Around The State

Raising Cane

Location Pointe Coupée Parish Parish seat New Roads   From Easter until sugarcane harvest, the 19th-century bell in front of the Alma General Store in Lakeland rings twice each day. The first bell, at 7 a.m., signals the start…

Irish for a Day

In 1986, Mabyn Shingleton, her husband, TV personality Pat Shingleton, and her baby son Michael in a stroller, lined up at the Baton Rouge City Park Golf Course and headed toward Perkins Road where the couple owned Zee Zee Gardens…

Great Expectations

A great egret fluffs its feathers, which is a post-preening behavior to remove dirt and dust and get feathers back in place. Houma

Main Streets

Monroe/West Monroe West Monroe native Becky Thompson always loved baking, so it was only natural that she earned her degree in hospitality management at Ole Miss, then the L’Art de la Pâtisserie at the French Pastry School in Chicago.…

Electric Art

For over six decades, Monroe artist Don Cincone has been on a remarkable journey that has taken him from a sharecropper’s cabin in Richland Parish to San Francisco, New York’s fashion district, movie sets in Hollywood, down to Mexico…

Double the Music and Double the Fall Festival Fun

It’s an Acadiana tradition about to hit its golden anniversary. And even though it hit a speedbump during the pandemic, Festivals Acadiens et Créoles has returned. Twofold. The annual fall festival, which turns 50 in 2024, has been celebrating…

Literary Lovers Travel Guide

Marie-Madeleine Hachard arrived in New Orleans in the early 1700s with a group of Ursuline nuns. She wrote of her new home in the French colony and that collection of personal accounts would become one of the first books about…

Cooling Off

Summertime and the living is … hot! Louisiana may be a sportsman’s paradise, but finding places to cool off this time of year can be daunting, especially in the great outdoors where waterways veer toward tepid and slow-moving. For those…

The Greatest Good

Did You Know? Facts and Figures • There are 154 national forests in the United States, and the U.S. Forest Service manages 193 million acres. • The Calcasieu Ranger District, which includes two non-adjacent “Units” — Vernon and Evangeline…

Atchafalaya Basin

Stepping from The Enterprise (“It boldly goes where no boat should go”), Bryan Piazza and Joseph Baustian enter the dry bed of a nameless bayou. It’s winter in the Atchafalaya Basin, a season of low water and expectation. In…

Louisiana Proud

New Orleans’ Oscar-winning pianist/singer/composer Jon Batiste, who took home five Grammys at the 64th annual Grammy Awards including Album of the Year (“WE ARE”) following his electrifying performance of “Freedom” (with a frolicking finale atop Billie Eilish’s table) premieres his…

Road Trips through Louisiana

Photo courtey: The Biedenharn Museum; Melrose Plantation; Whitney Plantation; Bentley Hotel A Trip Back in Time There’s plenty of history to love in Monroe and West Monroe, but Abby Wise, public relations and media coordinator for the twin cities, has…

Strawberry Fields

AT A GLANCE Location Tangipahoa Parish Flora Birdbill spike grass, scarlet oak, little floating heart Fauna+Insects Southeastern blue sucker, Hodges’ clubtail,…

Here Come the Fests

The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (nojazzfest.com) makes a triumphant return April 29-May 8 after two COVID-cancellation years. Returning headliners previously slated for 2020 and 2021 are The Who, Stevie Nicks and…

Art Runneth Over

Eight years ago, River Oaks Square Arts Center, a multipurpose contemporary visual and fine arts hub in Alexandria, wanted to put on a national art show to both elevate…

Shopping the State

Louisiana is an antique shoppers wonderland, so if you are one or have one on your list, options abound in every corner of the state — and the middle, too. Shopping for the holidays in Louisiana is as unique as…

Natural State: Preserving and Protecting

On either side of the boat stretches the vast wetlands of south Louisiana. Farther south, several miles beyond this ruler-flat landscape, lie Vermilion and West Cote Blanche bays — and beyond,…

Charming Towns

Take a road trip through Louisiana and visitors will find the most charming small towns scattered throughout the Bayou State. Nestled among bayous, fields of sugar cane and cotton, and filled with historic properties, these small towns provide for outstanding…

Pelican Briefs: Market Marvels

Chef Cory Bahr is bringing together growers and artisans from surrounding parishes to offer their produce, meat and hand-crafted products on Thursdays for “Grow the Roe Farmers Market,” situated on a lot beside his Parish Restaurant in downtown Monroe. “We’re…

Art: Art Out of Chaos

  Shutdowns, quarantines, masks, vaccines, hope. While Louisianians and the world deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, artist Kathryn Keller is in the right place — the peace and solitude of her…

Pelican Briefs: Drago’s Sizzling Sixth

In the aftermath of Hurricane Laura, Drago’s owner Tommy Cvitanovich (pioneer of the charbroiled oyster) and his team served over 5,000 plates of free shrimp pasta in L’Auberge Casino Resort’s parking lot, consequently…