You experience “in the moment” adventures with every flip of the electronic page. If you’re an alpha geeks or your children were born with ipods clutched in their tiny fists, you all will enjoy the fun links and true stories which surround Rusty.  You  don’t have to wonder how something works or sounds – it’s there at the click of a link.

The hero, Rusty Martin, is a polite young man, When was the last time you heard a young hero say, “Yes, Sir” and “No, Ma’am” to his parents and adults around him? He’s smart – confounding some of his  teachers, when he tells them that he lack sufficient information for those dreaded time and distance math problems. It seems that they don’t take into consideration the air temperature or speed of the tailwinds he may encounter.

If you are a history buff or served in the military during World War II or any other time, you may have encounted a  conversational generation gap with today’s youngsters. Be prepared: Tailwinds is so fascinating that they’ll want to know how Rusty did what he did.

And Dan Poynter has a special love for Casselberry because of its World War II history when parachutes were manufactured here. We feel quite honored that Dan selected our hometown as Rusty’s. Dan went to great lengths to make sure each detail is as accurate as possible – right down to researching who might have been Rusty’s teachers at Lyman School, now Milwee Middle.

Get your FREE Advanced review copy available from Smashwords in every ereader format. Go to: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/247518

Use the Coupon Code Here:  XY52B (Insert at checkout) - Limited Time Offer

MORE ON TAILWINDS: Adventures of a Young Aviator

Rusty Martin is born to an aviation family and grows up in Casselberry, Florida, in the 1930s. He is an entrepreneur and a self-starter who loves to fly. Rusty is 12 at the outbreak of WW-II. Flying takes the young man to many fascinating events of the time.

You will discover:
* Many significant events in 1939 through 1943.
* The stories behind the stories.
* What aviation was like in the 30s & 40s.
* How young people can start and prosper in a business.
* An inspirational story that could have happened.

This is a work of historical fiction and it is a new type of fiction: it is illustrated. Most of the places, events, and people are real. Much of the dialogue is presumed. The main character is fictional—but he could be real.

This book describes an interesting time and celebrates the people who lived it.

Fascinating, inspirational, educational, and a great read. You will love following Rusty’s adventures.

This ebook is a multimedia presentation. Employing maps, photographs, videos, audios, and written references, this enhanced ebook tells a story in a way that a print book cannot.

Read this novel on a device connected to the Internet to take full advantage of this enhanced ebook’s capabilities.

Readers may find some of the incidents described difficult to believe. The references testify to the ebook’s factual accuracy.

Most of the photographs and videos in this book are in black and white. That is because they are circa 1940. I have done my best to be faithful to history—to show and describe events and places as they were.

More than 20 vendors will trade fresh produce, home and garden supplies, fresh baked goods, health and wellness products, cooking demonstrations, and a variety of other goods and services at the grand opening. Organizers Steve and Bonnie Rich expect the number of vendors to increase as the market’s popularity grows. In addition, there will be Yoga and Tai Chi classes starting after the first of the year.

Steve and Bonnie Rich have been exploring farmers markets for more than two decades. Steve has a Masters in Biology and Botany and Bonnie has a License as a Massage Therapist, and together they share a love of all things natural and healthy.

The Casselberry Farmers Market will be open every Sunday at Lake Concord Park from 12 – 4 p.m. until May 2013. That was a bit surprising, so I wrote to find out why the odd hours. Here’s what Steve and Bonnie said.

“We made the hours from 12-4pm because we are targeting the ‘after church’ crowd. We have been vendors at markets for awhile and we kept hearing from people that attend church that they can’t get to the early morning markets because it conflicts with them attending their services. By the time they would finally get to a market by 11:30-12noon, the produce had been picked through so badly that it wasn’t worth them going to the market. Combine that issue with the fact that the good, organic farmers live in, or around, Melbourne and it takes them awhile to drive to the Orlando area AND the fact that in the morning they have to pick their produce before heading to their markets…….well, it was just a no brainer for us. No one in this area is doing anything like this and we thought it was time to do something a little different. ”

They did say that the months of June, July & August would be difficult due to extreme heat and the afternoon storms, so they will switch the time to 9am-1pm.

The turn out so far has been pleasantly surprising, according to Steve and Bonnie. “On the first weekend we had approximately 500 guests join us; on the 2nd weekend it was a bit lower. We also realize that this is a tough time to start a market with all of the holiday parties, etc, going on but we wanted to get the local area used to everyone being there by the first of the year.”

