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If there's one thing Charlie Crist is afraid of, it's sweating in public.

Understand that, and what happened on a Fort Lauderdale governor's debate stage this week before a live television audience might make a bit more sense.

Viewers who tuned in Wednesday night to watch Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott and former Gov. Crist (once a Republican, now a Democrat) instead saw an empty stage, with moderators explaining about "an extremely peculiar situation." Within seconds Crist strode out and spent the next several minutes lamenting Scott's absence, and how it was ridiculous to argue over the fan at the base of Crist's podium when Florida faced so many important issues, before Scott finally joined him and the debate began.

But what TV viewers didn't know was that Scott's campaign was so agitated about the fan that it was demanding the event be canceled and that the TV station providing the live feed not proceed with the broadcast.

"Why? Who knows? Your guess is as good as mine," Wendy Walker, head of one of the debate's co-sponsors, Leadership Florida, told NPR Friday. "They had a bee in their bonnets about the fan.... I said, guys, do you want the story to be the fan?"

Which is pretty much what happened. Florida media covered actual issues raised in the debate, but nationally the story was the fan. On Twitter it was #Fangate and #Fantrum and #Fanghazi. Predictably, it even made The Daily Show.

Scott campaign spokesman Greg Blair said Scott never refused to participate in the debate, and said his delay was based on "confusion" caused by Crist's violating the no-fan rules. Scott was waiting to see the resolution when he saw the debate had started without him, Blair said.

Crist's reliance on fans is well known to followers of Florida politics. He hates the idea of sweating at a public event, and for years as education commissioner, attorney general and eventually governor insisted on having a portable fan at his feet as he would give a speech or participate in debates.

Crist's debate adviser, former state senator and federal prosecutor Dan Gelber, said the debate rules originally sent to the campaign on July 22 banned electronic devices but made no mention of fans. A later version sent out Oct. 6 did prohibit fans, and Gelber said he hand-wrote an addendum saying Crist could have a fan if "temperature issues" made one necessary. He submitted that to organizers and was told it was acceptable, he said.

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The original July 22 debate rules did not mention fans. The Oct. 6 version prohibited fans. Leadership Florida hide caption

itoggle caption Leadership Florida

The original July 22 debate rules did not mention fans. The Oct. 6 version prohibited fans.

Leadership Florida

And that was where things stood until the night of the debate. When Crist went out to test his microphone, he said he felt too warm under the TV lights and requested a fan, which the campaign then set out and plugged in.

It was not long before Brett O'Donnell, Scott's debate coach, noticed and raised objections. O'Donnell is a giant in the Republican campaign world – the one-time debate coach at Liberty University has tutored George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney as they prepared for presidential debates.

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The Florida Democratic Party has released an ad reminding voters of Wednesday's fan episode. Florida Democratic Party/YouTube hide caption

itoggle caption Florida Democratic Party/YouTube

The Florida Democratic Party has released an ad reminding voters of Wednesday's fan episode.

Florida Democratic Party/YouTube

On Wednesday night, Gelber said, just minutes before the scheduled start time, O'Donnell pointed at the fan tucked beneath Crist's podium and made a big sweeping arm gesture, like an umpire calling someone out, then turned and stomped off.

"The Scott folks went literally berserk. They were just running around screaming at everybody, the station, the people who were hosting the event, Leadership Florida, just going literally nuts, saying they were going to cancel the debate," Gelber said. "It was just the most bizarre thing we had ever seen."

Leadership Florida and the Florida Press Association released a statement the day after the debate explaining that the rules banned fans, and the temperature on stage was cool enough not to require them. But Walker acknowledged that the interpretation of "temperature issues" was a subjective one, and that she personally was too busy dealing with a third-party candidate's legal challenge to worry about the possibility of a standoff over a fan.

"Honestly, at the time, it didn't seem like it was going to be a big deal," Walker said.

Scott campaign spokesman Blair said the governor is moving past the fan incident and will be talking about Florida's problems in the remaining days of the race.

The Crist camp, however, seems okay if people think about Wednesday night just a bit longer. The Florida Democratic Party on Friday released an ad featuring the fan.

S.V. Dte edits congressional and campaign finance coverage for NPR's Washington Desk.

Charlie Crist

To stop the raging Ebola epidemic in West Africa, "we need to pay attention to where the fire is burning."

