BeauHalton's blog

In the midst of federal and state budget crunches and a protracted slump in the housing construction industry, work surges on at the gigantic Nocatee development.
The irony isn’t lost on the developers, St. Johns County officials and others. And they’re loving it.
“During this downturn in the market, they’re still out there making progress on this project,” County Commission Chairman Tom Manuel said. “These are the kinds of projects we like, no doubt about it. ... Projects like these help make us the Pebble Beach of the East.”
Amid a recent tour of the Nocatee site west of Ponte Vedra Beach, Richard Ray (pictured), a partner with the Parc Group, the Nocatee developers, echoed that.

And I'm not talking about football. I'm talking about the "pass," air show talk for when an aircraft flies by, at the Sea and Sky Spectacular on Sunday, Nov. 4.

If your ears are still ringing and your bones are still jarred, you know the one I'm talking about. It was mid-afternoon. I'm fairly certain it was an Air Force F-16. It had the battle-ready, radar-stealth gray paint scheme, not the gleaming, showy blue and gold of the Navy's Blue Angels.

Who the heck was that, anyway? 

That pilot flew fast, low and loud over the beach, with plenty of innocent bystanders and boaters immediately underneath. Perhaps a bit too loud, low and fast. At an altitude of a mere 30 or 40 feet, it seemed, the pass made the Blues' fly-by's seem tame. And they weren't tame. The gray jet's pass made adults jump and babies scream.

Welcome to Shorelines.com.

A major feature of our new Web site is the relatively new canvas of communication called blogs. The world of blogs — call it what you may, Blogmania, Blogosphere — is often described to neophytes as “a whole new world.”

It’s part of what we in the journalism business call “new media.” Far beyond the printed pages and even e-mails, blogs allow for ceaseless public interaction that’s visible by all.

Care to join in the fray of a certain “conversation” online that’s caught your eye? Feel welcome to do so at any time. Care to exit the fray? Feel welcome to do so at any time. That’s the beauty of it all.
Adding Shorelines.com to the thousands of Web Sites and blogs out there gives us here at the Beaches, a community already defined by our geographic boundaries (we’re an island, after all!) and our lifestyle a good place to talk.