Sounds like they have a demand and a plan to meet it – so check out. For more information, updates on weekly vendors or to sign-up to be a vendor, visit the Casselberry Farmers Market Facebook page at www.facebook.com/CasselberryFarmersMarket or email Steve and Bonnie Rich at CasselberryMarket@gmail.com.

A beautiful actress who fought the Nazis -

How a brilliant starlet created a worldwide technology boom.

It all started with a skin flick…

In 1933, a beautiful, young Austrian woman took off her clothes for a movie director.  She ran through the woods… naked. She swam in a lake naked. Pushing well beyond the social norms of the period, the movie also featured a simulated orgasm. To make the scene more ”vivid,” the director reportedly stabbed the actress with a sharp pin just off-screen.

The most popular movie in 1933 was King Kong.  But everyone in Hollywood was talking about that scandalous movie with the gorgeous, young Austrian woman.

Louis B. Mayer, of the giant studio MGM, said she was the most beautiful woman in the world. The film was banned practically everywhere, which of course made it even more popular and valuable…

Mussolini reportedly refused to sell his copy at any price.

The star of the film, called Ecstasy, was Hedwig Kiesler.  She said the secret of her beauty was “to stand there and look stupid.” In reality, Kiesler was anything but stupid. She was a genius. She’dgrown up as the only child of a prominent Jewish banker. She was a math prodigy.  She excelled at science. As she grew older, she became ruthless, using all the power her body and mind gave her.

Between the sexual roles she played, her tremendous
beauty, and the power of her intellect, Kiesler would confound the men in her life… including her six husbands, two of the most ruthless dictators of the 20th century, and one of the greatest movie producers in history.

Her beauty made her rich for a time. She is said to have made – and spent – $30 million in her life.  But her greatest accomplishment resulted from her intellect… And her invention continues to shape the world we live in today.

You see, this young Austrian starlet would take one of the most valuable technologies ever developed right from under Hitler’s nose. After fleeing to America, she not only became a major Hollywood star … her name sits on one of the most important patents ever granted by the U.S. patent Office.

Today, when you use your cell phone or, over the next few years, as you experience super-fast wireless Internet access (via something called “long-term evolution” or “LTE” technology), you’ll be using an extension of the technology a 20- year-old actress first conceived while sitting at dinner with Hitler.

At the time she made Ecstasy, Kiesler was married to one of the richest men in Austria .  Friedrich Mandl was Austria ‘s leading armsmaker. His firm would become a key supplier to the Nazis. Mandl used his beautiful young wife as a showpiece at important business dinners withrepresentatives of the Austrian, Italian, andGerman fascist forces. One of Mandl’s favorite topics at these gatherings – which included meals with Hitler and Mussolini – was the technology surrounding radio-controlled missiles and torpedoes.

Wireless weapons offered far greater ranges than the wire-controlled alternatives that prevailed at the time. Kiesler sat through these dinners “looking stupid,” while absorbing everything she heard… As a Jew, Kiesler hated the Nazis.  She abhorred her husband’s business ambitions. Mandl responded to his willful wife by imprisoning her in his castle, Schloss Schwarzenau. In 1937, she managed to escape. She drugged her maid, snuck out of the castle wearing the maid’s clothes, and sold her jewelry to finance a trip to London .

She got out just in time. In 1938, Germany annexed  Austria . The Nazis seized Mandl’s factory.  He was half Jewish. Mandl fled to Brazil . Later, he became an advisor to Argentina ‘s iconic populist president, Juan D. Peron.

In London, Kiesler arranged a meeting with Louis B. Mayer.  She signed a long-term contract with him, becoming one of MGM’s biggest stars. She appeared in more than 20 films. She was a co-star to Clark Gable, Judy Garland, and even Bob Hope. Each of her first seven MGM movies was a blockbuster.

But Kiesler cared far more about fighting the Nazis than about making movies.  At the height of her fame, in 1942, she developed a new kind of communications system, optimized for sending coded messages that couldn’t be “jammed.” She was building a system that would allow torpedoes and guided bombs to always reach their targets. She was building a system to kill Nazis.

By the 1940s, both the Nazis and the Allied forces were using the kind of single- frequency radio-controlled technology Kiesler’s ex-husband had been peddling.  The drawback of this technology was that the enemy could find the appropriate frequency and “jam” or intercept the signal, thereby interfering with the missile’s intended path.

