I could go on. I haven’t even mentioned the cream-colored leisure suit with bell bottoms I wore to my National Honor Society yearbook photo shoot. (Did I mention my dating status?)

What could I know about what it’s like to be in high school today when I didn’t know much about what it was like when I was in high school? I ask because I recently judged the South Florida Sun Sentinel’s high school column and commentary writing contest for students in Broward and Palm Beach counties.

Maybe because, in addition to my early interests in coin collecting, chess and “Star Trek,” I was also on the staff of the school newspaper. Barely. (I was last to be picked for that, too.) Maybe because I’m still on the staff of a newspaper. (Barely).

“Ecology-Minded Person Speaks Up About Garbage on School Campus” was the headline on the first column I ever wrote, for The Madison Drumbeat on March 8, 1973. Just did the math — never my strongest subject, despite the chess trophy — approximately 51 graduating classes ago.

I was on a tear to change the world back then. As long as I didn’t have to leave my room.

“I think a lot of things could be done to improve the eyesore of trash around school,” I wrote in my first column, sorely tempting retaliation from the trash-tossing, unecological-minded bullies who regarded collecting coins, playing chess and making plastic “Star Trek” models alone in one’s room as uncool or even “nerdy.” (Imagine.)

“I have seen nice empty trash cans all over the school with piles of trash arrayed around it displaying the sheer ignorance of some people,” I wrote.

Yeah, some people. Take that!

Even now, more than 51 years later, I can almost hear the sheerly ignorant, trash-tossing people on campus warning, “We’re gonna get YOU after class for writing THAT!” I would look pretty funny with that chess trophy stuffed down the back of my pants.

But my school was a trash heap — and somebody had to say it. Even if it meant taking a stand against some people who littered. Even if it meant hiding in my room for the rest of my school life after the column was published. Which was pretty much my school life anyway. Just ask my mom.

Surely high school kids today would be writing about different things than I was 50 years ago, I thought as I started judging this year’s entries. And, sure enough, not one among the dozens of entries from 12 Broward and Palm Beach county schools concerned the issue of garbage on campus. Which, naturally, I assumed was because I had solved that problem in 1973. (You’re welcome, kids!)

This year’s high school columnists and commentators were writing about weightier issues such as “The Social Media Effects on Teen Girls” and “Rethinking the Future of Standardized Testing’’ and “Compromised Student Safety” — the latter about an uptick in hate crimes here and abroad.

“Standing up against individual instances of bigoted and hateful behavior whenever it is seen, no matter how small, is yet another thing individuals can do to combat such behavior,” wrote the editorial staff of the Eagle Eye News at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland.

I was proud of them. Of their bravery. Somebody had to say that. No garbage on the school campus here.

“This thoughtful, well-researched and engaging editorial effectively connects the lives of students with the larger world — and makes clear how events far from home matter to the future,” I wrote in my judge’s comments, awarding first place to the Eagle Eye News.

A close second-place award went to Daniel Morrison, pictured above, and Kara Warren of Pembroke Pines Charter High School, pictured below, for “Rethinking the Future of Standardized Testing: the Digital SAT.”

Natalia Vasquez and Savannah Ghibaudy, from Spanish River High in Boca Raton, took third for their charming “Movies vs. Books” faceoff, in which Savannah wrote, “It’s crucial that we always remember to appreciate what literature has brought to us as a society and aim to keep the art alive!”

I was proud of them — all of them — again. I wished I’d written that. Me and my 18-year-old, leisure-suit-with-bell-bottoms wearing self.

What do I know about what it’s like to be in high school today?

Only that they’re still trying to make the world a better place, somebody’s still saying it, and the art of commentary and column writing is alive.

Mark Gauert is the editor of City & Shore magazine, which is published by the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He can be reached at mgauert@cityandshore.com.

First up, your guide to some of the coolest shows of the season, at indoor venues where you can, literally, chill. Like the weather, South Florida’s arts calendar stays hot year-round now, and our guide ranges from Missy to Les Mis.

We’ll also dive into some of South Florida’s coolest pools, find refreshing wines and cocktails to beat most any heat, slip into some of the breeziest fashions for the beach, find a golfer’s paradise taking shape on the breezy island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas, talk with Florida Project movie produce Kevin Chinoy about his new project, and find products and ideas for fun in the sun if you dare slip out of the A/C for the outdoors.

All of this and more in the Summer Issue of City & Shore, coming this weekend in print, digital and online, https://www.qgdigitalpublishing.com/publication/?i=823321

Because Grandeur’s about as close as you’re going to feel you’ve boarded a private yacht on a commercial cruise ship.

Not that boarding here is particularly stressful, but there are chilled flutes of Heidsieck Monopole Blue Top Brut waiting at the end of the gangway from everything you left behind at PortMiami. There’s another bottle of Monopole in an ice bucket in your suite, too, in the unlikely event you feel any stress getting there.

The 332-square-foot Concierge Suite feels spacious, with a walk-in closet and good separation between the cabin door and the living areas. A valet brings the luggage and sets it on a welcome blanket across the king-sized bed. The 83-square-foot balcony is bigger than some cabins – possibly homes –  I’ve personally occupied, and comes with a pair of 8.5 x 21 Pentax Papillo II binoculars, because you’re going to see some things from up here.

