Mississippi Paddler Announces Camellia Home Health and Hospice as Gold Level Sponsor for Alzheimer’s Fundraiser

Flora, MS. May 19, 2010—Keith Plunkett, Mississippi paddler and organizer of Lucy’s Revenge, announced today that Camellia Home Health and Hospice will be a Gold Level Sponsor of the yearlong project to raise funds for Alzheimer’s research and support services. Camellia Home Health and Hospice is based out of Hattiesburg, Mississippi and has 18 locations from Jackson to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

“I am extremely excited to welcome Camellia Home Health as a partner for this project,” said Plunkett. “They understand firsthand the toll Alzheimer’s is taking on our seniors, and the need to fight this disease.”

In Mississippi alone, 53,000 people have been diagnosed with the disease with an additional 148,000 caregivers providing unpaid care.

“As Keith begins his journey, it is our hope to get our local offices involved in drumming up support and participating in the paddling experience,” said Camellia President Abb Payne. “I look forward to working with him, and the Alzheimer’s Association to further their efforts.”

The effort will begin in July on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and will take Plunkett on a journey across 5 regions of the state to paddle waterways that are both popular destinations and underutilized opportunities. During the trips, the Yazoo County native and Flora resident will tell the stories of Alzheimer’s patients and caregivers in each region, and will highlight ongoing efforts by the Alzheimer’s Association and medical professionals to defeat the disease.

Over the next two months leading up to the kickoff on July 10 in Ocean Springs, Plunkett will speak with groups across the state to raise awareness, and to secure donations. He has set a goal of 600 miles, or roughly 120 miles per region, and hopes to entice a few others to join him on some of the excursions, including Payne.

“Abb told me he would like to join me on a few trips, and I look forward to it,” said Plunkett. “Paddling is a great family friendly sport, and we have so many resources in Mississippi to enjoy. I welcome anyone that wants to join in.”

Work is ongoing to outfit the current website, www.lucysrevenge.com, with a real-time map that uses GPS to track Plunkett’s whereabouts, and a website has been setup by the Alzheimer’s Association to begin collecting donations. A Paddling Partners Program has also been established for those who would like to form paddling teams and compete to raise money for the project.

The project is named in memory of Lucy Plunkett, who suffered from Alzheimer’s before succumbing to the disease in 1994. The matriarch of the Plunkett family reared six children, and oversaw the upbringing of 9 grandchildren. She was a housewife and an active member of her church and the rural community of Little Yazoo in Yazoo County.

Here is your MAGIC diet pill!

In eight easy steps you can get rid of those unwanted extra pounds!

Just one problem . . . your too lazy to do it and too set in your ways to stop your pitiful eating habits!

This is why American's (especially Mississippians) are so fat. We're all about hard work, as long as somebody else is doing it. Most of us won't even walk to the mailbox. And we refuse to eat much of anything not loaded down with grease, fat, butter, salt and sugar. Heck, even our vegetables are unhealthy!

Bottom line is if what you're doing isn't working, then you should stop what your doing. The Chinese have it right. I knew there was a reason I was always hungry walking around NYC China Town.

Eight Reason Why The Chinese Are Skinnier Than You

Items 1, 3, 4 and 6 are pretty obvious.

Item 2 is, as well. But, the thought of it has me seeing visions of my Mama standing over me threatening to make me eat the unfinished morsels for breakfast. I'm working through that with self counseling (Thanks Mama!).

Item 5 is a no brainer, too. But so hard to do when you work until 9 on the days your not taking your kids to soccer or baseball game double headers.

Number 7? Please. I know people that will have the driver drop them off at the front door of the All-You-Can-Eat, so they don't have to walk that long 30 yards from the parking lot to the front door.

Number 8 is the only one here that is absolutely NOT going to make it in to any of my diet plans. One thing I know about good Ole' Mississippian's, we'll love you to death with food, literally. But, if you tell us we look fat in that new outfit we picked up from Wal-mart, your likely not going to see our happy side, and may, in fact, leave the whole exchange with something Ajax won't take off!

Harper discusses FEMA flap in Yazoo on Fox and Friends (Video).

