Baton Rouge Temperature: 92°
Thursday, August 7, 2008

MAGAZINE

 
He savors the stories behind those told in the photographs, his stories. Because he didn’t mean to include the London Lodge’s television antenna in the composition. Well, there was really no thought to composition at all.

The title is more practical than biblical. For this is a case where Noah’s lesson isn’t about taking instruction from God to build an ark, then load on animals two-by-two.

Arlo Guthrie, High School Musical and a tribute to The Beatles are just the beginning of what’s in store this season at the Manship Theatre, the Reilly Theatre and the LSU Union Theater.

Leave it to the women of Covington to think outside the box and come up with an unusual use for Mardi Gras beads.

The Lafourche Heritage Society, Inc. has extended an invitation to interested genealogists to attend and participate in their 32nd Annual History and Genealogy Seminar.

It’s not too early to think about the annual round of books festivals that dot the fall calendar. The best one (a subjective judgment) is here: The Louisiana Book Festival in downtown Baton Rouge. This year’s event is Saturday, Oct. 4, and according to Jim Davis, new director of the Louisiana Center for the Book at the State Library of Louisiana

Aug. 3-9, 2008

Laura Duplechin will be the guest speaker for the Monday, Aug. 4, meeting of the Denham Springs Fine Art Association. Duplechin will speak about the color pallet.

BEIJING — Faced with my blank look of incomprehension, the taxi driver took a deep breath and tried again. “Ha-pi-tu-mi-te-yu,” he intoned.

Summer is in full swing in Texas, and savvy travelers know to stay out of the sun. Plan trips around indoor attractions and visits to cool swimming areas.

How do you follow up playing Jesus? For Collin Cleary, it’s by taking on the role of Troy Bolton, male lead in High School Musical, the Ascension Community Theatre’s summer musical production.

When police find the body of a suicide victim during a wildfire evacuation in a Los Angeles suburb, it isn’t a big deal. The dead man is found sitting in a chair with a gun in his hand and hole from his chin to the top of his head. Just in front of the chair, at his feet, is an open photo album. The album is a big deal. It contains seven photographs, one on each of seven pages. The photos show murdered women, and because of their content, police believe the photos were taken as the women were being killed. Killed by the dead man, Lionel Byrd.

For Bobbie Faye Sumrall, former Lake Charles Contraband Days Queen, sleep is usually a refuge from a busy day of mayhem that may include a gunbattle, hair appointment, encounter with spies, her clunker car breaking down, many explosions (some destroying buildings or cars and adjacent properties), multiple emotional crises, encounters with hunky men and/or battles with family members.

The Baton Rouge Area Convention and Visitors Bureau is settling into its new building at 359 Third St., and the doors are open to all visitors.

The Bluebonnet Branch of the East Baton Rouge Parish Library, 9200 Bluebonnet Blvd., will host a six-week series of readings and discussions about World War II as a national and personal experience for Americans and their adversaries. The program is titled “I’ll Be Seeing You. … America and World War II.” It is funded by the State of Louisiana and sponsored by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and the Louisiana Library Association.

“Begin at the beginning,” the King says in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Unlike many people who try to write stories, Robert Crais knows where the beginning is.

Every year a national contest called River of Words honors the best young poets and artists in schools across the United States. The students write poems and create artwork that reflects the riparian theme of the competition. The contest is judged by founders Pamela Michael, a poet and poetry teacher; and Robert Hass, former poet laureate of the United States.

Toni McGee Causey was having some success in her career as a screenwriter when the demands of the job just overwhelmed her. “My kids were 15 and 19 and I was at the point where I recognized I did not want to rip up out of Louisiana and go to live there to try and have that career. But I knew that I wanted to write,” Causey said. So she took a chance and began a novel. What followed was an epiphany.

With forgiveness comes peace, but forgiveness for what? Bringing them into the world, then letting them go one by one? That’s what painters do if they’re blessed with an audience, collectors who seek out their work. Michael Crespo has been so blessed by the mysterious art gods. Mysterious, not mystical. It’s how he sees his creations, how he looks at them now sitting in this far corner of the Louisiana Art & Science Museum’s downstairs gallery.

The St. Francisville Transitory Theatre’s composition team has drawn from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass to come up with something new, What Alice Saw There.

Auditions for Baton Rouge Little Theater’s upcoming production of Chicago will be Monday-Wednesday, July 28-30, at the theater, 7155 Florida Blvd.

She was Homer’s muse, the inspiration for the Iliad and the Odyssey. Those are pretty big shoes for the Louisiana State Museum-Baton Rouge to fill. Still, it’s snobbish to assume that Calliope works only with legendary authors of epics. She is, after all, the muse of poetry, known as the beautiful-voiced in Greek mythology.

Baton Rouge Gallery, 1442 City Park Ave., will feature work by artist members Cody Bush and Preston Gilchrist beginning Sunday, Aug. 3. There will be an opening reception 7-9 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 6. The exhibit will continue to Aug. 28.

VOLCANOES NATIONAL PARK, Rwanda — Something is cracking, crunching and rustling its way through the jungle. The noise is loud. It sounds closer. Our guide, Olivier Mutuyimama, pauses, extends his arm and holds us back.

