Sorry to hear about the death of Channel 10 weatherman Dick Fletcher this morning. He was one of us; not just in the media business but in our community.
I only knew Dick casually but he was among that handful of “celebrities’’ I could call on for one event or the other to support a charity. He cared about the community and its people and how we treated both. One of his passions was studying the Florida environment and what we are doing to it. I’ll miss him.

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Anybody who lives around here and has had to get anywhere at anytime on any road was probably not surprised by this statement from a road construction spokesman yesterday. His remarks came after construction workers put up barricades on northbound I-275 around the Armenia\Howard entrance ramps, creating massive backups.
John McShaffrey, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation, said “Sometimes you do things in the planning room and get in the real world and have it not work out. If we’d known, we wouldn’t have designed it that way.’‘
I’d say that’s a big maybe. 

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Just came home and turned on the television. At first it appeared there were more troubles down at the County jail. Fortunately it was just the Serbs trying to burn down the American embassy in Belgrade.

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From the mailbag a few Readergraphs:
Mariella Smith usually writes about the environment or more to the point, what we are doing to it in the southern reaches of Hillsborough County. This one was a little different.
“You hit the nail on the head in your column today (2/15/08). My husband and I know Brian Sterner personally. As awful as it was to watch the one deputy dump him on the ground, the really sickening part was the way all the other deputies just walked around nonchalantly, this is is S.O.P. Not a single double-take. No one went over to ask’What’s going on?’ And that one creep smiles. If this is just one rotten apple, where was the shock among the rest of the staff?’

- On a completely different subject Bob Dwyer wrote in to comment on the column marking the 25th anniversary of the arrest of three county commissioners for bribery.
“I certainly remember the day (Jerry) Bowmer et al were taken down. I was a supervisor in the Tampa FBI office. My baliwick was directing violent crime investigations so I did not get involved in the comissioners’ case but I can tell you it was botched up in a very major way from the start. You can lay that at the feet of the egotistical US Attorney Bob Merkle.
“First of all, the case was a gift. A guy walked in, said he was being shook down by Jerry Bowmer and what should he do. He was wired up and in very short order we had Bowmer on tape in an extortionate conversation. Bowmer, of course, was a moron and rolled over immediately. Where to go from there?
What should have been done was to wire him up and let him roam around the county for the next six months or longer, recording hundreds of criminal conversations. Did that happen? No. Why? Because Merkle knew the legitimate venue for the case was the Organized Crime Strike Force and he wanted the glory for himself. So Bowmer was sent in the next day with the marked money, the busts went down and the cat was out of the bag. There isn’t the slightest doubt in my mind that if Bowmer had been wired there would have been a wholesale cleaning out of county government.

 

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“Hi Steve…You may find this amusing , but my brother in law was very worried about it… My sister and family were in town from Brevard, North Carolina for the Outback Bowl last month and they stayed at the Hyatt downtown…They were on the 16th floor and had a great view of one of our bank buildings. My brother-in-law called me and said that he saw at least 200 buzzards swarming around on top of buildings. He thought there was something dead up there! He snapped some pictures and sure enough there were swarms up there. Is this true? I thought you would be a great source since you know Tampa so well. Thanks, Margaret Dixon.’‘

  - I do know about the buzzards. I also know about Brevard, where they pay homage to the white squirrels that meander around the town. My guess is our buzzards and their white squirrels wouldn’t be all that compatible.
  My friend Bob Bishop, who used to work in one of those downtown buildings, did a study of the critters and discovered these are the same turkey vultures who show up in Hinckley, Ohio every Spring, where they have a Buzzard Day festival. He tried to get one going here a few Octobers ago -which is about when they arrive back in Tampa - holding a dinner and equiring everone to wear buzzard masks. For some reason it still hasn’t caught on.

-

é

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      Just got back from the state fair where former GTE boss Bill Starkey was named Tampa’s Outstanding Citizen of the Year by the Tampa Metro Civitans.
Starkey is a good guy and has worked to imporve this town in areas from education to health care. I think his most impressive moment came in 2004 when he was asked to take over as interim director of the Port of Tampa. We were in a lurch and although Starkey admitted he knew little about running the port, he brought in new energy, helped make sweeping changes and did it all for free, figuring it was something he owed to the community.
      The Civitans give out the award at what is called the Governor’s Luncheon, a huge deal with every muckey-much in town, inlcuding most of the elected officials and plenty of wannabes.
  For the second year in the row Charlie Crist was late…I mean he was more than an hour late which isn’t all that acceptable even if you are the governor.
    He finally rolled in, George Hamilton tan and all, took off his jacket, went to the podium and started right in telling us how swell everything is going in Florida, which could have fooled more than a few people in the hall. It was probably one corn dog short of a winner for the gov. who might have gotten a better reception if he showed up before everyone had to go back to work to pay their mortgage and fill up the gas tanks.

