The Polk County School system chooses their Spelling Bee champion February 24th. Starting at 6 pm, 39 middle school students from 23 schools will compete in the McKeel Auditorium at 1810 West Parker St in Lakeland. Last student standing is the county champion. Attendance is free, but if you have more questions call 863.519.8798 for more information, but you can only ask for the definition, part of speech, or language of origin.
Tuesday, January 12, the whole world was informed and quickly learned about a horrendous event, which has now claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, leaving hundreds of thousand more injured and/or homeless. A 7.1 earthquake leveled the majority of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. Wednesday, January 20, a second quake shook the already destroyed country creating even more [...]
Lakeland, Fla. - "There are 1.02 billion undernourished people in the world today," according to the World Food Programme (WFP) organization. Today-together-we will be able to help some of these unfortunate persons from all over the world.
Music and Martinis make for a great combination! Why? Keep reading to find out and watch Ron from Texas Cattle Company make a Chocolate Covered Cherry Martini …
First, thanks to my friend Jose ___ for letting me share his business with all of you. If you have not seen an actual citation you will now! Keep reading for more.
As if I didn’t need another reminder as to how lazy I’ve been recently… I was at lunch yesterday reading the latest USA Today national prep baseball poll, and saw that the Dreadnaughts of Lakeland High School are sitting at number ten (number eight among teams across the South). That is a drop of eight positions [...]
We have a new set of photos by Tom Hagerty in our front page slideshow. This week, we’re featuring 15 photos Tom recently shot in Polk County’s Lakeland Scrub. Remember, you can click any photo to open it larger in a new window.
A couple of news items that are near and dear to Lakelanders. (And a bonus headline.) [ONE QUESTION WASTED] Townsend interviewed in Ledger's "Five Questions" Last night the Ledger posted an article where Lakeland's paper of record asked the Downtown Lakeland Partnership's Julie Townsend* five questions about her organization's continuing fight against Florida wasting taxpayer dollars to give CSX corporate welfare. Yes, the project that used to be called Central Florida Commuter Rail. The project that used to be responsible for forcing CSX to build a new ILC in Winter Haven and running many more longer trains through downtown Lakeland. You remember that don't you? But I guess the Ledger believes we have always been at war with Oceana. Back to the Townsend questions. I finished the article and wondered why 20% of the questions ere wasted on: CSX officials have said that if the purchase of the 61 miles of track goes through, there will be money available to help to install quiet zones along the rail corridor indowntown Lakeland, but if the deal falls through, the quiet zones are probably off the table. Which is a bigger issue for the DLP: quiet zones or the increased number of trains the Orlando deal will bring? Townsend gave a courteous answer "To my knowledge, CSX has never offered to pay for quiet zones...." I wish she had said, "Stop misleading with talk about quiet zones. It's the wasted tax money and traffic stupid. It always has been" (To paraphrase a Bush.) • File Storms Under Aquatic Birds (genus Gavia) Part of our reading area has a state Senator, Rhona Storms. She was in the news recently: The economy is a shambles. State revenue is in a free-fall. House leaders in both parties stand accused of misusing their political powers. This week, state Sen. Ronda Storms identified another menace: The Dewey Decimal System -- Libraries Offer Plenty For Storms To Stew Over Some might give Storms credit. The Dewey Decimal system is a proprietary product of OCLC. Libraries use the company to catalog books and must pay a small price per item placed in their catalog. (Assuming they want to use OCLC's common cataloging info. They could save the money and not join with OCLC, but it would cost them more to do all their own original cataloging. Trust me on this one. I spent seven years dealing with OCLC and catalogers on a daily basis. There is a system that is owned by the American people: the Library of Congress system, but cataloging under that system also has costs. Storms proposes libraries use the BAM method. You know where bookstores place items under big signs in some odd sort of order. You know how easy it is to find the book you need at Borders or Books-a-Million? (I'll wait for my sarcasm challenged daughter to catch that last sentence.) OK, it is simply silly that Storms believes only "little old librarians" will be upset to lose proper shelving of books. So will every single library patron. It's not a miracle that you can look up a book and go to a shelf and find it properly placed. It is the result of a lot of hard work and a precise system of cataloging. It may save a few dollars to not use Dewey, but I promise that when your child needs that book on loons the night before the paper is due...you will be glad you don't instead find a biography on Rhonda Storms. • And as a bonus, this headline from today's Ledger: Woman Accused of Biting Hubby's Thingy Seriously? "Thingy"?! It's a penis people. The Orlando Sentinel, where the Ledger got the story, wasn't much better: Angry wife jailed after biting husband's you-know-what Note that the Sentinel's URL does reference "penis." • * - Townsend is the wife of Lakeland Local writer Billy Townsend, but that makes no difference to me. photo 1 credit: Cat Carter for ylakeland photo 2 credit: becflies2001 (Cross-posted at LakelandLocal.com)
If you blog, tweet, post on Facebook, or use the Internet to communicate -- you're invited Thursday, January 15th at 6pm for a meeting of like minds. Black and Brew Coffee House 205 E. Main St. Lakeland, FL 33801 (863) 682-1210 All ages welcome. Please pass it on. View Larger Map
Polk Community College has many activities in September and October for the celebration of Hispanic Heritage including a Hispanic Art themed exhibition. Vilas Tonape, PCC’s new art instructor, painted a students portrait in less than one hour at the opening of the Students Art exhibition. It was an awesome experience watching him paint (video to come soon). Many students showed up for the opening, which included food from Guava Berry Bakery. The gallery is on the Lakeland PCC Campus in the Technology Building (LTB) and open Monday to Thursday at various times. photo credit: Darby Critendon
photo credit: Tom Hagerty
Various outlets reported today that Graham Packaging will close one of two Lakeland facilities. The Pennsylvania-based company announced that it will close the McCrue Road plant on October 9. The company reported that most of the 15 employees will be eligible for severance packages and may apply at other Graham locations. Some McCrue plant employees will be transferred to the County Line Road facility. “In July, Graham Packaging disclosed an agreement to be acquired by Texas Rangers owner Thomas O. Hicks for $700 million. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter.” — Tradingmarkets.com
If you’ve had some difficulty with broken links after our switch to Wordpress… They should all work now. I won’t bore you with details. Please let me know in comments if you find any other broken links. Thanks. Now back to posts on traffic cones, buses, breakfast, and socialists. And isn’t it time for another look at local main stream media?
Bio: Growing up in Detroit, Tom Hagerty dreamed of watching baseball in sunny Lakeland, Florida. That dream came to fruition in 1998 when he moved to Lakeland. Tom has a passion for the Detroit Tigers, the Lakeland Flying Tigers and all things Detroit. His interests include reading, writing and photography. Tom and his wife have two daughters, four cats, one dog and a guinea pig.