The Grammar Patrol Is on Duty--Hurrah! Dan Ruth, Rosemary Goudreau Leave Tribune

Dan Ruth Vacates the Tribune; so Does Rosemary Goudreau

Ms. Goudreau:

I regret your being one of the Tribune people downsized.

I am grateful for the very long meeting you held with teachers about their side of the story on school issues on which the administration and board shafted them. It meant the world to the both those present and those absent teachers that you and Vicky would take three hours of your time to give them a full hearing.

I don’t know what you plan to do in terms of work. I advise people against going into the print press. It’s a dying industry. I said so years ago when the Web first appeared.

The way you summarized the teachers’ input in such a logical, professorial manner impressed me when Vicky put it on the blackboard as you spelled it out.

Why don’t you teach? It’s not a career with much money expected. The administrators get the money because they and the complicit board divvy it up in their favor before the teachers see a cent. Steve Hegarty, a former SPT reporter who didn’t have the experience required in the job description and can’t punctuate got the nod from Elia because she thought his having been a reporter would yield her automatic good press. She is not savvy enough to consider that the press would resent Steve’s defection and his making twice the money they do although his job at the Times was tip top.

But there’s more to life than money. You get the satisfaction in teaching that, when you walk out of the classroom at the end of the day, you feel you have done your part to improve the world. And teachers do get a pension. I have a friend down the beach working now in her dotage because she did not consider this factor when she was young. There is nothing worse than a poor old woman, so women should review their eventual retirement situation.

I hope you will teach in Hillsborough County and have sufficient courage to show teachers they can push back at the board and administration and not be annihilated by these obtuse bullies. I hope you will also lead an effort to get teachers to drop the current union and get one like New York teachers have that does the job for teachers and does not hop in bed with the administration as the current CTA does in Hillsborough County.

Good luck in whatever you do.

Lee Drury De Cesare

Dan,

I read about your leaving the Tribune in La Gaceta. It said some fired employees got marched out the door by Tribune constabulary without getting to clean out their desks. That would be my preferred way to depart the premises. I have always loved hostile dramas of that sort.

I recall your and my sitting in Beach Park at my kitchen table thirty years ago during your first Tribune stint—you were a reporter then. We discussed the social turmoil that the women’s movement in Tampa caused. I had convened a NOW chapter when my family moved from NYC for my husband’s job.

How the years have flown. I lived to see the ERA go down, of course. Typical weapons of expunging women’s Constitutional status came from the thought patterns of the quidnuncs of Hillsborough County’s fens and bogs. These Pleistoscene intellects maintained that ERA’s passage would ensure sexually integrated bathrooms. All of civilization would then be in the toilet, of course. The toilet argument worked.

That’s the kind of sure-fire appeal to idiocy that Bay Area denizens demonstrate. One has to journey to NYC periodically to get a dose of culture because our main resources in these forlorn badlands are the Bucs franchise and tractor pulls.

Yet you managed to make this unpromising customer base laugh—and often out loud.

That is a rare talent. Even Swift and Chaucer didn’t get belly laughs. And Aristophanes did only occasionally.

My youngest daughter, Margie, will be forlorn at your leaving. She often quoted you to me. I bet you have a lot of fans like that.

And stop preening your triple bypass. It wasn’t a quadruple, was it? I am a registered nurse and don’t cotton to malingering. Be grateful for small graces.

You will live a long time is my prediction. So find another job. Go over to the Times. Troxler did and is a star at that location. Tell Tash he is brilliant and handsome. I have called him a chachectic ectomorph, which is why I never get a letter to the editor published.

But your best bet is to solicit Slate for a slot. The future of the print press dwindles apace. Communication, as I told my old man many years ago, belongs to the Internet.

Good luck and thanks for the memories.

Lee Drury De Cesare

From: Anonymous [noreply-comment@blogger.com]

Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2008 5:49 AM

To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com

Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on Once Upon a Time.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Once Upon a Time":

"I think the the board and the administration should indeed get the publicity they deserve so that an informed public will vote the board slugs out of office and vote in [some people] who care about education instead of power and [who throw state money around without consulting teachers about the issues that affect them.] "

You think the informed public should vote in some people who throw state money around without consulting teachers? Good eye. But Hamilton's mix-up of homophones is worse in the illiteracy scale.

