happy new year, y'all

May 2006 be better than 2005.

I say that every year.

On the night of December 31, 1999, as the final year of the 20th Century approached, I fully believed the prospects for world peace were better than ever. The Berlin Wall was gone, the Pope had visited Cuba, and things just seemed to be headed in the direction of peace and stability. What a fool I was.

As we speak, there is one more tropical storm (Zeta) out there in the Atlantic somewhere, reminding us that our future and safety are not as much within our control as we would like to believe. I don't need to remind anyone that a great many people foolishly believe that bombing and killing will achieve something good. And, we have nearly three long years until the next presidential election.

Even so, as I think of my family and our extended family, which was extended even further in June, I can't help but think that 2005 was a very good year for us personally, and 2006 holds a lot of promise to be good or better. Please, God, may I not be fooled again!

catching up with Christmas

I've finally put up a photo of the tree (below). We'd need to put a hole in the ceiling to get a bigger one. I like to keep them up until Greek Epiphany Day, January 6. One of our neighbors put his out at the curb the day after Christmas, which is entirely too soon. We'll be caught up with Christmas when we get our cards in the mail, which for some reason always seems to happen in time for New Year's.

behold, Tannenbaum

Merry Christmas!

OK, it may seem a few days late for that greeting, but not really. This is the time when work tends to slow down and people start shipping themselves back home if they were lucky enough to come home for Christmas. No, that's not a contradiction. You can have two homes, and if you are fortunate enough to have a parent still living where you grew up, that's one of them.

We had three of our "kids" home for Christmas. We look at them and think, how did we raise four of them in this dinky little house? Our fourth "kid" was at home in Colorado, establishing a new Christmas tradition with his new wife - go skiing on Christmas Eve, and make your Florida family jealous. Some of our old traditions continue: One daughter had strep throat for the umpteenth time at Christmas, and another one expressed irritatation at being exposed to the bug. The one recovered and the other didn't take it home with her, so all's well. The five of us shared a warmth and a closeness on Christmas Day that is the stuff of fond memories. Stay tuned for photo with new camera.

the world is flat

Everybody, and particularly every Westerner under the age of 30, and every school teacher, should read Tom Friedman's book, The World is Flat. We have a "flat" world because of satellite communications, fiber optic cable, and high-speed Internet access. You can have an X-ray taken today and it will be read by a radiologist in India or Australia tonight. Your doctor will have a report on his or her desk tomorrow morning. You buy a gizmo at Wal-Mart, and before you walk out the door their computers are telling their sweatshop in China to make another one and ship it over.

Buying Christmas gifts over the Internet is an example of how the flat world works, right here at home. I just bought a camera (not a gift, but a replacement for myself). Thanks to UPS's tracking system I know it left New Jersey yesterday and rolled into Jacksonville this morning. It rolled out this afternoon and I fully expect it on my doorstep tomorrow. I never spoke with a human being about it. They never saw the flash of green money or even heard the clickety click of a credit card in their machine by the cash register. There is no cash register.

I can tell you the time of day it was logged in and out by UPS but I can't tell you what the sales clerk looked like, because there was no sales clerk. That's one less sales clerking job that might have been taken by some kid trying to make money for school. I saved money on the camera and didn't have to drive around our plagued, traffic-choked roads trying to find a better price.

If you are the kind of kid who's still in school but just shuffling along, getting no education to speak of and no job skills, it's time to look at the big world around you. Don't think you can get out of school and get by with a minimum-wage job. They haven't learned to flip hamburgers and sell them through the Internet, yet, but it's only a matter of time.

Christmas trees

We've been slow getting the house ready for Christmas this year but we do have the tree up with lights on it. Last year we had a tree that seemed good when we bought it but looked puny in the house. This year we got one that seems to have grown on the way home from the lot. It is big and beautiful, and probably the heaviest one ever; I had to run out and get a bigger stand. I would put a photo here, if I had a digital camera. :(

We have good friends whose tree fell over after they decorated it, which reminded me of a story about my Aunt D., in Kentucky. She is the sole survivor of my parents' generation and I know why: Few things bother her. She has the belief, proven true after a lifetime of experience, that "things will work out," so why fret? She's not starry-eyed or naive. She raised seven children successfully. But there was one time when her kids were little and Uncle H. could not get their Christmas tree to stand up. It kept falling over and Uncle H. was cussing a blue streak. This was in the days when a tree stand was two pieces of crossed wood nailed to the bottom of the tree, and you also need to know they had hardwood floors. Aunt D. finally had her fill of the commotion and she came in with a hammer and a nail. Wham, wham, wham. "That'll fix the damned thing," she said.

The replacement camera should be here in a week and I'll put up a photo of our tree. The new camera looks like a shrunken version of my old camera, which was beginning to look like a brick compared with what's on the market now. I have no idea what to do with 7.2 megapixels. The old one took photos with 2.1 megapixels when I set it to take the highest resolution, which I seldom did.

Happy Holidays? Merry Christmas!

An editor in our local paper today tees off on the issue of taking "Christmas" out of public displays, including Christmas trees, um, Holiday Trees, in town squares and shopping centers. The Nova Scotia logger who for years has donated Boston's official Christmas tree has said that, if he knew it was going to be referred to as a "holiday tree" in a city news release, he would have fed it into a wood chipper. Boston's mayor issued a statement saying he considers the tree to be a Christmas tree. Threats of lawsuits hang in the air.

I'm not sure who fatigues my rear end more, the ACLU or the radical religious right.

There was a time when the churches complained about the "commercialization of Christmas." Be careful what you ask for; you might get it. Christmas runs the risk of disappearing from public venues. It may have to take sanctuary in homes and churches (where it belongs).

In any event, a Christmas tree is not Biblical. The early Christians were clever enough to co-opt pagan symbols and Winter Solstice ceremonies (in Rome, "Saturnalia"). Why else would they put candles on branches of dead trees in their homes? December 25 is probably the wrong date, too.

The Puritans in England and the New World banned Christmas because its celebration had turned into a drunken carnival. Christmas was banned in Boston from 1659 to 1681. Congress was in session on December 25, 1789, the first Christmas under America's new constitution. Christmas wasn't declared a federal holiday until June 26, 1870.

And a Merry Christmas to you during this "holiday" season!

saying hello to Christmas season

We have four weekends to go before Christmas. Cool weather is settling into Florida and we had a fire in the fireplace last night. (Why do we associate Christmas with cool weather? It wasn't snowing when the shepards had their flocks out in the fields at night.)

It is that time of the year again and I'm not going to allow Hurricane Grinch or Idiot Grinch to interfere. We also have a couple of December birthdays to celebrate, one for an uncle and one for an aunt who will turn 80 and 90 respectively.

So, it's time to celebrate. Lights! Music! The show is about to begin.

saying goodbye to hurricane season

It's over. Finally. It may seem odd to have the official season run this late in the year but on November 30, 1925, a hurricane came in south of Tampa Bay, crossed over Tampa, and caused death and destruction.

We thought 2004 was a bad year and it was, but then 2005 came along. I shudder to think about next year.

