By Randy Moore, Publisher – Congratulations to the Venice Farmers Market for earning our Venice Spirit Award for 2024. Morgan Bettes, Antonio Hernandez (photo) and the rest of the team with Independent Jones have done a brilliant job in improving all facets of the region’s popular market open 8am to 1pm every Saturday year-round.

We are also announcing that Garden of the Arts (GOTA) has earned our Englewood Spirit Award for 2024. The owners Dena and Matt embody our shared appreciation of art and nature. GOTA includes a retail location on Dearborn Street and a certified plant nursery in the Englewood Arts District. The couple hosts monthly garden tours of their food forest demonstration garden. Dena is also an artist influencing the mix of products available at their retail store including visual art items, vibrant gift cards, glassware, and houseplants.

All of our awards acknowledge local individuals, businesses and nonprofits that are having a positive impact on the health and happiness of our community. You can see a list of our prior award winners on the home page of our two websites for South County Healthy Living and Englewood Healthy Living.

Our other awards include the Wildlife Champion Award and the Inspiring Artist Award. We also present lifetime achievement awards in Venice and Englewood. The prior recipients of our Venice Lifetime Achievement Award include Dr. Barbara Gaunt-Jaehne with Medical Gardens Hearing Center and Mike Levine with Home Instead Senior Care.

Here are some of the books I enjoyed reading recently: Feel Free by Zadie Smith, Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, Dark, Salt, Clear: Life in a Corning Fishing Town by Lamorna Ash, The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen, and Ageless Soul by Thomas Moore. I’ve read 230 books since launching my current reading program in July 2022. My longer term goal is to read 1,000 books.

I enjoy the basic pleasure and cognitive fitness that comes from reading. Reading books written by authors from around the world also helps me to be better informed about human nature, history, geography, diverse cultures, science, religion, politics, and more.

I’m encouraged to see more Americans pushing back on the misguided efforts by some groups to ban books and historical facts that make them uncomfortable. Book banning should be restricted to the home and not local schools and libraries. Let’s ban unwarranted fear and leave books and historical facts alone.

Wishing you the best for a healthy and meaningful spring and summer.