Columns

To lead an orchestra, a conductor has to turn his back to the crowd. To lead your life, you have to turn your back to the crowd. This means you have to immunize yourself to what others say, think, or do relative to your quest to achieve your goals.
Just as a conductor must focus on the performance of the orchestra, you need to focus on the performance of your life. If a conductor faces the crowd, he can’t direct the musicians.

The little steamer Fairy carried the mail from Franklin to Lake Verret near Napoleonville in the 1850s, holding the contract because it could make the trip in only six hours when the wind blew wrong and a lot faster on a nice, quiet day. The steamer met a mail coach that ran to the lake from Donaldsonville, putting Franklin within only 20 hours of New Orleans.
Spring was bursting out in April 1853, when the editor of the Planters’ Banner took “a quick and pleasurable trip on this little steamer” through “scenery in vestments of the richest verdure,”

Mystery and glamour always make a good news story. If you throw in a big-time gangster, it’s almost guaranteed to make the front page. That’s why the first paragraph of the Opelousas Daily World story on March 27, 1940, caught my eye. It offered all of the needed elements.
“Speculation ran rife today as to the identity of the gorgeous blonde being held in the parish prison, alleged accomplice of James John Ogden, fugitive from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”