President Barack H. Obama

Our new president. Let us hope he can turn our nation around.

Why my blog has gone quiet

I haven’t run out of opinions.

This is a busy week, and I am attending the Poynter Institute’s “Standing Up for Journalism” seminar with a hard-working and motivated group of fellow journalists who are between jobs (a couple of people actually are starting new jobs soon) and looking to upgrade their skills for the new world of multimedia.

It’s a very interesting and educational experience, and I hope to be back to blogging next week.

Thanks for visiting my blog.

Vinny

A day like no other

It’s 11 p.m. and this is a day that will be looked back to for decades, if not centuries, to come.

History has been made, and I feel so privileged to live it. I have my worries and fears about the future, and my future employment, housing and so much more, but when the sun rises again, something else rises with it.

Hope. And hope has a name: President-elect Barack H. Obama.

It’s historic – no doubt about that – to see a black man bearing the title of president-elect of the United States. But it’s something else: reassuring.

In these uncertain times, Americans decided it was time for a bold move in a new direction, and they have handed the reins of power to the 47-year-old Democrat and given his party larger majorities in the House and Senate. We Americans kind of worry when one political party has so much power, and that’s a good thing, but we worry more when it seems like our future is less bright, our economy is skidding, our jobs are disappearing and our futures seem to be so gloomy.

Maybe it’s all in our heads, but the statistics on jobs, the economy and 401(k)s show that we have reason to be concerned. Where is our country headed? Where is our world headed? Will there ever be good economic times again, or will the wealthy take it all and leave us with table scraps?

President-elect Obama can’t fix everything, and not right away, and I’m sure that there are disappointments aplenty ahead, but I feel that our country has taken a step in the right direction. We didn’t just elect a black man – we elected the right man for the time.

He has a giant challenge ahead. I just hope he’s equal to it.

Finally, I have to add that this is a moment that I wish my late friends Paula and Bill could have seen.

And on Jan. 20, 2009, there’s a new beginning in our nation, and hopefully some of the scars of the past will be healed and we’ll start moving toward a new era for our nation and the world.

Fourth inning at the stadium game

It’s the I-75 series. The contestants: The cities of Sarasota and Fort Myers. The prize: Boston Red Sox spring training. The price? Well, some say it’s not worth it at any price, and others say it’s worth it at any price.

The Red Sox have a long-term deal with the city of Fort Myers to hold spring training there for several more years, but of course such deals are made to be broken when it’s convenient to the team’s interests. As we saw with the Dodgers and Vero Beach, you can use such agreements for toilet paper if the team is determined to leave; a team will certainly sign such a long-term deal and even trumpet it in the media, but anyone with a hint of savvy knows that it’s just until a better deal comes along.

There’s a lot of debate in Sarasota about whether spending up to $55 million to build a new facility for the Red Sox is such a bright idea right now. Fort Myers is, not surprisingly, making a big play to keep the Red Sox and showing off plans for new facilities.

The current economic crisis is also raising concerns about whether the money can be borrowed, what with the credit markets tightening up.

No one can really know the desire of the Red Sox, though. Teams often declare that they are totally dedicated to staying in their current area, but then qualify that statement with the declaration that the local governments need to step up to the plate and show their own dedication to keeping the team there.

Allegedly independent interest groups are formed to keep the team, and in Sarasota the Citizens for Sox group is pushing hard through letters to the editor to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune (disclosure: I am a former employee of the paper). I think Citizens for Sox’s credibility might have been compromised when the Red Sox invited them to a luxury box at the Trop to see the Rays play the Red Sox recently.

Despite what some say, the future of Sarasota does not rest upon spring training. Since teams started their pre-season in the state, the economy has diversified and changed. Cities have found that losing a team is not the end of the world economically, unless they made extreme financial commitments and lost their team anyway. For a time, it may seem like the end of the world but it isn’t.

The stadium game is nothing new, but it only exists because government officials – with the connivance of team ownership – calls it into existence.

Third inning at the stadium game

Sports team owners today are adept at playing the stadium game with local elected officials, and know that it’s the threat of the “nuclear option” that can cause the leaders of even economically stressed communities to pay whatever it takes and build whatever has to be built to get a team to commit to come or commit to stay.

