Columns

What’s the lowdown on your town’s downtown?

My parents used to talk about the county’s farmers streaming into town on Saturday and shopping until midnight.

Bedon’s court offered a good show

Some years ago I received a copy of an account written by Montfurt Hull of Baton Rouge describing his encounter with one of the most colorful men in south Louisiana.

After would-be assassin was arrested, pundits said all the right things...at first

When I was in college, there was this campaign against what was just beginning to be called “slut shaming.

Do I know where you live?

I confess to employing the occasional half-truth. In order to keep conversations moving (and save face), I sometimes mumble, “Sort of” when someone queries, “You know where ol’ (fill-in-the-blank) lives, don’t you?

Of pecans, pralines, and bruised thumbs

It’s a sure harbinger of the season when sandwich-board “We Buy Pecans” signs begin to appear in front of feed ’n’ seed and little grocery stores across south Louisiana. They remind me of days spent crawling through the yard when I was a kid, and also makes me begin to hanker for pralines.

Think twice before relocating to a rural home

As more Americans can do their jobs from any remote location, a trend has been to relocate from urban and suburban areas to lower-cost, rural areas, according to a report by the Center for Rural Innovation.

Daughter saved father from sinking steamboat

A heroic daughter and a bale of cotton saved her father’s life when the steamboat Lessie Taylor sank just after leaving the busy St. Landry port at Washington on Feb. 3, 1878.

Have you joined the ‘underconsumption’ bandwagon?

I didn’t realize a recent CNN story would attempt making me feel guilty about my annual father-son bonding ritual.

Smart parents can prevent school shootings

“He was on our radar.” How many times have we heard that after a mass shooting at a high school or a shopping mall? We heard it for the umpteenth time again this week after a disturbed 14-year-old kid in Georgia took a rifle to school and killed two students, two teachers, and injured nine others.

Time for Louisiana to put up or shut up

It’s been a standing joke for a number of years. No matter how bad things get in Louisiana, the state could say at least it’s not Mississippi. Well not anymore. A new national study by Wallethub.com has just been released ranking the Bayou State as America’s worst state to live in.