Posts Tagged ‘report from louisiana’

Report from Louisiana: Podcasts

Posted: September 20, 2021 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT —  Y’all…I’m so late to this party it is just embarrassing. I am going to need a little help from those of you that listen to podcasts, but first, let me explain.

I am hard-pressed to think of a term that better illustrates the rapid advancement in personal technology in the past two decades than “podcast.”

Perspective: my generation grew up with rotary phones attached to walls by cords. In my lifetime I witnessed the invention of the push-button phone, the satellite phone, the cordless phone, and eventually the mobile cellular phone. It has been a steep learning curve for some of us that are of a certain age. I did not own a cellphone until I was 42 years old; it was a red Nokia flip phone.

Now I own a very expensive iPhone that will probably do a great many more things than what I actually use it for. Back in the flip phone days, I also had a click wheel iPod which was just revolutionary. I actually still have it and still listen to it sometimes.

Technology started pulling away from me when we no longer bought music on iTunes and made playlists. I think now people just stream everything. I’m not really sure. I subscribe to Apple music and Pandora but don’t really use them. I know there is something called Spotify and I don’t know how to use it.

You see my problem?

Back to podcasts. As a high school educator, my students tried to keep me in the technological loop and so I learned about things like Instagram and TikTok. (I have an Insta but won’t fall into TikTok. Refuse.) But podcasts? I didn’t have time to learn anything else! I was barely keeping up already!

The word “podcast” originated in 2004 and in 2005 it was the Word of the Year for the New Oxford American Dictionary. Apparently, podcasting is now a billion-dollar industry. The 18–34 age group seems to be the primary listening audience and by the time you get to my age group listeners drop significantly.

I dipped my toes into the podcast waters a couple of years ago when a friend insisted that I listen to S-Town, the popular true-crime serial. I dutifully pulled out my earbuds and started listening and I loved it! It was hosted by Brian Reed and the story centered around John McLemore, a larger-than-life, colorful character in Woodstock, Alabama. Mr. Reed’s recordings of his conversations with McLemore were fascinating and my friends and I spent hours talking about this story.

But since then? Nothing. I haven’t listened to another podcast. Why?

Right about that time was when I began a big research project and so there was really no time or opportunity to find a new podcast. When I was writing my book (the result of that research), I listened to a playlist on my iPod (not the click wheel one!). Honestly, there’s no good excuse. I just didn’t look for a new podcast.

Last week, someone suggested I try the Old Gods of Appalachia podcast. I’m not much into the horror genre, which is how this was described to me, but I do love anything Southern Gothic and so maybe this would be okay. The episodes aren’t overly long (in fact, they’re a little too short), and I do like the serialized format. I’ve listened to four or five episodes now and while I don’t yet love it the way I did S-Town, I am going to stay with it a while longer.

I would love to find some good podcasts to listen to. Now that I am retired, I think I can put on a podcast and do this godforsaken walking thing that my doctor wants me to do each day. While I like listening to music, or even birds and barking dogs in the neighborhood, I can see myself listening to a podcast while I walk.

But I have so many questions. How do you find a podcast you want to listen to? When do you listen? Why are so many podcasts in the true crime genre? I don’t even know what genre I want to focus on which is the first question everyone asks me. I want a podcast like S-Town. Colorful characters. I don’t want irritating voices or giggling hosts. I don’t want to listen to anything political — I was a political blogger for ten years and I’m tired of that fight. I want a good mystery, or to learn something. Escapism.

Since podcasts are basically today’s version of radio programs from back in the day, obviously I want to be entertained.

So, tell me. What are you listening to? What are your favorite podcasts and why? Help a girl out!

(This article was previously published on Medium; I am reprinting here because I really want your suggestions!)

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.

Report from Louisiana: Canned Curriculum Fatigue

Posted: September 13, 2021 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin  

SHREVEPORT – I highly recommend retirement.

I retired from the classroom after twenty-five years this past spring and could not be happier about it. Not everyone is cut out for retirement, or so I hear, but so far, I am loving it.

Part of the equation is that it was definitely time for me to leave the classroom; Common Core scripted lesson plans were not for me. My very nature rebelled against the canned slides, the prewritten questions, and the dull activities, the endless annotation of a “text.” I railed against all of this for the last five years of my career. You don’t realize what a burden this sort of thing places on you until you get away from it, until you strip away those bindings.

As younger, newer teachers come into the profession, this method will be the only one they know. They won’t know any other way to design lessons because they’ll never have to actually create a lesson. And the rebels, the old guard, like me, we are leaving in droves.

The result will be students that all learn the same material the same exact way.