I sometimes get the feeling that team owners figure that Florida public officials are not that bright, and thus the owners can get away with more. Let’s be realistic here, spring training does bring in money and tourists, but only for a few months. True, some teams use the stadium complexes for player development and Class A teams from when the major league teams leave until September, and some complexes are used for amateur baseball, but many in Florida question the use of taxpayer money for funding the sports dreams of people who are worth millions or billions.

I have always said that the rustic character of spring training and less-inviting facilities have a purpose, which is to motivate players to do better and thus get a shot at the higher-level minor leagues and “The Show.” Yet teams seem intent on having super-luxurious facilities in Florida, especially when they can gull city and county commissioners into footing the bill.

There is also the advantage of renting the facility instead of owning it, as the Dodgers did in Vero Beach until the city of Vero Beach and Indian River County took it off their hands. The team that rents finds it is that it’s easier to pack up and leave if city officials refuse to play ball and approve even more subsidies — or another city comes along with a better deal.

That ability to make a rapid dash for greener pastures may leave local officials in a lurch, and also stuck with a giant white elephant of a stadium that has few uses, and none that can recoup even some sales tax revenue. True, local officials are at least savvy enough to ensure that teams will guarantee the bonds floated to buy or build a complex, but even if the locality is made whole, what then? The only option is to try to steal a team from another locality in Florida, and believe me that can be pretty costly.

That is what is happening now in Sarasota, Fla., where the Cincinnati Reds have announced that 2009 will be the last year of their spring training in the city, and they will go to Goodyear, Ariz., for 2010. It’s never a good idea to hurt the feelings of rich people, and the ownership of the Reds had to be feeling pretty down after voters rejected attempts to pick their pockets for a new facility for the Reds.

The Reds play at Ed Smith Stadium, near downtown. I went to a late spring training game there with my brother Robert, my first time there in the four years I have been in the area, and it is not that bad a place. I attended a number of Florida State League games at Holman Stadium in Vero Beach, and a couple of games at the Mets complex in Port St. Lucie, and I was expecting a real hole when I went to Ed Smith. I was surprised and got to see a good split-squad game against the Braves.

But the Reds wanted something new, and they wanted it mostly at taxpayer expense, and they had made noises that a city in Arizona was pretty much willing to do lots to get them to do spring training there. Since team owners only respect the voice of the people when the people say what they want to hear, the vote against a new taxpayer-funded facility for the Reds apparently showed that Sarasota’s people lacked the commitment to baseball.

Actually, what it showed was that the people of Sarasota had common sense. Baseball is not the only game in town in a city that prides itself on the arts. Sarasota is not St. Petersburg, but there is a vibrant arts community and people interested in paying to hear music, see pictures and attend street fairs. A team that could afford to blow millions on .220-hitting players could surely afford to refurbish the stadium they played spring training in.

It’s hardly a surprise that the Reds looked afield and found their new spring home in Goodyear, Ariz., though that city’s officials were not all thrilled at the one-sided deal with the Reds. The team will share the facility with another team, which means that someday they will want their own, and at government expense, no doubt. I’ll bet in five years, either the Reds or the other team will threaten to leave Goodyear unless they get their own facilities.

Experts on stadium deals say that teams always try to avoid referendums on packages of aid for a team because they know the people will never go for it. Sarasota voters have approved higher taxes for school and other desired services (though lately that sentiment has reversed somewhat), but I trust the people — and local elected officials should, too — that most of us can tell when a deal stinks.

In the next inning, the I-75 series: Fort Myers, Sarasota and the Boston Red Sox.

The flight of my life

I don’t know why I was always so interested in airplanes. Maybe it was because the house I grew up in from age 6 was in an approach path for LaGuardia Airport in New York City, and seeing those miracles in metal, commercial airliners, passing overhead on their way to the runways just fascinated me.

Oddly, I never rode in an airplane until I was 17 and on my way to Marine Corps basic training at Parris Island. I never even got close to airplanes until I was assigned to a squadron after electronics training. Still, I was always interested in airplanes, and I blew my allowance every week on model airplanes, and built them in the basement for display in my bedroom.

Airplanes from the World War II era fascinated me. True, I built models of commercial airliners, but the military planes drew me in. I guess because I was born 15 years after World War II ended, to me the planes weren’t lethal, as they were to those whose cities were targeted as well as those who flew in them.

