Category Archives: Unpacking

The Lovin’ Spoonful ► Monday Musical Appreciation

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The first album I ever bought with my own money was The Best of The Lovin’ Spoonful. I played the grooves right off it. I simply adored The Lovin’ Spoonful and my band, Cobwebs and Strange, even performed a few songs from it.

Every song a hit, at least with me, this LP is comprised of “Do You Believe in Magic?”, “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?”, “Butchie’s Tune”, “Jug Band Music”, “Night Owl Blues”, “You Didn’t Have To Be So Nice”, “Daydream”, “Blues In The Bottle”, “Didn’t Want To Have To Do It”, “Wild About My Lovin'”, “Younger Girl”, and “Summer In The City”. Perfection!!! Every tune was a Sing-A-Long, at least with me. 

What’s of interest to me is how my youth has connected to my dotage and not just in a nostalgic way.

These days I think about The Lovin’ Spoonful a lot. There are times I am down in Coconut Grove taking pictures, or conducting interviews, when their song “Coconut Grove” starts playing unbidden in my head. Suddenly I’ve got an all-day ear worm that won’t shake loose, no matter how much Reggae I apply.

“Coconut Grove” is from their 3rd LP, “Hums of the Lovin’ Spoonful.” According to Talk From The Rock Room, in an essay called ‘Bes friends’-The Lovin Spoonful-‘Hums of the Lovin Spoonful’ LP:

Keeping with the theme of mellow melodies, “Coconut Grove” trickles in again spotlighting special instrumentation such as Sebastian’s auto harp and a hand drum. According to John Sebastian this song was conceived on folk icon Fred Neil’s boat in the pre-Spoonful days. The song rides rolling waves of sound, gently rocking to and fro, the breeze of Zal’s guitar gusting beautiful accents across the reflective seas. The strength of the tune is Sebastian’s vocal melody, almost able to carry the track on its own. This song can put you right on the deck, riding straight into a sun dipping behind the horizon. Mood music at its finest.

It should be noted that Fred Neil lived on his boat just offshore of Coconut Grove at the time.

I’m jammed for time this morning, because — not coincidentally — I am currently doing a final edit on my latest story about Coconut Grove. Where do you think I got today’s ear worm?

Crank it up and D A N C E ! ! !

Writing News With A Union Label ► Throwback Thursday

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Gather ’round, kiddies, and I’ll tell you the story of when I was a News Writer for Citytv’s BreakfastTelevision [sic] and wrote the perfect news script.

I worked at CityPulse for just over a decade. During my time there I cycled through every newscast they had: CityPulse at 6, CityPulse at 11, the weekend Pulses, and the short-lived LunchTelevision. However, most of my time was on BreakfastTelevision, some 8 years. I was with the show the day it was launched. While the station had an idea of what the show would be, it was up to us to give it shape and flesh it out.

I enjoyed the hell out of my job, but everything changed for me the day I wrote the perfect script.

The News Segment Producer, the person who gave the News Writers, Editors, Control Room their marching orders, had a soft spot for animal stories. I knew that whenever there was an animal story, either local or off the feeds, she would make sure to devote precious air time to it. On this particular morning she handed me some wire copy, told me there was VID on the overnight satellite feed, and tasked me with writing the script for it. It was a simple, but heartwarming, story of a university in the east closing en entire parking lot because an endangered bird chose to build a nest and lay eggs in it.

Kevin Frankish was one of the nicest people I wrote
for. “Choose alternate routes” is an homage to him.

Because it wouldn’t come up until later in the show — the last News Pack at 8:30 — I pushed it aside. In the meantime there were stories to write for earlier packs. As I handled those first, it came to me in a flash how I should treat this purple plover story. I quickly banged it off, polished it, and then sheepishly took it to Kevin Frankish, which was not the normal chain of command. However, let’s face facts: If Kevin refused to read it, there was little point in giving it to the producer for approval. I handed him the script and asked what he thought.

Kevin took one look at it, laughed, and said, “I love it!”

With his approval under my belt I took it to the News Producer who said, “Kevin will never read this.”

“I just showed it to him. He loves it,” I replied.

She yells across the room to the Assignment Desk, “ABOUT THIS SCRIPT OF HEADLY’S?!?!”

Kevin yells back, “I LOVE IT!!!”

That’s exact moment my fate was sealed. Here’s how it opened:

In Pembroke a pair of purple plovers picked a patch of parking lot to procreate.

The rest of the script was just a quick rewrite of the wire copy to match the footage. I printed out the obligatory 12 copies of the script and hand delivered Kevin’s to him, leaving the rest for the intern to distribute as usual.

The Purple Plover

For the next 2 hours, whenever he wasn’t on camera, I could see Kevin practicing the script. I couldn’t wait to hear this jewel delivered. However, the minute my script hit the TelePrompTer, it all fell apart. Kevin started sputtering like Porky Pig, tripping his entire way through the opening line.

Finally he broke and said, “See the things they get me to read here? Headly, what are you doing to me?”

I was always thrilled when my name was mentioned On Air, because it was so infrequent. However, that was one of the last thrills I ever had at Citytv.

When my boss arrived there was steam coming out of his ears. As he passed through the newsroom, he screamed at me to get into his office, where he yelled at me and swore at me for a good 15 minutes. “WE DO NOT GIVE OUR ANCHORS TONGUE TWISTERS!!!”

“But it was approved up and down the line.”

“I DON’T FUCKING CARE!!! WE DO NOT GIVE OUR ANCHORS TONGUE TWISTERS!!!”

“But we’re told to make our scripts cheeky and interesting.”

“I DON’T GIVE A FUCK!!! WE DO NOT GIVE OUR FUCKING ANCHORS FUCKING TONGUE TWISTERS!!! WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING???”

“I was thinking that it would have been great had Kevin not flubbed it.”

“HE FLUBBED IT BECAUSE IT WAS A FUCKING TONGUE TWISTER. WE DO NOT GIVE OUR ANCHORS FUCKING TONGUE TWISTERS!!!”

Here’s my takeaway from that meeting:

  1. We do not give our anchors tongue twisters;
  2. That day was the first of a non-stop campaign of harassment that continued until I finally left Citytv.

That was the day I became the office goat.

I had seen it happen to others before. Newsroom management would tag someone as the goat either overtly — “Get the fuck in my office right now!” — or it might be a covert whisper campaign that one could watch trickle down from up high — “They’re not our kind of people.” It could be someone new. Or, it could be someone that was there for years and had never been disciplined before, like me.

However, the newsroom staff quickly learned who was the Goat Du Jour. Everyone up and down the chain of command fell into line, treating that employee as toxic. Over the years I saw one goat after another. Eventually the goat would quit or a newer goat would be chosen. Or both.

When I became the goat the harassment was relentless. My newsroom mentor — someone in the know, who attended the management meetings with The Big Boys — told me they wanted me to quit. Because I loved my job, I decided to tough it out convinced they’d eventually find a new goat. I was mistaken.

