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Palms West Monthly • July 2018 • Page 1
Palms West
Monthly
WELLINGTON • ROYAL PALM BEACH • WEST PALM BEACH • LOXAHATCHEE GROVES • THE ACREAGE Volume 8, Number 7
PalmsWestMonthly.com
BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE: And so is the butterfly walk at MacArthur Beach State Park … PAGE 5
FREE • July 2018
Kitten Season
Arts, dining scene has transformed Northwood Village
Rich Anderson
Kitten season has arrived – Don’t touch!
Northwood Village, tucked between 23rd and 25th streets, is West Palm Beach’s oldest historic neighborhood and has all the charm of a small-town main street.
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By RICH ANDERSON Special to Palms West Monthly
Shakespeare festival returns to Carlin Park
Wormus commuted intermittently to the company’s West Palm Beach branch. On that fateful night, he was standing on the top-floor balcony of the SMArtX offices at 101 Clematis St., overlooking Centennial Park and the evening view across the Intracoastal. “It was Clematis by Fright,” he recalls, “the Halloween celebration. There was a band and kids were trick-or-treating and I thought, ‘Music. Free entertainment. It doesn’t get any better than this.’” A year later, he’d broken up with Germany and brought his wife Stella, and daughters Anne and Mia, here. “Now, when people ask me
Stop! Don’t touch those kittens … yet! Kitten season has begun and that means thousands of newborn kittens are starting to be born all around us. It is very important to know what to do – and what not to do – if you discover newborn kittens in your yard, in your neighborhood or around your office. First, when you see newborn kittens, resist the urge to take them to a shelter. Kittens less than four weeks old have little chance of survival if separated from their mothers and taken to a shelter. In fact, cats and kittens are the most at-risk animals for euthanasia in Palm Beach County. Most discoveries of newborn kittens don’t call for human assistance. No intervention is generally best until kittens can eat on their own. Before scooping them up, please remember the phrase “mother knows best.” The kitten’s best chance for survival is staying with mom. Newborn kittens need a mother’s care and antibodies from her milk. The mother will also train her kittens as only a mother can. Quietly observe from a distance to see if mother is present. She’ll need to leave her litter for short periods of time in order to find food for herself. If the kittens are clean and sleeping in a heap, mom’s most likely out finding food. Never interfere with the kittens or their space as long as the mother is around. Do not touch them. Do not create a shelter. Do not try to keep them warm. Do not feed them. This may stress her and she may abandon her family. However, you can provide food and water. Place containers far enough away from the
SEE WORMUS / PAGE 9
SEE KITTENS / PAGE 10
Don’t miss Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival’s presentation of “Antony & Cleopatra” coming to the Seabreeze Amphitheater.
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Photo by Carolyn Rose Designs/Palms West Monthly
Standing in front of Palm Beach Dramaworks’ Don & Ann Brown Theatre and the eye-catching street art of well-known Brazilian artist Eduardo Kobra, Aaron Wormus has a handle on all things happening in downtown West Palm Beach.
Norton Museum celebrates France’s Bastille Day The Norton Museum of Art will don a beret to celebrate Bastille Day, the holiday when the French celebrate democracy, patriotism, and “liberty, equality, fraternity.”
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Make sure you’re prepared for hurricane season
Come out to the Wellington branch library July 24 for a free Hurricane Preparedness seminar hosted by the Palm Beach County Division of Emergency Management.
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MAN ABOUT TOWN
In 2009, Aaron Wormus began posting photos of West Palm’s downtown happenings on Twitter. He now has 13,600 followers. By RON HAYES Palms West Monthly
WEST PALM BEACH — Aaron Wormus is a little hard to define. Is he a blogger? A photographer? A citizen journalist? Is he, as some say, the city’s biggest cheerleader? Or is he – as he’s known locally – just @aGuyonClematis? The man who started the feisty “Engage West Palm Beach” Facebook page and the husband and father who writes a monthly “Scene From West Palm” column for this paper? Call him what you want, but don’t call Aaron Wormus fickle. Before he gave his heart to West Palm Beach about 12 years ago, Wormus had lived in Finland and Argentina, India, Pakistan, Sweden and Ukraine.
He met his wife in Hungary and wooed her in Switzerland. “My parents were missionaries,” he explained one evening recently, relaxing in the courtyard at Subculture Coffee on Clematis Street, his favorite hangout. Born to a Finnish mother and American father in Oulu, Finland, 40 years ago, Wormus followed his parents on their search for souls. “I was home-schooled except for a couple of stints in real schools,” he said. “I’ve come to terms with it, but I never really grew up anywhere.” And then, one evening in October 2006, West Palm Beach seduced him. Living in Frankfurt, Germany, and working for SMArtX, a financial technology company,