Over Coffee

by Gay Wiley Shook
gayshook (at) bellsouth.net

June 16, 2008

   I heartily commend all of the fine folks who spend every last dime of their political capital to try to convince us fickle voters to elect them to political office. It must be quite an irresistible calling, one I fortunately have never heard.   I attended the Candidates’ Forum tonight at the Gwinnett Justice and Administration Center , which was hosted by the Conservative Republican Women’s organization. Most of the candidates for the Gwinnett Board of Commissioners complimented that group upon how well run the forum was and, indeed, it was.   No tackiness was allowed.

    District 1 Commissioner Lorraine Green did her usual exemplary job in describing why she is the best choice for Commission Chairman. She announced at an earlier press conference today her plan to bring the Homestead Option Sales Tax (H.O.S.T.) to Gwinnett, which would exempt homeowners from paying property taxes to fund county government. The H.O.S.T. plan replaces property taxes with a 1% sales tax that must first be approved by voters. DeKalb and Rockdale Counties are already using H.O.S.T. plans.

      This plan was devised back in 1996 or so by our own Gwinnett ex-Senator Bart Ladd, one of the brightest men in the Georgia General Assembly, who put this plan in place for his DeKalb District at the time. I always thought that Senator Ladd was one of the few down there under the Gold Dome who understood the math of legislation.

    Always well prepared, Carol Hassell, candidate for District 1 Commissioner, did her expected superb job. This three-way race between Carol Hassell, Shirley Lasseter , and Bruce LeVell will likely end in a run-off election as all three candidates have camps of supporters. Hassell’s remarks were organized and concise. Lasseter and LeVell tended to ramble around some of their answers, both of them wound up giving the audience a little less than Hassell did.  

   Shirley Lasseter’s proposal to build a retention facility for illegal immigrants in Gwinnett will probably make her platform the least popular with voters as many folks just want illegal immigrants gone. Even though Lasseter says she can get the Federal government to pay for everything (Good luck with that!) and the cost for this gigantic endeavor won’t come out of Gwinnett’s pocket, it will still come out of the taxpayers’, one way or another.

     The other Commission race represented was District 3, Commissioner Mike Beaudreau and candidate Doug Stacks.   Keep your eye on this one, folks!

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     Well, I finally ran into it. Belks did not have my size in some Keds I wanted so the salesgirl offered to order them for me. That sounded fine so I plunked down sufficient cash. Nope. Belks won’t take cash on a special order deal, has to be a bankcard. The salesgirl could not explain why, only that this was the rule.   Many days later I was advised by the Belks Item Locator that so sorry, they could not fulfill my order. Well, I will be checking to see if my bankcard gets a refund, which is undoubtedly the reason Belks does not accept cash on a transaction like this. No wonder retail merchandising is in the tank. Local merchants might take a page from catalog operations: backordered items are only charged when they are shipped.

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   My friends, here’s just a little update on our new yellow Lab Sammie. We submitted this photo of her for the Atlanta Dog Squad’s 2009 calendar and hope she’ll be selected for one of the months. We rescued seven and a half-year old Sammie last month and she has changed our lives. We got her from the Atlanta Dog Squad, a volunteer organization that rescues retrievers, both Labradors and Goldens. You can visit them online at www.atlantadogsquad.org and I encourage you to do so.   The Atlanta Dog Squad got Sammie from the Cobb County animal shelter just before her doom. This organization has dedicated people spotting fine dogs for them all over the state, animals that deserve to be rescued and placed in good homes. Sheriff Butch Conway , himself a big animal rescuer, wanted to know why we only adopted one Labrador retriever and not three or four! I believe we will have to work up to that.

    My family was dogless for over a year after we lost our beloved chocolate Lab Clover. We admit that we are just not whole people without a dog! Sammie knew instantly that she had landed in a good place with us. The evening we got her, she was very excited, busy checking out her new home and her new toys. Since my husband wasn’t up to his usual robust healthy self that night and thought he must be coming down with a dreaded summer cold and since I thought Sammie might have trouble settling into her new home, I decided to spend the night with Sammie out on our screened back porch where there is a very comfortable couch. That way at least my husband would have an uninterrupted sleep and Sammie and I could listen to the night sounds in the woods. I expected to be up for hours.

    Sammie finally settled down about midnight.   Then at three o’clock in the morning, she left her new bed on the floor and jumped up on the couch with me, wedged herself in between me and the back cushions, let out a huge contented sigh, and went to sleep immediately with her head on my chest. She was home at last and she knew it. That is how my husband found us in the morning.

   My husband says that sleeping with a Labrador retriever on the bed is like sleeping with a horse. He’s probably right. He doesn’t allow Sammie up on the bed; she has a comfortable one of her own; in fact, several. She sneaks up with me once in a while for a nap, but that doesn’t count! Ignoring her own puffy dog pillow, our Clover slept on the foot of our bed for years and I think my sweet husband had enough of that, especially when Clovie would chase rabbits in her sleep. I did read a statistic somewhere that recorded an astonishingly high percentage of dog owners who shared their beds with their pets. It really is a comforting thing.

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   Hope all is well and thanks for reading. It’s nice to be back perking expresso!