My fault is I wrote a sentence that is too long, so I got one of my prepositional phrases attached to a wrong antecedent. I should have done this: "I think the board and administration should indeed get the publicity they deserve so that an informed public can vote the board slugs out of office. Voters can vote out board members who don't care about education but instead care about power. Voters can also throw out board drones who throw state money around without consulting teachers about issues that affect them.

This knocks the your/you're thing into a cocked hat.

Publish this comment.

Reject this comment.

Moderate comments for this blog.

Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 2:49 AM

Once Upon a Time

Florence, Italy, is in the background .

My husband and I enjoyed this Italian tour on a bus more than all the flossy cruises we had taken. The bus people were friendlier and didn't think they were tres important. On the cruises we often sat at the captain's table with the snoots.

I don't know how we got the coveted assigned slot. I think it was my husband's political skills. He was mayor of our little beach town for a dozen years, quitting when he couldn't bear the strife any more. He still has people accosting him on the street pleading, "Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor, run again. The city government is going to pieces without you!" I wish he would run again instead of running me crazy rearranging my pots and pans.

By the time we had completed a two-week cruise on one of these floating examples of wretched excess, my old man could have won a captain-of-the-ship slot, such is his electoral charm. I busied myself fend offing the bazillions of widows who infest these cruises trying to pick of my old man or any other old man who is not on a walker or an oxygen tank. I also held conversations with the cleaning crews. They get terrible treatment from employers, and the passengers quite frequently don't leave them a tip after a two-week cruise, even though they can well afford it. lee


Ms. Faliero says she wants the schools to get the good publicity they deserve. I pledge to do my part to provide it. I did public relations for the first chapter of the National Organization for women when we formed forty-five years ago in the Bay Area. This stuff is right down my alley.

I think the the board and the administration should indeed get the publicity they deserve so that an informed public will vote the board slugs out of office and vote in some people who care about education instead of power and who throw state money around without consulting teachers about the issues that affect them.

The only money the current board seems concerned with is the thousands of dollars of tax money it spends to go to places like Las Vegas and Canada on so-called board conferences that are in reality pleasure sprees.

There is not one board member who has the courage, the education, or the knowledge of Robert's Rules to challenge Ms. Elia's hidden agenda that speeds by on the Consent Agenda without board review. The board does not insist on open government. The current board is only interested in preening on the podium and looking like its members are the benefactors of education.

My read says that all the current board are poseurs. Two--Dr. Lamb and Ms. Ethridge--are double dippers as is Dr. Jim (doesn't know the difference between "your" and "you're") Hamilton.

La Elia created him a lobbying job without the board's objecting to this boutique perch in an economic downturn and while the poor children of the county can't participate in class activities because they lack supplies.

I have not read yet Dr. Lamb's doctoral thesis. That experience should be a hoot. I wager it was bought and paid for as was Hamilton's in my professional view. One day I will ask the learned Lamb for a copy of his thesis to review. See my review of the former administrator for Pinellas County to give you some idea of the quality of the top administrative people of school systemshttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=6520837584997793196.

The community needs people on the board who, first of all, have educations--at least bachelor's degrees in non-rinky-dinck subjects, and who 1. aren't too intellectually inert to learn Robert's Rules so that the runaway gaveling conduct of chair Pole Girl Faliero does not go unchecked and 2. the get-up-and-go to learn to mount an individual board-member Web site to exchange information and views with community members.

If board members can't do these simple things to deserve their jobs, they should resign and give their place to people who are serious enough about their roles that they put out a modicum of effort to perform well in the job of board member.

As my first effort at getting publicity out about the schools that La Board Member Faliero touts, I have sent the following to a Brandon Christian school. I hope it spreads around that Christian education community so they people will get a better specimen to run for office against Faliero, who claims to be a born-again, no-doubt footwashing Christian.

