If you’re in college, planning to go to college, or the parent of a college student/pre-college student, if college is anywhere in your future or the future of someone you love, please read Mike Adams’ column today. This man has become a loud voice for the rights of conservative, Christian college students across the country. So if you’ve run into similar discrimination on your campus, he might be a good person to contact if you want to get some attention focused on your situation.
Some of you may find this a little obnoxious, but those of you from Texas (or who love Texas) will understand . . .
TEXAS
When you’re from Texas, people that you meet ask you questions like, Do you have any cows?” “Do you have horses?” “Bet you got a bunch of guns, eh?”
They all want to know if you’ve been to Southfork. They watched Dallas.
Have you ever looked at a map of the world? Look at Texas with me just for a second. That picture, with the Panhandle and the Gulf Coast, and the Red River and the Rio Grande is as much a part of you as anything ever will be. As soon as anyone anywhere in the world looks at it they know what it is. It’s Texas. Pick any kid off the street in Japan and draw him a picture of Texas in the dirt and he’ll know what it is. What happens if I show you a picture of any other state? You might get it maybe after a second or two, but who else would? And even if you do, does it ever stir any feelings in you?
In every man, woman and child on this planet, there is a person who wishes just once he could be a real live Texan and get up on a horse or ride off in a pickup. There is some little bit of Texas in everyone.
Did you ever hear anyone in a bar go, “Wow…so you’re from Iowa? Cool, tell me about it?” Do you know why? Because there’s no place like Texas.
Texas is the Alamo. Texas is 183 men standing in a church, facing thousands of Mexican nationals, fighting for freedom, who had the chance to walk out and save themselves, but stayed instead to fight and die for the cause of freedom. We send our kids to schools named William B. Travis and James Bowie and Crockett and do you know why? Because those men saw a line in the sand and they decided to cross it and be heroes. John Wayne paid to do the movie himself. That is the Spirit of Texas.
Texas is Sam Houston capturing Santa Ana at San Jacinto.
Texas is “Juneteenth” and Texas Independence Day.
Texas is huge! forests of Piney Woods like the Davy Crockett National Forest.
Texas is breathtaking mountains in the Big Bend.
Texas is the unparalleled beauty of bluebonnet fields in the Texas Hill Country.
Texas is the beautiful, warm beaches of the Gulf Coast of South Texas.
Texas is the shiny skyscrapers in Houston and Dallas.
Texas is world record bass from places like Lake Fork.
Texas is Mexican food like nowhere else, not even Mexico.
Texas is the Fort Worth Stockyards, Bass Hall, the Ballpark in Arlington and the Astrodome.
Texas is larger-than-life legends like Michael DeBakey, Denton Cooley, Willie Nelson, Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings, Janis Joplin, Kris Kristofferson, Tom Landry, Darrell Royal, ZZ Top, Eric Dickerson, Earl Campbell, Nolan Ryan, Sam Rayburn , George Bush, Lyndon B.Johnson, George W. Bush and Mike Moore.
Texas is great companies like Dell Computer, Texas Instruments and Compaq. And LOCKHEED MARTIN AEROSPACE! Home of the F-16 Jet Fighter and the JSF Fighter.
Texas is NASA.
Texas is huge herds of cattle and miles of crops.
Texas is skies blackened with doves, and fields full of deer.
Texas is a place where towns and cities shut down to watch the local High School Football game on Friday nights and for the Cowboys on Monday Night Football, and for the Night In Old San Antonio River Parade in San Antonio. Texas is ocean beaches, deserts, lakes and rivers, mountains and prairies, and modern cities.
If it isn’t in Texas, you probably don’t need it.
No one does anything bigger or better than it’s done in Texas.
By federal law, Texas is the only state in the U.S. that can fly its flag at the same height as the U.S. flag. Think about that for a second. You fly the Stars and Stripes at 20 feet in Maryland, California, or Maine and your state flag, whatever it is, goes at 17 feet. You fly the Stars and Stripes in front of Pine Tree High in Longview or anyplace else at 20 feet, the Lone Star flies at the same height – 20 feet. Do you know why? Because it is the only state that was a republic before it became a state.