I feel fortunate that there are still a few examples flying around, and Florida with its population of World War II veterans is a popular stop for the planes. I even got to crawl through a B-29, but it’s almost old hat to see a B-17 or B-24, the famous four-engined heavy bombers that are immortalized in countless books and movies.

I had gone through both B-17s and B-24s on static display, but until November 2007 had never flown in one. When I learned that a B-17 was touring Florida and would stop in Sarasota, I knew that if I ever wanted to experience a flight aboard a B-17, that was the time, before it was too late.

I thought at first that I would have to spring for the price, almost $400, for a short ride, but learned that the organization that owned the plane offering a flight for members of the media. I talked to an editor at my paper, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, and got a pass for a free flight on the B-17G Flying Fortress. I wrote a couple of preliminary stories, and was eager to finally not only climb aboard one, but actually see, hear and feel the B-17 in flight.

The Herald-Tribune sent a photographer with me, and other local news media outlets had sent reporters and camera people. The real thrill was meeting two World War II veterans: a man who had flown B-17s into combat over Germany, and a man who had been in training as a radio operator when the war ended, and thus never saw combat and never went overseas. Actually, the latter had some fascinating stories about taking care of those awesome B-17s.

It was amazing to see that plane arrive at the airport and taxi in. I wondered what it must have been like to see an airfield full of B-17s, and even more to see and hear them pass overhead.

The former pilot was in his 80s, but you could see him grow younger as he talked about his missions during the war and told stories to the rapt media people who surrounded him before the flight. One of his sons was there, and he was almost as excited about riding with his father in that beautiful and well-restored B-17.

After a ground briefing, we boarded the plane from the back door on the right side of the aircraft, behind the waist gun position. I had a personal video camera recording everything, and I managed a lame joke about being in seat 6A. Of course, the inside of the plane was tight. Somehow, the B-17’s inside looks bigger in the movies.

We took our seats and buckled ourselves in. This was definitely a warplane, and the crew chief reminded us that after the plane was aloft and we were moving around, to be sure not to grab the control cables if we needed to regain our balance in bumpy air.

Behind me was a transparent wall, and the tailwheel. I read somewhere that the tail gunner entered through his own door behind the tailwheel, and that unless he was small could not get into the main part of the plane.

Finally, the door was closed and the big radial engines were started. The noise was something else, and someone pointed out that there was no OSHA back then. The plane taxied for a while, finally took the active runway and the engines roared as we rolled faster and faster, and finally took to the air. I was flying in a B-17.

As the plane flew, I took video out the windows and some inside the plane. The B-17 pilot was enjoying the flight, his first in a B-17 in 60 years, and the rest of us were bouncing off the interior of the plane and each other. As I said, a B-17 may look huge from the outside, but it’s kind of tight inside.

A ride in one makes you appreciate the service and sacrifice of those astonishingly brave young men who flew into combat in those planes so we could all have a better life.

Looking out the window of the left waist gun position, I noticed that the wing flaps were down. That meant we were near to landing, and the crew chief was making hand signals that translated to sit down and buckle up. I did so, and soon we touched down at the airport in Sarasota, and the plane taxied in.

After we came to a full stop, and the door opened, we who had been aboard emerged and just walked around talking about the flight. I continued to interview people and take notes, and finally had to tear myself away to get to the newspaper and write my story.

For a few hours, I was busy telling the story of a man who was told he was too short and light to fly B-17s, and then how he ended up at a B-17 base, where he became a co-pilot on the planes. There was nothing about me or my joy at flying on the plane. I had planned to write a column but never did. So long as the main story got in, that’s all that mattered.

In the following days, I heard from the son, who was thrilled at my story and the photographer’s pictures. The group that had collected admission, the local Experimental Aircraft Association, was grateful to me because they had a very large crowd despite the plane being there on Tuesday and Wednesday.

A friend who I mentioned in an earlier post had been a navigator on B-24s during World War II, and I wish he were still alive so I could share my tape and experience with him. I bet he would have enjoyed it.

Those old warbirds may soon be permanently earthbound, I fear. The high price of aviation gas and maintenance may mean that the skies may soon no longer hear the throb of big radial engines pulling a piece of history through the air. That will be a terrible shame. And we’re losing World War II veterans, too.

