Columns

If we missed half of our workdays, most of us would probably lose our jobs.
The school board consists of nine members; however, several members consistently struggle to attend public meetings.
The school board meets once a month to vote on key issues like finances, insurance, policies, and decisions about opening or closing schools. These choices directly affect our students.
When elected officials fail to attend school board meetings despite receiving a monthly stipend of $800, it raises questions about their commitment to serving the district and public schools.

Rice farming became the mainstay of our prairies after the railroad cut across them in 1880. Southern Pacific shipped 2 million pounds of south Louisiana rice to New Orleans in 1886. Those shipments grew to 200 million pounds over the next decade, and that was just the beginning. All of that rice needed more water than our rivers and streams could provide, and that brought big trouble in the Mermentau basin in the early 1900s.

traveler and writer Charles Dudley Warner rowed early one spring morning, “while the dew was still heavy” down Bayou Petit Anse. “in Petite Anse means “little cove.” The bayou runs along the west side of Avery Island, then flows generally south into Vermilion Bay. Warner described his delightful boat ride in a long article about “The Acadian Land” in Harper’s Magazine in February 1887.