Faliero needs replacing for the good of the children, the teachers, and the community. She needs replacing to put the fear of God into that bunch of ROSSAC thugs who crucified Mr. Erwin and not one of whom received an iota of punishment for their dirty deeds from the board, which always pretends that the whole group is deaf, dumb, and blind when leadership is called for.

If my readers want to add their heft to my publicity blitz for the board, the administration, and especially Ms. Faliero, they should get out their phone books and send messages to the Brandon community. Tell the prospective Brandon voters to check onto my blog, The Wall, and other teacher blogs that expose what really goes on at the school board and administration of the schools of Hillsborough County. lee


To a Christian school in Brandon (Ms. Faliero claims to be a Christian):

I think this organization should be concerned with the ethical quality of your school-board member. Go to leedrurydecesarescasting-room couch.blogspot.com for a history of this member's conduct.

If the Christian community does not pay attention to what sort of person occupies its district's school-board seat, then the community suffers. The education community should encourage ethical people to file to oppose Ms.Jennifer Faliero when her school-board race comes up soon.

If the Brandon community does not have an ethical person on the school board, it is because its members do not pay attention to what kind of person a board member's conduct suggests he or she is. The citizens do not review whether the decisions the member makes on the board support the community or support the corrupt administration headed by MaryEllen Elia.

In Ms. Faliero's case, it is the support of Ms. Elia that is primary to her, not the support of teachers, students, and taxpayers. Brandon needs to recruit a board candidate to oppose Ms. Faliero who wants excellence and morality in the schools.
lee drury de cesare
_______________________________________________________

lee drury de cesare

Jennifer Faliero, District 4 School Board of Hillsborough County, Florida

Ms. Faliero:

I have comments and questions from a reader below of my Casting-Room-Couch blog that need answers. Voters especially need this academic-credentials data since you will run for re-election soon one assumes.

This reader’s questions require your USF transcripts. Give me email permission to ask the USF college-records office for these, and I will post a copy on my Couch blog for the benefit of prospective voters. Also helpful would be any academic honors you won at USF. Those, too, I will post.

In addition to intellectual fitness, I am concerned about your moral fitness for the job of chair of the school board. I am also concerned at your participation in youth guidance, especially the Ophelia Project for pre-teen girls. Your school-site adultery with Marc Hart, which the divorce depositions record, makes me fearful that you do not present the right moral role model for children and especially for pre-teen girls.

You also participated in the one-sided punishment of Hart's getting the sack and your getting the school-board chair job by a vote of the other board members not concerned about your adultery after the affair had run its course.

Please explain how you justify your participation as school-board chair and community youth-board memberships, given your deposed record of sexual immorality and other ethical lapses that do not present an appropriate role model for youth of the community. I will post these data on Casting-Room-Couch as well since the voting public will need this information in addition to your transcripts and other academic data.

I regret that in writing the letter of rebuke to the Tribune that you required editing help. Most people have good ideas--even those who can't read much less write, but they can’t put them down on paper because they do not possess the standard of literacy required of bona fide educated people: the ability to write literate prose. A person who must have an editor to make her writing meet standard-education requirements is not a literate person no matter what degrees stand after her name.

The ability to write down information with correct grammar and punctuation is the gold standard of literacy. Those who can’t do this task unassisted can't count as literate and should go back to school until they master language to this standard of literacy.

Remove the superfluous comma after “2002” in your biography; it splits a compound verb. Put one after “daughters”; the adjectival subordinate “who” clause is nonrestrictive since you have only two daughters.

Respectfully,

lee drury de cesare

c:
Brandon Chamber of Commerce
Brandon Kiwanis Club
Florida School Boards Association
Governor Charlie Crist
State Board of Education's Professional Practices Advisory Group
Glazer Museum’s Board of Directors
Department of Juvenile Justice
Hillsborough Education Foundation board of directors
County Council of Governments
Hillsborough County Value Adjustment Board
Lowry Park Zoo board
Hillsborough County Republican Women’s Club

Board Members

Jennifer Faliero – School Board District 4

Jennifer Faliero is the 2008 Hillsborough County School Board Chair. She first was elected to the Board in 2002, and was re-elected in 2006. She is one of seven members responsible for making policy decisions and overseeing a budget of $3.2 billion for the 8th largest school district in the nation, which is also the county’s largest employer with 25,000 employees.

