It's that time of year when even the most industrious Floridians can be forgiven for losing their minds to dreams of visitng our nearby white sand beaches, walking among the sea grasses and counting the bottle-nosed dolphins playing hopscotch along the horizon.
Memorial Day weekend marks a special time to pay tribute to the men and women who bravely serve in our armed forces and to remember those lost to battles now and in the past.
It is also the beginning of what we experience as the slower pace of summer -- a time for school to be out and families to take off on vacation. A time to fly or drive north for cooler weather and a time to catch up on reading both for work and for pleasure.
So try not to miss us as we take a week off to enjoy a colorful array of spring flowers -- bougainvillea, bromeliads, gardenias, geraniums, tulips, petunias, hibiscus, honeysuckle, jasmine -- on our morning walks. If you're lucky enough to call Tampa Bay home, as we are, join us in appreciation of the purple martins, red cardinals, painted buntings, yellow goldfinches, blue jays and our personal favorite, the natty chickadees.
We'll be back in June and will look forward to writing more stories for you about the region's talent, innovation, diversity and environment.
The 83 Degrees Media Team
Diane Egner, Julie Busch Branaman, Megan Hendricks, Kathy Steele and a bevy of local storytellers
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Read more articles by Diane Egner.
Diane Egner is a community leader and award-winning journalist with more than four decades of experience reporting and writing about the Tampa Bay Area of Florida. She serves on the boards of the University of South Florida Zimmerman School of Advertising & Mass Communications Advisory Council, The Institute for Research in Art (Graphicstudio, the Contemporary Art Museum, and USF’s Public Art Program) Community Advisory Council, Sing Out and Read, and StageWorks Theatre Advisory Council. She also is a member of Leadership Florida and the Athena Society. A graduate of the University of Minnesota with a BA in journalism, she won the top statewide award for editorial writing from the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors while at The Tampa Tribune and received special recognition by the Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists for creative work as Content Director at WUSF Public Media. Past accomplishments and community service include leadership positions with Tampa Tiger Bay Club, USF Women in Leadership & Philanthropy (WLP), Alpha House of Tampa Bay, Awesome Tampa Bay, Florida Kinship Center, AIA Tampa Bay, Powerstories, Arts Council of Hillsborough County, and the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce. Diane and her husband, Sandy Rief, live in Tampa.