There are people in Florida still living with blue tarp roofs after more than a year, and FEMA's temporary housing is still occupied. Defenders of the Bush Administration blame the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans for the federal incompetencies of this season, but I don't hear them blaming Gov. Jeb Bush for their lingering incompetencies in Florida.

two post-break-in thoughts

Don't lay up treasures on Earth, where rust corrupts and thieves break in and steal. Lay up treasures in Heaven, which pays compound interest.
-- Bible (paraphrased)

When things go bad, don't follow them.
-- Sign, nondenominational church down the street

*&@#!! - part 2

In addition to the camera, cell phone, keys and a chocolate bar, the [horribly offensive expletive deleted] took my wife's little piggy bank, which was stuffed with quarters. It isn't the quarters she'll miss. The piggy bank was a gift to her when she was born. You cannot replace a thing like that.

The window is semi-repaired. The new glass will keep out the rain but the fasteners for the moving parts of the window might not be replaceable (it is an old window). I used a bolt and nut from my lifetime collection of spare bolts and nuts but they are too large to fit the clearance. I'll check the hardware store -- maybe I'll get lucky. That leaves the cut screens to be repaired, one inside the house and one section of the pool screen. It also leaves the wooden gate and fence section that the [vile expletive deleted] knocked down, not because he's strong but because the 4 x 4 post is rotted at ground level.

We have new keys. Some but not all of the mess is cleaned up. The good stuff he missed is in a new safe deposit box. The [nasty expletive deleted] did me one favor, though. He forced me to confront, and discard, a truly strange assortment of old socks, old shorts, and one silly tank top that crept into my dresser drawer years ago and hid from public scrutiny until the contents were dumped on the floor.

Here's one note of levity which demonstrates how smart the [can't say that word either] is. I have an exterior light with a motion detector. He saw the motion detector, assumed it was a camera, picked up an eight-foot section of landscaping timber, and knocked it off its mount. He didn't break it, though. It hangs from its cable and still works. If it was a camera, it would have gotten a really good photo of his stupid face.

*&@#!!

This turned out to be a truly crappy day. Between the time I left for work at 11:15 a.m. (yeah, late, but I'm still on California time and didn't have an appointment until 1:30) and when my wife got home at 2:30, some kid, or pair of kids, broke a rear window, entered and ransacked our house, and stole her new cell phone and my not-so-new digital camera that had 50-60 photos from San Francisco that I hadn't downloaded anywhere.

I'd give him the camera if I could get the memory card with the photos back. I don't even care about the scenic shots, just the photos of Megan and Conor, and Megan and her mother. The [bleep] also stole the extra key to the new car, so Nissan is going to re-key the car. He took a house key, so a locksmith will be here tomorrow. You can't get a window guy to come out to replace one pane of glass so I'm taking at least half a day off to repair the broken window in addition to cleaning up the mess.

Good news: The cops got some good fingerprints including a set the tech called "juicy."

The [bleep] didn't find my father's .380 automatic or my grandfather's old revolver, which is good because if they ever catch the [bleep] I'd like to have target practice on his hind end although the cops might take a dim view of that. It isn't so much the sense of being violated as the aggravation of having to clean up the mess.

It was interesting what he didn't take - he wasn't interested in baseball cards or wine from Napa Valley or what's left of a bottle of tequila or this computer or the TV set or a few other goodies that were more or less hiding in plain sight. Oh, yeah, one more project for tomorrow morning is to open a safe deposit box for all the stuff he overlooked. The cops figure it was a kid looking for cash. Fortunately, we don't own much worth stealing. I don't expect the kid to return because he seems to have spent a lot of time and effort for nothing special. The camera can't be worth much on the street and the cell phone is your basic upgrade without all the fancy bells and whistles. Hmmm. . .I don't see Megan's ancient lap-top. Did I toss it like I was told to or did the kid steal it? I hope he stole it, because whoever buys it will come back and beat him senseless.

And this is certainly a great way to get into the Christmas season.

over the river and through the woods. . .

Let's start that song over. How about, over the Gulf and over the woods and over the Plains and the Rockies. . .nah, that won't rhyme. We aren't going to Grandma's house, either. We are going to visit Megan in San Francisco for Thanksgiving and I'm more than ready. She went to S.F. with no job and no permanent place to live, and found both in short order. It's been more than a year and a half since our last visit - entirely too long.

One reason I'm ready to get out of town is - my faithful readers may remember me describing the Big Project I had to do a few weeks ago. This week I had Son of Big Project ("SOB" Project) which I had to finish and file today. I think I did a better job on the SOB than on the earlier one. Last time, I was defending my city. This time, I was defending an employee. Our office works hard to defend the employees. A city wouldn't run without good employees. This was a "high-tech" job. When computers came out I didn't know what a lawyer would do with one. This week I was finding cases on line, checking to make sure they were still good, and composing the motion on my computer. The last step was to file it electronically. I don't know how to do that and don't want to learn. We have some very good secretaries and they need to know there are some jobs only they can do.

Now, I don't want to see a computer for a week. All I want to do is laze around my daughter's apartment, eat, and get in everybody's way. For a week. Can't wait.

Gamma? Gimme a break! [revised]

The projected track of Tropical Storm Gamma now runs east, south of Cuba. Not good news for Jamaica, but it may remain a tropical storm and not turn into a hurricane. See it here:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at2+shtml/204548.shtml?5day

it was a church

Earlier this week, while in a department store shopping for shoes (a task I dislike above most others), I almost literally bumped into a local judge. Not to name any names but he was a central figure in a famous right-to-die case that came to its inevitable conclusion this year. We chatted for awhile and I invited him to attend our Methodist church because I know he was invited out of Calvary Baptist Church here in Clearwater. Maybe he'll accept that invitation but not anytime soon.

That got me to thinking, as I looked at their new "church" building, just what kind of church do they have left? I know of one prominent "pillar of the church" type of man who left the church recently because of its treatment of the judge. He was a young lawyer on the Deacon Board back when my father was a deacon. My parents left the church years ago because the pastor (at that time) was getting into deep right field and making comments about women that set my mother's teeth on edge. The Baptist Church has drifted further to the right since then, to the point that it now dis-invites a respected judge (himself a conservative Republican) from its membership rolls because of the judge's decision that was, by the way, upheld by the appellate court. (I left the church back in the 60's, much sooner than my parents did, after Tallahassee's Baptist church voted to keep its membership all white.)

So now I'm thinking, this new building may suit the Baptists just fine. They don't need a traditional church building now. The old stained glass windows didn't seem to inspire them appropriately anyhow.

this. . .is a church?

This building will replace the old Calvary Baptist Church in Clearwater, Florida (see below). To be fair, I tried to find a good angle for this shot, but if this building has a good angle it isn't visible from the road. If this building has stained glass windows, like the old church, they are not visible from the road, either. This building screams "insurance company headquarters," not "church." The only church-y thing about it is the cross, made of I-beams and attached to the wall with straps, like an afterthought. Methodist churches have plain crosses. Baptist churches usually don't, or at least that's what I learned growing up in one. The old church does not have a cross. Click this photo for a larger image. Larger, but not better. No, not better at all.

this is a church

This is the old main sanctuary of Calvary Baptist Church in Clearwater, Florida. This view is from what used to be a main corner of downtown when Clearwater had a downtown. I grew up in this church, and in this town. It is hard to get a good photo of the church nowadays because the trees around it have flourished. The Baptists built a huge new sanctuary on the west side of this building years ago. The property has been sold to developers, who will tear it all down. Last Saturday, the interior of the old sanctuary was stripped of its pews and the pipes from the organ were lying across the floor.

Christmas already?

I was thinking today that I'm ready for the Christmas season this year -- but not the kind that comes in stores. Maybe it's a desire to retreat from the world after one helluva year of hurricanes, floods, Tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes, and war.

