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Sent: Saturday, March 08, 2008 11:10 PM
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Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on <!-- End GoStats JavaScript Based Code -->.

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Lee--

You simply must get back into teaching--or are you having too much fun? When's the Brandon seat up for election--I must save up my pennies!

See you at the next meeting! Thanks for Thursday--never has the Trib been so nice to teachers. We'll see where we all go from here.

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 8:10 PM

Casting-room Couch Blog Readers: The above beautiful and brainy young woman will replace Jennifer Falliero in 09 when she runs for the board again.

Not only does Falliero not know what the First Amendment means, she also uses her chairship to retaliate against voters for what she perceives is their lese majeste in questioning the way she conducts herself in public office.

Ms. Falliero has no business being on the board that oversees the school lives of the community's children. She initiated an on-site adultery with a young married man and father of two, destroyed his marriage, and caused the suffering of his two little children with his stupid cooperation. Voters must evict her from the board and replace her with the above young woman.

This young woman is a Brandon teacher. When the time comes for her to run, we must have a fund raiser for her. She is poor. She is a teacher and that's poor by definition. But already she has skills that La Falliero will die not having. She knows how to comport herself with steadfast poise in the presence of newspaper biggies: I saw that the other day at the Tribune meeting. She will give wonderful speeches on the stump: she has an anchor-woman voice of strength and authority. And she's an English teacher. She can drop quotes from Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Erasmus if the audience is up to it.

I don't even know this young person's name yet. But I will, and you will by the time comes for her to run against Falliero and mop up the floor with that sad excuse for a public official. If the administration tries to retaliate against her for her ambition to run for the board, the teachers in the Tribune meeting must gather around and punch back by writing the board email after email with copies to the newspapers. Never underestimate the board's and administration's terror of bad press.

This is the end of Casting-room Couch for the kid here. I am tired of haranguing the school board and leave that job to posterity. Somebody is out there who will take it on. Maybe one of the teachers who talked to the Tribune the other day will assume it. Maybe this future board member will want to continue this blog as a vector her candidacy. If so, I will pay the monthly fee for her. It's a flossy blog that gives you lots of data.

I have been amazed at the people who read this blog. I have hits from all over the US and even from the world.

I don't know whether they think Casting-room Couch is a sex site or what. But I have return hits from the same places--Dubai comes to mind. Maybe they are interested in education and the Peyton Place Hillsborough County School Board.

Our young future board member could research the issues that affect teachers and students in the schools and could write about them on this blog. She must let me know if she would like to do that, and the blog will go on.

The only loose end I leave is that I have not yet heard from the Florida Bar's Ethics Commission on Tom Gonzalez that I filed a charge against and that it accepted. When I get the results, I will ask Ms. Goudreau to pay attention to them in the paper for the good of the school community.

So it's hail and farewell from me. I am going back to reading Dante and all the books an English teacher piles up by her bed over the years that she does not have time to read because she is grading essays--usually illiterate. If your English teacher lets you get by her or him illiterate in high school, then you will be so all your life. Nobody ever seems to learn how to punctuate after the age of 17; and nobody after high school thinks it's his or her duty even in college to teach you basic literacy. That's why my two blogs on the grammar and punctuation mess-ups of the local press and the NYT and Washington Post have such lively traffic. The newspaper writers are not as bad as Ms. Elia, but they are pretty bad for writers of the two major newspapers of the country.

What will I be doing? I am going to have fun, fun, fun until Daddy takes my T-bird away, which means I will go to the Democratic convention in August with the two little girls who used to live across the street from our family in Beach Park and are now young matrons with families of their own. For my 76th birthday in May, I am going out to New Mexico to the little village where Georgia O'Keeffe spent the last years of her life painting. I don't like her art, but I love the independence of her life and how her art was just as important to her as it was to any male artist. She said to her husband, the photographer Stieglitz, in NYC, "Well, I'm off to New Mexico to live and to paint." Stieglitz didn't like it, but she stuck to her guns.

After a thorough review of O'Keefe's Spirit House, I will go to Santa Fe to see my darling oldest grandchild, Alanna. She dropped out of college and took off to NM with a young fellow who's as handsome as Brad Pitt and travels around the world like a rolling stone. My granddaughter teaches children to ski presently. I don't know what the Rolling Stone does, whom I liked in spite of myself. You cannot dislike a fellow who looks like Brad Pitt. I have to devise a way to get them both back in college. I think they would make wonderful grammar-school teachers and would not end up when they are my age under a bridge with very bad dental work, eating sardines out of a can and soda crackers.

I have had a good time beating up on the school board. I have one rule in life: if it's not fun, I am not going to do it. But I did not have a really good time. Why? The board is not smart. You can't have fun attempting repartee with people who are dull witted. That's why I miss the faculty lounge. There is always at least one worthy opponent in the faculty lounge.

The smartest person on the podium at the school board is Tom Gonzalez. And he is a Republican without a shred of humor. No humor. None. And he lies. I have asked the board to fire him at least a half dozen times in the public forum. But they hang on to him. He knows where all the bodies are buried in the administration catacombs and would be dangerous if turned loose with that lore mad at the board and administration for firing him.

I shall go to lunch Monday at Mise en Place because some newspaper men--all men, of course--are having a seminar. On what God knows. My old boss Patrick Manteiga will be there; so will Hooper be from the St. Pete Times. Maybe you have forgotten that Hooper is the huckleberry who wrote that fatuous article on La Belle Dame Sans Merci Falliero. She must have been in high-vamp mode that day and overwhelmed Hooper. I haven't forgot Hooper for this stupidity even if you have. I must go to this lunch if for nothing else than to tell Hooper what a round-heels sap he is for writing a gushing piece about our school-board honkytonk La Belle Dame Sans Merci.

Hail and farewell. And remember to take every opportunity to enjoy yourself. I do and always shall. lee