Retiree bridges miles, years to help struggling scholar BROOKSVILLE -- The folks in the office at Central High School were caught a little off guard earlier this month when an 85-year-old man walked in and asked to speak to a student he had never met. With bars between them, mothers and kids connect A Department of Corrections program helps imprisoned moms bond with their faraway kids.

Destiny in Spring Lake brings a farewell to farms [Times photo: Maurice Rivenbark] Once home to sprawling citrus groves and ranches, the countryside around Spring Lake is rapidly giving way to more houses, less agriculture.

Colorado vacation got off on the wrong foot
"Why," she asked as we walked down a hill late at night for a dip in the hot spring at a Colorado campground, "are you walking like a penguin?"

Year-rounders should thank snowbirds, not complain
Editor: Re: Keep daily parking fees the same for everyone, May 2 Hernando Times editorial, and Snowbirds should pay more than year-rounders, May 10 letter to the editor:

Rejecting Wackenhut was the right decision
It's widely known the Hernando County commissioners can dance around controversial issues with the best of them. When they are not tap dancing around issues, they are overstepping their bounds, high stepping through their own rhetoric or twisting your words.

'A good ride' ends in the right place
Hernando softball coach Ernie Chatman had told his players that what ultimately will matter isn't so much how they finished their run, but where they finished it -- in the state title

Winning isn't the only thing
The conversation was simple enough at first: two teenage girls chatting in a grocery checkout line.