who you probably know as Lady Bird, rest in peace. Landru said everything I wanted to say except to thank her for all the flowers. Spring in Washington always reminds me of her, fields of daffodils in the midst of traffic and sprawl. And while I was thinking of that lovely lady and her flowers I was also reminded of this.
Venus Ramey came from the District of Columbia to become Miss America in 1944. Yesterday at 82 she balanced on her walker as she shot out the tires of an intruder's vehicle with her snub-nosed .38-caliber handgun.
she saw her dog run into a storage building where thieves had previously made off with old farm equipment.
Ramey said the man told her he would leave. "I said, 'Oh, no you won't,' and I shot their tires so they couldn't leave," Ramey said. "I didn't even think twice. I just went and did it," she said. "If they'd even dared come close to me, they'd be 6 feet under by now."
Ramey then flagged down a passing motorist, who called 911.
What a foot-stompin’ reunion there must be at this very moment in that great Purgatory of Journalists in the Sky. I can see them now—Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, Upton Sinclair, Henry Demarest Lloyd, Ida B. Wells, David Graham Phillips, George Seldes, I. F. Stone, Walter Karp, Willie Morris—welcoming our darlin’ to their bosoms. Oh, my, how she comes trailing clouds of truth-telling glory! Look at her—big-hearted as ever, leaning over the balustrade and reaching down to the tormented of Hades, moistening Tom DeLay’s lips, patting down Bob Perry's hair, erasing George W's sandstone scribblings. In the celestial light she glows as irrepressibly and vividly as she did here on Earth, where she made the mighty humble, the wicked ashamed, and the good ol' boys reach for the barrel to hide their forlorn nakedness. And, oh, the stories she must be telling as we speak.
At a PBS meeting a few years ago, she ended her talk with a joke that would have gotten anyone else arrested or excommunicated. But she was carried out on the crowd's shoulders, as right now she is being ushered into the Council of Ink-Stained Immortals, where the only religion is truth. Save some room up there, Molly: You have inspired us earthbound wretches to keep trying to live up to your legacy in the hope of joining you there one day.
Molly Ivins didn't make it through the third round of breast cancer. I will miss her terribly. We all will.
