Amanda Whittamore

A pickleball pro who competed in the US Open championships in Naples picked up the game when he was healing from cancer. He loved it so much, he shared it all the way to Papua New Guinea.

It was a show of protest, frustration, disaffection and concern and it was shared by thousands Saturday in various Southwest Florida sites, other parts of the state and across the United States and the world. The No Kings III event was billed as a protest rally and drew people of many different political affiliations who said they had concerns with how the current administration in Washington run by President Donald Trump was handling things.

I know a whoopee spot where the gin is cold and the piano’s hot … and all that jazz. It’s Lehigh Senior High Center for the Arts Auditorium, where they’re performing “Chicago Teen Edition.” It’s a paint-the-town jazz extravaganza perfectly suited to Artistic Director Miguel Cintron’s triple threat theater students. And senior Samantha Jean-Marie's set design enables Cintron's talented actors to strut their stuff.

Muralist Juan Diaz's "The Growth of Our Beloved Neighborhood" in the Heights Foundation Education Building lobby encapsulates Harlem Heights' past, present and future.

The Fort Myers Symphonic Mastersingers will premiere an extraordinary choral work titled “The Witness: Incidents of the War of the Rebellion.” The work was conceived by the choral group’s artistic director, Matthew Koller, and inspired by the memoir of his great-great, grandfather, James Waxler, about his time serving in the Union army during the American Civil War. The memoir’s message is as cogent today as it was when he wrote it in 1888.

Lee County School system has an abundance of construction projects underway. We cover a few.

A unified basketball game brings belonging at Fort Myers High School.

Watching an actor walk off stage and immediately reappear in a completely different outfit is one of the most captivating moments in theater. Quick costume changes add a layer of intrigue to any theater production. That’s especially true in a show where 35 actors change costumes dozens of times over the span of a couple of hours. That’s what happens in “The Little Mermaid,” which will be performed by Bishop Verot High School March 19-22.

There are an estimated 250,000 feral and community cats on the loose in Lee County on any given day. To raise awareness about the magnitude of the problem - and to inspire people to adopt some of the shelter's cats and kittens, Lee County Animal Shelter has collaborated with Broadway Palm on its production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "CATS."

A seven-month-old Bonita Springs organization is helping families navigate life after a loved one is deported.