BY MARCY SHORTUSE - It’s July. Time for the streets to roll up, the iguanas to bask and the Beacon staff to get really, really creative. When you look up at our little community calendar and week after week all you see are bare date boxes, that means there ain’t much goin’ on ‘round here.

Before we venture back into the world of tarpon debate, I just wanted to put a bug in your ear about guest writing for the Beacon. We have a lot of great contributions during season, but we need them even more in the summer.

It seems like every year we get part-time residents who stay a little bit longer. When it’s hotter in New York than it is in Boca Grande, you can see why. If you’ve got something local that you’d like to write about, we’d love to hear about it.

Don’t be daunted by the fact that the seasonal residents are gone and won’t get to read the Beacon. Almost all of our subscribers, and that’s a good percentage of Boca Grande residents, have a year-round subscription and do read the paper ... whether they’re sitting on Park Avenue or in Marblehead, Mass.

This is the locals’ time of year. We get to make the Beacon what we want it to be, without a whirlwind of social events taking the headlines. So whether you like to talk about plants, trees, wildlife, Boca society or golf, give it a try and do some guest writing.

And, just so you know, Liza Strout will be filling in as our jack-of-all-trades in the very near future as I bring yet another Shortuse child into the world, my fifth to be exact. Any time between now and August 1, I will temporarily disappear and our ever-diligent roving reporter will become ... Beacon Woman.

And now, back to our regularly-scheduled tarpon debate ...

Marcy Shortuse is the editor of the Boca Beacon

Gladys Gannon Geib, 86, of Jamestown, R.I.and Boca Grande passed away Wednesday, June 27, 2012.

She was the wife of the late Frederick J. Geib.

BY LIZA STROUT - When Rich Harsh visited Charlotte Harbor with his wife Janeen, they knew that they had found their new home.

“I’ve always been a water junkie,” laughed Rich. “My grandfather took me fishing as far back as I can remember. It’s in my blood. I wanted to live on the water and get into the professional fishing industry.”

The couple sold their house in Michigan, packed up their belongings and family and restarted their lives in Englewood two years ago.

“We knew that we wanted to do it, and we decided that we should do it sooner rather than later,” Rich said. “We wanted to do it while we could enjoy it, because you never know what the future holds.”