Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

Please tell me why the person used to demonstrate the new body scanning machines at Tampa International Airport - as seen on the Metro front in Friday’s St. Petersburg Times -

Why not an old fat guy?

is a buff young woman and not a fat old man?

Whomever she is - let’s call her Big Boobs Girl - certainly does not represent most of the people I see at TIA or at the mall or at the grocery store or in the mirror or at just about anyplace in America. Aren’t we having an epidemic of obesity?

But the larger question - not boobwise, but otherwise - is regarding the technology.  Is it an invasion of privacy?

Does it smack of Big Brother?

And who really believes that those images can’t be saved, reproduced, e-mailed around the world?

If you’re not already depressed about the state of our state, don’t read the story in Time magazine that seems to suggest that the Sunshine State is crashing and burning.

Writer Michael Grunwald, who lives in Miami, says there is trouble in paradise.

“We’re facing our worst real estate meltdown since the Depression. We’ve got a water crisis, insurance crisis, environmental crisis and budget crisis to go with our housing crisis,” he writes.

“We’re first in the nation in mortgage fraud, second in foreclosures, last in high school graduation rates.”

Population is also stagnant and the Florida Legislature would rather focus on the State song than more substantive issues.

There’s more, but read it for yourself. You’ll also see a familiar name quoted in the story: USF historian, Gary Mormino.

He says to Grunwald, “The dream is fading. People think Florida is too crowded, too expensive, too crazy, too many immigrants - name your malady.”

We have a lot of maladies - far too many to list here.

But is the dream really dead? Has Sunshine State really lost its luster?

What do you think?

A caveat first. Mary Jordan, who co-stars in the New Tampa Players production of Same Time Next Year for the next couple of weekends at the Carrollwood Cultural Center is my niece. So I’m biased.

That said, the two-act play, which also stars Marc Sanders, is a hoot.

Sander and Jordan reprise the rolls played by Ellen Burstyn and Alan Alda in the 1978 movie, based on the play by Bernard Slade.

The pair - Doris and George - meet in a country inn in northern California in 1951.

That initial extramarital tryst is repeated the same weekend year after year until 1975 with hilarious - and bittersweet - results.

Both Jordan and Sanders (whom I am not related to) give extremely strong performances.

Is the play - which runs July 18, 19, 20 and 25, 26, 27 - as good as I think it is?

I’m not a theater critic, so I don’t know what an educated “critic” would say. My standard of excellence about entertainment, whether on stage, television or movies, is: Does it make me laugh or touch me in some way? Same Time Next Year does both.

Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for seniors and children and groups of 10 or more.

The play does include some racy language, so if you are easily offended or worried about tender ears, don’t go.

The Carrollwood Cultural Center is at 4537 Lowell Rd. Call (813) 386-6687 for reservations.

Any woman past a certain age can remember a time when gender bias was open, blatant, ugly. Gender discrimination is still around, but these days it’s usually more subtle than the historic kind and the kind that was aimed at Hillary Clinton during her run for the Democratic nomination for president.

PMS jokes, mood swing jokes, make-up jokes and comedy routines about her pants suits were routine. So were comments about how she looked, whether she deliberately showed her cleavage at a dinner, her nagging wife voice and - and worse.

Male candidates were not subject to similar attacks.

You may well have heard some of those jokes or sexist comments coming out of the mouths of people you know and love.

But there wasn’t anything funny about the yearning by many women to see the ultimate glass ceiling shattered. Some of those women not only remember but experienced discrimination. So the idea of a woman president was pretty heady. Clinton’s loss was their loss and they took it hard.

I felt a certain disappointment as well, but not as much as some because, though I’d love to see a woman president, I didn’t much like Hillary and I couldn’t cast a vote for her or anyone simply based on gender. Or age, or race, for that matter.

William March, political writer for The Tampa Tribune wrote a thoughtful piece in Saturday’s paper in which he asked a number of local women how they felt about Clinton’s loss and whether they would support the presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama. Some said they would; others said they would but reluctantly.

National stories indicate that some women - even young women - are so disappointed and/or angry that Clinton lost that they will simply not vote at all. Others say they will vote for the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain, even though they are Democrats. And quite a few are angry at the Democratic Party for not speaking out about the sexism aimed at Clinton.

The Tribune’s editorial section followed March’s story up on Sunday with a package in Commentary featuring many of the same women March quoted sounding off about the gender factor.

Rosemary Goudreau, the Trib’s editorial page editor, artfully summed up female discontent, while former Tampa Mayor Sandy Freedman, Clerk of Courts Pat Frank, and historian Doris Weatherford added their voices to the discussion.

While Freedman and Frank seem angry, Weatherford explained the discontent in her usual thoughtful, measured way.

Subconsciously, women, particularly older women who have witnessed a lot, resent the fact that nobody ever says thank you, and that (women’s) issues are put off to later,” she wrote.

I agree with Weatherford about the resentment and completely understand the anger some women feel over Clinton’s suspension of her campaign. Recent personal incidents in my own life have fueled exactly those feeling in me.

Only after some real soul-searching did I come to understand that I’d spent far too much time time and energy focusing on something I can’t change. The only healthy and productive thing to do is keep on keeping on.

Will women eventually get the appreciation we deserve? I don’t know. But I can continue to educate my grandchildren about how things were, how far women have come - and how far we have to go.

If so, visit this link: Bolleas’ jail tapes anger victim’s father.

I read this story in the St. Petersburg Times this morning and almost lost my breakfast. Apparently, the Pinellas County Jail released telephone conversations between Nick Bollea and his family to the public.

In one conversation, Linda Bollea - one half of the pair that created Nicky, the wild child, who is serving eight months in the slammer for turning his buddy, John Graziano, into a vegetable - says that she loves and misses John more than his own mother does.

