Reputations and Inaction

The Start Page for my internet browser has a gadget that displays a different quote each day by somebody famous or inspiring or smart. They're usually pretty accurate, or at least instructional. But today . . . . ?

Here's the quote:

"You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do."

--Henry Ford



WRONG, Mr. Ford!

My Friend, and the Gardenia, Knew

2001, in Moogie's Kitchen . . . .

A few weeks ago . . . .

The Mother-of-the-Bride's chair at LJ's Wedding, June 25th . . . .

I got a wonderful letter in the snail-mail yesterday! I hardly ever get real hard-copy letters anymore that have any value other than notifying me I may have won the Publishers' Clearinghouse Sweepstakes or have an expiring-soon opportunity to buy (fill in the blank: A. mattresses; B. landscape lighting; C. carpet) at a discount. But this letter was a keeper.

Even before its arrival, I knew it would be a keeper, though. My late friend, JB, told me so.

You may remember my bestest buddy, JB. I posted about her last fall, on the anniversary of her passing. She was quite the character, but also quite the nurturer, and -- ever the riddler and punster -- she keeps up with that nurturing thing in the oddest little ways, even today in this world she has left behind.

In 2001, at the same time I left Arkansas to live in New Orleans full-time, JB and her husband moved back to Arkansas from New Jersey to throw slumber parties for a living (they bought and ran a B & B in the Ozark Mountains). In July of that year, on the same day, with neither of us knowing about it in advance, we sent one another "house-warming" plants.

She won the "who's a better friend" contest -- I sent some random house-planty thing, but she sent me a gardenia in full-fragranced bloom, nestled in a crockery planter. It graced my kitchen island for nearly a year (and I nearly let it die of thirst countless times!) before I finally wised up and transplanted it to the front yard where there is rich, black Mississippi delta soil. And there it has thrived, surviving our Katrina-imposed exile and other unpleasant weather, and even Bouie's youth, during which he converted the gardenia bush into a gardenia topiary with his strong, sharp puppy teeth. Today, it stands well over five feet tall -- and I know I'm accurate about its height because I stand five-feet-flat in my stocking feet and must bend the top branches to drink in that heavenly gardenia fragrance from the highest blossoms.

This year, its spring bloom started on Easter Sunday, and it set so many flowers that its branches strained with the weight and drooped over the plastic netting Pepper installed to (try to) dissuade Bouie from any further defoliation.

Last month, a few days after I found the lump, on the day before I was to undergo the second mammogram and ultra-sound, I pulled up to the curb beside the front gate after running some errand or another and was suddenly knocked over by a calm; a peace that unknotted those muscles all tensed-up with worry in my neck.

That peace took over me because I spied it -- one single gardenia blossom nodding to me on the gentle breeze. It smelled like JB.

She was letting me know that everything would be all right.

And it was.

The next day, another bud appeared beside the blossom as Pepper and I were preparing to fly to Ft. Lauderdale for the Destination Wedding of JB's younger daughter, LJ; LJ is JB's half of "The Littles." (Our four girls are of two ages -- now 29 and 27 -- so they were "The Bigs" and "The Littles" as inseparable youngsters, and the term just stuck.) My Little, along with her fiance and older sister, was to join us in Florida and stand up for LJ as an attendant in a sunshine-yellow polished cotton bridesmaid dress with pockets in the seams.

That second bud opened the morning we left for the airport.

It was a message to my girls and LJ that her mom would be there for her wedding. And she was there -- in the smiles of her Big's sons that she never got to hold, in laughter and tears, in untold glasses of white wine, and certainly in the Jimmy Buffett songs spun by the DJ.

LJ wore her mom's cathedral-length veil in her wedding on the terrace overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It flew wildly in the stiff breeze, and wrapped itself around LJ and her father as they moved down the aisle, but it stayed firmly gripped to LJ's beautiful bridal hairdo, rejecting the temptation to take wing on its own adventure.

And thus JB nurtures on.

