Heritage

Historic Louisiana museums facing budget cuts

On April 5, 2011, In Heritage, By admin

BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) -

More than 15 historic museums around the state are in danger of closing their doors. They’re the latest potential victims of a state budget crunch. If cuts happen, the Baton Rouge Area Convention and Visitors Bureau says it won’t help tourism much.

The CVB says Louisiana welcomed more than 24 million visitors in 2010. Theresa Overby, with the CVB, says at least a half dozen people a day stop in to ask where to visit. One of the downtown museums always on the list is the Old State Capitol.

The Secretary of State oversees the historic museums. Secretary of State, Tom Schedler, says the recommendation is to cut their budget by $842,000. Schedler says he receives $2.7 million in state money and that cut would take a toll on museums because it’s the only area considered unprotected.

Schedler adds at the end of 2010, they cut student workers due to mid-year budget cuts. “Any further reductions are going to cause more reductions in the hours we can open if we don’t have the man power,” said Schedler. The only other thing to cut, “hours and people.”

He says the Old State Capitol is one of the more visited museums, and must be protected. However, even smaller ones, like the Eddie Robinson Museum on Grambling’s campus are also attracting visitors. Schedler says that museum has only been open for 17 months, and already 10,000 people have been there.

Schedler explains it’s a catch 22. “If I reduce hours too much or I reinstate fees for attendance, you run away visitors. And if you close or diminish hours of smaller museums you don’t really achieve a lot of dollar savings,” he said.

Now he says they must develop a plan A, B and C if cuts do come, but also remind the legislature these buildings are educational components of Louisiana’s history.

The Secretary of State says he could also propose having a minimum attendance requirement for each museum. Right now, Schedler says the objective is to keep all of the facilities from shutting down.

From WAFB

ST. JOSEPH’S DAY ALTARS AND MARDI GRAS INDIANS AT NIGHT

On March 21, 2011, In Heritage, mardi gras, By admin

See More at Offbeat

Guys in New Orleans are unhealthy… but happy

On February 28, 2011, In Food and Drink, Heritage, By admin

Men’s Health Magazine has compiled a list of the best and worst cities in America for men in terms of health, fitness, and overall quality of life.

New Orleans ranked among the magazine’s worst.

Only eight cities ranked below New Orleans for factors like fatal strokes, diabetes, cancer deaths and number of smokers among men.

But, of the ten healthiest cities for men, only four were rated better in quality of life.

“Definitely, certain quality of life factors kept the city from finishing lower. And that’s great, because you have something to build on,” says Matt Marion, Deputy Editor at Men’s Health Magazine.

37 different criteria were used to determine the rankings…the good, the bad and the ugly.

And, although guys in New Orleans are apparently among the ugly, they’re also fat and happy, and think New Orleans is a great place to live.

“Now, if you work on the health and the fitness, you’ll actually live long enough to enjoy what you have going on there in the city.” says Marion.

Of the cities that ranked worst for men, half of them are in the south.

And, except for New Orleans…the quality of life in the ten bottom dwellers is also lousy!

New Orleans’ overall ranking in Men’s Health is 92nd…100th in health, 76th in fitness and 14th in quality of life.

“Problem now is, you’re probably losing twenty or thirty years that could be spent sitting back and saying, ‘Wow! This a really great place to live.’, according to Marion.

He says guys here need to exercise more, cut down on smoking, and watch the fat and calorie intake.

But, hey, it’s Carnival time and everybody’s having fun.

“Hey, you know what? Enjoy it. That’s what it’s about,” says Marion.

“Have fun, enjoy life and then just do what you can to see that you have a lot more Carnival seasons in the future.”

From WWL

Crawfish are a legacy for Louisiana

On February 20, 2011, In Food and Drink, Heritage, By admin

Throughout the history of Louisiana — especially in the South — crawfish have been a highly soughtafter food source. Early French settlers as far back as the mid-1700s caught crawfish with the “bait-on-the-string” method.

And by 1880, a commercial production of 10,000 pounds of crawfish worth $800 was reported in a government publication.

