Poet’s Notebook: Which piper?

EDITOR’S NOTE: CL won’t be running its endorsement in the St. Pete mayoral race till the issue of Aug. 24. By that time, we hope to have met with all of the candidates in the race individually — though in the case of former Mayor Rick Baker, neither he nor his associates have so far responded to repeated calls from CL asking for a one-on-one interview. Mayor Rick Kriseman and candidates Jesse Nevel, Momma Tee Lassiter, and Anthony Cates have agreed to be interviewed.

In the interim, we received columns from Florida Poet Laureate Peter Meinke and renowned Poynter Institute writing coach Roy Peter Clark. Both Meinke, in his “Poet’s Notebook” column, and Clark express a clear preference for one candidate, and we thought their viewpoints deserved to be spotlighted.

…At last the people in a body

To the Town Hall came flocking:

“‘Tis clear,” cried they, “our Mayor’s a noddy;

And as for our Corporation—shocking… 

St. Petersburg’s lucky. Our mayors have been nothing like the lying sack described above — the one in Robert Browning’s famous poem who was mayor of Hamelin when the Pied Piper danced in to save the town.

Jeanne and I arrived here in August 50 years ago, with four small children in an un-air-conditioned VW van, wobbling along a truly disheartening Route 19. Our Northern friends told us that St. Pete was where old folks went to die, and we could see what killed them. The mayor then was Herman Goldner, an Al Franken lookalike and idealistic Republican, who turned Democrat during the Vietnam war. That was  encouraging.

Each year our city has become a little bit better. As we learned in conservative Switzerland, the slow pace is important. In housing, St. Pete didn’t overbuild; in race relations, it didn’t over-react; in equality, it’s marched calmly toward the St. Pete Pride Parade; in education, three remarkable schools — Eckerd College, St. Petersburg College, and USF — slowly gained numbers and influence, turning St. Pete into a younger town. Together these made us an “Arts Destination City,” with fine restaurants, theaters and bars stretching along Central Avenue and Beach Drive. 

Of course, as throughout America, progress hasn’t been entirely equal or fair. But just to get this far, we’ve needed good mayors down the line, keeping us in step with the best trends of the last half-century without going bonkers or into debt. Jeanne and I have fond memories of them, especially our only female mayor, Connie Freeman (who paved the way for the baseball stadium while making St. Pete’s waterfront our focal point), and David Fischer (who appointed our first black police chief and planted around 20,000 trees).

Now we have former mayor Rick Baker returning to challenge current mayor Rick Kriseman. Although the Tampa Bay Times has recommended Baker, its editorial concludes, “Aside from the sewer debacle, St. Petersburg is humming along nicely with a growing national reputation as ‘cool’.” Well, Baker’s an old-style Republican, perfectly sane — still, he preferred Sarah Palin to Barack Obama, and that should make us nervous. He sees the sewer crisis as a chance to hop back early, but the city would be served better with Kriseman, who’s led us smoothly toward our destination as a vibrant metropolis.

St. Pete will flourish under either candidate. But here’s an anecdote: In 2003, while Baker was mayor, I wrote a poem, “Maples & Orange Trees,” commemorating the twin birthdays of the two St. Petersburgs — Russia’s 300th and our 100th — and the city decided to have it painted on a prominent wall of the Florida International Museum (now the downtown center of St. Petersburg College) between two palms and a bear. The painting was charming, and some bypassers even enjoyed the poem — until suddenly it was painted over. The City Council was deemed responsible, but as the St. Petersburg Times reported, no one ever found out how or why it happened. (One rumor was that an anti-alcohol council member objected to my lines advocating “vodka and mimosa” for the celebration.) The Times then, on March 5th, 2003, wrote an editorial that ended firmly, “Mr Baker: Repaint that wall.”

Mr. Baker didn’t repaint it. I think Mr. Kriseman, a firm friend of the arts, would have put the poem back. I know this mayoral position is theoretically non-partisan. But folks, we’re already burdened by  President Trump and Governor Scott. Do we really want to add Mayor Baker?

This article appears in Aug 10-17, 2017.