Also, being a Texan is as high as being an American down here. Our capitol is the only one in the country that is taller than the capitol building in Washington, D.C. and we can divide our state into five states at any time if we wanted to! We included these things as part of the deal when we came on. That’s the best part, right there.
Texas even has its own power grid!!
Good morning! Looks like it’s going to be a good one here on the Gulf Coast. My honey and my baby girl made it to work and to school just fine and I’ll be meeting with a client this afternoon to select colors for her window treatments. I’m not sure what we’ll be doing this evening, but I’m thinking about making stroganoff with some of the venison my husband brought home from his hunting trip in December.
Columns like Jeff Jacoby’s remind me just how good life is. Mr. Jacoby writes about his father and Auschwitz and I encourage you to read it. While it must be difficult to write about the grandparents, aunts, and uncles you never had an opportunity to meet, I commend Mr. Jacoby for keeping the history alive. There are those who would have us believe this horrible, horrible time in our history never happened. And thus, condemn us to repeat it . . .
You might want to give Charles Krauthammer a scan, too. With regards to the Rice nomination and the Democrats’ ridiculous opposition, he does a nice job of deflating their balloon, i.e., explaining why their objections are a bunch of hot air. The last few lines of his column address the Hillary factor, which leads us to our next article:
Mona Charen asks, “Can a liberal change her spots?” My answer, emphatically, is “NO!” And my prayer is that, as Ms. Charen states, Hillary’s past will cast a long shadow. She may be “talkin’ the talk,” but I hope that people are smart enough to see if she’s “walkin’ the walk” with regards to a more moderate stance. Because we all KNOW that she’ll never take a step in conservative mocassins.
Jonah Goldberg. Enough said.
Have a great day!
Thanks for another fun quiz, Darkstar218!
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| BLUE: At work or in school: I like to be with people, sharing with them, inspiring them, and helping them. I work and learn best when I can take into consideration people and the human element. I flourish in an atmosphere of cooperation. |
I have to admit, I’m a little peeved at the lack of recognition The Passion of the Christ received from Oscar. Peeved, but not surprised. Oscar did have enough sense to recognize the incredible cinematography, musical score, and make up . . . but I’d like to know where the nominations for James Caviezel, Maia Morgenstern, and Monica Bellucci were? Not to mention Mel Gibson.
The only thing that makes it a little easier to take is that Fahrenheit 9/11 DID NOT RECEIVE ONE SINGLE NOMINATION. Take that, Michael Moore.
Hello out there in Xangaland! I’ve been MIA for a few days as far as blogging goes . . . well, I HAVE been keeping up with my subscription reading, but I’ve had very little time to write anything myself. I hope you’re all well!
The business has been keeping me busy, which is good. In fact, I have a couple of quotes I need to work on in a few minutes, so this will be short today. The last few days have been quite good as far as window treatments go. A couple signed their contract for 27 custom window blinds on Saturday and I am meeting with a designer this afternoon to finalize the details for shutters and other window treatments for one of her clients.
Another woman really liked my 2″ blinds and my price, so I’m sure that will be a done deal shortly. And I’m about to do a quote for another 27 windows for a custom home in a “ranch estates” type development near here.
In addition, one of the developers a little north of here contacted me about participating in a “builders’ fair” in April. The development has around 500 homesites ready for construction to begin, and of those only 70 remain on the market. Meaning there are 430 people having homes built that will need window treatments. Oh, my. . . The only cost to us to participate is a $100 door prize contribution. It’s not that bad, considering booth space at some of these events can run two, three, and even four hundred dollars.
I guess that’s it for now. I’m developing a blog over at Blogger where I can post photos. I don’t think I’ll be writing much there, but I may include links here from time to time so you can see my photos! We’ll see. Maybe I’ll be able to “scrape up” the $$$ to go premium with Xanga and then keep it all in one spot. There are just so many other things I need $$$ for . . . new stove, new fridge, new sofa, . . . 
Have any of you tried Picasa for organizing and editing your digital photos?
It may be a little early to say, but for the moment I LOVE this program. As many of you are probably already aware, when it comes to computers, I’m not the quickest hard drive in the cubicle . . . so complicated software programs are a HUGE source of frustration to me. My honey got me a beautiful little HP 735 for Christmas, and I’ve really enjoyed using it. (He actually gave it to me in September — the sale at Radio Shack included the camera, camera dock, and PhotoSmart 145 printer for a steal at $299!)
