History is important -- to most of us

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Most of us here in Lake Worth are all in tune with our history whether we have lived her for a lifetime or just a few years. We value the importance of all those who came before us who started our great little city and all its fabulous assets. We have been celebrating our 100 year birthday with pride. 

Lake Worth's own Dorothy Block is in the news today. Dorothy, with a masters degree in Archeology, was on our Lake Worth's Historical Preservation  Board just a few years ago. She has been involved in the Town of Palm Beach and the maps that were devised to show the ancient cultural sites and unmarked prehistoric Indian cemeteries.  If you recall, years ago she advised the city about ancient artifacts when we were going to dig up and renovate our beach.  CLICK HERE FOR ARCHEOLOGY 40 MINUTE VIDEO 19 megs from Lake Worth Media.

Just last month, the Town Council in Palm Beach approved an ordinance requiring owners of land on known archaeological sites to have a professional assess the historic value of the property before so much as installing a sprinkler system. One Council member, President David Rosow, voted no. He is renovating his $10 million property and does not agree with the additional expense and says he has no obligation to care for the remains or artifacts found on or near his property nor does he want to have an archeological assessment done before construction.

Read about it.

Vandals destroy outdoor Church statue in Lake Worth

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Sacred Heart Catholic Church and School
The outdoor "state of the Sacred Heart"

Back in the early 60's and after the result of lawsuits, there were bans against the teaching of religion and religious practices in public schools. It was said that organized prayer in schools was a violation of the separation of church and state. It was decided that publicly funded schools were an extension of the state, and that organized prayer or bible readings were a form of proselytizing--thank you Madalyn Murray O'Hair. The bans not only banned mandatory prayer in schools but also banned the daily reading of bible passages. So, Catholic churches built more catholic schools, thus integrating religious education as the core subject within their curriculum and giving children the opportunity not only to say a prayer but be educated in religious values.

What is this world coming to? 50 years later, there are some who even believe that the sheer mention of the supreme being is inappropriate including saying the Pledge to the Flag or even wanting the name God taken off our currency. Muslims, however, are allowed to erect mosques and won the legal right to build  one two blocks from the Twin Towers. No one would think of defacing anything on a mosque. That would be politically incorrect for heaven's (Allāh's) sake.

A reader of this blog writes--Father Joe Papes (who just said the prayer at our May 21st city commission meeting) announced at Mass this morning that the outdoor state of the Sacred Heart that stood to the left of the front entrance to the church was destroyed by vandals overnight on Sunday, June 9. He said there's a video showing the act of vandalism, but that the quality is poor.

A report was filed with the PBSO. A short write-up was included in this week's church bulletin. "We don't know what their intentions were in doing this and I know you like me are saddened that this would occur; all we can do is pray through the Sacred Heart of Jesus that their hearts be converted," writes Father Joe.

He writes that he believes it will cost "well over $3,000" to replace the statue.

Sad....especially for a church that is struggling to support itself and maintain its school

Allen West Memorial Day Message

We must remember the brave men and women who have worn the uniform of the United States Military to defend the liberties each of us enjoys. Not just today, on Memorial Day, but every day.

As a veteran who saw too many of my comrades make the ultimate sacrifice, I could go on and on talking about the significance of today, what it means to serve this great nation, and why I'm so proud to be an American. But I know you probably have plans, so I'd like to leave you with a verse from the Bible that I believe sums up today perfectly:

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"

We are the land of the free, because we have always been the home of the brave. Let us never forget.

God bless America,

Allen West

The Pastor and the Pulpit

Don't screw around with condoms.

Read more about the pastor who was beaten to a pulp because condoms fell out of his bible.

Quote of the Day - Pastor Rick Warren

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My definition of truth is: If it’s new, it’s not true. If it was true 1,000 years ago, it will be true 1,000 years from today. Opinion changes, but truth doesn’t .

~Pastor Rick Warren

Pastor Warren's reply to Piers Morgan who said that “Both the Bible and the Constitution were well intentioned but they are basically, inherently flawed. Hence, the need to amend it,” Morgan claimed. My point to you about gay rights, for example, it’s time for an amendment to the Bible.”

Read more at WND

Lecture by Archaeologist, Dorothy Block, this Thursday

Pre-Columbian Palm Beachers

Presented by: Dorothy Block, M.A.

Did you know that Palm Beach Island has been inhabited by humans for around 3,000 years? Are you interested in the conservation and protection of the numerous ancient Indian burial mounds and habitation sties scattered throughout the nation's wealthiest town? Are you curious about the realities of how ancient burial and archaeological sites are dealt with by developers and property owners in this unique municipality?

