No foaling around: Horses deserve a holiday as much as we do. New Orleans’ Human Horse Races leave the horses in the stalls to chillax while the humans are saddled with racing duties. Yes, it’s a real event. Every Thanksgiving. Via NOLA Vie offers this history of the event. The story is from 2021, and some details within may pertain to just that year, so be sure to check the event listing. Bottom line: if you seek a spur-of-the-moment holiday trip, trot on down to this mane event.   – Editor

Have you ever dreamed of waking up and instantly falling under the spell of a man wearing a horse’s head, as did the Fairy Queen Titania in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream? Or, like a child, dreamily circling a carousel in the saddle of a steed, grasping its reins? Even perhaps galloping ’round a golden meadow with a colorfully painted horse’s head atop a pogo stick?

Well, then, Human Horse Races may rouse your vivid imagination. Human Horse Races is a community event intended to support injured or retired horses while having a jolly good time.

Makeup artist Ingrid Anderson came up with the novel concept for an alternative Thanksgiving outing so participants can still have an opportunity to show off their finery and fabulous chapeaux while leaving the horses to relax in their stalls.

The post ⚜️ Stirrup Some Fun This Thanksgiving at NOLA’s Human Horse Races appeared first on Go Gulf States.

Scott Gold’s modest King Cake proposal had us not only guffawing, but also in serious crave mode. Dang it, as if the countdown after Christmas isn’t tough enough – the tantalizing tick-tock that there are 12 more days to countdown before King Cake is available. He makes a good argument, but still manages to taunt tastebuds. For those of us in non-Mardi Gras cities (can you believe there are such things?), not only do we have to wait for January 6, but we also have to endure the indignity of shipping.   – Editor

Gather round, my children, and let the gnarled old sage tell you of a time long ago in New Orleans, in that paleolithic era known as “the early 1980’s.” It was a simple time, back when Emeril had a last name and was known only as a local restaurant chef, when Maison Blanche still operated out of a storefront on Canal Street, and the idea of the Saints ever making it to the Super Bowl was considered a fantasy as far fetched and unlikely as the development of cold fusion or interstellar travel. Also, people who took pictures of their food at this time were considered to be “touched in the head.” Oh, how the world has changed, my young friends.

Back then in New Orleans, too, even king cake was different. It was a simple carnival treat, and not the platform for unabashed decadence and excess it has become today. Back then, they were massive circular loaves of dense, doughy, vaguely cinnamon-inflected bread topped with granular sugar colored purple, green and gold.

For many years, this is what “king cake” meant to me as a child, and as you can imagine, I wasn’t much of a fan. Why gnaw on what seemed to be six baguettes worth of bread when you can have doberge cake or buttermilk drops? It was, to my mind, the red-headed stepchild of New Orleans baked goods. Then, one glorious day, I tasted a cream cheese stuffed Haydel’s king cake, and my entire king cake worldview encountered an intense paradigm shift.

Since that time, king cakes have been getting steadily more elaborate and creative, with bakers insisting each Carnival season on a kind of good natured one-upsmanship that, for the most part, has resulted in king cakes with ingenious new flavor combinations, frostings and fillings. (This is consistent, of course, with the New Orleans bushido of excess.)

The post ⚜️ Peak King Cake Season Means Serious Carnival Craving appeared first on Go Gulf States.

Our Gulf Coast is a canary in the coalmine of climate change, and there’s no better harbinger to sound the alarm than New Orleans. We’ve been intrigued and encouraged by the the city’s various Mardi Gras bead recycling initiatives, to rescue and reuse what would otherwise slide into a drain. Upcycling and recycling movements have also been adopted by many other Mardi Gras communities across the Gulf. ‘Via NOLA Vie’ student Hannah Hogan explores a few NOLA fashion retailers that are taking the commitment one step further.   – Editor

The post How to Preserve New Orleans Natural Wonder and Wear It Well appeared first on Go Gulf States.

With a moniker reflecting the honor of sharing a name with an Allen Toussaint classic, DJ Soul Sister is a New Orleans icon, known for her deep crate digging and disc spinning artistry. Be sure to keep up with her website: It carries listings of all her upcoming events. In April – 4/20 in fact – she spins the 20th Anniversary of HUSTLE! dance party at Hi-Ho Lounge and on April 28, she’s Interviewing Patrice Rushen at New Orleans Jazz Fest!   – Editor

It’s no surprise Soul Sister has anchored her life in the craft of mixing and blending music. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine any other way it could have gone.  Music called her powerfully from an early age. Throughout her childhood, music moved her and animated her imagination. She began collecting records at six years old. She recalls, fondly, a doll she owned with a radio inside. She clung to the doll every night, listening to the radio all night long.

