Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Douche Bag du Jour

The Lincoln Journal Star features state politicians in the series “In Their Own Words.” Nebraska State Senator Bill Kintner recently answered some personal questions.

Douchebag Extrodinaire from Nebraska


The standout reply was about women and his opinion of them:

“Biggest mystery? Women. No one understands them. They don’t even understand themselves.
Books and books and books have been written about it, and no one understands it.”

WOMEN! There you have it! This anti-choice, Christian man has told YOU that you don’t understand yourself – because HE KNOWS.


It gets EVEN BETTER:

“In our household, we have a separation of powers. The legislative is downstairs and the executive is upstairs. We don’t talk about what she does on her side and what I do on my side. There’s no sharing of inside information.”
I find this reply to be disturbing and I am unsure what he means. Maybe he is the Executor or the Executive in the bedroom? Does this mean his wife has no say when it pertains to their sex life? When he says the “legislative is downstairs,” does this mean household chores? Does it include their finances? So many questions. So many possible nightmare scenarios.


The Tea Party made its way into Congress in 2010 because people didn’t vote. Let’s change this in 2014 and vote these people out. They are trying to take away the" basic rights of women (anti abortion legislation, Planned Parenthood)

Information above was obtained at this website.

The author is Kimberley A. Johnson (BIO) – A.K.A. The Anti Coulter and the author of The Virgin Diaries and an activist for women’s rights.

Windows Wednesday



I have no idea where this is, honestly. Please enjoy.

Monday, May 27, 2013

To Parents of Young Children


Neil DeGrasse Tyson gives great advice to parents of young children

It ain't all about soccer, T-ball, football and dance classes, parents. By doing less and providing the right tools you are helping your children discover the universe around them.

Great article that accompanied this article is here. Please read and enjoy

Memorial Day


Not Free

Nothing is ever free,
though to you it be.
Somewhere, somehow,
someone paid.


©2002 Roger W Hancock (www.PoetPatriot.com)

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Scuzzbucket of the Week



The above poster says it all. These two just make me ill.

Here is Sammy the Cocker Spaniel, who suffered abuse from two more scuzzbuckets from Brick, NJ



You can read about Sammy's former owners' sickening treatment of him at this page.


Thursday, May 23, 2013

Frank Davis

I was raised as a Catholic. that means I was raised feeling guilty about things. LOL.

I left the church, but I remained a praying person, as I have witnessed the power of prayer.

Local TV personality Frank Davis needs ALL of our prayers. Check this out:

Frank has CIPD One in 4 million people are affected by it. It is curable in that he could be back to 50-75% of his former self.

If you watched the video, you can see how fast this disease affected him.

My only wish is that you say a little prayer and - if you're from Southeast Lousisiana, please share and ask for more prayers.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

It's that time of year again

Buy your hurricane supplies this weekend and pay no state sales tax! From the Louisiana Department of Revenue:


2013 Louisiana Hurricane Preparedness Sales Tax Holiday
Saturday, May 25 & Sunday, May 26

Louisiana Revised Statute 47:305.58 provides for an annual state sales tax holiday on sales of hurricane-preparedness items or supplies made on the last Saturday and Sunday of each May. During the two-day annual holiday, tax-free purchases are authorized on the first $1,500 of the sales price of each of the following items:

portable self-powered light source;
portable self-powered radio, two-way radio, or weather band radio;
tarpaulin or other flexible waterproof sheeting;
any ground anchor system or tie-down kit;
any gas or diesel fuel tank;
any package of AAA-cell, AA-cell, C-cell, D-cell, 6-volt, or 9-volt batteries, excluding automobile and boat batteries;
any cellular phone battery and any cellular phone charger;
any non-electric food storage cooler;
any portable generator used to provide light or communications or preserve food in the event of a power outage;
any “storm shutter device,” as defined in the Act;
any carbon monoxide detector; and
any blue ice product.
La. R.S. 47:301(10)(ee), and 301(18)(o), as enacted by Act 462 of the 2007 Regular Session, provide a permanent state sales and use tax exclusion for storm shutter devices. La. R.S. 47:337.10(m) authorizes, but does not require, political subdivisions of the state to provide a similar exclusion from their sales and use taxes. Accordingly, the state sales tax exemption on storm shutter devices is not limited to the two days of the sales tax holiday. The term “storm shutter device” is defined for purposes of both the holiday and the permanent exclusion as materials and products manufactured, rated, and marketed specifically for the purposes of preventing window damage from storms.
Conditions for Exemption

