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Times photos and stories by John Pendygraft

Photos and text by John Pendygraft
 
For the Bartow High School quidditch team, the divide between fantasy and reality is brutal. 
 
Unlike Harry Potter, they are not encouraged by a stadium of cheering wizards in awe of their broomsmanship. There is no hero’s welcome for the victors. Playing on the football field was never an option, and the ultimate Frisbee team kicked them off the band practice field. Now they play on a lopsided drainage patch next to a retention pond in back of the school. After the first bloody nose, their muggle instructor decreed that brooms were too dangerous to be used in the game at all. 
 
“They call us the nerd squad,” said red team captain Dorothy Kleissler, 17. “They joke that IB students think they can fly.”
 
So they put on wizard capes and goggles, and run around pretending to fly on invisible brooms. A group of students in JROTC uniforms stops to watch. They are laughing. One picks up a small rock and throws it at the quidditch patch, secure in the fact that if it hits someone on the field, no one will do anything about it. It lands harmlessly, and they go on their Slytherin way.
 
They don’t see the magic.  They don’t know that fairy tales can be ridiculous on the outside but true on the inside.
 
Consider the advice of this geek squad’s matriarch, J.K. Rowling, at a Harvard commencement speech in 2008.  “One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.”
 
So why are fairy tales told and retold for hundreds of years? What is it about Harry Potter?  “It’s really about the things we connect to, things that make us a hero,” says goalie Caroline Bresnan, 18. “How we deal with bullies, the loss of a loved one, first romance, relationships with friends.”
 
It’s about growing up, they say. Harry is a role model. The adventure becomes their own.
 
“Pablo Picasso says art is a lie that brings us closer to the truth,” pipes in blue team captain Katy Piotrowski, 17.
 
“I think art, especially literature, lasts because it is about finding truth in ourselves. That’s why parents still read fairy tales to their children at night.”
 
And even children know that brooms are not what make us fly.
 

Nicole Radivilov, 16 ... Read more

For this Sunday's story about Leo Boatman and the murders he committed in the Ocala National Forest in 2006, photographer John Pendygraft used a unique photographic process called "emulsion transfer". John talks about the process, and why he decided to use it.

When we interviewed Leo Boatman in prison he told us about his state of mind as he  walked the trail in the Ocala National Forest before murdering Amber Marie Peck and John Parker, both 26, in January of 2006. Along the way, things that he should have found beautiful and calming were making him angry. While in solitary confinement, he dreamed about how hiking the Appalachian Trail would give him a sense of freedom and peace. It didn't. As he became more and more agitated the thought popped into his head that he would shoot the next person he saw. He did. 

We wanted to photograph the scene of the murder, an otherwise serene scene of Hidden Lake, in a way that reflected a sense of anger and agitation. Using a view camera, I shot the scene on 4x5 inch Fuji instant film and brought it back to the newspaper office. We boiled it in an electric skillet until the emulsion peeled away from the paper backing, then transferred the emulsion layer to watercolor paper. The idea is to use the process of heating, peeling and regluing the emulsion, making the scenic lake look warped, abused, and angry. It is possible to transfer emulsion with enough care to minimize the damage. We didn't.

  ... Read more

We’re going to miss this Florida primary season, aren’t we? Not the incessant poke-poke TV ads or the catfight “debates,” but the Fellini-esque feel of it all. What a cast of characters! In the Democratic race for Senate, we have Greene, a billionaire who pals around with that bastion of bad decisions, Mike Tyson, and is so new to the state he might have trouble finding his way home if he didn’t have a driver. His opponent, Meek, wouldn’t be in the House if not for his mother and might not get to the Senate because of her. How Sophoclean!

In the Republican governor’s race, we have a millionaire, Rick Scott, who pays people to support him and asserts his ethical purity by boasting he was never even questioned by the feds in that massive Medicare fraud. And we have another guy, I forget who. Larry something, maybe.

The options are unsettling if you like good government. But if you like a good story, and the taste of possum, come with me.

Read Sean Daly's story about the circus that is this year's Florida primary season.

Kendrick Meek poses with Leonard Parry, 53, and his pet possums at the Wausau Possum Day Festival, Saturday August 07, 2010. ... Read more

Two years ago Jasmine Radloff, hands on hips, made an announcement. “I know why I’ve been bitchy lately.” Joe Jagodzinski looked up from his video game. She had been. “I’m pregnant.”

Pivot. Stomp. Slam. Lock. Radloff flopped down on the toilet and buried her face in her hands. She knew his reaction was going to be rotten, and she’d had enough rotten. Everything was rotten. Socks were on the bathroom floor. Toothpaste and whiskers coated the sink. His business had just gone belly up and she’d been laid off. Neither could find a job.