There’s a shower and tub in the marbled bathroom. Lavender bubble bath and jasmine shampoo, conditioner, shower gel and body milk, all by L’Occitane. There’s a phone in there, too, in case you think of anything you may require from the steward. (He was out in the hall memorizing guest names the last time I saw him. He remembered mine. Even pronounced it correctly). Details you’d expect on a private yacht.

Everywhere throughout this 14-deck, 735-foot ship, there are such small, elegant touches that say big things. The tables spread with white linens in the stylish Compass Rose dining room on Deck 4 are set with Rosenthal Versace china designed exclusively for Regent Seven Seas Cruises. The cozy loungers and Jacuzzis off the Serene Spa & Wellness Center on Deck 5 overlook the ship’s wake and, shhhhhh, hardly anyone knows about them.

Then there’s the haute cuisine and the name-dropping Louis VIII, Opus One, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellar labels around the ship. And the feeling you’ve checked into a boutique hotel at sea. Or a private yacht. One where the Caribbean or the Mediterranean or the Gulf of St. Lawrence comes to you.

What they’re drinking

Strawberry Sparkler

Ingredients

5 ozs. High-quality prosecco

¾ oz. Fragoli, a wild strawberry liqueur

1 Tbsp. Fresh strawberries, puréed

Sliced fresh strawberries (for garnish)

Sliced fresh lemon (for garnish)

An homage to Grandeur’s Italian shipyard roots, this simple cocktail is pretty and refreshing. Purée the fresh strawberries, strain the fiber from the liquid; add strawberry liquids and chilled prosecco in a champagne glass. Serve with a slice or two of strawberry and lemon.

Overheard

“Do I want a big pop or small pop? [Crowd, answering, timidly: “uh, small pop?”] Small pop, right! Why do I want a small pop? [Crowd shifts silently, not sure.] Because chefs are cheap! We like to save money. So what we love to do is save as much champagne or prosecco as possible.”

– Culinary Arts Kitchen Cooking Class Chef John Stephano, showing his 18 students how to open a bottle of bubbly without losing a drop.

What’s cooking

There are four specialty restaurants aboard Grandeur, and one cooking class that can teach you how to make your own memorable meal.

“What do you never want to do on vacation?” Chef John Stephano teases the 18 guests before his hour-long Culinary Arts Cooking Class. “The last thing you ever want to do is the dishes. Anybody who really struggles in their culinary skills today we’ll be sending down to the galleys to help us out.”

Nervous laughs around the cooking stations in the Culinary Arts Kitchen on Deck 11.

“No, not at all!” he says, laughing, before showing his class how to make Pasta al Limone and classic French crêpes with allspice berry ice cream.

Stephano comes from a big Irish-Italian family in Philadelphia, where there was always something cooking on the stove, he says. Since no open-flame gas burners are allowed on the ship, he’s had to adapt some of his grandmother’s recipes to the induction cooktops each member of his class gets to work with.

“You can’t use regular pots and pans on these stoves – they have to be magnetic,’’ he says. “I always hear from someone who likes cooking with induction so much here they want to get it at home, then find out they have to change all of their cooking utensils.”

For the pasta dish, students learn what mise en place means (literally, everything in place), whether to add the oil to the water or the pan, how to use a zester for the lemon, whether to rip or cut the basil and how to serve pasta (in a warm bowl warmed with the pasta water.) After about 20 minutes of the chef’s steady guidance, everyone’s pasta al limone looks ready for the cover of a food magazine.

“Who wants a picture with their pasta!?” Everyone does.

The crêpe instruction follows, including a two-handed, chef-secret dump and roll maneuver to get the batter to spread evenly on the pan.

“I want you to ease in, like you’re driving a race car,’’ he says, demonstrating. “No flipping crêpes here – try that at home if you like.”

Twenty minutes later, the crêpes also all look magazine-cover ready. (It may help that Strawberry Sparkler cocktails were served before class began).

“Nice job,’’ Stephano says, reviewing mine.

“Thanks, chef!” I say, not exactly ready to join the cast of The Bear but ridiculously impressed with myself.

Don’t miss, part I

Impossible to miss, really, because Grandeur’s Fabergé egg is among the first things you see (after the welcome champagne) when you board on Deck 5. Sarah Fabergé, great-grand daughter of Peter Fabergé, was aboard for the christening of the ship and unveiling of the 180 mm, diamond, pearl and emerald egg last December in Miami. If you must ask, “I can’t disclose the value – other than it was created especially for Regent,’’ a spokesperson says. “I will say it’s in the multi millions.” And worth even more to lend the impression you’ve stepped onto someone’s private yacht. Someone with deep pockets – and considerable taste in art.

Don’t miss part II

While some cruise lines are downsizing – even replacing ship libraries with crêpe stations (ca alors!) – Grandeur’s library is lovingly, borderline reverently, tended. If libraries are making a last stand, this one’s an oceangoing Alamo – with eclectic out-of-nowhere titles ranging from “L’Âpre et splendide Espagne” by Camille Mauclair to “The Bazaars of Istanbul” by Isabel Bocking. Biography, history, fiction, large print, nautical transport, practical advice, reference, science & natural history, sports & leisure, travel & travel writing, visual arts and children’s books – all within easy-to-grab and sprawl on a nearby comfy couch or chair.

