Author: opinionstogo

Port Finally Makes The Right Call

This much we know about the search for a director for the Port of Tampa:

* It better yield a seasoned veteran who can juggle multiple egos and myriad priorities. The latter include accommodating bulk shipping as well as the cruise business, realizing the container potential, and playing real estate developer and landlord. It puts a premium on communication skills and international, i.e. Latin American, savvy. Fluency in Spanish would help.

*T he first go-around, when a national search was summarily and secretly jettisoned, was a blindsiding mistake . A sharply divided (3-2) Tampa Port Authority board awarded the job to interim director Zelko Kirincich — for a year.

* Kirincich , who seems well thought of, read the resulting uproar correctly and within a day had declined the promotion. He will compete in the re-instituted national search.

* As one of the country’s biggest ports (in tonnage) and a $13-billion, economic colossus for the Tampa Bay area, the Port of Tampa must act the part . This isn’t Biloxi. This really is the big time.

* When Mayor Pam Iorio and Hillsborough County Commissioner Ronda Storms — the two dissenters in that ill-fated vote to initially promote Kirincich — agree on anything, it’s worth noting. And in this case, worth heeding.

A Pledge Of Allegiance To Common Sense

How now, Michael Newdow? You don’t have standing on behalf of your daughter to challenge “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.

But that’s a technicality, of course, and some other affronted atheist, peeved pantheist or steamed secular humanist surely will take up the clause cause again. Moreover, only three Supreme Court justices flat out said that the use of “under God” was constitutional. The others only referenced the custody issue.

Arguably what is now called for is a Pledge of Allegiance to common sense. And, in effect, that is what the Bush Administration is arguing. Its brief says “under God” in the pledge is about as religious an act as pocketing coins with “In God We Trust” imprinted on them. It amounts to a patriotic acknowledgement of “the nation’s religious history.” We were, after all, founded by Pilgrims, who had issues with the Church of England — not God.

The Administration, mercifully, got this one right. “Under God” is an empirical statement that poses no threat to the separation of church and state. If it does, then “God save the United States and this honorable court.”

Catholic Schools’ Secret Of Success: Parents

A Tampa Tribune story the other day chronicled how nuns, priests and brothers were no longer the “heart and soul” of Catholic School classrooms. More like skeleton crews these days. The story focused on the 12,000-student Diocese of St. Petersburg, which includes Tampa.

The dynamics of this diocese reflect the national trend that has seen fewer Catholic men and women answer the vocational call to religious orders. And those who did are increasingly opting out or retiring. As a result, some 95 per cent of Catholic School teachers are lay instructors. Two generations ago, that figure was nearly reversed; lay teachers in Catholic Schools were a rarity. The non-uniformed civilian who didn’t teach religion.

Case in point: South Tampa’s Christ The King Catholic School, which is staffed, as it were, by the Salesian Sisters. All three of them. As of next school year, there will be none. All laity, all the time.

To Catholics, especially the generations who were taught almost exclusively by nuns, the loss of the tradition and the special symbolism is hardly shocking — simply sad and wistful. Catholic schools and nuns were synonymous.

Unencumbered by family priorities, they were totally committed. They had this unique calling that transcended “job” or “profession.” They had standards. They labored, well, religiously. They knew the value of discipline.

And they were overrated.

OK, that’s harsh, but hear me out. My credentials include being taught by St. Joseph’s nuns through the Philadelphia grammar schools of Holy Innocents and St. Timothy and by the Christian Brothers at La Salle High School. I can attest first-hand that even corporal punishment can be overdone. Martial arts, arguably, need not be incorporated into language arts. I lived George Carlin’s early material.

Back in the day, nuns didn’t need a college degree, and the same nun who drilled you on the rigors of math was supposed to teach you the finesse of rhetoric and composition — and everything else right through the middle school years. That would have been beyond Mr. Chips, let along Sister Margaret Mary. You also learned about the kind of stuff that could cost you salvation and how you could help salvage “pagan babies.” In eighth grade we were seated — 35 boys on one side, 35 girls on the other — according to academic rank, which seemed more humiliating than motivating to the usual academic laggards.

