Thursday September 17 With her 1995 album — and without the publicity of a live tour — she pretty much swept the country music awards in 1996: Billboard No. 1 Top Country Album Artist, Grammy for Best Country Album, Album of the Year from both the Academy of Country Music…

Seen from southbound I-95 near Griffin Road, the structure off to the right looks like a giant, gleaming piece of abstract art. But up close its overlapping steel panels look familiar. In fact they look a lot like fish scales, which makes sense considering that the artful building is the…

Thursday September 10 During the late 19th Century in French-ruled West Africa, the most popular postcards featured paintings of smiling, naked women balancing heavy water jugs on their heads. Ah, those French, showing us that, even while doing some heavy lifting, the natives are beautiful. But those images had nothing…

Thursday September 3 The members of Britain’s hottest new swing combo, Big Six, have all played in other top U.K. bands, making them a sort of swing “supergroup.” What’s amazing is that they can find the time to practice and locate socks to match their plaid suits. The band takes…

Sitting at long tables covered in white linen, people swirl the dark red wine in their glasses, then tilt them at an angle, holding them up to lights overhead. They’re not looking for water spots. They’re checking out the “legs” of the wine. “Legs,” the spindly, elongated drops that cling…

Thursday August 27 Book research can’t replace personal experience when it comes to bringing life to a novel, and Pompano Beach author Mark Jacoby’s debut effort, Path to Arequipa, is a prime example. The travel writer has toured extensively in the Peruvian Amazon, where during one trip he and his…

In the musical Fiddler on the Roof, the long-suffering milkman Tevye sings of “Tradition,” which includes not allowing single men and women to dance together during weddings. Nowadays, Tevye would have to get used to seeing even same-sex couples dancing together, but he’d freak out if he were to show…

Barry Dutter didn’t get sand kicked in his face, but, like the wimpy guy in the old Atlas bodybuilding advertisements, he spent a lot of time at the beach watching beefy studs and outgoing guys meet all the girls — the girls he wished he had the guts to address…

Thursday August 20 There’s still no law against drinking and walking. So blood-alcohol level be damned at the Las Olas Wine Stroll, which will offer a sampling of wine and appetizers in downtown Fort Lauderdale. Actually, tasting, not getting tipsy, is the purpose of the event, so spitting out samples…

Water lily fronds, huddled together on the water’s surface, part with a gentle nudge from Dan Riefler’s canoe during his frequent trips to Blue Cypress Lake. And Spanish moss dangles from the gnarled limbs of the stately cypress trees that border the lake and provide ample shade. “You don’t even…

Thursday August 13 As a long-time jazz mecca, New Orleans is steeped in the history of the American musical form. So instead of getting lost in the shuffle of Dixieland and other standard jazz styles, the Crescent City group All That is busy writing the next chapter of jazz history…

Thursday August 6 Some of the scenes in the movie Saving Private Ryan are so graphic that the gore of World War II is sending audiences into virtual shell shock. At least that’s what it was called back in the ’40s. Today it’s called “posttraumatic stress disorder” and affects veterans…

Thursday July 30 Les Standiford, director of the creative writing program at Florida Atlantic University, is also a novelist. And his Miami crime thrillers have fans, namely best-selling crime author James Ellroy, declaring him, “the unassailable new kingpin of the South Florida crime novel… inheritor of the [Elmore] Leonard mantle.”…

Thursday July 23 His nickname is “Captain Fingers,” and if that sounds a little cheesy, consider when he got it. Pop and jazz-fusion guitarist Lee Ritenour earned the title in the mid-’70s. In his early twenties at the time, the classically trained Ritenour was logging many studio hours as one…

Thursday July 16 El Nino-driven weather catastrophes — floods in California and the Midwest, tornadoes and wildfires in Central Florida — have taken their toll, but the Buehler Planetarium show Stormy Weather makes them seem like mere inconveniences. Assistant planetarium director Susan Barnett begins the show by talking about the…

Thursday July 9 When artist Michael Joseph moved from Connecticut to Fort Lauderdale seven years ago, he felt pretty disconnected. But after landing a job at the now-defunct Squeeze, where he helped design the nightclub’s ever-evolving decor, he was invited by owner Jack Kearney to put some of his own…

“Excuse me waiter, is that a pistol under my prime rib?” Diners at Dave and Buster’s restaurant in Hollywood might ask just that while attending one of the establishment’s Saturday murder-mystery dinners. During the show, members of the Murder Mystery Players get patrons to stash weapons for them and back…

Thursday July 2 When volunteers protested segregation in bus terminals during the 1961 Freedom Rides, he was severely beaten by members of a white mob. In March 1965, on so-called “Bloody Sunday,” his skull was fractured in a melee between state troopers and black protest marchers after he led more…

Lynette Brodeur found inspiration behind the wheel of her car. But it wasn’t the freedom of the road or just a good driving tune that flipped her mental switch. The radio in her car picks up only AM stations, most of which are crammed with talk shows. All of that…

Drinking high-octane Japanese rice wine while using knives sounds dangerous. But a shot of sake is part of the fun at the Making Sushi at Home Workshop. Sushi traditionalists, who know that the Japanese raw-fish fare is prepared by specially trained chefs, would be appalled by the informality of the…

Thursday June 25 Don’t believe the title. Beethoven by the Beach Festival II is taking place in downtown Fort Lauderdale, not on the beach. And do yourself a favor: Skip the movie being shown for the kids. Beethoven has nothing to do with the 19th-century German composer otherwise known as…

Their curiosity peaked, a mom and a daughter in-line skating through Tradewinds Park in Coconut Creek stopped to watch. I had just stepped onto the tee pad for Hole 8 at the park’s disc golf course, and the rectangular slab of cement faces a small lake. With a streamlined version…