Tonight I heard and saw the first Christmas commercial on TV this season. I'm not ready for this. I'm not ready for sleigh bells, if I'm not riding an actual sleigh. I'm not ready for anything they sell in Wal-Mart that's colored red and green. I'm definitely not ready to hear even one more rendition of Andy Williams' "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," one of the most insipid songs by one of the most insipid singers.

The one thing that gets me into the Christmas spirit without fail is to read Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." It is not a religious book, but Dickens understood what it's all about. I think our political and business leaders ought to be compelled to read it again, too. If they would learn what old Scrooge learned, this could be a better world.

city elections, and the results are in

We had an election in our fair city today, and you can go here to read all about it:
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/11/09/Southpinellas/_A_city_united___Bake.shtml
I make it a strict rule not to talk about work for the obvious reason. I like my job too much to consider an alternative. But: This is the fourth city I've worked for in my checkered career. The other three -- when I started working for them -- had elected officials who were good, solid, "center field" people who understood good government and tried to act responsibly. In all three cases they were replaced by people who drifted into left field, jumped the wall and went to straight to hell, dragging the concept of good government with them, while I was there or shortly after I left. I was beginning to take it personally, as though it was my fault somehow. But tonight's election reversed that trend. A good mayor was re-elected. Time will tell if a good city council will be even better but the writing is on the wall and it is encouraging.

trying to reason with hurricane season

Pardon me for obsessing over hurricane season but it ain't over yet. This week the St. Petersburg Times published a graphical prediction of what a Category 4 hurricane could do if it came up out of the Gulf and used Tampa Bay as the on-ramp for the rest of the state. (Click to enlarge.) With the exception of Highway 19's bridge over the Anclote River, north of Tarpon Springs, our bridge routes will be out of commission and, if the bridge over the Anclote River fails, our peninsula will become two islands (the white zones in the map). I could launch a boat from our front yard, but my cousin's house, a couple of blocks to the east and down-slope, will almost surely be flooded.

We love Halloween!

We want candy!

Happy Halloween!

Trick or treat!

our son turns 25

Every generation hopes that their children will do better than they did, and I'm proud to say our son is living up to that hope. His sisters are too, but yesterday was his big day: Now that he's reached the ripe old age of 25, his auto insurance rates ought to drop! But let's talk about generations here.

His grandfathers attended college. One got his degree. My father, by the time he was 25, had graduated from Eastern Kentucky, was teaching school in "Bloody Harlan" County, Kentucky, and hadn't met my mother yet. Grandfather Doyle started college at Michigan State, but went to work at the Ford plant in Lansing after the beginning of WWII. There he met and married Sally, and was seven weeks away from being the father of a little red-headed girl when he turned 25.

By the time I was 25 I'd finished college (Florida State) and two years of active duty in the Army. I was a first-year law student in Hogtown. . .er, Gainesville, Florida. I hadn't met my future wife yet, either.

Our son earned a bachelor's degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found a great job in his major field with an aerospace company, and got married this summer to a wonderful young lady. How young? Two years younger, by my count, but that seems to be an inside joke.

His grandfathers would be proud. I am.

a few points to ponder

It's time for a little levity, no matter how forced or corny. I've borrowed this from a columnist at the Aspen Times, who had a longer version, but she probably borrowed it from somebody else and surely won't object. Next time you are riding a bus, or stuck in traffic because you should have taken the bus, consider:

• Who was the first person to say, "See that chicken over there ... I'm gonna eat the first thing that comes out if its butt"?

• If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?

• If a fork is made of gold, would it still be considered silverware?

• Did Noah have woodpeckers on the ark? If he did, where did he keep them?

• Do pyromaniacs wear blazers?

• If you don't pay your exorcist, do you get repossessed?

• If a bunch of cats jump on top of each other, is it still called a dog pile?

• Can a person choke and die on a Life Saver?

• When you snap your fingers, does the sound occur when your middle finger releases from your thumb, or when your middle finger hits the palm of your hand?

• If two identical twin brothers married identical twin sisters, would their kids be identical?

• Do cows have calf muscles?

• If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?

whew

Throughout your life you find yourself facing The Big Project, one of those things you've absolutely gotta do, and do it right. Maybe it was a term paper, a master's thesis, or a presentation to the Big Boss or a prospective client. Maybe it was organizing and arranging your wedding or your child's wedding. Whatever it was, there was a Deadline, as in drop dead if you're late. As the Deadline approaches, your brain begins to short-circuit and slide into panic mode if you did not get a head start early enough and did not plan ahead.

I had one of those Projects due this week, not as big as a wedding but important enough to do it right. Today was the Deadline. Court deadlines are inflexible, especially in federal court. I consider it a professional failure to have to ask for an extension of time. Thankfully, I took a big stab at it beginning last week. It always looked good at the end of the day but the next morning I would ask, who wrote this crap? Some projects always require more time than you think it ought to and this was one of them. HOWEVER, I got the thing finalized and filed before five o'clock. Some lawyers in private practice keep bottles of booze on hand to celebrate such events, but not so in a municipal building. Ah, well. The satisfaction of getting it done is intoxicating enough. The satisfaction of winning will be even better but that remains to be seen.

Fall arrived

Fall's finally arrived in Florida, with enough gusto to shove a hurricane out of the way. Thank God for both the arrival and the shoving. It pushed Wilma off the projected track and surprised a lot of S.E. Florida people who foolishly relied upon the weather service's map, the one with the broken line that runs up the center of the Cone of Uncertainty. Now there are 3.2 million people without power, some living in 20-floor "walk-ups" with no glass in their windows or sliding glass doors. Down in Naples, some have neither power nor running water, some have water but no power, some have tree holes in their roofs, some have no roofs at all. If you want to see local photos of the damage, do a Google search for the Naples News, the Palm Beach Post, the Boca Raton News, and the Miami Herald, and see what they are displaying.

The only good news is, we don't need power for the air conditioners. It was 50 degrees outdoors in Clearwater this morning and it's 74 degrees inside the house right now with the a/c and the heat off. Great stuff! Tomorrow I'm going to finish a defensive motion to file in a federal case I'm defending and then I'm going to get into a weekend mood right away.

Godot arrived

Hurricane Wilma is rapidly becoming history as I type this, at least for us Tampa Bay area residents. The storm came inland on top of Marco Island, south of Naples. We've had a little wind and rain here in Clearwater. I had a dental appointment at 7:30 this morning. Just as my dentist was complimenting me on the healthy condition of my gums while reaching back for the old hammer and chisel, the power went out. Got home in time to see some video from Naples. Lots of wind and flooding in Naples, which was near the northern wall of the eye as it went over. The report from Jill is, no power and no water, and our call to her was the first news she's had this morning. Two trees are down on the roof of Dewey's newly constructed house. There are trees down all over town. Meanwhile, Wilma is racing across the state at 25 mph, slightly south of the projected track. The western edge is being flattened somewhat by the cold front that is driving it east and north. Tomorrow we are going to have lows in the 50s.

waiting for Godot

Hurricane Wilma is out there, moving slowly, aimed northwest. Why worry? But the hurricane wizards and their computer models and their spaghetti maps are predicting it will make a right turn towards West Palm Beach by way of Naples. That depends on a lot of variables. . .will it turn? When will it turn? How far will it turn? Will it then go in a straight line? The longer it stays on its present course before turning, the more likely it will be to aim itself at the Tampa Bay area, if it goes straight after turning. The target date, so to speak, is now Monday, not Sunday, not Saturday, as was the early forecast. Aaaargh. See my post below for the link to the current weather map.