Kiesler’s key innovation was to “change the channel.” It was a way of encoding a message across a broad area of the wireless spectrum. If one part of the spectrum was jammed, the message would still get through on one of the other frequencies being used. The problem was,she could not figure out how to synchronize the frequency changes on both the receiver and the transmitter.  To solve the problem, she turned to perhaps the world’s first techno-musician, George Anthiel.

Anthiel was an acquaintance of Kiesler who achieved some notoriety for creating intricate musical compositions.  He synchronized his melodies across twelve player pianos, producing stereophonic sounds no one had ever heard before. Kiesler incorporated Anthiel’s technology for synchronizing his player pianos.  Then, she was able to synchronize the frequency changes between a weapon’s receiver and its transmitter.

On August 11, 1942, U.S. Patent No. 2,292,387 was granted to Antheil and “Hedy Kiesler Markey,” which was Kiesler’s married name at the time. Most of you won’t recognize the name Kiesler.  And no one would remember the name Hedy Markey. But it’s a fair bet than anyone reading this newsletter of a certain age will remember one of the great beauties of Hollywood ‘s golden ageHedy Lamarr.

That’s the name Louis B. Mayer gave to his prize actress. That’s the name his movie company made famous.  Meanwhile, almost no one knows Hedwig Kiesler - aka Hedy Lamarr - was one of the great pioneers of wireless communications. Her technology was developed by the U.S. Navy, which has used it ever since.

You’re probably using Lamarr’s technology, too.  Her patent sits at the foundation of “spread spectrum technology,” which you use every day when you log on to a wi-fi network or make calls with your Bluetooth-enabled phone.  It lies at the heart of the massive investments being made right now in so-called fourth-generation “LTE” wireless technology. This next generation of cell phones and cell towers will provide tremendous increases to wireless network speed and quality, by spreading wireless signals across the entire available spectrum.This kind of encoding is only possible using the kind of frequency switching that Hedwig Kiesler invented.

Readmore: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr

https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=pts&hl=en&q=ininventor:%22Hedy+Kiesler+Markey%22

http://www.amazon.com/Spread-Spectrum-Lamarr-mobile-phone/dp/1419621297/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1351631187&sr=8-3&keywords=spread+spectrum

Find out about Early Voting in Florida

Casselberry Amendment – Giving Tax Abatement for New and Growing Businesses in the City 

The Amendments to the State Constitution:

The Official Explanation from the State of Florida 

The Short Description as written in the Suannee Democrat 

Friday November 2

Thursday November 8-  The Casselberry Chamber of Commerce is hosting the Casselberry Food & Wine Festival from 5 to 8 p.m. Come taste a diverse selection of foods and wines while enjoying live entertainmentby the smooth jazz sounds of the Jeff Rupert Quartet.

The festival will be a grand evening of tasting and celebrating that will showcase some of the best restaurants from the Central Florida area. The evening wouldn’t be complete without our silent auction filled with fun and exciting items including fine art, sports memorabilia, restaurant gift certificates, jewelry, and much more!

A portion of the proceeds will go to the Casselberry Art House, Casselberry Elementary Food Pantry,  and the Casselberry Chamber of Commerce Scholarship program for graduating seniors in our area.

Advance tickets can be purchased on line for $20 adults and $10 ages 12 and under.  Tickets will be $25 at the door.

Friday November 9 - Art and Music in the Park is another chance to cruise through the colorful trucks and get your fill of different types of delicious foods. This time there will be jazz and more art to enhance your outdoor dining experience. Admission is free, so bring your family and friends for a great way to start the weekend.

In 1939, Jules Colle, an azalea grower from Belgium, and his wife Janice read about a place where electric pumps brought oil in through the pipelines to keep ferns and flowers from freezing. The man behind the operation was Hibbard Casselberry.

When the Colles met Hibbard, Jules spun vivid tales of variegated flowers in a rainbow of colors, the beautiful young women in traditional costumes who tended the azaleas — and of his long search to find the perfect environment to raise the flowers. Colle’s vision sparked Hibbard’s, igniting a new business, Casselberry’s Belgian Azaleas.

After setting aside a few acres near the railroad tracks for an azalea nursery, Hibbard looked at the expenses. The business needed a sign, its own stationery, a salary for Colle, and an assistant. Alfred Ellis, a quiet man, formerly a farmer from Alabama, proved to be the perfect match for Colle. Other than shade, azaleas required entirely different care than the ferns. They needed raised beds and frequent watering.