Could miss

Not that there’s anything wrong with the live shows in the two-level Constellation Theater, featuring a demographically hep mix of hits from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s performed by an earnest troupe of singers and dancers. They’re fine after-dinner diversions. But “Key Largo” is playing on a loop on the big-screen TV in the cabin. And if you haven’t seen it, it’s one of Bogie and Bacall’s best. Just saying.

IF YOU GO

Regent Seven Seas Grandeur

Accommodating 744 guests, with 372 suites and 532 crew. Four specialty restaurants, including Compass Rose; Pacific Rim, an Asian-Fusion restaurant; Chartreuse, a French restaurant; Prime 7, a steakhouse. Casual eateries include Sette Mari, at the back of La Veranda dining area on Deck 11, which does breakfast and lunch in the morning/afternoon and Italian food at night; pool-grille cafe/buffet and Coffee Connection. Fitness center and spa with a sauna. Jogging track, putting green, bocce court, pickleball court. Boutique, casino, business center, among other amenities. The Grandeur is sailing the Mediterranean now through August. It returns to PortMiami (from New  York) on Nov. 7, where it will resume various itineraries through March 2025 before returning to Europe.

Information, RSSC.com, 844-873-2381.

All the birds in the sky are singing

You got to understand.”

– Eleutheria by Lenny Kravitz

Tommy Turnquest turns the engine off at Mystery Lake.

“This is my favorite place, right here,’’ the former member of the Bahamian Parliament and cabinet minister says, stepping out of the 4 x 4 Ford and quietly closing the door. “Listen.’’

All the birds really are singing here this morning, just like Lenny Kravitz sang about the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas. Red-legged thrushes, semipalmated plovers, Cuban pewees. Sea breezes sigh through the shrubby forest reflected in the blue-hole waters of the lake. The ocean on the far side of the island sounds the way it does when you hold a seashell to your ear. Distant, hushed, calming.

And after a few moments at Mystery Lake you begin to understand what Kravitz was trying to say about this place.

That we’ve stopped the car in paradise.

Jack’s Bay

Down on the pink sands of Jack’s Bay, Patrick Cerjan is spin casting his favorite yellow and red fishing lure into the surf. He’s the only other person I can see on this four-mile stretch of beach, horizon to horizon.

“I catch everything here,” he says of the turquoise bay, glistening with fish and bobbing today with sea turtles. “Every kind of snapper, jacks – big ones, like you wouldn’t believe.”

He fishes a photo of one of his catches from his phone. And I believe.

Just then a black-tip shark about half as long as his fishing pole cruises past. A loggerhead turtle head pops up farther from shore. Then another, closer. Pretty soon there are sea turtle heads popping up everywhere. The way people described scenes of pristine nature in accounts from the 18th and 19th centuries along the coasts of Florida.

“The turtles come here because they’re protected from predators in the Atlantic beyond the reef,’’ says Cerjan, on a fishing break from his job as director of sales at Jack’s Bay. “I was standing here the other day and a sea turtle swam right between my feet.”

Just like that.

The way it was when the world was new.

Tiger and The Bear

Up on the terrace of Salt Spray, the exclusive golf clubhouse overlooking Tiger Woods’ 10-hole course, the Atlantic and Jack’s Bay, I settle into a deck chair and read headlines in magazines about this idyllic place. I didn’t know any of this existed — 260 miles from Fort Lauderdale, 75 from Nassau — possibly because I’m no golfer and possibly because it’s only recently becoming known as a paradise of another sort.

“If money were no object, what would the ultimate golfer’s paradise look like?” a story in Forbes asks. “Exactly like Jack’s Bay.”

“How do you make golf in paradise even better?” Golf magazine asks. “Add a goat. Or rather, the GOAT.”

So, yes, Jack Nicklaus is coming here, putting his illustrious name on a seaside, 18-hole Heritage championship course scheduled to be completed in 2025. Tiger Woods beat him to it in 2020, with the 10-hole, par 3 “Playground.”

And there’s a 1,200-acre resort club and Nicklaus-branded residential community in the works. And 33 “ready-to-build” beachfront and ocean view lots, already sold at an average of $1.4 million a piece. And a 7,000-square-foot spa village on the way. And a “world-class” beach club, a freeform pool, comprehensive fitness and wellness program, a family-friendly Sports Pavilion, a boating lagoon with cabanas and a conch-fritter shack. And tennis, kayaking, diving, hiking trails, cave exploring, giant chess board …

And I think back to my quiet morning at Mystery Lake with Tommy Turnquest, the former Bahamian minister who’s now executive deputy chairman and chief executive officer of Jack’s Bay Eleuthera.

“This is one of the nicest properties in the Bahamas,” he says. “We got to make sure we don’t mess it up.”

90-minute flight

It’s a bit of an adventure to get to Jack’s Bay. Makers Air flies Cessna Caravans direct the 260 miles from Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport to Rock Sound International, the tiny airport nearest to the property on the southeast coast of Eleuthera. How that goes may depend on your tolerance for travel in small, single-engine aircraft, seated with up to 14 of your fellow passengers immediately behind the pilot and co-pilot.

