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 ...
Fathers
Not everyone has a father growing up; I didn't. And there are a host of other reasons many of us may not feel particularly close to our dads. But none of us ever stops needing one. I think the depth ...
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. ...
Our Lady of Deliverance
Because St. Louis Cathedral sits on the city's main square in the French Quarter, most of the tourists who come to New Orleans take a moment to peek inside. That curiosity coupled with the cathedral's ...
