Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

I received yet another in my email inbox just a few minutes ago. This one features Ashley Flores, a supposedly missing 13-year-old. The picture is haunting. The message, purportedly by Ashley’s mother, is heartbreaking. There’s only one problem. It’s fictitious.

All it took was 30 seconds on www.snopes.com to discover the truth.

Well-meaning people fall for these scams all the time. Most of the hoax messages appeal to the recipient’s greed, sense of outrage, altruism or ego.

But they can be dangerous.

In this case, I don’t think there’s a computer virus or worm or trojan embedded in the message. But you can never be sure.

So it’s a great idea if you receive one of these ubiquitous messages to take 30 seconds and check it out.

I tried to respond to all on the email address list, but my server couldn’t send it because there were too many recipients. Likely thousands …

Actually, it’s a good idea to go to snopes, the most prominent of the debunking web sites, regularly. I get an email update from the site once a week.

It’s a good reminder that you may be more vulnerable on the Internet than most places in the real world.

I have one question - and it isn’t rhetorical. Would someone please explain the obsession with former American Idol contestant Jessica Sierra’s public meltdown?

After her most recent arrest, she made the front page of both newspapers and led newscasts on at least two local television stations.

But I just don’t get the fascination.

What am I missing here?

It’s like watching a train wreck, a plane crash.

She’s pitiful. A sad bimbo.

It seems Paula and Randy White of Without Walls International Church in Tampa are so fond of Texas pastor, Bishop TD Jakes, that they gave him a Bentley for his birthday.

A Bentley.

Apparently, Jakes took the car.

I’m not sure which model. But Bentleys range in price from $169,000 up.

That outrageous expenditure and others by the Whites - multiple expensive houses, multiple expensive cars, multiple expensive cosmetic procedures - are being examined by the US Senate Committee on Finance.

Dan Ruth’s column Thursday about the latest church scandal puts a savage and wonderfully humorous spin on the Whites and others also being investigated by the committee, including TD Jakes.

I can’t laugh about it.

The Tampa Tribune, which broke the Without Walls story earlier this year, provided an update in Sunday’s paper.

I just wish while the committee is investigating the church’s finances, the Whites could examine their own hearts and souls.

Prosperity theology is one thing - and it has other proponents besides the Whites and Jakes.

It has its critics, too. To see more of both, just Google prosperity theology.

It just seems that no matter what theological highway you are motoring on, Bentley’s as gifts to others who preach the same message, such as Jakes, is taking things a car too far.

This is a little late, but not for lack of admiration. Ralph Smith and the Computer Mentor Group hosted another very successful tech bowl Oct. 27.

A team sponsored by Microsoft that included Eric Castillo, Jorge Martinez, Jarred Futrell, Anthony Pritchett, and Gordon Kratz took first place in the competition that was held at the Hillsborough Community College Brandon Campus. Castillo, Jim Lathrop and Rick Roux, all from Microsoft, were the team’s coaches.

Twice as many teams - 12 - competed in this second tech bowl. That’s 48 teens who were inspired to spend their free time learning about computers and technology, and numerous volunteers who spent their free time mentoring and tutoring.

This year’s sponsors included Microsoft, Citi, Nielsen, Interface Network Systems, Holland & Knight, Suncoast for Kids Foundation, Acuity Solutions, JP Morgan Chase, Numara, Tampa Bay Community Network, the St. Petersburg Times, the College Reach-Out Program at HCC and Air Tran.

They all deserve a round of applause.

The St. Petersburg city election was held Tuesday and almost no one showed. A paltry nine percent of the registered voters bothered to cast ballots. Only 14,500 of you showed up. That’s a record low, by the way.

Turn-out was so sparse that as I walked in to my precinct at about 2 p.m., a poll worker dozed in a chair in the warm sun.

I asked him if he were having an exciting day.

He opened his eyes, looked at me and deadpanned, “What do you think.”

I thought not.

Turns out, there were more members of the firefighters union outside campaigning for a couple of candidates -and more poll workers inside waiting to assist than there were voters for them to help.

Maybe it was a sign that St. Petersburg residents are completely satisfied with city government. Or maybe it’s because we’re a city full of lazy asses who don’t understand the importance of exercising something called a franchise which, by the way, in this context has absolutely nothing to do with sports and everything to do with democracy.

You don’t have to play golf to have a ball at Party on the Green Friday, Nov. 16, from 7 p.m. until whenever at the Palm Ceia Country Club. You can even score a hole in one (pardon the golf pun) by attending the gala that benefits the Gift of Adoption Fund, an organization that fosters adoptions by providing financial grants to families trying to give children without one a forever home.

The local host committee for the Florida Chapter of the fund includes David and Rebecca Alexander, Michael and Cheryl Benitez, Marlyn Carlton, Steve and Natalie Cheeseman, David and Jennifer Conn, Vince and Mary Jo Pennino, Steve and Natalie Raney, Rob and Dianne Rossi, Marc and Loreen Spencer and Mark and Jeanne Tate.

PGA professional Gary Koch is the honorary chair.

Oh, yes. Music will be provided by my favorite local group, the Johnny G Lyon Band, fronted by our own Tommy Duncan, of Sticks of Fire.

Tickets are $75 per person, which includes appetizers, cocktails and JGLB.

“Caddyshack” attire welcomed.

For more information and reservations, go to http://www.giftofadoption.org/News.asp.

If you’re straight-laced, uptight, buttoned up, repressed, you probably won’t want to wade through the first two minutes of this video clip of a 2006 Arsenio Hall show to reach the most hilarious bit ever featuring a tiny Jewish sex expert who once trained as a sniper in Israel.

