Wednesday, May 14, 2008
PEOPLE
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Between field trips to museums and art and music lessons, two summer enrichment camps will give teens and pre-teens a chance to discuss the rise in sexually transmitted diseases among their peers.
In this week’s Style File, where we catch people out and about, we find a woman showing off her spring style. Spotlight for May 12, 2008 When many who fought in Vietnam returned home, they were received with less than open arms — even by veterans of previous conflicts. “I came home and went on down to join the VFW and they treated me like … I was just a piece of trash,” said Roger Arnold, of Port Allen. “They actually told me I wasn’t in a war. I don’t belong there.” When 13 LSU engineering students added up the time they spent on their senior project, they figured it was enough that each of them could have walked to and from Michigan — one at a time. Instead, they’re driving to Michigan International Speedway today, where they expect things to move much more rapidly. Here are some treasured mementos mothers (and children) shared with The Advocate. The memories are published in PDF form. PORT ALLEN — The Rev. Jim Sawyer went into the operating room Oct. 17 to fix his back, but a rare surgical complication would change his life and his ministry. TODAY
About a month after his 50th birthday, Aubrey Foster Sr. was “basically homeless” and fired from the church he had pastored for nearly five years. Some people will do anything to save gas — including waste it. A study conducted last year by a national fuel sales organization found that almost a third of drivers will drive to a gas station 10 minutes out of their way just to save three cents per gallon. As Mother’s Day approached about 25 years ago, a poor boy entered my mother’s florist shop and asked what kind of gift he might be able to get his mother for 30 cents. Like many teenage girls, Krystal Benoit and Amber Meaux started planning for the prom three months ago. Boys at their school asked to be their dates, and they each found dresses they loved. Each week The Advocate asks a different “quiz taker” for his or her current favorites in pop culture. After my wife died — a year ago tomorrow — I began to notice little projects she never finished. That brought back memories from losing my father and my Uncle Vincent. My father had cartridge cases lined up like little soldiers to be reloaded in his shop. On May 16, members of LSU’s Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity will travel from across the country to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Zeta Zeta Chapter, the country’s 31st DKE chapter. It’s a chapter that already had a history when it came to the LSU campus in 1923. To poor South African teens touring the United States last month, American students seem to have everything. The computers, cars, a free secondary education and well-stocked libraries and classrooms got noticed by South African high school students during visits to Baton Rouge and eight other U.S. cities on their concert tour. Nobody puts together an outfit like the subject of this week’s Style File, where we catch people out and about. Through singing and playing, fifth-graders at the Baton Rouge Center for Visual & Performing Arts are stretching their musical knowledge for their upcoming production of “101 Dalmatians.” A writing assignment in his English class at St. Jude the Apostle School that earned Patrick Tangney an “A” has also been named the top essay in a state patriotic essay contest. A forester and a bicycle advocate have teamed up to organize, what else, a bicycle tour that combines a 12-mile ride with a tree lecture Sunday. “Mark Martin came up with the idea,” said Hallie Dozier, an LSU assistant professor of forestry who often rides her bicycle to work. When Carolyn Westlake moved to Baton Rouge a year ago to work for the YMCA, she decided she wanted to trade in her traditional office chair for a stability ball. Westlake’s new boss thought she was joking. But Westlake, the membership and wellness director at the Paula G. Manship YMCA, absolutely was serious. So, you think you want to trade in your desk chair for a stability ball? Fitness professionals say it’s an easy way to strengthen your abdominal muscles during the workday. Here’s what it was like for one reporter who traded in her office chair for a stability ball for one week. A DVD of the 10-hour PBS documentary, “Carrier,” should be on the shelf in every high school guidance counselor’s office. WATSON — You’d have to ask those who know him better about whether Bill Hawkins Jr. could be described as a son of a gun. But one fact is indisputable if you walk into his man-space. Hibiscus plants will be showing off their glorious blooms when the Red Stick Hibiscus Association holds its fourth annual show and sale