Jon Dengler talks about how his visit to Manila profoundly changed the way he sees the world, and prompted him to create the Lake House, an intentional community in Tampa.
“We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.
The TEDxTampaBay Salon is the third Monday of every month from 6:30 PM until 8:30 PM at Tre Amici at the Bunker in Ybor City.
Unfortunately, many people who are sympathetic to the concept of evolution don’t know much about it. At Scientific AmericanBrian Switek explains why missing links and great chains of being have no place in discussions of contemporary evolutionary theory.
“The dichotomy between what scientists know and what the public is presented with still hangs on now, even as research conducted within the past 30 years has shown horse evolution to be a tangled story which cannot be corralled into a straight-line narrative. Not only were there multiple radiations of horses over time, but there were even some reversals in which large lineages became dwarfed. There was no onward-and-upward march towards Equus.”
Savage Love by Dan Savage (January 18, 2012, “Out Now”)
The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams (January 20, 2012, “Are blue states smarter than red states?”)
Wikipedia’s Featured Article for January 18, 2012: Nick Drake (See the entire entry here.)
“Nick Drake (1948–1974) was an English singer-songwriter and musician, best known for his sombre guitar-based songs. He failed to find a wide audience during his lifetime, but now ranks among the most influential English singer-songwriters of the last 50 years. Drake released his debut album, Five Leaves Left, in 1969. None of his first three albums sold more than 5,000 copies on their initial release. Drake suffered from depression and insomnia throughout his life, and these topics were often reflected in his lyrics. On completion of his third album, 1972′s Pink Moon, he withdrew from both live performance and recording, retreating to his parents’ home in rural Warwickshire. He died from an overdose of amitriptyline in 1974.”
Over my recent break I had the chance to read Alfred Jarry: A Pataphysical Life by Alastair Brotchie.
Jarry is one of my intellectual and artistic favorites. There’s something about the concept of Pataphysics that resonates strongly with me, along with the anarchistic, vulgar, and absurdist nature of Jarry’s work. What is Pataphysics? Glad you asked.
First, I can hear those of you who already know what it is muttering under your breath “moron-there’s-an-apostrophe-in-’pataphysics-’to-avoid-the-obvious-pun’.”
Here’s Brotchie on the apostrophe –
“The apostrophe to the word Pataphysics is not used (except in reference to the College de ‘Pataphysique). Jarry signaled its desirability, but never employed it himself.”
In chapter 3 “Our Science of Pataphysics” Brotchie provides Jarry’s definitions.
“An epiphenomenon is that which is superimposed upon a phenomenon. Pataphysics [...] is the science of that which is superimposed upon metaphysics, whether within or beyond the latter’s limitations, extending as far beyond metaphysics as the latter extends beyond physics. And an epiphenomenon being often accidental, Pataphysics will be, above all, the science of the particular, despite the common opinion that the only science is that of the general. Pataphysics will examine the laws governing exceptions, and will explain the universe supplementary to this one, or, less ambitiously, will describe a universe which can be–and perhaps should be–discovered in the traditional universe are also correlations of exceptions, albeit more frequent ones, but in any case accidental data which, reduced to the status of unexceptional exceptions, possess no longer even the virtue of originality.
“DEFINITION. Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments.”
I’m not quite exactly sure what any of that means, but I find it compelling nonetheless.
In Caesar/Antichrist a character defines Pataphysics thus –
“Axiom and principle of the identity of opposites, the pataphysician, clamped to your ears and your retractable wings, flying fish, is the dwarf atop the giant, beyond metaphysics.”
Brotchie see Pataphysics as an argument for a “supplementary universe in which imagination would have a reality equivalent to that of the actual.”
Jarry daydreamed his theory of Pataphysics while taking philosophy classes from Henri Bergson.
A teen-aged Jarry just before he had to cut his luxuriant locks for a mandatory stint in the army.
Jarry is probably better known for his play Ubu Roi than his whimsical creation of a new scientific discipline. For some theater historians the debut of Ubu Roi marks the beginning of the modern era in theater. The opening night of Ubu Roi is famous in French theater because of the chaos it caused among the audience. The crowds went wild, some factions stamping and booing, others whistling and cheering. The offensively scatological dialogue and the reprehensible Ubu offended many patrons who were used to seeing serious dramas like the latest from Henrik Ibsen. Those enthusiastically cheering the performance were the bohemians and anarchists delighted by the childish humor and tweaking of authority.