She advocates in Tallahassee and Washington, D.C., for better laws that affect public education. Prior to her election to the School Board, she was a health care marketing and public relations executive.

In 2007, Jennifer was appointed by Governor Charlie Crist to serve on the State Board of Education's Professional Practices Advisory Group. She serves on the Glazer Children's Museum Board of Directors. She has also served on the Hillsborough County Youth Advisory Council, Department of Juvenile Justice Board, the Hillsborough Education Foundation board of directors, the committee for Making Strides Against Cancer, Hillsborough County Council of Governments, Hillsborough County Value Adjustment Board, and Lowry Park Zoo board. She is a member of the Brandon Chamber of Commerce Economic Development Council, H.B. Plant Museum, is an honorary member of the Brandon Kiwanis Club, and is involved in the Ophelia Project for Preteen Girls. Jennifer has been a member of the National School Boards Association since 2002, and served as the Hillsborough legislative liaison with both federal and state lawmakers for the Florida School Boards Association (FSBA). She also has served on the FSBA’s board of directors and advocacy committee.

As a private citizen, Jennifer worked with lawmakers to establish the state’s landmark school concurrency program, and since her election she has taken a lead role in developing the district’s pilot project to implement school concurrency. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in public relations from the University of South Florida in 1986. Hillsborough County has been her home since 1982, and she currently lives in Valrico with her two daughters who attend Hillsborough County public schools.
January 2008
________________________________________


From: Linda Cobbe [mailto:lcobbe@sdhc.us]
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 4:13 PM
To: lee de cesare

Subject: Re: FW: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on Some Ghost

All of the Board members' bios are on the Board web page.

Linda E. Cobbe
External Communications Manager
Hillsborough County Public Schools
901 E. Kennedy Blvd.
Tampa, FL 33602
813-272-4602 (O)
813-493-6964 (C)
813-272-4510 (F)

Our mission is to provide an education that enables each student to excel as a successful and responsible citizen.


"lee de cesare" writes:
Linda, can this reader below get these data through your office? Lee


From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 12:47 PM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on Some Ghost Writer Assisted Falliera to Look Litera....





Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Some Ghost Writer Assisted Falliera to Look Litera...":

I would like to know where I can find Fallerio's education and experience previous to sitting at the helm of this board. Where does she get off treating others as if she is some type of Rhodes Scholar? Perhaps you know, Lee. I wonder what kind of grades she earned at a four-year institution, if she attended. Online, mumbo-jumbo degrees don't count to me. People who truly value the experience of higher education do it the best way, attending on campus, interacting with professors and classmates face-to-face. I doubt she wrote this little piece of propaganda alone. If she did, I would love to know how long the editor spent fixing it up to make it “presentable.”

On another note, I can't respect my "superiors" if they lack a college-level literacy at least, which almost every one of them proves to lack. I receive emails and see communications from assistant principals, principals, Elia, the school board, communication specialists, what have you, and the errors are egregious at times. The hypocrisy is overwhelming. “We at the SDHC demand all students be literate and college ready, but most of us at ROSSAC couldn’t write a complete thought free of comma splices and other gratuitous mistakes to save our lives.” What is their solution to facilitate the perception of college-level literacy? Hire people to make us “look” smart and literate.

Publish this comment.

Reject this comment.

Moderate comments for this blog.

Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 9:46 AM
Ms. Kipley:

Answer to reader's question about the location of Marc Hart's deposition in the divorce case involving Ms. Faliero: Mr. Hart or his lawyer has it I assume. I saw the part that dealt with the infidelity with Ms. Faliero. He called up asking for a visit and showed me the deposition. If he gives it to me, I would usually put it on the blog. But he has two young children whom he loves and who could eventually see the blog, so I don't think publishing it on my blog is a good idea because of Hart's children. Faliero has two young daughters. Poor girls with such a role model for a mother. lee

Lawdy, Ms. Claudie

Meeting with Mayor Dick Greco Concerning the Discrimination Against Women by the City of Tampa in Employment 45 years ago. We were able to open the police department and sheriff's department to women police officers and deputies by filing complaints with the EEOC and the Justice Department against the city and the sheriff's office.

