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Christmas Eve Bonfires Light Up the Levee in St. James Parish, and Nobody Agrees on How the Custom Started
At 7 o'clock on Christmas Eve, if the wind cooperates, fire chiefs in St. James Parish give the signal and dozens of wooden towers along the Mississippi River levee go up in flames at roughly the same moment. The heaviest concentration is in Lutcher, Gramercy and Paulina, with a scattering of fires in neighboring Ascension and St. John the Baptist parishes. In 1999 there were more than 100 bonfires along a 3.4-mile stretch of levee in those three St. James communities, geogra
At Fred's Lounge in Mamou, the Cajun Dance Starts on Saturday Morning and Goes Out Live on the Radio
By 8:30 on a Saturday morning, the red-brick bar in Mamou is already crowded. Couples are waltzing across the floor, a Cajun band is set up with accordion and fiddle, and the drinks on the bar include Budweiser and Bloody Marys. This is Fred's Lounge, which according to its website is open Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., and for a couple of hours every week, the whole morning goes out live on the radio. The broadcast belongs to KVPI, "The Legend," 1050 AM out of Ville Platte
Louisiana Wrote the Natchitoches Meat Pie Into State Law in 2003. The Town Has Been Making Them Since at Least the 1820s.
Louisiana has an official state meat pie, and it is spelled out in law. "There shall be an official state meat pie," reads Section 170.9 of Title 49 of the Louisiana Revised Statutes. "The official state meat pie shall be the Natchitoches Meat Pie." The Legislature passed it in 2003, and the act even authorizes the pie's use on official state documents and alongside the state insignia. The pie itself is simple to describe. It is a half-moon hand pie with a crimped edge, fille
Politics
Why Louisiana Has Parishes, and Who Actually Runs Yours
Every Louisiana kid learns early that the state has parishes where the rest of the country has counties. Fewer people could say why, or who actually decides when their parish road gets patched. The answer runs from Spanish colonial church records to the 1974 state constitution, and it explains why local government looks so different from one parish to the next. The word comes from the colonial era, when local life in French and Spanish Louisiana was organized around Catholic
Supreme Court to hear arguments on Louisiana congressional map
The United States Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C., where justices are set to review the constitutionality of Louisiana's new...
Pushing back school start times to address truency in LA
Middle and High School students across Louisiana could be starting school at later times within the next few years. According to a new...
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