While she and Arsenio visit an L.A. boutique, Condomania, Dr. Ruth Westheimer takes aim at safe sex techniques. I won’t even link you to the Condomania at website, which will certainly get you in trouble if you visit it online at work.

Suffice it to say, Condomania does NOT sell condominiums.

That very same Dr. Ruth is coming to Tampa in a couple of weeks to speak at a fundraiser for the West Central Florida Area Agency on Aging.

You don’t have to be a person in the fullness of life to attend. In fact, Dr. Ruth can teach even those young things who think oral sex isn’t sex a thing or two.

For tickets, visit http://www.agingflorida.com/information/special.odb or call 813-676-5583.

Dr. Ruth knows that people of all ages have sex, including those over a certain age. Even if you’re safe from pregnancy, you can still get sexually transmitted diseases. So safe sex at all ages is critical.

In her book, “Sex For Dummies,” Dr. Ruth, who will soon be 80, even includes a chapter for those who believe they are too old to engage in sex.

She says, Hogwash or BS or something like that.

If you want a taste, so to speak, of her attitudes and advice, visit this YouTube clip that features Regis Philbin reading from that segment in “Dummies” with hilarious results.

If past performances count for anything, Dr. Ruth’s visit to the Bay area should be enlightening, tittilating and flat-out funny.

See her at the Tampa Hyatt Regency, downtown Tampa Friday, Nov. 9. Individual tickets are $65 or $600 for a table of 10.

The event begins at 5 p.m. with a cocktail hour and raffle. Dinner will be served at 6.

Dr. Ruth is dessert.

Pinellas County school board member Nancy Bostock made a couple of anguishing decisions recently. First, after months of trying unsuccessfully to find affordable inpatient mental health treatment for her emotionally disturbed adoptive son, she and her husband Craig are relinquishing custody of the boy to the state so he can hopefully get the intensive care he needs.

The child had been in a theraputic group home, but the state would only pay for 18 months of care. He needs more - he has been violent to Nancy and the Bostock’s fear he will harm their two daughters - but the couple can’t afford the $70,000 a year tab.

On Monday, Bostock stepped forward at a meeting of the state Senate Committee on Children, Families and Elder Affairs and spoke publicly about the devastating situation.

Under the supervision of Department of Children and Families Secretary Bob Butterworth, foster and adoptive care in Florida is better than it used to be - but that isn’t saying much.

Many adoptive and foster families discover almost immediately that the system can be more fractured, neglectful and dysfunctional than the families that produced their scarred children.

And Florida’s limited interest in taking care of throw-away kids wanes when headlines of death and/or abuse fade.

Granted, such care is expensive. Overwhelming. Frustrating. It takes an enormous amount of time, money, community involvement and support to provide for these kids.

Politicians and bureaucrats are not heartless, but they are often spineless when confronted by an electorate that wants its taxes lowered at all costs, be damned the consequences. In the case of some of these kids, the consequences will be dire: a life of dysfunction, drug and alcohol abuse, promiscuity, more unwanted babies, more uneducated, unproductive citizens. Some will end up in prisons, on the streets or worse.

What makes this particular case so unnerving is that it’s so common. Through the years I’ve heard more harrowing stories than I can recount from adoptive and foster parents - most of whom were afraid to come forward because they were afraid of retribution, afraid of losing the kids they love.

Bostock should not have that concern. After all, she is a public figure, an elected official who has not only a tender heart, but political clout.

Taking on a child so troubled came with more problems than the couple expected.

“We naively thought our love and our stable home would be enough,” Bostock told the committee.

It wasn’t.

So now the couple has made what is certainly an anguishing decision.

Bostock can’t feel good about this. She must be humiliated, mortified. But she came forward anyway to try to change things.

The terrifying part of all this is that if someone with political savvy and influence - she is a conservative Republican, by the way - can’t get services for a seriously disturbed child, who can?

I’m not sure how to tout this. As a free concert with a dog walk, or a dog walk with a free concert.

So I’ll start with Tommy’s group, the Johnny G Lyon Band, which will give a free concert at Al Lopez Park Saturday between 9 a.m. and noon.

But don’t come unless you like dogs and kids.

The event, of course, is the Animal Coalition of Tampa’s major annual fundraiser, Stride for Strays, which will feature about 30 teams of walkers who have raised money for the coalition’s low-cost spay/neuter clinic.

Before we go any further, and in the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I am a paid community liaison for the coalition, and Tommy’s band is getting paid to perform, too.

Anyway, the team that raises the most money gets a Golden Dog Bone trophy and a private suite at Tropicana Field for a Tampa Bay Devil Rays home game next season.

The Johnny G Lyon Band will provide live and loud entertainment except when emcee Dick Crippen, of the Devil Rays and Brighthouse Cable’s local sports channel, Catch 47, takes the microphone to announce something or other.

Stride for Strays’ major sponsors include Publix Supermarket Charities, Synovus Bank of Tampa Bay, the PetCo Foundation and the ASPCA’s Mission Orange.

Other donors include the Tampa Tribune, Big Cat Rescue, Sticks of Fire.com, the Johnny G Lyon Band, Printshack, MJ Clark, Bark Busters and other wonderfully supportive animal lovers.

Ken Suarez of WTVT Fox 13 News will be on hand, as will folks from Hillsborough County Animal Services and representatives from a number of breed rescue groups.

Vendors will have stuff for you to buy including snacks and breakfast food items, beverages, ice cream, pet paraphanalia and other goodies.

And the Humane Society of Tampa Bay will have its Mobile Adoption Center onsite just in case you want a forever friend.

Join us.