Alicia Zuckerman

  Joyce Green started doing yoga to lose weight. Then she said she had a vision of Jesus, and from there she became Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati, the wildly charismatic leader of the Kashi Ashram church on a ranch in Indian River County, north of Vero Beach. And that's who she was for the rest of her life, right up until she died last year. 

Fifteen thousand people are leaving Puerto Rico every year, and half of them are coming Florida. Many are leaving because of an explosion of violence on the island. Over the last several years, the murder rate has been between five and seven times the national average. 

Miami New Times reporter Michael E. Miller traveled to Puerto Rico to find out how things got so bad. The answer? Drugs and police, says Miller. Here's what he found out. 

Ruth Greenfield was a music teacher and a maverick. In the segregated 1950s and 60s, she ran a Miami arts school that included students and teachers from all racial backgrounds–even if she had to teach in a Masonic lodge or in a funeral home.  She came from a privileged background and was able to study music in Paris, where people of all kinds interacted more freely.

When Richard Blanco got the call that he'd been chosen to write a poem for President Obama's second inauguration, at first he thought it was a prank. He still has no idea how he ended up on the President's radar.

"I would dream actually that the President has actually read my work and was so moved by it," says Blanco, laughing, "that he said, 'I want this guy to read a poem at the inaugural.'"

When Miami native Aaron Lebos was a kid, his parents told him to choose between violin and piano. "I chose piano," he says, "obviously." But his big brother played electric guitar, and he wanted to too. He thought it was "cooler." Eventually, he got his hands on a guitar of his own and made his way through jazz studies programs at Miami Dade College, University of Miami and FIU. 

Several times a week, Miami reminds me of Los Angeles. For better and worse. We're both the land of sunshine, palm trees (theirs are taller) and beautiful beaches (ours are nicer based on ocean temperature and clarity, but we're missing out on the mountains). And both places have much beneath the surface of our beautiful things. Extreme wealth and poverty pressed up against each other, but rarely mixing -- largely because both places are so deeply devoted to the automobile.

Remember those unsettling dancing babies? The ones that got passed around the Internet in the days before social media and eventually made their way onto the Fox TV show, Ally McBeal? Those were GIFs.  

GIF stands for graphics interchange format. It's a series of still images, looped --  and last month, after 25 years of existence, it was named the Oxford English Dictionary 2012 American word of the year.

Christopher Janney's sound and light installation for Miami International Airport was unveiled during last year's Art Basel Miami Beach. This year, he's back to discuss the piece on a panel during Design Miami, today (Friday, Dec. 7) at noon. 

At long last, brat pack heartthrobs Molly Ringwald and Andrew McCarthy will cross paths again.  They're both appearing at the Miami Book Fair International on the same day, in the same room ... but not, sadly, at the same time. They'll be separated by five hours. Ohhhhhhh.

Kurt Vonnegut fans have a lot to look forward to over the next couple of weekends. First, a performance of a chamber music piece with a libretto by the iconoclastic author, and then a discussion of a new book of his letters at the Miami Book Fair International.

The bassoonist Luciano Magnanini has been a fixture of South Florida's classical music scene for the past four decades. He has played around the world and performed under the conductors Leonard Bertstein and Zubin Mehta. In 1972, after arriving from Italy via Peru and Mexico, Magnanini began a 40-year teaching career at the University of Miami. He’s retiring in May, and this Sunday he performs a chamber concert celebrating his career.

Green Card Stories (Umbrage Books) is a collection of profiles and photographs of fifty immigrants from around the country by journalist Saundra Amrhein and photographer Ariana Lindquist.  Amrhein has been a journalist for seventeen years.  She spent ten years at the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times.)  Immigrants profiled include a triathelete, a magician, a flea market worker, small business owners and executives.

Ruth Greenfield was a music teacher and a maverick. In the segregated 1950s and 60s, she ran a Miami arts school that included students and teachers from all racial backgrounds–even if she had to teach in a Masonic lodge or in a funeral home.  She came from a privileged background and was able to study music in Paris, where people of all kinds interacted more freely.

 Ruth Greenfield was a music teacher and a maverick. In the segregated 1950s and 60s, she ran a Miami arts school that included students and teachers from all racial backgrounds–even if she had to teach in a Masonic lodge or in a funeral home.  She came from a privileged background and was able to study music in Paris, where people of all kinds interacted more freely.

Ruth Greenfield was a music teacher and a maverick. In the segregated 1950s and 60s, she ran a Miami arts school that included students and teachers from all racial backgrounds–even if she had to teach in a Masonic lodge or in a funeral home.  

She came from a privileged background and was able to study music in Paris, where people of all kinds interacted more freely.

On September 11, 2001, Tanya Villanueva Tepper’s fiancé, Sergio Villanueva, was one of the 343 New York City firefighters who didn’t make it out of the World Trade Center. Tanya is featured in the new documentary,Rebirth, which follows five people affected by those attacks, over the course of the last decade. The film airs Sunday on Showtime on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. Tanya now lives in Miami, where she has found solace and a new life. She spoke with Under the Sun co-host Alicia Zuckerman.

Fifty years ago, North Miami Senior High School students lived in neighborhoods where most kept their doors unlocked at night. They say they felt safe riding their bicycles throughout town – some streets weren’t even paved. Today, many students at the school say they don’t feel safe in their school or their neighborhoods.

North Miami Senior High’s demographics have also changed. In 1960, the segregated school was all white. Today, most students are of Haitian descent. According to the school, 31 out of 2,700 students are white.

A tiny berry called a “miracle fruit” transforms your taste buds for about two hours.  The fruit is from a tree originally grown in West Africa.  The grower who ships them across the U.S. is based here in South Florida.  His name is Curtis Mozie and he calls himself the Miracle Fruit Man.  Alicia Zuckerman went to the Fort Lauderdale farm for a tasting.