If so, please join local archaeologist and Palm Beach County Archaeological Society founder, Dorothy Block, for a lecture describing Palm Beach’s ancient cultural sites and unmarked prehistoric Indian cemeteries. The lecture will recount the history of archaeological research on the island from the 1930s to the present, and assess the effectiveness of present day approaches to mitigation, conservation and protection of these important and non-renewable cultural resources

 Thursday, December 20th, 2012

 7 PM

Paramount Building, 139 North County Road

Palm Beach, 33480

 For more info, call: 561-215-7909

Mosques and America's naive tolerance

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Mosque in Dearborn, Michigan

As I attended the Memorial Day service at Pinecrest and prayed for all those who made the ultimate sacrifice, I couldn't help but think of those who want to harm our great country and all for which we stand and their driven force to annahilate Israel off the face of the Globe. The potential harm can be subtle and woven into a religious philosophy. We are taught tolerance and to love our neighbors but some religions are out to destroy all who believe differently.

Mosques are springing up all over the United States and little coverage is given in the Press. No one seems the least bit worried about it all until they wanted to build one near Ground Zero. Across America as a Mosque pops up, there's whispering about it-- "Can you believe they're building a damn mosque right in our backyard?" This is an astounding article about one that was temporarily stopped in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, right in the heart of the Bible Belt close to where I once lived. We can all be against mosques, but still stand for religious freedom and The First Amendment.

Under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism (we voted in Obama), we have been opening our gates to millions of Muslims. After all, our Constitution welcomes all religions and praying to your own God. As of 2010, there are now over 2.6 million in the United States and growing. According to Care2, Islam seeks to overthrow the established Constitution of the United States, and to replace it with Shari'a. That is sedition.

According to Wikipedia, mosques are usually explicitly Sunni or Shia. The well-known guerrilla organization Hezbollah, which forced the Israelis out of southern Lebanon in 2000, is Shia. Worldwide, Shias constitute 10 to 15 percent of the overall Muslim population, but they make up the majority of the radical, violent element of Islam. There are 1,209 mosques in the United States and the nation's largest mosque, the Islamic Center of America, is in Dearborn, Michigan. In Great Britain and in Germany some mosques are used to recruit suicide bombers.

The Department of Justice has named the Islamic Society of North America, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and other key Muslim groups and figures as unindicted co-conspirators in a scheme to fund the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. These groups filed a friend-of-the-court brief demanding that the case against the Murfreesboro mosque be dismissed.

"We have 50 million Muslims in Europe. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe—without swords, without guns, without conquest—will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades." -- Muammar Ghaddafi

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." -- Abraham Lincoln

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within. " -- Ariel Durant

Muslims living in our country want to see an Islamic America--that is their goal. We are One Nation under God, but their God is different and don't let anyone tell you differently.

Twisted Vision

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I guess we all have vision. In politics it is just more mumbo jumbo for an excuse to do what you want to do. In my personal case, it is more like "hope" to age in good health, body and mind.

The best vision anyone could possibly have would be to follow the Golden Rule. A key element of the Golden Rule is that a person attempting to live by this rule treats all people with consideration, not just members of his or her in-group. In the recent firing of the city manager, the "rule" was lost in translation because Susan Stanton was not treated justly nor do I believe was she treated ethically. The new commission kept hearing "fire the witch" from the Dirty Dozen, their loud supporters.

Does power get in the way of the "rule?" Often times it does. We read about people everyday who have gained some power and have turned around and ripped off the system or have voted in a way that is unrepresentative of all of the people--personal visions get in the way. They don't take the time to understand any other point of view. They don't care.

We know that we can not trust many politicians. They say one thing to get elected and then turn right around in 3 weeks and vote to do something totally ridiculous that cost the taxpayers a heck of a lot of money. They always said that they would give the city manager a chance to go along with their directives.

If you can't trust your preacher, who can you trust? We all remember Obama's preacher, Jeremiah Wright, the preacher who hates "whitey." We grew to despise him for saying, "God Bless America. No, no, no, not God Bless America. God damn America — that's in the Bible — for killing innocent people. God damn America, for treating our citizens as less than human." He had a weird vision and he's still preaching racism when the rest of us have been over that for 50 years.

Now we have churches into the act of grabbing the cash and I'm not talking about the collection plate. Redemptive Life Urban Initiatives an arm of the Redemptive Life Fellowship Church, is under investigation for having a vision to grab the cash and put it in their pockets. HUD money in the amount of $1.6 million was used to build 22 houses in the Coleman Park area. Think about that a minute. 22 houses for $1.6 million comes out to $72,727 a house. Not bad.

