Imagine. It’s now October. The autumnal equinox has come and gone. Columbus Day approaches. A quarter of the Buccaneers’ regular season is already over. And the Rays are still playing baseball. Not the old, bedeviled Rays or the Martha Rays or the Bob and Rays. Not the team/franchise that was synonymous with “loser.” Not the [...]
More good news. The St. Petersburg police officer who “appeared” to put his Taser against the head of that out-of-control, mutant Red Sox fan has been cleared of any wrong-doing by a department review. Recall that the obnoxious, besotted, Bosox fan wasn’t satisfied being loud and verbally berating and abusing Rays’ fans. When he was [...]
Finally. Tampa Housing Authority Commissioner Karen Peoples has been evicted. She’s been in violation of federal housing guidelines for nearly a year because she lives alone in a four-bedroom, C. Blythe Andrews apartment. An apartment that sets her back all of $26 a month. But that’s just for openers. Peoples has been at Andrews since [...]
Gertrude Stein once chided Oakland, where she spent her childhood, for its identity-challenged ambience. Her observation: “There is no there there” remains a classic. Residents of Tampa, which has long lacked a readily identifiable, central gathering, celebrating, rallying, entertaining, communing venue, understand. Which makes the prospect of what Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park can be truly [...]
Hillsborough County Commissioner Jim Norman’s proposal to rename the “Moral Courage Award” after the late Ralph Hughes is now reality. Norman’s had, as we know, worse ideas, but this one is bad. Unless political agenda is somehow synonymous with moral courage. If there had to be any kind of name change, then it would have [...]
It might be a good time to take down those City of Champions signs that greet visitors by extolling Tampa for its Super Bowl, Stanley Cup and Arena Bowl championships. Unless the Bucs are actually in Tampa-hosted Super Bowl XLIII, such signage will become fodder for out-of-town journalists quick to remind the world that Tampa [...]
I remember the first time I encountered Charlie Arnade, the singular USF international affairs professor who died recently at 81. It was in the 1970s, and he was a last-minute substitute instructor in a Russian History course on USF’s St. Petersburg campus. He spoke English with a hybrid European accent that was – I later [...]
We all, quite naturally, like to think the best of our democracy, especially when it’s confronted by forces antithetical to its very premise. But in practice, of course, democracy is only as good as the process and the people who are consequently elected. Which brings us – somehow – to Rachel Burgin, the heavily favored [...]
Until his recent win in the Democratic primary, District 6 Hillsborough County Commission candidate Kevin Beckner had never run for office. Never felt compelled to. In his 10 years in Tampa, the 37-year-old Carrollwood resident was settling into a career as a certified financial planner. The Indiana native was content to build a client base [...]
John McCain’s choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for his running mate may turn out to be a stroke of pure pragmatic genius. The gender thing, the performer thing, the Christian conservative-base thing, the energy-state thing. And, in a very convoluted and calculated way, the experience thing. The 44-year-old doesn’t have a lot, notably none [...]