None of the lawyers for the city or sheriff told their bosses that Title VII and government grants required equal employment opportunity in jobs. Gonzalez, the current school- board lawyer, who got his job with a handshake and who beats the drum for no-bid contracts, probably has not told the board about its obligation to the federal law either.

Gwen and Elaine came from Miami at their own expense to help out since I couldn't get many local women to go to confront Dick, including Helen Gordon Davis, whose husband said she couldn't go because "Dick is a friend of ours." I said Dick was a friend of no woman, especially the three he married.

Gwen Cherry and Elaine Gordon went on to the state legislature, where they worked for women's rights. Helen got elected senator from Hillsborough County and passed the potty parity bill, making it obligatory for future state buildings to have enough potties for women.

I graduated from Hillsbrough High in '51 with Dick Greco. Everybody is agreed in the Class of '51 that Dick was a jerk then and remains a jerk today. lee

Jennifer Faliero, District 4 School Board of Hillsborough County, Florida

Ms. Faliero:

I have comments and questions from a reader below of my Casting-Room-Couch blog that need answers. Voters especially need this academic-credentials data since you will run for re-election soon one assumes.

This reader’s questions require your USF transcripts. Give me email permission to ask the USF college-records office for these, and I will post a copy on my Couch blog for the benefit of prospective voters. Also helpful would be any academic honors you won at USF. Those, too, I will post.

In addition to intellectual fitness, I am concerned about your moral fitness for the job of chair of the school board. I am also concerned at your participation in youth guidance, especially the Ophelia Project for pre-teen girls. Your school-site adultery with Marc Hart, which the divorce depositions record, makes me fearful that you do not present the right moral role model for children and especially for pre-teen girls.

You also participated in the one-sided punishment of Hart's getting the sack and your getting the school-board chair job by a vote of the other board members not concerned about your adultery after the affair had run its course.

Please explain how you justify your participation as school-board chair and community youth-board memberships, given your deposed record of sexual immorality and other ethical lapses that do not present an appropriate role model for youth of the community. I will post these data on Casting-Room-Couch as well since the voting public will need this information in addition to your transcripts and other academic data.

I regret that in writing the letter of rebuke to the Tribune that you required editing help. Most people have good ideas--even those who can't read much less write, but they can’t put them down on paper because they do not possess the standard of literacy required of bona fide educated people: the ability to write literate prose. A person who must have an editor to make her writing meet standard-education requirements is not a literate person no matter what degrees stand after her name.

The ability to write down information with correct grammar and punctuation is the gold standard of literacy. Those who can’t do this task unassisted can't count as literate and should go back to school until they master language to this standard of literacy.

Remove the superfluous comma after “2002” in your biography; it splits a compound verb. Put one after “daughters”; the adjectival subordinate “who” clause is nonrestrictive since you have only two daughters.

Respectfully,

lee drury de cesare

c:
Brandon Chamber of Commerce
Brandon Kiwanis Club
Florida School Boards Association
Governor Charlie Crist
State Board of Education's Professional Practices Advisory Group
Glazer Museum’s Board of Directors
Department of Juvenile Justice
Hillsborough Education Foundation board of directors
County Council of Governments
Hillsborough County Value Adjustment Board
Lowry Park Zoo board
Hillsborough County Republican Women’s Club

Board Members

Jennifer Faliero – School Board District 4

Jennifer Faliero is the 2008 Hillsborough County School Board Chair. She first was elected to the Board in 2002, and was re-elected in 2006. She is one of seven members responsible for making policy decisions and overseeing a budget of $3.2 billion for the 8th largest school district in the nation, which is also the county’s largest employer with 25,000 employees.

She advocates in Tallahassee and Washington, D.C., for better laws that affect public education. Prior to her election to the School Board, she was a health care marketing and public relations executive.

