GENDER SPECIFIC
If you haven’t heard of Oretha Castle Haley, it’s time to get to know her. She was a force in the civil rights movement in Louisiana in the early 1960s, and one of more than a dozen figures in Louisiana Women: Their Lives and Times (The University of Georgia Press), a collection of biographical essays spanning Louisiana history from the colonial period to the present. Richly annotated and written by academics — most with ties to Louisiana universities including UL Lafayette professors Mary Farmer-Kaiser and Mary Ann Wilson — Louisiana Women is a fascinating study in how women have preserved and exemplified our culture, as well as challenged gender, racial and economic mores. There are the familiar names — Voodoo priestess Marie Laveau, writer Kate Chopin, folk artist Clementine Hunter — and there are the obscure but equally fascinating likes of slave turned slave owner Marie Thérèse Coincoin and Coushatta Indian Louisa Williams Robinson. In many ways, these Louisiana women comprise a diverse group, but they share commonalities in gender, geography and gravity. Louisiana Women retails for $24.95 and is available at all major retailers and online. Several of the contributors will be on hand at 2 p.m. Saturday at Barnes & Noble for a book signing; Cajun musician Helen Boudreaux will also perform. — Walter Pierce
HEAT WAVE
When I read this cocktail recipe in the New York Times one 104-degree day last week, I was immediately drawn to the idea of a sweet and sour, watermelon and lime cooler. So I went home and started muddling. It wasn’t until I read the rest of the recipe that I realized this is a cocktail made for us. Note the rime on the rim — salt, sugar and cayenne — south Louisiana in a sweet, salty, peppery sip. I made one alteration, substituting cachaça, a Brazilian sugar cane liquor, for the joven mezcal and tequila in the original recipe. Watermelon Cooler
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon superfine sugar
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
2-inch-wide cubes watermelon
3/4 ounce simple syrup
3/4 ounce fresh lime juice
2 ounces cachaça
On a small plate, mix salt, sugar and cayenne with a fork. Lightly wet rim of a medium cocktail glass with water or lime juice, and dip glass on plate, coating rim, then tap to shake off excess.
In a cocktail shaker, crush watermelon with a muddler or long-handled spoon. Half fill the shaker with ice and vigorously shake the watermelon, syrup, lime juice and cachaça. Strain into glass and serve. — Mary Tutwiler
LONG LIVE LOVE
Bonsoir Catin are the Cajun Queens of Acadiana and nobody can figure out how to stop them! Their new CD Vive L’Amour is KILLER. Plus it was produced by Dirk Powell for Valcour Records. In this album, you get treated to everything from pre-war European ballroom balladry to slamming Cajun dancehall tunes to ancient blues artifacts that get dug up from the bowels of Dirt Earth. There’s even old school country by way of a Dolly Parton song that’s been transcribed to French. These chicks are on their game, sharing vocal duties over a mixture of very, very old archival gems and some brilliant originals written by Kristi Guillory. Buy it on the Web at bonsoircatin.com or at Johnson’s Boucaniere. — Dege Legg
In rendering his ruling, District Judge John Trahan all but called the real estate developer a liar for inconsistencies in his accounts of what prompted him to punch a school teacher unconscious.
Frank’s Casing Crew, now doing business as Frank’s International, will make its final appearance on ABiz’s list of the Top 50 Privately Held Companies in Acadiana this year, and once again it will likely be at the top with more than $1 billion in annual revenues. The 75-year-old company specializing in tubular fabrication and installation services to the oil and gas industry plans to offer shares of its stock to the public for the first time.
The defeat, or rather highjacking of House Bill 420 in the final days of this year's Legislative Session, say Reps. Vincent Pierre and Terry Landry, is the result of the propaganda spread by one unidentified local media outlet and an unnamed former state Representative, but nothing to do with the original legislation's lack of checks, balances or details.
City-Parish Council Chairman Brandon Shelvin heaped steady doses of condescending ire on a Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Louisiana executive while failing to reveal his financial ties to a BC/BS rival.
Abbeville native David Primeaux was a popular professor until his death late last year, and while he was successful at camouflaging a dark past, he couldn’t outlive it.
Tehmi Chassion’s failure to recuse himself in the school board’s selection of a group health benefits provider raises ‘serious questions’ on whether he violated state ethics law.
He’s a singer. A songwriter. A piano man. A family man. He’s even got his own Wikipedia entry. He’s David Egan. And he knows ancient secrets about the monolithic stones of Stonehenge that he’s not willing to share.
GENDER SPECIFIC
Subscribe to this comment's feed