Columns

If you read enough stuff that was written a good while ago, you will eventually run across the claim that Bayou Teche was named for Edward Teach, the infamous pirate better known as Blackbeard. I most recently came across it in an 1868 piece in the New Orleans Crescent describing the discovery of salt at Avery Island, which was then called Petite Anse Island, for its little wooded coves.

From the earliest days I can remember, the beginning of July has been the beginning of fig season, the time when grandkids were dispatched to the back yard to pick fruit from eight big trees and my grandmother cooked fig preserves by the dish-pan-full.
Until I went away to college it never occurred to me that it was possible to have a meal — morning, noon, or night — without a jar of fig preserves on the table.

I recently attended an interesting program about a vanishing community on an island at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. This island is Isle de Jean Charles, which is probably no more than 20 miles southeast of Houma in Terrebonne Parish. It is named after a Frenchman who first settled there. The presenter of this much appreciated program was Heather Stone, associate professor of the college of Education and Human Development at UL. Professor Stone had an excellent PowerPoint program with plenty of photos of the island community.