You may see storms building between you and the islands ahead, for example, and wonder, how’s that going to work? You may see the hard rain splattering the cockpit windshield at 1,500 feet as the pilot aligns the Cessna with the skinny strip of runway cut into the shrubby forest below. And you may begin to see your pilots – often invisible on commercial flights – in a new light. You may thank them when you’re on the ground more than you’ve ever thanked a pilot on a commercial flight. And not just because there’s no bathroom aboard a Cessna Caravan on the hour and a half flight from Fort Lauderdale.

You’ll also see wonders on the way over. Savannahs of turquoise dunes beneath the shallow clear waters of the Bahama Banks, between the big island of Andros and the coral-crusted archipelago of the Abacos. A Rorschach test of shapes out the Cessna’s windows in the white sandy bottoms that shift and swirl in the currents below. See that dune in the shape of a bird? Or maybe a dolphin? Assuming you open your eyes on a small plane coming in for a landing on a strip of asphalt in a storm over shallow water.

“Get any shut-eye on the way over?’’ our pilot grins at the end of the smooth landing at Rock Sound International. “I know I did.”

We all laugh.

“Imagine if you’d had your eyes open,’’ I say. And he laughs – a big, reassuring laugh that makes you want to go right back up and go through another adventure with him.

‘Oasis of the soul’

It’s a bit of an adventure to get to Jack’s Bay from Rock Sound International, too. Don’t forget, for starters, they drive on the “wrong’’ side of the road in the Bahamas – which said no to British rule in 1973, but held fast to the Queen’s rules of the road.

The Queen’s Highway south from the airport to the gate of Jack’s Bay is potholed and crumbling, which nonetheless doesn’t seem to slow anyone from driving fast. The views of Caribbean-clear waters on one side and the staggering – at least compared with the rest of the mostly flat Bahamas – 40- to 90-foot hills and cliffs along the Atlantic side are also distractions from driving at full attention.

After all of that, it’s a bit of an adventure to stay at Jack’s Bay, too. At least for now. It’s not really ready for visitors yet, the developers say. Check back in November, maybe sometime after Thanksgiving. No homes have even been built. The master plan on display in the Salt Spray clubhouse is dotted with the words “future residential” because a lot of it’s still months away. Much of the infrastructure is still going in – electrical, water, fiber-optic cables – all being excavated and trenched from Eleuthera’s limestone crust.

But back in the 4 x 4 Ford, which comes in handy because many of the roads are uphill and as yet unpaved, Tommy Turnquest points out the trailer that houses the 1.25 megawatt backup generator, enough to run the whole property if local power fails, he says. He pauses by the new reverse osmosis plant that will convert briny well water to supply the resort and its two thirsty golf courses, and the big new tank that will store it. They’re working on waste disposal systems for the 395 residential homes, too, mindful of how precious water resources and renewables are in the islands.

“There’ll never be more than 395 residences here,’’ Turnquest says. That’s the way he and his investment partners, on-site developers and staff have planned it from the beginning. Low density.

“Everything we’ve done here we’ve done very deliberately,” says Turnquest, who served as the Bahamas’ minister of tourism and national security, among other posts, until he left government in 2012.

“We’ve looked at it and thought about it for the past 12 years. So you can weave into the golf and residential and homes around that golf course the whole aspect of nature and hiking and biking and recreation.”

As for marketing the property to a jet-setting, golf-tourism world, “it’s very golf forward, the ‘Tiger and the Bear,’” says Robi Das, portfolio manager and strategy advisor to Sir Franklyn Wilson, chairman of Eleuthera Properties Ltd. “But as you go around the property, you’ll see there’s a lot of stuff for everyone to do here. They can go out on the water, they can get a spa treatment, they can do hikes.”

On one of those hikes, Turnquest points out some rare red Cuban cave shrimp, swimming in the clear waters of a protected blue hole lake along the trail.

“This place,” he says, happy to see them, “is an oasis of the soul.’’

Golfers and more

And as they’ve built it, to borrow a baseball metaphor for a golf resort, they have come. And not just the golfers. And not just to Jack’s Bay on the southeast coast of Eleuthera.

Ritz-Carlton is renovating the venerable Cotton Bay Club resort next door. Disney is scheduled to begin landing cruise passengers for day fun at Lookout Cay on Lighthouse Point further down the coast in June. The morning I left Jack’s Bay, I spotted a big three-masted ship against the rising sun and wondered … Jeff Bezos’ yacht, Koru? Maybe.

Or maybe not.

“I don’t know,’’ Turnquest said, studying the blurry photo I shot on my iPhone. “Could be. Could be a freighter, too.’’

Maybe.

“It’s been crazy,” says Cerjan, the director of sales, sipping a bottle of the local Sands beer after catching nothing all afternoon in the surf on the bay. Most buyers and prospective buyers have been coming from the eastern seaboard of the United States, Florida and a few Bahamians, he says, most looking for a second (or third or fourth) residence.

“But once Golf magazine picked up on the whole Tiger/Nicklaus thing, omigosh, I had 200 sales leads by 11 a.m. the next morning,” Cerjan says. “From Monaco, the U.K., Switzerland, California, Vancouver. You name it.”

And you begin to understand something else about Jack’s Bay on Eleuthera. That for a director of sales, it’s a beautiful feeling, too.