By the 1920s, annual commercial production averaged about 100,000 pounds. Because of problems such as inefficient capture methods — primarily dip nets — lack of adequate highways and a transportation infrastructure, and poorly developed preservation methods, growth of the industry proceeded slowly until the 1930s.

By then, improvements in gear, transportation and preservation, along with population increases in south Louisiana, made possible significantly increased commercial catches.

From the 1930s up until the late 1940s, all crawfish production was from the wild. Production during that period averaged about a million or so pounds per year.

The first reported crawfish pond production occurred in 1949 when a rice farmer reflooded his rice field after the fall harvest. By keeping his field flooded, crawfish growth was facilitated and production of a farm-raised crop was enabled. In years since then, farm ponds were established for the exclusive purpose of growing crawfish.

Crawfish aquaculture is currently done by farming in ponds, flooding swamps and in rotation with rice production.

Although crawfish are cultivated for food in Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, South Carolina and North Carolina, and are consumed in these and many other states, Louisiana continues to dominate the North American crawfish industry.

Continue at Houma Today

New Orleans: The food that got them through

On February 16, 2011, In Food and Drink, Heritage, By admin

The young man with the broad, gold-capped smile slammed the van door and picked up the microphone. “My name is Anthony, and I’ll be your shuttle driver today. If this is your first time in New Orleans, there is one thing you need to know: eat all the food you can. You cannot go wrong with that.”

Perhaps it’s possible to find someone within the New Orleans city limits who is neutral on the subject of food – agnostic on the provenance of the city’s best po-boy (or for that matter, how to spell it) and content with a frozen burrito on a Monday night when by all means they ought to be having red beans and rice. Chances are they just haven’t been in town long enough for a local to set them straight, lead them by the hand to a proper coffee shop or sno-ball stand and then maybe on over to the house for Friday night gumbo.

Don’t worry about them – it’ll happen, because goodness, do New Orleanians love to talk…and argue……and educate…and opine about food. It’s who they are, and what has kept them going, even when their very way of life was in danger of being swept away forever.

Food is the lingua franca of New Orleans. Says Richard McCarthy, executive director of the organization that oversees the local farmers markets, “If you’re stuck in an elevator here, you could make conversation with anyone about one of the three Fs: food, fishing and football.” The Saints and seafood may be seasonally relegated, but there is always something cooking.

“Here in New Orleans, we hear a great deal about good eating; our enthusiasm for food is unending. A familiar scene in New Orleans restaurants is a table laden with spectacular food surrounded by New Orleanians eating happily while already planning their next meal,” wrote cookbook author Rima Collin in her 1975 introduction to “Brennan’s 417 Royal St.: A Souvenir Cookbook.” The statement – and the restaurant – still stand.

McCarthy attributes a certain amount of that intrinsic passion to the city’s ethnic underpinnings and cultural Catholicism. “Fusion before fusion” is how he refers to Creole cooking. While the French made it their mission to maintain canonical cooking practices in the region, Spanish, African, Indian and other influences began to meld with it and form an entirely new cuisine. The Catholic calendar, along with the progression of the seasons, defined times for food-based rituals and celebration.

On Fridays between Twelfth Night and Fat Tuesday, no matter the secular or non-secular nature of a school, often there will be King Cake. Children learn to bite down gently so as not to chip a tooth on the small baby figure that may or may not be baked into their slice. The lucky recipient of the baby is crowned as royalty for the day and bears his or her prize home proudly to parents who might be less enthused; they’re on the hook for providing the next week’s King Cake.

This, needless to say, does not happen many other places in the country. As McCarthy puts it, these New Orleans food traditions transmute into the “rhythm of who and where are you are.”

Radio host, culinary activist and cooking teacher Poppy Tooker attributes the city’s food fixation to catholic tastes – in the lower-case sense of the word. “It transcends gender and race,” she says.

“You walk down the street and you hear everyone talking about what they ate and where they got it. It might be a group of women. It could be a bunch of businessmen talking about the meat they shot and how they’re going to cook it. It’s just everybody.”

