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Report from Louisiana: Your Best Self

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

Conspiracy Theorist is a colorful euphemism for someone who sees through all of the progressive bovine excrement

Posted: June 3, 2021 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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One of the most pervasive hallmarks of the political left is their chronic distortion of language.  George Orwell highlighted this in great detail when he wrote 1984.  The term he created for this type of behavior is Newspeak. 

Progressives and other leftists have been warping language for well more than a century.  It is the only way they have any hope st winning arguments or convincing those that are uninformed or unknowledgeable.

One of the most common tactics used by leftists is to take a term that has a negative connotation and apply it to those who absolutely do not deserved to be tagged with that label.  The most current example of this is the all too casual way leftists on social media throw around the accusations of someone being a conspiracy theorist. 

All an individual has to do to be tagged on social media as a conspiracy theorist is to make a statement that conflicts with standard leftist orthodoxy.  Liberals and other leftists live in a universe that is divorced from reality, a universe that is ruled by feeling and emotions rather than the truth, facts, science, or other forms of absolute truth.   

Social media giants such as FaceBook and Twitter employ an army of so called fact checkers who all too often label factual posts as false or containing misinformation.  If you share posts that are flagged by these phony fact checkers too often you risk being banned or having the audience your posts reach severely restricted.   I have been banned from Twitter for spreading conspiracies and I am pretty sure FaceBook has severely throttled back my account.

To be labeled a conspiracy theorist by a leftist on social media all you have to do is tell the truth about the 2020 presidential election being stolen from President Trump, mask mandates being ineffectual, lockdowns doing tremendous harm and no good,  the possibility of the Wuhan Virus escaping from a lab, global warming and man caused climate change being a bunch of bunk, and so much more.

It is amazing how frequently us so called conspiracy theorist are later proved to be purveyors of the truth when all of the facts and evidence are carefully examined and weighed.

Dr. Fakey Down, DaTechGuyblog up, An Economy Hint, Manchen & Sinema remember and Lopez replaces Romano Under the Fedora

Posted: June 3, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

The sudden fall of Dr. Fauci (or as my wife caller him Dr. Fakey) is a wonder to behold. Of course the media is doing all it can to prop him up now that his email’s are showing him to be the Sir Humphrey Appleby of government medicine but the sudden pulling of his book from pre-sales shows they understand the writing is on the wall.

To Quote Don Surber from last month and today:

“Tony Fauci is about to become the fall guy for the Covid Conspiracy, which wrecked the economy to elect Biden.

“And with a $400,000 per year salary sucking at the federal teat, the quack is totally cool with that.”

I take exception to the use of the word “elected” there.

Unlike St. Anthony the great apparently he wasn’t all that good at resisting temptation.

As you can see DaTechGuyblog.com is back up. It went down the day I was about to launch the indulgence Calendar part of a project that I’ve been putting off for almost a decade in the same way that Jonah went to see when asked to go to Nineveh.

Because my primary backup site was full I created a 2nd backup site datechguyblog.wordpress.com which had space for the Calendar and published the post and the file there and viola the very next day this site was up again.

I mentioned it to my pastor Tuesday he suspect it means we’re on the right track.

You can download the June Calendar here.

I understand that Vice president Harris is supposedly gong to be put in charge of a task force to restore the economy.

I’m sure there will be a good amount of government money spent on those involved to come up with a solution but the quickest way would be the return of Donald Trump to the White House.

We’ll have to wait 3 1/2 years for that, hopefully there will be an economy still there to get going.

The continued attacks on Joe Manchin & Kyrsten Sinema are rather amazing as it shows an amazing ability to forget the fruits of Harry Reid’s moves that backfired spectacularly on the Democrats and the left. It’s as the left believes it will hold power forever.

Of course when you gain power by illegitimate methods you tend to have that idea, as Glenn Reynolds said concerning the left’s responses to the various audits: “Not once in all the challenges have the Democrats responses indicated ‘we have nothing to hide.’”

Finally Romano’s Market is gone but a man named Lopez has moved in there with a variety store. It has some meats, not the variety that Mike had as he’s not a full blown butcher by trade but so far I like what I’ve tasted.

This is what happens in America, seven generation of Italians ran Romano’s for 117 years perhaps in the year 2138 the seventh generation of Lopez’s will decide they want to do something else and another family of immigrants will take it over and begin the cycle again.

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