‘It’s time to share’

Everybody had said the stars were especially bright here, so I stepped out the door one night to have a look.

It was like stepping into space. Or at least how I imagine it would be like stepping into space.

On a moonless night, without light pollution from any source, the pale constellations and stars we can barely see from South Florida blazed against the sparkling backdrop of the Milky Way. Orion, the Pleiades, the Big Dipper – bigger than I’d ever seen it.

Beautiful. Especially with a soundtrack of the sea. Or Lenny Kravitz.

In the morning, on the way back to Rock Sound International, I asked Tommy Turnquest – the former Bahamian minister – if he really wanted word to get out about this place of beautiful feelings.

He thought for a moment.

“Yes,’’ he said. “It’s time to share.’’

IF YOU GO

Upon completion, homeowners will be allowed to rent their homes through Jack’s Bay’s rental management program. Information, 800-320-6281, https://jacksbayclub.com. Since this story published, Jack’s Bay has launched sales for 12 Atlantic Club Cottages, each fully furnished with a private pool, including six four-bedroom 3,000 square foot cottages (starting at $2.8 million) and six six-bedroom 4,200 square foot cottages (starting at $3.9 million). The 2024 residential collection at Jack’s Bay also includes Phase 1 of the Nicklaus Village residences, both designed by RAD Architecture, https://www.radmiami.com/.

Much was sure to be different there since Hurricane Irma took it apart the morning of Sept. 10, 2017. I hadn’t been to the resort off Little Torch Key since February 2015, long before the storm passed through.

Back then, after my wife and I had spent a day and a night there, I wrote this about Little Palm Island:

“We wore ourselves out that day, trying to do everything before the sun set. We’d jump into an ocean kayak and take a few sharp turns into the mysterious mangroves around nearby Big Munson Island, or escape to SpaTerre for an 80-minute massage. We walked the crushed seashell paths around the island, playing the giant chess board, lounging by the pool, sampling Gumby Slumbers (Capt. Morgan spiced rum, Malibu coconut rum, fresh squeezed orange juice, pineapple juice, cranberry juice and rum-soaked coconut), swinging in hammocks, watching the Key deer run, till the sun began to set and we got hungry.

New issue of ‘Explore Florida & the Caribbean’ is going places

“Then we followed the footpaths, raked to Zen-garden like perfection (no leaf blowers to disturb our peace here), past the thatch-roof bungalows to the Dining Room. We took a table down on the white-sand beach as the sun began to sizzle into the west. Our own personal Mallory Square (without the fire jugglers).

“We were both worn out by the time we were holding hands again on the launch back to Little Torch Key.”

I was sure about one thing, after my last trip to Little Palm Island. It was the best place I knew.

‘Even the birds were gone’

Since then, Irma had come ashore with wrecking 130 mph winds. And everybody else on Little Palm Island was somewhere else that day.

Inga from the concierge desk was in Pennsylvania. Rolando at the beach cabana was on Florida’s west coast. Sandi at the spa was miles away in Central Florida.

“Everything you see here now was all rebuilt,’’ Inga says, greeting us at the dock for a tour of the 4.5-acre island that used to be five acres before Hurricane Irma. All of it, from the wooden floors of the dining room that buckled under as much as eight feet of seawater to the thatched roofs of the 30 bungalows that blew away in the Cat. 4 force winds.

“The boutique over here used to be on the [other] side of the island,” she says, along with the white-sand beach where we’d had dinner the last time we were here. “The tree that used to overhang the pool is gone now. The bar over there was rebuilt. The piano survived – not even Irma could move that. The giant chess board you remember from your last visit did not – it’s been replaced by a reflection pond. Somehow, the Truman outhouse – built in the 1920s – survived. It survived! They knew how to build stuff back then.”

But almost everywhere else she sweeps her hand, you hear about trees knocked flat, or the Great Room that used to be on the ground floor that’s on top of a new building that houses the dining room now; or about how they found the beloved portraits of Bess and Harry S. Truman standing up to their pastel knees in seawater in the drowned remnants of the library.

“All those old books were washed out to sea,’’ Inga says, moving on to the beach cabana where they keep the ocean kayaks, paddleboards and Boston whalers. “But, as you can see, Irma did not take Rolando – he’s still here.”

“Were you like this, hanging on by your fingernails?” I ask Rolando, in his little cabana pressed between the sea and the pool.

“Oh yeah,” he says, smiling. “Kind of.’’

No, not really. No one was here for that.

“Thank goodness,” I say.

“Thank goodness,’’ he says.

Rolando had thought about staying, but he decided in the last hours to evacuate with everyone else. He waited in Naples until Irma let go of the Keys, then picked his way back through the debris field that was Monroe County.

“I came back two days after the storm,” says Rolando, one of the first employees to return. “It was a wreck. There was no place left with a roof, so I slept under the stars on a couple of porches. I was a couple of years living like that. No power – the undersea line had been cut, and they were afraid to turn the power back on until everything was repaired.”

There were changes everywhere, he says, big and small.

Before the storm, for example, there’d been life all over Little Palm Island. Squadrons of frigate birds riding currents high above the bungalows. Pelicans splashing after fish in the bay. Key deer swimming over from the mangroves of the National Key Deer Refuge – so many they put up signs to remind guests the 30-inch tall animals are protected by law.