Brotchie helps deflate this story a little by finding references to similar outbreaks at other play openings and some reminsceses from Jarry acquaintances suggesting that Jarry asked his friends to disrupt the play. If people cheered they were to boo, if people booed they were to cheer. Jarry wanted the notoriety that would come with creating such chaos.
He got more than he bargained for and his association with Ubu Roi became his main claim to fame. Think of a pop musician with a single hit song.
For my money, though, it’s the poetical science of Pataphysics that sets him apart from his punk-theater peers.
Brotchie’s biography alternates biographical chapters with thematic chapters covering Jarry’s influence, influences, and the era in which he worked. He does an excellent job of dispelling many of the myths surrounding Jarry (and confirming others), and illuminating how productive and creative he was in his short life-time.
Jarry died at the age of 34 from tuberculosis.
Here is Jarry in his mid-20s at the peak of his career. Ubu Roi has made him the most notorious playwright in Paris and he has moved to the country to pursue bicycling, fishing, drinking, and writing.
A friend describes Jarry’s death –
“The last time that I went to see him, I asked him if there was anything he would like. His eyes lit up. There was indeed something that would bring him much pleasure. I told him I’d get it for him immediately. He spoke. What he would like was a toothpick. I dashed out straight away to buy some for him and came back with a whole packet. He took one between two fingers of his right hand. Joy visibly spread across his face. It seemed a if he suddenly felt filled with a delight as great as when he set off on one of his fishing, boating, or cycling expeditions, his three favorite activities. I had hardly taken a step or two away to speak to the nurse when she told me to look back: he was breathing his last.”
May 22, 1944 Life Magazine Picture of the Week, "Arizona war worker writes her Navy boyfriend a thank-you-note for the Jap skull he sent her"
I guarantee you — pissing on dead bodies is not the worst thing soldiers do to lose the hearts and minds of the “benefactors” of our latest colonial adventure. Americans have a long history of desecrating the enemy dead and keeping war trophies. Tiger Force, anyone?
From the Indian wars to the Civil War to the Philippines to WWII, Korea, Vietnam and our current GWoT there have been a minority of soldiers who commit war crimes. It is as predictable as the sun rising in the east and a warmonger being elected president of the United States.
The real news (should anyone care to report it) would be explaining what we’re doing in Afghanistan. Are the people of Afghanistan really an existential threat to the US? And if they don’t really threaten out existence, then what exactly are we doing there?
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Barack Obama approved the drone strike that burned this girl and killed her family. This is just the kind of stuff that happens when you’re part of a belligerent, aggressive, war-loving nation. Too bad there’s not an anti-war candidate we can vote for (who might actually win).
“Supercut videos (a.k.a pop culture megamixes) are video montages made of overused movie or TV platitudes. Very often, they are meant to highlight how certain hackneyed lines have lost all meaning due to their continuous employment by lazy screenwriters.”
Savage Love by Dan Savage (January 11, 2012, “Santorum Surges”)
The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams (January 13, 2012, “What’s the best animal to slice open and crawl inside to stay warm?”)
Wikipedia’s Featured Article for January 09, 2012: The Green Child (See the entire entry here.)
“The Green Child is the only completed novel by the English anarchist poet and critic Herbert Read. Written in 1934 and first published by Heinemann in 1935, the story is based on the 12th-century legend of two green children who mysteriously appeared in the English village of Woolpit, speaking an apparently unknown language.”
Attention conservation alert: Boring chatter about changing stuff on the blog.
It’s time for this blog to do something else columns/series-wise. Effective immediately, Politics Monday and Across the Tampa Blogosphere are on hiatus. I’ll continue the Community Informatics series, but it will go up when I have a posts ready instead of trying to force them out once a week.
My new schedule has me working 8-5. Writing time on the longer project is between 7 and 9. Saturdays are dedicated to another project that I only work on on Saturdays. That means there’s not much time for substantive blog posts. So, I dunno, maybe some art or monsters or art about monsters or something.
Or maybe some floating whales…
or our diabolical ant overlords…
Not sure yet, but I’m almost positive it will be substance free.
The Atlantic has an interesting essay on the ethics of military robots. We already use them to kill enemy combatants (as well as children and civilians), should we also use them to torture those captured on the “battlefield” (which now covers every inch of the globe, including the USA)? Drone-Ethics Briefing: What a Leading Robot Expert Told the CIA by Patrick Lin.
