How was your Wednesday? Did you spend three-plus hours of the tail end of it stuck on at least one of our bay-crossing bridges? Do you think that's an acceptable expenditure of your time every once in a while, that it's gonna happen and there's nothing we can do about it? I did, and I don't.
St. Pete Mayor Rick Kriseman unveiled "Baseball Forever," an initiative to try to keep the Tampa Bay Rays headquartered downtown in the 'Burg. One might be tempted to think that needing an initiative to keep a franchise in town — rather than doing all the other things that normally keep a franchise in town, like filling their stadium on a regular basis — is kind of a sign that maybe the franchise isn't right for the community. But one would be crazy to even think, much less suggest such a thing, apparently.
A newly hired Hernando County middle school teacher's Dead Poets Society moment backfired, and got her fired. She handed out a form called "How comfortable am I?" and evidently what made her students uncomfortable was feeling pressured to answer questions about race and others' sexual identities in a middle school class.
If you're walking your dog on the beach or in a waterfront park or other public area and your dog poops and you don't pick it up, you are, seriously, a total asshole. None of this "oh, I don't have a bag" or "we're in a hurry to get back" or anything, it's just, nice assholing, asshole.
And finally, Quincy, a Clearwater accelerant-detecting ("arson-sniffing") dog, is up for a national award for canine help and heroism. You think his handler just leaves his poops lying around the beach? You don't get nominated for an American Humane Hero Dog award if your handler just leaves day-ruining landmines hidden in the sand.
This article appears in Apr 6-13, 2017.