Around HereBy Leo CoughlinNobody asked me, but – . . . Riddle me this, if you please – Just recently the first lady, Michelle Obama, was at a soup kitchen in Washington, D.C., helping to dish out food to “homeless” people. Lo and behold, directly in the photo is a fellow taking a picture of Obama with a cell phone camera. Questions – A “homeless” person with a cell phone? And where do they send the bill? . . . The loss of Ann Babcock came as a brutal shock. This vivacious friend, so full of life, taken at 39. Too young. Too sad. . . . Don’t kid yourself. Contrary to the mythology we are fed and mouth constantly we have a lousy, ineffective, bad criminal justice system. We now know of 235 exonerations of serious criminal convictions and 130 or so people taken off death row because they were innocent. The system is corrupt. Prosecutors, cops, sometimes judges. That is why it is so important that if you are ever accused you immediately demand a lawyer and say nothing else except that you want a lawyer. If you “didn’t do it,” all the more reason to have a lawyer. . . . Hey, check out all these low-cost bargains in traveling by air, cruises, vacation packages, etc. Only one ineluctable conclusion – they were overcharging before. . . . Can’t be right all the time. It was noted here, erroneously, that Mac Craig, Largo city manager, lives in Belleair Bluffs. Wrong. He lives in Largo, a few feet from the city line in an area that tucks right into the Bluffs. Sorry. Craig is kind of sensitive about that, emphasizing, of course, the fact that other city officials live out of the city. Craig lives just off Indian Rocks Road and walking distance from the Belleair Bluffs City Hall. . . . You have to be my age and to have been where I have been to know how rippingly sad it is to see Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player pass from the scene, as we have witnessed the past couple years, at Augusta and from big league golf. Once again, this stuff emphasizes the ultimate thing about life – it is all about goneness. . . . It’s pretty clear that this new-fangled thing of “texting” – typing words in on your cell phone, as I get it – is pretty much addictive. Folks doing it just can’t stay away from it, hear tell. So addictive, in fact, folks are doing it while driving automobiles. Where there isn’t a law forbidding this, there should be. . . . Our perspicacious friend points out – It’s amazing that during the mad cow epidemic our government could track a single cow, born in Canada three years prior, right to the stall where it slept in the state of Washington, but the government is unable to locate 11 million illegal aliens? Maybe we should give each of them a cow. . . . One citizen not long ago suggested to the boss lady at Largo Parks and Recreation that 1/10th mileage markers be installed on the walk way in Central Park. That suggestion was shrugged off as “too expensive” given budget restraints and so forth. The markers are there now. Guess the $17.98 it took to stencil in the markers was found somewhere. . . . Meanwhile there is all kinds of ruckus over the five to six million dollar project to turn Highland Avenue into something resembling the Champs Elysee – a totally wiggy headed project. ‘Tain’t necessary, folks. . . . If you ever run across a film called “Judge Priest,” starring Will Rogers, while channel surfing tune it in. It is a classic of classics. . . . Whatever became of Nancy O’Barsky and that wonderful Irish tenor voice? . . . Scheduling the Rays to open in inhospitable Boston shows how nutty those who draw up that thing are. Naturally, they could not play. Ditto in Chicago. Those are not the types of places to open the baseball season. . . . The work release center being operated by Good Will under the auspices of the state Department of Correction may not be in Largo but it certainly is surrounded by the city. DOC officials should have at least told Largo officials of their plans. They did not. Jurisdiction or not, I bet Chief Lester Aradi of Largo keeps a weather eye on the place. He’s a guy who knows what he’s doing.
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