The Fashion Institute of New Orleans, created in 2007, offers a rare opportunity for high school students in the Louisiana Recovery School District to get hands-on experience in the fashion and retail industry.

Since Katrina closed their local Winn-Dixie, Thomas and thousands of other residents of the Lower Ninth Ward have not had a single grocery store or supermarket in walking distance. This lack of access to fresh produce and foods has turned the neighborhood into what socio-economists call a “food desert. Today, efforts on several fronts are under way to bring healthy food to the Lower Ninth.

Three years later, the Smith family can find before and after photographs of their home along the Williams Gallery walls as part of the Historic New Orleans Collection’s recently opened exhibition, “Katrina +5: Documenting Disaster.”

With an estimated 200,000 gallons a day of oil continuing to leak into the Gulf of Mexico, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana said he has decided to take matters into his own hands.

Dr. Foots has softened the edges of his hard life. There was a time when he ran the streets and got into trouble, but now his wrinkled hands craft eccentric baubles.

The Philadelphia native, who was born John Booth, started making jewelry at age 8, but it took decades before he carved his niche as a sought-after artisan whose work adorns such celebrities as Erykah Badu.

Jamming to the “The Light” by Common with my Jamaican-inspired Skullcandy headphones and my first born child, my MacBook Pro named Bobby, I was hoping to find some kind of light on the location of this “nonexistent” jewelry maker, Dr. Foots, in New Orleans.

Sitting in the Duicef Building’s smart room, awaiting the next workshop panel, I looked down at my phone with excitement. It was Monday and in approximately three hours, the season finale of “Gossip Girl” would air on CW.
But then I realized I was here in New Orleans and, unless a television magically appeared, there [...]