Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

Each year since 2003, the City of Tampa has chosen a photographer to chronicle the city for The Big Picture Photographer Laureate Program.

The purpose of the project was to commission an artist to photograph and respond to life in the City of Tampa. The Photographer Laureate Program is inspired by historic photographic projects including the Farm Workers Administration, the National Endowment for the Arts, and regional Photographic Archives. The program’s long-range vision is to build a public collection comprised of images that are representative of the life and times in Tampa, by regional, national and international photographers.

Over the course of the multi-year project, an artist will be commissioned to “add a volume” for one year. The volume must be built upon a theme/topic selected by the artist/photographer and approved by the committee. Over the course of time, the city hopes to accumulate and display a full and varied representation of the multiple and diverse perspectives of artists on Tampa.

The artist chosen for 2007 was Marion Belanger (www.marionbelanger.com) from Connecticut, and the Big Picture Photographer Laureate, Volume V is now finished, and Marion’s work is open to the public.

Check out Real Estate/Spaces in Transition on view at the American Institute of Architects Gallery in downtown Tampa at 200 N. Tampa Street, Suite 100.  Find it on the west side of Tampa St. just south of Jackson.

You may want to check out the online work of previous Tampa Photographer Laureates, including 2003 Photographer Laureate Beth Reynolds, 2004’s Suzanne Camp Crosby, pinhole photographer Rebecca Sexton Larson in 2005, and 2006’s Steven S. Gregory.

The 2008 photographer, Jeremy Chandler, is busy taking photos now.  Look for his exhibit in about a year.

Congratulations to Citrus Park and Palma Ceia!

Not only are the Citrus Park Little Leaguers representing the Southeast US at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA, but their Big League Softball team is representing the South in the Big League World Series Softball in Kalamazoo, MI.

The softball team beat host St. Petersburg (District 12) to get to the World Series, and has already played the round robin games, going 1-3.  Their last consolation game (today at 11am) will determine final placement.

Congratulations also goes out to the Palma Ceia Little League Junior Softball team for getting to the Little League Junior Softball World Series in Kirkland, WA.  They will play in today’s consolation final at 5pm.

But the Little League Baseball gets the most attention.

Citrus Park’s little leaguers beat Alabama in the Southeast Regional Tournament finals to move on to the World Series with 15 other teams from around the world.  Citrus Park’s round robin schedule looks like this:

• GAME 1 against Midwest winner Canyon Lake (Rapid City, SD) Friday, Aug. 15, 2pm on ESPN
• GAME 14 against West winner Waipio (Waipahu, HI) Sunday, Aug. 17, 8pm on ESPN2
• GAME 19 against New England winner Shelton National (Shelton, CT) Monday, Aug. 18, 6pm on ESPN2

If they win all of those, they move on to the semifinals which begin Wednesday, Aug. 20.

We wish Citrus Park players, coaches, parents and neighbors the best of luck - have a great time!

Cheer for your hometown heroes representing Tampa Bay in Beijing.  Finals for your neighbors begin Saturday, so if you want to get a look at them, you’ll need to know when to tune in.  (All of the listed times are based on Tampa Time, but I’m not guaranteeing anything.)

Clearwater’s Zach Railey is an Olympic sailor, and competes in the finn class.  Zach has been sailing since he was 8 years old, and is currently in second place in the Olympic standings (behind a Brit).  The 8th race has been postponed to Friday, and the Final is scheduled for Saturday, August 16 at 1am.

Twin brothers from Wesley Chapel are competing in the Olympics. Bob Bryan plays keyboard and Mike Bryan plays drums in the Bryan Brothers Band.  They also play tennis (men’s doubles) fairly well.  They beat the Aussies in this morning’s quarterfinals, the semifinals are scheduled for Friday, and the Gold medal match will be on Saturday.  Check out Bob and Mike.com or BryanBros.com for more on the twins.

Tennis player James Blake also lives in Tampa and trains at Saddlebrook.  In men’s doubles, Blake and partner Sam Querry were bounced in the first round.  But Blake defeated Roger Federer in the quarterfinals this morning.  The men’s singles semifinals are on Friday, August 15, the Bronze medal match is on Saturday, and the Gold medal match is on Sunday, August 17.

Brandon’s Chris Colwill is a graduate of Tampa Prep and the University of Georgia, and the Linkin Park fan is a member of Diving TeamUSA.  Colwill and teammate Jevon Tarantino placed fourth in synchronized 3-meter diving, and Colwill will compete in individual 3-meter springboard on August 18 at 7am and 10pm, the finals are on August 19 at 8.30am.  He’s also writing a blog for TBO.com.

Damu Cherry was born in Tampa, and went to Leto High and USF.  She currently lives in Ocoee and trains in Clermont.  Currently ranked #2 in the world, Damu is competing for Team USA Track & Field in the Women’s 100-meter hurdles.  She is writing an Olympic Experience Blog for TBO.com.  Round 1 of the Women’s 110m hurdles is scheduled for August 17 at 7am, Semifinals on Aug 18 at 7.40am, Finals Aug 19 at 10.30am.