They started finding every little thing wrong with my performance. I took too long to write some scripts. I didn’t spend enough time writing others. Because writing is subjective, and there’s no sentence that can’t be improved with enough editing, they kept finding individual sentences, out of context, that didn’t meet their suddenly high standards. Keep in mind I had never been tagged for any of this in the previous 8 years.

Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada

Eventually management scheduled a weekly meeting with me and my union rep to rake me over the coals in a discipline hearing. Every fucking week.

It only made management madder at me when I first refused to even meet with them for these punching bag sessions unless they allowed my union rep to attend. Insisting on my union rights just became an invisible black mark, because they couldn’t write it down. But, it sure pissed them off.

In the end I grieved the entire deal. It went to arbitration, which was a mistake. Arbitration is another word for compromise. I was off work for an entire year. At first I was off on a [possibly-related] Medical leave. When I was deemed well, they refused to allow me to come back to work. However, because I had started the grievance process, I couldn’t look for work, otherwise Citytv could say I had quit and abandoned my job. I had to borrow money from family and friends to stay alive and my union advanced me some money as well.

In the end I was sent packing with a lump sum that felt inadequate, but my union told me it was the best I was going to get. Oddly enough, I was never asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement with Citytv, but they agreed to give me a letter of recommendation and promised not to bad-mouth me to prospective employers. That promise was broken when I had someone in the industry call to say they were thinking of hiring me.

After a lawyer told me I would have trouble suing for that, I stopped using Citytv on my resume. The decade I spent there mattered for nothing in the job market.

Post script: In the end all of those people who yelled and screamed and belittled and harrassed their underlings were fired in a purge when ultimate boss Moses Znaimer found out how they were really treating the people below them, including the on air talent.

If I had it all to do over again, I wouldn’t write the perfect script.

Coconut Grove in Black and White

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Francisco J. Garcia of Miami’s Department of Planning
and Zoning provided the answers to residents’ questions

Community involvement was strong last night in Coconut Grove as more than 200 residents packed a meeting hall at Plymouth Church to vent and make plans. 

The homeowners of South Grove are up in arms and called this “Community Organizational Meeting,” which was attended by Miami District 2 Commissioner Ken Russell, Miami-Dade District 7 Commissioner Xavier Suarez, and Francisco J. Garcia, of Miami’s Department of Planning and Zoning. Homeowners want to develop a strategy to put a stop to the division of large properties to build more homes; the demolition of old houses; the building of ‘cookie-cutter’ houses, derisively called White Boxes; and the continued destruction of the Grove’s famous tree canopy.

Oddly enough, these are the exact same issues I’ve been quietly researching for the last several weeks, even before this story bubbled up to the surface. My interest began when a source suggested I attend a Planning and Zoning meeting about potential “up-zoning” of a certain property. Up-zoning is when a developer asks for more than is allowed by the Miami21 code and — usually — gets it. This piqued my curiosity. A few weeks later the same source took me around to show me the contemporary ‘cookie-cutter’ houses being built. These concrete White Boxes stick out like sore thumbs among the older homes that fit the neighbourhood.

Just some of the White Boxes being built all over Coconut Grove

However, all my research — and all the houses we looked at — was in West Grove, where the prevailing style of house are either one-story Shotgun Homes or Conch-style houses, both reflecting the neighbourhood’s rich Bahamian history.

South Grove architecture, on the other hand, is distinctly different and all over the map, as it were. The houses there are
more suburban in style, from the earliest one-story small cottages, to the more recent Monster
Homes of the last few decades, and everything in between. Because this area was developed from the
1920s onward, the houses reflect nearly every kind of home architecture attempted
since then. And, as people were told at last night’s meeting, these White Boxes are what developers want to build because, they claim, it’s what people want to buy.

This demolition on Charles Avenue has taken place
over the last 6 weeks. That is not a typo. This is how it
looked on April 27, 2016, the same day South Grove
residents complained about their precious tree canopy.

However, that’s not the most glaring difference between West Grove and South Grove. In fact, as I’ve joked before, the difference is like Day and Night.

West Grove is the Black area of Coconut Grove. It can’t be said any simpler than that. The area is blighted, and has been for decades, precisely because it’s the Black area.

QUICK HISTORY LESSON: Unlike most Black neighbourhoods of its era, Coconut Grove is unique because the people owned their own homes. At one time Coconut Grove had the highest percentage of Black home ownership than anywhere else in the country. [Read: Happy Birthday Coconut Grove. Now Honour Your Past] This meant they couldn’t be dislodged as they could in other U.S. cities where Black folk rented from absentee landlords. However, the same economic factors that kept Black neighbourhoods in poverty elsewhere also worked on West Grove: low wages, an inability to get home improvement loans, and systemic racism. However, the neighbourhood has remained predominately Black as folks passed their houses down to generation after generation, the way White people pass down the family jewels.
End of history lesson.

This is the same rooming house as above on April 2, 2016

Earlier in the day I met with a second anonymous source who has also been researching the White Boxes in West Grove. Oddly enough, before we went to look at them, they wanted to take me to see a house on Charles Avenue that I had already taken a number of pictures of.

This demolition has so far taken about 6 weeks. The site has never been secure, making it an attractive place to play for local kids. But the nails sticking out of the boards are the least of the problems. This house was filled with asbestos, from the roof shingles to the several layers of paint on the walls. The prevailing winds have scattered some of it to wherever prevailing winds blew for the last 6 weeks.

The woman who lives next door has asthma and was just getting sicker. She and her husband have gone to live with relatives up north, in Georgia. The rest of her neighbours will just keep breathing it in until something is done about it.

One kind of nondescript White Box being built in West Grove,
this one on William Avenue. That’s actually the front of house.

People have complained to By-Law Enforcement about the unsafe demolition site and are still waiting for something to happen. There is, apparently, a promise for it to be cleaned up by the city in the morning. I sure hope they take into account the toxicity of some of the materials.

For more examples of these ‘cookie cutter’ homes go to The White Boxes.

Meanwhile, South Grove residents were told on Wednesday night if they see anything hinky happening in their neighbourhood — from illegal tree-cutting to demolitions without a permit — to call By-Law Enforcement. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that they respond a lot quicker than they have to this disaster on Charles Avenue in West Grove.

As South Grove meets with their elected representatives, West Grove is as ignored as ever. As South Grove begins the task of forming a Homeowners Association, West Grove is quietly gentrified without anyone noticing. When will West Grove get the same kind of attention from the City of Miami as South Grove?

Me and Garry Shandling and Patty Duke, But Mostly Me ► Unpacking The Writer

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♫ ♪ ♫ Meet Cathy, who’s lived most everywhere… ♪ ♫ ♪

It’s way past due to create another Unpacking The Writer, my almost-monthly behind-the-scenes look at what’s happening here in the Not Now Silly Newsroom. But, I’m just not feeling it right now.

It’s not that I have nothing to say. It’s that I have far too much to say and — already having the basic outline of this essay in my head when I begin — wonder how much I really want to reveal.