“[But] there was no wildlife here after the storm,” Rolando says. “Even the birds were gone.”

It was two months before he even saw anything else alive. Heard it, actually, over the din of the mini dozer clearing debris across the island.

“The first back were the mourning doves,” he says. “You know, that coocooing song, singing every morning, calling for their mates. That was awesome. Life coming back.”

But there were questions whether the resort would be coming back. Whether Little Palm Island had taken too big a hit this time. Whether it was worth rebuilding in this beautiful but vulnerable place.

But it happened, a few weeks after the storm. He was here the day he got the news Noble House Hotels & Resorts and the insurers had resolved to rebuild. “A happy day,” he says.

And he was here the day Little Palm Island reopened, on March 1, 2020, almost two and a half years after Irma. The last resort in the Keys to reopen. “Now, if a storm like Irma happened again, I’d stay,” he says. “That big building [housing the Dining Hall, Monkey Hut bar, Great Room and Boutique], is set forever. The foundation goes 90 feet down in the rock.”

People started coming again almost as soon as it reopened, he says. The way they’d been coming to Little Munson Island since it was a fishing camp in the 1920s; and as a resort since 1988.

“We wanted it to stay the same as they left it,” he says, looking over the calm ocean where Irma had come ashore. “And it happened.”

The best place

A bottle of Laurent Perrier champagne was chilling in the bucket in our bungalow, the last time we stayed on Little Palm Island. This time, a bottle of Nicolas Feuillant.

That was about the only difference.

We wore ourselves out again, trying to do everything before the sun set. We could jump into an ocean kayak and take a few sharp turns into the mangroves around nearby Munson Island, still battered from Irma but still there. We could escape to the rebuilt SpaTerre for an 80-minute deep-tissue massage or 50 minute rose quartz facial with Sandi. We walked around the island, lounging by the new pool, sipping Butterfly Bees (Butterfly pea flower-infused Bombay Sapphire gin, honey, lemon juice and Rocky’s Botanical), swinging in hammocks, watching the frigate birds soar over the thatched roofs and the pelicans dive on fish in the bay, till the sun began to set and we got hungry.

Then we followed the crushed seashell footpaths, raked to Zen-garden like perfection (still no leaf blowers to disturb the peace here), past the rebuilt bungalows to the new dining room. It was too chilly for a table on the white-sand beach, back where it belongs on the Atlantic side of the island; so we took a table on the new deck as the sun began to set. The man at the piano Irma couldn’t budge began to play an old song.

“God bless the child that got his own.”

We were worn out by the time we were holding hands again on the launch to Little Torch Key the next day.

I didn’t know what to expect on Little Palm Island, seven years after the storm. But it’s still the best place I know.

IF YOU GO

Little Palm Island Resort & Spa, 28500 Overseas Highway, Little Torch Key, Fla. 33042, 800-343-8567, littlepalmisland.com.

The ultra-luxe private island resort, where suites start at $2,800 per night, has 30 thatched-roof rooms – with new interiors – for never more than 60 guests at a time set amid ocean views, some with private sundecks with copper soaking tubs; tropical foliage and sandy beaches re-nourished since Hurricane Irma’s devastating winds in 2017. The one time “Munson Island Fishing Camp,” which hosted President and Mrs. Harry S. Truman, also features crushed seashell paths to the pool, new fitness center, docks for watercraft recreation, beach cabana and two-story SpaTerre, Noble House Hotels & Resorts’ signature spa. The resort’s private motor yachts depart to the island hourly (9:30 a.m.- 9:30 p.m.) from a new dock at the Welcome Station, just off U.S. 1 on Little Torch Key. The crossing takes 15-20 minutes, and is especially delightful at sunset with a Gumby Slumber – the island’s signature cocktail – in hand.

About the Key deer

The resort’s long been famous for visits from the endangered Key deer, which swim in from the nearby National Key Deer Refuge and other Keys. The 30-inch-tall animals delight guests with sightings (and, of course, selfies) at the dock, along the beach and foraging among the mangroves. (Many are such regular visitors they’ve been given names.) Feeding the deer, however, is illegal and can result in a $250 fine. Their numbers are still recovering from Irma.

We were not the first to fall under the charms of Little Palm Island

When actor Cliff Robertson came here to make the 1963 film “P.T. 109,” with Little Munson Island and the Keys standing in for the Solomon Islands in President John F. Kennedy’s Pacific wartime biopic, he apparently went a little island happy. He left a publicity still of himself at the helm of the P.T. boat, in full command of his role as President Kennedy, which hung on a wall in the dining room before Hurricane Irma.

“To my good friends of Little Island (Palm),’’ he signed. “Unposed and unclothed. My favorite beachhead.” The record, like the fading ink on the photo, was not clear on what prompted Robertson to write the dedication. Maybe it was the splendid isolation, the sunsets, the starry nights – or the Bacardi 151-spiked Shipwrecks. Sadly, Irma swept away the framed autographed photo. Rolando in the beach cabana, however, salvaged one souvenir: a faded poster from the movie that somehow survived.

