Louisiana Life - Summer 2008

Danneel Harris

Danneel Harris often joined her friends in making the drive from Baton Rouge to New Orleans.She was a student at Louisiana State University and enjoying the college experience. Harris and her friends would go out and attend the New Orleans…

The Great Louisiana Quiz

Pictured above is what was then the newly built Charity Hospital in New Orleans, which opened in 1832. This was the fifth building in the succession of Charity hospitals. The original opened in 1736 with money left in the will…

Autumn Times

Northern LouisianaThrough Sept. 30. Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs. Sci-Port Discovery Center, Shreveport 318-424-3466.Through Sept. 30. Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk. Sci-Port Discovery Center, Shreveport 318-424-3466.Sept. 16. Designing an Evening Garden. Biedenharn Museum & Gardens, Monroe (318) 387-5281, www.bmuseum.org.…

Cowboys and livestock gather in Houston

If Disney productions and the world of rodeo merged, what you might have is the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. I had been to rodeos before, mostly small-scale affairs where cowboys with Stetsons angling over their eyes and their cheeks…

Retirement in Louisiana

Louisiana is more than just a great place to visit –– it’s also a great place to retire. With its rich history and culture, charming small towns, thriving cities, moderate climate and varied topography, Louisiana can meet the needs of…

Fall Festivals

The communities where they are held include lots of things to see and do, so you can extend your visit to take in some of Louisiana’s most interesting spots.    Here’s a look at some of the festivals slated for this…

Around Louisiana: Greater New Orleans

FORK IN THE ROADHere comes Mr. JourdanOn a balmy evening late in spring, I attended a dinner party at Muriel’s, a restaurant charmingly placed catty-corner from Jackson Square. I don’t know if it was the fan-shaped window hanging from the…

Around Louisiana: Baton Rouge/Plantation Country

QUIRKY PLACESHush, hush, sweet hauntedWhen Kevin Kelly purchased Houmas House Plantation, he stripped it of the bland white Americanization that a former owner had imposed upon it. In the Creole tradition of its original early-19th-century owners, Kelly lavished the beautiful…

Around Louisiana: Cajun Country

LOUISIANA GROWNCitrus with a smileEach October the sight of satsumas pleasantly reminds me of a Sunday morning the autumn that I was 7. It was the first cool day after the onslaught of summer. The house was wide open to…

Around Louisiana: Central Louisiana

QUIRKY PLACESCotton up to ghostsConcordia Parish, across the Mississippi from antebellum Natchez, was believed to have first been visited by Hernando de Soto in 1542, and it is now the home of  Frogmore, a working cotton plantation owned by Lynette…

Around Louisiana: Northern Louisiana

QUIRKY PLACESTransylvania StationHanging high above Louisiana in the northeastern corner of the state in East Carroll Parish, the tiny unincorporated town of Transylvania flies at you out of nowhere as you travel along Highway 65. The tall white water tower…

Real Estate Update

W  hen deciding on a new home, leave city woes behind and head out to the serenity of nature at these two new developments. Both are close enough to city conveniences while still offering open space, green vistas and a…

Louisiana Health Update

Wellness is about prevention first, and then intervention. A good wellness plan involves regular care. The state of Louisiana is constantly seeking to update the standards of care available to its citizens. With over 60 qualified hospitals and countless specialists…

What the Doctor Ordered

Every day since 1971, Lake Charles pharmacist Frank Pryce has driven the same car down the same block to his family’s business.Pryce bought the orange-and-white Buick Skylark for $7,500. When people ask him if he will ever get rid of…

This Job is No Snap

The Meche family of Arnaudville has turtled together on various lakes for 20 years. Locals welcome Stoney Meche with his five adult sons, Errol, Todd, Ross, Alan and Shane, as they capture turtles on the 75-mile-long Toledo Bend lake located…

Wins, not Winds: A Guide to Louisiana Football

If college football in Louisiana were a hurricane, we could describe its intensity as being a Category 5.Ah, Louisiana: a state where football is king, home of a high school athletic association that has five classifications when it could get…

Louisiana's Best

Our readers have spoken. Our Spring and Summer issues contained self-addressed postage-paid ballots with which readers were asked to pick their Louisiana favorites in many categories. In tallying the results, we only included those places for which there was a…

Louisiana that was

So you’ve learned by browsing back issues that this Louisiana travel column has been around awhile –– ever since we got our first “attractions” to publicize, like Driskill Mountain and the Kisatchie Wold –– but it turns out it’s not…

Ginger Kelly

Sunlight fills Ginger Kelly’s small studio, which is attached to the back of her wood-frame house. Playful rainbow-colored lights swirl and dance silently along tabletops and racks filled with beads and droplets of fanciful colored glass. Scores of small glass…

Laurel Hill

Laurel Hill backs up to a 50-foot bluff and is surrounded on the other three sides by rich farmland and forest. This is where, in the mid-19th century, a simple farmhouse was built in Louisiana’s rich plantation country near St.…

Heads Up

Even people who don’t like seafood love shrimp.In one preparation or another, shrimp appears on menus all over the country. It’s a restaurant staple as ubiquitous as steak and much more versatile. Shrimp can be cooked just about any way…

Louisianian at Large

Stalking the giant salviniaThe giant salvinia of South America is proving to be quite a contradiction –– as its name reveals more about its proliferate abilities than actual appearance.A tiny floating fern, sold widely throughout the United States as a…