Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Hell No it Won’t Show!

Posted: June 9, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

About 1 AM as I was getting ready to crash was a notice of an update to my OS on my screen. I thought very little of it as OS updates are a regular fact of life for any system.

This morning when I got home from mass I noticed the weather in my bottom toolbar.

While the weather is useful I had not turned on that toolbar and wondered what had put it there.

When I clicked on it suddenly there was a feed feeding me the entire MSM line in every story in sight.

Each time I shut off one “news” site it was replaced by another just as obnoxious and woke till all that was left was the Washington Examiner and Fox and while I don’t mind those sources but I didn’t want a feed at all.

I finally got into the task bar and shut off the feed from there, which frankly I should have thought of first.

I know I could have just left that weather bar there but in the end if I want something on the net I’ll ask for it but I wonder how many people just take the feed and the misinformation.

Rather sad actually.

Leave Mother Nature alone

Posted: June 8, 2021 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
Tags: ,

By Christopher Harper

I don’t claim to be a climate expert, but a recent trip to what’s known as the Pennsylvania Wilds demonstrates how Mother Nature does a pretty good job of taking care of herself.

In the rolling hills and valleys of north-central Pennsylvania sits Pine Creek Gorge, known as The Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania. See https://www.dcnr.pa.gov/StateParks/FindAPark/LeonardHarrisonStatePark/Pages/default.aspx

A friend who has traveled throughout the world said as she looked over the landscape: “That’s a wow!”

Indeed, it is.

According to the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, an estimated 90 percent, or 31,000 square miles of the state, was covered with forests before William Penn and his fellow Quakers settled the state. By the American Revolution, lumber became one of the leading industries in Pennsylvania. Trees were used to furnish fuel to heat homes, wood for construction, furniture, and barrel making. Rifle stocks and shingles were made from Pennsylvania timber, as were a wide variety of household utensils and the first Conestoga wagons.

By the mid-19th century, up to 20 million board feet of timber floated from the area to the West Branch Susquehanna River and to sawmills near Williamsport, a few miles from my new home. At the time, Williamsport boasted the highest number of millionaires per capita in the country.

But the timber barons cut down too much lumber and did not replenish what they had harvested. On May 6, 1903, a local newspaper ran the headline “Wild Lands Aflame” and reported landslides throughout the gorge. The soil was depleted of nutrients, and it became known as the “Pennsylvania Desert.” Much of the wildlife died or left the area.

Fast forward to today. Left to its own devices, Mother Nature has replenished the forests, renewed the land, and wildlife has returned.

The area is part of a state forest, but nature, not humans, did the bulk of the work.

As I said, I’m not an expert. But could you examine if you had all of today’s climate doomsayers trying to intervene in reviving the forestland? I’d rather leave the work to Mother Nature and God!

Report from Louisiana: Your Best Self

Posted: June 7, 2021 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
Tags: , ,

By: Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT –I have just returned to Shreveport after eight days in south Louisiana; for eight days I did not turn on a television. I looked at Facebook nonsense only once a day, and I read zero newspapers. For eight days I have been blissfully unaware of the wider world around me and only concerned about what I was going to eat that day or what rural road I might explore. Is the snow cone stand open today?  Is that a snake in the bayou over there? 

We go to south Louisiana about five times a year and spend a week completely unplugged from the news. It is wonderful! We do talk to people, though, and I can assure you that this part of the state is still staunchly Trump and hoping for a Trump comeback in 2024. It is the NOLA area that is more Democrat, of course, around New Orleans, but most of Louisiana remains politically conservative.

The area we visit is heavily Catholic; my husband and I attend an Episcopal church, which he calls Catholic-Lite.  Without getting into the theological differences, let’s just say that we can attend a Catholic Mass and not look too much out of place. We attended Saturday afternoon Mass and we did okay.

