Oratory in middle of central piazza

About 25 miles to the east of Naples and Fort Myers, really a long way out in the boondocks, there is a new town going up. In Florida that may not be such big news but this town is being built around a new university rather than a golf course or a riding stable or even an airport: a new Catholic university called Ave Maria. This is the first new Catholic university in the USA in about 50 years, a dream that Thomas Monoghan, of Domino’s Pizza fame, first imagined into being along with the Barron Collier family of Southwest Florida. The latter provided the land and Monoghan provided much of the money.

From the altar end

From the balcony looking toward the altar

That oratory has some distinctive architecture, reminding me of a lovely stone-trimmed missile silo on first glance. Then, when you walk around it a little it starts to grow on you, especially when you go inside. It is still unfinished as is most everything around here.

The university now has about 600 students, not sure how many it will eventually support, though the Wikipedia article on the town mentions 5000.

I will be home to Billings soon. Have they started playing baseball there?

One of those things to do is to go fishing. In the Crystal River area, a little below the bend on the inside or Gulf Coast of Florida, just below the Panhandle, April 1st was the opening of grouper season. These gentlemen got their limit of two each by mid-morning.

The various parts of the Florida Coast all have their own names: e.g. the Nature Coast here in the Crystal River area, the First Coast on the other side, that is the Atlantic side from Jacksonville down through Saint Augustine, the locals put the accent on the first syllable, and so forth.

Manatees migrate to this area and they don’t move very fast and don’t have much room to move either in this very shallow but surprisingly clear water. Hence the slow motion of the boats in certain areas. Lots of birds too as you can see. Herons, ibises, pelicans, anhingas, ospreys were some of those I recognized.

We used an airboat to get around, kindly provided and ably handled by Capt Adam McCormick, of Nature Coast Outfitters. Check out their website for all they can do for you in this part of the world. We had a great time.

Apparently twelve! is the answer, but they don’t all have to be facing in the same direction. I wonder how much the chief hoser gets paid? This was taken in Disneyland at the Atlanta Braves spring training facility. The good news is that this was a magnificent park with fairly comfortable seats, though the template for the seat width was either taken from Japanese plans or from American butt measurements some two generations ago. The bad news was that the spectators were looking at the sun the whole game and they had one of those bush league announcers who pretends that each name announced is the brother of either Jesus Christ or John Denver. Five innings was long enough in the sun.

After they sprinkled the dirt part of the infield they went over the dirt and grass looking for small pebbles. Maybe they were looking for pieces of dirt that had clumped together. No one in the stands could see what they were picking up very carefully and dropping into a small burlap bag.

Reminded me of picking up stones on my grandfather’s farm every spring, “winter potatoes” he called them. Only we could see plainly what he wanted us to pick up. And sometimes they were too heavy for the two of us. No fooling around either. I think my brother Gerald and I got paid about a dollar for the day.

Yes, I know the weather is bad in Billings. The above is to give you hope.

Of course, most of them will be coming from the Caribbean and various colleges.

The picture above left was taken at an Oriole game in Fort Lauderdale earlier this month.

Actually now that I think about it for awhile there must be various Legion and Little League players warming up right now in Billings, bad weather and all. I know because I saw some of them trying out at Urbaska Field before I left. Now there was a guy, Fred Urbaska, dying way too soon.

Can you taste the pretzels to the right?