“This point about deception and bad faith is related to a criticism we’re already hearing about military robots, which I mentioned earlier: that the US is afraid to send people to fight its battles; we’re afraid to meet the enemy face to face, and that makes us cowards and dishonorable. Terrorists would use that resentment to recruit more supporters and terrorists.”
Every time I think about robots on the battlefield I think about Robert Sheckley’s story “The Battle” published in 1954. In “The Battle” all warfare is done by robots and humans sit safely far away from the battlefield. Humanity has reached the point of Armageddon and as the robots fight the hordes of Satan the heavens open up and the angels descend and take all the robots to heaven, leaving humanity behind.
“The song was composed during a transitory time in musical history when songs first began to be recorded for the phonograph. It was among the earliest pieces of popular music to be recorded. Dresser’s inability to control the distribution of phonograph cylinders led him and his company to join other composers to petition the United States Congress to expand federal copyright protections over the new technology.”
I’ve added a new page titled R/CT Recommends. In the right-hand column you’ll find a list of 20 logos and images for things around Tampa I think are worth recommending. To keep the front page from loading too many images I took the complete set of 120 items and divided them into six groups of 20. The six groups alternate randomly, so you should see quite a variety as you visit. If you want to see the entire collection you can find them here. The list is in no particular order.
This is a work in progress. As soon as I collect 20 more things to like I’ll add them to the group.
Note that these are not paid endorsements. As of now, R/CT no longer accepts advertising, or runs Google ads. Everything on here is stuff I like or think is worth recommending.
While I’m reading through that I’ll be compiling a Community Info Checklist. I thought this page (Infotoolkit.org) would provide a checklist (and that I’d run the results of the survey today), but it doesn’t. Or, if it does, I didn’t find it. Which means I’ll need to put together my own checklist and answer the questions.
Since this will be a time-consuming project, I’m going to alternate the Information Needs series with a political pranks series. For example, Abbie Hoffman throwing dollar bills onto the floor of Wall Street is a political prank. I expect both these series to run to eight posts, and then I’ll put them all together into a compilation post at the end of the series (the same convention I used for last summer’s Cemetery Summer series).
There’ll be no Politics Monday post next week since I’ll be out lollygagging by the pool.
On a side note, I recently became a full-time employee. My years as an impoverished student, and an underpaid part-timer, seem to have finally come to an end. What that means for this blog is that it will be updated less frequently. My hope is that as the quantity of posts is reduced the quality will be increased. In addition to the two series’ announced above I’m also working on a bit of Ybor City history that I’ll run as a series as soon as it’s complete.
I’ll also be reading the works of Michael Gurstein as I prepare for this project. Here he is giving an introduction to Community Informatics.
“The application of information and communications technology (ICT) to enable and empower community processes, the goal of Community Informatics is to use information communication technologies (ICT) to enable the achievement of community objectives including overcoming “digital divides” both within and between communities. However, community informatics goes beyond discussions of the “Digital Divide” to examine how and under what conditions ICT access can be made usable and useful to the range of excluded populations and communities and particularly to support local economic development, social justice, and political empowerment using the Internet. Community informatics as a discipline is located within a variety of academic faculties including Information Science, Information Systems, Computer Science, Planning, Development Studies, and Library Science among others and draws on insights on community development from a range of social sciences disciplines. At the forefront of this new field of research is Michael Gurstein, Director of the Center for Community Informatics Research, Training and Development in Vancouver, Canada, which works with communities, ICT practitioners, researchers, governments and agencies as a resource for enabling and empowering communities with Information and Communications Technologies.”
Here’s Brain Pickings The 11 Best Psychology and Philosophy Books of 2011. She also has best of series’ for children’s books, art and design books, photography books, science books, history books, and food books.
“Anyone who laments the excesses of Christmas might consider the Puritans of colonial Massachusetts: they simply outlawed the holiday. The Puritans had their reasons, since Christmas was once an occasion for drunkenness and riot, when poor “wassailers extorted food and drink from the well-to-do. In this intriguing and innovative work of social history, Stephen Nissenbaum rediscovers Christmas’s carnival origins and shows how it was transformed, during the nineteenth century, into a festival of domesticity and consumerism.”