from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday in the Ione Burden Conference Room at Burden Center, Essen Lane at I-10. There’s still time to get in summer bedding plants. LSU AgCenter horticulturists suggest some newer selections which include Profusion Zinnias; Summer Wave Torenia; perilla, graptophyllum, “Cuban Gold” duranta, “Ragin Cajun” ruellia, “Linde Armstrong” cleome; “Party Time,” “Gail’s Choice” and “Red Threads” alternantheras and “Bourbon Street” acalypha (copper leaf). As this spring’s high school and college graduates hear commencement speeches urging them to look to the future, I’ve been considering a different piece of advice from David McCullough. When a group of Catholic High School seniors wanted to start a lacrosse team last fall, their former religion teacher became the perfect recruit as faculty moderator. Each week The Advocate asks a different “quiz taker” for his or her current favorites in pop culture. From Lake Pontchartrain, viewing the lonely lighthouse at the mouth of the Tchefuncte River reminded me last week of what special structures lighthouses are. The hundreds of blue and silver pinwheels are reminders of happy and healthy childhoods, and having them spinning in the wind throughout the city is a reminder that it’s important to work to prevent child abuse and neglect, not just respond to it after it’s happened, said Anna Fogle, Prevent Child Abuse Louisiana CEO. Troop 5’s former Scoutmaster, Van Bailey, made it his business to see that the 92-year Boy Scout troop’s meeting place — “The Hut” — survived. Last week, “The Hut” was moved from a clearing in the woods off Ben Hur Road to Jefferson United Methodist Church, 10328 Jefferson Highway. They call it the Best Dressed Ball for good reason. Fashion rules the night at this annual fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. The women glittered in long gowns and the men looked their debonair best in black tie at the April 19 event. Want to see how to mix patterns? In this week’s Style File, where we catch people out and about, it’s done the right way. When Ed Taylor sold office supplies, he’d begin calls on customers with a joke — often a Cajun joke. With her first-place finish in the kindergarten through third-grade age group, Margaret Ellis, a third-grader at the Baton Rouge Center for Visual & Performing Arts, was one of 20 area winners in the 2008 Louisiana Junior Duck Stamp Art Competition. Fifteen-year-old Neal Wu compares his computing talents to those of an athlete who can make winning touchdowns or score three-point hoops. DENHAM SPRINGS — Florence Crowder will go to France this summer, taking with her the tools — grafting knife, collecting bags and pens for labeling — required for making cuttings from some of Europe’s oldest camellias. In the last afternoons of cool weather, I built a fire outside and read. I’d found firewood stacked at a neighbor’s curb, wood left from the winter that my neighbor was throwing away until I came along to recycle it. Three days, 10 gardens and tons of fun — it’s time for the Friends of Hilltop Arboretum’s Spring Garden Tour. Four gardens will be open for touring on Sunday, five will be open on May 18 and a bonus garden will be open on June 22. Dr. Michael and Laura Quinn have been parents to more than 40 babies. Most of the time, except in the case of the couple’s four children, their parenthood lasts only a few days or weeks. According to a recent national report, interest in nature among Americans is on the decline. That probably wouldn’t have surprised the late Washington Post columnist Henry Mitchell, who worried before his death in 1993 that technology was distancing people from the natural world. Could a garage sale bring out hundreds of high school girls searching for designer prom dresses? Not likely. Yet, Cinderella Project of Baton Rouge founders Sarah Dupree and Shelton Jones figured out a way to pull the idea off. Each Thursday, The Advocate asks a different “quiz taker” for his or her current favorites in pop culture. When I was a child, crossing the Mississippi River on one of its numerous ferries always stoked my imagination. On a good day in the 1950s, traveling with my father, I might get to cross the river on two different boats. Eleven outstanding individuals who work tirelessly for the community will be honored at this year’s Volunteer Activists luncheon May 6 to benefit the Baton Rouge Speech & Hearing Foundation. What sounds like a small Academy Award-winning film, “An Afternoon of Roses,” is part of a move to make the Burden Center, formerly the Burden Research Center, Essen Lane at I-10, more gardener friendly. NAME: April Sermons, Baton Rouge; AGE: 22; OCCUPATION: Full-time LSU student majoring in fashion merchandising and Frock Candy employee. Neighbors Notes for April 22, 2008. |
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