People in New Orleans are passionate preservationists of their city’s food history, for it is a massive part of what has sustained them. Coming in as a first time visitor, it’s impossible not to notice in the structures and the statements: every event is couched as “before the storm” and “after the storm.” Bustling new eateries – more than 300 of them established in the past five years – abut grand dining halls that have served up pommes soufflé, Oysters Rockefeller and shrimp remoulade for over a century.

Tooker refers to these restaurants – Galatoire’s, Arnaud’s, Antoine’s and the like – as “living food museums.” Says she, “In France, they’d forgotten about some of these dishes. They’re oddities. We’d never stopped making them.”

She continued, “The average New Orleanian is only happy if she walks into one of these places and the Trout Meuniere and ideally even the waiter are the same as when she used to come in with her grandmother. Everything has to remain the same. You end up with a perfectly preserved food culture.”

And yet these living, lively culinary artifacts and new ventures coexist with buildings and entire neighborhoods that still sit derelict after Hurricane Katrina. The residents live among, as Richard McCarthy says, “complicated layers of decay – the marvelous ghosts and tragic ones.”

Continue at CNN

Mardi Gras Indians Work To Copyright Costumes

On February 8, 2011, In Heritage, mardi gras, By admin

Chief Howard Miller knows cameras will start clicking next month when his Creole Wild West Mardi Gras Indians take to the streets with their elaborately beaded and feathered costumes.

Now they and members of the city’s other tribes are working to get a slice of the profits when photos of the towering outfits they have spent the year crafting end up in books and on posters and T-shirts.

“It’s not about people taking pictures for themselves, but a lot of times people take pictures and sell them,” Miller said. “For years people have been reaping the benefits from the pictures they take of the Mardi Gras Indians.”

Intellectual property law dating back to the nation’s founding dictates that apparel and costumes cannot be copyrighted, but Tulane University adjunct law professor Ashlye Keaton has found a way around that by classifying them as something else.

“Their suits and crowns, their regalia, are certainly unique works of art,” Keaton said. “They are entitled to protect that art work.”

Keaton got to know many of the Indians through another Tulane program, the Entertainment Law Legal Assistance Project.

She was intrigued by their art, more so after she saw photos sold at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and at local galleries, apparently without their permission. Pictures of the Indians sell online for up to $500 each, and books and T-shirts are also available.

The first test for the Indians who have copyrighted the new costumes they will wear this year will come at Mardi Gras. The Indians revamp or completely remake their suits every year, and the copyright takes effect at the first public showing, said Ryan Vacca, an assistant professor of law at the University of Akron School of Law.

Keaton started working this past year with the club members to help preserve intellectual rights to their costumes.

Once the costumes are copyrighted, which can be done online for $40, the Indians can either sue people who sell photos of them or try to negotiate licensing fees with photographers either before or after the pictures are taken.

“They would be in a good position to negotiate a flat fee or percentage of the sale, something like that,” said Vacca said.

Andrew Langsam, a New York lawyer who has been practicing intellectual property law for more than 30 years, also suggested the Indians find a way to notify photographers their costumes were copyrighted — perhaps carrying a sign saying so — and try to find a way to negotiate use of their images before hand.

The Mardi Gras Indians have a long and colorful history in New Orleans. Since the end of the 19th century, black men have been making their own version of Indian dress and banding together for informal street parading at Mardi Gras. Local lore holds the tradition sprouted from runaway slaves’ admiration for Native Americans who harbored them from slave hunters before the Civil War.

Mostly the Mardi Gras Indians come from working-class neighborhoods, so their costume investment can take up much of their disposable income.

Continue at NPR

Collecting Mardi Gras: Yes, those trinkets have value

On February 3, 2011, In Heritage, mardi gras, By admin

With Mardi Gras slowly approaching this year- this is the longest Carnival season in decades- you have time to review your family’s stockpile of trinkets, favors and various memorabilia. Beyond the faded memories of attending a glittery ball and tableaux where our Carnival royalty wear rhinestones, crowns and tights, to elbowing your neighbor for this year’s novelty parade throw, does any of it have monetary value?