In the train wreck that was their life, how could they have another accident this big? The 21-year-old and her 24-year-old partner would be starting a family as part of this recession’s hardest-hit demographic. Although people ages 16 to 24 make up just 13 percent of the labor force, they represent 26 percent of the unemployed, according to a May study by the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. The youth unemployment rate is 19.6 percent, the highest for any age group since the government began keeping track in 1947. Youth unemployment has been consistently high throughout the downturn. A July Gallup poll reports 1 in 3 young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 are jobless or underemployed.

Jagodzinski knocked lightly. She opened the door and tears were streaming down his face. She had never seen him cry. He wrapped her up and bawled tears of joy. “But I hate kids,” she remembers thinking.

Two years later she qualifies that. Fourteen-month-old Vaeden Liam Radloff pulls on the hair that Mom just styled for a part-time job interview. Radloff sniffs and detects diaper change No. 3 of the day. She wrinkles her nose, kisses her baby’s forehead and hands him off to Dad. “I hate all kids but this one,” she says.

They are living in about 500 square feet, much of it in a converted garage that has not been drywalled. Exposed wiring snakes around the walls, but the rent is cheap, $450 a month.

For two years neither was able to find regular work. But Radloff recently got a part-time job cleaning animal cages at the SPCA in Largo. It pays $7.50 an hour. If she’s lucky she can get 30 hours a week. Jagodzinski’s last job nibble was three months ago. They are living mostly off unemployment and whatever they own that will sell on Craigslist. Up next is their fish tank.

He has always been the guy who could fix things. When he was 16 he taught himself how to install a car stereo system. Within a few years he opened his own shop, Catastrophic Audio. Between making cars thump and working with his dad’s charter fishing business he was making a good living. In 2007 both the charter fishing and the thump-thump business dried up. He and his father argued over money, then stopped speaking. The building owners put a padlock on the audio shop and sold the remaining woofers, tweeters, kickers and bass slammers to pay what he owed on the lease.

Vaeden’s cry turns to a scream. Jagodzinski changes his diaper, swoops him up, spins him around and plops him onto the couch. His blue eyes brighten. His Disney laugh fills the room.

It feels good to be able to fix something.

There are 720,000 undocumented workers in Florida. Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The Mexican locks eyes with the Border Patrol agent. Crammed in the car with him are four other illegal immigrants. Their smuggler is cuffed and on his knees in the grass along Interstate 75 just north of Tampa.

“Come with me to the back of the car,” the agent commands each passenger in Spanish. Everardo Lemus hesitates. He struggles to translate the words into Nahuatl, his native language. It is the language of both the once-majestic Aztec empire and his impoverished family in Cuautempan, Mexico. His village consists of a few dozen homes six hours’ walking distance from the nearest telephone. His eyes water. He bites his lip.

Two years ago, as an 18-year-old, Lemus stared into the United States from the banks of the Rio Grande outside Laredo, Texas. Behind him, childhood. In front of him, a four-day desert crossing into a country where he risks arrest to pick vegetables, a place that both exploits and despises him. The plan was to be here about five years. Just long enough to save the $6,000 he needs to build a concrete house, no bigger than 1,000 square feet, on a little plot of land to farm back home.

Maria Elena would marry him either way. She doesn’t care that a wooden home won’t keep out the cold. That without a little land, her husband will spend his life working someone else’s field for less than a dollar a day. She knows there will be times when there is food, and times when there isn’t. That her children’s pants will be patched and repatched as they pass from father to son to younger brother to youngest brother. She doesn’t care that asking for charity stings.

But Lemus does.

“Yes, sir,” he says, and takes his first steps toward home.

Fern White’s 10-month old granddaughter pounds on the bird cage, sending the parakeet into a squawking frenzy. She prays for patience. Bolts of pain shoot from her arthritic knees as she gets up to look for the baby bottle. She prays for relief. Her granddaughter giggles, grabs the computer mouse and tugs. She prays it doesn’t break. If it breaks, she can’t replace it. And without it, she can’t look for a job from home while watching the baby. ... Read more

Every day they watch. And they worry. And they wait. The oil keeps pouring into their Gulf, the black stain creeping ever closer, coming to claim their shores, their pelicans, their shrimp. They’re scared. And they’re angry. They want to do something. But what? They can’t strap on a mask and dive into the sea and plug that pipe. They keep thinking there must be a way to make a difference, to make things better. Or, at least, to make themselves feel better. So these folks set out to make their mark. Their tools? Bottles of Pepto Bismol, a painted octopus, bags packed with poodle hair, and the best of intentions.

DAVID MURPHY, 58

Rubber gloves? Check. Toothbrushes and towels? Check. Supersized bottles of Dawn dishwashing detergent and plastic cages and plenty of Pepto Bismol? Check. David Murphy is ready. Whenever he gets the call, he will jump into his flag-striped VW Bug and be there for the birds. Murphy, who is retired, volunteers at the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary in Indian Shores almost every day, but he has never scrubbed oil from waterbirds. He’s worried about them. “This is just way too big for any of us to really understand.” He hopes the BP disaster will make people more vigilant about protecting their environment. Mostly, he hopes to get that call to help. ... Read more