In June, HUD ordered the city of West Palm Beach to repay over a million dollars where much of it went to the Blue Roof program where no bids were sought. Redemptive Life has paid $2.2 million to various directors, employees and companies without properly documenting the transactions. The preacher man, Bishop Harold Ray, who has surrounded himself around celebrities, just hired celebrity lawyer Willie Gary because West Palm Beach has ordered Ray to return $1.1 million in monies that were not properly administered.

Our very own CRA got $23 million in a HUD grant to build $130 houses. Do the math. The are having all sorts of fun figuring out where to spend it next. Funding here in Lake Worth will be primarily used to purchase, rehabilitate and demolish foreclosed homes within the City of Lake Worth so says the CRA. They are building houses on these itsy, bitsy lots of 25 feet in the hood mind you. Some funding will also be available to provide homebuyer counseling, "green" maintenance says the CRA. We are attracting the poor to our city...just what we need. That will really turn the city around as well as our tax base.

This new commission is backed by those who just love the CRA and spending money. So, it can't be that vision that they want to change...starving artists and poor people. What is this new vision?

On December 20, this visionary commission will be voting on moving forward (oh, that's something else they are telling us of late that they want to do), to vote on the uniform method of collecting non-advalorem special assessments so just in case they want to special assess all of us next year, all their ducks will be in a row. Isn't that vision just a little twisted?

The Mayor just said that she has her own vision...that people are still angry and there was so much mistrust still in the community...her justification to can the city manager. I thought her vision was to stop the fire assessment, ensure that an independent auditor be hired (that was approved by the former commission), fix outdated infrastructure to prevent outages at our Utility (that's already in the CIP that the former Commission approved) . She further talked about her vision and the vision of those who joined her along the way...those who voted for her.

I don't mean to single out the Mayor here, personally I like her, but she was the swing vote to fire the city manager. As you represent all of the people Mayor, just keep the number in mind--222--all those others who did not come to the polls or did not vote for you have some sort of vision too and they aren't coming up to the lectern every other week spitting out fire and brimstone.

Charter Review Committee suggested for Lake Worth

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Charter Amendments were the order of business at today's Workshop.

Initially, the City Commission’s term of office and salary were brought up by Rachel Waterman during the September 20, 2011 City Commission meeting. Therefore, the city manager placed the entire subject of Charter Amendments and our Charter on the agenda with the excuse that a review is "healthy for a city to evaluate its Charter." All the Charter Amendments that have passed by the voters over the last 7 years were on the agenda.

A Charter Review Committee is being pushed by our city manager, Susan Stanton. The Reason? She says that she is being threatened with termination every election year and wants "stability" within our government. On top of all of that, she said, "The public doesn't always know what's best. The length of term has everything to do with "stability of leadership." The reason given for even putting the entire thing on today's discussion is that there are certain "housekeeping" issues (according to the city manager) that need to be cleaned-up in our Charter, our Bible, our Law, such as residency for fire chiefs. This is an excuse to open up the can of worms. We should not be screwing around with our charter and treating it so lightly by opening up the door with the pretense of "housekeeping."

It was mentioned that charters need to be up-dated to fit into the economic times in which we now are involved. Scott Maxwell asked how does the economy impact our Charter. He was given no logical explanation by the CM or anyone else for that matter. Stanton asked the commission--"You need to decide what sort of government you want." A strong mayor or a city manager? Well, the people have already spoken. We want what we have right now. What we would like, however, is a stronger commission and not one that agrees with the city manager so easily.

Christopher McVoy, Jo-Ann Golden and Suzanne Mulvehill agree with the city manager. Waterman was absent for this session. McVoy even went so far as to say that a 3 year term was "valid." He believes that 3 year terms will bring more stability to the administration. Mulvehill wants to know how we get a Charter Review Committee. Golden asked if they could make a motion to change the Charter from the dais and she was told by the City Attorney, "No, it must go to a vote of the people." Now how come this question was even asked? Aliens.

Now get this, Stanton says that in many places a Charter Review Committee can out vote the city commission. In other words, this is another attempt to grab more power by the city manager to once again reduce the balance of powers under our Charter. This commission is getting less and less powerful and they are doing it to themselves. If we change our city government to a 'strong mayor" type of government, Stanton should run for office.

Now, one more time, we just voted on this term issue 3 & 3/4 years ago and told the commission then that we did not want 3 year terms. It won with 68% of the vote. We didn't want longer terms then and we certainly want them even less today.