There is an avid group of collectors who think so and their interest and devotion fuels the marketplace. A recently published group of books by Carnival chronicler Arthur Hardy (www.mardigrasguide.com) and designer and historian Henri Schindler (www.pelicanpub.com/products) have become good reliable reference books and sources of information and guidance for collectors. Begun in the mid nineteenth century, the New Orleans Mardi Gras has developed into a multi-layer, city-wide tradition over the last hundred and fifty years.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the hand delivered ball invitations from krewes including Rex, Mistick Krewe of Comus, and Krewe of Proteus were artfully designed by local artists and printed in Paris. Included in the personalized envelopes were admit cards for each invited guest and dance cards with small pencils attached by decorative strings for the ladies to record the names of partners for upcoming dances. Some invitations were cleverly designed pop-up cards and elaborately unfolded to reveal the annual krewe theme. There is no doubt that these have value; with auction estimates ranging from $200 to $600 for each piece some sell for upwards of $1500.

By the 1920s, the cost of designing and printing these elaborate invitations and their accouterments had become prohibitive and, out of necessity, they became plainer and less inventive. These still have value, but not nearly as much. Generally, at auction, invitations from the mid to late twentieth century are grouped together in lots with prices ranging from $200 to $400. If there isn’t a collector with a particularly interest or someone with a family connection to any of the pieces, they will usually sell within that range.

Part of the tradition at a ball was for each invited guest to receive a favor, a memento of the Carnival royal occasion. In the early years the favors were vases, card holders, ink wells and envelope openers with the name of the krewe and date of the ball included on each piece. These pieces range from $75 to $125 each, depending on their rarity and condition. The original box does enhance interest.

The delicate enameled favor pins are highly prized by collectors. Like the invitations, the theme of the krewe’s ball and tableaux was the inspiration for the design. These little gems at auction, generally estimated from $200 to $500, can achieve prices upwards to $2000, depending on how badly it is desired by the collector.

Continue at Examiner

New Orleans archdiocese to publish online baptism, marriage records of slaves

On February 1, 2011, In Heritage, By admin

The Archdiocese of New Orleans says it will unveil Tuesday a new online database containing records of baptisms, marriages and deaths in colonial New Orleans — including those of African slaves, who until now have been nearly invisible to genealogical research.

Although the church released few details on the database, which is scheduled to go live Tuesday, the church’s brief description outlines a powerful new tool for scholars and ordinary genealogists, particularly for those searching for slave ancestors, a New Orleans historian said.

Archbishop Gregory Aymond and archivist Emilie Leumas are scheduled to announce Tuesday that the French and Spanish records, set down in florid script and dating from the founding of New Orleans in 1718, are moving online and will be available to anyone, anywhere.

The church scheduled a demonstration of the database for Tuesday at 12:30 p.m., but it released few details, including how it will be searchable.

“This is a cache of records unlike any other,” said Emily Clark, a Tulane University historian of early New Orleans who, as a credentialed scholar, has made extensive use of the church records stored at the old Ursuline Convent in the French Quarter.

Until New Orleans became an American city in 1803, the state-sponsored Catholic Church functioned in some respects as an arm of the government, first under the French, then the Spanish.

One of those functions was record-keeping. In colonial New Orleans, there were no separate civil offices recording births, deaths and marriages like modern offices of vital statistics, said Clark. Those events were recorded in church ledgers. And so it is church ledgers that provide researchers the keyhole through which to view the social and cultural mores of the colony, she said.

Continue at the TP

Historic Mardi Gras costumes

On January 12, 2011, In Heritage, By admin

For more than a century, the Louisiana State Museum has been quietly collecting samples of historical clothing. Tucked away in an unmarked French Quarter warehouse is a stunning collection of Mardi Gras history.

Wayne Phillips is the curator of costumes with the museum. He says most of the costumes are not normally on display.

“I always call this Louisiana’s closet. Because just about anything that you can name that is in your closet or in your drawers at home or in your jewelry cabinet is here at the state museum,” Phillips said. “These were all float riders’ costumes from parades that took place in the 1940’s, possibly even earlier.”

