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Roadside clutter can carry a message

By MARLENE SOKOL
Published September 15, 2006

Somebody spot me on this.

Is there a rule, in the Hillsborough County schools handbook, that excuses a child from going to school if the bus breaks down? My daughter and the kid down the street say there are three excuses for skipping: Death, a religious holiday, or the bus not showing up.

Or are they trying to scam me?

Is it me, or is Sweetbay just a supermarket?

And isn't it time for those political campaign signs to come down? Major offender, David Langheier for Congress. "Time to Make Things Right." Time to clean up your mess!

Found the handbook, and the neighbor's kid was right. A no-show bus is an excuse to skip school. Looks like they're using the bus crisis to solve their class-size problem.

Back to visual clutter:

It's probably a good thing when your 10-year-old son is offended by a giant billboard that says "SEX."

What's it doing there?

The eyesore du jour at Gunn Highway and Casey Road is an ad for Impact, a pro-abstinence program run by A Woman's Place.

Okay, so what is A Woman's Place?

If you've read the press lately on pregnancy crisis centers (that they're fronts for the antiabortion lobby, deal in junk science and get gobs of money from right-wing churches and similarly right-wing governments), well, yeah, their name used to be North Tampa Crisis Pregnancy Center.

But hold on, says founder and president Pat Layton.

There just might be a link between abortion and breast cancer, a point of great contention between the two sides. It's like postmenopausal hormone treatments, she says; the science is all over the place.

Layton says centers such as hers, at 2901 Busch Lake Blvd., are being slammed unfairly, perhaps because of tax money used primarily to promote abstinence.

Layton acknowledges that among her staff, "we have a deep-hearted belief that women are damaged and injured when they have an abortion." She had one at 23, she said. She was wholly unprepared and suffered physically, emotionally and spiritually.

But, she added, "we are here for the woman, regardless of what choice she makes." Funding comes from various sources, including big churches such as Idlewild Baptist.

The bottom line? Layton wants to see teens delay that first sex act from high school to college, or beyond.

Now, if the buses would only get them to school!

[Last modified September 14, 2006, 12:53:17]