Louisiana Life - May/June 2020

A Louisiana Life: Jukebox Hero

Jeff Richard opened The Fret Shack in Baton Rouge as a side venture, considering the instrument repair shop a productive way to occupy his free time. Thousands of renewed and enhanced instruments later, the 52-year-old Baton Rouge native marvels at…

Farther Flung: Mountain Escape

Located in the northwest corner of Arkansas, Bentonville used to be a sleepy little town. Then Sam Walton got the great idea of helping people save money and live better, opening a five-and-dime called Walton’s on the square and beginning…

Travel: Get Out

Trust spring to fill us with urgency to get outdoors, and never more so than spring 2020 with cabin fever posing the second-greatest threat to our physical and mental wellbeing. So, what’s keeping you? Many of Louisiana’s great short-trip destinations…

Kitchen Gourmet: Fresh Catch

Before Hurricane Rita washed me out of it, I lived on a small bayou that emptied into Vermilion Bay. I knew shrimp season was about to open when I heard my neighbor tuning up the engine on his boat, the…

Home: Finding Its Voice

The challenge was to give a voiceless house a voice,” says designer Lance Thomas, one half of the duo that runs Room Service, a Lake Charles interior design business and store specializing in Southern traditional mixed with a current and…

Art: Holding On

Louisiana photographer Cate Colvin Sampson, inspired by the writings of Southern novelist Flannery O’Connor, joins a growing chorus of artists and photographers raising warnings about South Louisiana’s endangered wetlands and a way of life for the people who have lived…

Louisiana Made: Well Armed

Rounding the corner past a path of palms, ferns and lilies in the expanse of the greenhouse, Harper runs beaming, her arms waving wide like falcon wings. The young girl refuses to take off her new jacket; she pleads with…

Literary Louisiana: Off the Shelf

MAGICAL TALE The Lost Book of Adana Moreau by Michael Zapata This book is a hard-to-describe tale of twists, turns and mysterious manuscripts. It starts in 1929 New Orleans, where a young woman writes a popular science fiction tale, falls…

Healthy Louisiana: Anxiety 101

At different times and to different degrees, all people experience anxiety in their lives. But how can you manage it? How can you keep your mind from racing nonstop, especially in times like now, amid the COVID-19 fallout? Awareness and…

Pelican Briefs: Innovative Measures

LSU researchers and hospital leaders have recently created, obtained fast-track federal approval for and started running coronavirus tests at a newly minted River Road Testing Lab. The new lab testing capacities could give coronavirus test results to the most critical…

From the Editor: Our Commitment

A SPECIAL EDITORIAL We have all experienced our Evangeline Oak moments this year. In 1928 Huey Long, a then little-known candidate for governor, stood beneath the oak and made a speech that is a classic in American politics. Referring to…

Drastic Measures

The Louisiana coast is many things to many people. Home. A livelihood. Vacation. Beauty. A breath of fresh air. With over 7,000 miles of squiggly coastline — more than any other U.S. state besides Alaska and Florida — Louisiana waterways…