Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to use the internet and he won’t bother you for weeks, months, maybe years 😅

  Mainline Florida: Link to Mainline Florida. 

I am making more use of links, music and visual. Click on them and then you might have a second link to search. Some locations, such as YouTube generate revenue for your "free" viewing by running ads, so be patient. On occasion there is a "skip ad" button. Sometimes it will load and start when you go there, sometimes you need to click on the white arrow in the red box.

I hope you enjoy the updates to my art and life as presented in this blog. IF you don't like the political stuff and don't want to receive future blogs just say so, no hard feelings. So far, only five have taken me up on the offer. With that in mind, remember: BELOW THE FOLD is where (most) of the controversial stuff is placed. Sometimes stuff is a hybrid, say humor and political. Nevertheless, I do this blog for me, it clears my mind and then I do it to share stuff I think is interesting, fun, needed to be considered, etc. I like, also, the feedback I receive, either on a specific article or the concept in general. Right now there are about 70 of you who receive this directly. Claude

   For a better experience, click on the “view web version” then you can go to the archive for prior published editions. 

ART:

12” x 16” oil on wrapped canvass Apotheosis of Saint Louis (Louis IX King of France)

OTHER’S ART:

Congratulations to the winners of the September 2022 PleinAir Salon! First place will receive a cash prize, plus all winners will be entered into the judging for the annual cash prizes, including the $15,000 grand prize for the best painting of the year, and they’ll see their painting on the cover of PleinAir Magazine. Could you be the next winner? “The three paintings I’ve chosen begin to transcend the components of shape, color, and finish,” Bill said. Keep reading to see what he had to say about the top three winners and his advice for those who plan to enter their work in the future. PleinAir Salon, September 2022 Winners Preview: 1st Place Overall: “Late Afternoon in Spain”

Luis Azon, “Late Afternoon in Spain,” 52 x 52 in., oil

“This painting allows me to be quietly lost in a space while I hear activity all around,” Bill said of ‘Late Afternoon in Spain.’ “I’m able to separate from viewing a surface to sensing a feeling of atmosphere while mentally passing in and among groups of people engaged in their individual worlds as they become part of a unified environment.”

FLORIDA:

Hurricane map of destruction as the top arrow pulled water out of the rivers and offshore, then the bottom arrow pushed the surge back on shore. Fort Myers is in the center circle.

THE GOOD AND THE BAD: The surge lifted all size of boats; then on a later day I sat for a luncheon with a friend downtown near the marina.

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Meanwhile, Comic Cure held a benefit concert in the form of a comedy contest in Naples.

ANOTHER DAY IN MY POOL….

HUMOR;

“Old age comes at a bad time.”  - San Banducci

Jennifer Yang: “Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what happened?”

And, “I’m so old that my blood type is discontinued.” - Bill Dane

                                           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

    

Babylon Bee Parody headlines, go to their website for full “articles”.

            

LISTENING:

 Read the last column on the right for fun info

Remember you can pinch open for a better read. The royalty mention is educational.

Recently, I listened to an enjoyable but stunning debut sound for a long-time popular band and one of rock’s great guitarist and his buddy frontman. The guitar solo and the engineering are primo. 

Link to original album cut

YouTube episode - What Makes This Song Great

Link to the first known recording of their live show and, yes, even at this early point in their stage presence, it has the recognizable guitar solo.

THINGS OF WHICH INTEREST ME:

Wonderful success story in STL, a leader and benefactor.

 From The Smithsonian: On the left is Methuselah, a date palm on the grounds of Kibbutz Ketura in southern Israel. Scientists raised the tree from a 2,000-year-old seed excavated near the Dead Sea. 

     On the right or below it shows the 1967 mission in the Sinai desert to recover the remains of Avshalom Feinberg, a Jewish spy killed in 1917. The palm tree was a clue to the body’s whereabouts; it had sprouted from a date in his pocket. 

                 

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Thomas Merton says: All that you can do with any spiritual discipline is produce within ourselves something of the silence, humility, the detachment, the purity of heart, and the indifference which are required if the inner self is to make some predictable manifestation of HIS Presence. Then my experience is that I need to put myself in a place where God can/will talk to my soul.

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Double Down? They gave him 2 more years even though, at best, he’ll probably end up with a record similar to Barry…

BELOW THE FOLD: WARNING:

The state of The United States of America today?

Religion, with its connection to God and with the aura of its rituals, can motivate us to pursue wisdom and virtue more effectively than laws can do on their own power.

Our Founding Fathers were keenly aware of this fact. George Washington, in his farewell address, reminded our nascent nation that “[o]f all the dispositions and habits that lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. . . . [R]eason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

John Adams, in his inaugural address, praised the propagation of “knowledge, virtue, and religion among all classes of the people, not only for their benign influence on the happiness of life in all its stages and classes, and of society in all its forms, but as the only means of preserving our Constitution from its natural enemies.”

And, as if there were any doubt as to what religion Adams meant, he felt “it be my duty to add” that “a veneration for the religion of a people who profess and call themselves Christians, and a fixed resolution to consider a decent respect for Christianity among the best recommendations for the public service.”

The Founders knew that to survive, our republic required virtuous citizens. Ordered liberty was the end; religion was the means.

Flash forward to today, when the goal of ordered liberty has been replaced by expressive individualism. The individual is now greater than the republic, which is to cater to each person’s every whim. The individual maximizes his clout by declaring his most coveted desires “rights” over which no person or entity may trespass.

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 The voters in Illinois have only themselves to blame. 

Again, the press ignores the will of the people. DeSantis is up by at least 12 points in polls. Moreover, there is no comparison between the good DeSantis does and the wishy washy, flip flopper Crist who is in the race only for himself, not Florida. Calling DeSantis a bully is sooooo incorrect, just a way for the liberal press to smear a very popular gov. There is no reason to endorse Crist so they go low on DeSantis. 

   

REAL World…

No Democratic congressional candidates brag about the 3 million people who illegally crossed an open border.

 

None boast that they helped cancel key pipelines, reduced federal leasing of gas and oil and shut down the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. None take credit for hammering investments in fossil fuels. 

 

None preen over the no-bail and defund-the-police policies of left-wing, big-city prosecutors and mayors who have spiked crime.

 

None insist that an annual 8-9 percent inflation rate is a desirable spreading of wealth.

 

And yet odder still, no Democratic candidate, state or national—and most certainly not Joe Biden—offers to alter these toxic policies.

 

If they won’t defend what they have done, they apparently will not even undo what they have wrought.

 

No Democratic gubernatorial candidate wants one foot built of a new border wall. No Democratic House candidate demands that the Keystone pipeline be finished. No Democratic senatorial candidate calls for fiscal discipline to lower inflation.

 

Instead, they stay mute.

                        ****************************

MEMORIAL OF SAINT CHARLES BORROMEO, BISHOP

LUKE 16:1–8

Friends, like the steward in today’s Gospel, we must regularly take a hard took at ourselves. What are our strengths and our weaknesses? Where do we need improvement? Where are we not in particularly good shape? Is our prayer life strong? Do we frequent the sacraments? Do we participate in the Mass? Are our lives focused around the corporal and spiritual works of mercy? Do we speak out against injustices and moral evils? And, like the steward, we must act with cleverness, firmness of purpose, and boldness. Enough wishy-washiness in the spiritual life! The time for action is now. Today, commit to making Jesus Christ and his demands the undisputed center of your life.

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