I spoke too soon [updated]

Just when I was admiring the "cool" weather and the opportunity to turn the A/C off, Mother Nature reared her ugly head with Tropical Migraine Number 24 [now known as Hurricane Wilma]. Check this link for current information:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at4+shtml/204841.shtml?5day

On Sunday, I said that this beast appeared to have two probabilities: One was to throw an uppercut into the Tampa Bay area, and the other was to give the New Orleans area the third-strike-and-yer-out treatment. On Sunday, our weather guy on TV showed us one of those spaghetti maps this afternoon and most of the computer models were running right over Tampa Bay. This is not good.

Update: This is suddenly a Category Five, yes Five, hurricane. They are now showing a projected path running right across Naples and over to West Palm Beach, but note that the "Cone of Uncertainty" is wide enough to reach Tallahassee. They do not really know where this thing is going, but the odds are that Saturday is going to be a disastrous day for a lot of people. The only good news is that the New Orleans area should get a break from this one.

Never mind the wool socks; where are my waterproof boots? It's time to check out our hurricane supplies.

fall in Florida, part 3

The current weather forecast calls for lows in the UPPER 60's this weekend. Cool! Time to get the flannel shirts and wool socks out! Clearwater Jazz Holiday opened last night and the first wave of cool weather always blows in for that. We have frozen our giblets sitting at the park during Jazz Holiday.

You non-Floridians may think I'm jesting, but this is a sure sign that summer is almost thinking about getting ready to decide whether to go away for the year.

just blogging along

I've been doing this blog thing for fifteen months now. Periodically, like everytime I fiddle with it, I ask "why?" It started out as sort of an open e-mail to our children, nice Florida kids who left home for the colder climates of Massachusetts, Colorado, and California. The idea was to drop little reminders of life back home without cluttering up their in-boxes. They can check in daily, monthly, or not at all.

That grew into "look-what-I-did" brag book. Here's Dad, trying to be helpful to hurricane victims. Here's Dad, taking and completing a Scuba course. Here's Dad. . .but that got tiresome.

Lately it has become a venting place, an electronic letter to the editor of no newspaper, to be read by maybe a dozen people but not to be carried out with tomorrow morning's egg shells and coffee grounds. This has actually turned into something that justifies the nominal effort, and it's fun when I can import a good political cartoon or photograph.

It is also an exercise in self-restraint. I've had years of practicing self-restraint. I do not want something I write to show up in tomorrow's newspaper to my embarrassment. A good friend of mine, the police legal adviser for another city in a galaxy far away, once referred to the city's police officers as "hot dogs." The newspaper loved it. The cops did not. He was embarrassed. That perfectly illustrates why you need to assume that whatever you write will eventually be read by the wrong people. Some folks are a bit too sensitive but there's no point in picking a fight unless you really intend to and have another job lined up. That's why you won't find me discussing my current job, the people I work with, or my employer. There's too much other stuff to grouse about without having to explain myself to somebody whose opinion really counts.

abolish the death penalty, part two

A gal named cessna asked me which Florida governor didn't sign death warrants. Well, it turns out I exaggerated somewhat. Florida's death penalty was declared unconstitutional, along with other federal and state capital punishment laws, in 1972. For about seven years prior to that, beginning in 1965, there was an unofficial moratorium on executions, nationwide. No executions took place in Florida from 1964 to 1979, which covers Reubin Askew's two terms as governor. In 1976, the laws of several states including Florida were upheld by the Supreme Court. Florida's first execution after that moratorium was John Spenkelink's in May of 1979. There were no more in Florida for the next four years. Back to cessna's question: There were no executions during Bob Graham's first term in office (1979 to 1983) except for Spenkelink's, but whether he signed death warrants during that time, I don't know. After his re-election, there were eight executions in 1984 alone.

say goodbye to the Adam's Mark Hotel

The Adam's Mark Hotel on Clearwater Beach came down shortly after 7:00 this morning with a mighty implosion. The Adam's Mark was the first of the tall hotels you encountered after going down the beach past the concession stand and the southern-most parking lot. It's too bad I have no sound. This started with BLAM, BLAM, BLAM at regular intervals, ten or so BLAMS, and then the hotel collapsed in a matter of seconds. You can click for a bigger image.

an arrogant insult: the nomination of Harriet Miers

I consider the nomination of Harriet Miers to the vacancy on the Supreme Court to be an arrogant insult to the nation.

To quote Pres. Bush: Miers "will strictly interpret our Constitution and laws. She will not legislate from the bench." That statement is happy horse feathers. The Constitution, written more than 200 years ago in concise terms, does not and cannot be applied to every factual situation without some measure of interpretation. There is no such thing as "strict" interpretation. Be glad of that. Otherwise, you would not have a constitutional right to privacy, which is mentioned nowhere in the Constitution.

To be able to apply the Constitution requires an exceedingly rare mental capacity. You need a mind capable of dealing with messy, sometimes ambiguous, sometimes conflicting, facts. After wrapping your mind around the facts, you need to be able to apply legal principles that often are in conflict with each other. Most federal judges have learned to do this fairly well, some better than others, most better than state court judges who see constitutional issues infrequently. The mind of a good federal judge is a wonder to behold. The best ones do not begin with the conclusion and work backwards. They begin at the beginning and plow forwards to a decision which is consistent with precedent.

My point is that we have hundreds of federal judges who have both the intellectual capacities and the judicial temperament to wear the robes of a Supreme Court Justice. Becoming president of the Texas Bar Association and being George W. Bush's confidant and in-house legal adviser are not qualifying events.

fall in Florida, part 2

The subtle signs of autumn in Florida are beginning to sneak up on us. The water in our swimming pool has cooled down somewhat. The air in the mornings is a tad cooler, or at least it no longer feels like the inside of somebody's mouth as it has all summer. The days are a little shorter. The lawn doesn't need mowing as often. Best news: Hurricane season is coming to a close, but it will be another month before we can pay more attention to the sports guy than the weather guy on the evening news. This isn't like autumn in New England or Michigan or Kentucky, but neither are our winters.

abolish the death penalty

This is long but bear with me.

When I was younger, I believed in the rightness of the death penalty. I could have pulled the switch.

I no longer believe that our criminal justice system is capable of sorting the guilty from the innocent to the level of certainty that justifies killing those convicted of a capital crime. Here is the most recent example, from the Associated Press. This man was not sentenced to death but many others have been after being convicted of similar offenses on similar evidence. As you read this, ask yourself where were you 19 years ago and what have you been able to do with your life since then. I have italicized the more atrocious aspects of this story:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Barry Gibbs was a forgotten man convicted of a forgotten crime he said he never committed: the 1986 slaying of a prostitute in Brooklyn.

It took a more memorable case -- the arrest earlier this year of a former detective on charges he doubled as a mob hit man -- for authorities to finally listen to Gibbs. On Thursday, a judge threw out Gibbs' 1988 murder conviction and released him based on new evidence that the same detective coerced a witness into identifying him as the killer.

"I knew I was innocent," Gibbs, 57, said at a crowded news conference at his lawyers' office. "I just had to make people believe." [Nineteen years ago he was 38 years old.]