Savage Love by Dan Savage (December 21, 2011, “Good Friends”)
The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams (December 23, 2011, “Should I worry about bugs in my Christmas tree?”)
Wikipedia’s Featured Article for December 24, 2011: Harold Pinter (See the entire entry here.)
“Harold Pinter (1930–2008) was a Nobel Prize-winning English playwright and screenwriter, with a career that spanned more than 50 years. His plays include The Birthday Party, The Homecoming and Betrayal, and his screenplays include The Servant, The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Sleuth. Pinter appeared as an actor in productions of his own work on radio and film. He also undertook roles in works by other writers. He directed nearly 50 productions for stage, theatre and screen. He was born and raised in Hackney, east London, trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Central School of Speech and Drama, and worked in repertory theatre before achieving success as a writer. In his later years, he was known for his political activism and his opposition to the war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. Pinter’s last stage performance was as Krapp in Beckett’s play Krapp’s Last Tape, for the Royal Court Theatre, in 2006.”
“Ed Emshwiller did the Christmas covers on Galaxy Science Fiction magazines from 1951 through 1961. Along with aliens and robots, a recurrent theme was the jolly old four-armed Santa.” (source)
“Krampus is Santa Claus’ whip-toting Christmas sidekick. According to legend, Krampus joins Santa where he tends to the children on Santa’s naughty list. No coal here though. Instead, Krampus whips and licks children into shape or carries them off in his sack.”
I don’t know why I haven’t mentioned this site before. I read it regularly. Open Letter News is an independent journalism site dedicated to covering the Occupy movement in Florida. Quite a bit of their work covers Tampa.
“Rather than continuing the search for [shooting suspect Darnell] Ammons, who should be considered armed and dangerous, Tampa police focused on arresting peaceful, unarmed protesters. It leaves one to wonder, where are the priorities?”
Tampa Bay History remembers when the city of Tampa was dissolved. That’s right, first there was a Tampa, then there was no Tampa, then there was.
“Lesley ran for mayor on the platform that if was elected he would abolish Tampa’s city government. He won in a landslide and, true to his word, he saw that the city’s charter lapsed, therefore ensuring that it would not fall into the hands of Carpetbaggers (Northerners) and Scalawags (Southerners aiding the Carpetbaggers). Tampa would not become a city again until July 1887.”
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Gasparilla Music Festival announces dates and is looking for stakeholders to put up some money. In return this membership will allow special goodies like a swag bag and custom passes.
“They’ve thrown several awareness events and have created a special membership program that’s been dubbed the Ring Of Fire. And it’s not called that for no good reason.
“According to an information pamphlet, members of the Ring of Fire are ‘energetic Tampa residents passionate about continuing the cultural development of the Tampa Bay area’ who will be stakeholders in the festival that connect with other ‘music enthusiasts, area professionals, and community leaders looking to build the festival into the signature music event in the region.’
“Membership is $1,000 and gets you a slew of perks which include two VIP tickets to the inaugural festival as well as two “lifetime” general admission tickets. Members will also a swag bad that includes gear and custom passes as well as recognition in print and web materials.”
This story by Josh Poltilove was originally published Dec. 25, 2003 in the Tampa Tribune.
“But believe it or not, this was the lesser of the show’s Santa woes.
“Clark’s Credit Clothiers was allowing the show to use a dressing room for the Santas to change into costume. That worked well until one Santa stayed hidden in a dressing room until the store closed.
“When the coast was clear, Santa broke through the wall to the building next door, Hayman’s Jewelry Store. Santa practically cleaned out the place.”
My friend JDG posted a link to this story about a Children’s General Assembly.
“Dozens of parents and children gathered in Union Square, New York, on a Saturday morning for the ‘Children’s Anti-Bullying/Police Brutality March.’ A General Assembly (GA) was held, Occupy-style, for children. Following the GA, the demonstrators planned a march to Foley Square, in downtown Manhattan.”
Let’s create a central location where children can gather from across the city to discuss issues important to them.
Tampa can sponsor an annual (at first) Children’s Parliament allowing children to debate, lecture, learn, and help plan the future of the city. This gives children a chance to speak and the adults an opportunity to listen. In the Children’s Parliament only the children decide which ideas are good and which are not. The adults listen and work to understand instead of lecture and pontificate.
It is important to know how children see the world. When we ignore children, we are contributing to our ignorance instead of increasing our knowledge.
