“If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.” — Pearl Buck In the heart of the Ten Thousand Islands cresting the Everglades is a place called Chokoloskee Island. Truly one of Florida’s last frontiers, its first inhabitants came some 2,000 years ago and altered the watery terrain by building shell mounds and canals.

“How will we know it’s us without our past?” — Walter Havighurst “With Heritage So Rich,” 1966 A few months after the 1966 report titled “With Heritage So Rich” was published, Congress passed the National Historic Preservation Act, which enacted almost every major recommendation from the report.

“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.” — Henri Bergson (1859- 1941), French philosopher The Old Naples Waterfront Association has welcomed the Nina and Pinta replica ships to Tin City, where they will remain docked until sailing on their way early Sunday morning, April 10. While reviewing photos of the ships arriving in our port city (which was not a pleasant day to be out on the water), I couldn’t help but wonder what the Calusa must have thought at the sight of Columbus’ original Nina and Pinta plying the waters toward the coast of Florida hundreds of years ago.

“Mix a little foolishness with your prudence: It’s good to be silly at the right moment.”— Horace (65 B. C.- 8 B. C.) I don’t think anyone really knows for sure when and how April Fool’s Day originated. Many scholars connect it to the confusion of changing from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar way back in 1582. Renewal philosophers viewed the tradition much like we see “spring break” today, as a type of “spring fever” ritualized with great mayhem. By the late 1600s the Scottish had fully adopted the new calendar and were having a grand old time sending people on phony errands called “hunting the gowk” (the cuckoo bird).