But here is the key point. We learned. Even the academic cabooses.

And, yes, there’s a place for rote memory, thank you. And homework was always checked — no, scrutinized — the following day. You were accountable for your actions — and there were consequences. An impressive test score or a scrupulously completed assignment brought a Blessed Mother or St. Joseph holy card. Miscreants could expect labor-intensive detention.

And then there was the summary notice to parents at the first sign of an apostate, a class clown or an academic malingerer. Likely in that order.

That parental nexus was the critical variable. Back when parents typically came in pairs. The nuns were imbued with what any teacher — regardless of academic credentials or pedagogical knowhow or lack thereof — must have: a reinforcing ally at home. En loco parentis should be so literal in today’s public schools.

For all their vows, habits and mystique, the nuns were simply instruments of parental priorities and extensions of parental oversight. You were sent to school to learn what was taught. That was your job. It wasn’t an option or an experience nuanced with psycho-babble, sociological verities or socio-economic excuses. Talk about empowerment. Your friends, your peer pressure, your television time, your threshold of pain, your hormones weren’t priorities. It all underscored the secret to any successful school: Parents worthy of parentage.

Parents who get involved in their kids’ lives and are supportive of the teachers. Parents who are actually on the same side as the teachers. Parents who don’t believe their “gifted” child is also a gift to teachers and don’t feel that their child’s individuality is compromised by school uniforms. Parents who don’t look at schools as one-stop social service agencies and don’t regard teachers as underachievers on the lam from the real world. Parents who take care of the civilizing part before sending their kids off for the formal schooling part.

That’s why the Catholic schools worked — and still work. Because parents demanded that they work, and they weren’t interested in a self-esteem curriculum for their tuition dollars.

The Catholic schools may have lost their nuns, but they haven’t lost their way. They are much more than secular institutions with Catechisms. They don’t need FCAT validation.

They need what all schools need. Parents with the right stuff. Amazingly, effective teaching will follow. That hasn’t changed.

But, OK, the nuns made the most of all that empowerment. And maybe I did deserve all that corporal punishment. Maybe I still do.

Lee Looks At The Legislature

Hillsborough County is in the midst of a rare political parlay. It is home to Florida’s outgoing Speaker of the House as well as the incoming Senate President. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the Speaker was Johnnie Byrd.

When asked recently at the Tiger Bay Club of Tampa Bay luncheon, what was the biggest ethical lapse that he has seen in the Legislature, incoming Senate President Tom Lee pulled no rhetorical punches. He cited the “unfortunate” goings-on in the House the last two years. He made it clear that Plant City’s Byrd was out of line for fundraising for a U.S. Senate seat campaign while still calling legislative shots as the Republican speaker.

“When you offend the conscience of the lobbying corps, you know you’re out there pretty far,” assessed Lee.

Byrd’s co-mingled priorities — and bullying leadership style — helped undermine legislative priorities, intimated Lee. One result: precious little got done in the last session. “We passed a budget, and that was about it,” Lee acknowledged.

Other Leeward points:

*On Gov. Jeb Bush’s veto pen that eliminated nearly $40 million in Hillsborough County projects: “Because of the unique tandem of an outgoing Speaker and an incoming President, we had more dollars flowing to the region this year. So we were subject to more dollars being vetoed. No, I wouldn’t characterize it as an ‘unfair hit.’ Keep in mind, for instance, that it wasn’t USF who originally asked for the ($12-million) Alzheimer’s research center.”

*There is a serious need in Tallahassee to “reassert the authority, power and influence of the committee process .” It’s where “the public and the media” can be privy to “what we’re doing.”

