Life at the End of the Road
The first time that I’m given directions to Pilottown, the secretary dispatching me to the weekly grocery delivery boat says: “First you drive to the end of the world. Then you get on a boat, and you just keep going.”…
Best Hunting
Your Beatin' Heart
Inside a ramshackle barroom that leaned like it could collapse tonight or stubbornly wait another 20 years, the roof leaked, plaster walls slowly crumbled, and the paint elegantly peeled amid the flicker of candlelight. The run-down décor didn’t stop a…
An Acadian Journey
The year just ended was the 200th since the birth of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, America’s first great poet and revered in Louisiana as author of Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie. So 2007 in the bard’s home state of Maine was…
Paul Neff
When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable, and, to the citizen, most dismal swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place — a sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow…
A Visual Symphony
Few homes are more beautiful than a show house all dressed up with perfect landscaping, furnishings fit for the pages of a top national home magazine and just the right accessories. A return visit to a show house, once the…
Complementary Cast
I want foods to taste like themselves, but I also enjoy dishes that are a synthesis of many ingredients, some of which are not readily identifiable. Often it is those supporting elements that round out and enrich the principal ingredient…
Between some rocks and a hard place
If you were looking for our farm 10 years ago, it would have been hard to tell where our place ended and the next began. Back then, this was dairy country. The view was nearly one continuous vista of forestland…
Louisiana at Large
Coming up roses At the Burden Center in Baton Rouge, this year’s All- America Rose Selection winners, the hybrid tea-style Mardi Gras and the long-stemmed Dream Come True, are on display.Louisiana State University AgCenter horticulture professor Allen Owings describes Mardi…
Barometer
WHAT'S HOT Lots of knots. Lisa Gentry (seen at right) of Chatham, the fastest crocheter in the world, according to Guinness World Records, hooked two more records at the 2008 Knit-Out & Crochet at the Mall of America in Bloomington,…
The Man at 5-1-1
As this is written, State Highway 820 near Ruston is closed temporarily because of construction. I know that because the man at 5-1-1 told me so.I first discovered 5-1-1 totally by accident. Driving along the somewhat-monotonous stretch of Interstate 10…
Robby Albarado & Calvin Borel
Horse racing stories usually focus on a single horse’s feats, rivalries between horses or the relationship between a horse and its mount. But the story of 2007, centers on two Louisiana jockeys from Acadiana. On the first weekend in May,…
Around Louisiana
Northern LouisianaCAUSE TO CELEBRATEThe power of graceMissy Crain, artistic director of the highly acclaimed, Monroe-based Louisiana Delta Ballet, was sitting in a church service one day when the preacher asked the congregation, “What do you have to give in return…
Women on the Run
By January, rural communities on southwest Louisiana’s prairies are busy preparing for their local Mardi Gras runs, or courirs de Mardi Gras. Women begin stitching baggy pants and matching shirts, adding layers of fringe and building tall hats called capuchons…
Milk it.
I’m standing in a concrete pit, eyeball-to-udder with a big black and white lady named No. 418. In my hand is a device resembling a robotic spider. It has a palm-sized, stainless steel body with four black rubber tubes extending…
Andouille to Z'Herbs
A definition.Gumbo: Spicy, thick Creole soup composed of fish or shellfish, poultry, game, meats and vegetables in any of a great variety of combinations. Gumbo is thickened with either okra or filé powder and is served ladled over rice. The…
Traveling Gournet: Radical Gumbo
Not long ago, four couples were having drinks before dinner, chatting about this and that while nibbling on almonds roasted with smoked paprika and homemade bread with cheeses. As often happens, the discussion turned to food and cooking, and from…
TRAVELER: Back on Track
This year, along with the usual azaleas and Spring Fiesta home tours, spring promises St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans an even greater gift. Streetcars. First, some terminology: It’s crawfish, not crayfish; parishes, not counties; neutral grounds, not medians; and…
Home: A Mansion on the Avenue
Our favorite movie is Gone With The Wind,” says Jack Lyles, as he sits on his wicker porch swing overlooking St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans, “And this is our Tara.” His wife, Pam, adds, “I grew up in New…
John T. Scott
Spirit House,” “Circle Dance,” “Middle Passage,” “Dance for My Father,” “Spirit Gates” – all are but a few names the nationally acclaimed New Orleans artist John T. Scott gave to a remarkable lifetime of art that gained him a name…
The Rural Life: Raising Kids on the Farm
One morning I found a crumpled sticky note on which our 7-year-old son had scribbled this ardent petition to God or Santa Claus or most likely, me – the parent perceived to be the biggest pushover:“I wish I had a…
Louisianian at large
Alexandria eyes moviesCarved from the retail vacancy of a former Alexandria Super Kmart store is a soon-to-be located film production studio and medical business incubator.The development, supported by the state through a capital outlay award of $1.7 million for renovations,…
Barometer
WHAT'S HOTRoll out the barrels. Hannah Pittman, 12-year-old daughter of Matt and Jane Pittman of Bogalusa, recently won the title of 2007 National Barrel Horse Association 2-D Youth World Champion at the competition in Jackson, Miss. Pittman and her gelding,…
Women and Rings
What surprises me is that I actually have two stories on the subject of women fighting each other in Avoyelles Parish. The first is from my youth when, so the family story goes, an uncle who was a justice of…
Troy Peloquin
Like so many other residents of New Orleans, Troy Peloquin lost everything in the fury of Hurricane Katrina. The only possessions he salvaged from his flooded home were his college diploma, passport, his father’s dog tags, a set of cufflinks…
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