News

Update 7:27 p.m.: Tallahassee lawmakers ended their 60-day legislative session without approving a deal to provide taxpayer support for a $350 million upgrade of Sun Life Stadium.

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.

 THE AMERICAS AND MIAMI

From world famous beaches to international trade flows, South Florida has become one of the world's most vibrant and diverse economies.

Through a series of one-hour radio programs, special correspondent Tom Hudson will host a weekly series on Mondays in May and June exploring The Sunshine Economy, a fresh take on the key industries driving growth across South Florida.

Guests:

Art that has been coming out of the urban core is often heavy on portraiture – characters, friends, family portrayed in both raw settings and historical and cultural context – especially in painting, especially from African-American artists. The work of Houston’s Robert Pruitt, currently showing at General Audience Presents up in North Miami, is one such example. But Miami has always lacked a strong black artistic infrastructure, and therefore we haven’t seen much significant work coming out of the community (with some notable exceptions). Enter the up-and-coming T.

If you ask someone to name a valuable commodity, they may say gold, or oil. Ask someone in ballet the same question, and there’s good chance they’ll say boys.

Most ballets have almost equal part male and female roles. But in the U.S., boys who want to do ballet are hard to come by.  

For that reason boys often receive full scholarships to ballet schools and other forms of special treatment in order to attract them to the profession.

Former principal dancer with New York City Ballet Philip Neal was one of those boys.

The legendary choreographer George Balanchine once said, “ballet is woman,” and that seems to be the case, considering the scarcity of boys aspiring to become ballet dancers compared to the legions of girls.  But of the girls who grow up to become top dancers, few have actually graduated into the upper levels of leadership.

Ballet’s Glass Ceiling

Move over, Freud. Your couch is being replaced by a piece of wood on wheels.

On the shady slopes of pavement in Greynolds Park in North Miami Beach, a therapy counseling session is in progress.

Once a week, amid the sprawling canopies of hardwood hammocks and mangrove forests, patients sort through emotions — while pushing on a longboard skateboard.

Donning kneepads and helmet gear, Alex Batista, 47, smiles as he rides silently alongside his therapist.

Throughout the 2013 legislative session, we've been posing questions to Tallahassee lawmakers that were raised at a WLRN-Miami Herald News Town Hall last February.

Among the topics is the rising cost of higher education in Florida.

Speaker Will Weatherford introduced a new member of the Florida House this week.

“Members, we have an auto-reader. We had it in the closet just in case we ever had to actually read the bills,” Weatherford said amid laughs from the chamber. “It may be a little bit faster than normal.”

Weatherford's communications director announced on Twitter that the auto-reader's name is Mary.

Within an hour of her debut, Mary had her own Twitter handle - @HouseAutoReader. Some of her tweets include “I'm so bored” and “Anybody have a cure for the hiccups?”

Here's lookin' at YOU,  Bogie fans.

Starting today, fans of Humphrey Bogart will be flocking to Key Largo for a film festival celebrating one of Hollywood's most beloved tough guys.

David Menasche is a light packer. Four days of clothes, basic toiletries, a voice recorder, a laptop and a cell phone are all he needs. Oh, and his red-tipped cane, to help him navigate now that he is almost completely blind.

His quest is heavy on purpose and light on itinerary. His goal: to see the Pacific Ocean before his vision is completely lost, and to visit as many of his former students as possible along the way.

Miami, you have exceeded our expectations.

When we asked for poetry, you delivered in droves.  And we didn't even offer an open bar.

The concept behind WLRN and O, Miami Poetry Festival's month-long project, "That's So Miami," was simple enough: Write us a poem that starts or ends with "That's So Miami."

With just a few days left of the legislative session, we're working to get as many answers as possible to questions posed during our last WLRN-Miami Herald Town Hall meeting in February.

This question comes from Steve Moyer of Cooper City:

"I have a disabled child that attends public school and feel the education provided to most ESE (Exceptional Student Education) students in Broward County as well as other districts is inadequate.

WLRN-Miami Herald News has garnered an impressive array of journalism awards nationally and within the Southeast region recently. We decided to share some of this professional recognition we received from our peers with you, our readers.