“A lot of people assume that I inherited music from my parents […] that my parents passed down their love of music to me. And that actually is not so.” Her father’s small vinyl collection may have gotten her started, but her enthusiasm for music far exceeded what she found in her early environment. It seemed to tug on her throughout her life, drawing her more and more closely in.

Despite this early call to music, Soul Sister insists that she never set out to be a DJ. Throughout her story, DJing just kept calling out to her.

The post She’s the Baddest in the World: New Orleans’ DJ Soul Sister Doesn’t Need to Spin the Hits appeared first on Go Gulf States.

This article sure brought back some vivid memories. We can clearly “see” ourselves and our pals bopping down our grade school hallways, singing along to Jim Croce’s catchy hits. The songs were so ingrained in our formative era, their influence contributed to our own musical learning and loving the guitar. Later in adulthood, we had the pleasure of seeing A.J. in concert at SXSW. The man is a master. For fans of father Jim, this son’s tribute tour will not only strum the heartstrings, it will – if you’ll forgive the 70s parlance – blow your mind.  – Editor

Is your road trip soundtrack full of your favorite Adult Contemporary hits from the early 70s? Is Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle” near the top of your playlist? Then mark your calendar for March 24 and start planning your next Gulf Coast road trip to New Orleans, Louisiana. It’s there at the Joy Theater that A.J. Croce takes the stage for Croce Plays Croce. The tour is a 50th-anniversary celebration of the music and legacy of Jim Croce, A.J.’s father.

I Got a Name

After years of being a jack-of-all-trades, Jim Croce dreamed of finally becoming a full-time singer-songwriter. The dream started coming true in 1972. That was the year things turned around for the struggling musician who had worked several jobs to pay the bills. Now, however, all of that was changing.

In 1972, Croce released his third album, You Don’t Mess Around with Jim. Two tracks received significant airplay – the title track and the hit, “Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels).” He quickly followed up with another album, Life and Times, in January 1973 featuring the #1 hit “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.”

To support Life and Times, Jim went on a 45-date U.S. tour, chartering a Beechcraft E18S to fly him from venue to venue. On the night of Thursday, September 20, 1973, Croce performed a concert at Prather Coliseum in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Once he finished, he hopped on the plane headed for Sherman, Texas, and a concert at Austin College. Sadly, the plane crashed into a tree on takeoff from Natchitoches killing everyone on board. Croce was just 30 years old. Along with a string of hits, he also left behind his wife, Ingrid, and son Adrian James.

Photographs and Memories

Adrian James “A.J.” Croce was just eight days shy of his second birthday the day his father died. As one can imagine, except for a few photographs and his mother’s memories he doesn’t remember much about his dad. What he does remember, however, there always being music around. And its music that helped him not only cope with his father’s death but also with other tragedies in his life. Physical abuse by his mother’s boyfriend caused him to go blind at four years old. (At the age of 10, he did regain his eyesight in one eye.) However, he turned to music to get him through, becoming a piano prodigy and a songwriter, like his father.

Still, for most of his life, he was hesitant to play his father’s songs. Besides not wanting to hear the same old “like father, like son” clichés, A.J. wanted to carve his own path. As a result, barely in his 20s, he began his music career. Eventually, A.J. would find himself touring with the likes of B.B. King, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, and New Orleans’ own Allen Toussaint.

Ooh Child

The young Croce began to make a name for himself, touring across the country and gathering his own fan base. A mix of his father’s admirers and new and curious fans began to fall in love with his charm, piano virtuosity, and special treatment of classic cover tunes, like Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed” and the Five Stairsteps’ “Ooh Child.”

So what made A.J. finally want to cover some of his father’s songs? Well, a few years ago, he found an old tape his father had made. On it were old blues, country, and folk songs Jim had recorded. They were songs by Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, and Pink Anderson. Though A.J. had been playing the same songs since he was a child, he never before heard his father play them. As a result of discovering this tape, he felt a deeper spiritual connection and realized that there was more than just DNA he and his dad shared.