The following activities will be eligible during the two days of each annual holiday for the sales tax exemption:

buying and accepting delivery of eligible hurricane-preparedness items or supplies;
placing eligible items or supplies on layaway;
making final payment on and withdrawing eligible items or supplies previously placed on layaway; or
ordering an eligible item for immediate delivery, even if delivery must be delayed, provided that the customer has not requested delayed shipment.
Special Provisions

The Act provides that:

The exemption is allowed on both inputs to and withdrawals from layaway.
Purchases of eligible items or supplies during the holiday with “rain checks” issued before the holiday are eligible for exemption, but purchases after the holiday with “rain checks” issued during the holiday are not eligible for exemption;
Orders for immediate shipment are eligible for exemption even if the shipment is after the holiday, provided that the customer does not request delayed shipment;
The post-holiday exchange of merchandise to effectuate changes in size, color, or correction of defects does not create a tax liability, but exchanges after the holiday for dissimilar items will be considered the purchase of new property on which the sales tax will be payable;
For a 60-day period after the holiday, dealers who issue refund or credit for the return of merchandise that was eligible for sales tax exemption during the holiday can issue refund or credit for the state sales tax on that returned merchandise only if the customers returning the property have receipts showing that the tax was actually paid on the original purchases, or the dealers are otherwise able to document that the state sales tax was paid on the original purchases.
The sales tax holiday does not extend to hurricane-preparedness items or supplies purchased at any airport, public lodging establishment or hotel, convenience store, or entertainment complex. Since these terms are not defined by La. R.S. 47:305.58 the department has published a rule, LAC 61:I.4423, to define the terms.

The 2013 sales tax holiday will begin at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, May 25 and conclude at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, May 26.

Return Filing Procedures

Retailers should report exempt sales on Line 24 of the Sales Tax Return (R-1029).

Windows Wednesday



Taken at the Morocco Pavilion in EPCOT (my favorite place of Walt Disney World). There are so many hidden gems at this park, this window was off to the side.

It's been three years, I want to go back!

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

A Prayer for Oklahoma

God of our hearts,
we search our shared sky
for the rainbow
of your unwavering love
to arch over our hearts
when the pain of unimagiable loss
swirls and thrashes us to dust.
Oh please Abba,
shelter those whose lives
have been blown into the abyss
that they may know your peace
after the storm
in the storm
on the horizon of their hearts.
Oh Mother,
thou who were, are and will be
the creator and animator
of love in our frames,
may we be that which will
make palpable your grace
in the graceless days before us.
Brother Christ,
grant us the will
to rise and go
to those whose pain
surpasses our comprehension
but not our compassion.
Endless Spirit,
in the days ahead
when there is no calm
after the storm
we pray
that we may be still
and know.
Amen

By Kimberly Knight

Scuzzbucket of the Week



From the tornado-battered state of Oklahoma, Senator Tom Coburn.

The following is taken from Forward Progressives dot com

The Senator will apparently require offsets to spending before he votes in favor of disaster relief for the areas of Oklahoma devastated by tornadoes on Monday.

Yes, you’ve read that correctly. Even with 20 children confirmed dead, along with 31 others (as of 12:30 am CDT), and countless others with their lives destroyed, this sorry excuse for a human is already playing politics with the lives of Americans who are in desperate need of help.

When did this country become one that only helps its citizens when the “proper budget cuts” have been made? Think he'll be re-elected?

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Stephan Wagner's Art

Not a lot of people have ever heard of Stephan Wagner

He's not an artist in the traditional sense, but he has such unbelievable talent. He is responsible for the recycling of Mardi Gras beads

His art show is travelling across Louisiana this year and we were pleased to have to opportunity to view his work firsthand a few weeks ago when it was in Slidell.

We were told that the scene for his beadwork is first drawn by artists. Stephan - along with volunteers - glue beads onto the artwork one-at-a-time.

Here are some of my favorites:


The Hubig one made me want a fried apple pie.


Zapps chips, yum!


World-wide favorite Tabasco sauce.


This is called "NOLA's Resiliance" (click on the link for a backstory of this piece)

Remember, all of this art was created by glue-ing one bead at a time.


Crawfish Season!


Louisiana's State Capital Building in Baton Rouge


Water Meter


What I couldn't share is the photo of the wonderful New Orleans riverfront art, it is 8 feet tall by 30 feet wide. Fortunately, it is shared at Stephan's website, at the link below.


