Columns

Save water, shower with a bureaucrat?

If you’re like me, you enjoy few things more than a long, hot shower. Nothing loosens the muscles or washes your worries away better than gradually turning up the hot knob until you’re red as a boiled lobster.

Texas is not the new Taliban

As expected, everyone’s apoplectic about the Supreme Court’s decision not to block the Texas abortion law. It’s no secret I have been advocating for the criminalization of abortion for decades. Many people disagree with me, and that’s okay.

The ‘rural purge’ of 1971

In mid-1971, I experienced a most distressing visit to the dentist. A TV fan magazine in the waiting room divulged life-changing news.

Providence led schooners to Teche

When we think about boats on Bayou Teche in days gone by, we think first about steamboats. But a surprising number of ocean-going schooners regularly visited Franklin and other bayou towns, bringing fancy goods and staples from New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and other places.

And they came for the leprechaun, too

I’m right infrequently enough that I like to point it out when it happens. This time, I wasn’t only right. I was downright prophetic. A few weeks ago, in a column about “cancel culture,” I touched on the elimination of certain team mascots as a capitulation to toxic wokeism.

The troubles with Biden’s brain

Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York got a special Emmy last year for his nauseating daily pandemic press conferences. So why shouldn’t President Biden win something this year from his Hollywood supporters for his series of wildly untrue Afghanistan speeches about the evacuation of Kabul?

Critical debt-ceiling and dollar battles ramping up

Over the next 90 days critical battles over the National Debt and the Dollar will be taking place. Our political leaders and media will be telling us daily that it is imperative to increase the debt limit (which is maxed out) to preserve the creditworthiness of the U.S. government.

What do you remember about 9/11 – and before?

Early on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I was a newly minted warehouse supervisor for a farmers cooperative. I can remember almost exactly where a customer’s truck was parked when I overheard him telling one of my co-workers something or another about a plane crash up north.

A time when miles were subjective

When we cruise across the south Louisiana prairies today, we know almost exactly where we are all the time. Numbered markers are set along the highway at one-mile intervals, so we can calculate how far we’ve come and how far we have to go. It wasn’t always that way.

Tragedy in Afghanistan is a call to action

I come from a family of fighting men. My cousin Adolph was a paratrooper who landed at Normandy on D-Day, and the parachute he used — stained with blood and dirt — was turned into my cousin Helen’s wedding dress.