The sudden release of Gibbs after 19 years behind bars was the latest twist in the case of former detectives Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, dubbed the "Mafia cops" by tabloids. Both were arrested in Las Vegas in March on federal charges alleging they moonlighted as professional hit men in the 1980s and 1990s, settling scores against rivals of a Lucchese crime family underboss for tens of thousands of dollars.

Eppolito also was the lead investigator in the slaying of the prostitute. He located a witness who testified at a trial that, while jogging, he had seen Gibbs dump the body of the strangled victim near a bridge.

Gibbs, at the time a postal worker who was struggling with a drug problem, admitted he once had an "encounter" with the woman but said he never harmed her. Still, he was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.

Following Eppolito's arrest, Gibbs' lawyers urged federal agents and prosecutors to re-examine his case. The discovery of an old homicide file on the prostitute's killing in the former detective's Las Vegas home raised suspicions further.

Under recent questioning by the FBI, the witness recanted, claiming Eppolito had bribed and intimidated him into identifying Gibbs, authorities said.

Gibbs said he was looking forward to feasting on a lobster tail stuffed with crab meat before worrying about how he'll survive on the outside.

"I was a legitimate guy," he said, "and now I have nothing."

Run/walk/stroll/amble for the Cure

The annual Komen Foundation Race for the Cure for Breast Cancer drew 12,000 people to downtown St. Petersburg this morning. It was a beautiful, hot day. Here's the starting line:

and here's a view from the rear of the pack with most of the route behind us. Not the complete rear; we started late. We completed the 3K hike in about 1:10, give or take a few minutes.

thank God for small things

Years ago I heard the then-mayor of Jacksonville tell a group of Methodist men that he believed God answers small prayers - like, for example, an empty parking space in front of the courthouse when you are about to be late for a hearing. I've never bought that, because God usually acts like the Cosmic Clockmaker. . .wind it up, turn it loose, sit back, and see what happens. But, tonight, I am thinking of a few things to be grateful for. Whether God had anything to do with it remains to be seen. In no particular order:

* A lawsuit against my city that I am defending has been dismissed by a federal judge. The plaintiff gets another chance, but for the moment, the pressure between my eyes has eased considerably.

* Representative Tom DeLay (R) has been indicted. He is accused of conspiring to violate a Texas ban on the use of corporate money by state political candidates, by funneling thousands in corporate contributions through the Republican National Committee. He is innocent, he says, of course. The prosecutor is described as a partisan (read: Democratic) fanatic, which the prosecutor denies, of course. I'm always happy to see pompous, self-righteous fat cats do the "perp walk."

* My fantasy football team, which I did not actually select, is 3 - 0 and leading the league, due to no talent or skill on my part, absolutely none.

* The Bucs are 3- 0 due to the talent and skill of several rookies and second year players.

* The Devil Rays have lately discovered they are a major league baseball team. Since the All Star break, they are winning more than losing. News of their breaking .500 for half a season actually brought tears to the eyes of Lou Piniella, who unfortunately will be either fishing or managing a better team next year.

* The Seminoles are 3 - 0 (2 - 0 in the ACC).

* The Gators, Seminoles, and Hurricanes are ranked 5, 6, and 9 in the AP Top Ten.

* The old Romans were correct: If the citizens are restive, distract them with sports. Federal litigation and the indictment of politicians are "sports."

* I've found a pair of earbuds for my iPod that fit my ears. Jeez, what a difference in sound quality. Anybody want the earbuds that came with my iPod, which are designed for the ears of a mule?

* We got some rain today. Tough question: If God gets credit for rain, which he usually does, who gets credit for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita?

cartoonists get it, part 2

I'm becoming a big, big fan of Steve Kelley of the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

look, Ma, I'm flying!

I've learned a new way to view the world, right here on my home computer.

Google Earth.

At first, it looks like one of those screen savers with an Earth photo. Zoom in, and it begins to look like MapQuest using satellite photos. Then you discover "tilt," and suddenly you are flying. Land features rise up in 3-D. So do buildings in major cities to a limited extent, not as dramatically as hills and valleys.

I found our house in Clearwater and saw a large oak tree that became history about 18 months ago, dating the picture. I typed in the first address I had to memorize as a five-year-old in Louisville and it took me to the right block. I think the house with the brown roof was where we lived. Somebody's added a detached garage. Next, I tried various family addresses. The 3-D effect is very good in Boston and San Francisco.

But, I had to fly. I flew up and down Zion Canyon, where I once spent a summer pumping gas, and the Grand Canyon, which I've seen from the north rim. I found the town in Germany where I was stationed for two years. The resolution is too low to make out buildings but the hills and valleys are wonderful. Naturally I had to fly over the Alps and on to Venice, back through France, and up to Scotland.

I'm going to be flying in my dreams tonight.

doomed to repeat it

You've heard what happens to people who pay no attention to history.

CNN's web site has a list of the ten deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history. Two of them hit Louisiana. The "Grand Isle Hurricane" of 1909 had a death toll of "at least" 350. It came ashore between Baton Rouge and New Orleans with a 15-foot storm surge that inundated much of southern Louisiana. Six years later, another storm caused Lake Pontchartrain to overflow its banks, inflicting a death toll of 275 people. CNN's comment includes this observation, obviously written before Katrina: "That scenario is one that hurricane experts don't like to ponder because if the city, surrounded on three sides by water, is hit by a major hurricane, the storm surge might inundate the city."

Number one and number ten on the list were hurricanes that hit Galveston, in 1900 and 1915. Galveston had constructed a seawall after the devastation of the 1900 hurricane. Still, 275 people died when the 1915 storm hit.

All four of these hurricanes were Category 4. Katrina was a Category 4 storm. Rita, a Category 4 storm, is headed for Texas.

Why do we not take these things seriously during normal weather? Why don't we remind ourselves that it wasn't raining when Noah built the Ark?

Hurricane season ain't over yet

Just when I was hoping this year's season might give Florida a break we have Rita, a tropical storm that's likely to inflict damage upon Cuba and the Conch Republic, a/k/a the Florida Keys, in the next couple of days. They don't need this. The rest of Florida could use some rain in the worst way and this is the worst way. In September we've had something like 0.000001 inches of rain, way below normal. My front lawn looks like the underside of my car. You can find where Rita is by doing a Google search for any weather site that keeps up with tropical weather. Monroe County, Florida, has a good one - and they need one. Their hold on life is precarious enough without a storm taking out the Seven Mile Bridge between the mainland and the Conch Republic. In fact, as we speak, they have issued a mandatory evacuation for everybody below the Seven Mile Bridge and our governor, Jeb Bush (smarter than his brother but no less a political whore) has already declared a state of emergency so they can saddle up and ride when needed. I'm tired of it already. I'm going to go to bed and set my alarm clock for November.

TV news gets it, accidentally

A picture is worth a thousand words:

putting the "D" back in D-Rays

From the perspective of the morning after, our Devil Rays look better than they did at bedtime last night. Maybe it was the shrieking girls that threw me off, but I do have to give the Rays' defense a lot more credit than I felt they deserved last night. The Yankees left 9 runners stranded on base. That's the good news. Bad news: The Yankees scored all of their runs when they had two out. As the old saying goes, a good offense will beat a good defense. The Rays' offense didn't give up, though. Every time the Yankees scored, the Rays came back and tied, right up to the end when they finally ran out of gas.

