Don Farmer

It was jarring to see the secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in news briefings involving Hurricane Irene. It was appropriate, yet unsettling because some of us find it hard to separate that agency from the terrorist attacks ...

As we approach Grandparents Day on Sept. 11, I’m increasingly aware of the influence we can have on our grandchildren. What happened years ago, when our grandson was about 6, makes the point. It had to do with his mom’s ...

I know budget cutting is on the agenda at Marco Island’s City Hall, as the city manager and the seven council members keep looking for ways to reduce city spending. One modest proposal I’ve heard kicked around in some circles ...

We used to call our neighbor John Arceri by his first name. Now we call him 2-L John. That’s because John, 69, of Marco Island, has passed the exams at Ave Maria School of Law, which makes him a second ...

Betty Shepard has transformed a fun play time for her great grandchildren into a “cottage” industry with an impact on hundreds of children here. “I bought a few little yellow pillows, about five inches square, from a White Elephant shop,” ...

A good friend and mentor died this week, Elmer W. Lower, a giant in the world of TV network news in the last half of the past century. You may never have heard of him because he wasn’t an on-camera ...

Tracking the “traffic” between Marco Island and Naples is getting interesting. Not vehicular traffic; rather it’s a pattern of cross-pollination of events, projects and people.

I have read that the favorite thing rich people steal from luxury hotels is soap. Why? Some folks just have larceny in their DNA. Some see hotel soap as virtually a no-risk theft. Would any upscale hotel stop a departing ...

You know that in the world of cyberspace, hacking is a big deal, a major problem when America’s National Security Agency runs a website called CryptoKids. It’s a cartoon-centric effort to make “good” hacking cool, according to wire service reports.

A first-time, modest effort is aimed at giving blind and visually impaired people here some good fun and a potentially great form of independence during this Independence Day period. The “independence” analogy may be a stretch but the project is ...

Having one’s head “in the clouds” means the person has unrealistic, impractical ideas. Steve Jobs never saw it that way and now he’s bringing “iCloud” to the vaunted Apple family of high-tech wonders.

This is a story about a Naples lady who works her heart out to help heart surgery patients even as she endures her own life-threatening bout with stomach cancer. She is Hea Lange, who volunteers her time and efforts to ...

Among some seniors we know in Naples and Marco Island, an informal, unofficial rule of etiquette has been around for a while. It’s the eight-minute rule for all social occasions, from after-church chat to dress-up galas, meaning shoes and long ...

One vivid memory of my recent open heart surgery at a NCH Healthcare System hospital was the briefing my wife and I got from Tricia Sutton before the operation. A registered nurse and manager of RNs at NCH’s 6-North, Sutton ...

A red pillow, shaped like a Valentine heart with a graphic of a human heart on it, has become my new BIFF — Best Inanimate Friend Forever. Many people around Naples, Marco Island and elsewhere will share or already have ...