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Haven’t been to the fair yet. I plan on hitting it Monday afternoon after the Governor’s luncheon which is a must event. I love the Governor’s luncheon. It reminds me of a similar event further down the midway at the poultry tent. There’s something about meandering about looking at the various breeds of chickens, all preening and strutting around, that reminds me of this other gathering of movers and shakers.

It’s also a good excuse to try whatever new deep-fried goodie that is the specialty of the year on the midway. The best thing is you can go up to the counter with absolutely no guilt and order a deep-fried chocolate bar or whatever, without asking the guy what he put into it.
I was sitting over at a Starbucks on Bay to Bay last week staring at the cup. They like to put inspirational messages on the cups. At the bottom it noted that the cup was made with “10 percent post-consumer recycled fiber.’‘
You know, that’s more than I want to know and I doubt I’ll have to deal with any such information at the deep-fried food booth.

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Sixty-three years after his death, a photo taken minutes after the death of Ernie Pyle surfaced and was printed in newspapers and online this week. It was a striking picture of Pyle, stretched out on the ground shortly after he was killed by Japanese machine gun fire on the island of Ie Shima, April 18, 1945.
I was a fan of Pyle’s reporting and writing before I even got into this business.
After I read the story I went back and dug up one of his books, “Brave men’ I bring out once in awhile. Pyle made himself one of the guys during World War II, moving with and listening to the troops as they lumbered across Europe.
You can read his passages and understand more of what it was like in that war than anything I’ve seen or read about what is happening in Iraq or Afghanistan.
All of the technology - the emails, the video cameras - can’t replace someone who takes the time to listen and understand what is happening.
Listen to some of his words: “I sat in the darkness on the forward deck helping half a dozen sailors eat a can of stolen pineapple. Some of the men of the group were hardened and mature. Others were almost children. They all talked seriously and their gravity was touching. The older ones tried to raionalize how the law of averages made it unlikely that our ship out of all the hundreds involved would be hit…Younger ones spoke but little. They talked to me of their plans and hopes for going to college or getting married after the war, always winding up with the phrase, ’ If I get out of this fracas alive.’
“As we sat there on the hard deck - squatting like Indians in a circle around our pineapple can -  it all struck me as somehow pathetic. Even the dizziest among us knew…’‘
And it goes on and you cannot stop reading. Pyle became one with an entire generation. That picture reminded me of what our profession is supposed to be about but all too often depends on technology instead of the human touch. 

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Saturday was one of those days the chamber people would have you believe Florida is always like. They tend to skip over the dog days of August or notice that those same dog days hang on forever into November.
But this was one of those mornings that screamed to hit the road, open the sun roof and head for the beaches. I’d seen an ad for a “Floridana’ show over in Gulfport, where there would be booths selling Florida memorbilia and that a few Florida Highwaymen would be making an appearance.
You know who the Highway me are. Originally they were a group of balck artists who made their living seliing paintings from road side stands mostly along the Florida east coast. For twenty books tourists could have one of their Florida landscapes to take back and hang over the fireplace.
Now the Highwaymen are hot. We’ve been trying to buy one of their paintings for about a year now. Usually we go over to Benedettos, an auction house in Pinellas County, where the Tuesday night auctions usually include two or three Highwaymen paintings.
I convinced the Frau to let me go as high as three hundred bucks the first time, until they opened the bidding for the first painting at $800 and it eventually sold for two thousand bucks.
Anyhow I figured that maybe in person the Highwaymen might not be so inclined at highway robbery and give me a deal.
Gulfport has always been on the funky, artisian side of St. Pete, although we noticed that the prices in the shops and restaurants could be Hye Park or higher.
The old Casino was the perfect venue for an event like this. I’m not sure why it is people who have grown up around here have this craving for kitsch. I’m not sure if it takes us back to a simpler time or whether we just have lousy taste.
Most of the vendors were wearing Hawaiian shirts and selling stuff that appeared to have been recovered from the Sunken Gardens gift shop. Nostalgia was rampant and I found myself fondling an old Howard Johnson’s placemat with Florida attractions on it.
There were three or four Highway on hand and after some perusing I saw the painting I wanted. It was a typical beach scene, with a few towering palms and the Gulf washing over a white sandy beach.
The artist, I think his name was Jacobs, was standing there.
“How much is this one?’’ I asked him and he smiled at my good taste and said he could let it go for forty-five.
“That’s a bargain price,’’ I said about the same time he realized how cheap I might be and he added he meant $4,500. “It comes with the frame,’’ he added.
I thanked him and went back over to see if I could swing a deal on the Howard Johnson’s placemat.

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With Steve Otto

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