Columns

I don’t know why I kept it in the first place, or even how it fell into my hands, but one of the things that I haul out every Christmas season, along with the tree lights and decorations, wreaths for the door, and an old nativity set, is the December 23, 1950, edition of Collier’s magazine.
The covers barely cling to frayed pages and, just like me (I was six years old in 1950), it’s beginning to show its age. But I’ve kept it as a reminder of the simpler Christmases we celebrated when I was a boy, and of things that still are the essence of the season for me.

This year’s all-too-brief prospect of an all-Chicago World Series would have renewed one of the few longstanding disagreements between my dad and myself.
I have been a Cubs fan since I was a kid. He pulled for the White Sox.
I started following the Cubs because they played only day games in the 1950s and their broadcasts came in loud and clear in Lake Charles most summer afternoons.

The movement to proclaim Father Joseph Verbis Lafleur a saint has taken an important step with the opening of his Cause for Canonization by the Vatican.
The heroic World War II chaplain, who was born in Ville Platte, is now the third person from south Louisiana to be entered into the official process of investigation for sainthood. Bishop Douglas Deshotel began the process for Charlene Richard, the young girl from Acadia Parish, and Auguste “Nonco” Pelafigue of Arnaudville in January, but the announcement for Father Lafleur was delayed by red tape.