Hibbard may have wondered if Colle had have left his homeland because of the pressure growing in Europe. On September 3, 1939, Great Britain declared war on Germany.  Then Canada did likewise.  America took a neutral position in the conflict, and also placed an embargo on shipments to any warring country. This meant Hibbard could not ship ferns to his Canadian customers.

Before winter set in, fernery workers set the smudge pots out in the fernery, while Colle and Alf protected the azalea beds. The plants were blasted with twenty-two freezing nights in January 1940, but the oil pumps saved them.

In July 1940, Hibbard borrowed money from the First National Bank in Orlando to increase the inventory of Belgian azaleas. Colle estimated 80,000 plants would be ready for shipment by October. Hibbard set the repayment schedule accordingly.  They both knew that for azaleas to be sold and blooming elsewhere in the early spring, they needed to be mature enough for shipment before the end of the year. Hibbard set the repayment schedule accordingly.

By October, Hibbard’s stressful lifestyle, including a law suit he had to endure to establish the Town of Casselberry had produced ulcers that chewed away at his stomach.

Then Hibbard pushed for a firm date to keep anxious clients from canceling their orders and insisting on a refund of money they had spent. Colle held the final say, and had extended the shipment dates twice. Finally, he stated no azaleas would be ship until December 28.

Soon their partnership was worse than broke; it was in debt, with payments overdue at the bank.  After fifteen years as a grower, Hibbard knew 2 things: nature would not obey his orders; and bankers and customers didn’t want to hear his excuses. What agitated him most was that Colle spent time driving around the state, looking for a better place for them to grow azaleas. For Hibbard there was only one place to do anything – Casselberry.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor. War of the Worlds no longer meant a fictional invasion by aliens. People looked around, wondering who would enlist; who might not return?

In 1942, the federal government intervened in Hibbard’s business again, this time practically wiping out the fern business by declaring it a non-essential branch of a non-essential industry.

Hibbard spelled out the situation surrounding the azalea business, as directly to Colle as his banker had given it to him. “We’ve been told to sell anything and everything to meet payments on time. I would like you to have luncheon with me almost daily at the soda mart where we can get a good 25 cent luncheon plate and a 5 cent cup of coffee. I believe we can use the relaxation time to promote a better understanding of each other’s problems and get some planning done.”

Unfortunately, Colle had discovered a little town called Frostproof. Hibbard reminded Colle. “There should be no planning to move to a ‘Frost Proof’ place — that was definitely agreed before we entered into this partnership. I am not the slightest bit interested in azaleas anywhere, except at our own plantations — not one of them.”

The Belgian Azalea Gardens was eventually moved to the highway and persevered. People became enchanted by it and the little Normandy style cottages that Hibbard had built in 1930. The combination made Casselberry somewhat of a tourist attraction.

In 1950, Hibbard hired an advertising firm to review his entire development operation. When he received their report, it said, “You, Mr. Hibbard Casselberry, are the master of your destiny, and the promise and prosperity of your dream of a community, town, and city is in your hands.

The report pointed out that Casselberry’s lakes formed an unusually picturesque background for a residential development. It has wooded sections, rolling acres and building sites that have a most attractive view. It would be a busy, progressive city, a beautiful city. As the firm suggested, Hibbard started selling azaleas to residents at a discount and giving them away with each lot sold. They said that with 50,000 Belgian azaleas planted around homes, Casselberry – the City of Azaleas – would soon develop on its own

In the wilder days of Florida when families were scattered about and farming was the way of the residents, a family traveled down from Georgia. They found a cabin and cleaned it up and started to work the land a little and hunted for swamp deep and hogs. A new traveling minister started making the circuit and he pressed the family to accept his teachings and be saved. The farmer’s youngest daughter was named Hope, she hung on the preacher’s every word, and her father didn’t like it. He didn’t like the way the preacher looked at Hope and several other young girls. The preacher started to sneak notes to Hope and one night she got up the nerve to sneak away.

They met at a spot by the church and the preacher told Hope she needed to be saved before they could be together and he took her out into Secret Lake for what she thought was a baptism, instead he grabbed her and held her underwater as he screamed bible passages into the night. One of Hope’s sisters tattled and her dad and three older brothers grabbed their guns and ran for the church, they heard the splashing and the preacher yelling and shot him, but it was too late to save Hope. After her funeral her parents went to put flowers on her grave and they heard her singing and followed the voice and saw a filmy image of Hope floating over the water.