This past week I have been incredibly out of sorts and feeling quite blue. It started when I learned that Garry Shandling, one of the greatest comedians ever, had died at the age of 66. Then came the news that Patty Duke died at 69. I’m 63. Both deaths were body blows for different reasons and I have never felt quite so mortal as I do right now.

I was such a big fan of Shandling’s, starting with his earliest appearances on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. His skewed outlook seemed to perfectly match my own.

Then, in 1986, he created (with Alan Zweibel) “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show”, one of the greatest “sitcoms” in tee vee history. I have always delighted in comedy that breaks the 4th wall. It gives me a special thrill. Groucho would occasionally turn to the camera to make remarks directly to the theater audience; Green Acres put the opening credits on laundry that Lisa Douglas was hanging up; George Burns not only talked to his audience, but had a magic tee vee on which he could keep up with continuing plot points as he talked to us; and Woody Allen dragged Marshall McLuhan into a movie line-up to excoriate the pontificating idiot standing in front of him.

“It’s Garry Shandling’s Show” not only broke the 4th wall, it destroyed it: Shandling played his nervously neurotic self, living on a tee vee set with a studio audience, but appears to live in a conventional suburb, with just the sort of goofy neighbours that inhabit every sitcom since the days when sits were first commed.

The day after learning of his death, I had to write my weekly Friday Fox Follies for PoliticusUSA. I try to inject as much humour into it as I can. Considering the overarching topic — the systematic destruction of my beloved career of Journalism at the hands of the Fox “News” Channel — it can often be an uphill battle. As I was doing last week’s final edit I realized that some of my writing — especially the things I want to stand out as humour — break the 4th wall of Journalism, if journalism is said to have any walls at all any more.

It also occurs to me that breaking the 4th wall is also the main purpose of Unpacking The Writer, this seemingly never-ending series in which I examine the entrails of my life to divine the future. At the same time I expose the entire enterprise to your prying eyes. I am aware I do this both for myself — because I will often learn things about myself I didn’t know when I started (and today is no exception) — and for your reading pleasure — if you get any pleasure out of it at all. Yet, I know from past experience that when I start to get too confessional, I begin to use the delete key liberally, holding back the most personal revelations because, after all, I’m really a coward. There’s only so much I really want to expose about myself to the world.

That’s why Patty Duke’s death hit me so hard. She was already a star when I was just a kid. Being about the same age it was easy to identify with her as identical twin cousins (how weird is that?) on The Patty Duke Show. And, she won an Academy Award. I didn’t see The Miracle Worker until years later, but it was easy to see why she won an Oscar for her performance, at the time the youngest person to have done so. In this teenager’s imagination, she seemed to have a charmed life.

However, it wasn’t until I read her book, Call Me Anna; The Autobiography of Patty Duke, did I learn of her struggle with bi-polar disorder. What an amazingly brave thing to have put out there for everyone to know.

I’ve not been nearly so brave. While Unpacking The Writer in the past, I’ve danced to the edge of talking about my own bouts of depression, but have always shied away from being explicit. Even now — as this paragraph gets pounded out and revised and heavily edited — I am keeping most of my recent self-discoveries to myself. However, I’m also aware I’m burying the lede. I’m stuffing this confession so far down this essay that only my most loyal readers will see it. Part of me hopes that most readers have given up by now.

Look at me! I am the 4th wall!

Yeah, depression. I’ve been self-diagnosing myself my entire adult life.

There was a time in my life I referred to it as anhedonia, which incidentally was the original name for the movie Annie Hall. I thought of it as anhedonia because it was so even and level as to be like Florida, sea level as far as the eye can see. However, in the end, I rejected that definition because there are things I take pleasure in, like music, beautiful brass objets d’art, books, and relationships — just to name a few.

Later I came to think of myself as manic-depressive, because there are some days that I am incredibly up and enjoying life. Then I fall back into that steady norm that I once called anhedonia. Incidentally, the term manic-depressive is no longer used. The medical community calls it bi-polar these days, the same disorder as Patty Duke.

However, I also rejected bi-polar in the end. I’ve read a fair bit about it over the years, including some case studies, and I am fully aware that my highs are not manic and my lows are not like falling into the Marianas Trench, either.

For a number of years I tried to fool myself by calling it The Blues. Not all of us are all always happy, are we? That’s how I rationalized it. Yet, I know some people that never appear to be down and some who never appear to be up. At least I had moods. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

However, I stopped all of that self-delusional rationalization after I was finally diagnosed as having Depression. There it was. A doctor said so. There was no longer any way to ignore the fact that the serotonin in my head — or the lack of uptaking thereof — affects my entire outlook. For a few years I took some meds. Actually, at the beginning, I took a lot of meds, different meds. It took a while to find one that didn’t make me crazy, which is not an exaggeration. Then we had to adjust the dosage so I didn’t sleep most of the time. But, we managed to find the right balance.

In the end I quit the drugs altogether. They wrapped my brain in a kind of cotton candy that was hard to think through and absolutely impossible to write through. Since then I have self-medicated when I have the need and the money.

That diagnosis, BTW, was a good 14 or 15 years ago. I no longer think of myself as depressed because — really? — who wants to carry that around all the time? It’s heavy, man.

Heavier still: Over the years I’ve started to think of myself as human kintsugi. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, as opposed to how we do it here. Westerners try to restore pottery by concealing the repair.

Thinking of myself as kintsugi acknowledges that I have been broken and repaired — more than once, in fact. However, it also means that I am more fragile than I would be if I had never shattered.

There! I’ve said it. Do I feel any better for finally having been so confessional? Time will tell, but it’s a good sign that I don’t feel any worse. And, because music always makes me feel better, crank it up and D A N C E ! ! !

The Best Laid Plans ► Unpacking The Writer

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Toronto’s own Johnnie Lombardi and Me

My Go Fund Me campaign:

In our last exciting episode of Unpacking The Writer — my monthly look behind the curtain at the Not Now Silly Newsroom — I got all nostalgic. To quote myself from Where We’re At & Where We’re Going: 

I’ve taken care of Pops for the last decade and I’m simply burned out. It’s time for me to return to Toronto, the city I call home, to recharge my batteries.

Ironically, I’m returning to Kensington Market, which has a similar Hippie feel as Coconut Grove. I lived in Kensington Market many years ago, but was able to experience it again anew when I visited Toronto in September. I spent most of my time in the Market and felt comfortable and at home. Soon I will be able to call it home.

When I wrote that (at the beginning of January) my departure date was tentatively scheduled for the end of February; so tentative that I didn’t mention it. Now, due to circumstances beyond my control, I won’t be leaving the Yew Ess Eh ’til the end of August. That means I have more time to tie up all the loose ends down here and promote my Go Fund Me campaign, to help defray my moving expenses.

