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Mrs. Teasdale: Your excellency I thought you left
Chicolini [disguised as Firefly]: Oh no I no leave
Mrs. Teasdale: But I saw you with my own eyes
Chicolini: Who are you going to believe me or your own eyes?
Duck Soup 1933
As I think about it while the Marx Brothers line is apt this clip from: A guide for the married man (1967) might be more proper.
We’re at a point where people are going to have to decide if they are going to buy Joey Bishop’s line or not.
By: Pat Austin
SHREVEPORT -A few random thoughts today:
On Living in Louisiana: Even though Louisiana is at the bottom of all the important economic growth lists, bottom of education, bottom of job growth, there are some definite advantages to living here. I’ve written often about the differences between north and south Louisiana – it might as well be two different universes, and I do love south Louisiana. But, even up here in the northern part of the state, we have our perks. It’s never a bad day, for example, when a friend calls out of the blue on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon and says, “We droppin’ a big ol’ batch of crawfish in da water right now; come get you some!”
When that happens, you drop what you are doing, grab a six-pack, and follow the directions to a renovated industrial looking building in the shad of the interstate where three 45-pound sacks of crawfish await the hot boiling brew over the propane fire that turns them into spicy, tasty delicacies. I could eat my weight in crawfish.
They aren’t crayfish or crawdads around here; they are crawfish. Sometimes mudbugs. Always delicious.
Another perk of living in Louisiana is the weather; yes, last winter we had a five-day snowmageddon event that had us shut inside for a solid week. Unheard of. We have already had our one day of snow this week, so now we look forward to spring. Oh, the cold isn’t done with us yet. We will have a few more spells where the temps go below freezing, but for the most part, I’m looking for spring.
I mean, college baseball kicked off this weekend. Nothing says spring like college baseball!
We have Mardi Gras parades coming up beginning in the next week or so and that harkens to Lent and then the Easter season, and well, spring.
Here in Shreveport, we have “city Mardi Gras” as opposed to “country Mardi Gras” celebrated by many of my friends in Cajun country down south. Very different events! But always fun.
I’m the first one to get on my soapbox and complain about the crime, the terrible politicians, the urban decay, the potholes, the low teacher pay, etc.; we are far from perfect here in Louisiana, but dang, I wouldn’t live anywhere else.
On The Super Bowl: Are you going to watch? I’m probably not. I haven’t watched an NFL game in three or so years and could not care less about it. I do love Joe Burrow however, and so I rather would like to see him win, but I won’t lose any sleep over it. We usually watch the Puppy Bowl instead.
On The Vanishing Louisiana Coast: I know we all hate the NYT, but I do want to share this article. Last week one of the books I share with you was the Mosquito Supper Club cookbook and this article references that book, the author, and her very real concerns about the danger of the Louisiana coastline. I’ve seen it. It’s read and it’s shocking. We can debate the whole climate change angle, but whatever the actual cause, or combination of causes, we are losing a lot of land down there, as well as entire communities and even the sustainability of our seafood industry. It’s troublesome.
Y’all have a good week and be kind.
Pat Austin blogs at And So it Goes in Shreveport and at Medium; she is the author of Cane River Bohemia: Cammie Henry and her Circle at Melrose Plantation. Follow her on Instagram @patbecker25 and Twitter @paustin110.
Being the first to connect Trudeau with the word truck, as in the not so polite version of “Let’s Go Brandon,” is another thing I cannot claim credit for. I first encountered it in this photo, taken by an unknown photographer, which I saw on Facebook.
For more than twenty months I’ve been waiting for organized resistance to all of the Covid tyranny to begin in earnest. As each month has gone by without widespread revolt I’ve been getting more and more agitated and disheartened. Because the United States has always been the land of the free, I expected that the people here would have put an end to all of this tyrannical nonsense well over a year ago.
I got my hopes up too many times, as it appeared that all of these mandates, passports, and lockdowns would all be swept away by an orgy of mass protest, that appeared to be igniting, only to see the flames sputter out.
Finally there appears to be a mass movement, camped out in Ottawa, that could bring an end to the totalitarian nightmare in Canada.
So far the Canadian Government has not backed down. They are actually considering imposing new mandates. Trudeau has demonstrated tremendous courage during the mass protest by fleeing to an unknown location.
The protests have been peaceful. Yet that has not prevented the chief of the Ottawa police from threatening them.
Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly told reporters on Monday that “all options are on the table,” including “enforcement,” to end an ongoing protest led by truckers in the Canadian capital against the country’s onerous anti-coronavirus mandates that Sloly himself admitted had led to no injuries or violence.
These convoys are spreading. One is planned for Australia, one for the United States, and several in Europe. Gould this finally be the end of our totalitarian nightmare?
By Christopher Harper
“American Pie,” the iconic ballad that chronicled social and musical history during the 1960s, has turned 50.
Don McLean, the author and singer of the eight-minute-long tune, has launched a 65-city tour in the United States and Europe to belt out the tale of taking a Chevy to the levee, which actually was a bar rather than part of a river.
Throughout the years, people have tried to untangle the meaning of the lyrics, which reflect the downward spiral of the United States in the 1960s.
If you want all of the interpretations of the song, here they are: https://americansongwriter.com/american-pie-don-mclean-meaning-lyrics-50-years-later/
The top of the pops from American Songwriter:
–“The song is about the nostalgia that comes with closing a chapter in time. A chapter that was good, youthful, and innocent. The song starts in the late 1950s, where both McLean himself and the post-World War II American sentiment were still sincere and innocent, if also blindingly naive. And as we know, naivety and innocence are always lost. For McLean, it was lost when he discovered that his favorite musicians, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, had died in a plane crash—the day the music died. And for America, it came when the utopia of the 1950s was exposed as a veneer, giving way to the more socially conscious, but turbulent 1960s.”
–“Everything became more political in the 1960s. [President John] Kennedy was assassinated, and the courtroom was adjourned with no verdict, as Lee Harvey Oswald was killed prior to judicial proceedings. The Helter Skelter murders happened during that sweltering summer, which, if not expressly political, was certainly ideological.
Music was no exception to all the politicization. John Lennon was reading from the book of Marx, as The Beatles released songs invoking revolution and even referencing China’s Mao.”
–The Levee was a bar in New Rochelle, New York, where McLean drank with his friends.
What’s refreshing about McLean is he hasn’t turned into a nattering nabob of negativism like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell.
In a recent interview with Fox Digital, McLean underlined the positive values he learned in his youth, which are sadly lacking today.
“The America now is not the America I started out in,” said McLean. “And it’s not the America that I was in before I started out … The America that I remember in the 1950s when I was growing up and was a young boy and teenager — that’s the America I knew and the value system I knew.”
He also pointed out that “so many people today make it sound like the America of the ’50s was some horrible White racist country, and it’s disgusting the way [some] people have characterized our country. There was a wonderful civility [back then]; there was trust; doors were open; we had the No. 1 colleges in the world; and we were No. 1, for real.”
Rock on, Don! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RciM7P9K3FA
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