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Posted inLens Carnival Edition

All in a Carnival’s Pay

High winds on Mardi Gras Day truncated Rex’s route and kept Zulu from downtown New Orleans, taking a toll on business owners and on local school bands, which went unpaid for Zulu and other weather-affected parades. Then Rex announced that it would pay the bands booked for its parade, raising questions about the history of band payments from krewes – and why those payments matter. 

Posted inOpinion

Redemption and the Ultimate Punishment

“I remember feeling a flush of anger that the State of Louisiana was giving Bordelon what he wanted, relief from his guilt,” writes the author, who visited Angola with a film crew in 2010 as Louisiana was preparing to execute Gerald Bordelon. “My husband had died a few years before that, leaving me a widow and mother to two small children. Death, for me, was not something a governor should casually enter into with a signature — or that Bordelon could chase, to relieve his personal agony.”