My best ever month and my All Time Top Five

SOUR GRAPES MAKES FOR A BITTER WHINE: I’ve been looking at the stats again for the Not Now Silly Newsroom. As of this writing, I have served up 410,958 pages for my readers to … err … read since launching this place almost 4 years ago.

My monthly count averages 9,000-10,000 views. My daily hits range anywhere from 150-300, depending on the subject matter and how much promotion I do. On the odd occasion my monthly readership has reached heights that even I have trouble believing. Pictured at right is when I hit almost 18,000 views just one year ago, twice my general average.

I bring these stats up because, to be perfectly honest (and a bit of a whiner), I am disappointed in the lack of response to my Go Fund Me campaign to help me get back to Canada. If people knew how much work went into these posts, and how few pennies I get from the few advertisements that Google feeds me, they’d wonder why I do it at all.

There are times I wonder myself. Times like this when I look at the stats and see that I made a dime yesterday, or $1.78 in the last 28 days, which comes to slightly over 6 cents a day.

I know that over the course of the next month this particular post will be read by an average of 300 people. If every person chucked a quarter into a Tip Jar for every page they read, I’d be bringing in about $2,500 a month. I’ve not even earned 1/10th of that since starting this blog almost 4 years ago.

Having said that, I didn’t start this blog for the money. I would write regardless because it’s what I’ve done my entire adult life. However, I did have it in the back of my mind that this blog could ‘top off’ the other income I produced. It’s been a disaster in that respect.

While still on the subject of stats, you’ll find in the column to the right the Not Now Silly All Time Top Ten Posts. However, just for the fun of it, I broke out the Top 10 stories that caught your attention just this month, from highest to lowest:

TITLE OF POST VIEWS PUBLISHED TOTAL VIEWS
Paul McCartney Deported From Japan 280 Jan 25, 2016 280
A Civil Rights Champion Born 187 Feb 4, 2016 187
Del Shannon & Me 179 Feb 8, 2016 179
The 45 Is Introduced 179 Feb 1, 2016 179
Take the “A” Train 171 Feb 15, 2016 171
The Detroit Riots 132 July 22, 2012 6401
Remembering the Challenger Crew 30 Years Later 125 Jan 28, 2016 125
The Palin Family’s Greatest [Literal] Hits 81 Jan 21, 2016 264
It’s Only A Northern Song 75 Feb 22, 2016 75
Unpacking The Writer 68 Dec 1, 2012 1285

That’s 1,477 views on just the Top Ten posts in the last 30 days (which doesn’t even include those evergreens that didn’t make the Top Ten). A dime per visitor would earn me more than in the past 30 days than I have received in the 4 years since launching the blog.

Recently I was having this discussion with a friend on the facebookery: Our mutual profession of writing has been seriously devalued since Bill Gates made the World Wide Web a Point & Click environment. Anybody with a keyboard and mouse now believes they can write. And, we can see the sad results all over the innertubes: People can barely create a 10 word meme without serious grammar and spelling errors.

Speaking of sour grapes: I’ve groused several times previously about the Coconut Grove Grapevine. I have even truthfully and non-ashamedly admitted to being jealous; jealous that such a poorly written blog has so many more readers than I. That a blog so devoid of actual journalism is able to sell a passel of advertisements. Yet the actual news stories I write about Coconut Grove — as opposed to Falco’s commercial fluff — earns almost nothing at all. [I know I am repeating myself from previous posts, but it’s only a rerun if you’ve seen it before.]

Consequently, a profession I spent my entire adult life perfecting is no longer considered worthy of adequate remuneration. [A big shout out here to all my musician friends who find themselves in the same sinking boat.] I remember how excited I was, way back when, that an editor agreed to pay me 5 cents a word for a very long article she commissioned. I thought I won the lottery because that seemed like a fortune in those days. Now I am constantly approached to write for free because it will be “good exposure.” No, seriously. I also stopped writing “on spec” 4 decades ago. Either I will pre-sell an article or keep it for the Not Now Silly Newsroom.

I need to be more like Al Crespo, of The Crespogram Report,
who publishes the best muckraking blog in Miami. He doesn’t take any
advertising at all, so he obviously doesn’t peg his words’ worth to the
almighty advertising dollar.

Hopefully next month I won’t feel so sorry for myself and my profession.

HOP ON POPS: The last week has been very busy around here. Pops celebrated his 90th birthday on Valentine’s Day. Relatives started arriving last week for the party on the 20th. We took over one of the condo clubhouses and invited over 60 of his friends to help us celebrate this great day.

Here’s a pic of him getting about to blow out his candles and you can follow THIS LINK to a slideshow.

What a great time it was. Pops loves being the center of attention (Who doesn’t?) and he sure was this weekend. People hung on his every word and laughed at all his jokes, even the ones we’ve heard for decades. He couldn’t have asked for a better time and neither could we.

Now that things are returning back to what qualifies as normal around here, I have several irons in the fire. Hopefully, I’ll be able to reveal more about these projects in our next exciting episode of Unpacking The Writer, coming soon to a web browser near you.

A Civil Rights Champion Born ► Throwback Thursday

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Happy Birthday to Rosa Louise McCauley Parks, born on this day in 1913. On December 1, 1955, at the age of 42, Parks refused to give up her seat to a White person on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, triggering the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It lasted just over a year and, finally, integrated the buses in that southern city.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a defining event in the country’s history. There had been other attempts to integrate buses (which you can read about in the Wiki essay Events leading up to the bus boycott). However, this one attracted national attention and led to the Supreme Court ruling that the laws behind Montgomery and Alabama’s bus segregation were unconstitutional.

According to the National Archives: 

Mrs. Parks was not the first person to be prosecuted for violating
the segregation laws on the city buses in Montgomery. She was, however, a
woman of unchallenged character who was held in high esteem by all
those who knew her. At the time of her arrest, Mrs. Parks was active in
the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP), serving as secretary to E.D. Nixon, president of the Montgomery
chapter. Her arrest became a rallying point around which the African
American community organized a bus boycott in protest of the
discrimination they had endured for years. Martin Luther King, Jr., the
26-year-old minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, emerged as a
leader during the well-coordinated, peaceful boycott that lasted 381
days and captured the world’s attention. It was during the boycott that
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., first achieved national fame as the
public became acquainted with his powerful oratory.

Parks was not the quiet seamstress that history tends to remember. The WikiWackyWoo picks up the story:

At the time, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. She had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee
center for training activists for workers’ rights and racial equality.
She acted as a private citizen “tired of giving in”. Although widely
honored in later years, she also suffered for her act; she was fired
from her job as a seamstress in a local department store, and received
death threats for years afterwards. Her situation also opened doors.

Shortly after the boycott, she moved to Detroit, where she briefly found similar work. From 1965 to 1988 she served as secretary and receptionist to John Conyers, an African-American U.S. Representative. She was also active in the Black Power movement and the support of political prisoners in the US.

After retirement, Parks wrote her autobiography and lived a largely
private life in Detroit. In her final years, she suffered from dementia. Parks received national recognition, including the NAACP’s 1979 Spingarn Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman and third non-U.S. government official to lie in honor at the Capitol Rotunda. 
 