*A philosophical consensus on “smaller government, lower taxes and more freedom” is meaningless “if we don’t have more integrity and courage and a lot less b.s.

More On Brother Ray

Ray Charles was born poor and black in the Depression-era South. By age 7 he was blind. By his early teen years he was an orphan. He was a dropout and later a drug addict.

But he never played the victim card. That may be the ultimate legacy of Brother Ray’s iconic, eclectic American life. “What’d I Say” — but never “Why you ain’t?”

Ray Charles: R.I.P. Recording In Perpetuity. From “Sea to shining sea.”

Tribute — Not TRIBulation

The Tampa Tribune will be a while living down that fiasco over the wrong editorial that consoled the Lightning over a valiant — albeit losing — effort against Calgary in the Stanley Cup Final. It was among the worst things that can happen to a newspaper — trying to cover your ass on deadline and making the wrong call. The contingency plan from hell: preparing in advance for either victory or defeat — and then choosing the wrong one.

Oh, the average reader moved on the following day, but it took a little longer for the national media — and the St. Petersburg Times — to let go. This was a juicy, “Dewey Defeats Truman” moment. The impact, however, transcended embarrassing media snafu.

It was an opportunity for the ESPNs and other sports media — especially flagship newspapers in markets with well-established traditions in hockey — to pile on the Tampa Bay area as a less-than-deserving venue for such major sports success. The Trib, alas, provided Exhibit A to the usual naysayers.

Ultimately, however, it comes down to this. To hell with ’em. The editorial. The apology. The cheesy, cheap shots.

The Cup is where it belongs. Worthy of tribute — not Tribulation.

Stanley Gets A Tan In Tampa

It’s been more than a week now that the Stanley Cup has needed serious sunscreen. Presumably all of Canada — and perhaps Philadelphia — have now accepted that the Cup is in the Tampa Bay area, where hockey will never be more popular than football or NASCAR, where Channelside Drive will never morph into a frozen tundra and where the Forum will never be an NHL cathedral.

But the Cup does accompany the best hockey team in North America, and the Lightning has been embraced for the classy, hard-working winners they are. No team had more skilled players than the Bolts or more resilience. None had better coaches or a savvier front office. Tampa might as well be Toronto-South right now. A lot of locals may not yet know a poke check from a pork chop, but the Stanley Cup flat-out belongs here.

Moreover, people who know will tell you this run to the Finals may not be an aberration — as it was with other expansion franchises in non-traditional markets such as Carolina or Anaheim. This is no one-hit wonder. The team was good last year — and then kept on getting better. A Sun Belt Cup may not be a novelty for long. One prominent ex-skeptic, ESPN hockey analyst Barry Melrose, now thinks playoff runs into late spring could become commonplace around here.

“This team is deep and it’s young,” Melrose noted after the Calgary series. “The future is very bright for Tampa Bay.”

That future, of course, is clouded by variables ranging from a September labor lockout to a rash of injuries to key players. For the here and now, however, this much was evident:

*What just happened here is about as good as it gets in the context of sports. For two months, culminating in climactic series against Philadelphia and finally Calgary, the Tampa Bay Lightning was able to give fans and bandwagon passengers a most welcome respite from, well, you know. All the reminders of what’s wrong with the world. No need to repeat them here. The timing couldn’t have been better. Certainly beats “Day After Tomorrow” for escape.

*Sports success — with its collective psychology and vicarious achievement — has the unique capacity to rally a region, galvanize a city and unite its residents. More than, say, getting a new art museum out of the ground or bringing reclaimed water on line — as important as those projects are. It just does. To quote the legendary Alabama football coach Bear Bryant: “It’s hard to rally around the Math Department.”

And this metro area, where a bay can sometimes seem like a gulf, can benefit more than most. To that end, last week’s Bolt’s parade and rally also reserved roles for St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker and Clearwater Mayor Brian Aungst. Nice touch. We are neighborhoods and cities –and a regional market.

