• Harrell & Harrell is sponsoring “A Night of Heroes,” honoring the physicians, nurses, technicians, TraumaOne flight crew, fire and rescue and police involved in the Level 1 Trauma Center at Shands Jacksonville. The event is scheduled for Feb. 2 at the West Club at Jacksonville Municipal Stadium and includes a reception, awards presentation and live auction, with all money benefiting the Trauma Center. Individual tickets are $125 and tables of 10 are $1,250. For more information, call 244-1093 or visit www.anightforheroes.com.
• Traveler’s alert: A new U.S. Department of Homeland Security measure went into effect Jan. 1. If you carry extra lithium batteries when you fly on a commercial airline you are not allowed to put them in your checked baggage. Spare lithium batteries may be packed in carry-on baggage and lithium batteries installed in a device may be packed in either checked or carry-on baggage. For more information, visit http://safetravel.dot.gov.
• He’ll need to follow new gift reporting rules of course, but Mayor John Peyton could be the recipient of two tickets to the Super Bowl. Peyton received an e-mail last week offering him a chance to win the tickets and hotel accommodations in Phoenix if he would register for 100 free sales leads from Salesgenie.com, one of this year’s Super Bowl television advertisers. The e-mail also said the contest is not open to the general public, only to those able to purchase business subscriptions to online information services.
• Visit Jacksonville has received a $20,000 grant from the State that will be used to create a visitor’s guide supplement that will market the city as a destination for multicultural groups and events. The organization (formerly the Jacksonville and the Beaches Convention & Visitors Bureau) is also forming a committee that will be chaired by Council member Mia Jones to study ways to bring more racially and ethnically diverse tourists to the area.
• Steve McDaniel has been named senior plant manager at Anheuser-Busch’s Jacksonville brewery. He replaces Sylvester Robinson, who retired after 17 years with the company. McDaniel started with the beer company more than 20 years ago as a line foreman in Jacksonville before working in plants in New Hampshire and Colorado. The Jacksonville brewery has a capacity of 8.5 million barrels a year and ships beer to Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and the Caribbean.
• Downtown Vision Inc. is hosting a gathering Wednesday at 9 a.m. to discuss issues of concern to Downtown stakeholders including cleanliness, safety and parking. The meeting will be held in Multi-purpose Room 1 at the Main Library’s Conference Center. For more information, call 634-0303 ext. 221.
“From now on, I think it is safe to predict, neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party will ever nominate for President a candidate without good looks, stage presence, theatrical delivery and a sense of timing.”
– James Thurber, U.S. humorist.(From an unpublished manuscript, dated March 20, 1961.)