The priest delivered a sermon that resonated with me; the night before, Friday, the diocese that includes Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, and Arnaudville, Louisiana (where we were), began a summer series of discussions called Theology on the Bayou. The event was open to the public and held at Bayou Teche Brewing in Arnaudville, in their event space.

Theology in a brewery?  Well, why not? 

The event was a huge success; we got there about fifteen minutes before it started which enabled us to get a beer and find a seat. We spoke to Father Travis, “our” priest, and he introduced us to Father McIntyre from Breaux Bridge who was leading the evening’s program. As we waited for the event to begin, we watched the amazement unfold on their faces as people began pouring into the room; they just kept coming. More chairs had to be set up, then more chairs, then people squished up closer together and more chairs came out. The room was busting at the seams.  It was pretty amazing.

The theme of the night’s discussion was “What makes us human?” and basically, becoming a better human. One of the questions Father McIntyre asked was “What person in your life makes you your best self; that allows you to be, and to become, who you really are?” The part of the night that resonated so much with me was the discussion part when people shared ideas and just talked. I loved the community of it, the mutual desire to be better people, better Christians, and stronger in family and faith.

That’s a message I can get behind no matter what religion it comes from. As we all sat in that room, most with a beer, several with pizza (they served terrific wood-fired pizza there), and the doors open to allow the cross breeze in, I looked at the assembled faces; all ages were present. Husbands, wives, kids, grandparents, everyone. It was pretty special.

At Mass the next day, Father Travis had a similar message for his congregation: that we should be more open, more welcoming, basically, our best selves.

Now that I’m back in Shreveport, where we have daily shootings, the highest homicide rate since the 1980s, and an overload of negativity, decay, and decline, I’m thinking that unplugging for a while might be necessary to my mental well-being! Real life (as opposed to vacation life) brings enough responsibility and obligation as it is without the negativity that social media and even main stream media brings.

If I’m going to be my best self, my happiest self, it is definitely something to consider.

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.

RT —

For shame

Posted: June 4, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Italian artist Salvatore Garau recently sold at auction his latest work, entitled Lo Sono. The buyer paid over $18,000.

Garau describes Lo Sono as being “made of air and spirit.” He says he likes to think of it as a vacuum, and calls the work an “immaterial sculpture.” As he told Spain’s Diario AS, “The vacuum is nothing more than a space full of energy, and even if we empty it and there is nothing left, according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, that nothing has a weight. Therefore, it has energy that is condensed and transformed into particles, that is, into us.”

Confused? Don’t be. The piece of art doesn’t actually exist. There’s truly nothing there.

The buyer will instead receive a “certificate of authenticity” and “display” instructions. Garau insists the “work” must be exhibited in a private house in a roughly five-by-five-foot area free of obstruction.

“Lo Sono,” translated, means “I am.” Garau at least has a sense of humor.

When I was a boy, my brother and I decided to create our own superheroes and sell homemade comic books to the neighborhood suckers. I don’t recall the entire cast of characters we came up with, but Caterpillar Man was a featured player, spinning his own silken threads. Watch and learn, Spidey.

The comics were a series of colored drawings in standard comic book format, stapled together just like the, er, pros do it, and they were even given a brand: Stars and Stripes Comics. And after only a few minutes of showing the wares to the local crew, we found one taker, who gave us our asking price of a nickel each for a couple of issues.

When my mom found out, she made us give the nickels back. Charging for such tripe. No, this was not money we were going to keep. One of us would later work as an artist for Disney Animation and “South Park,” so the art couldn’t have been that bad, but Mom would not be shamed seeing her boys dupe some neighborhood simp.

The buyer hasn’t been disclosed, but be it a simp or a sophisticated modern art tastemaker (same thing you say?), I’m pretty sure Mom would feel at least as shamed were Garau one of hers.

Merriam-Webster defines the word “shame” thusly: “a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety.” The second meaning is: “a condition of humiliating disgrace or disrepute.”

For all the instances of the second meaning we have seen in recent years, we sure seem to have a serious shortage of the first.

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