There is so much more to this show. Presently the works are travelling across the state as a "Main Street" Project. To see more and discover the other aspects of Bead World, please check out this link. It's fascinating.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

I Got Shot in New Orleans | The Nation

I am presenting the whole article, as I really don't think a lot of people read The Nation and I believe this is an important message that anyone who loves New Orleans should share. Written by Mark Hertsgaard


I Got Shot in New Orleans

  • Decrease text sizeIncrease text size

A possible shooting suspect shoots into a crowd of people in New Orleans. Police believe more than one gun was fired in the Mother's Day gunfire that wounded 19 people during a New Orleans neighborhood parade. (AP Photo/New Orleans Police Department)  
I got shot in New Orleans the other day, but that won’t make me give up on this magical, essential city—and neither should you.
When pistol shots rang out during a Mother’s Day “second line” jazz parade through the city’s Seventh Ward, the attack made news around the world. Police said nineteen people were injured, three of them critically, in the Sunday afternoon outburst. Two of the wounded were 10-year-old children (who have now been treated and released from the hospital).
As news of yet another tragedy emanates from New Orleans, outsiders may feel tempted to write the city off, once again, as a hopeless, crime-infested, hurricane-vulnerable hellhole that should be left to its own devices. But the realities of New Orleans are more complex than that—and more compelling. The truth is, the United States as a nation, and many foreign countries as well, need New Orleans to be a city that works. And that is not an impossible dream.
I say this as a journalist who has grown to love New Orleans over the course of many reporting visits since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I also say it as someone who carries a bullet in my leg from this last spasm of street violence.
It turns out that I was standing barely ten feet in front of the Mother’s Day parade shooter, as confirmed by the surveillance video the New Orleans police department released on Monday (I’m wearing a lime green shirt, orange shorts and cream fedora):
It’s important to understand that the second line parade is a cultural tradition dating back to New Orleans’ roots as the chief New World destination for the slave trade. Nowadays, virtually every Sunday, from September through June, one New Orleans neighborhood or another hosts a second line parade. One or more brass bands—which are composed of a dozen or so musicians who play a variety of horn and percussion instruments and are preceded by a phalanx of joyously gyrating dancers wearing brightly color-coordinated costumes—march through the streets, while crowds of people follow behind, making up the “second line” of the parade.
Each second line is sponsored by a social aid and pleasure club, a civic organization established to aid disadvantaged individuals in the long years of segregation, when blacks lacked equal access to government programs and private insurance. Nowadays, second line parades function mainly as a source of community pride and celebration (as I describe in this article about a Christmas second line in the Lower Ninth Ward five years after Hurricane Katrina).
The 2013 Mothers Day second line had halted momentarily at the intersection of Villiers and Frenchmen streets when I heard the “pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop” of pistol shots. Like everyone around me, I started to run, then dove to the ground. It’s a good thing I did. As the surveillance video shows, I’d have been directly in the shooter’s line of fire had I remained upright.
So I ended up getting shot in the leg, rather than higher up, the way my journalistic colleague Deborah Cotton was. Cotton, who blogged for the local weekly newspaper The Gambit under the name “Big Red Cotton,” had written frequently about both second line culture and gun violence in New Orleans. I didn’t know her personally but was stricken to learn that the shooting sent her to surgery, where doctors removed one of her kidneys. She is now in guarded, stable condition, according to her editor, Kevin Allman.
At a news conference Monday night, Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas named Akein Scott, 19, as the suspect seen shooting in the surveillance video. The Gambit reported that Scott had been arrested in March and charged with possession of heroin and stolen firearms, according to Orleans Parish Criminal Court records, and then released on bond in April. Scott remains at large.
Dr. Prateek Adhikari, the physician who treated my gunshot wound at Tulane Medical Center, was not surprised that violence marred the Mother’s Day second line.
“It seems like family holidays are when see we some of these mass casualties,” Adhikari, a trauma unit physician who grew up in New Orleans, told me. “A lot of people who may have left the neighborhood come back for second lines and holidays like Thanksgiving or Mardi Gras. The shooters know where those individuals will be and when, and they don’t care if other people are standing in the way when they start shooting.”
Mitch Landrieu, the mayor of New Orleans, has been careful to condemn the shooting, while holding blameless the second line, which he called “a sacred event” central to “the cultural beauty of New Orleans.” Speaking Monday at a rally at the shooting site, Landrieu added, “Yesterday was a symbol of a much, much deeper problem…. It’s our responsibility to do what is necessary…to make New Orleans a beautiful city we know it can be.”
Why should outsiders care about that mission?
The unsentimental reason is economics. It is an unalterable geographic fact that New Orleans sits at the mouth of the North American continent’s largest, most economically productive river system, the Mississippi. Thus it comes as no surprise that New Orleans is America’s number-one port. Without a functioning New Orleans, America’s status as the world’s leading agricultural superpower would be in jeopardy, as farmers in the Midwest would lose their main route of export. Likewise, as much as 90 percent of the oil and natural gas consumed and exported by the United States passes through New Orleans. The Louisiana Gulf coast also accounts for roughly one-third of all seafood Americans eat.
Personally, I care just as much about the unique cultural and musical treasures of New Orleans. America’s greatest contribution to world culture, jazz, was born in New Orleans, emerging from the legacy of slavery and the resulting mix of African rhythms and European musical structures. Today, New Orleans continues to boast the greatest music in America, perhaps the world, not just in the city’s countless clubs and bars but above all in the streets—in the boisterous, irresistibly infectious performances of brass bands in second line parades.
To abandon New Orleans would be to abandon this precious cultural heritage, which strikes me as a sin against all that is good and right and redemptive in the world.
Not only would it be unwise to give up on New Orleans, it is unnecessary. Yes, there have been many such shootings in New Orleans, and yes, serious steps must be taken to bring this deep-seated problem to heel, as Mayor Landrieu pledged Monday night.
But let no one doubt that these problems can be fixed. Other American cities have suffered from apparently intractable violent crime—Washington, D.C., and New York City come to mind—but they went on to fix and transcend these problems. This article is not the place to specify which counter-strategies are best suited to New Orleans; that is a larger, more complex discussion. But as I said on CNN the day after the shootings, defeating violent crime in New Orleans will require not only the city but the United States as a whole to expend real resources, not mere rhetoric.
More than one observer has said it’s a miracle that no one was killed at the Mother’s Day shooting in New Orleans. I myself am feeling lucky to be alive today. Nevertheless, I refuse to allow this deplorable incident to turn me against a city and a people that occupy such a special place in the nation’s and indeed the world’s culture and economy. And I hope that no one else falls into that trap either.