That makes me sad, but blissfully happy that I am no longer a part of it.

When school began this fall, I thought I would miss it.  I do not. As much as I loved my students, it was time for me to go. The boring, canned lessons create more classroom disruptions. A bored kid is going to either go to sleep, pull out his phone, or act out. I no longer had the energy to battle this.

I worry a little about what is happening in education today but not so much anymore that I think I can do anything about it. I used to believe I could make a difference, that I could change things. Truth is, I could make a difference in my little room with my own students, but that was it. The future of education is in the hands of the big guys like Pearson, like Bill Gates…people with agendas and companies that write tests and publish books.

It isn’t about what is good for the kid anymore, I don’t believe.

To those teachers still in there fighting the good fight, you have my support and my best wishes.

Meanwhile, I’ll be enjoying retired life. I get up when I want to, I don’t have to wait until a bell rings to go to the restroom or to each lunch. Lunch can be whatever time and last for however long I wish. I can spend my days in a hammock reading a book, at my computer writing a masterpiece, planning delicious meals for my family. I can travel on a whim. I can spend the entire day sitting on the edge of the Atchafalaya Basin drinking a beer and watching the boats.

And for me, that’s much better than standing before a classroom of bored students reading a canned slide and having them annotate a dull passage for the third time because some suit in some office thinks that’s how kids learn.

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.

Report from Louisiana: The Soros District Attorneys are Killing our Cities

Posted: September 6, 2021 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – Another violent weekend in Shreveport and our homicide rate continues to climb. The violence is literally out of control on the streets and as of this morning only one elected official has made any kind of statement (a city councilman).

Saturday night, shooting broke out at Tinseltown movie theatre leaving a thirteen-year-old boy dead, two critically injured, and an innocent lady who picked up her kids after a movie traumatized after her Tahoe was riddled with bullets. She was at a stoplight two blocks from the theater. The video she posted immediately after, while waiting for the police, is horrific.

A nearby hospital took at least six bullets through the lobby windows from this incident.

The mayor of Shreveport has made no statement about this violent weekend – possibly because he wasn’t even here. He went to California for the LSU game.

But there is a lot of discussion on local social media pages about this ongoing, and escalating problem. It isn’t just Shreveport where this kind of violence is happening; we realize this. The story is always the same, after every shooting: nobody saw anything. The no-snitch rule is in effect.

We want to blame someone for all of this: the mayor? He’s young, ineffective, a Democrat…whatever your logic. The police chief? The police chief stepped down last week after a vote of no-confidence from the city council although in truth he was doing the best he could with extremely limited resources. He is 100 officers short because the pay is abysmal. A week with an interim chief has made no difference and we are still 100 officers short.

Who else can we blame? Now folks are looking at the District Attorney. Our DA is a Soros boy; every time he runs for re-election, Soros pumps money into his campaign. In 2015, George Soros dropped $406,000 into James E. Stewart’s campaign. He was re-elected in 2020; his opponent in the race, attorney Patricia Gilley, was jailed for contempt of court a month before the election. A mug shot doesn’t do much for your campaign. So, we get Soros boy Stewart for another six years. In the 2015 special election for Caddo Parish District Attorney, James Stewart’s candidate was Dhu Thompson, who had a great chance to win until Soros pumped a fortune into the Stewart campaign.

“As a candidate and citizen of Caddo Parish, if an outsider was that interested in the race, I wanted to know exactly what he had in mind for the criminal justice system if he were to win,” said Dhu Thompson, a Louisiana attorney who lost a district attorney race to a Soros-backed candidate, James Stewart, in 2015. Soros gave over $930,000 — more than 22 times the local median household income — to the group boosting Stewart.”

Soros funded district attorneys across our nation are all heralding over escalating crime rates in their cities.  Soros has spent a lot of money on district attorney campaigns in Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas. Why?  Because he wants influence over the criminal justice system; the candidates he favors are soft on habitual offenders, favors reduced sentences, plea deals, diversion programs, and aims to combat what he calls “racial disparity.”

In St. Louis, Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner has an “abysmal” relationship with the police department:

“I would describe it as abysmal,” Jeff Roorda, general manager of the St. Louis Police Officers Association, said when asked about cops’ relationship with Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner. “It has gone from bad to worse and now there is no cooperation.”

The city has suffered a crime surge since the Soros-backed prosecutor took office. Violent crime rose by 8.8% since 2006. In terms of violent crimes per 100,000 residents, St. Louis has surpassed Detroit as America’s most violent city.

Soros pumped almost $200,000 into Gardner’s campaign.

In Philadelphia:

“…homicides have again shot up, rising by 34% in 2020 and hitting 257 as of Aug. 3, according to police department figures.