Ben Barger (benbarger.com) is a windsurfer on the US Sailing Team USA Sailing who lives and trains in Tampa.  Out of the ten scheduled RS:X races, four have already been run, and the Finals will be on August 20 at 1 o’clock in the morning.

Another local Team USA Track and Field member is Calvin Smith, II (not to be confused with his dad, Calvin Smith).  Born in Lutz, Calvin graduated from Freedom High, and is currently a sophomore at University of Florida.  Calvin is on the 4×400 relay team.  The opening round of the Men’s 4×400m relay is scheduled for August 22 at 8.10am, and the finals will be Aug 23 at 9.05am.

To keep track of everything your neighbors are doing, check in on the WFLA / NBC local Olympic athletes page.

Tampa Bay isn’t that different from any other post-WW II collection of sunbelt suburbs in search of a city. LA, Phoenix, Albuquerque, El Paso, Houston, Orlando, Jacksonville - the built landscape is pretty much the same. 

Designed to isolate us in autos and ranchettes, these sprawls give us lawns and shopping malls and de facto segregation by class and ideology as well as ethnicity.  (Thanks, Greatest Generation.)

This isn’t good for the creative class.  And a diverse creative class is a big part of what makes cities livable and attractive to the knowledge workers who generate the dollars in the post-industrial economy.

Oh, yeah, and that includes tourist-dependant economies — Pinellas, I am looking at you.

Mayor Iorio signed on to this concept. In 2003, anyway.

The man-made environment in the bay area — sprawling, low-density, built-for-cars– doesn’t throw people together in a stimulating creative stew the way it does in high-density environments. A friend of mine, visiting St Pete a while back, summed it up for me:

“The most important art contacts you’re gonna make– they’re at the laundromat, at the coffeehouse, on the bus, on the street with a really ugly terrier on a leash. You can’t help but run into them. I mean: Run. Into. Them.”

Tampa Bay is hemorrhaging its creative class, and that is worse than you think. They are leaving for places where they can find respect, employment, amenities, and like-minded people.

Can intentional design break us out of this creativity drain?

Where do you go every day to rub elbows with creative, stimulating people?

Former St. Pete Police Officer Ken Kokotek retired, and unveiled his secret identity.  Picasso is the screen name Ken used on the Law Enforcement Officer Affairs (LEO Affairs) website while ripping the higher-ups on the force as well as the City of St. Pete administration and others.

Apparently, he’s pretty good with photoshop, too:

In one, Mayor Rick Baker is wearing a pink dress with a matching pink hat.

In another, police Chief Chuck Harmon’s head has been put on an obscenely overweight body, and the chief is looking intently at a two-layer cheeseburger.

Sounds attractive.  Look at the TBO article to see the altered images for yourself. 

Those higher-ups were irritated.  So much so,  there was an investigation into Picasso’s identity, and threats of firing - even after he retired!:

Had he not retired, a St. Petersburg police officer would have been fired for posting degrading computer-altered pictures of police administrators and others on a Web site…

Anyway - the artwork is average at best, but the satire is pretty good.  For more, check out Picasso’s home on the web, SPPD - An Insider’s View.

According to a new report released by the Corporation for National and Community Service, 60.8 million Americans volunteered in their communities in 2007.  That represents an average of 26.2 percent of Americans age 16 and older.

The study also reported the percentages of individual states as well as metro areas, and those findings are highlighted on the Volunteering in America website.

The number of volunteers from the State of Florida is below the national average, and ranks only third from the bottom of the list:

• Volunteer Rate Ranking: 49th within the 50 states and Washington D.C.
• Average Volunteer Rate: 20.0%
• Volunteer Hours Ranking: 45th within the 50 states and Washington D.C.
• Average Volunteer Hours per Resident: 29.3 hours

Most of those (32.4%) volunteer with religious organizations.

Floridian cities make up the bottom of the metro rankings too:

• #50 - Miami - 14.5% volunteered.
• #46 - Orlando - 19.7% volunteered.
• #45 - Jacksonville - 20.7% volunteered.
• #40 - Tampa - 24.8% volunteered.

Sure, Tampa Bay ranks higher than the rest of the state, and is above average for Florida, but we can certainly do better.

Here are the numbers for the Tampa, FL Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) (Major cities included in this MSA include Tampa, FL; St. Petersburg, FL; and Clearwater, FL):

• Volunteer Rate Ranking: 40th within the 50 large cities
• Average Volunteer Rate: 24.8%
• Volunteer Hours Ranking: 29th within the 50 large cities
• Average Volunteer Hours per Resident: 34.8 hours

So what about you?  Do you donate your time to any worthy causes?  Fill out the poll, and tell us about some worthy causes in the comments:

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Your local elected officials are the people who determine if Wal-mart will build in your neighborhood.  They determine how much you pay for parking, which amenities your parks have, how many police are on hand, and how fast the fire department will show up at your house.

