Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

Jim Norman has been waiting for this day for a long time. The Tampa Tribune ran a huge front page story about how the citizens of Tampa and especially our children have no place to play their games. You can almost picture the red-faced Norman on the phone demanding that the Tribune hurry and publish this story.

As soon as I saw the big above-the-fold headline, Sports Field Shortage Scuffs Youth Dreams, I knew how the story would go:

1. Local ball fields are being overused.
2. The helpless little kids are suffering badly because of the overuse.
3. Therefore, we obviously need more sports fields.
4. Jim Norman’s Championship Park just might be the fix we need!

Let’s read the article to find out.

TAMPA - During Little League season, 6-year-olds sometimes play tee-ball at 9 p.m.

Well, they started with the helpless little kids…

Mark Thornton has been director of the Hillsborough County Parks, Recreation and Conservation Department for 20 months. In that time, he said, “there hasn’t been a day I’ve come to work where we haven’t had complaints over space issues.”…

According to figures released in May, field capacities are stretched thin in most of Hillsborough. Youth baseball facilities are at 93 percent capacity, softball fields are beyond 100 percent, football fields are at 113 percent and soccer fields are at 153 percent capacity. That means people playing games at night, fields spilt [sic] in two to accommodate teams, and children playing at odd hours…

“There’s definitely a shortage of fields in the area, most importantly those available to adults,” said Chris Giebner, owner of Tampa Bay Club Sport, the area’s largest provider of social sports leagues, which include flag football, soccer, softball and kickball…

Overuse is as pressing an issue as overcrowding. Repair bills for chewed-up fields are becoming less palatable for local government officials as they ponder ways to save money.

So that’s the set-up.  And here’s the money shot, thanks to that director of County Parks & Recreation, Mark Thornton:

Thornton said he hopes some relief eventually will come from Championship Park, a planned sports complex north of Plant City that would have 30 multipurpose fields.

The project’s $40 million cost would come from the Community Investment Tax. Commissioner Jim Norman, the project’s sponsor, has maintained the complex would bring in money from national tournaments and perhaps from a Major League Baseball team using the site for spring training…

Shocker.

For sprucing up, the piece is fertilized with a little bullsh*t:

The field-use figures don’t take into account the availability of space for practices.

“What I’ve seen over the 25 years I’ve been doing this is you’ll have a whole lot of kids sign up, but if they’re not getting the practice time they need, they’re bound to drop out over time,” Thornton said.

I’m certain that kids don’t just quit because they found something more appealing. It’s GOTTA be because they can’t practice, right? Please.

I got a couple questions.

Thornton says that “some” of the baseball and soccer fields are at 200% capacity, and that “a few” of the football fields “exceed that figure.” The ideal use is 80% to compensate for rainouts. But the article says:

…Youth baseball facilities are at 93 percent capacity, softball fields are beyond 100 percent, football fields are at 113 percent and soccer fields are at 153 percent capacity…

So that means just as some fields are overused, it appears that some are underutilized, especially the baseball fields. Why aren’t we sending users to the underused parks?

And has Thornton done anything to address the situation?

… Thornton is looking for additional ways to save money. For example: Umpires who work part-time for the county will be reclassified as contract workers, and responsibility for field maintenance will shift from the county to the independently operated leagues.

That’s a good start. What else?

Er… well… uh… Thornton has no other ideas - at least in this article.

Meanwhile, I wonder if high school football and baseball fields are being used to capacity. I wonder if nearby Pasco, Polk, and Pinellas have some parks we can borrow for those 9:00 games.  But mostly I wonder about those underused fields in the county.  Why aren’t they being used to capacity?

Mark Thornton has been on the job for less than 2 years. Has he exhausted all the possibilities? I refuse to believe he was hired 20 months ago to help make sure that Norman’s Folly is hammered through?

Imagine not being able to log on any time of the day or night. Not being able to do research online at will, send e-mails, visit Sticks of Fire, start a blog of your own, a Web site, print out a homework project, a letter, a resume. It’s hard for many of us to remember those pre-computer times.

But Ralph Smith is reminded of them every day while working with folks who don’t have FIOS, or WiFi, and don’t have broadband. And no, these folks don’t have dial-up. In fact, they do not even have a PC.

And there are plenty of them. The shortage of computer access in Hillsborough County was noted Monday in a story in the Trib by Anthony McCartney. It seems that so many people come to one of the Tampa-Hillsborough public libraries to use the free computers that the system will soon limit users to a two-hour a day maximum.

Smith recognized lack of access about 10 years ago, even before computers became pretty much ubiquitous in all but the most disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Then in IT at Citibank, Smith saw that the growing opportunities - information, connection, work opportunities (including well-paying technology jobs) - offered by cyberspace were not available to many low-income families.

He also noticed that there weren’t many black or brown faces in IT departments.

So he did what far too few do: Tried to change things.

The results is the Computer Mentor program based in a small building at 2802 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. in East Tampa.

Computer Mentors offers computer access and training to the entire community, but focuses primarily on teens. There is no shortage of eager students of all ages, but there are no resources for expansion. Space and hardware are in short supply. So are volunteers - and, of course, money.

Smith and the group do have some impressive sponsors but more are needed. If you can assist with money, a building, some time, some hardware, visit this link.

Tommy and I spent a couple of hours with Smith last week. He’s a sweet guy with a huge heart and big dreams.

Help him give a hand up to a needy community if you can.

Joseph Ramos was pulled over because his car windows are too dark. As he pulled over, the citizen turned on his own flashing lights, and stepped out of the car wearing a dark blue uniform.

