“They want us to tell scary stories,” chuckles Cassandra Jones, “so maybe I’ll tell my version of how women got power. That always scares the guys.” CJ, as the Fort Lauderdale native is known, is talking about Moonlight Tales, Jazz and Java, the adult storytelling event put on by the…

Mom, pop, and two boys stand in front of what looks like a carnival midway game. They madly pump away on hydraulic levers as four creatures skim across the playing field. But it’s not a game; it’s actually a demonstration of how squid move through water by jet propulsion. By…

This Sunday the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood continues the city’s tradition of throwing parties to attract folks to its redone downtown. The center’s shindig is actually three events: the Fabulous Art and Funky Antiques Market in the east parking lot, an Artist and Artisan’s Outdoor Market in the…

Circling gracefully overhead, a large anhinga soars on its outstretched wings, looking for a place to alight just west of I-95 in Dania Beach. As the majestic water bird surveys the scene, so does Glenda Kelley, noting that not long ago, the dark-feathered fowl would have been looking elsewhere for…

Although there’s not much green at Palm Beach County’s trio of weekly Saturday green markets, and virtually no farmer at Fort Lauderdale’s Sunday farmers’ market, there are plenty of other reasons to sample these outdoor-shopping events. The cream of the crop is the West Palm Beach GreenMarket, which is lively…

“Aaaaiiiiieeeee!” a young girl yells as the roller coaster crests a 100-foot peak and hurtles down a steep incline. “Aaaaiiiieeeee!” echoes a man in a nearby car as it rockets around a sharply banked curve at 55 miles per hour. Shrieks of delight or screams of terror? It depends on…

The mirrored ball spins slowly, casting sparkling light on the walls and ceiling of the intimate club and illuminating local blues mama Juanita Dixon with its dappled light. She’s waiting to belt out torchy blues for technicians from Palm Beach County’s WXEL-TV (Channel 42), who are preparing to tape a…

The Atlantic Ocean’s actually a couple miles east of the venues for Beethoven by the Beach IV, but we can let the Fort Lauderdale festival’s tenuous title slide. After all, no one would want sand in his or her shoes while enjoying two weeks of Florida Philharmonic Orchestra concerts, chamber…

Steve Leveen and Lori Grainger were having the usual argument — about which one of them would get to use the couple’s sole reading lamp — when they hit upon the idea for a business. If they were battling over the good reading light, the pair figured, the problem might…

The group tiptoes into the empty auditorium at the Broward Center For the Performing Arts, which is dark except for a “ghost light” that throws light and shadow across the dormant stage. Standing amid the set pieces for the opening scene of Titanic, one of which is the large boarding…

Hoke Moseley, the casually noir hero of late Miami writer Charles Willeford’s crime novels, might feel out of place at the festivities in his creator’s honor at the 11th annual Fort Lauderdale Antiquarian Book Fair this weekend. After all, the shady cop just wouldn’t fit in among the rare-book collectors…

Our American customs of getting drunk, getting loud, and cheering as the ball drops in Times Square seem downright heathen compared to the cultural invigoration of New Year’s revelry in Japan. The Japanese consider the Oshogatsu New Year’s celebration their most important yearly observance. It’s a time for new beginnings,…

“Ewww,” squeals a young girl, pointing a finger at a very large, very hairy spider in a glass enclosure. “Wow, what’s that!?” exclaims a young boy, cramming his nose against the glass for a better view. Sherwood “Woody” Wilkes, director of science and technology at the Museum of Discovery and…

Her demonstration almost complete, Reiko Nishioka begins taking the pins out of the dolls. No, this is not some kind of voodoo ritual going on here; Nishioka is director of education at the Morikami Museum in Delray Beach, and she’s explaining the cultural underpinnings of cloth dolls to a visitor…

Murder-mystery writing is done backward. “You start with the murderee and work your way forward,” says Marcia Rankin of Mirthful Mysteries, an Orlando-based mystery-writing team. Beginning with the end of the plot, she and her partner, Mario Santangelo, develop whimsical whodunits, like the one for this year’s ClueLess on Las…