In 2007, Jennifer was appointed by Governor Charlie Crist to serve on the State Board of Education's Professional Practices Advisory Group. She serves on the Glazer Children's Museum Board of Directors. She has also served on the Hillsborough County Youth Advisory Council, Department of Juvenile Justice Board, the Hillsborough Education Foundation board of directors, the committee for Making Strides Against Cancer, Hillsborough County Council of Governments, Hillsborough County Value Adjustment Board, and Lowry Park Zoo board. She is a member of the Brandon Chamber of Commerce Economic Development Council, H.B. Plant Museum, is an honorary member of the Brandon Kiwanis Club, and is involved in the Ophelia Project for Preteen Girls. Jennifer has been a member of the National School Boards Association since 2002, and served as the Hillsborough legislative liaison with both federal and state lawmakers for the Florida School Boards Association (FSBA). She also has served on the FSBA’s board of directors and advocacy committee.

As a private citizen, Jennifer worked with lawmakers to establish the state’s landmark school concurrency program, and since her election she has taken a lead role in developing the district’s pilot project to implement school concurrency. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in public relations from the University of South Florida in 1986. Hillsborough County has been her home since 1982, and she currently lives in Valrico with her two daughters who attend Hillsborough County public schools.
January 2008
________________________________________


From: Linda Cobbe [mailto:lcobbe@sdhc.us]
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 4:13 PM
To: lee de cesare

Subject: Re: FW: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on Some Ghost

All of the Board members' bios are on the Board web page.

Linda E. Cobbe
External Communications Manager
Hillsborough County Public Schools
901 E. Kennedy Blvd.
Tampa, FL 33602
813-272-4602 (O)
813-493-6964 (C)
813-272-4510 (F)

Our mission is to provide an education that enables each student to excel as a successful and responsible citizen.


"lee de cesare" writes:
Linda, can this reader below get these data through your office? Lee


From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 12:47 PM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on Some Ghost Writer Assisted Falliera to Look Litera....





Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Some Ghost Writer Assisted Falliera to Look Litera...":

I would like to know where I can find Fallerio's education and experience previous to sitting at the helm of this board. Where does she get off treating others as if she is some type of Rhodes Scholar? Perhaps you know, Lee. I wonder what kind of grades she earned at a four-year institution, if she attended. Online, mumbo-jumbo degrees don't count to me. People who truly value the experience of higher education do it the best way, attending on campus, interacting with professors and classmates face-to-face. I doubt she wrote this little piece of propaganda alone. If she did, I would love to know how long the editor spent fixing it up to make it “presentable.”

On another note, I can't respect my "superiors" if they lack a college-level literacy at least, which almost every one of them proves to lack. I receive emails and see communications from assistant principals, principals, Elia, the school board, communication specialists, what have you, and the errors are egregious at times. The hypocrisy is overwhelming. “We at the SDHC demand all students be literate and college ready, but most of us at ROSSAC couldn’t write a complete thought free of comma splices and other gratuitous mistakes to save our lives.” What is their solution to facilitate the perception of college-level literacy? Hire people to make us “look” smart and literate.

Publish this comment.

Reject this comment.

Moderate comments for this blog.

Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 9:46 AM
Ms. Kipley:

Answer to reader's question about the location of Marc Hart's deposition in the divorce case involving Ms. Faliero: Mr. Hart or his lawyer has it I assume. I saw the part that dealt with the infidelity with Ms. Faliero. If he gives it to me, I will put it on the blog. But he has two young children whom he loves and who could eventually see the blog, so I don't think publishing it on my blog is a good idea because of Hart's children. lee

The following is a complaint I filed with the Professional Standards Office that jumps on teachers for the least little thing. It's Elia's Gestopo, headed by Linda Kipley, whose academic credentials consist of a pre-Cambrian home-ec degree. She also shows signs of a ripe sadism, which makes her relish her job.

Hamilton was the chief doer of the dirty work along with Earl the Pearl Lennard and Davis to run Mr. Irwin crazy, fire him, and strip him of his pension when the Mr. Erwin reported repeatedly about the criminal activity on campus by insiders. I believe it was Davis who recently fled ROSSAC because La Elia was displeased with him. That's divine retribution in my book.