I’ve been playing with it quite a bit, figuring out what it can and can’t do. At first I got very frustrated with flash capabilities — I kept expecting to point, shoot, and get the same kind of photos I get with my Canon Rebel 2000. But then the local library offered a freebie digital camera class and it helped me to understand the differences between the two critters. I learned that it’s important to have a good photo editing program to make adjustments in order to achieve the kind of final product I’d been looking for.
So I’ve been playing with Microsoft Picture It! Photo 7.0 and HP Image Editor (which came with my computer). I much prefer Picture It! over Image Editor, because there are some “auto” buttons that make adjusting brightness and contrast a breeze. However, I’m not so crazy about the red eye correction, and for some reason I still get a lot of red eye (even using the red eye flash setting on the camera). Until I figure out my user error with the camera, I really like being able to fix those little devil eyes on the computer!
Enter Picasa. I heard about this program on the Kim Komando program a while back. Decided to check it out, and I love it! It doesn’t have a bunch of “extra” stuff that I’m never going to use. It addresses the things that are important to me: organization of my photos in logical files, automatic correction for brightness and contrast, and a MUCH better (IMHO) red eye correction feature than that of Picture It! I took a few pictures yesterday over at the Varner Hogg Plantation and printed one out this morning. It is almost postcard perfect, with a couple of clicks of the mouse.
One thing it doesn’t feature (that I can tell at this point) is special effects. This doesn’t bother me too much, because I’m not into “soft fade” and “sepia” photos. The only option I would like is “black and white,” but if I really need this, I can switch over to Picture It! the every blue moon that I might want it.
I’m going to keep playing with it and see how I like it over the long-term. One thing that was FABULOUS was that upon installation, it scanned my hard drive for all images and organized them in folders automatically. Awesome, awesome, awesome!
DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW EXCITED I AM?????
Okay, it’s really not that big of a deal. But if you knew how challenged I am when it comes to this computer stuff . . . well, maybe you would understand the sheer magnitude of my excitement! Quite by accident, I think I’ve discovered how to insert links in my blogs so that they are part of my text and not the gibberishy www.alsjdf;lasu/hsad/jsldijajdf;ll.html format you see in the little address window above your browser window.
I’ve thought several times “I should ask Miss O’Hara or Darkstar218 how they do that . . . ” but then I never got around to doing it. And then quite by accident I did it, and it worked! Wheeeee!
Look out, bloggers — I may just go linkin’ crazy!
Thank you, Intermodal, for bringing this quote to my attention!
«Speaking to the American Bar Association in July 1985, the President characterized terrorism as “an act of war” and declared: “There can be no place on earth left where it is safe for these monsters to rest, to train, or practice their cruel and deadly skills. We must act together, or unilaterally, if necessary to ensure that terrorists have no sanctuary — anywhere.” The air strikes against Libya were one manifestation of this strategy.» – The 9/11 Commission Report
I hope my efforts continue to be rewarded this way . . .
I’m in charge of begging for donations for my daughter’s school carnival/raffle/silent auction. I don’t mind doing this at all, as it is not for me, it’s for the kids and I think that when people are approached by a cheerful person who says “thank you for your time” even if the answer’s “no,” they are much more inclined to say “hey, wait a minute, let me see what I can do for you . . . ” or “call me next year and I’ll have something for you . . . ” None of my other fellow PTO’ers like doing this, so maybe it’s my “calling” or “gift”. 
I have my first triumph of the day! I’m not going to name names because it’s not yet printed on the raffle ticket, but I’m certain that it will happen! A local caterer who has worked his culinary magic for governors and presidents (#41 and #43), as well as famous ball players (Nolan Ryan) and that awesome musical genius missed by all (Stevie Ray Vaughn), has agreed to prepare and deliver a rib-eye steak dinner for EIGHT. The steak will be served with mescaline greens and raspberry vinaigrette dressing, bow-tie pasta with broccoli and truffle oil, and garlic bread. Dessert is not included, but goodness, isn’t this enough????? (The dinners are valued at $35/person.)
Heavens, I hope I win this . . .
A Scribbler & A Shutterbug 