While a sign of progress, building a new sewer line isn’t often cause for major celebration.

It has not been long since I wrote about the Avalon Park Daytona plan.

Racial justice and police accountability, now!

My coming of age was guided rather delightfully by the music of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. I learned a lot from their thoughtful lyrics that I would not have learned from my parents, and I honed my political and pacifistic tendencies in their harmonies.

Voting by mail is good for our health, our democracy, and our soul.

“White Americans have never apologized for slavery; thus black Americans have never forgiven them for it,” Judge Hubert Grimes said at a lynching memorial ceremony May 23.

An enlightened group of local people began the Memorial Day weekend with a ceremony in honor and remembrance of a Volusia County resident, at his gravesite.

Before my grandfather passed, his proudest moment was witnessing our nation’s first black president.

Memorial Day weekend is a fitting setting to remember Lee Snell, a World War I Army veteran, who, in 1939, was the victim of racial terror by lynching in Daytona Beach.

Editor’s note: LeadingAge Florida is a nonprofit association that assists and represents elder-care facilities and retirement communities. This is written by the organization’s president.

There are still some Americans — unreconstructed traditionalists — who believe May 30 should be the holiday for honoring the nation’s war dead and those who survived wars but who have since passed from this life.

Small businesses — there are about 12,000 of them in Volusia County — truly are the backbone of our economic engine.

Imagine coming home from a long shift or turning on the TV after being in your house all day, and watching a live broadcast of your favorite team playing. As removed as we are from professional and collegiate athletics, that win makes you feel a little bit better.

This is the third in a four-part series by Quint Studer, author of Building a Vibrant Community: How Citizen-Powered Change Is Reshaping America.

I don’t much care for paying taxes. Maybe I could be clearer: I very much dislike paying taxes. Writing those checks to the county pretty much ruins an afternoon for me.

One nice thing about COVID-19 shutdowns is that we have fewer public government meetings. Well, that is good for the governments, who are busy operating via conference link or otherwise keeping low profiles.

Without a doubt, we are now living history.

This is the second column in a three-part series by Quint Studer, author of Building a Vibrant Community: How Citizen-Powered Change Is Reshaping America.

Let us be fair. There are times when lawyers show up as the good guys. Who among us does not remember the old Perry Mason books and TV shows? One lawyer successfully defends his client against the overwhelming force of the state.

By congressional resolution and presidential proclamation, today, May 7, is the National Day of Prayer.

It’s incredibly humbling to realize how the decisions made by the County Council can impact our community and our lives far into the future. Volusia County’s trail system is a prime example.

While we don’t know the exact timeline, in the next few months, we expect the shelter-at-home restrictions to be lifted, and folks will be eager for things to reboot and get back to “normal.”

During this coronavirus pandemic, access to accurate and trustworthy information in your community is as critical to life under quarantine and as sought after as hand sanitizer and face masks.

Well, it has been a couple of months since we last looked at the snowflakes of New Smyrna. The weather is warming up, and those snowflakes are not doing so well.

If you aspired to be a great leader, would you send your team into harm’s way with incomplete or inaccurate information? What would happen if you withheld important facts that could have saved lives or changed the outcome?

Newspapers in the United States have traveled rough seas to the First Amendment freedoms we enjoy today. From the colonial Stamp Act through wartime censorship to today, when thousands of newspapers were slammed with the public health emergency known as COVID-19, people who work for newspape…

Schools, hospitals, roads, affordable housing: What if you could help ensure that Volusia County receives its fair share of funding for all of these vitally important programs, and many others as well? Sounds like a big ask and an even bigger task. But the good news is that it’ll take less t…

It used to be a sort of an ugly footrace. Competing interests would send their people to get to particular legislators. If your lobbyist got there first and had the right amount of persuasive power, your bill moved. Otherwise, we know how useless the Legislature is.

I guess I fall into the “ignore the scientists’ explanations at your own peril” camp, because I have read a couple of scientific papers that explain the mathematical models showing how coronavirus infections grow exponentially instead of slowly like the normal flu.

In the lyrics of the early rock band The Doors: “Strange days have found us, Strange days have tracked us down.”

Editor’s note: While The Beacon is publishing only one weekly print edition to cut expenses in an attempt to outlast COVID-19, the columns about national politics written by Russ White and David Rauschenberger have been suspended. Both men have been invited to submit occasional columns on lo…

I seem to recall an old theory that people who do evil shrink from public observation, while those doing good have no such shyness. Our governments regularly remind me that the old theory is correct.

Good day, West Volusia!

I love work. I can watch it for hours. Longer, even, but always from a safe distance. Doing it is not quite so much fun.

Like a bad dream, IT seemingly came from out of nowhere. Coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, an import from China that escaped the tariffs, suddenly appeared.

As is often said, “Sunshine is the best disinfectant.”

After talking with my family, I realized that we are understanding the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of our previous traumatic experiences.

Can somebody on the left side of the political barbed-wire fence tell me how Democrats can, with a straight face, lay claim to being the party of diversity? I’m just curious. Do any of them notice how their selection process has played out? Their media partners act as if all is well. And I’m…

The United States is about to be forced to learn some very hard and painful lessons involving our health care and economic systems. We are woefully unprepared for them, and at their core is the man we have in charge.

You and I, and all other Florida taxpayers, are being ripped off every day. Our tax dollars — money we provide to help care for our state’s ailing poor — are being siphoned out of the Medicaid program and into the pockets of predatory entities that, ironically, were created to save us money.

In the post-World War II era, the Republican Party was often in exile from Congress for causing the Great Depression. Fighting went on for control of the party between the Wall Street money folks and the crazies of the John Birch Society wing of the party.

County Chairman Kelley has somewhat figured out that the sales-tax referendum went down in flames because few people trust the county. Of course it was not his fault. Everyone else screwed up. No one trusted the county or its past messages, so they are planning a new campaign with a familiar…

In my constant effort to bring a dose of reality to The Beacon, I thought I’d dispel a myth that seems to be traveling in certain political circles. That would be the idea that this political game between the deranged left and President Donald Trump and his supporters is going to be close in…

This column is for supporters of this president.

It took long enough. The Deltona City Commission voted to give away about $2.5 million in taxpayer money, without even knowing which panhandler wanted it. They went for the usual promise of jobs, though, in fairness, they did not get a promise of good jobs.