You can see the fine craftsmanship of the older carnival wear.

“Most of which were made by professional seamstresses and tailors here in the city and were always made of silk, the finest materials, sometimes real fur.”

Rex, the king of carnival, wore an ornate tunic in 1923. It’s something you can only see at the museum.

“This is a beautiful silk damask used to make this costume with sort of a gold thread running through it.”

From the time it opened in 1906, the Louisiana State Museum has been saving costumes, and uniforms, and everyday clothing from Louisiana. Today, that collection totals at least 2,500 thousand pieces.

Among those pieces, the 100-year-old crown jewels from the Queen of Proteus that would have been made by a Parisian jeweler and imported to New Orleans, according to Phillips.

One of the oldest artifacts is a ball invitation that predates New Orleans’ first Mardi Gras parade.

“A ball invitation from a Mardi Gras ball that was held at the St. Charles Hotel in 1854,” Phillips said. He points to a child’s costume. It is “just a street costume. It’s probably homemade by his mother. Dates to about the 1940’s.”

For about 20 years, Rex wore this costume for his Mardi Gras parade. It was last worn in 2005.

“It was found in the den, in the Rex den after Katrina and was damaged but not destroyed,” Phillips pointed out. The garment will stay in its damaged condition, as part of the history of carnival.

“That’s one of the things that has broken my heart the most studying post-Katrina Mardi Gras is what was lost. Many of the Mardi Gras Indians had multiple suits in their homes and lost just about everything that they possessed at the time which documented years and years of creativity for them.”

Now, these pieces of our history belong to the people of Louisiana, items donated by kings and queens and the families of Mardi Gras commoners. These are costumes that brought laughter and joy to a celebration that is part of the fabric of New Orleans.

You can get a glimpse of some of the state museum’s “Hidden Treasures” of carnival during a special event later this month. The state museum and the “Friends of the Cabildo” are hosting a special tour of the museum’s storage rooms on Tuesday night, January 25.

To reserve your space, call 504-523-3939, or purchase online at http://www.friendsofthecabildo.org

(Source: WVUE)

Bayou Classic: Grambling State vs. Southern

On November 27, 2010, In Event, Heritage, By admin

GRAMBLING STATE (8-2, 7-1 SWAC) VS. SOUTHERN (2-8, 1-7)

Kickoff: 2 p.m. Saturday

Facts and Figures – Site: Louisiana Superdome (65,000) – New Orleans, La. Records: Grambling State, 8-2; Southern, 2-8. Television: NBC. Series record: Southern leads, 30-28. Last meeting: Grambling State won, 31-13. Conferences: Grambling State, SWAC; Southern, SWAC. Coaches: Grambling State – Rod Broadway (34-12 in four seasons at Grambling State, 67-23 overall); Southern – Stump Mitchell (2-8 in first season). Sheridan Poll Ranking: Grambling State, 4; Southern, unranked.

What to know: Grambling State and Southern will meet in the 37th annual State Farm Bayou Classic, with Grambling State favored to tighten a hotly contested series that Southern leads, 30-28.

Grambling State’s sensational senior Frank Warren needs to rush for 246 yards in his final game to become the SWAC’s all-time leading career rusher (Destry Wright had 4,049 yards for Jackson State from 1997-99). Warren is third in the FCS with a 143.1-yard average.

Southern’s rush defense is probably strong enough to prevent Warren from setting the SWAC record, but the Jaguars have surrendered a porous 33.4 points per game. Coach Stump Mitchell has found the going rough in his first season, although the Jaguars hung tough with Eastern Division champion Alabama State before falling 21-19 on Nov. 13.

The Jaguars have struggled offensively with quarterbacks McGinty Jeremia and Joseph Dray both completing less than 50 percent of their passes. Wideout Allen Curry (38 receptions for 499 yards and three touchdowns) is their chief threat.

While Warren is Grambling State’s offensive leader, linebacker Cliff Exama fuels the defense. His 106 tackles are second-best in the conference and he can disrupt an offense in many ways.

Prediction: Grambling State, 35-21

From SportsNetwork