“I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees.” Actually that would be Susan Hester Edmunds, who as a president of the New Iberia Optimist Club led the board to pass a resolution requesting the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development to reconsider their plans to wack a 150 year old live oak in Iberia Parish. DOTD has been slowly transforming US 90 into I-49, building overpasses and service roads throughout St. Martin, Iberia and St. Mary Parishes. The centurion oak, a member of the Live Oak Society named Mr. Al, grows directly in the path of a projected service road near the intersection of Freyou Road and 90. Edmunds suggests that the service road could be rerouted to spare the oak.
DOTD District Administrator Bill Fontenot is not averse to saving trees. Actually, the DOTD plan dates back to the 1960s, and Fontenot says the department is looking at the specs to see if the tree can be preserved. However, he did cite the weary DODT party line that “trees too close to the roadway are a matter of concern,” meaning, I suppose, that they jump out in front of cars sometimes and cause wrecks. The service road project is slated for next year. Fontenot’s number is 262-6100, if you’d like to speak up for Mr. Al.
Meanwhile, a merry band of bicyclists, the Acorns for Hope brigade, is back on the road again this year, planting live oak seedlings along the coast. Last year, Church Point arborist Bob Thibodeaux led 20 members of the bicycling organization, Tour des Trees, on a five day ride from Lake Charles to Houma, planting about 2,000 sturdy live oak seedlings as they went. The five year plan is to plant 10,000 seedlings into the swath of Hurricane Rita, which killed a large portion of the state’s coastal forests. This year, the Acorns of Hope crew has grown to 35, and today they are in Opelousas, talking to kids at Creswell Elementary School about tree planting, then they’ll make a pilgrimage to the Jim Bowie Oak, across the square from the St. Landry Parish courthouse. Tomorrow morning, they head out from Lake Charles on their mission. The seedlings they plan to plant have all been sprouted from the acorns of historic oaks like the St. John Oak, the Evangeline Oak in St. Martinville, and the Jim Bowie Oak. Proven stock, Thibodeaux says of his seedlings, stands the test of time.
Is it a crime for citizens to photograph, video, or take notes of a police officer in the line of duty, or a right protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? Locally, such activity, as witnessed recently, will at the very least result in a night spent behind bars.
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
At Thursday's State of the Economy luncheon, LEDA President and CEO Gregg Gothreaux said PXP has already quietly hired 180 people for its Broussard expansion.
Episcopal School of Acadiana’s Dr. Joshua Caffery, chair of the school’s English Department, is headed to Washington, D.C., and the Library of Congress as the latest winner of the Alan Lomax Fellowship in Folklife Studies.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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