In about fifty thousand years, give or take a few centuries, the state of Florida will be gone. The Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean will cover the peninsula that rests just above sea level. Geologists tell us it has happened before and they know about when it will happen again.

This information does not keep the tourists, retirees, winter residents from the North who Floridians call snowbirds, and the less than savory drifters and always hopeful dreamers from adding each year to the population. They are attracted by the weather, beaches, opportunities for theft and mayhem, or the hope of a last frontier or a final resting place.

The west coast of Florida faces the Gulf of Mexico. On the white sand shore a little over fifty miles south of Tampa lies Sarasota.

Money magazine ranks the city as one of the fifteen most livable communities in the United States. Southern Living magazine recently named Sarasota County “the nation’s per capita arts capital.” The wealthy residents sponsor and support five live equity theaters, world-class museums, an opera company and opera house, a ballet company, a performing arts center, a circus tradition, and lots of film festivals.

One can spend a day, a week, or a lifetime avoiding the mean streets, the dark corners, and the violence that occurs daily, at least until they become a victim or witness it on television.

Sarasota is a beautiful bright orange blanket over a layer of darkness. Most people who come here don’t look under the blanket.

And then the newspaper or television news on Channel 40 lifts it to safely reveal a woman murdered in front of her infant triplets, a cabdriver staggering into the lazy Sarasota-Bradenton Airport bleeding from two bullet wounds in the chest, the rape and murder of a woman in her bed in a safe and expensive condominium community.