Below are some of the highlights from March-April:

I will never forget that awful December day. My daughter left to school and I turned on the TV. I stumbled upon something that read “School Shooting.” All I could think was that my little princess was at her school and that this could happen anywhere. As it was getting time to pick her up, I rushed a little more and could not wait to hear her voice and see her smile. As soon as I saw her, I felt an immense sense of relief and peace. Tears kept on coming down my face.

Update 10:07 p.m. EST: The Florida Senate approved the Dolphins bill, 36-4. Now the House will get its turn to pass its own version.

Believe it or not, early voting began Monday in Miami-Dade County in a referendum that may NOT be needed by the end of the week.

The Miami Dolphins are one step closer to approval of a private-public partnership to renovate Sun Life Stadium after the Florida Senate passed a bill to legitimize a Miami-Dade referendum currently underway. 

Debate about the renovations has produced dozens maybe hundreds of hours of audio and video: Dolphins' press conferences, Miami-Dade County commission meetings, Florida Senate committee hearings, etc.

In 1998, the cultural climate in Cuba wasn't exactly conducive to artistic freedom.  While a thriving underground music scene did exist, official radio and television channels were notoriously selective, only airing artists who echoed the Communist Party line.

I was born in Nashville and spent the first four years of my life in Tuskegee, Ala.

My father, Dr. John O. Brown Sr., moved to Miami in 1955 to begin his practice in ophthalmology. To this day, I'm glad he did.

We had neighbors who were white and black. Our next-door neighbor was an older white lady who inspired my mother's love for growing orchids and my brother's passion for collecting butterflies.

I attended schools -- Jackson's Toddle Inn and Floral Heights -- that were all black. I remember those as happy years.

More than four years ago, when Congress passed the Obama stimulus, nobody in Fort Lauderdale would have imagined that a ripple effect from the legislation might become a "Wave" for Broward County commuters and businesses.

"This is the beginning," said Diana Alarcon, director of the city's transportation and mobility department, smiling as she described the new Wave streetcar project for downtown Fort Lauderdale during a recent public workshop in Oakland Park.

Two months ago, twelve dump trucks bursting with dirt and fill from a downtown Miami construction site made their way to the Everglades Outpost, an animal rescue facility in Florida City.

Barbara Tansey, the facility’s owner and overseer is slowly sifting through the remnants looking for clues. Though volunteers occasionally come to help, at some moments the elderly Tansey is entirely on her own, tirelessly sifting in hopes of revealing any artifact.

It should be mentioned that twelve truckloads is an insane amount of dirt.

Actor Colin McPhillamy is finishing up his run in Exit the King at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach.  He is also a published author, and reads an excerpt from his second book, An Actor Walks into China.  To learn more about Colin, visit www.mcphillamy.com, and to hear more excerpts, log onto www.artsradionetwork.com.

I was sitting on the verandah of a hotel overlooking Waikiki beach waiting for a lunch menu. The mighty Pacific Ocean purred like a Lamborghini in the distance. I'd spent hours walking in Chinatown from early morning looking for beautiful and unique dishes I love to use for the thematic ‘Tasting Menus’ at our restaurant. But I had little luck and a keen hunger was rising up in me.

Riding a bike is a childhood right of passage.  As we age, we move from tricycle to bike with training wheels to classic two-wheeler. But at some point we shift from bikes to the expanded mobility of owning a car.

Kathryn Moore, program manager at Broward B-Cycle, thinks people should consider going back to the basics when it comes to getting around downtown Fort Lauderdale.

Miami's quickly growing bike scene remains tightly interwoven with the city's other do-it-yourself-spirited, artsy subcultures.

Sure, there are plenty of people with fancy road bikes and Lycra suits joining Critical Mass and speeding along on group rides. But a large number of the scene's most outspoken two-wheelers are young people who push for bicycling less as an exercise form per se.

Join us Friday at noon on 91.3 FM WLRN for an hour's discussion on the week's headlines, including:

• Legislation on health care, ethics, elections and education dominate the final days of the current session in Tallahassee.

• Before Miami-Dade voters have their say on stadium improvements, will the state clear the way for the Miami Dolphins to receive tax rebates?