U.S. Representative Gregg Harper (R-Miss.) joins Steve, Gretchen and Brian live on FOX & Friends to discuss a recent incident in Yazoo County involving local volunteers and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees. Volunteers with faith-based organizations were asked to change their shirts because of a religious message on the shirt, before they were allowed to proceed with an interview with a FEMA employee. This interview hits on the details of this episode and Congressman Harpers encouraging conversation with FEMA Administrator, Craig Fugate.


 



Related Posts: Gregg Harper upset with FEMA over T-Shirt Flap
Michelle Malkin addresses FEMA T-Shirt Flap

Michelle Malkin addresses FEMA T-Shirt Flap

FEMA attempts to whitewash faith-based volunteers


A few years ago, economist Arthur Brooks wrote a must-read book on volunteerism in America titled, “Who Really Cares.” An excerpt:

The conventional wisdom runs like this: Liberals are charitable because they advocate government redistribution of money in the name of social justice; conservatives are uncharitable because they oppose these policies. But note the sleight of hand: Government spending, according to this logic, is a form of charity.

Let us be clear: Government spending is not charity. It is not a voluntary sacrifice by individuals. No matter how beneficial or humane it might be, no matter how necessary it is for providing public services, it is still the obligatory redistribution of tax revenues. Because government spending is not charity, sanctimonious yard signs do not prove that the bearers are charitable or that their opponents are selfish. (On the contrary, a public attack on the integrity of those who don’t share my beliefs might more legitimately constitute evidence that I am the uncharitable one.)

To evaluate accurately the charity difference between liberals and conservatives, we must consider private, voluntary charity. How do liberals and conservatives compare in their private giving and volunteering? Beyond strident slogans and sarcastic political caricatures, what, exactly, do the data tell us?

The data tell us that the conventional wisdom is dead wrong. In most ways, political conservatives are not personally less charitable than political liberals—they are more so.

…People living in conservative states volunteer more than people in liberal states. In 2003, the residents of the top five “Bush states” were 51 percent more likely to volunteer than those of the bottom five, and they volunteered an average of 12 percent more total hours each year. Residents of these Republican-leaning states volunteered more than twice as much for religious organizations, but also far more for secular causes. For example, they were more than twice as likely to volunteer to help the poor.

I bolded that last part as a segue to this stomach-turning story from the Associated Press about how a FEMA official taping interviews with volunteers helping tornado victims in Mississippi was so sick of meeting faith-based volunteers in the area that he asked two women to change their shirts to hide their religious affiliation:

The top officer for FEMA said one of the agency’s videographers was “absolutely wrong” to ask Mississippi church volunteers not to wear religious T-shirts for a video about tornado cleanup.

Angela Lott and Pamela Wedgeworth, who are sisters, told The Associated Press that the FEMA worker videotaping the cleanup on Saturday in the small town of Ebenezer asked them to do on-camera interviews but requested that they change out of their T-shirts because of a Salvation Army logo.

“He said, ‘We would like to ask you to change your shirt because we don’t want anything faith-based,’” Lott said Tuesday.

Lott said she asked him why he didn’t want to feature faith groups.

“All he said was, ‘We’ve done that hundreds of times,’” Lott said.

No surprise there.

If only the religious volunteers had worn ACORN or SEIU or “God is Dead” t-shirts, the FEMA employee would have featured them in full-length documentaries and bought them steak dinners.

Michelle Malkin

Work progressing on new station

By the end of the year, the Adam Weisenberger Memorial Fire Station should be in operation on Stribling Road.

In the planning stages for several years but delayed by snags over landing a location, the station becomes the second one operated by the South Madison Fire Protection District and should mean a drop in insurance rates for homeowners in the district.

"I can't wait to see a brand new truck sitting in that brand new station," said Bill Weisenberger, head of the fire district board and the father of Adam.

Adam Weisenberger, 19, was killed when he was tending to victims of a wreck on I-55 in 2002. He became an official volunteer with the South Madison district when he was eligible at age 18 but had spent years hanging around the Gluckstadt station where his father was, and still is, a volunteer. County officials agreed to name the new station in his honor.

"This is a wonderful tribute to our son," Weisenberger said at the recent ground-breaking for the station, located just past Lake Caroline.

"By naming this for one volunteer who gave his life is something we should all appreciate," Supervisor Karl Banks said at the recent groundbreaking.

Read the entire story at The Madison County Herald