It is time to add the obligatory, "This is a young team. They should look great next year." May we all live so long.

baseball, ho-hum

I haven't written much about baseball this summer. The Yankees are in town, so we went to see if the Devil Rays could exact revenge for being pounded 17 to 3 last night. Alas, no. A score of 6 to 5 sounds like it should have been an exciting game, and I suppose it was mildly exciting for Yankees fans, but it was more like watching two wrestlers trying to get a grip on each other. I don't mean Saturday Night Rasslers. I mean real wrestling, Greco-Roman or collegiate style. Real wrestlers can look immobile but every muscle is straining for some advantage and a three-minute round feels like forever. Tonight, nine innings felt like forever.

The game featured no home runs and several attempted but unsuccessful double plays. The double play is the prettiest athletic move in any sport -- when it works. The Devil Rays shortstop, Julio Lugo, committed two errors and brought the game to a fitting conclusion when he was thrown out at second base in the bottom of the ninth with Carl Crawford at the plate. Was he stealing, or was he just told to run with two out and got caught? I hope some fool of a manager flashed a steal or a hit-run signal because if Julio thought that up on his own, he's history or ought to be. The game highlights consisted of a few doubles and a Carl Crawford triple earlier in the game. Back to my wrestling analogy, it was a few take-downs and a few escapes but no pin. They just ran out of time, thankfully.

I can't decide if the Rays deserve praise for keeping the game so close or if the Yankees really are that bad this year. The Yankees pitcher, a Korean with a fan club sitting behind us, kept a tight lid on Rays batters. By the time he'd thrown 47 pitches our guy had thrown 85 and should have come out. The Rays went two for three in their last trip to New York and the Yankees are returning the favor here at home, with the possibility of going three for three.

Here's an interesting side note: For the entire game we had two pubescent girls screaming their heads off three rows behind us. I'm glad to see girls so excited about baseball but their voices didn't wear out until the ninth inning. All night long it was, "Go Yankees, go, WHOOOOOOOOOOOO." "Go, Matsui, you can do it, WHOOOOOOOOOOOO." I can't spell that whoop at the end the way it came out of their throats but it was primal and it was tiresome, another argument for staying home and watching the game on TV. But, the Red Sox will be in town next week. That should be more interesting, or at least the possibility of bench-clearing brawls should be greater, and duty will call us back to one more live game before the season wears down.

cartoonists get it

From the New Orleans Times-Picayune, a Steve Kelly cartoon:

you pay 'em for what they know

Once again, I've had an $85 lesson in plumbing. . . for fifteen minutes of the plumber's time spent wrapping a "ratty looking piece of string" (my wife's description) around the threads of the pipe I was trying to install, then adding some joint compound to make a leakproof connection. Part of that time was spent writing out the bill.

I have a great idea for a book. All of us home handy-man types should get together and compare notes about similar lessons learned from plumbers. We could charge what it's cost us to learn those secrets - about $85 per page should do it. Would they get after us for giving away trade secrets? Do the plumbers have carefully guarded secrets like the Masons? Was there a plumbers guild back when the Masons were getting organized?

My favorite lesson so far is how to unclog a stopped-up drain after somebody (not to mention any names) ran too many potato peelings through the garbage disposer. I couldn't reach the clog with the "snake" so I called a plumber. His solution: Use MY ladder to get up on the roof so he could run MY garden hose down the vent pipe that comes up through the roof, then have ME turn MY water on so he could jam MY garden hose up and down, breaking up the potato peelings. That was cheaper than 85 bucks but this was years ago when everything was relatively cheap.

This time, at least the plumber had to provide his own string. (I haven't looked to see if he included the cost of string in the bill.) I am not sure whether he used his own joint compound or the tube I had sitting out on the bathroom counter. But at least the danged thing is installed, operational, and leak-free.

chess nuts

I started a simple plumbing project the other day. That's a contradiction in terms; plumbing projects are never simple and this one has me stumped. It is good that the family is far way from me when I attempt a plumbing job because the air turns blue and my negative aura can bleach hair at fifty feet. This simple job is a replacement of a shower head. That entails replacing a perfectly good pipe because this shower head needs a new, longer pipe with a 90-degree bend at the end. Problem: The threads inside the connection at the end of the water supply pipe behind the wall look like they have been beaten with a wrench, and I cannot get a watertight connection. Solution: Admit defeat and call a plumber. I am hoping that he (do you know a female plumber?) knows some plumbing magic that does not require cutting a hole in the wall for access because that will be a helluva mess to repair.

For escape, I've started playing chess lately. We have a chess club that meets on Friday nights, and today they are sponsoring an all-day tournament. Last night I was this close to signing up, but I'm not ready for tournament play yet. The chess club regulars can beat me with their eyes closed. Let me tell you that chess club regulars are the geekiest geeks you will meet anywhere, in a whole different league than computer geeks. Once you accept that, they are not a bad lot. Of the ones who talk, some have a sense of humor. They are obnoxious in a passive sense but I can deal with that.

So I stayed home from the tournament, made a few more attempts at the shower head, and have concluded that I should have gone to the tournament instead. Better to lose to a better chess player than lose to a piece of brass that hides behind a bathroom wall.

yes, a helluva job

A week ago yesterday, George W. Bush praised FEMA chief Michael Brown, saying "you've done a helluva job, Brownie." Today, Brownie was relieved of command of the hurricane relief effort and shipped back to Washington to "return to his duties as overall FEMA chief."

This raises a few questions.

If George W. Bush cannot tell a helluva good job from a job that deserves sacking, can we trust his judgment on other issues?

If George W. Bush meant to say "a helluva bad job," why did it take a week to sack Brownie? Is there anything else he's said lately (i.e. since his election) that sounds like one thing but means the opposite?

What are the "overall duties" of the FEMA chief, if not to supervise relief efforts following the single most devastating disaster since the Chicago Fire and the San Francisco Earthquake?

Inquiring minds want to know.

fall in Florida

Fall isn't here yet, not by a long shot, but summer is beginning to show some sign of releasing its tight, sweaty grasp. There is a slight (very slight) coolness in the mornings. The temperature has dropped a couple of degrees and the humidity is down a few percentage points. It doesn't feel like Hell's entry chamber but more like Hell's front porch, with a breeze coming off the bay. This year the breeze smells like the aftermath of Red Tide.

In a few weeks I will tell my wife that there is a touch of fall in the air which only us long-time Floridians can detect because it's so subtle. She, a Michigander, will tell me to shut up. This has become an annual ritual.

I know better, because we lived in Louisville when I was a kid and I associated the name "September" with back-to-school, the smell of burning leaves in the air, and something called "Autumn." In our county, school started last month, nobody burns leaves in their back yards, and we have to drive north to find autumn foliage. Worse, we don't see cool air until Halloween, sometimes later. All we are feeling right now is the reminder that fall will be here in a month or two.

bureaucratic bungling has become criminal malfeasance

We've been hearing these stories all week. A manufacterer of bottled water has hundreds of thousand of bottles of water ready to ship to the disaster zone but is told no, send money instead. Money? To buy water, I suppose. A military unit has ice and water ready to ship but can't get clearance from FEMA.

Tonight, CNN's web site is carrying this AP story, from Baton Rouge, which points blame at Louisiana state officials:

Volunteer physicians are pouring in to care for the sick, but red tape is keeping hundreds of others from caring for Hurricane Katrina survivors while health problems rise. Among the doctors stymied from helping out are 100 surgeons and paramedics in a state-of-the-art mobile hospital, developed with millions of tax dollars for just such emergencies, marooned in rural Mississippi.