The new issue that will appear in digital and limited print format on Sunday, May 5, features stories on Florida’s lighthouses, cruise-line dining, a return to ultra-luxe Little Palm Island in the Keys, a camping trip to Peanut Island in Palm Beach County, a postcard from Regent Seven Seas’ new Grandeur, a small plane trip across the Bahama Bank to the island of Eleuthera, a hike up the volcanic cone of Saba island in the Caribbean and more.

Florida and the Caribbean basin have a destination for every interest – and we’ll help you find it in the latest issue.

All of this – plus complete calendars of events throughout Florida and the Caribbean basin – in the new issue of Explore Florida & the Caribbean. View the digital magazine here.

“The news and stories that matter to Californians (and anyone else interested in the state), delivered weekday mornings.” — Siobhan Roberts, New York Times, 17 Jan. 2024

“Or maybe you can get fed but can’t hear a word anyone else around the table is saying.” — Mark Gauert, Sun Sentinel, 17 Jan. 2024

“From this perspective, the moral evaluations of Keynes, Tolstoy or anyone else are irrelevant.” — Nick Romeo, The New Yorker, 16 Jan. 2024

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happier than anyone else about this. Probably everyone else. But this is so sudden — I wish I’d had time to prepare.

If I’d known I might be cited between The New York Times and The New Yorker in a dictionary through some algorithmic, possibly fleeting, fluke, I might have picked my words more carefully. Said something of more importance than a complaint about not being able to hear over all the noise in a restaurant. I might even have thrown in a reference to Tolstoy, Keynes (or anyone else) of my own.

I don’t know how anyone else would have handled news like this, but I would have appreciated some time to brace my K-through-grad-school teachers for the shock that I had made the dictionary, too. Friends from high school. Coworkers. Members of my immediate family.

“No way!” a former teacher says.

“Jump back!” a friend from high school says.

“You should get a royalty or commission,” a coworker says.

“Can you look up if you’re also an example of cleaning your side of the bathroom sink?’’ a member of my immediate family says.

Just did. I’m not.

But, apparently, I’ve been in the dictionary for a lot of other words. Really!

“Some sources point to friction with Soon-Shiong’s 30-year-old daughter, who in recent years has apparently appointed herself the paper’s unofficial ombudsman.” — Jason McGahan, The Hollywood Reporter, Jan. 2024

“This guy apparently did not understand the assignment.” — Becky Krystal, The Washington Post, 17 Jan. 2024

“Famous for food, fine dining … and, apparently, low potential risk for hearing loss and retirement mistakes?” — Mark Gauert, Sun Sentinel, 17 Jan. 2024

Apparently, there have been other examples in Merriam-Webster: Davenport, from a story I wrote a few years ago describing the homey Midwestern decor in the living room of Harry S. Truman’s Little White House in Key West; diners, from a column about noisy restaurants (again!); noise, ditto (you may detect a trend); tarte tatin, about the noted French dessert, because, really, who wouldn’t want to be cited with that when you look it up in the dictionary; grille, about faux filet grillé, a noted main course in France that is definitely NOT a veggie burger; and, of course, sea oats.

Sea oats! Really?

“Around 100 horses roam in the Corolla herd and have adapted to eating sea oats, persimmons, acorns and other native grasses on the island, the News & Observer reported.” — Peter Aitken, Fox News, 2 Aug. 2021.

“The ospreys and other shore birds had gone quiet now, the wind had fallen to whispers in the sea oats, even the waves seemed to slosh ashore in a hush.” — Mark Gauert, Sun Sentinel, 4 May 2021.

“Officials in Panama City Beach on Tuesday introduced a program that allows tourists during their visit to help build homes and plant sea oats in the sand dunes of neighboring Mexico Beach.” — Associated Press, 15 Jan. 2020.

Not that I’d allow this algorithmic, possibly fleeting, fluke, to go to my head. No, no. I know I’m capable of endless errors of grammar, spelling, light housekeeping.

You may be surprised to find me when you look up certain words in the dictionary. I know I was. But I’m no authority.

I may know more about sea oats than anyone else eating faux filet grillé and tarte tatin on the davenport, but, apparently, you’ll never hear it over the noise of the diners.

Really! You can look it up.

Mark Gauert is the editor of City & Shore magazine, which is published by the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He can be reached at mgauert@cityandshore.com.

Home is where Lindsey and Brody and Presley – wife, son, daughter – are in California while Skip resides in Miami and makes his living trying to get ballplayers home at loanDepot park. Talk even for 15 minutes with Schumaker, though, and you get the impression that managing baseball is an avocation of sorts, while managing lives is the real game.

They are lessons he learned from his late father, Wayne Schumaker, who passed away last month just days before the start of the new season. In memory of his dad, Skip donned jersey number 45, his dad’s number when he played for teams in high school, on Opening Day. https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2024/03/26/dave-hyde-skip-schumaker-brings-high-hopes-and-a-heavy-heart-into-marlins-season/

“Seeing how he always cared more about family than anything else made an impression on me,” Skip, Major League Baseball’s 2023 National League Manager of the Year, tells writer John Hughes.

And now that young-middle-aged man (he’s 44) wants to be like his father – to make family priority.

“Everything I know, I learned from somebody else,” Schumaker says. “I didn’t make any of this up.”

We’ll talk more with Schumaker in this special home issue, which features our interview on the cover of the digital version of the magazine and a report from the recent Kips Bay Decorator Show House Palm Beach, where the invitation to “have fun with it” was as much a design objective as a visitor experience, on the cover of the print version.