The letter from my snail-mailbox opens with, "Your imaging examination shows a probable benign finding (not cancer)." Then it reminds me of my follow-up appointment in December and other stuff, but who cares about that right now. An actual doctor wrote the literal words, "not cancer" on actual paper! In ink!

JB knew it all along.

And the gardenia is still blooming today.

I Love to Pilfer!

Shamelessly stolen from Moonbattery.

The only change I'd make to Van Helsing's observations is to note that thousands of jobs have gone missing while the Emperor dabbles in immigration, not hundreds.

Muslim Culture Meets German Engineering

I now want that car. Very. Very. Much.

I'll rent it to any car bomber who would care to use it for an extremely reasonable rate.

h/t to Donna T.

Taxing That Bronze Glow for Healthcare

Not that I use tanning beds, and aside from the fact that I don't trust them and always discouraged my daughters from using them, nonetheless . . . .

Isn't adding a tax to a service used pretty much exclusively by one race pretty much the embodiment of racism?

Just sayin'.

Too Little, Too Late, Mr. President.

Seventy-one days after the initial explosion on the BP Deepwater Horizon and the United States is now prepared to accept assistance offered by at least twelve nations who have a little more experience with disaster.

Seventy-one days that could've seen a collaborative effort contain a considerable amount of the mess that's now befouling (and befowling) the Gulf Coast.

Seventy-one days while the Emperor fiddled around with Paul McCartney and varying tee times.

Seventy-one days.

The Obama administration's moratorium on offshore drilling was announced May 6th. Since then we've seen a migration of rigs to Brazil, more every day, taking countless jobs with them, and enriching whom? Hmmm.

A federal judge enjoined the moratorium, declaring its basis to be arbitrary and capricious, but the Secretary of the Interior thumbed his nose at the Injunction and said he'll just enforce the moratorium another way.

We continue to pump untold sums into Haiti, a literal third-world nation, and the Emperor fiddles on as the Gulf South slips inexorably toward a third-world status of its own.

What smells bad about this picture? Let me count the ways: 20 Billion, 40 Billion . . . .

Mr. President, Call Off the I.R.S.!

Home again, home again!

And already emailing the Young President.

It seems that the I.R.S. will tax BP's restitution payments made to those affected by the Gulf oil mess at the same rate as ordinary income. What a nice little windfall for empty government coffers at the expense of people losing their livelihoods, cultures, and property!

Having recently flown over the Gulf a couple of times and personally witnessing the vast expanse of that abomination, I can attest that there is no easy fix on the "horizon" (pardon the unpleasant pun).

And with all the new info we peons get day by day (such as the government was made aware of problems with the Deepwater drill site as early as February of this year, yet took no action), and tropical weather brewing in the Caribbean and Gulf, a certainty is coming into focus: as a region of the United States of America, down here in the Gulf South we're screwed.

Without even getting a teeny weeny smooch. Or even a Value Meal dinner at McDonald's.

So, I'm joining in FairTax.org's mass email effort to ease a little of the pain facing all those folks whose lives have been irreparably damaged: Mr. President, CALL OFF THE I.R.S.!!!

Here's my version of the email template:

Re: IRS Reg to tax oil spill payments: Gulf South v. NYC

The people and economies of the Gulf Coast states have suffered enough because of the catastrophic oil spill, but the worst may not yet have been seen. It is neither
fair nor just that the IRS will now tax the relief checks paid out to residents by British Petroleum.

I begrudgingly accept that the Gulf South isn't as important to you or your administration as the northeast; nonetheless, please direct the IRS to forgo any taxation of these relief payments as was done in New York after the 9/11 attack.

Mr. President, this is the right thing to do for our fellow countrymen.

Please act now to direct that these payments go untaxed so that those who have been so hard hit are not asked to give more out of empty pockets next April 15th.

The magnitude of this disaster justifies this compassionate exception to the rules.

(For clarity, Sir: "com·pas·sion (km-pshn) n. Deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it. See Synonyms at pity." Emphasis mine.)

Most sincerely,
MoogieP

You can send yours here, if it strikes your fancy. Let 'em have it!