Flagler professor, veteran journalist and Forum founder Ostrowidzki dies
Apr 10th
ST. AUGUSTINE, FL Victor Ostrowidzki, Flagler College’s director of the Forum on Government and Public Policy and a longtime professor at the college, died on Saturday after battling melanoma.
Ostrowidzki, 80, was a veteran journalist who had served as a White House reporter during the Reagan administration and covered health-care issues in the Clinton era. He also reported on every presidential election from 1964-1988.
He joined the faculty of Flagler College in 1997, and went on to found the Forum on Government and Public Policy, which brings in journalists and other experts to speak about current issues. The Forum has brought to the college names such as Robert Novak, David Broder, Joe Klein, Anne Coulter, Pat Buchanan and Chris Matthews.
Ostrowidzki taught Campaigns and Elections for our Humanities department and Media Power in Politics for Communication.
He was a native of Poland, and during the Soviet Union Occupation of Poland (1939-1941), Ostrowidzki’s father, a high-ranking Polish government official, was captured as a prisoner of war. At this time, Ostrowidzki’s mother, brother and grandfather were deported to Siberia while he was on vacation visiting his aunt. He survived both the Soviet Union and German occupation of Poland and was later re-united with his family in England in 1948. Two years later he moved with his family to the United States.
Ostrowidzki started working for the Hearst paper, the Times Union in Albany, New York, as a copy boy in 1953. He graduated from Siena College in 1954 and served in the United States Army from 1954-1957. During his military career he aided Hungarian refugees escaping from the country in the midst of a revolt against the Soviets.
In 1957, Ostrowidzki started working for the Times Union as a reporter. He was promoted to Capitol Hill bureau chief in 1960. In 1961 he was recalled to active duty for the Berlin and Cuba crisis, as an interpreter. After he completed his active duty, he earned a Master of Arts from Siena College and started covering Washington D.C. for Hearst Newspapers.
At Hearst, he served as White House, National, Foreign, War and Congressional Correspondent and Chief Political Writer. Ostrowidzki covered every presidential campaign for Hearst from 1968 until his retirement in 1997.
He is survived by his wife, Sharon; three children; two step-children; six grandchildren; four step-grandchildren; and a brother.
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Flagler College is an independent, four-year, comprehensive baccalaureate college located in St. Augustine, Fla. The college offers 24 majors, 29 minors and two pre-professional programs, the largest majors being business, education and communication. Small by intent, Flagler College has an enrollment of about 2,500 students, as well as a satellite campus at Tallahassee Community College in Tallahassee, Fla. U.S. News & World Report and The Princeton Review regularly feature Flagler as a college that offers quality education at a relatively low cost; tuition is $22,500, including room and board. A relatively young institution (founded in 1968), Flagler College is also noted for the historic beauty of its campus. The main building is Ponce de Leon Hall, built in 1887 as a luxury resort by Henry Flagler, who co-founded the Standard Oil Company with John D. Rockefeller.
For more on Flagler College, visit www.flagler.edu. from Read Media
“Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” Makes the Impossible Possible
Apr 7th
“Making the Impossible Possible”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is a love story, and I don’t mean the love that fishermen have for fishing, although there is also that.
On the other hand, Steven Wright says in his act, “There is a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore looking like an idiot.”
In this movie, the comment is made that the only thing that fishermen care about is fish, and that they are patient and virtuous.
The fishermen, of course, are patient and virtuous, not the fish.
No, we should remember that fish are so dumb that they can’t tell the difference between a real fly and an artificial fly with a hook in it at the end of a fishing line.
Emily Blunt plays Harriet Chetwode-Talbot, and she has a client who is an avid fisherman, Sheik Muhammed from Yemen, who wants to introduce salmon fishing in his desert country.
So, Harriet contacts the salmon expert in the British Fisheries, Dr. Alfred Jones, played by Ewan McGregor, to ask for his help in fulfilling the dream of the sheik, who naturally has enough money to make it happen.
Dr. Jones turns down Harriet’s request, telling her that the project is fundamentally infeasible.
In the meantime, however, Patricia Maxwell, who is the press secretary for the Prime Minister and who is played by Kristin Scott Thomas, tells her people, “We need a good news story from the Middle East and a big one. We need it now.”
So, with pressure from the top of the government, Dr. Jones is practically blackmailed into working with Harriet to make Sheik Muhammed’s dream come true.
And with two attractive people working closely together, romantic sparks are bound to fly, right?
Not so fast, Dear Audience, because Dr. Jones is married, and Harriet has a serious boyfriend.
Dr. Jones changes his assessment of the project’s success from fundamentally infeasible to theoretically possible, the sheik is willing to pay 50 million pounds, and so the problem now is to make it all happen.
Did I mention that there are dissidents in Yemen who believe that the sheik’s dream of building a river in the desert and stocking it with fish is insulting to Allah?
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen makes the impossible possible in so many different ways, and not just in fishing.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Forbes Names St. Augustine One of 10 Prettiest Towns in America
Apr 4th
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. (April 4) – Forbes magazine, one of the world’s leading sources of business news and financial information, has named St. Augustine as one of the ten prettiest towns in America. The exclusive list names the ten towns selected for Forbes by experts at National Geographic, the Travel Channel and Fodor’s. The selections were made on the basis of natural beauty, a unique identity, or a combination of the two.
Here’s how Forbes described St. Augustine:
Founded in 1565 by Spanish explorers, St. Augustine is the oldest city in the United States occupied by Europeans (take that, Jamestown!), and it remained in Spanish hands until it was traded to the British for Havana. But the town has retained much of its Spanish past in some of its homes and larger architecture. “Castillo de San Marcos, the formidable 17th-century structure built by the Spanish to defend La Florida, is the country’s oldest fort, and boasts impressive turrets, a moat, and even a double-drawbridge,” says Arabella Bowen, executive editorial director for Fodor’s Travel. “The town’s picturesque historic district is full of old-world atmosphere, historic homes, and easily explored on foot.”
The other towns on the America’s “prettiest” list are: Newport, Rhode Island; Taos, New Mexico; Old San Juan, Puerto Rico; Columbus, Indiana; Gatlinburg, Tennessee; Key West, Florida; Longview, Washington; San Luis Obispo, California; and Tarrytown, New York.
To see the Forbes article, click here.
This is the third major distinction received recently by St. Augustine. In December, National Geographic selected the city as one of the ten best places in the world to see holiday lights. In January, TripAdvisor chose St. Augustine as one of the 15 vacation “hot spots” for 2012.
Located midway between Daytona Beach and Jacksonville, Florida’s Historic Coast features historic St. Augustine, the outstanding golf and seaside elegance of Ponte Vedra, 42 miles of pristine Atlantic beaches – the same beaches that greeted Ponce de Leon in 1513 when he discovered and named La Florida – an area whose boundaries included what would later become the eastern United States. For more information on events, activities, holiday getaways and vacation opportunities in St. Augustine, Ponte Vedra & The Beaches, go to the Visitors and Convention Bureau website at www.FloridasHistoricCoast.com, become a fan on Facebook or call 1.800.653.2489.
Source: St. Augustine, Ponte Vedra & The Beaches, Visitors and Convention Bureau