A surgeon, Dr. Preston "Chip" Rich of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said, "We have tried so hard to do the right thing. It took us 30 hours to get here," he said. That government officials can't straighten out the mess and get them assigned to a relief effort now that they're just a few miles away "is just mind-boggling," he said.

While the doctors wait, the first signs of disease began to emerge Saturday: A Mississippi shelter was closed after 20 residents got sick with dysentery, probably from drinking contaminated water. Many other storm survivors were being treated in the Houston Astrodome and other shelters for an assortment of problems, including chronic health conditions left untreated because people had lost or used up their medicine.

The North Carolina mobile hospital stranded in Mississippi was developed through the Office of Homeland Security after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. With capacity for 113 beds, it is designed to handle disasters and mass casualties. It travels in a convoy that includes two 53-foot trailers, which as of Sunday afternoon was parked on a gravel lot 70 miles north of New Orleans because Louisiana officials for several days would not let them deploy to the flooded city, Rich said. Yet plans to use the facility and its 100 health professionals were hatched days before Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, doctors in the caravan said.

Dr. Jeffrey Guy, a trauma surgeon at Vanderbilt University who has been in contact with the mobile hospital doctors, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview, "There are entire hospitals that are contacting me, saying, 'We need to take on patients," ' but they can't get through the bureaucracy.

My prediction: Before the end of this calendar year, we will see class action lawsuits, criminal indictments, or both.

a modest suggestion

I can go for weeks without blogging, but the destruction of New Orleans and other coastal communities has really grabbed my attention, for a variety of reasons. I think I've finally discovered the real purpose of a blog - it is a place to vent, like a letter to the editor, but it won't be used the following day to wrap old fish and coffee grounds.

New Orleans has grabbed my attention because we went there for our honeymoon. I see U.S. Highway 90 torn up and I think, that's the road we took from Tallahassee. I think of the French Quarter and I think of Preservation Hall, where we saw old jazz musicians whose careers started back in the 1930's (this was 1972). I hope the current crop of jazz musicians were able to save their musical instruments as well as their lives. The fortunes lost in the flood included ancient instruments and old sheet music and old photos of the jazz greats in their prime. Good news: Fats Domino has turned up alive and well, after being unaccounted for.

Now, my modest suggestion: Is there anybody who doesn't like Dixieland jazz music? You can be down, your car's broken, your dog's run away, your mortgage and your girlfriend are overdue. . .but five minutes of Dixieland will have you tapping your feet and realizing the sun will rise tomorrow like it always does and life will go on. So -- what if everybody went to the music store and bought up all the Dixieland jazz recordings? The musicians should get a royalty. The record stores will make money. Here's the challenge to the industry: Wouldn't it be great if the music industry, inspired by the sudden sales of Dixieland jazz, pumped money into the recovery efforts to help bring New Orleans back on its feet? Yes, it would be great. Why should that not happen?

where IS the Cavalry?

I took a break to watch CNN a few minutes ago, which is always bad for your mental health. They were interviewing a sheriff in Virginia who put an emergency response team of 22 deputies on the road, with all the gear they needed to be self-sufficient, and he spent hours on the phone trying to get authorization. He was finally told by some dimwit at the Louisiana state police that they weren't asking for help, so he called his deputies back (they were three hours down the road).

The bureaucratic mind is an awful thing to behold.

(a) After saddling up to ride, why spend hours trying to get "authorization?" He didn't say so, but I'll guess he was worrying about his budget and whether he would get reimbursed (or be required to pay the expenses out of his own pocket), and who would cover the liability for any damages they might cause, or injuries to his deputies, or loss of property. Under these circumstances, this is like a fire truck barred from a fire by a picket fence. When that happens, the picket fence becomes history.

(b) Who in Louisiana with an IQ above room temperature would dare tell a sheriff from out of state to keep his troops at home? I hope that imbecile has already lost his job.

WHERE is the Cavalry?

From this morning's edition of the Times-Picayune:

Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard called the lack of federal response "a disgrace."

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was equally blunt. Federal and state officials need to stop having "goddamn press conferences" and get the relief effort rolling, he said in a late-afternoon radio interview, an angry flare-up out of character for the popular, generally easy-going former cable TV executive.

And from CNN's web site:

Even Republicans were criticizing Bush and his administration for the sluggish relief effort. "I think it puts into question all of the Homeland Security and Northern Command planning for the last four years, because if we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?" said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

spammers should be dragged out and shot

I apologize to my four or five regular readers of this blog, but I had to activate "word verification" for anyone leaving a comment. That's the thing that shows you a picture of a word and you, a real human being and not a spam-spewing computer, have to type it in. I did this because my last posting got tagged with comments from three spammers, all anonymous.

WHERE IS THE CAVALRY?

In the immortal words of Kate Hale, the Dade County emergency management director,

"WHERE IS THE CAVALRY?"

That was in 1992, after Hurricane Andrew wiped out the City of Homestead and nearly obliterated southern Dade County. What have the feds learned since then?

It has been three days since Katrina made landfall on New Orleans, Biloxi, Gulfport and other coastal communities. As I type this there are thousands of people stranded where they can't get out. People are dying by the minute. The hospitals are running out of supplies.

The government has helicopters, boats, amphibious craft, big trucks, and armored personnel carriers which can be used to bring food, water, and medical supplies and to carry people out. Where are they?

The impetus to take immediate action could have come from our Commander in Chief. The poor guy had to cut his month-long vacation short two days so he could fly over the disaster area on his way back to the White House. Meanwhile, whole dragoons of bureaucrats seem to be waiting for somebody to give them a request for help (the official excuse for non-action after Andrew), or orders, or authorization, or something.

Congress, which came back to town on a weekend to enact legislation for Terri Schiavo, might come back in a day or two to make a decision about Katrina. Fortunately for them, it is not necessary for all members of Congress to interrupt their vacations to return to Washington for this. They can approve the appropriation by a simple voice vote. The absentees are probably writing the statements they will insert in the Congressonal Records whenever they go back to work. You and I should have such jobs.

p.s.: After initially posting this, I watched CNN's reporting of successful rescues by emergency response teams from California. Imagine that: Rescue guys could bring boats and other gear from California and go into action faster than the federales. But I will give credit to one heroic group of federal officers - - the Coast Guard. The USCG is the most under-rated military branch we have. They have been heroic during and after Katrina, pulling people to safety.

New Orleans newspaper is now a cyberpaper

Katrina has done one thing both interesting and positive, and that is to shut down the presses of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. That's "positive" in the sense that it forced the paper into the 21st Century with no looking back: The paper is now on line. I have added a link to the paper in the "Links" column, to the right. Go there for some of the most compelling news coverage you will find anywhere.

Katrina, Mother Nature, life, death

I'm sitting here ready to go take the deposition of the owner of a billboard company, in a lawsuit arising from our fair city's code enforcement program, but I am distracted by what we have seen from Katrina's trail of damage and tears. My heart is not in this deposition, but there's a job to do and I'll do it.

Meanwhile, Mother Nature has delivered a sucker punch to the belly of the South, blowing down billboards along with buildings and bridges, making hundreds of square miles totally unlivable. The devastation on human lives has not be counted nor will it ever be fully accounted for. Parts of New Orleans may become an uninhabited wasteland after the flooded homes are bulldozed.

I thought what Hurricane Andrew did to Homestead, Florida, was the worst a hurricane could do, and certainly never wanted to see another one like it. In terms of magnitude and effects on human lives, Katrina sets a new low. Recovery will take years, and for too many people, recovery will be an impossible dream.

