The next pope
There are numerous contenders, of course, and they come from all around the globe. Over the next few weeks, we'll be hearing Vaticanistas on every side handicap the odds. But when the last note of ...
JP2, I still miss you
Twenty years is a long time. But somehow, the death of Pope John Paul II isn't easy for me to place on a timeline. History is elastic when we don't read it in books. The events we remember can ...
Pilgrim roads
It may be disappointing, but contrary to the lyrics of the well-loved John Denver song, "Country Roads" won't ultimately take us home. It's not just because relatively few of us hail from the ...
The end of marriage
When I was a kid, there was a little rhyme everybody chanted to tease whoever they thought was experiencing a childhood crush. It went like this: (Boy's Name) and (Girl's Name), sitting in a ...
A winter wonderland
We missed the Blizzard of '78 by a year. But when people here in Louisiana ask us if we miss the snow, we don't hesitate to tell them that we've had our fill and hope we never see the white ...
Holding onto hope
Waking up in New Orleans on New Year's Day was a lot like driving home from work after the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. Shocking, disorienting, and very sad. The evil of that manmade tragedy, ...
Feeling like Christmas
With highs in the 60s and 70s (and lows staying above 40), it doesn't exactly "feel" like Christmas in southern Louisiana, at least not for anybody who was raised well north of the Mason-Dixon Line. ...