Detroit honoured this Civil Rights icon by renaming 12th Street, where the 1967 riot occurred, Rosa Parks Boulevard.

Is Ted Nugent Racist? ► Throwback Thursday

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For this week’s Throwback Thursday I am — once again — reaching into my vast writing archives. In 2012 I was freelancing for Stones Detroit, a website out of…err…Detroit. This original article was commissioned by my editor.

Is Ted Nugent A Racist?
Our Stones Detroit Writer Says, “Yes”
OPINION by Headly Westerfield — October 2012

 

The house I lived in on Gilchrist Street

When I was growing up in Detroit I lived on Gilchrist Street, 5 houses away from David Palmer, the original drummer for the Amboy Dukes. When the Amboy Dukes were rehearsing in Dave’s garage, all us neighbourhood kids would gather at the end of the driveway and listen, but we’d catch hell if we took one step onto the property. As a teenager I saw the Amboy Dukes dozens of times in large and small venues and, consequently, have followed the career of Ted Nugent ever since, culminating in his crazy, racist rant earlier this week.

Where to begin? Let’s start with the Vietnam War. Nugent, who is a long-time board member of the NRA, and brandishes weapons on stage, was a self-admitted Draft Dodger.

I got my physical notice 30 days prior to. Well, on that day I ceased cleansing my body. No more brushing my teeth, no more washing my hair, no baths, no soap, no water. Thirty days of debris build. I stopped shavin’ and I was 18, had a little scraggly beard, really looked like a hippie. I had long hair, and it started gettin’ kinky, matted up. Then two weeks before, I stopped eating any food with nutritional value. I just had chips, Pepsi, beer-stuff I never touched-buttered poop, little jars of Polish sausages, and I’d drink the syrup, I was this side of death, Then a week before, I stopped going to the bathroom. I did it in my pants. poop, piss the whole shot. My pants got crusted up.

Nice imagery.

Nugent, the coward, also claimed to have snorted crystal meth just before his physical. However, that’s all old news. More recently Nugent had to explain himself to the Secret Service for remarks he made earlier this year:

Because I’ll tell you this right now: if Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year. Being at the NRA event, God Bless ya, good indicator, but if you can’t go home and get everybody in your lives to clean house of this vile, evil America Hating Administration, I don’t even know what you’re made out of.

This column could be filled with just the incendiary comments he’s made, like when he called President Obama a punk and suggested he suck on the machine gun he was brandishing on stage. However, I’d much rather deal with the comments he made this week to Brett M. Decker of The Washington Times.

Decker: You and I are Motown soul brothers, as you’ve put it before. When outsiders visit our hometown today, the reaction is always the same: This place looks like some post-apocalyptical disaster area. Once one of America’s richest, most dynamic business centers, how did the Motor City fall so far and what lessons can be learned from the demise of Detroit?

Nugent: It is so very true that my birth city of Detroit was the cleanest, most neighborly, positive-energy, work-ethic epicenter of planet earth when I was born there in 1948, right on through to the 1960s. Enter the liberal death wish of Mayor Coleman Young and a tsunami of negative, anti-productivity policies by liberal Democrats that put a voodoo curse on our beloved Motor City. When you train and reward people to scam, cheat and refuse to be productive, there is only one direction that society can go: straight down the toilet. It is truly a heartbreaker. Some wonderful people are still to be found back home, but they are outnumbered by the pimps, whores and welfare brats that have made bloodsucking a lifestyle. And now we have a president who is doing everything he can to take the whole country down that same path. Truly amazing.

This is wrong on so many levels. Let’s count the ways, shall we? To begin with Coleman Young didn’t become mayor until 1974, well after the ’60s ended. What sent Detroit “straight down the toilet” was racism, pure and simple.

At a time when Detroit could have become a model for integration, it was already going the other way and becoming one of the most segregated cities in the United States. As far back as the 1920s respectable people like Dr. Ossian Sweet found that Whites were not going to share their neighbourhoods with Black folk.

The racial strife only became worse during World War Two. Blacks from the south were recruited to help in the factories of the Arsenal of Democracy, as Detroit was called at the time. In 1943 Packard promoted 3 Black men to work the line and 25,000 Whites went out on strike.  During the strike one voice was heard on the loudspeaker to say, “I’d rather see Hitler and Hirohito win than work next to a Nigger.” This was just 3 weeks before the Detroit Race Riot of 1943.

After the war ended and throughout the ’50s, when both Blacks and Whites had enough money to buy houses, Whites could purchase anywhere they wanted, but Blacks could not. Properties were “redlined,” in the vernacular of the day, and Blacks could only buy in certain neighbourhoods, if they could get bank loans at all. Meanwhile, White folk started to buy and build in the suburbs beyond 8 Mile Road. White Flight had already begun in the 1950s, but it truly sped up after the Detroit Riot of 1967. Had the White folk stayed in the city, things would have been much different.

I’m not going to mince words: I find Ted Nugent’s comments racist. The Detroit he remembers was “the cleanest, most neighborly, positive-energy, work-ethic epicenter.” This was the White Detroit of Nugent’s halcyon memories. The neighbourhood Nugent grew up in, and the neighbourhood I grew up in, were all-White. Black Detroit? For Nugent that’s the Detroit of the “liberal death wish” of Coleman Young, the Black mayor, who put a “voodoo curse” — a Black curse — on his beloved Detroit. “Pimps, whores and welfare brats” are all Nugent’s impression of Black Detroit as well. No one describes White folk that way.

Detroit gets knocked by a lot of people, but to hear Nugent ignore Detroit history to spout racist tripe is beyond the pale.

It’s hard to sum up a few hundred years of history in a short post. I’ve written far more extensively about Detroit’s Race Relations on my blog in an essay called The Detroit Riots ► Unpacking My Detroit. Please check it out and tell me what you think.

Originally published at Stones Detroit.

Is Ted Nugent A Racist? Our Stones Detroit Writer Says, “Yes”

OPINION by Headly Westerfield
When I was growing up in Detroit I lived on Gilchrist Street, 5
houses away David Palmer, the original drummer for the Amboy Dukes. When
the Amboy Dukes were rehearsing in Dave’s garage, all us neighbourhood
kids would gather at the end of the driveway and listen, but we’d catch
hell if we took one step onto the property. As a teenager I saw the
Amboy Dukes dozens of times in large and small venues and, consequently,
have followed the career of Ted Nugent ever since, culminating in his
crazy, racist rant earlier this week.
Where to begin? Let’s start with the Vietnam War. Nugent, who is a
long-time board member of the NRA, and brandishes weapons on stage, was a
self-admitted Draft Dodger.

