Columns

Are you clinging to ‘poor-people’ habits?

“And we was too broke to even pay heed/But that’s how it is when you’re po’ folks.” — Bill Anderson. I was intrigued by a recent USA Today article about “poor-people” habits (i.e. vestiges of frugality that persist even when a person becomes financially comfortable).

How PBS and NPR can go commercial

“The public broadcasting people are too snooty to run traditional advertisements,” I said to a giddy media consultant. “The Trump-backed bill rescinded more than $1 billion in public broadcasting funds,” said the consultant.

The DOE gets Fs in education

It’s only taken 45 years for my father’s dream to come true — at least in part. But thanks to Donald Trump, a Republican Congress and a conservative Supreme Court, the Department of Education is finally being dismantled. My father called for the DOE to be abolished when he ran for president in 1980.

Covering Uncle Sam’s debt

My hat goes off to them. I speak of the wonderful people who give their own money to Washington in hopes of reducing the national debt. Since 1961, the U.S. Treasury Department has accepted these “gifts” — though by law, they can’t be used to pay down the total debt.

Is bottomless overtime right for you?

Is work-life balance dead, and will you even find time to attend the funeral?

Shot through screen door sealed killer’s fate

No roads led to Cameron in the 1920s, but that didn’t keep crowds of people from gathering there for the trial of the man newspapers called “the pivotal figure in the worst crime ever committed in Cameron Parish.” Ned Harvey was accused of killing Archie A.

Let’s stop using tragedy to make political hay

When 20 children were murdered two weeks before Christmas in Newtown, Conn., my worldview shifted. To me, the violent shooting deaths of babies who were contemplating sugar plums and Santa challenged my belief in a good and loving God.

Iran’s war on the supernatural

When an Iranian regime insider recently claimed Israel had deployed “supernatural spirits” in its latest war with Iran — complete with Jewish talismans allegedly found on the streets of Tehran — I didn’t laugh. I didn’t scoff. I felt something worse: déjà vu.

Hail the heroic hot dog

July is National Hot Dog Month, a time to honor one of America’s most beloved, misunderstood and delicious foods. On July 4 alone, Americans consumed an estimated 150 million hot dogs, according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council — and that was just in my backyard!

Piney woods brought mills, railroads, and towns

Longleaf pine, “yellow pine,” has been described as the most important timber tree in the southern United States. It certainly has been important in south Louisiana for more than a century, not only because fortunes were made from it, but because it helped create dozens of the places where we live.