Once, planes like the B-17 ruled the skies and filled the air with noise, and Americans with pride. Time and technology have left them behind, but I hope the day when those awesome planes are permanently grounded is still way off.

The shutter shuffle

They sit in the corner of the garage. They’re long, sometimes sharp and usually heavy, holding within the secret of protection from high wind and debris.

If you live in Florida, you’ve probably seen aluminum hurricane shutters, either attached to houses when a storm threatens or stored in a garage somewhere. They look nice and reassuring stacked in the corner, but someday the time may come when you have to unstack them and install them, and that is quite a job.

I know this because the approach of Tropical Storm Fay caused me to cover most of the windows with shutters. I had been through two storms in 2004, when I lived in Vero Beach, without shutters and the house came through fine despite the very high winds, but the situation was different because that house was between two larger houses and was thus a bit sheltered. In my current place, one side of my house, and several windows, are exposed to the possibility of wind, rain and debris.

I bought my house new, and it came not only with custom fitted shutters but also with a mass of hardware and an instructional video. The printed material gave some basic instructions and maintenance tips, and also included photos of the installed shutters on the house.

Probably the best thing to do is to have a helper and a very good, secure ladder that can keep you secure even on not-perfect terrain like a sloping lawn. A drill with screwdriver bits will help, as well as manual screwdrivers to loosen and tighten the screws.

It’s best to have a few pairs of work gloves, since the panels are sharp, and goggles for eye protection are also important. Lithium grease is also useful to lubricate the screws, and I used it after taking the shutters down and before screwing the fasteners back into the house.

You have to give yourself a lot of time; this is a job that is easier if you are not in a frenzied hurry, with the wind picking up, rain starting to fall and several windows to go. It’s definitely better to be the first on your block to have the shutters up than the last, or to have to stop because the weather just got too bad.

I put up most of the shutters on Monday, Aug. 18. I left the shutters for the back sliding glass doors and the window over the front door, as well as the front door itself, for last. I was going to get help from a neighbor with those, and help him with his shutters. As it turned out, we didn’t need to put up shutters, so on Wednesday, Aug. 18, I took down all my shutters and restacked them in the garage. All the hardware was accounted for and I feel confident that I can put up all the shutters on my own.

And now there’s another storm out there. Maybe I should get ready to start the process again.

USS Tarawa memories

 It was just a brief story in Navy Times, but it brought back a flood of memories. The Navy, the story said, was going to retire several ships by the start of fiscal year 2009, and one of them was the USS Tarawa.

Yes, LHA-1, the amphibious assault ship. I spent about five months of my service in the Marine Corps on the Tarawa, and occasionally would see Associated Press photos of the ship sailing out of or into some port during our recent military actions. I guess time and technology had not been kind to the Tarawa, and it is going on the inactive list.

In 1980, I had been assigned to VMA-513’s avionics shop since 1979. The squadron was and still is home-based in Yuma, Ariz., and I was pretty happy to be there. I had made friends among the civilians in Yuma, and the guys I worked with were a great bunch. It was the Marine Corps, so discipline was pretty tight but not overwhelming.

We were flying the AV-8A Harrier, the first-generation planes. For aviation electricians, they were a bit of a nightmare, and most of my formal tech school training was useless. You kind of had to learn as you went.

There was talk when I first arrived at the squadron about “Det B,” and how six planes and part of the squadron’s personnel had been deployed to Okinawa for about six months. They returned, and there was talk of another “Det,” this time aboard a ship.

The Iranian hostage crisis was ongoing and there was talk that while the next Det would be a WestPac cruise, it would also go into the Indian Ocean and possibly be part of action against Iran.

I had thought about whether I wanted to go. Finally, I decided that I had joined the military to see the world, so a trip to other countries courtesy of the Marines would be a good experience. I put in my name to go and received word that I was accepted.

I figured that being a single man with no children (more common back then in the military than today), I’d enjoy the experience more. The married guys had to worry about their wives and children back in the U.S. in base housing, while I just kept in touch with my parents and brothers.

Our Det finally set off in October 1980, riding a bus or buses (it’s a little hazy now) to San Diego. We finally arrived at a Navy base there, and saw for the first time the ship that would carry us on our adventure: The USS Tarawa.

