Editor's Note: Mardi Gras Hopping
I have had a lifetime of Mardi Gras celebrations but only in New Orleans. Since I was a baby, we’d find a spot on St. Charles Avenue, spread out a big blanket, prop up our chair ladders and spend Fat…
Louisiana Life - January/February 2026
A Look Inside Louisiana’s Courir de Mardi Gras
The three capitaines are busy working on their whips. Astride horses, they wear jeans, boots, button-down shirts, black hats. From their shoulders hang lustrous capes. They flutter, purple, green and gold in the February chill. A quick shriek like scratching…
Discover Louisiana’s Most Unusual and Quirky Mardi Gras Celebrations
When most people think of Mardi Gras, images of Bourbon Street revelry and towering floats most likely come to mind. But venture beyond the Big Easy, and you’ll discover a Louisiana where Mardi Gras traditions run deeper than beads and…
Mardi Gras Mood
As we get deeper and deeper into Mardi Gras after January 6, and we spend more time at parties, at balls and at parades, we sometimes need a bit of help keeping up with the celebrations. Party fatigue is real.…
Three Remain
“I can’t find my French music,” says Shane Vincent. And then, so there’s no confusion about where we find ourselves, geographically or culturally, he repeats his name: “That’s Vansohn.” In the 90-degree shade, he’s pacing between two burial sections at…
Prosperity Moves
Rick Majeste, Metairie
Village People
If, like me, you live in or are visiting a Louisiana city that is positively taken over by parties and parades during Carnival season, respite from the whirl sounds beyond appealing. Especially if it can be reached in 15 to…
Ways of Seeing
Sister Creatures Set in Pinecreek, Louisiana, Laura Venita Green’s “Sister Creatures” starts with the protagonist, Tess, encountering a stranger with her daughter and a friend. Venita Green writes the scene with equal parts wonder, terror and empathy. The encounter leaves…
Carnival Updates
The all-new Mystic Kings Krewe parade (January 5) kicks off Mardi Gras (February 17) with bejeweled co-ed riders prancing through the streets of New Orleans atop graceful Arabian stallions amid artful floats and twirling flambeaux. In Lafayette, Mardi Gras parades…
The Spice is Right
Last summer, over the serenading crush of emerald Gulf waves, Alys Beach homeowners dining at The Beach Club devoured something new — a sweetheat cornbread concoction called Perique Creole Handshake Corn Beignets. The name is whimsical, but the spice kicking…
The Natural World
West Monroe artist Donna McGee looks to the works of earlier artists such as Vincent Van Gogh for their use of bright colors and their “unique vision” and to environmentalists, conservationists and poets for their love of nature. But most…
The Perfect Getaway
In the 1950s, my mother and grandmother used to steal away to Gulf Hills Hotel & Resort in Ocean Springs where they lounged by the pool and rode horses. Harkening back…
Bringing the Blues
The blues is a living, breathing organism — the lifeblood of the collective souls of the exultant, the downtrodden, the righteous and the damned. This past year has seen a bit of a blues resurgence into popular culture through Ryan…
