Standing on the stage at Shreveport’s legendary Municipal Auditorium, Winston Hall, a musician and tour guide with a passion for the city’s music legacy, points to a spot on the floor, right up from in the center. The auditorium is…
On Mardi Gras morning in those villages of the Cajun prairie that are blessed with a Carnival celebration, a pack of mounted revelers heads towards various homes. As they approach they sing a special song in Cajun French: Les Mardi…
Sixty years ago, Christmas season 1958, was an exciting time in Louisiana. Something no one expected happened. The LSU Tigers football team finished the season undefeated and ranked number one in the nation. Led by a speedster from Baton Rouge…
BIRD’S LIFE
There was a time that had I been asked to name Louisiana’s top indigenous baked confection I might have settled on pecan pie though without much conviction. The dish is more Southern than unique to this state. Beignets might…
Warrior from the sky
A NIGHT AT THE OLD MANSION
Edwin Edwards likes to tell the story about after graduating from Law School at LSU he had to decide where to set up his practice. As a native of Avoyelles Parish, the town of Marksville would have been a natural…
After all the town went through in 2016 Baton Rouge deserves to relax, hold hands and party during 2017. Fortunately the city’s forefathers had the vision to seemingly perceive that back in 1817 when they signed an act of incorporation…
Waterways define Louisiana. They set the state’s boundaries on three sides; they divide the state’s interior into political and social regions. They provide work, leisure, food and great vistas. Like many people throughout the world, we are folks that have…
Baton Rouge we hear you. There is no happy conclusion to be drawn from the string of tragedies that originated in Baton Rouge this summer. The news reverberated throughout the nation. We can all hope for a better day, and…
From The Editor
How The Lake Charles Style of Architecture Evolved
A specter in the night sky looked like something from an ancient picture of Michael the Archangel descending to earth while outlined by a glow. Hundreds of people driving along I-10 slightly east of Lafayette gawked at the sight. Instead…
Shining a spotlight on our local crabs
From The Editor
Opelousas has given the world Paul Prudhomme and zydeco. Both are Cajun-influenced, with lots of spice. Prudhomme was clearly one of the past century’s most important chefs. When done right his Blackened Redfish was an exquisite dish – so much…
Of the two monsters that slithered from the Gulf, through the swamps and into our lives during the summer of 2005, one was bigger, meaner, uglier and traveled farther than the other – but it was the other that the…
From The Editor
From the editor
As the Louisiana Carnival’s biggest parade, which starts in New Orleans' Mid-City neighborhood and heads through the Central Business District toward the Superdome, the magic happens on the floats, in the streets and beyond.
By now practically every Carnival organization in the state with enough gumption to stage a parade also has a website, even if it is put together by a neighbor’s 14-year-old. Looking at what is online I have concluded that there…
From the Editor
We have heard of hidden gold. Sometimes it is there all along, just no one has thought to look very hard. In this case the gold is a piece of music and in the right hands it could be a…
Curtain time is not always an easy moment when you operate a theater on the edge of a bayou. At the Bayou Playhouse in Lockport, about a half hour away from Thibodaux, guests wait for the theater doors to open…
Anything that is 100 years old usually has at least two histories; one about its origin and another about its survival. Take, for example, the Caddo Lake “Vertical Lift” Drawbrige in Mooringsport, a dozen miles south of Shreveport. In 1914…
Have you heard about the Pelicans from Louisiana who got into a scramble with a bunch of Hawks? They also rumbled with Raptors. Pelicans, our state bird, have taken on a new status lately. For most of the state’s existence,…
An inside look at the Courir of Mardi Gras.
Mark Twain did not think much of the building in Baton Rouge that we refer to as the Old State Capitol. Twain called it one of the ugliest buildings on the Mississippi. The building, he said, was representative of Southern…
Our tree for Christmas 2005 was purchased at the Walmart in Alexandria. It was a fine-looking fixture, all four feet of it and pre-strung with lights. According to the writing on the box from China the tree was a Douglas Fir model. It maintained…
Once when I was visiting a Louisiana plantation, someone in our group asked the owner/tour guide if the place had any ghosts. “No ghosts,” the owner answered. “We have history, and where there’s history you don’t need ghosts.” His answer…
I have driven along Hospital Road in the Pointe Coupee Parish town of New Roads many times. To me, the street is a switch-over from one highway to another on the way to and from Central Louisiana. Most often my…
When I last had lunch with Aunt Doris, she was apologetic about what she had to offer. “This is all I have,” she said shyly. Then she placed on the table three pie pans: one filled with boudin, the other…
We did not know that there was a ferry ahead, but since the alternative was to take a 150-mile detour to catch I-10, the ferry was welcomed; besides, ferries are more scenic than an interstate. For all the endangered species…
There was plenty to worry about in the days after Hurricane Katrina’s wrath, survival being first on the list. Not too many notches down, however, especially in New Orleans, was saving the culture. New Orleans is a town that oozes…
Season of the Boucherie
For many Louisiana football fans, last season could have hardly brought more in high hopes and hurtful endings. LSU, going into the national championship game against Alabama, was being talked about as one of the greatest teams ever. “Greatest ever”…
Huey Long’s anthem was “Every Man a King.” That notion made great politics for the former governor but not such good logic. In a land where every man is a king (or, as Huey was quick to add, “Every Woman…
Lunch this day was at the Green Parrot Bar & Grill located on the cruise ship dock at George Town, Grand Caymen. There was still about an hour before Royal Caribbean’s Voyager of the Sea would sail away for a…
With this issue we celebrate the bicentennial of Louisiana statehood. Louisiana, the expansive territory, had long existed, but in 1812 the current state took shape. In many ways we are honoring the true birth of Louisiana. Every Louisiana governor has…
There were neither porpoises nor egrets that could be spotted from this intersection. Nor, for that matter, was there an avenue or much of a street. Someone could have exceeded 15 miles per hour, and no one would have noticed.…
Every four years two of Louisiana’s passions, state politics and football, come together in the fall. This was one of those years. And while the election year was a yawner, the juxtaposition of the two spectator sports reminds me of…
Edwin Edwards, we are told, might become the subject of a new reality TV show. Makes sense: What could be more real than the saga of a former four-term governor serving eight years in the pen and then, after being…
When your great uncle was known as “Blind Willie” and when the tools of his trade, which are still in use, are 107 years old, you have to figure there is a story there. And there is.Baton Rouge resident Lionel…
It was John James Audubon who first declared the vibrant flowers he spotted in the woods to be the “Louisiana iris.” Audubon would never know the full wisdom behind his selection: Centuries later that flower would commonly bloom in hues…
There’s only one reception hall that comes complete with Bobby Jindal watching over the wedding cake.Of all the votes ever taken in the building now known as the Old State Capitol, back in the days when it was just “the…
As our carriage approached the building that houses the Mardi Gras Museum of Imperial Calcasieu in Lake Charles, a group of masked revelers was waiting in the parking lot. When the mule stopped, the revelers approached us and began tossing…
Searching for the truth
Five years ago from right now Louisiana was a different state. Not since the Great Flood of 1927 had there been so many refugees encamped on the state’s higher grounds, but back then the refugees were mostly from down the…
There was a mysterious white object bobbing in the Gulf. Our cruise ship had cleared the Yucatan straits, re-entered the Gulf of Mexico and was heading back to New Orleans.News of the oil spill and those hurtful pictures of the…