When Hamilton's retirement time came, he was loath to leave the scene of his many triumphs over underlings in the school system, so Elia created him a job at $140,000 a year with a bloated title to tide him over until he stopped having the heebie jeebies about loss of power. She put his name on the job before the description went on the books a clerk told me. She did not advertise it. Nobody knew about it until it appeared out of the blue and whizzed by on the Cover-up Consent Calender.

Did board members ask for justification of this job creation and for handing it to Hamilton before it went on the books? No. Did these board we-are-an-equal-opportunity-employer scofflaws ask Elia if she had advertised the job? Oh, go on! Did Ms. Elia explain the reason she created this job and give some rationale for the move? Has the Pope converted to the Holy Rollers or invited gays into the priesthood?

When Hamilton's nerves had calmed down, Ms. Elia lured him into overdue retirement (I think he camped out in replacement Otero's office meanwhile) by improvising him yet another job as lobbyist up in Tallahassee for $65,000 a year, making him a double dipper into the tax-payer kitty as are board potted plants Lamb and Ethridge.

Who's in Tallahassee besides all the Panhandle wits? Why Ms. Connie Mileto is there as the school system's Chief Information Officer and Munchkin Charmer. Hamilton, you recall, is reputed to have guided kindergarten-prepared Ms. Mileto past the qualified applicants for this job, paying I think now $140,000 a year and perhaps a wardrobe allowance like Palin got.

Though my reading of Freud suggests that Mileto is not delighted to see the old-fool-like-an-old fool specimen with a gallon of IV Viagra in a Winn Dixie shopping basket turn up to blight her social life with livelier Tallahassee legislative dudes the physiology of whom is in roaring good order, I bet Hamilton is in hog heaven. Hog heaven is the only heaven for which Hamilton has the physiological bona fides. lee

To Ms. Linda Kipley, Professional Standards Gestapo Cell Block:

I repeat a complaint that I filed with your office six months ago against Dr. James Hamilton for use of the school emails for personal preening. Mr. Heggarty claims I never made such complaint. I cite Dr. Hamilton's emails that follow as basis for my complaint then and now:

To: All Principals and Site Managers

1. Cap’in, Cap’in, and can you hear me?

The slurred-pronunciation of "Captain" should be "Cap'n," not "Cap'in." Dr. Hamilton apparently does know quotation-marks protocol for quoted material.

2. I can hear you Mr. Scott, but I can’t see you, touch you and feel you!

A comma follows the first "you" for direct address; a comma follows second "you" for items in a series.

Cap’in, Cap’in, I think it’s the dilithium crystals! I just can’t get ‘er to give me more power!

"Cap'n," not "Cap'in"

3. Well Scotty, where am I?

Comma after "Well" for mild interjection

4. Cap’in I think that you’re molecules are spread across the universe, ‘cause the transporter is jammed!

"Cap'in" should be "Cap'n." "Your" should replace "you're," which is contraction for "you are." Mr. Star-Trek-Scott-Hamilton hasn't mastered homophones. The comma after "universe" cuts off a restrictive trailing adverbial dependent clause.

5. Well Scotty, I’ve got an important message to get to all of the principals and site managers, so put down that bottle, and stoke those engines and get me back in one piece so I can get it out by the end of the day!!!!!!!!



Comma follows "well": mild interjection. No comma after "bottle": don't separate a compound verb with a comma. Only very young children, comic books, and grown-ups stuck in arrested development use plethora of exclamation points as does Dr. Hamilton.



From: James Hamilton

Subject: Back in Margaritaville

To: AutoOpeners



Well fans I am happy to report that the Ca'pin has survived the failure of the Dilithium crystals. While atomized across the vast reaches of space between Margaritaville and the Starship Enterprise I encountered two Klingon birds of prey lying in wait in cloaking devices. I even had a photon torpedo fly through my parts while I was waiting for Mr. Scott to reassemble my parts.



