Louisiana
Friday, May 18, 2012
Dept. of Overreaction Dept.: Rayne sportswriter fired after "bullshit" makes the paper
Posted by Kevin Allman on Fri, May 18, 2012 at 1:02 PM
Yesterday a sports report from the tiny town of Rayne, La. went viral when reporter Kade Seibold's story about a high school baseball game ended with the words " ... unfortunately no stats were available due to the coach's bullshit and laziness."
Most people, it seemed, got a kick out of the newsroom error — and it was a good reminder to all reporters and editors never to write joke copy.
It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt — and now Seibold has been fired from the Rayne Independent.
Jim Romenesko reports that Seibold told him the coach in question accepted an apology and even managed to laugh about it. On his Twitter account, Seibold said, "This is still haunting me. It will haunt me for a long time. I just wish in time i can be forgiven by everyone."
Seems like a hell of a punishment for one stupid move. In fact, one might even call it —
Thursday, May 17, 2012
How they report sports in Rayne, Louisiana
Posted by Kevin Allman on Thu, May 17, 2012 at 4:42 PM
Jeannine LeJeune, online editor of the Crowley Post-Signal out in Cajun country, caught this and sent it out over Twitter. Seems a sports reporter for an even smaller Acadian paper, the Rayne Independent (so small it doesn't even have a website), had a unique take on a softball game played at Rayne High School:
Why do I suspect the reporter had some personal relationship to pitcher Hailey Habetz?
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Prison privatization bill probably dead for year, sponsor says
Posted by Charles Maldonado on Sat, May 12, 2012 at 11:21 AM
The Times-Picayune reports from Baton Rouge:
"...the sponsor of a stalled bill that would allow the privatization of Avoyelles Correctional Center was asked whether the measure, House Bill 850, would be brought forward for another vote. Rep. Henry Burns, R-Haughton, said, 'At this moment, my intention is that the bill will probably not move.'"
Read our cover story on the plan to privatize Avoyelles here.
Friday, May 11, 2012
Legalize Louisiana rallies for marijuana reform tomorrow
Posted by Alex Woodward on Fri, May 11, 2012 at 4:30 PM
An event note, per Legalize Louisiana: "Do not bring any illegal substance to this rally."
Grassroots marijuana reform campaign Legalize Louisiana has organized a series of statewide rallies tomorrow, from New Orleans to Shreveport. The group's statement is as follows:
The group demands policies creating safe and free access to cannabis medicine, for the promotion of human health in Louisiana; industrial hemp should be utilized to boost our state's economy and the health of her ecosystems; that personal use should be decriminalized, and that commercial use should be taxed and regulated, which will create justice where there is now abuse, and, simultaneously, reduce Louisiana's world-record incarceration rates. That religious use of cannabis is an inalienable right protected by our state and federal constitutions, by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and that our justice system professionals are oath-bound to realize the letter and the spirit of these most high an sacred laws.
The group, headed by Louisiana native Donnie Griffith, has been campaigning in the state since 2009. Griffith says he was inspired to start the campaign after living in Los Angeles under its relaxed marijuana laws. Following the rallies, Griffith says he plans to tour the state with Legalize Louisiana and register the campaign as a nonprofit organization. The rallies also serve as an opportunity to "encourage people to vote and get active" in promoting reform, he says. Legalize Louisiana's Facebook page is nearing 6,000 "likes."
Louisiana's National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws chapters are defunct, however there's an active student-run chapter at Tulane University. (Read more about Louisiana and New Orleans' marijuana laws in Gambit.)
A list of rallies and marches and their respective locations, below the jump.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
The artist's mother
Posted by Wendy Rodrigue on Wed, May 9, 2012 at 10:34 AM
“Aren’t you happy?” asked my uncle of Marie Rodrigue on the night of my engagement to her son. “You’re going to have a daughter-in-law!”
“I had one,” she replied, her face deadpan. “It didn’t work out.”
When she died in 2008 at age one hundred and three, George Rodrigue’s mother still wanted to “go home” to New Iberia. She wanted her car back, to remove her grandsons’ hats and cut their hair, to lengthen my skirts and overcook my Thanksgiving turkey, to visit long-dead friends and family, and, most important, to see her son get a real job, “with the telephone company,” she said, as she worried about his pension:
“When will you realize that nobody’s gonna buy those pictures?”
She was tough, ‘solid,’ as George used to say, with legs like tree stumps (her description, not mine, although…)…
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
House committee approves second amendment bill
Posted by Alex Woodward on Wed, May 2, 2012 at 4:20 PM
Louisiana has dozens of gun laws on the books. State Sen. Neil Riser filed Senate Bill 303, a constitutional amendment that aims to expand and protect the second amendment right to bear firearms. His bill would "require that any denial, infringement, or restriction on one's right to acquire, keep, possess, transport, carry, transfer, and use arms for defense of life and property be subject to a strict scrutiny standard by courts in determining any violation of the right."