Tampa wouldn’t be the first city to institute a Children’s Parliament, and with any luck it wouldn’t be the last.
Scotland has a Children’s Parliament providing civic education to kids under the age of 14. What would our primary school citizens recommend we do about the problems facing us all?
How do you discover and share information about your community?
Regardless of how you define your community information plays an important role. If you have a little league baseball team you need to know who plays whom and when. You need to know the rules of the game and how to find them should a disagreement arise. You need practical information on where to buy uniforms and equipment. You need to know how to get medical attention in case someone gets hurt.
If you’re an informal organization you probably don’t need a formalized history, someone’s memory will serve. More formal organizations keep records and try to translate human memory to paper and electronic files. These tangible memories must be stored, and stored in a way they can be accurately retrieved.
Communities come in all shapes and sizes, and have a wide variety of needs and wants. The study of how they use information is known as informatics.
I am particularly un-fond of the word informatics. It’s clunky and hard to parse. Nonetheless, there’s not really another word that stands for the study of information systems and how they are built and used. An information system is a method of storing and retrieving information.
For the next few weeks I’ll be thinking about what kind of information is most useful for cities, specifically Tampa.
Some of the information we need is readily available from the City of Tampa website. The City website can tell us when trash pick-up day is, where parks are located, who our City Council representative is, etc. Our ability to collect and disseminate this sort of mundane information is greatly enhanced by computers and the Internet.
Over the next few weeks I’ll write about this mundane access to information, but I’ll also spend some time thinking about the more intractable problems of informatics. For example, people are largely indifferent to the quality of information they receive. Study after study has shown that people are just as willing to accept medical or financial advice from friends and relatives as they are willing to accept such advice from doctors or accountants. Is there a way to draw sharper distinctions between the value of high-quality information and low-quality information?
The Journal of Community Informatics defines CI this way: “Community Informatics (CI) is the study and the practice of enabling communities with Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs).” Over the next few weeks I’ll be considering the information ecology of Tampa and thinking of some imaginary solutions to make it better.
“The atmosphere at the park was both uplifting and slightly surreal. About ten kids from the neighborhood, some with adult supervision in tow but many not, were drawn to the event. We had kickball, four-square, crafts, and of course cookies on hand for them (There was also plenty of healthy food served, at least some of it to kids). But even as the kickball game was going on, a trio of field medics visiting from Occupy Miami were demonstrating the proper use and maintenance of a gas mask, and how to use a formula of Maalox to treat pepper-spray victims. We had a steady stream of locals come through to enjoy the amazing meals prepared by Tampa Food Not Bombs. Many of them were aware of Occupy, but many were not. One very important opportunity for improvement in our outreach efforts would be in literature availability, so that Occupy Tampa can spread the word about what they stand for without seeming like aggressive proselytizers.”
Thanks to BB for pointing me to this gigantic compilation of end-of-the-year music best-of lists.
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Grizzly Bear covers The Crystals’ “He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss).” “He Hit Me” was produced by Phil Spector in 1962. It tells the tale of a woman who believes that the abuse she receives at the hands of her boyfriend is a testament to his love for her.
“These Drive By History programs highlight areas in Tampa of historic significance. This video includes features on the Sulphur Springs Water Tower, the Beach Park Gateway, and the Tampa Bay Hotel. This special was produced by Brian Sullivan and was originally run on City of Tampa Television (CTTV) in December, 2011.”
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Thanks to Mike Lortz for mentioning my recent publication!
I’m not the only person putting out a book this year. Check out The Bus Leagues Experience Vol 2. This collection focuses on interviews with minor-league baseball players, but includes “in-depth conversations with writers, historians, fans, a broadcaster, and even a bus driver.” Clark Brooks (of RIToC) is also interviewed about his time with the Tampa Tarpons of the Florida State League.
The Bus Leagues would be an excellent Christmas gift for the baseball fan in your family.
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Tampasphere takes a look at Tampa commutes and concludes that the civic leaders of Tampa aren’t willing to do the heavy lifting necessary to improve commuting in Tampa.
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Art Taco reminds us that shopping at art galleries is a good way to find unique gifts that help the local economy and local artists.
“As we count down towards Christmas, the number of events is thinning, but remember that all the galleries are open and that art is a unique, hand-made, non-corporate gift, the kind people will appreciate and remember. There are works of every description, in every medium and style, ranging in prices from $20.00 up. So get out there and get a gift like no other.”