Commas should enclose "fans" for direct address. "Ca'pin" should be "Cap'n" for elision of letters. A comma goes after "Enterprise": introductory adverbial clause. "Even" is a misplaced modifier: it goes before "a photon."



They are now reassembled and I have landed in Margaritaville again. While on my way over to Louie's Backyard, I thought it would be helpful if we took a brief moment to return to Lawson Land and remember that we have more of our hard working people getting paid tomorrow, and some will need help understanding their check.



Comma goes after "reassembled": compound sentence. "It" lacks antecedent. Dr. Hamilton should hyphenate "hard working": two words before a noun acting as a single adjective. "People" should be "people's": possessive before the gerund.



And don't tell them it's them SO and SOs downtown because my phasers are not on stun, Mr. Spock.



"Them" should be "those." "Them" is a solecism of such gaucherie that it places the author in the pits of illiteracy.



Madam: This is the second formal complaint I have referred to your office against Dr. Hamilton. I do not trust your own professional conduct since your participation with Ms. Elia to terrify Bart Birdsell at the behest of Joe Stines, of the Hillsborough County Library system. The purpose of the search of Mr. Birdsall's email files was to trap him in some fugitive error that violated the Professional Standards policy of the school system to give the superintendent an excuse for firing him. This reign of terror's involving the fear of firing keeps the school employees silent when they see wrongdoing. They are scared for fear reporting it will boomerang and result in their being fired. Whistleblowers suffer crucifixion in the school system. You found nothing punishable in your fishing expedition in Mr. Birdsall's files, the school lawyer's telling you that Birdsall had a free-speech right send emails from his home to Mr. Stines.



You changed your stories about why you hauled Birdsall in and failed to send the letter of apology that you promised him. Instead, you sent him an ominous registered letter with vague allusions to his undefined wrongdoing and vague allusions to his putative punishment for undefined wrongdoing in the future.



So your own professional conduct is under scrutiny in my formal complaint against Dr. Hamilton. I shall call immediate attention to anything I consider an infraction on your part and look forward to our interview to discuss this charge in detail in your office.



Dr. Hamilton's illiterate, vulgar emails cited above disgrace the professional standards of education. His tone of offensive familiarity toward people whom he addresses goes athwart protocols of professional conduct in an educator. Mr. Hamilton's tone says that he reigns imperial boss of the school domain and that his underlings must sit and listen in helpless acceptance to his ignoble use of school employees as captive audience because crossing him would jeopardize their jobs, although his low behavior does not jeopardize his majestic level of employment.

Apparently, Dr. Hamilton has gotten away with such boorish behavior with impunity so long in his role as Rasputin to Dr. Lennard and now Ms. Elia and his sponsorship of a cushy no-competition $120,000 job for pet Ms. Connie Mileto that he assumes his arrogant behavior's universal indulgence is a form of entitlement. The reference to Margaritaville suggests his approval of drunkenness: unsuitable, certainly, for the leader of the young students in his charge.



I want to ask that the coarse professional standards of Dr. Hamilton's low level of grammar and punctuation assure his eviction from his job in education. Such performance from a fellow making at least $120,000 or more with bloated perquisites coming from taxpayers who trust his guidance to ensure that students in the system exit their secondary education able to use correct grammar and punctuation is not acceptable.

How can a fellow who demonstrates such illiteracy as does he guide young people in literacy? That's the illiterate leading the illiterate. Nor is it acceptable to use vulgar allusions to Margaretaville in professional statements as model communication for young people in their quest to get a job in a world not receptive to the soused illiteracy that Dr. Hamilton's emails recommend.



Dr. Hamilton's personal use of the school email to inflate his ego and to showcase his contempt for his recipients and derision of the inconvenience of people deprived of timely receipt of their paychecks because of the administration's incompetence recommend that Dr. Hamilton suffer firing posthaste.



Please tell me when to appear in your office to discuss this formal complaint.



To thwart another claim that you never got this email, I shall distribute it widely.



lee drury de cesare

15316 Gulf Boulevard 802

Madeira Beach, FL 33708

tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com

727-398-4142