This afternoon, Louisiana’s House committee on criminal justice voted 9-5 in favor of the bill. The bill, according to Riser, “will give Louisiana the strongest second amendment right in the nation.” The bill's opponents fear Riser’s bill would open a door for litigation to rule those 80-plus laws unconstitutional, creating a gun-toting free for all. It now enter the House for a vote and will likely end up on November ballots where its fate will ultimately be decided by voters.
State Reps. Roy Burrell, Dalton Honore, Barbara Norton, Terry Landry and Helena Moreno repeatedly asked why Louisiana needs the additional “protection.” “I’m just trying to figure out how this gun bill is going to make Louisiana better and make citizens safer,” Landry asked, adding he doesn’t want to send the state back to “the wild wild west of this country.”
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Tony Bernard: Louisiana's festival poster King
Posted by Wendy Rodrigue on Tue, May 1, 2012 at 8:09 PM
Here in New Orleans, when we think of festival posters, we think of Jazz Fest. But the rest of the state also embraces this tradition, commissioning artists to commemorate annual events.
These local celebrations are an integral part of each area’s agricultural product or cultural history. The poster tradition reaches back more than fifty years throughout our state. These days, the artist most in demand is Tony Bernard.
- Tony Bernard
- The Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival is this weekend, May 4-6, 2012
Born and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana, Bernard spent years seeking credibility, entering Louisiana’s Duck Stamp Contest, where he placed 2nd and 3rd three years running. By 2007, discouraged and ready to abandon the effort, he entered one last time at his wife Roxie’s urging:
“You’ll surely never win if you don’t enter!” she exclaimed.
With only two weeks until the contest, he gave it one more shot, learning a life’s lesson as he landed first place and the official 2007 Louisiana Duck Stamp.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Louisiana bicentennial stamp on sale today
Posted by Kevin Allman on Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 11:58 AM
2012 is the 200th anniversary of Louisiana statehood, so of course we get a postage stamp to commemorate the occasion. It's being released today. And it's a nice one, so your bills will be extra pretty:
The image, "Flat Lake Sunset," is by Louisiana photographer C.C. Lockwood, and the U.S. Postal Service explains it thusly:
The photograph shows a sunset at Flat Lake in the Atchafalaya Basin, the largest contiguous river swamp in the United States. The bald cypress trees hung with Spanish moss suggest the unique ecosystem of the Basin and the opportunities the area provides for hunting, bird watching, fishing, boating, and camping.
Best of all, it's a "forever" stamp, which means it'll be good for first-class postage even after the next inevitable postal rate hike. Read more about it at the Postal Service website.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Artist Miranda Lake celebrates Louisiana
Posted by Wendy Rodrigue on Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 8:22 AM
“I love the wax; it’s so seductive,” explains Miranda Lake, a New Orleans artist working in encaustic, a medium she made her own more than ten years ago following an extended workshop at Anderson Ranch Arts Center near Aspen, Colorado.
Born and raised in Connecticut, Lake (b. 1969) grew up immersed in the arts, particularly her father’s Op Art, a form of expression utilizing patterns and distortions. With a degree in Art History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she expanded her creative thinking with studies at the Parsons School of Design and The London College of Fashion.
Her trained artistic eye craved stimulation from an early age. In addition to collecting and creating, she traveled, immersing herself for extended periods in new places, such as Alaska, London, New York, Seattle, and her destiny, New Orleans.
- Miranda Lake
- Louisiana, the Pelican State: “a celebration,” explains Lake, “of the natural beauty of our state, as well as a reminder that we must carefully tend our future —- like eggs in a nest.”
Lake’s preferred medium, encaustic, is an ancient practice blending beeswax with pigment, melted together and then applied with a knife, hot iron, or heat gun. As early as Ancient Egypt, artists painted using this method; however, in modern times, art giants like Jasper Johns use the wax to adhere other materials, such as newspaper and textiles, to a wooden surface.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
House approves amendment to allow privatization, but not sale, of state prison
Posted by Charles Maldonado on Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 4:21 PM
Louisiana House Rep. Henry Burns, R-Haughton, the sponsor of HB 850, which would privatize Avoyelles Correctional Center, today introduced an amendment that would prohibit the sale of the facility to a private operator and limit any private management contract to ten years. The House voted 62-43 to adopt Burns' amendment but deferred, for today, any further votes on the bill.
The bill's original language — which passed the House Appropriations Committee last week in a 13-11 vote — called for a sale and a 30-year management contract.
Another amendment by Rep. Ken Havard, R-Jackson, also introduced today, would ban any management contract that requires a minimum population at Avoyelles if it's handed over to a private operator. A request for information on the sale of state-owned prisons last year called for responses to base guaranteed state per diem payment estimates to be based on a 96 percent occupancy.
A response from Nashville, Tenn.-based operator the Corrections Corporation of America went further, calling for a minimum occupancy guarantee from the state.
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