Columns

Everybody wanted to be on Old Spanish Trail

The celebration of Rayne’s Old Spanish Trail Day on September 23 is a reminder of how important that roadway (essentially the old Hwy. 90) was to south Louisiana, and also of the town’s connection to a significant bit of OST history.

It’s all about football at LSU!

I was paying my bill at the local supermarket here in Baton Rouge when the lady at the cash register asked me, “Are you going to the game in Tiger Stadium Saturday night?” I paused for a minute, then told her: “I think my days going to Tiger Stadium are over.

The root cause of education crisis

A recent op-ed by The Advocate newspaper questioned whether “School Choice” and the “political plea to let the state money follow the child” was just “Campaign Rhetoric” that fails to address the root problem of poverty—as Louisiana’s child poverty rate is the second highest in the nation—and that...

Jimmy Buffett was a super-spreader of happiness

There’s a reason the name “Jimmy Buffett” elicits immediate joy in the hearts of millions: happiness contagion. A study conducted by Harvard University and the University of California followed 5,000 people for 20 years to determine if happiness was contagious.

‘Pleasure seekers’ were caught in great storm

After the hurricane on Sept. 8, 1900, that destroyed Galveston, the headline in the Abbeville Meridional read, “We Missed the Storm.” It’s true that south Louisiana felt nothing like the Texas coast, but we were not entirely missed.

How are you in the best friend department?

“So, Dan – what are you doing tonight?” After 40-plus years, I can still hear one of my best friends from college asking that dreaded question.

Politicians’ brains are a bipartisan problem

Seriously folks. Maybe we Republicans better stop banging on Old Joe Biden for the serious cognitive issues he obviously has.

Some music highlights our divisions

I am really confused about what’s going on in this country today. At one time, the conventional wisdom was that the Democrats were for the blue-collar workingman, and the Republicans were for upper crust elites.

What to like about the GOP’s primary debate

As usual, there was too much cross-talk and chaos on stage. And there was way too much partisan cheering and hooting by the audience. But the first Republican presidential primary debate on Fox News was an entertaining spectacle.

Is your house too large?

When I was five years old and my father worked for a subdivision developer, the Tyree family was giddily comparing floorplans for constructing a new house on a wooded lot next to our crowded domicile.