I think Ybor should have its own Krampusnacht celebration in December, but technically there’s no connection between Ybor and Krampus. To solve this problem I invented a myth that has Krampus regularly visiting Ybor at the end of the nineteenth century.
Tampa already has the invented Jose Gaspar to serve as inspiration for the annual Gasparilla festivities, so I’m sowing seed in some already well-tilled ground.
You can read an earlier post about Krampusnacht here.
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068: Krampusnacht Celebration in Ybor
Tampa and Ybor City already have some great celebration events, from Gasparilla to Guavaween. Why not another? As far as I’m concerned, we need as many excuses to play dress-up and wander from bar to bar as we can find. To that end I recommend that Tampa adopt Krampusnacht as a local celebration.
Krampus is Santa’s evil twin and is celebrated in some Scandinavian countries. There’s almost no cultural reason for Tampa to adopt Krampusnacht, but that shouldn’t stop us from joining in on the fun and creating our own Krampus-by-the-bay legend. Just as community leaders created Gasparilla out of whole cloth, I give you . . .
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The Legend of Krampus in Ybor
Once upon a time Santa had a helper. Not like an elf working in the toy shop, or one of his reindeer, but someone who traveled with him and visited boys and girls around the world. His name was Krampus.
For many years Santa gave toys and treats to all the good little girls and boys, and Krampus gave coal to all the bad little children. Krampus wasn’t handsome and jolly like Santa but looked more like a scary monster. Sometimes he would frighten the children.
Santa and Krampus both felt it was important to remind bad little children that no good would come from their wickedness. There are no treats for the naughty.
And after Christmas both Santa and Krampus would take a vacation. Christmas is hard work!
For many years Krampus would take his vacation in Ybor City. Krampus loved palm trees, cigars, and the warm winter weather of Florida.
Though Krampus looked like a scary monster, he was good friends with Vicente Martinez Ybor, and Mr. Ybor always made sure his friend was welcome when he arrived. Even though Krampus looked scary, he never did really liked scaring the children. He did it because he hoped it would teach them to be good little boys and girls.
After Krampus’s first few visits, seeing that people were still afraid of him even though he was actually very nice and friendly, Mr. Ybor had an idea. If everybody looked like a monster, nobody would mind Krampus. And so began Krampusnacht in Ybor City.
In the week leading up to the day after Christmas, in addition to the Christmastime parties, Ybor began holding Krampus arrival parties. These parties were for grown-ups since it was good for children to remain scared of Krampus. At these parties everyone would wear their scariest masks and drink and smoke cigars in anticipation of Krampus’s arrival.
And then, when Krampus arrived on December 26, they’d hold a huge party to welcome him to Ybor City.
For many years Krampusnacht was famous in Ybor City for its revelry and fun. Some old-timers remember their parents talking about it, but very few people alive today remember Krampusnacht since children weren’t allowed to attend. If a child learned that Krampus was a nice and gentle old elf, he or she would never be afraid of him and wouldn’t stop doing naughty things throughout the year.
Eventually Krampus got tired of being the bad guy. While he still thought it was important to remind naughty children that their wicked ways would have consequences, it was hard for someone so kindly to be constantly scaring the children who actually delighted him so.
And so after a final Krampusnacht in 1919, Krampus decided to retire. He built a home in the Andes mountains, where he still lives today. He no longer scares children and secretly gives them many gifts of toys and candy.
After Krampus retired there were a few more years of parties, but they just weren’t the same without him, so they eventually stopped. Regardless, there are some of us who still believe we should celebrate Krampusnacht on the night after Christmas to remind us all that sometimes monsters aren’t as scary as they seem.
Earlier this year Tampa Do-Gooder interviewed several Tampa-area bloggers for a report on local blogging. Unfortunately real life intervened and the interview project was temporarily put on hold.
I recently asked Dawn about getting a copy of the interview we did and she was kind enough to provide me with an mp3 file. The following interview has not been edited and so is a little raw and lacking in polish.
The interview was conducted at the beginning of June 2011. Listening to it I realize that at the time I was still wavering over whether to complete Re/Creating Tampa the book or not. (Soon afterwards I decided to complete the book and you can find a copy at the link.)