On the Croce Plays Croce tour, you’ll hear A.J. sing some of these songs as part of his setlist. And of course, he’ll be singing some of his dad’s songs too. However, don’t think it’s a night celebrating only the legacy of the elder Croce. The concert is actually a celebration of two generations of musicians, and A.J. will be playing his own songs, too.

Indeed, Croce plays Croce is than a catalog of songs of father and son. Audiences will be treated to little vignettes of the two musicians’ lives that share more than just the kindred of blood but also their love of music.

Croce Plays Croce makes one last Gulf Coast appearance at New Orleans’s Joy Theater. Tickets are available online or at the Joy Theater.                                                                                                                   🌊

Wherever you’re traveling along the Gulf Coast, be sure to bring plenty of Stuckey’s along with you.

After all, is it really a road trip without a Stuckey’s Pecan Log Roll? Order yours and all of your favorite Stuckey’s souvenirs, snacks, and treats from Stuckey’s online today.

The post Time Out of a Bottle: Croce Plays Croce in New Orleans appeared first on Go Gulf States.

As we careen into the holiday season with visions of pecan pie dancing in our heads, its a good time to reflect on the true origins of our many quintessentially American blessings. This is the story of an enslaved man, Antoine, the de facto grandfather of the American pecan industry. His story makes clear that our gratitude for innovations – the spoils of which we still enjoy today – must go to the man and not to the institutions that bound him and tried to bind his spirit. This breezy telling of “Antoine & the Pecan” was published prior to, but in the same year as a biography on the innovative gardener. Historian Katy Morlas Shannon‘s insightful 2021 biography, ‘Antoine of Oak Alley’ is a book we intend to feature on our pages again in the future.  – Editor

All of those Stuckey’s pecan log rolls we devoured as a kid (and, admittedly, still devour as an adult) may not have been possible without the work of one man – a 19^th century gardener slave from Louisiana named Antoine.

Back in the 1800s, pecans weren’t really new to the American diet. Native Americans up and down the Mississippi River from Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico were eating them for hundreds of years before Europeans first set foot on the continent. When the Europeans did come, fur traders carried pecans to help sustain them on their journeys from the wild frontier to the East Coast. In the 18th century, founding fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson planted pecans at Mount Vernon and Monticello, respectively, and it’s even said that George Washington always kept pecans as a snack in his coat pocket.

Over in Louisiana, there was a market for pecans and seeing this opportunity was plantation owner Dr. A.E. Columb who attempted to graft twigs from his luxuriant pecan tree that produced large, thin-shelled nuts in copious amounts onto other pecan trees. Like those who had tried in the past, Dr. Columb’s efforts were unsuccessful. Growing frustrated, he heard that there was a talented gardener right across the way at the Oak Alley Plantation. Columb went to pay Jacques Telesphore Roman, the owner of the plantation, a visit. Roman guided the doctor to his talented gardener, an enslaved man named Antoine. After meeting with Antoine and discussing his ordeal, Columb gave Mr. Roman a twig off of his best pecan tree, and, in turn, Mr. Roman gave the graftwood to Antoine. Thus, the ‘Centennial’ became the first variety of pecan that was successfully propagated by grafting.

Unfortunately, not much is known about Antoine other than he was a slave and a gardener and a very adept gardener at that. We know this because Antoine was the first person in history who learned how to propagate pecan trees. That is, Antoine knew how to make near exact copies of successfully producing pecan trees, thereby turning the pecan into a cash crop – not an easy task at the time. Then the American Civil War came along and nearly changed everything.

The post As American as Pecan Pie: The Incredibly True Story of Antoine & the Pecan appeared first on Go Gulf States.

We at Go! Gulf States choose to cover NASA in this decade and do the other things not just because they are cool, but because so much of what they do happens in Gulf states. Because that goal will show how much work toward our race for space occurs right here along the Gulf Coast. And because that challenge is one that we’re willing to accept. – Editor

Four astronauts are busy training for Artemis II, the first mission to carry humans on NASA’s powerful SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft. They’ve been testing systems to support life in deep space on future Moon missions and expanding the space frontier beyond Earth orbit.

In August, the crew – NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen – finished the first part of their training known as fundamentals, establishing a foundational knowledge of all SLS and Orion systems.

Home Sweet Space

The quartet began the process of learning every inch of their Orion crew module’s interior, which will serve as their home for the approximately 10-day flight test. They reviewed the building blocks for navigating the spacecraft’s displays and executing the procedures they will use to fly and monitor Orion. While some training activities included all four crew members together, other activities involved one-on-one sessions with trainers.