I got my physical notice 30 days prior to. Well, on that
day I ceased cleansing my body. No more brushing my teeth, no more
washing my hair, no baths, no soap, no water. Thirty days of debris
build. I stopped shavin’ and I was 18, had a little scraggly beard,
really looked like a hippie. I had long hair, and it started gettin’
kinky, matted up. Then two weeks before, I stopped eating any food with
nutritional value. I just had chips, Pepsi, beer-stuff I never
touched-buttered poop, little jars of Polish sausages, and I’d drink the
syrup, I was this side of death, Then a week before, I stopped going to
the bathroom. I did it in my pants. poop, piss the whole shot. My pants
got crusted up.

Nice imagery. Nugent, the coward, also claimed to have snorted
crystal meth just before his physical. However, that’s all old news.
More recently Nugent had to explain himself to the Secret Service for remarks he made earlier this year:

Because I’ll tell you this right now: if Barack Obama
becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in
jail by this time next year. Being at the NRA event, God Bless ya, good
indicator, but if you can’t go home and get everybody in your lives to
clean house of this vile, evil America Hating Administration, I don’t
even know what you’re made out of.

This column could be filled with just the incendiary comments he’s
made, like when he called President Obama a punk and suggested he suck on the machine gun he was brandishing on stage. However, I’d much rather deal with the comments he made this week to Brett M. Decker of The Washington Times.

Decker: You and I are Motown soul
brothers, as you’ve put it before. When outsiders visit our hometown
today, the reaction is always the same: This place looks like some
post-apocalyptical disaster area. Once one of America’s richest, most
dynamic business centers, how did the Motor City fall so far and what
lessons can be learned from the demise of Detroit?
Nugent: It is so very true that my birth city of
Detroit was the cleanest, most neighborly, positive-energy, work-ethic
epicenter of planet earth when I was born there in 1948, right on
through to the 1960s. Enter the liberal death wish of Mayor Coleman
Young and a tsunami of negative, anti-productivity policies by liberal
Democrats that put a voodoo curse on our beloved Motor City. When you
train and reward people to scam, cheat and refuse to be productive,
there is only one direction that society can go: straight down the
toilet. It is truly a heartbreaker. Some wonderful people are still to
be found back home, but they are outnumbered by the pimps, whores and
welfare brats that have made bloodsucking a lifestyle. And now we have a
president who is doing everything he can to take the whole country down
that same path. Truly amazing.

This is wrong on so many levels. Let’s count the ways, shall we? To
begin with Coleman Young didn’t become mayor until 1974, well after the
’60s ended. What sent Detroit “straight down the toilet” was racism,
pure and simple.
At a time when Detroit could have become a model for integration, it
was already going the other way and becoming one of the most segregated
cities in the United States. As far back as the 1920s respectable people
like Dr. Ossian Sweet found that Whites were not going to share their
neighbourhoods with Black folk. The racial strife only became worse
during World War Two. Blacks from the south were recruited to help in
the factories of the Arsenal of Democracy, as Detroit was called at the
time. In 1943 Packard promoted 3 Black men to work the line and 25,000
Whites went out on strike.  During the strike one voice was heard on the
loudspeaker to say, “I’d rather see Hitler and Hirohito win than work next to a Nigger.” This was just 3 weeks before the Detroit Race Riot of 1943.
After the war ended and throughout the ’50s, when both Blacks and
Whites had enough money to buy houses, Whites could purchase anywhere
they wanted, but Blacks could not. Properties were “redlined,” in the
vernacular of the day, and Blacks could only buy in certain
neighbourhoods, if they could get bank loans at all. Meanwhile, White
folk started to buy and build in the suburbs beyond 8 Mile Road. White
Flight had already begun in the 1950s, but it truly sped up after the
Detroit Riot of 1967. Had the White folk stayed in the city, things
would have been much different.
I’m not going to mince words: I find Ted Nugent’s comments racist.
The Detroit he remembers was “the cleanest, most neighborly,
positive-energy, work-ethic epicenter.” This was the White Detroit of
Nugent’s halcyon memories. The neighbourhood Nugent grew up in, and the
neighbourhood I grew up in, were all-White. Black Detroit? For Nugent
that’s the Detroit of the “liberal death wish” of Coleman Young, the
Black mayor, who put a “voodoo curse” — a Black curse — on his beloved
Detroit. “Pimps, whores and welfare brats” are all Nugent’s impression
of Black Detroit as well. No one describes White folk that way.
Detroit gets knocked by a lot of people, but to hear Nugent ignore Detroit history to spout racist tripe is beyond the pale.

It’s hard to sum up a few hundred years of history in a short post.
I’ve written far more extensively about Detroit’s Race Relations on my blog in an essay called The Detroit Riots ► Unpacking My Detroit. Please check it out and tell me what you think.

– See more at:
http://stonesdetroit.com/is-ted-nugent-a-racist-our-stones-detroit-writer-says-yes/#sthash.JbhxdXZB.Tx3mALHp.dpuf

Is Ted Nugent A Racist? Our Stones Detroit Writer Says, “Yes”

OPINION by Headly Westerfield
When I was growing up in Detroit I lived on Gilchrist Street, 5
houses away David Palmer, the original drummer for the Amboy Dukes. When
the Amboy Dukes were rehearsing in Dave’s garage, all us neighbourhood
kids would gather at the end of the driveway and listen, but we’d catch
hell if we took one step onto the property. As a teenager I saw the
Amboy Dukes dozens of times in large and small venues and, consequently,
have followed the career of Ted Nugent ever since, culminating in his
crazy, racist rant earlier this week.
Where to begin? Let’s start with the Vietnam War. Nugent, who is a
long-time board member of the NRA, and brandishes weapons on stage, was a
self-admitted Draft Dodger.

I got my physical notice 30 days prior to. Well, on that
day I ceased cleansing my body. No more brushing my teeth, no more
washing my hair, no baths, no soap, no water. Thirty days of debris
build. I stopped shavin’ and I was 18, had a little scraggly beard,
really looked like a hippie. I had long hair, and it started gettin’
kinky, matted up. Then two weeks before, I stopped eating any food with
nutritional value. I just had chips, Pepsi, beer-stuff I never
touched-buttered poop, little jars of Polish sausages, and I’d drink the
syrup, I was this side of death, Then a week before, I stopped going to
the bathroom. I did it in my pants. poop, piss the whole shot. My pants
got crusted up.

Nice imagery. Nugent, the coward, also claimed to have snorted
crystal meth just before his physical. However, that’s all old news.
More recently Nugent had to explain himself to the Secret Service for remarks he made earlier this year:

Because I’ll tell you this right now: if Barack Obama
becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in
jail by this time next year. Being at the NRA event, God Bless ya, good
indicator, but if you can’t go home and get everybody in your lives to
clean house of this vile, evil America Hating Administration, I don’t
even know what you’re made out of.

This column could be filled with just the incendiary comments he’s
made, like when he called President Obama a punk and suggested he suck on the machine gun he was brandishing on stage. However, I’d much rather deal with the comments he made this week to Brett M. Decker of The Washington Times.