Thanks Dawn for sharing this interview! And thanks for doing the interviews! I hope you find the time in the next few months to put together the whole piece. I’m looking forward to it.
Last week I actually wrote THREE different posts for Politics Monday, but ended up not running any of them. I wrote about the amateurish reporting at the St. Pete Times (I started to call it embarrassing, but they don’t seem embarrassed by their work), the cowardice of Mayor Bob Buckhorn, and the stunning willingness of our Congress to grant extra-legal powers to the Executive Office.
But, frankly, each of these topics is depressing, and it’s not the sort of thing I want to emphasize with Politics Monday.
I thought about doing a link round-up, but all the stories I read and the stories my friends send me are similar bummers.
That means this week I’m stumped. I need some new kind of kick. During the early summer I went through a similar politics burn-out and just put PM on hiatus for a month or so. I’m thinking this time I need a special series to focus on for the next few weeks. Any suggestions?
Undercover 2011 returns with a special Christmas music edition: Holiday Undercover 2011. Here’s Little Scream covering Velvet Underground’s song “Jesus.”
What is third wave coffee? If this sounds delicious (and it certainly tastes delicious) stop by Mojo Books and Music “the only third wave coffee place north of Kennedy.”
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Pedal America, a new PBS show on bicycling and community, visits Tampa.
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As I was researching my current writing project I discovered that USF archivist Tomaro Taylor walked a similar path in 2008. I’m in the process of translating Wen Galvez’s (Wenceslao Gálvez y del Monte) Tampa — Impresiones de un emigrado, an account of Ybor City and Tampa from the 1890s. You can read Tomaro’s translated excerpts at Cigar City Magazine.
“On Saturday nights, Franklin Street is a spectacle, as businesses stay open until rather late hours; some people go for walks, others for shopping, and those who carry packages resemble ants with their winter provisions. It is neither customary to haggle nor alter the price of goods, it being more common that each item’s price is indicated. In spite of this, you can be assured that each article that is worth fifteen cents can be acquired two for twenty-five, because the peseta plays a very important role here, to the extreme of which all that costs twenty-five cents does not sell easily. Thus exists Tampa’s shaky and staggering commerce.”
Congratulations to Ryan Iacovacci for winning the first Awesome Tampa Bay thousand dollar grant for the Birdhouse Buying Club.
The Birdhouse Buying Club acts as an intermediary between people who want to buy locally-produced fruits and vegetables and local organic growers.
“Our buying club is unique in that sense because we go directly to the farm and work with farms that meet our standards. We strive to build trust with our customers and we do that by inspecting the farms ourselves and being honest with our customers when it comes to fertilizers, pesticides, labor practices and such.
“We want to not just support our local farmers, but we want to educate our partners, like you, as much as we can about our farms here locally.”
Awesome Tampa Bay hands out $1,000 fellowships to home-grown projects they deem awesome.
“Eve Walker came in second with her “Get Us Out of the House!” proposal to let parents of special-needs kids have a night out once a month while volunteers watch their kids.
“Roger Allen secured third place with “Tampa Vulturefest,” his vision of establishing an annual festival in downtown Tampa honoring the “much-maligned birdies,” complete with a buzzard statue to lead a parade.”
Savage Love by Dan Savage (November 30, 2011, “Busted”)
The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams (December 02, 2011, “Is there a God (revisited)?”)
Wikipedia’s Featured Article for November 22, 2011: Blackbeard (See the entire entry here.)
“Edward Teach (c. 1680 – 1718), better known as Blackbeard, was a notorious English pirate who operated around the West Indies and the eastern coast of the American colonies. He was probably born in Bristol, but little is known about his early life. He may have served on privateer ships during Queen Anne’s War before he joined the crew of Benjamin Hornigold, a pirate who operated from the Caribbean island of New Providence, and with whom he engaged in numerous acts of piracy. Teach renamed a captured merchant vessel as Queen Anne’s Revenge and became a renowned pirate, his nickname derived from his thick black beard and fearsome appearance; he was reported to have tied lit fuses under his hat to frighten his enemies. A shrewd and calculating leader, he avoided the use of force, relying instead on his fearsome image, and commanding his vessels with the permission of their crews. There are no known accounts of his ever having harmed or murdered those he held captive. Following his death on 22 November 1718, his image was romanticised, becoming the inspiration for a number of pirate-themed works of fiction across a range of genres.”
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