Short Stack: Robyn, ‘Tennie,’ FUNd & Fillers

TBM doesn’t always agree with Robyn E. Blumner (St. Pete Times), but almost always enjoys her writing. Robyn's Oct. 16th Keep Web rude, real was dead-on. Suffice to say, her assessment is that the Wild Wild Web ought to stay that way, despite what she terms some posters' “intemperate, exaggerated and obscenity-laced diatribes that seem to flow directly from their overheated brains to their typing fingers without any civilizing filter.” She also diagnoses that, “When people are cloaked by pseudonymous screen names, nastiness runs amok…” But she punch-lines her column by noting that, “Few things have been as democratizing as giving everyone with a connection to the Internet the ability to publish thoughts to a world audience."
Amen, Sister!
www.sptimes.com/columns/blumner

Image-lovers, especially fans of what was once called “candid photography,” should plan a pilgrimage to the Tampa Gallery of Photographic Arts, 1628 W. Snow Circle in Tampa. The reason: One Shot Harris: The Photographs of Charles “Tennie” Harris. The Oct. 12-18 Weekly Planet (Page 27) has an excellent write-up on this exhibit, so TBM recommends that reading for an overall on both the photographer and his work. These WP sentences perhaps sum it up: “One Shot Harris showed the world real faces of black America – pictures startling in the normalcy of the everyday life they captured. He also documented the realities of prejudice, poverty and the struggles for desegregation and justice that characterized the time.” That "time," btw, was the 1940s-1960s in Pittsburgh, just up the road from where TBM grew up in Western PA. One Shot Harris runs through Jan. 8, 2006. Call 813-251-1800 for details.
www.tgpa.org

The 13th Annual "An Evening with the Authors" will take place Nov.18 at the Clearwater Main Library, 100 Osceola Ave., Clearwater, from 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Cost is $30 for a patron donation or $15 for an individual donation. Proceeds will benefit the Clearwater Library Foundation. Featured authors include (but are not limited to) Roger Bansemer, Bruce Hunt, Lee Irby and Dr. Ruth Peters. (TBM does not personally know any of these authors but is a sucker for doing anything to help libraries.) Call 727-799-3734 for mo info.
www.clearwatercwc.org

WMNF’s Fall FUNd Drive is on and runs through Oct. 28. Tune in to 88.5 FM and join in the FUNd. (Where else can you get an “ALL NATURAL, COMMERCIAL FREE t-shirt short sleeve” for 75 bucks?) MNF bills itself as “Community Radio,” and rightly so. TBM particularly likes the bluegrass and folk programming on Saturday morning. “Plinka-plinka. Strum, strum.”
www.wmnf.org

“Record low unemployment goes even lower” reads the headline in the Tampa Bay Business Journal online. The lead graf states: “Unemployment rates in Florida and the Tampa Bay area continued to decline slightly through September.” The magic number: 3.5 percent. TBM mentions this as he ponders a rhetorical question: “Does anybody realize what an incredibly low number that is?” Sidebar: having lived in South Tampa and then moving (circa 1977-1989) TBM was not prepared for the Yuppi-dom he and Mrs. TBM encountered when they visited Old Hyde Park Village this past week. Fortunately, the TBM’ers were NOT carded, and the fifth generation Cracker (Wife) and former Ditch Digger (TBM) were allowed to quietly leave without incident – and, now, this parting thought: Somebody, somewhere must be makin’ a whole lotta pasta (i.e. moolah, cabbage, boodle, greenback, gravy, gold, lucre, wad, lettuce, wampum, skin, sugar, chips, mazuma, jack or the like) to have transformed Swann – from the Ugly Duck it once was.
tampabay.bizjournals.com

Whatever happened to Hubert Mizell?