Several years later there was another baptism at the lake and when they brought the girl up out of the water the congregation saw Hope come up out of the water, pushing the girl ahead of her. A minister once said he heard singing and went to the water and he saw Hope’s ghost dunking the dead preacher into the water and holding him under like he had done with her. He told people and they didn’t believe him, until a deacon went into the lake with the minister to help, and he was dragged under water and held there until Hope’s brother yelled that it was the wrong man. He crawled out coughing and sputtering and it was the last time they used it for baptisms.

It’s the most anticipated international Mazda event of the year, and it will not disappoint.

This year’s EpisodeM will feature booths showcasing various Mazda specialists, special guests including NFL Hall of Fame running back Thurman Thomas, custom Mazdas, food from California Pizza Kitchen and Jeremiah’s Italian Ice, music, family friendly activities, a VIP area, and Mazda gear for the ultimate Mazda enthusiast.

Street Unit Performance has been orchestrating Mazda functions since 2005 and is committed to the Orlando community, and that includes our furry friends. All event proceeds will be donated to the Seminole County Animal Shelter and T.E.A.R.S. (Together Every Animal Receives Support).

Animals will be up for adoption looking for loving homes, and the Seminole County K-9 Unit will be presenting exciting police dog demonstrations throughout the day.

“We are dedicated to Mazda and that makes for an awesome event, and it benefits our furry four-legged friends,” said Street Unit Performance, Inc. President Cullen Mariacher. “We are working very hard on this event; the experience can be enjoyed by enthusiasts of all ages.”

EpisodeM will take place on Saturday, Oct. 20 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Street Unit Performance headquarters (350 Anchor Rd. Building 1050, Casselberry, FL 32707).  For more information and to register, visit www.EpisodeM.com.

Two toes Tom is a beastly mix of human and alligator that lived around Florala. He came over the border after farmers tried to burn him out of his habitat and started a muck fire. He stood between ten and twelve feet tall and used to steal cattle and other animals to eat, farmers would find the shredded carcasses of their animals scattered along the edges of ponds or creeks. Pap Haines had taken a dozen buckets and packed them with eighteen sticks of dynamite and then his sons helped him to stuff the buckets around a pond that had a huge slide (that’s where the gators slide from the bank into the water) so they knew he had to be in there. They tied the fuses into one big one and got far enough back and lit it. The tnt blew out the pond and they saw parts of a gator flying into the air. They were still watching when they heard this hellacious scream and splashing and they ran to water hole used by the cows, they found the chewed up remains of Haines’ granddaughter on the bank and watched as two toes sank into the murky water, all they could see was his red eyes sinking into the pond.

Eventually they ran Two toes further into the state. Several women were reportedly attacked by this beast, one claimed to have had a beast child, one stormy night days after it was born, she took it out to the spot we knew as Secret Lake and left it on the water-floating on a piece of wood.  He found her leaving the woods and she told him that his beast baby was in the water and he ripped her head off and then ran to the pond, before he could get all the way to the baby he was hit by lightning. His roar of pain could be heard all over and the next day the woman’s family went searching for her, they found her body, but not her head, and the remains of the burnt beast and then on the far side of the pond were a fresh set of tiny prints with two toes leaving and heading into the brush.  He comes back every year on that day to hunt for revenge.

The Lesson: If you think you have nothing at stake when development is in the other person’s neighborhood and not yours, you’re wrong. Decisions of this magnitude affect all of us.

Here’s the article from the Orlando Sentinel written by Martin E. Comas.

Casselberry commissioners on Monday said the city intends to preserve the Casselberry Golf Course property, calling it a “unique asset” and “an integral green space in the heart of the city.”

Last June, the club’s owners told city officials that the golf course is no longer profitable, and that they are considering selling the land to a developer. Hundreds of residents packed a community meeting at Casselberry Elementary last month to oppose plans to turn the property into single-family homes. Many of them saying they would rather see the land remain an open green space if the course closes.

“We heard you loud and clear,” Commissioner Jon Miller said before joining fellow commissioners in approving a resolution that the city will work with citizens and the owners to preserve the golf course property.

Built in 1947, the golf course winds through five neighborhoods just of City Hall. But in the past three years, the course has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, owner Chad Barton said.

City attorney Catherine Reischmann said city officials should be prepared to ask a judge about a 1973 deed restriction on the property that says if the golf course ceases to operate then the property will be conveyed free of the charge to the city.