If you've tuned out my failed efforts to make Donkeyrock own up to the consequences of his words, I want to bring your attention to a far more edifying discussion over on my Baptist post. Some truly excellent and respectful back and forth.
I attended the City of Lakeland budget hearing last night. Fairly uneventful, though long. Like most budget hearings, it drew sparse attendance from citizens without a vested funding interest
If you care about your country, you need to watch this video from beginning to end. It captures a “rally” against the Park51 Islamic Community Center that has people so exercised. A man, described as a carpenter on his way to work at the Ground Zero construction site, who happens to be black, walks through [...]
The invaluable Cary McMullen continues to be The Ledger's finest asset of credibility. In the last two weeks, he's twice tackled....
As some of you may know, I'm a bit of a Facebook vigilante. If I'm your "friend," I consider your postings no different than someone standing in the middle of Munn Park waving a sign or shouting through a bullhorn. I feel free to repeat them, and I tend to offer, ahem, perspectives on certain things that get said. If this offends, you should unfriend me. Now. Fair warning. With that in mind, I just want to...
Not to belabor the Shirley Sherrod point further, but let's belabor it. The context for all of this is the NAACP's statement a few weeks back, which said this:
If you're a Fox News watcher (I'm not), and I know that many of you are, I'm sure you've been following this story with glee. In short....
A Cautionary Tale About Rewarding Polk Developers for their Incompetence
Tired of the freaking oil in gulf? Of the economy and the wars? Of loudmouthed jerks like me? Well, watch this all the way to the end and see if you can keep from smiling. I couldn't.
It turns out the city fairly long ago - 2001 - honored the men of the 10th Cavalry with commemorative marker along Lake Wire where they camped in 1898 before going onto military fame in the Cuban phase of the Spanish American War. The Ledger wrote about it while I worked there. Oh, the shame.
If you stop along Lake Morton, near the intersection with Massachusetts Avenue, you'll see a historic marker erected "by the city library" in 1948 honoring the encampment of the Second Massachusetts Infantry during the Spanish American War in 1898. It notes that one soldier, a private, died in the camp and was given a "funeral that a marshal of France might have deserved..."
Note: I've been working on this piece on and off since late February, when The Ledger's Cary McMullen wrote a religion column documenting and lamenting the decline of mainline protestantism. It's a little long and not terribly local -- it grows out of my other project. But I hope you'll indulge me. If not, well, you don't have to.
If there's one lesson we can draw from Paula Dockery's ill-fated campaign for governor, which ended yesterday after never really gaining traction, it's this...
I have been rather, uh, terse in my critique of certain political behavior in the wake of the gulf oil spilling (using the gerund because it’s ongoing). Particularly toward that important species of conservative that either loved to chant “Drill, Baby, Drill,” or kept silent while others did, but pleads complexity now, with chocolate-covered sea turtles on our TVs and fishing bans in the gulf.....
Bio: Billy Townsend was a longtime government, political and general assignment reporter in Polk County and the wider I-4 corridor. He wrote extensively about Polk's unique regional identity and the issues shaping it, including USF Polytechnic, the Heartland Parkway and the CSX rail deal. Billy recently left professional reporting to take a corporate writing job, but he keeps close tabs on news of all stripes (especially political news) and the changes in modern journalism. Billy's wife is Julie Townsend, executive director of the Downtown Lakeland Partnership.They live with their three children in the Lake Morton area. His work at Lakeland Local is his first as an amateur hyperlocal writer.
