ancestors, cont'd

Now that you've met my great-grandfather, meet my grandfather. Known to the family as "Pa," he travelled Kentucky in a mule-drawn wagon selling home products made by the Raleigh Company to farm families. This was before the days of the mail-order catalog, and the business was good enough to let him support a family with five children. He died before I was born but I've met little old ladies from Kentucky who remembered him as the "Raleigh Man."

Pa was also known in his small town as an expert on horses. They had a farmer's market in town on Saturdays, and if a buyer questioned the age of a horse they'd call him in. He could tell the age of a horse by looking at its teeth and, as the saying goes, his word was law on that subject.

He was also a loving family man, and a teetotaler. While I was getting this photo ready to post I spilled some red wine on my keyboard. It doesn't seem to have fried the keyboard but I hope that wasn't Pa's way of telling me he disapproved of my drinking.

I'm not suddenly into ancestor worship, here. I'm just amazed to have learned within the past couple of days that this photo and the one below exist, and that I was able to get digital copies over the Internet just by asking. Cool!

ancestors

Let me introduce you to my great-grandfather. Born in 1832, he died when my father was two years old. He was a Kentucky man. I wish I could tell you his life story was a series of heroic deeds of pioneer days, but the best I can tell you is that he and his wife had eleven children over a span of 20 years and he supported his family by running a store. Considering the time and place, that's sounds heroic to me.

I didn't know this photo existed until yesterday. The original is in the possession of a distant cousin in Maryland. It was copied and distributed thanks to the magic of scanners and the Internet.

When I look at this photo on my monitor, enlarged to fill the screen, there seems to be a light in his eyes and he's looking directly at me. Click on the photo to enlarge it and tell me what you think.

lunacy on Clearwater Beach, cont'd

Our local newspaper, which cannot stop fawning over bloated redevelopment projects, has done it again:

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/02/04/Northpinellas/Short_term_pain__for_.shtml

This seems to have been written with my earlier (unpublished) letter to the editor in front of the writer, for which I ought to be flattered.

Read it carefully. It is an admission of failure. Despite plans that have not borne fruit, they advocate plowing ahead (literally) by plowing up most of the existing parking on South Beach in hopes of what might be built two years from now.

We have friends with a business on the beach. Over the past two years they have lost money, big time. They are not likely to hold out for two more years.

Just because our city has planned to act like lunatics for several years does not mean that they must act like lunatics now.

lunacy on Clearwater Beach

I live in a city that was once known as a beautiful small town on the Gulf of Mexico. Lately, it shows evidence of being governed by imbeciles. But first, take a look at the following and tell me what you think:

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/02/01/Northpinellas/Deal_for_beach_parkin.shtml

I think this is lunacy. The city is removing, within the next few weeks, more than 500 of the 755 public parking spaces on Clearwater Beach to make way for a "revitalization" project. If we wait two years (perhaps riding bicycles to the beach in the meantime), we might be allowed to park in some of the spaces to be built for a Hyatt hotel.

Now the city is ready to spend $9 million for 300 spaces in a garage to be built more than a block from the beach for a condominium project. That garage might be available in two years, if all goes well. We are asked to be grateful because the City has set aside more than $12 million from a local tax called "Penny for Pinellas" for a parking garage, and the leftover cash can be spent on other "big-ticket city projects."

The City has a plan for the beach they call "Beach by Design." It is supposed to mean revitalization. I call it slow death. Hundreds of hotel rooms have already disappeared. The parking will all but disappear just in time for spring break and the summer tourist season.

A vast horde of winter (and summer) visitors no longer patronize shops and restaurants on the beach because they cannot stay there. I fear that their absence will be construed as meaning the beach needs less parking - a vicious cycle, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I hope the City does not begin removing parking spaces from the beach until the voters have had their say on renewing "Penny for Pinellas," which comes up for a vote next month. I predict the tax will be trashed by voters who are tired of seeing vast sums of money spent on big-ticket city projects. Removing the spaces now runs the risk that the beach will be left in the lurch with totally inadequate parking, no money in the slush fund, and no relief in sight.

Why should I care, you might ask? I have lived in this town, off and on, since 1955. Every other town in this county looks better than it did ten years ago. My hometown is slowly going down the sewer pipe.