Decker: You and I are Motown soul
brothers, as you’ve put it before. When outsiders visit our hometown
today, the reaction is always the same: This place looks like some
post-apocalyptical disaster area. Once one of America’s richest, most
dynamic business centers, how did the Motor City fall so far and what
lessons can be learned from the demise of Detroit?
Nugent: It is so very true that my birth city of
Detroit was the cleanest, most neighborly, positive-energy, work-ethic
epicenter of planet earth when I was born there in 1948, right on
through to the 1960s. Enter the liberal death wish of Mayor Coleman
Young and a tsunami of negative, anti-productivity policies by liberal
Democrats that put a voodoo curse on our beloved Motor City. When you
train and reward people to scam, cheat and refuse to be productive,
there is only one direction that society can go: straight down the
toilet. It is truly a heartbreaker. Some wonderful people are still to
be found back home, but they are outnumbered by the pimps, whores and
welfare brats that have made bloodsucking a lifestyle. And now we have a
president who is doing everything he can to take the whole country down
that same path. Truly amazing.

This is wrong on so many levels. Let’s count the ways, shall we? To
begin with Coleman Young didn’t become mayor until 1974, well after the
’60s ended. What sent Detroit “straight down the toilet” was racism,
pure and simple.
At a time when Detroit could have become a model for integration, it
was already going the other way and becoming one of the most segregated
cities in the United States. As far back as the 1920s respectable people
like Dr. Ossian Sweet found that Whites were not going to share their
neighbourhoods with Black folk. The racial strife only became worse
during World War Two. Blacks from the south were recruited to help in
the factories of the Arsenal of Democracy, as Detroit was called at the
time. In 1943 Packard promoted 3 Black men to work the line and 25,000
Whites went out on strike.  During the strike one voice was heard on the
loudspeaker to say, “I’d rather see Hitler and Hirohito win than work next to a Nigger.” This was just 3 weeks before the Detroit Race Riot of 1943.
After the war ended and throughout the ’50s, when both Blacks and
Whites had enough money to buy houses, Whites could purchase anywhere
they wanted, but Blacks could not. Properties were “redlined,” in the
vernacular of the day, and Blacks could only buy in certain
neighbourhoods, if they could get bank loans at all. Meanwhile, White
folk started to buy and build in the suburbs beyond 8 Mile Road. White
Flight had already begun in the 1950s, but it truly sped up after the
Detroit Riot of 1967. Had the White folk stayed in the city, things
would have been much different.
I’m not going to mince words: I find Ted Nugent’s comments racist.
The Detroit he remembers was “the cleanest, most neighborly,
positive-energy, work-ethic epicenter.” This was the White Detroit of
Nugent’s halcyon memories. The neighbourhood Nugent grew up in, and the
neighbourhood I grew up in, were all-White. Black Detroit? For Nugent
that’s the Detroit of the “liberal death wish” of Coleman Young, the
Black mayor, who put a “voodoo curse” — a Black curse — on his beloved
Detroit. “Pimps, whores and welfare brats” are all Nugent’s impression
of Black Detroit as well. No one describes White folk that way.
Detroit gets knocked by a lot of people, but to hear Nugent ignore Detroit history to spout racist tripe is beyond the pale.

It’s hard to sum up a few hundred years of history in a short post.
I’ve written far more extensively about Detroit’s Race Relations on my blog in an essay called The Detroit Riots ► Unpacking My Detroit. Please check it out and tell me what you think.

– See more at:
http://stonesdetroit.com/is-ted-nugent-a-racist-our-stones-detroit-writer-says-yes/#sthash.JbhxdXZB.Tx3mALHp.dpuf

Where We’re At & Where We’re Going ► Unpacking the Writer

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Pops and I soon after I moved to Florida 10 years ago.

I opened this joint (originally called “Headly Westerfield’s Aunty Em Ericann Blog”) in April of 2012 to publish Johnny Dollar Has Proven Himself To Be A Very Dangerous Person. Then I had to decide what else to do with it. It has metamorphosed into what you see here today, the Not Now Silly Newsroom.

When I fired up this place, I had no real plan; I still don’t. I merely followed my interests, writing about whatever rang my bell at the time. I took the position that my interests, as interesting as they are, would be of interest to other interesting people. And, I also assumed, that my droll, tongue-in-cheek writing style would be endlessly entertaining, not to mention interesting.

Not following a road map has led me to some very interesting places.

F’rinstance: I never thought I’d be writing about Coconut Grove, which is 35 miles from where I live. I was still disguised in my Street Performance Art Installation as Aunty Em Ericann, when I discovered the Charles Avenue Historical Marker, the E.W.F. Stirrup House, and the shuttered Coconut Grove Playhouse. I distinctly remember getting home that day and telling friends I had found a story at the corner of Charles Avenue and Main Highway. I just wasn’t sure what it was yet.

That first encounter with Coconut Grove gave me an almost endless supply of stories about that community and its rich history. It’s the oldest neighbourhood in Miami and, at one time, had the highest percentage of Black home ownership than anywhere else in the country. Today the 33133 Zip Code is considered one of the most exclusive in the nation, while gentrification of The Grove continues to bulldoze the rich Bahamian history the original village was founded upon.

But it wasn’t just Coconut Grove history I got sucked into writing about. I also wrote about Trolleygate and Soilgate, long before the Miami media discovered those stories. I wrote about [allegedly] corrupt politicians and the Distrct 2 election campaign. I’ve written about the continued encroachment of Marler Avenue, which became the third chapter of my popular Where The Sidewalk Ends, Racism Begins series. I’ve written about bad neighbours and rapacious developers, who just so happen to be the same person. I’ve written about parking problems and valets run amok. And, of course, I’ve written about my campaign to save the E.W.F. Stirrup House for something other than a B&B for rich White folks.

It took me quite a while to realize why Coconut Grove was one of the few places in Florida where I felt truly comfortable. To begin with, the Grove isn’t suburban, which is really what the rest of South Florida feels like. Hugging the east coast, it’s just one long, sprawling suburban landscape; gas stations and strip malls separated by gated communities, and indoor malls, all connected with ribbons of highways, each radiating the midday summer heat.

Coconut Grove is different. It still has faint echoes of the original Bahamian culture that built the neighbourhood. Later those original settlers were joined by artists wanting to capture the tropics in paintings, and one can still feel that vibe throbbing under the surface. The Bahamians and Bohemians got along together famously and, by the ’60, were joined by folksingers such as Fred Neil, John Sebastian, David Crosby, and Joni Mitchell. On a quiet day you can still hear their songs in the off-shore breezes.

There’s a deep Hippie vibe in parts of the Grove, the parts where I felt the most comfortable.


Montage by author

The overarching rubric for all of my Coconut Grove stories was Unpacking Coconut Grove. Right now I’m feeling nostalgic because I am Packing Coconut Grove; trying to tie up all the loose reportorial ends as I prepare to leave South Florida.

I’ve taken care of Pops for the last decade and I’m simply burned out. It’s time for me to return to Toronto, the city I call home, to recharge my batteries.