We’ll also talk with a South Florida couple who were determined to make homes (plural) in South Florida and North Carolina (they had a plan, what could go wrong?); get advice from On the Money writer Robyn A. Friedman on how home sellers can sell quickly and get the most bang for their home-sale buck; look for products and décor with Patti Roth to perk up your home; chat with CITY Furniture CEO Andrew Koenig and shop with wine and spirit writer Peg San Felippo for stylish wine decanters, which are tasteful additions to any home decor – and, she says, can make your favorite wine taste even better.

All this and more in the April home issue, now in print, online and digital, https://www.qgdigitalpublishing.com/publication/?i=819041&pre=1

My going on 92-year-old dad, the doctor, has been taking care of my going on 91-year-old mom pretty much on his own since she fell and broke a hip last year. It’s best not to talk in much detail about that, but his help has gone far beyond anything he ever learned in medical school. Far beyond anything you think you’ll ever have to do when you stand and recite your vows at the wedding.

When it got to be too much for him this week, Dad called an ambulance and checked Mom into the hospital for some tests. He gives me detailed clinical updates each night on her oxygen levels, hemoglobin counts, electrolytes. Dad, I say, I just want to know how she’s doing.

“Oh, better,” he says, his voice tired over the phone. “I suspect she’ll go home tomorrow.”

The worst is over, he says. For now.

***

I’m a slow reader, so apologies in advance for just now finishing “The Book of Charlie,” on the extraordinary life of Dr. Charlie White, published last May. It’s a fine book, and I admire author David Von Drehle’s style of writing and voice.

For a time in the 1960s, my dad was one of Dr. White’s anesthesiology partners in Kansas City. Dad loaned me his copy of the book to read last year, and when I asked if he was in it, he said, “I don’t know.” I thought that was an odd answer, since he’d read and enjoyed it when it first came out.

Now that I’ve finally read it, I think what he meant is he’s in it, obliquely, in references to the “grand rounds” he and Dr. White did with the other doctors at Baptist Memorial in KC. My dad was a partner with Dr. White and four or five other anesthesiologists at the time. When I asked Dad how many of those doctors are still with us, he stopped for a moment to think.

“Just me,” he said.

When I was a kid, I worried about my dad breathing in the gasses he and the other anesthesiologists use in the operating rooms. It didn’t seem very healthy for your health, possibly the medical equivalent of inhaling coal dust in the mines and developing black-lung disease. But all those men – and they were all men back then – have lived or lived long, overall healthy lives. Notably, as we know from the book, led by Dr. White, who passed the day after his 109th birthday.

After I finished the book, I told Dad I thought I’d drop David Von Drehle a note and tell him I might have a sequel for him on my dad’s (almost) equally eventful life. “Oh no,” my dad said, “I would have never stuck a needle in my arm to give a transfusion to a gun-shot wounded gangster or ridden a cow-catcher across Colorado.” Without going into too much detail, I think he’s being humble about his own notable exploits.

I know I’m late with this, but there’s much to admire in Dr. White’s story. “Charlie,” Von Drehle writes, “learned to treat the unknown as a friend until life convinced him otherwise.”

Better late than never, to learn a lesson for a lifetime.

“How long have I been married?” Mom repeats the nurse’s question, as Dad folds her clothes in the hospital room. “It’ll be 70 years in June,” she says. “And I haven’t regretted a day of it.”

Being a caretaker is so much harder than being a doctor ever was, my dad says. “Hearing her say that,” he adds, his voice tired but happy again, “makes it all worthwhile.”

Another lesson from the “Book of Dad,” to last a lifetime of unknowns.

mgauert@cityandshore.com

Fleming spoke with us just after the telecast of the 46th Kennedy Center Honors in December, in which she was among five honorees — with Dionne Warwick, Queen Latifah, Barry Gibb and Billy Crystal — celebrated for their enduring contributions to American culture.

Her more recent collaborations with the scientific and medical communities investigating and espousing the healing power of music — indeed, her international championing of its acceptance as a clinical therapy — have developed into a side-by-side symbiosis with her musical career. Such is the case when she performs a recital at Festival of the Arts Boca on March 3 and returns the following night to host a presentation and panel discussion with local health practitioners titled, “Music and Mind.”

“She uses her voice to call out for change, helping us understand the intersection of music, health and neuroscience,” said actress Sigourney Weaver in a presentation honoring Fleming’s non-diva accomplishments. “It all springs from that amazing voice.”

About her upcoming performance in Boca Raton, Fleming says, “The audiences in Florida and especially southern Florida are reminiscent of the audiences in New York and the major Eastern capitals. So I feel like I’m at home.”

Also close to home in this issue, we’ll meet five remarkable women History Fort Lauderdale will honor this month as Broward County Women Trailblazers; look back on 40 years at SunFest, “the world’s largest waterfront arts and music celebration,” in West Palm Beach; recommend some old world wines that are a delicious detour from the same-old and listen to readers who sound off loud and clear about the rise of noise in South Florida restaurants.

All this and much more in the March issue of City & Shore PRIME, now in print, online and digital, https://www.qgdigitalpublishing.com/publication/?i=816451