“John never meant anything to her or Ed [John's father]. It’s just sad because I really appreciate you kids, and I just miss John. I miss you, too. She’s not suffering. I am. I have the loss.”

Does this woman have a brain?

I confess I’m a political junkie. I also confess I assume - stupidly, I guess - that most people are at least somewhat informed about the what’s going on in politics these days. So when my yard dude and his co-worker both disavowed me of that notion Tuesday it broke my heart.

“You guys vote yet?”

“I’m not registered,” said one. The other said the same. “I’ve never voted,” added No. 1.

I’m familiar with non-voters. My father never voted. Ever.

“I don’t want to encourage them,” he’d tell me and then launch into one of the many stories he told and retold about political corruption in New York City during the Tammany Hall days of his youth.

My father was cynical. I don’t think my yard guys are. They just have a lot of other stuff on their plates, primarily families and making enough money to keep households going.

But they’re both dealing with the multitude of problems that confront workers who live from week to week - problems they ought to be using their votes to solve such as no health care, high taxes, high property insurance, skyrocketing gas prices, a gallon of milk with a pricetag almost as high as high test.

One had little or no money to buy holiday presents for his kids. The other has a chipped tooth that he can’t afford to have fixed.

When I began yelling (fondly) at them about not voting, No. 1, who runs a very successful landscaping business, tried to deflect the attack by arguing he wasn’t smart enough to vote. He doesn’t keep up with the issues, he said, and, therefore, isn’t well enough informed to make a wise choice.

“I might vote for the wrong guy,” he said. “So I leave voting up to smart people like you.”

Not a good excuse. Not an excuse at all. In fact, it’s bad, bad, bad. He ought to be informed. We all should.

But at least he isn’t making an ill-informed vote. Not so a woman I’ve known for about 10 years who told me later in the day that she doesn’t even know if she’s a Democrat or a Republican.

“I’m not keeping up with things,” she said. “Who’s running?”

Since she was cutting my hair and had scissors in her hands, I didn’t explode. Instead, I calmly mentioned all the candidates. She didn’t recognize most of the names and had no clue what party any of them were in.

Since her admission came after I asked her if she’d voted yet, she tried to reassure me that she would exercise her franchise.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I promise I’ll vote on the way home.”

I didn’t have the heart to ask her for whom - and why. I probably should have told her, “Don’t bother.” But I didn’t do that either.

I guess I’m trying to convince myself that any vote is better than no vote at all.

Editor’s note: See similar laments from the 2004 election, an overwhelming show of apathy in the 2006 election, the general population’s failure to know the slightest thing about government on a national scale, turnout at the ‘06 Presidentials, ghostly turnout at St. Pete’s elections in ‘07, and Wayne Garcia’s recent piece on irrational voters.

Yes, I know. Confidentiality is important when it comes to mental health patients, families in crisis and so forth.

But when it comes to taking a child into your home, whether through adoption or foster care, you ought to have information from the child’s background that will allow you to make rational decisions.

We have, yet again, another situation in which an adoptive parent is attempting to relinquish parental rights because the child is so damaged he presents a danger to others in the family.

Last October, Pinellas County school board member Nancy Bostock and her husband took that anguishing course.

Ronda Gary-Jackson of Tampa is walking that tortuous path now.

In both instances, the child was violent toward a family member. Bostock’s son towards her. Gary-Jackson’s son, Hershel, beat and raped a mentally challenged woman who lived in the home.

Florida foster care is rife with stories about children placed in families who were ignorant of the child’s background. That means the child doesn’t get the treatment he or she needs - and the family is often placed in an untenable situation which results in heartbreak for them and further damage to the child.

Florida Department of Children and Families Secretary Bob Butterworth is working hard to provide more transparency for foster and adoptive parents, but it can’t come soon enough. There are other Hershel’s in homes around the state.

We haven’t been interested in providing high quality mental health care for these broken children. At least we should warn the families who care for them that these kids come with an enormous amount of baggage.

I’ll just lay it all out and put it bluntly. Paris needs a home. Jack Talman found the adorable black and white momma and her five kittens in the woods near a Shell gas station in Plant City. The cats were lucky Talman found them. His commitment to animals, particularly free-roaming and stray cats, is significant.

The owner of Talman Tank ponied up the money to open the Animal Coalition of Tampa’s spay/neuter clinic. In the interest of full disclosure, I work with ACT and am paid by the group.

But that has nothing to do with Paris, whose kittens were almost immediately adopted at Humane Society of Tampa Bay.

Talman took Paris home. (He had named her Shelly, after the gas station. His wife Jewel changed it.) An unabashed cat guy, he expected to have Shelly/Paris around for a very long time. Like a proud pappa, he brags that she will play with a feather on a wand for hours and she comes when she’s called. “She only weighed six pounds when I found her,” he says. “She’s up to a healthy nine pounds now.”

Not surprisingly, as a free-roaming cat she hadn’t had a lot of contact with humans, so Talman says she doesn’t like being picked up yet. But she loves to be petted while she lies on the floor.

There’s another “but,” however. Turns out Jewel is allergic to Paris the cat. So the adorable animal lives on a screened porch at the Talman home. “She loves to watch the squirrels and birds,” says Talman.

But he wants more for the cat than a home on the porch.

Paris has been spayed and tested for FIV and FeLV. She’s had all her shots and will soon get a microchip. Talman also says that she has a wonderful, shiny coat, eats dry cat food and uses the litter box.

“I haven’t had her around other pets,” says Talman, “so I’m not sure if she would get along with other cats and dogs. But, as we know, somehow they adapt.”

If you are able to give Paris a home, email Talman at jtalman@ij.net or call him at (813) 376-0480.