Archaeological monitoring - Lake Worth Beach Redevelopment Project

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June 23, 2011

HRPB Board Members,

As you may recall, at our first meeting we made a resolution, which was unanimously approved, directing staff to request a summary of archaeological resources within the city limits of Lake Worth for our review and for inclusion on the city's planning maps. Unfortunately, staff has not yet followed through on this directive and Lake Worth remains out of compliance with its 2009 Comprehensive Plan LDRs and Coastal Management Plan and potentially with Florida Statute 872.05 the Unmarked Human Graves Act.

You may also recall the HRPB’s discussions regarding the necessity for archaeological monitoring at Lake Worth Beach during the renovation process which is currently under way. In the past, I have stressed the necessity of archaeological monitoring on the southern part of the beach parcel specifically, but recently it has come to my attention that Phase One shovel testing of the entire parcel, along with careful monitoring of any ground disturbing work anywhere on the parcel, is what is appropriate and required by our Comprehensive Plan since prehistoric cultural material likely occurs throughout the parcel.

Late last week (9-9-11), I visited the Casino Building construction area for a period of about 20 minutes and found evidence of prehistoric materials in the area of the building's footprint in the form of oyster midden shell. Oyster, as you may know, is a non-marine edible mollusk and a typical marker for prehistoric sites in our area. This finding is also consistent with Florida Master Site File records for the Lake Worth Beach locality wherein archaeologist John Goggin, in the 1940's, reported the presence of a prehistoric midden context near the southern part of the site where the old radio tower stood.

My new (9-9-11) finding indicates that midden is likely located throughout the beach property and may be found as shallow as 1 meter below the surface. Thus, landscaping and installation of utility pipes etc. could disturb cultural deposits. I cannot stress enough how important it is for the city to come into compliance with our LDRs and Coastal Management regulations on this matter.

I suggest that before any ground disturbing work is permitted outside the Casino building’s foot print, that arrangements for Phase I shovel testing and archaeological monitoring of the project be made.

While the Beach parcel is the center of our attention at the moment, we should not let it diminish our concern for the Littlefield Site, a significant and partially intact archaeological site in college park which needs protection as well as the Seminole burial of our city's founding family member located in the 300 block of South L Street.

As you may recall, during my commentary at a recent HRPB meeting, I stressed that this Seminole burial was discussed and the necessity of adding its location to the city's planning map so that it will be protected. According to my latest inquiry, this has not yet been addressed by staff. There are likely more burials in that area which require proper recording and protection and conducting the appropriate investigations regarding unmarked cemeteries in that part of town should be a priority.

You will find a summary of my recommendations below. You will find copies of the pages of our Comprehensive Plan which address archaeological concerns attached.

Thank you for your attention,

Dorothy Block
Archaeologist M.A.
Vice Chair
HRPB City of Lake Worth
561-215-7909

CC: City Commissioners, Planning and Zoning Board, HRPB Board and Staff.

Historic Preservation in Lake Worth and Lisa Maxwell

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It goes without saying, most all of us believe in historic preservation. In just two more years, Lake Worth celebrates its 100th birthday. In time for that event, will be our newly built Casino to reflect its history in its design by capturing the essence of its original 1922 style. The majority of people believe that to be very important.

Back in July 2006 Helen Greene got it right when she was a member of the Planning & Zoning Board. Back then the P&Z Board members also sat on the Historic Preservation Board. The two boards consisted of the same members. She said, "I don't want to denigrate what was done here, but (the design) wasn't done in a very scholarly way." Mrs. Greene was speaking of three story 12-unit townhouses that a developer wanted to build on property where two historic homes were situated on Federal Highway.

There was one lone member on the Board who had no use for historic properties and wanted to make way for developers, after all, working for developers was and still is her profession.

Who was it? Lisa Maxwell, candidate for Mayor, wanted to demolish these houses.

The P&Z said "no" and denied the site plan as well with two board members dissenting, one of whom was, you guessed it, Lisa Maxwell. Frank Palen was the attorney for the developer and a former Chair of the Planning & Zoning Historic Preservation Board. Wes Blackman, board member commented, "We're balancing the old versus the new here; we are a city that was built in the 20's, 30's and 40's and we need to reflect that in our major thoroughfares.

The Planning and Zoning Board has come a long way. We now have a separate Historic Preservation Board, another watchdog for Lake Worth, in order to preserve our history and to ensure that historic properties do not get demolished just for favored developers or for development sake. This Board consists of Chair, Manuel Occhiogrosso an architect and Dorothy Block an Archaeologist, to name a few.

It's very important to preserve and protect our history in Lake Worth. All candidates running for election should make historical preservation a top priority. Let's ask Lisa Maxwell if she has had a metamorphosis.