That means there is no "magic solution," Jim Yong Kim, the head of the World Bank, told NPR's Steve Inskeep during an interview on Morning Edition. So appointing an Ebola czar to monitor the international response isn't going to suddenly stop the outbreak.

Neither will closing the borders between U.S. and the three hardest-hit countries: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

To Kim, that's not a long-term solution: "It's like you're in your room and the house is on fire, and your approach is to put wet towels under the door. That might work for a while, but unless you put the fire out, you're still in trouble."

"The way to stop this epidemic from coming at an even higher level in the United States is actually try to stop it in its tracks," he says of the many U.S. health workers who have volunteered to go overseas.

He says what's most important is not only getting protocols in place in the United States but in the three hardest hit countries: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. That means quickly identifying cases and instituting a high level of infection control — not just standard precautions.

"We've got to have very high-quality protective equipment," he says. "When patients get sick we need to provide intensive care."

The good news, he says, is that leaders like President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron has stepped up in their aid. But the response has just been inadequate for an outbreak that dates back to December of last year. "We are only now getting comprehensive plans for how we are going to attack this epidemic," he says.

What's really missing are health workers, he says. "While we can move thing and build structures what we need are skilled health workers who can do all the complicated things you need to stop the epidemic."

Goats and Soda

A Glimmer Of Hope: Nigeria May Have Beaten Ebola

Kim pointed to Nigeria to illustrate the level of intervention needed to stop the current outbreak. With the help of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, Nigeria was able to contain the outbreak, with 19 confirmed cases and only seven related deaths.

Still, "it cost them $13 million and more than 200 physicians [and] 600 other health workers," he says. "They had to do 19,000 home visits taking temperatures in order to get it control."

He acknowledges that with nearly 9,000 cases so far, there's a lot of work to be done. Yet he's confident that the international community will be able to stop Ebola — although he stresses that "we've got to move much more quickly."

Jim Yong Kim

ebola

World Bank

To stop the raging Ebola epidemic in West Africa, "we need to pay attention to where the fire is burning."

That means there is no "magic solution," Jim Yong Kim, the head of the World Bank, told NPR's Steve Inskeep during an interview on Morning Edition. So appointing an Ebola czar to monitor the international response isn't going to suddenly stop the outbreak.

Neither will closing the borders between U.S. and the three hardest-hit countries: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

To Kim, that's not a long-term solution: "It's like you're in your room and the house is on fire, and your approach is to put wet towels under the door. That might work for a while, but unless you put the fire out, you're still in trouble."

"The way to stop this epidemic from coming at an even higher level in the United States is actually try to stop it in its tracks," he says of the many U.S. health workers who have volunteered to go overseas.

He says what's most important is not only getting protocols in place in the United States but in the three hardest hit countries: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. That means quickly identifying cases and instituting a high level of infection control — not just standard precautions.

"We've got to have very high-quality protective equipment," he says. "When patients get sick we need to provide intensive care."

The good news, he says, is that leaders like President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron has stepped up in their aid. But the response has just been inadequate for an outbreak that dates back to December of last year. "We are only now getting comprehensive plans for how we are going to attack this epidemic," he says.

What's really missing are health workers, he says. "While we can move thing and build structures what we need are skilled health workers who can do all the complicated things you need to stop the epidemic."

Goats and Soda

A Glimmer Of Hope: Nigeria May Have Beaten Ebola

Kim pointed to Nigeria to illustrate the level of intervention needed to stop the current outbreak. With the help of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, Nigeria was able to contain the outbreak, with 19 confirmed cases and only seven related deaths.

Still, "it cost them $13 million and more than 200 physicians [and] 600 other health workers," he says. "They had to do 19,000 home visits taking temperatures in order to get it control."

He acknowledges that with nearly 9,000 cases so far, there's a lot of work to be done. Yet he's confident that the international community will be able to stop Ebola — although he stresses that "we've got to move much more quickly."

Jim Yong Kim

ebola

World Bank

"I'm just a hand liner. I put lines on," says Kevin Manypenny. He's been working here for nearly 40 years.

He twirls a plate, dips a brush in brown glaze and paints three delicate lines on the plate's edge. Fiesta is about half of Homer Laughlin's business — the other half is dinnerware for hotels, and the sturdy plates and cups you find at chain restaurants. The plate he's working on is for a Boston restaurant.