“The crew is making incredible progress. They’re getting ready for their flight as the first people to fly inside NASA’s newest spacecraft built for deep space,” said Jacki Mahaffey, chief training officer for Artemis II, based at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “Their training is preparing them to do everything from planned mission tasks and daily operations, to how to recognize and deal with unexpected situations.”

The post Artemis Crew Trains for Moon Mission Across 3 Gulf States… and Beyond appeared first on Go Gulf States.

Nunez administrators and facilities staff join landscaping contractors installing the first stanchion for the Voyage Mark II scale model solar system walking exhibit on the Nunez Community College campus in June. Nunez held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open the exhibit to the public in September.

“This is an effort to welcome everyone onto our campus to learn about our solar system, our opportunities here at [NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility], and here at Nunez as well,” said Nunez Community College Chancellor, Dr. Tina Tinney. “Nunez’s desire is to be a destination in learning, both inside and outside the classroom.”

Outer space was the focus during a day-long event Sept. 6 on the campus of Nunez Community College.

In addition to Jobs for the Future (JFF) hosting its day-long ‘Space Industries Workforce Strategies’ event, a summit dedicated to expanding apprenticeship opportunities at local space-focused industries, Nunez also hosted the official ribbon cutting for its Voyage Mark II scale model solar system walking exhibit.

The Voyage Mark exhibit spans the entire Nunez campus, marking all major celestial objects in our solar system with stanchions representing the sun, the nine planets, the asteroid belt and the Voyager spacecraft. The educational attraction is spaced to scale to give visitors to the Nunez campus a tangible idea of the distance between objects in our solar system.

Nunez plans to add more interactive elements to the Voyage Mark exhibit in the future. This new trail is one of just 14 in the United States.

The post Space Is the Place: Nunez Cuts the Ribbon on New Scale Model Solar System appeared first on Go Gulf States.

Fisherman’s Castle out at Irish Bayou by Kevin O’Mara from Flickr Creative Commons

Nobody can deny that there are countless incredible tourist attractions in Louisiana, but not all of them are known by the general public. In fact, some of the most beautiful places are completely ignored by most top lists you see online. The following hidden gems are some of the secrets Louisiana has that you should know. Check them out for some incredible memories and photo ops.

For example, there’s the “Little White Castle” aka “Fisherman’s Castle” on Irish Bayou and Liberty Lagoon in Baton Rouge for two.

So, go ahead and click through to see the full list of unexpected finds – the majority of which are in the southern part of the state in the Gulf Coast region – and make your plans to visit.

The post Six Off-the-Beaten Louisiana Detours for Some Last-Minute Summer Fun appeared first on Go Gulf States.

Last week marked the passing of vaunted Southern author, Willie Morris. Among his many encounters with literary success, a number of his works were made into motion pictures: ‘My Dog Skip,’ ‘The Ghosts of Medgar Evers,’ and ‘Good Old Boy: A Delta Boyhood’ (aka ‘River Pirates’). His son, David Rae creates his own photographic and filmic legacy while carrying on that of his father. In this 2018 piece, Via NOLA Vie’s Fowell Dunbar visits with the artist in his studio  – Editor

Willie Morris, the acclaimed author and publisher from Yazoo City, Mississippi, spent a lifetime spinning yarns about his home state. In works like My Dog Skip and North Toward Home, he captures the region’s unique people, places and events, warts and all. Like William Faulkner and Shelby Foote, he grapples with what he called ”the old warring impulses of one’s sensibility to be both Southern and American.”

His son, David Rae Morris, who lives in New Orleans, chose to tell a similar story, only using different mediums, including still images and video. Over the years, he has photographed the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf oil spill, Saints fanatics at Vaughn’s Lounge, jazz musicians, Mardi Gras revelers, athletes, local celebrities, friends and fellow artists. Most recently, he ventured up to his father’s old stompin’ grounds to shoot the documentary, Yazoo Revisited, which explores the legacy of segregation and integration in the Mississippi Delta.

According to David, “Both New Orleans and Mississippi are very complicated. They are suffused with both history and beauty, but at the same time, tragedy and cruelty. They are a photographer and filmmaker’s dream.”

The post Words & Photos, Like Father, Like Son: Willie & David Rae Morris appeared first on Go Gulf States.