Read more: http://www.thenation.com/article/174325/i-got-shot-new-orleans#ixzz2TNqvCCXZ

Windows Wednesday

Taken near the entrance of the once prosperous River Walk (what's going on there?) toward the beautiful Aquarium of Americas on the riverfront in New Orleans

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

2 Years Ago

While browsing through my photos on Sunday, I realized that just a small fraction of what I take ends up online and the rest stay in neat little labelled folders on my external hard drive. I decided to look back and find shots taken around todays date.

I found these taken on May 15th, 2011. We took a swamp tour (something we've never done and the Honey Island Swamp is right in our backyard). We chose Pearl River Eco Tours thanks for a Groupon I found. It was an informative trip with a lot of beautiful sights. Being deep in the swamp gives one a special feeling of being in a place that is sacred in it's natural beauty.

Here are three shots from that trip:

The serenity of the swamp


The gators know that when they hear the swamp boats coming that it's time to get either a marshmallow or a piece of red hot dog.


I liked the reflection of this water flower (hyacinth?)

If you ever get the chance to take the tour, I highly recommend it. It's not just for tourists.

Sunday, May 12, 2013

It's almost time.......!

It's Mother's Day and I'm not doing anything resembling work.  So I decided to take a l-o-n-g overdue look at the thousands of pictures I've amassed in the past many years.  I decided to see what I was up to last year at this time and the nearest date was May 20th.

I came upon these and started salivating in stantly
The creoles are coming! The creoles are coming!!!


A basketful of creole goodness!

Every year I make a creole tomato pie to die for. I use Ritz crackers as the crust. The tiny hand belongs to my chef daughter and yes - that is a fork and knife tattoo on her wrist.

For those of you not from this area, creole tomatoes are an heirloom variety that grows in the Southeast Louisiana. The flavor comes from the silt that has landed in the back yards of people who live in the Greater New Orleans area, or anywhere where the Mississippi River runs. There is nothing better than picking these wonderful tomatoes and slicing them up for dinner.

I hope our rainy winter and spring hasn't hurt the crop this year. I will let you know!

Windows Wednesday (Belated)

I succumbed to the sunny weather and spent most of last week planting in the yard. I didn't realize until today that I neglected to post a "Windows Wednesday" for last week (May 8th). Here it is



Description not required.

Wednesday, May 01, 2013

Windows Wednesday


Taken in 2008 along Highway 90 in "the East", this abandoned boat survived Katrina but lost most of her windows. If she could talk, I'm sure she would keep us enthralled for hours with her tales of the past.

Monday Morning Smile