Manypenny and seven of his eight siblings — and their parents — have worked at this factory. And there are dozens of families like theirs. Brothers founded the company: Homer and Shakespeare Laughlin — presumably a literary family — jumped on a new fashion for a whiter, more refined dinnerware.

"They were the young whippersnappers in the pottery world, and they were the ones who ended up successfully firing four kilns worth of whiteware before any of the other potteries could, and then they won a prize of $5,000 ... and that's what launched the Laughlin brothers into pottery production on a big scale," says Sarah Vodrey of the Museum of Ceramics across the river in East Liverpool, Ohio, where Homer Laughlin used to be based.

Around the turn of the 20th century, the factory changed hands. The new team built a plant on the West Virginia side of the river, and those long, low factory buildings are still in use today.

Then, in the 1930s, the company created Fiesta: inexpensive, colorful, cheerful dinnerware. It was a hit even in the Depression. In 1948, Homer Laughlin really stepped up the production of plates and bowls. The company designed and built its own machine inside the factory. Dave Conley, a longtime employee and unofficial company historian, calls it "the big, flat automatic."

Credit: The "big, flat automatic" machine allows Homer Laughlin to mass produce multiple types of items at once. (Ross Mantle for NPR)

"You've got three machines here, and each one has two heads on it, so theoretically we could be making six different items at a time," he says. Conley says that's 3,000 dozen pieces — or 36,000 pieces of pottery — every eight-hour shift. (People who make dishes talk in dozens.)

There have been improvements. Computers control the firing now. 3-D printers speed the design process. Ceramic engineers found a way to make glaze shiny without using lead — all in house.

"The people that owned our company have always put profits back into the plant to modernize, and we've always had state of the art equipment [like the big, flat automatic], and I call that state of the art even though that's as old as it is — it's almost 60 years old," Conley says.

Credit: Fiesta salt shakers are sent down the line to be glazed. (Ross Mantle for NPR)

Fiesta Revival

Inside the old buildings, with fog pouring off the Ohio River and drifting into the windows, the ware comes out of the fire, magically transformed — creamy orange, intense red, vivid turquoise. Bright pottery is stacked in bins and crates and piled all over the place.

"I remember the first time I actually went to the facility, and I'm looking around and I'm thinking, 'Boy, am I back in the 1940s or what?' I mean, even the office, it isn't all spruced up," says Bruce Smith, the head of the union representing the pottery workers. "It's the old look, and they're focused on making product and not being flashy." He says while nothing about Homer Laughlin is flashy, the workers do make decent money.

Calling All Fiesta Fans

Brighten your day: Photos of Fiesta dishes that NPR listeners submitted to Instagram. You can submit your own via Instagram; just tag them #NPRfiesta

"They're good jobs and they're making a living, being able to buy a home and raise a family and retire with some dignity," Smith says.

Both management and labor consider that an achievement.

"I'm very proud to have kept this business here in the Ohio Valley. That's very important to us," says Elizabeth Wells McIlvain, the first woman to lead Homer Laughlin, and the fourth generation of her family at the plant. Her immediate family now owns most of the business. Her daughter, Maggie, is an intern in the marketing department.

Homer Laughlin stopped producing Fiesta for a time beginning in 1973. A harvest gold color and an avocado green didn't sell. But in 1986, Bloomingdale's came calling, looking for a retro china for its stores, and Homer Laughlin made a typical, practical decision: restart an old line and revive Fiesta for retail sale along with its existing hotel and restaurant business.

"We have two sides of the business, and that's helped us tremendously because it seems when ... the retail side of the business is flourishing, the hotel side is ... having difficulties, and vice versa," McIlvain says.

Pallets of Fiesta pieces are lined up in preparation for an upcoming retail outlet tent sale at Homer Laughlin in Newell, W.Va. Ross Mantle for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Ross Mantle for NPR

It helps that Fiesta has a big fan base. Collectors stand in line for hours to get into the factory tent sales. Fans meet, they swap, they critique the company's color choices. And they wait for the new Fiesta color unveiled each March. (The color for 2014 is poppy, a bold, saturated orange.)

"They always have suggestions. One year they all wanted fuchsia, and they all arrived to Homer Laughlin to go on their tours dressed in whatever fuchsia they had. That was their silent but very loud statement," McIlvain says.

But she offered no color clues for this coming March. "That's a very deep, dark secret," she says with a laugh.

fiesta

homer laughlin