KIGALI, Rwanda — Visiting places famous for death is nothing new. You can tour the Nazi concentration camps of Dachau in Germany and Auschwitz in Poland. Tourists sought glimpses of the World Trade Center ruins within days of the Sept. 11th attacks.

While travel expenses are up this summer, Genevieve Shaw Brown, Travelocity’s senior contributing editor, said summer travel is still very strong. “What’s different is how people are traveling,” Strong said in a telephone interview.

Thinking back, baseball season is the most ironic part of all. That’s when Zwolle High School lost to Runnels 12-3 in the Class B state championship. Jonathan Mayers noticed the headline, not for Zwolle but because his alma mater beat this town with the strange name in baseball.

Theater can happen anywhere. On a formal stage. On a street corner. Online. The evening before the 4th of July, theater was unfolding in the sanctuary of Luke 10:27, A Community of Faith Church in Denham Springs. Budding thespians were rehearsing their roles for the upcoming production of Looking Glass Land.

A summer evening of fine wine and hors d’oeuvres comes to the Reilly Theatre stage on the LSU campus at Swine Palace’s first Wine Tasting fundraiser 7-9 p.m. Thursday, July 24.

New Yorkers and visitors alike can immerse themselves in refreshing public art this summer. The talk of the town is “The New York City Waterfalls,” created by Olafur Eliasson, the Danish-Icelandic artist who is world-famous for creating his own weather systems. The four waterfalls ranging in height from 90 feet to 120 feet will appear until Oct. 13 They run from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.

The name Lloyd is a variation of the Welsh word llwyd or clwyd, which means “gray” or “brown.” The double-l represents the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative of Welsh and was sometimes also represented as fl, yielding the related name Floyd.

The nation’s attention was focused on a tiny town in the hills of Tennessee 83 years ago this summer. There, in the hamlet of Dayton, the forces of science and religion met in a mighty confrontation that became know as the Scopes Monkey Trial. Or at least that’s how the hype goes. In reality, the event was a trumped up public relations stunt devised by local merchants to bring business to the little town whose economy had stalled.

It’s as if a carpenter wanted to show off his handiwork and all he had to display was a handful of nails. Photographer Donn Young lost his life’s work in Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 when his studio in the Lakeview section of New Orleans was flooded.

Calling all kids – this is your chance to create your own fashion label. Well, all right. This thought isn’t much in the way of cool for boys, so let’s reword it for them.

Brunner Gallery, 100 Lafayette St. in the Shaw Center for the Arts, will feature sculpture and installations by Steven Durow and Babette Wattigny beginning Saturday, July 26. The show will continue to Sept. 27.

Groupings of several works by well known local artists give the big show at Elizabethan Gallery, 680 Jefferson Highway, visual importance.

Tickets are on sale for the Baton Rouge Ballet Theatre’s fundraising gala Tutu Groovy Two — The Original ’60s Bash, at 7 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 23, at the Dancers’ Workshop, 10745 Linkwood Court off Bluebonnet Boulevard.

This story is merely an observer’s notes. For an observer has to look through the eyes of another to see cityscapes in a computer board, an armoire among the angles, even a flawless hope chest somewhere deep within the grains of Nigerian walnut.

New appointments in the Louisiana Department of Culture Recreation and Tourism bring experienced leaders to the forefront. Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, who oversees the department, has appointed Pam Breaux as acting secretary of the department.

July 13-July 19, 2008

In 2005, Clearfield Company launched a new series of books by David Dobson designed to identify the origins of Scottish Highlanders who traveled to America prior to the Great Highland Migration that began in the 1730s and intensified thereafter.

He’s back. The complex, haunted, angry, sometimes tragic, sometimes lethal, sometimes hopeful, sometimes cynical, ex-alcoholic New Iberia Parish Sheriff’s detective who lives on the pages of author James Lee Burke’s bestselling crime novels. Dave Robicheaux is back. And that means his former nun wife, Molly, and his hard-bitten, tough-guy, former New Orleans cop turned private detective friend and sidekick, Clete Purcell, are back.

Darrell Bourque’s service as Louisiana Poet Laureate has encountered an unexpected caesura. Bourque was named the state’s poet laureate in November 2007 by then-Gov. Kathleen Blanco. A distinguished educator and respected poet, Bourque is a writer who plumbs the issues of life. His love for his home state is apparent in his works.

The fact that women come in all shapes and sizes is reaffirmed in this is who I am. But the book is much more than that: it’s a collection of 54 women who were not only brave enough to bare it all (or most of it) for the book, but were willing to bare their souls as well, sharing thoughts on their feelings about their bodies, and their lives, warts and all.

The Elizabethan Gallery, 680 Jefferson Highway, will host the annual show and sale of new artwork by members of the Associated Women in the Arts, beginning with a reception 6-9 p.m. Thursday, July 17. The show will continue to Aug. 25.

“Totally HOT and still Knockin’ ’em DEAD,” the subtitle screams. Sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it? And it is to some degree.

Dauphin Island sits at the edge of Alabama just waiting for visitors. Generations of families have played there leaving little but footprints in the sand. The barrier island has survived many a storm and still it stands, calling to beach lovers.

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