It looked huge up close, the ship seeming to tower over the dock where it was tied up. We hauled our seabags up the ramp and reported in, then were led through endless corridors to our berthing space. It was hardly the most impressive spot, but it was our home for the next few months.

I think that one thing about the deployment was it certified that I had made the right choice by picking the Marines over the Navy. Life aboard ship, even with the lighter discipline of being in the Navy, just did not seem as much fun as living on shore. Sure, living on a Marine base could be limiting, but at least you could go outside the gates. Living on a ship at sea, there was no way to get away from the ship, at least until it docked, and then the powers that be might not let you off the ship.

We settled in aboard ship, and I remember the day when our planes arrived. They flew to San Diego and made vertical landings while the ship was still docked.

Later, I don’t remember exactly when, we set off on our voyage across the oceans.

Our ride from San Diego to Hawaii was uneventful and the planes did not fly. The guys spent our duty days in a little compartment, playing cards, talking and reading. I read “Shogun” on the way over.

We had a little grab-ass, too, like the morning I woke up, put on my flip-flops, padded over to the head and looked down to see that someone, overnight, had painted my toenails black with Em-Nu. We used Em-Nu to blacken our rank insignia and eagle, globe and anchor insignias, and some clever fellow had discovered another use.

So I scraped off the Em-Nu with a key and went back to my bunk, got dressed and reported to the shop.

During the day, someone turned the conversation to guys who kind of went “gay.” Someone noted that I had gone “gay” and had painted my toenails black. Someone else disbelieved it, so I was told to remove my boots and socks. I refused, and returned to my book.

It took a few of my friends holding me down, while one unlaced my boots and removed my socks, to get the job completed. Meanwhile, the ruckus drew attention from the compartment next to ours, and a second lieutenant (whose name escapes me, so I’ll call him Lt. Smith) came in.

“What’s going on here?” he asked. “What’s all this noise?”

“Sir, Lance Cpl. Safuto has gone gay,” one of my shop-mates said. “He painted his toenails.”

I was sitting off to the side, putting on my socks, and the lieutenant looked at me.

“Safuto, what are you doing with your shoes off?” he asked.

“They did this to me, sir,” I said.

He looked at me and shook his head.

“Are you like Klinger, Safuto? Are you bucking for a Section 8?” he asked. (Klinger is of course the corporal from MASH who is trying to get discharged from the Army by dressing like a woman.)

“No sir.”

“Then keep your shoes on.”

“Yes sir.”

“And stop painting your toenails.”

“Yes sir.”

From then on, whenever this officer saw me, he’d ask, “So, Lance Cpl. Safuto, how are you doing on keeping your footwear on? I can get you that Section 8.”

Our group had a lot of adventures on that cruise on the Tarawa, including the sobering trip to the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor; the Philippines; Thailand; Singapore; Mombasa, Kenya; Perth, Australia (and crossing “the line”); Pusan, Korea; and finally Okinawa, where we handed our six planes off to VMA-542 and they sent six of their hangar-queens to Yuma. We flew back to the States in April 1981 and it was great to be home.

While we were aboard, Ronald Reagan was elected president, John Lennon was shot and killed, and, most importantly, our hostages were released from Iran.

I never went on another shipboard deployment, though some guys from 513 went on another LHA, the Belleau Wood, I think. I left the Marines in August 1982, but still have the photos and movie film I shot of my adventures on the Tarawa.

I hope it comes to a dignified end. Maybe it didn’t win any wars, but the ship did its part.

Embarking on a new adventure

Hi everyone and welcome to my blog on WordPress.com.

I’ll be posting here regularly and will reply to all comments. Don’t let me just mouth off, have your say, too.

There has recently been a very big change in my life. I was laid off from my job at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. The news business is undergoing some major changes, and while I thought I might be immune, the Reaper struck. I am at the paper until Sept. 21, and will get severance, but it’s still a blow. So I’ll be out there looking for work and hope to land something in a field that will use my writing and editing talents, and also pay me enough to keep the house and cats in good shape.

There could be a silver lining, since I will have nights and weekends free and may even find a nice woman.

I love journalism still, and will miss the great people I worked with at the H-T.

Come back for more news later.