Author: Porter

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Tourism

Bishop Planetarium Attracts Islanders and Visitors

Bishop Planetarium is an exciting and educational attraction for Anna Maria Islanders and visitors alike.

Anna Maria Island can be a good place from which to gaze at the heavens. We are fortunate to often have excellent views of space shuttle launches, to the east. Many people on the island have chosen to use minimal outdoor lighting, and to choose fixtures that direct the light down, rather than needlessly to the sky. It’s better for sea turtles during nesting season, and it’s better for star gazers, too. The meteor showers of summer can be seen here because there is relatively little light.

In addition to what can been seen directly from the island, there is a nearby resource that adds a great deal of opportunity and education related to astronomy. The Bishop Planetarium, in downtown Bradenton, is part of a complex that includes the South Florida Museum and the Parker Manatee Aquarium.

The planetarium’s theater is a 50-foot-high dome equipped with a $1-million digital projection system, which is one of only three systems of its kind in the world. Incorporating unidirectional stadium style seating, high definition DVD, TV, and PowerPoint projection, and a digital 25,000 watt Dolby 5.1 surround sound system, the Bishop Planetarium theater is capable of presenting a wide range of programs.

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Real Estate

The Best Roofs for Avoiding Hurricane Damage

It’s been a windy November, and this is just a reminder of how much windier it can be in years that we are more affected by tropical storms and hurricanes. It brings up the question of how hurricane-proof our houses are here. Anyone in the market for a house on Anna Maria Island should certainly pay close attention to the quality of the construction, starting with the roof.

Anna Maria Island has been very lucky this 2009 hurricane season, as has the entire Atlantic region of the United States. Unlike some recent years, in which life on the island was interrupted frequently by approaching hurricanes, this year, it has been possible to almost forget these great storms are part of life here. By the middle of November, the only storm that came nearby was Hurricane Ida, which passed by with less interest than we’ve paid to any of the previous storms, such as Hurricane Bill in the Atlantic, earlier in the year.

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Arts

Art, Cultural Events Start Anna Maria Island High Season

Doors, entrances, portals and passages are the theme of the Anna Maria Island Art League’s first show of the 2009-2010 cultural season. It opens on November 13, as part of the island-wide ArtsHOP, a weekend full of art, theater and music. Hosted by the Anna Maria Island Art League, Island Gallery West, The Artists’ Guild Gallery, and The Studio at Gulf and Pine, ArtsHOP includes a Friday evening gallery walk through all these fine galleries, and more.

An ArtsHOP Passport listing all the participating galleries can be picked up at any of the participating locations. Those who get their Passports stamped at six of the locations will be offered a 20 percent discount on dinner, afterward, at any of three of the Island’s favorite waterfront restaurants: The Sand Bar, The Beach House, and Mar Vista, on Longboat Key. A stamped Passport turned into the Art Leagues of Anna Maria Island before 8:45 Friday night will also serve as a raffle ticket for a huge basket of art-related gifts from Keeton’s Office and Art Supply of Bradenton.

Also on Friday and Saturday night will be performances by the Island Players of “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe,” a show originally performed by Lily Tomlin. On Saturday and Sunday during the day there will be an arts and crafts fair at the Holmes Beach City Hall Field. A Sock Hop on Saturday night will be held at the Anna Maria Island Historical Society Jail and Museum Complex. It is appropriately called “The Jailhouse Rock Sock Hop.” Suggested attire is poodle skirts and greaser outfits. Music of a very different kind will be featured on Sunday afternoon at 2 in the season’s first performance of the Anna Maria Island Orchestra and Chorus at the Cross Point Church.

A special part of this year’s ArtsHOP is an art happening in which local artists painted doors that were displayed all around the island in the weeks leading up to ArtsHOP. On Sunday afternoon, November 15, the doors will be auctioned under the banyan tree at the Anna Maria Island Art League, with proceeds going to the Cultural Connections. The mission of this organization, founded in 2008, is to promote Anna Maria Island as a cultural destination.

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Real Estate

Marble Window Sills: An Architectural Detail Often Overlooked

Even the smallest and oldest of the houses on Anna Maria Island feature certain design and architectural elements that are not only functional, but beautiful. It’s easy to take them for granted (and some people might even take them for granite), but the gray and white marble sills that form the bottom of so many island windows are just such a solid, visually pleasing detail.

It makes a lot of sense to put marble at the base of an island window … especially those of the traditional jalousie design, which are often left open even when showers come through. The angled panes of the opened jalousie window catch and deflect most of the rain away from the sill. But if some of the rain gets through, a marble sill is preferable to wood. The water won’t penetrate, and can be easily wiped away. Damp wood leads to many problems in the Florida climate, including rot, mildew and even termites.

As I’ve visited more and more friends at their homes in Florida, I’ve continued to be surprised by how many of these houses feature marble window trim. I’m not sure which surprise me the most … the humble old houses, or those of brand new construction, that feature marble sills. It seems even the modern luxury building industry has recognized the benefits of the marble that was used in simpler times.

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Categories
Real Estate

Island Real Estate Offers Benefits of Minimalist Design

I have never forgotten Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s comments about the appeal of simplicity when it comes to shelter, as well as to other basic needs in our lives. In Gift from the Sea, she writes with such appreciation about her time on a Florida island, where she escaped the very busy routine of being a mother of five, with a career, living in the North. In a beautifully poetic way, she allows the seashells she finds on her daily beach walks to stimulate her more general ideas about life.

“One does not need the airtight shelter one has in winter in the North,” she writes. “Here I live in a bare sea-shell of a cottage. No heat, no telephone, no plumbing to speak of, no hot water, a two-burner oil stove, no gadgets to go wrong. No rugs. There were some, but I rolled them up the first day; it is easier to sweep the sand off a bare floor. But I find I don’t bustle about with unnecessary sweeping and cleaning here. I am no longer aware of the dust. I have shed my Puritan conscience about absolute tidiness and cleanliness. Is it possible that, too, is a material burden?”

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