Local leaders are responsible for a myriad of public services and agencies such as airports, convention centers, museums, beaches, harbors, zoos, clinics, law libraries, and public housing. They provide services such as child and family services, elder services, mental health services, welfare services, veterans assistance services, animal control, probation supervision, historic preservation, food safety regulation, and environmental health services. They have many additional officials like public defenders, arts commissioners, human rights commissioners, and planning commissioners. Finally, there may also be a county fire department (as distinguished from fire departments operated by individual cities, special districts, or the state government).

These people affect your day-to-day life as no one else can.

And YOU determine who “these people” are.

We have already listed the candidates for your Hillsborough County elections.  From here forward, we are going to find out all we can about them, and encourage them to address us citizens.  And we’re going to get to know them, so we can make an informed decision when we vote.

But we all have differing ideas of what makes a good leader, so I want to make sure you are heard.  Leave a comment below with an answer to this question:

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU WANT TO ASK THE CANDIDATES?

I’m sure you heard about the Angel Flight pilot who’s plane crashed late last week at Vandenburg Airport. As part of the Angel Flight program, Sun City Center resident Harlan E. Northcott was preparing to fly a cancer patient and a teenage friend of her family to Suart on Thursday, when the plane hit an antenna and crashed on takeoff, killing all three.

A memorial service was held Sunday, and everyone had so many nice things to say about the man everyone called “Lanny.” We received this email from a friend of Harlan’s son-in-law:

I don’t know if you heard about the plane crash out at Vandenberg Airport
or not, but I just wanted to say, it was the father in law of a friend of
mine in New Orleans, he had this comment ….

“What a very sad day indeed. My FIL was a very special guy. He went from growing up in a cardboard house in Caifornia to a self made millionaire. He never frogot where he started out. He died flying a cancer patient and a 15 year old. He donated hi time, his plane, and a great deal of money to help sick people that lack the necessary funds to travel for treatment. He was in the Navy at the end of world war II and graduated from Old Miss. After his service he got into the oil business as a petrolium geologist. He sought out and found investors to back a company and Northcott Exploration was born. He would end up selling that company to Tidewater Marine where he bceame an Executive VP in charge of several operations. Even after retirement his ablity to do his job led him to a lot of work as a
consultant. He loved to fly and was one of the main people responsible for my Education and trainging as a professional pilot. Even though he was my wife’s stepfather, he treated us like family. Especially my boys. They loved their “paw-paw lanny” very much and it kills me to watch them break down about it. I’ll say this. The world has lost a truely uniqe man today. I
am……. very sad now…. “

Sounds like we all lost a great guy…

Looks like another local media outlet is experimenting with citizen journalism.

Since 2005, the Tampa Tribune has offered you a chance for you to be one of their “Community Columnists” and write opinion pieces found on their op-ed page.  They also added “Reel People,” including the beautiful and talented Lisa Ciurro, to write movie reviews that show up in Friday Extra now and again.

A few months ago, Creative Loafing introduced their “Fix It Now” blog, and made the call for interested citizen journalists to contribute to the site.  Since then, a couple have added their voices to the blog.  I’m not sure if they have been published in the printed Loaf, though.

Other than those efforts, not much has been done by local media to get regular citizens involved in the news gathering process.  But Tampa Bay’s 10 is gonna give it a try. 

They plan on handing out video cameras, and want to air your video reports on Tampa Bay’s 10. 

Tampa Bay’s 10 is looking for twenty people around the Bay area to help us with a special project. We will teach twenty lucky people how to shoot a video camera, and how to get the video to us here at the station.

… These clips can be about many different subjects. Things that happen in your community. Anything from bad weather to your childs play at school. Maybe your neighborhood meeting.

Not only that, but they are going to pay you and let you keep the camera (emphasis is theirs)!

Each time you send me a video story that either makes it on the news or on our web site, Tampa Bay’s 10 will pay you TWENTY DOLLARS!

If you hold up your end of the deal, after a year, you will KEEP the video camera we assign you.

In addition to the camera, you will get a tripod, a camera bag, a battery, and everything you need to download video into your computer. 

Former Tampa Bay reporter Amani Channel doesn’t think that’s enough:

I don’t think tampabay10’s “citizen journalism team” has taken the right approach. It’s great to encourage public participation, but this initiative sounds like a low paying job. Stringers can make up to $500.00 bucks for each piece of newsworthy content they capture, and sell.

We’ll be looking forward to the results.If you want to be one of Tampa Bay’s 10’s new Citizen Journalists, send Mitchell Wallace an e-mail mwallace@tampabays10.com.

PS:  Tampa Bay’s 10 is also running the new local Metromix website, as well as something called “Hey Juicy,” which defies explanation.