District Attorney Larry Krasner won the office in 2017 running on his background as a defense attorney and litigant against the police department. In that campaign, Mr. Soros’ Pennsylvania Justice and Public Safety PAC spent $1.7 million supporting Mr. Krasner’s bid, a figure which startled a state’s political class that had never seen such sums spent in a district attorney race.

In San Francisco, same thing. The district attorney there is Chesa Boudin who was raised by Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, and according to The Washington Times, “While Mr. Boudin did not receive money directly from one of Mr. Soros’ multiple state PACs, a network of left-wing donors connected to the Hungarian-born billionaire helped Mr. Boudin raise more than $620,000.”

There is no question that this has been the most violent year in recent Shreveport history, and we still have four more months to go. We’ve seen gang violence in the ‘80s, and a terrible riot in 1988, but what is happening on our streets now is the worst we’ve seen in decades.

In response to the violence this weekend, the District Attorney posted on social media: “Unsupervised teenagers driving around with guns shooting at each other is at epidemic level. Parents, if your child is out of control, please go to the Caddo Parish Juvenile Court, 1835 Spring St., and ask for an ungovernable child petition. This will get your child under the supervision of a juvenile court judge and their authority.”

Once in that juvenile system, what happens? A probation worker meets with the kid once every few weeks and asks him questions. “Are you doing your homework? Minding your mother? Staying out of trouble?”  Then the kid goes on about his business.  Stewart’s post was met with ridicule.

Maybe it is time to quit blaming the police chief struggling with minimal resources. Maybe it is time to look at societal factors and why kids with guns are running the streets at all hours. Maybe it’s time to look at the DA who gives them a slap on the wrist, a fine, and sends them back out.

I’m not sure what will be left of this city when Stewart’s term ends in five more years. Perhaps it is time for him to step down.

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.

Report from Louisiana: Hurricane Ida

Posted: August 30, 2021 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – Hurricane Ida has finally come and now has left Louisiana, but she is travelling through the eastern states leaving storms and plenty of water in her path.

The predictions for this storm were dire in the days leading up to landfall: “worst storm in Louisiana history!” said one, and “bigger than Katrina!” said others. As landfall was predicted on the sixteen-year anniversary of Katrina, comparisons were inevitable.

As the storm approached the coast, the cone consistently shifted to the east just a little more with every new track. This eventually took my beloved Acadiana region out of danger, and Shreveport, up in the NW corner was never really in danger. We spend a lot of time in Arnaudville and the Acadiana region, and we have a lot of friends there, so we watched the progress with a lot of anxiety.

The storm made landfall as a high-end Cat 4 about noon Sunday; it was hard to concentrate on the sermon in church yesterday. Wind gusts in places were as high as 180 mph when the storm hit Port Fourchon; I read where 28 people chose to ride out the hurricane in Grand Isle. This is akin to suicide in my mind. I don’t know how many of them survived. When the storm made landfall it briefly reversed the direction of the Mississippi River.

The only way to get any reliable news or information yesterday was via live streams of local channels. The Weather Channel was a joke. There was Jim Cantore standing in the French Quarter, braced against the wind as if he was about to fly off while two guys walked the sidewalk behind him sipping coffee. In another shot, Cantore is again braced in the street and another guy runs into the back of the camera shot and turns a cartwheel.  The only positive about that coverage to me was the humor factor in listening to the broadcasters mispronounce Louisiana place names. Houma, Louisiana (prounounced HOME ah) became HOOOOM ah for example. The news anchor did everything she could to avoid saying Atchafalaya and Tchoupitoulas.

This morning as damage is assessed, the Cajun Navy is busy making rescues. Levees were overtopped in some places and people have flooded. LaPlace, Louisiana is completely underwater and impassable. An Entergy tower fell into the Mississippi River leaving NOLA without power; this is expected to be a problem for weeks. It also means that 911 is down.

Damage assessment is ongoing. While some areas are obviously flooded, luckily we are not seeing the massive flooding that we did with Katrina. The damage is extensive of course and cleanup will take a long time. Lake Charles, over on the Louisiana/Texas border, still has not recovered from the triple shot of storms they endured in the last twelve months, the biggest being Hurricane Laura.  Nobody expects this to be fixed soon.

In our area we have a lot of evacuees in shelters anxious to return home. Officials are asking everyone to be patient. There are no sanitary services in most places, no water, no power. The death toll will certainly climb; it is early yet.

If you’d like to help, Catholic Charities of Acadiana has an Amazon Wish List and is assisting with disaster relief. The Cajun Navy is also requesting help. Prayers are good, too!

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.

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