The cop had him get back in his car, but then Ramos reached over the passenger seat for something. The cop drew his weapon and told him to stop.

They searched his car and found three pellet guns, a loaded shotg un, four Tasers, a nightstick, handcuff keys, a neighborhood watch brochure, some Tampa police trespass warnings and a too-large can of pepper spray.

Tampa police arrested him for impersonating an officer.

Ramos’ boss said the charge is “ridiculous,” since these items can be explained by his job as a security guard.

If he was impersonating a cop, wouldn’t he have been busy using his flashers to run red lights, idling in a parking lot playing computer games, or being completely oblivious to the thousands of cars with very darkly tinted windows?

Last week, development consultant David Campo wrote a letter to the editor at the Tampa Tribune. A Sticks of Fire reader also got a copy of the entire email, and posted the unedited version on Sticks comments.

The part that cracks me up (and was deleted from the Trib’s Ed-Op page), refers to Sticks of Fire as a “left wing extremist website.”

Coupled with the obvious and blatant political agenda of Wetlands Division staff (see Jadell Kerr’s rant on left wing extremist website), it has become an unfair and ridiculously costly burden.

How would you describe this website?

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There’s a new family-friendly festival in the Tampa Bay area. Deep Carnivale: A Celebration of Words is scheduled for Saturday, September 8, on 14th Street and Palm Avenue in Ybor City from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Presented by the Artists and Writers Group, Inc. and Hillsborough Community College-Ybor. Deep Carnivale is free and open to the public.

According to the press release,

“This event will be a celebration of literature and writing in its many wonderful and diverse forms. The goal is to excite our community about the joys of literature, with a special focus directed toward our younger generations of children and young adults about the pleasure of listening, learning and using the written and spoken word creatively.

There will be three sound stages for readings, spoken word, original singer/songwriter performances and small theatrical performances. Areas of arts and writing activities for children and adults of all ages will add to the celebratory quality of the day. There will be visual arts components, such as the Books As Art exhibition, and the 20 arches of El Pasaje building transformed into pages by twenty artists and writers and based on an art concept from the 1920s called the Exquisite Corpse.

Thirty vendors or so will sell books and related literature. Numerous community organizations will provide information on their activities. Coupled with interesting decorations, live music and a wide variety of scheduled readings and performances that will appeal from the youngest to the most sophisticated, this inaugural event will be well on its way to becoming a flagship event for Ybor City.”

The schedule, names and bios of attending authors and more details on events will be announced soon. For more info, email David Audet at daudet(at)hccfl.edu or visit www.deepcarnivale.com.

I am on the Deep Carnivale planning committee. If you are interested in buying space for a vendor table or an ad in the program, please email me at tampafilmfan ( at ) aol.com and I’ll send you the details. Hope to see you there.

(cross-posted at www.tampabookbuzz.com)

In an editorial Sunday, the Tampa Tribune chastises Macy’s for offering an offensive t-shirt. Macy’s had already pulled the product off their shelves, but the Tribune plodded on anyway.

The t-shirt was aimed at young latinas, but the saying, “Brown is the New White,” was found to be in bad taste (and bad marketing). But your hometown newspaper compares the idiocy of that marketing to a made-up story that itself is racist and offensive.

Marketing textbooks are filled with cultural missteps by American retailers tripping over themselves to attract the burgeoning Hispanic market, a demographic that defies stereotypes. One of the most famous was General Motors’ ill-fated attempt to sell the Nova in Mexico, failing to realize that when translated into Spanish, the economy car’s name meant “does not go.”

Good grief! Every time I hear this story about the Nova, I cringe. It suggests that Mexicans are a bunch of rubes - too stupid to know the difference between marketing and reality. Talk about offensive!

It’s true that marketing textbooks include this as an example of horrible marketing, but Snopes will tell you it never happened:

… GM was aware of the translation and opted to retain the model name “Nova” in Spanish-speaking markets anyway, because they (correctly) felt the matter to be unimportant.

The truth is that the Chevrolet Nova’s name didn’t significantly affect its sales: it sold well in both its primary Spanish-language markets, Mexico and Venezuela. (Its Venezuelan sales figures actually surpassed GM’s expectations.)

You know, because Latinos are not a bunch of bumbling idiots. Yet the story is commonly used to stress the importance of research in marketing. More from Snopes:

The Chevy Nova legend lives on in countless marketing textbooks, is repeated in numerous business seminars, and is a staple of newspaper and magazine columnists who need a pithy example of human folly. Perhaps someday this apocryphal tale will become what it should be: an illustration of how easily even “experts” can sometimes fall victim to the very same dangers they warn us about.

So the Tribune is not the only one who is perpetuating this pile of offensive nonsense, but as my mom told me millions of times, ‘because everybody does it’ is no reason to justify something wrong.

People have been asking where I learn about the local fallen soldiers, so I figured I would just put the links here for anyone else who is interested:

• Department of Defense News Releases
• Washington Post Project: Faces of the Fallen
• Military Times: Honor the Fallen

20, of Pembroke Pines, Fla.

assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment (Airborne), 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, Vicenza, Italy; killed July 22 in Korengal Valley, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit using small arms fire.

Rafael Castellar, Restrepo’s stepfather, said that the soldier was a wonderful young man who enjoyed music above all else… ”He loved to play his guitar,” Castellar said. Castellar recalled that Restrepo played both electric and acoustic guitar and was even in a band before he enlisted.

what is this?