*While national TV ratings were weak, the Finals played well across Canada and were televised to more than 200 countries. The media crush was unlike anything since the last Super Bowl. It was priceless exposure for the area, and the chamber of commerce and the convention and visitors’ bureau felt blessed — as did hoteliers and restaurateurs. Even contrarian economists would acknowledge that there was significant outside money injected into the local economy.

*It couldn’t have happened to a better bunch. Too often sports is about the spoiled, especially at the pro level. Hockey players are largely from blue-collar backgrounds and haven’t forgotten their roots. It’s not a hip-hop culture. They remember what it was like to have Stanley Cup dreams and look up to the Wayne Gretskys. They’re more than accommodating to fans — especially kids. These are uniformly high-character guys.

Before the Bucs had their rings, they were already attracting notoriety with a weapon-waving, road-rage incident and a domestic assault. Don’t expect to see Lightning players showing up on police blotters in the off season.

*As with the Bucs’ Super Bowl victory, the ad hoc post-game celebration and the parade-rally went off without incident. Tampa — unlike Los Angeles, Oakland, Detroit, Denver and a number of other big league cities — can be Titletown without trashing itself.

*Kudos to the Bolts’ organization for prominently recognizing all its support personnel — from trainers to equipment managers — at the parade and Forum celebration that followed. It reinforced the club mantra that, indeed, “It’s all about team.” General Manager Jay Feaster, when he wasn’t doing his best Howard Dean impersonation at the podium, put it succinctly when he described the Bolts as 25 guys who “played for the logo on the front, not the name on the back.”

*To the uninitiated, the chorus of cheers that greeted Lightning goalie Nikolai Khabibulin at the post-parade celebration might have sounded like booing. What were bona fide boos, however, were the sounds emanating in response to the name of Gov. Jeb Bush, who issued a proclamation in honor of the Lightning. So much for that respite from reality.

*Head Coach John Tortorella directly and appropriately acknowledged the world apart from sports. He prefaced his accolades and expressions of gratitude to players, families and fans by saluting America’s armed forces, including personnel at MacDill AFB, some of whom were in attendance. The “real stuff,” he said. Another classy touch.

*The taciturn Brad Richards, MVP of the playoffs, summed up the mood with a comment that could not have been scripted better by Mayor Pam Iorio or her civic songwriter: “We love playing here, and we love living here.”

Cue: “We Are the Champions.”

And cue Jay Feaster again: “Yeeeeaaaah!”

Central Park And The Real World

Add another footnote — or maybe chapter — to the politically circuitous route being traveled by the Central Park redevelopment plan.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development turned down Tampa’s bid for a $20-million grant proposal to replace the decrepit public housing complex. Presumably, the government would have been more amenable to the application had it been jointly proposed by both the Tampa Housing Authority and a private-sector partner. Earlier this year the Hillsborough County Commission wouldn’t sign off on such an arrangement with the Civitas development company.

This much, however, is still known. Central Park is a slum and needs replacing. In its stead should go a planned community — not a public-housing island in a sea of dilapidation. The only way to make that happen is to involve private developers and, in this case, the creation of special taxing districts to pay for infrastructure improvements. It’s hardly without precedent in the county.

Moreover, the only way to induce such a partnership is to allow for profit. Even encourage it. It’s called incentive.

It’s also called the real world. One that the commission may yet be forced to inhabit.

Cold War Relic Reminder

It’s one of those items that requires a re-read. Sure enough, the Pentagon has announced that it is proposing a plan to withdraw its two Army divisions — about 40,000 troops — from Germany. They will be sent where they’re needed more — as in the Middle East.

That part makes sense, but it’s a reminder that we STILL have troops in Germany. Post Cold War Germany. Unified Germany. Undivided, Checkpointless Charlie, wall-less Berlin, Germany.

What’s next from this time warp? An end to the Cuban embargo?

Not.