You can contribute to the recovery efforts. We are going to contribute to the United Methodist Church's recovery operation. They were helpful in Florida last year and will be there again, to the best of their resources, for the victims of Katrina.

it must be hurricane season

We are about to head down to Naples, Florida, for a family reunion in honor of my mother-in-law's 80th birthday. This will be more fun than it sounds, 'cause my in-laws are a very sociable group and like to eat well.

Naturally, because this is August, the skies are omenous with an approaching tropical storm named Katrina. I'm picking up family at the airport around midnight tomorrow night and then we are heading south right away to beat the storm. You can check on the location and likely path of Katrina. Go here: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ and then look for the 3-day or 5-day "cone" for Katrina. We are going to have a wet Saturday. I was hoping to go diving Saturday but that isn't going to work this weekend.

Go, Seminoles

News flash: "Florida State University can continue to use 'Seminoles' as its nickname. The NCAA issued a statement today saying it is removing FSU from the list of colleges and universities subject to restrictions on the use of Native American mascots, names and imagery at NCAA championships."

Being an FSU alumnus, I am glad to see this.

Back in the Dark Ages, when I was an undergraduate, FSU had "Sammy Seminole," a gymnast who could do back-flips the entire length of the football field (no mean feat). FSU also used a stupid-looking cartoon that would truly be insulting to Indians of all nations by today's standards. . .or even by the standards of that unenlightened age.

Even so, the word on campus was that the Seminoles were selected because they were the only undefeated Indian nation in the land, having fought the U.S. Army to a standstill in several campaigns. Also, the other good Florida icons (gators, hurricanes, rattlers, etc.) were taken. Flamingos, mosquitos, and giant cockroaches don't lend themselves to athletic imagery. The pity was that our football team, though valiant, couldn't claim the same record against Gators, Bulldogs, Wildcats, and other creatures of the forest that the Seminoles maintained against the Army.

Flash forward a few years. "Sammy Seminole" became "Chief Osceola" on horseback, wearing a reasonably authentic Seminole Indian outfit and brandishing a flaming spear. Never mind that the historic Osceola was not exactly a chief, or even a Seminole. Never mind that the actual Seminoles did not ride horses and didn't use bows, arrows, or spears much after they figured out the rifle. The point was that the un-authentic Plains Indian garb worn by "Sammy Seminole" was gone and so was the stupid cartoon. In its place was a much more respectable figure of a genuine Indian leader. As if in response to an improved "look," the football team turned into a major national powerhouse - but, alas, without maintaining the undefeated record of the Seminole nation.

the new bridge

Ta-daa! The new bridge to Clearwater Beach
is now open.

This photo was taken while it was under
construction (note the scaffolding, etc.). It
is a "high" bridge, designed to let sailboats
pass under it without the infuriating delays
caused by the old drawbridge being held
open.

I'll have to post a photo of the bridge in its final completed stage, whenever they have it finally completed, but this will give you a good idea of the final results.

The old bridge, from the foot of Cleveland Street, is closed and will be demolished. That will be the end of the historic downtown Clearwater, which will suffer the fate of all the towns on historic Route 66 when the Interstate passed them by. Sad, but there hasn't been much downtown worth going to for many years, not since the retailers opened new stores in the malls and closed their downtown stores.

a small correction

The bridge did open today, or at least one of the east-bound lanes. They had a convoy of city vehicles heading east from the beach, so the pressure was on to get it opened. The actual opening trumped the "grand opening" scheduled for later, when they plan to have runners and joggers trotting over the bridge. We have one old geezer in our part of the state who has somehow become the first to cross several major bridge openings. I'm suspecting he got taken by surprise on this one.

water under troubled bridges

My hometown, Clearwater, has a long sad history when it comes to bridges.

There was the Highway 19 overpass, over Gulf to Bay Boulevard, which couldn't be opened for months because somebody forgot to design (and construct) an expansion joint. It sat out in the hot summer sun for months with water trickling off of it until they fixed the problem. (It was a good fix. The overpass is still there.)

There was the bridge from Clearwater Beach Island to Sand Key, which the locals hated from the get-go. The bridge sagged ten inches one day after giving some city employees enough advance warning to be able to do something about it. That one's been replaced. (The locals hated it because it opened up Sand Key for development, and because it ruined the spot on the south end of the beach where we took the girls to watch the submarine races.)

Now we have the new $69 million bridge from the mainland to the beach. It was looking good, and the city was taking credit for it, until a section of the roadway sank and twisted. They replaced that. Then they found cracks in the four main columns. They built two new columns around each cracked one, and removed the cracked ones. Another section of roadway sank seven inches overnight. They repositioned that one. They found cracks in a section of the south span. They removed and replaced that one.

Finally, today was supposed to be opening day, but the opening has been postponed while they finish one small detail: Paving the roadway. The city quit taking credit for this bridge (a state road department bridge) a long time ago. Now we just keep our fingers crossed.

old church, continued

When I said millions of dollars were at stake, I didn't know the details. This morning's newspaper sheds more light, by reporting that the church property will be redeveloped with a 25-story condominium tower for downtown Clearwater. Not to worry, though. Our City is ever vigilant. Quoth the paper: ". . . the first step in a potential $250-million remake of a waterfront block that includes City Hall, was approved without discussion Tuesday by the city's Community Development Board." [Italics added.]

"Construction on the 157-unit building could begin by the end of the year, said the project's developer, Opus South. The Tampa company must first close on the $15-million sale of the church properties, now scheduled for October."

They need to pre-sell a certain number of condo units. The units will "fetch" between $500,000 and $1-million. Meanwhile, developers will start working on the second, larger phase of the residential, retail and office project. "For that phase, developers envision a ring of restaurants and storefronts around what is now the City Hall property, with offices and lofts above. A new City Hall could also be part of the project, as well as $750,000 worth of public art."

I have a suggestion for the public art phase. Leave the church's grand old sanctuary where it is, and build the condos, etc. behind it.

"Opus would need to purchase part of the city property in order to complete the project, and that transaction requires voter approval in a referendum. A vote is now scheduled for March 2006."

I think I know how I'm going to vote.

"City officials, meanwhile, are exploring ways to save the original Calvary chapel as a possible performing arts center. Opus has agreed to donate the building and says it could cost $1.5-million to relocate the 1926 chapel." That's because they will need to disassemble it, brick by brick, and rebuild it elsewhere.

my old church

This is the interior of the sanctuary of Calvary Baptist Church, in Clearwater, Florida. Built in the 1920's, its days are numbered. The church got too big for its britches. First, it built a new, huge sanctuary adjoining this one, and now it has sold the property to a developer so they can build a new church on the east side of town. The new one is ugly. The old one will be torn down for condos on the bluff overlooking the harbor. There are millions of dollars at stake, here.

This was the church we attended when we moved to Clearwater. I never noticed the floor being so good looking because the room was filled with pews and our attention was riveted by an old-style Baptist preacher.

Up in the corner, not visible in this photo, are little angelic heads that probably have a fancy architectural name. They fill in the corners where the walls and ceiling and arches meet, and on top of columns. There was a sweet little old lady who attended our church, and the word was that she was the model for the angel heads when she was a little girl. It bothers me to think of those angel heads being torn out and shipped off to the land fill. Unless they come up with a way to save the building, don't be surprised if I am caught some night inside the sanctuary with a hammer and chisel, rescuing a few angels.