Ironically, I’m returning to Kensington Market, which has a similar Hippie feel as Coconut Grove. I lived in Kensington Market many years ago, but was able to experience it again anew when I visited Toronto in September. I spent most of my time in the Market and felt comfortable and at home. Soon I will be able to call it home.

Help me get to Kensington Market
by contributing to my Go Fund Me:

Endings Mean New Begingings

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I already have the right hat

As you may, or may not, have heard, the Not Now Silly Newsroom is moving to Canada. My time in Florida is coming to an end.

I’ve been here in paradise for the last decade taking care of Pops. Now the time has come to turn his continued care over to one of my 4 sisters.

Looking back on the last 10 years: 

My attachment to Coconut Grove is a flame that cannot be extinguished. I will continue to visit West Grove, as well as write about this unique and magical place. I already have a couple of new articles in the pipeline.

But, as I say, it’s time for me to leave.

I’ll need to find long pants and warm socks because I’m heading back to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the city I call home no matter where I am.

Just like Coconut Grove, I fell in love with Toronto the first time I saw it. That was long before I ever moved there. I miss The Big Smoke and my brief visit earlier this year — 4 days in September — only whetted my appetite for more.

I’ve not seen a Canadian winter in 11 years. I wonder if they are
as bad as I remember, although it’s balmy up there right now. That won’t last long. I’ve never liked Winter and I am not sure whether I’ll survive the cold, or
not, but the effort will be worth it.

My biggest mistake was choosing to quit before I really had the means to do so. However, I just hit the wall. Consequently, I have fired up a Go Fund Me account to help get me back to Toronto. Please take a look and see if you can find your way clear to contribute a few bucks to get me home.

Interview With District 2’s Ken Russell

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Ken Russell, potential Commissioner-elect for District 2
while the Veterans’ Day commemoration gathers to march

I originally met potential Commissioner-elect Ken Russell way back when — during Soilgate — when I called out of the blue to interview him.

We met at a local coffee shop just as it appeared his battle with [allegedly] corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff was finished. It was an epic battle over the toxic soil in Merrie Christmas Park and, in the end, the residents got the kind of toxic soil remediation they felt their children deserved.

While it appeared as if Merrie Christmas Park would be re-mediated properly, I was surprised when he moved on to his next concern, which was all the other toxic parks in the city. Russell was genuinely concerned that those residents might not have enough clout, or enough money, to hire a lawyer like he and his neighbours had. That’s when I knew Ken was about far more than his own property values. He had a Social Justice bone.

He wasn’t doing it for effect. At the time Russell had no intention to run for office, but the fight over toxic soil made him feel that he could do better than the current Commissioner. And, the secrecy in
which [allegedly] corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff went behind the backs of the residents, breaking several laws about proper notification for a Brownfield Site — not to mention when he lied to this reporter that it had never been so designated — told Russell there must be a better way to conduct city business on behalf of constituents.

It’s a sign!!!
The Veterans’ Day Parade marched right past this.

When he later declared he was running for District 2 Commissioner, Russell made transparency one of the cornerstones of his platform.

In one of the craziest election finishes in Miami history, Ken is engaged in a runoff election with wife of term-limited Teresa Sarnoff. However, with Sarnoff withdrawing from the race, the city lawyer says the runoff will still be held, but that votes for Teresa Sarnoff won’t count. Yet, Democracy dictates that the votes count and Ken maintains that he’s still in it to win it. He wants a clear mandate, so he’s still campaigning for every vote on November 17th.

Russell agreed to a sit down interview and suggested we meet in West Grove after the Veterans’ Day commemoration. As I drove down I couldn’t help but wonder if he had chosen the perfect photo op for a politician, or whether it was simply to accommodate me. I requested an interview, but told him it had to be on Wednesday because that was the only day I had free. I left it up to him to choose the time.

That we met in Coconut Grove for this interview seems appropriate because that’s where he received his highest support, with a nearly 20% turnout. It’s also the area I’ve been researching extensively since 2006. Watching Russell work the crowd was nothing like watching a politician work a crowd. There were enough hugs, kisses, handshakes, and genuine warmth in both directions, that it was obvious that Russell is already well-liked by this part of his potential constituency.

Russell surprised me by sitting in the grass his suit for this interview.

NNS: You’re making up for a politician that was reviled in this district. How are you planning to overcome that?

KEN RUSSELL: It’s true that part of the reason I got involved was seeing how my Commissioner operated and seeing how I felt things could be done better. The day he’s out of office, the day I get into office, that’s the first step and it’s really not that hard. A new tone, a new communication, a new conversation with the neighbours.

I’m already being told, and I’m not even in there, that this already feels different than it has for the last 9 years. So, the first step is to be open and even that, at the very least, wasn’t done to my understanding. And, that comes easy for me.

NNS: Especially in this neighbourhood of West Grove, the people here kinda felt burned by promises made years ago that were never fulfilled. Yet, you were able to overcome that to get a 20% turnout at the polls that went overwhelmingly to you. How are you going to keep that bridge open to the community?

KR: The community’s going to keep that bridge open. At this point, I owe so much to this area that I don’t even have a choice of closing the door. It’s too important. It’s been vocalized and it’s been publicized well enough where my heart is, that I couldn’t turn back if I wanted to, and I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the support of the West Grove and, despite advice I received early on, I could see that there was a community here with a lot to lose, that would turn up at the polls if they felt they had an advocate.

NNS: And, you’re going to be that advocate?

KR: Absolutely. I’ll be the best that I can.

NNS: One of the things I did during the elections is I did door knocks with you in various neighbourhoods. Where do you think your biggest support was coming from overall?


KR: I knocked [on] over 2,000 doors during the 10 month period, all the from the South Grove to the West Grove to Morningside. It was very difficult to knock doors in Brickell and downtown, but we found other ways to reach the community there. The largest support was from the Grove as a whole, all parts of the Grove together. There was nearly a two-to-one margin in my favor at almost every major precinct in the area.

NNS: Do you have any job you want to do on Day One?

KR: Day One is learning for me because I don’t pretend to have all the answers, especially within process. I have the intention of what I’d like to accomplish and, as you can see here today, just the conversation, the conversation that we’re having even today with folks, is part of the first step; is part of that first step of giving them a trust [and] a feeling of comfort that their Commissioner is going to be open with them.

NNS: Is there any big project you’ve got in mind? Something you want to try to do while in office.

KR: Yeah, I would like to see something good come of the Trolley garage. I’d like to see that building serve the community. And, I’ve heard a lot of good ideas, but not in a formal setting to where I could say what should be done with it, but it’s a symbol of how this part of town’s been treated and, I think, in the same symbolic gesture should be converted into something that builds up the community.

With that Ken Russell was off to a meeting at Miami City Hall, where the learning curve for a new potential Commissioner-elect is steep.

For further reading please see: Soilgate, Trolleygate, [allegedly] corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff, and the Anybody But Teresa facebookery, where so many of these issues intertwine.