Columns

With the heat of the summer upon us, we just want to find something productive to do and stay cool in the process. You can ‘think cool’ and take advantage of the heat and start planning ahead for the holidays. Grab a notebook, pencil, and a cool glass of lemonade, and get started with these tips!

Create your Calendar: Start by creating a holiday calendar that includes important dates such as family gatherings, parties, and other events to help you stay organized and prioritize your commitments.

Set a Holiday Budget: Your holiday budget should include expenses for gifts, decorations, food, travel, and any other holiday- related costs. A budget can help you stay on track, keep you from overspending, and even possibly prevent holiday debt altogether. No one wants exorbitant credit card bills in January!

Make Lists — and check them twice. This includes gift lists, menus, activities, and others.

Summer is here, and many of us have travel plans. But trying to stuff all those suitcases full of everything we need can bring tears to our eyes! Rather than start your vacation off with tears, use these handy tips to pack what you need, and possibly have room left over to bring back some fun souvenirs!

Plan Outfits in Advance: Consider the activities and weather forecast for your destination, and pack accordingly.

Pack Smart — Be Versatile: Choose clothing that can be mixed and matched to create multiple outfits, reducing the number of items to be packed.

Roll Clothes Instead of Folding: Rolling clothes instead of folding them saves space and minimizes wrinkles.

Use Packing Cubes or Compression Bags: These are designed to compress clothing items which maximizes the available packing space in your suitcase.

Eggplant Cubed

Or, more accurately, a tasty combination of three very good Eggplant recipes from my three favorite Recipe Books that I’ve had for years. Just out of curiosity I looked up Eggplant on Wikipedia and found out that it is generally believed to have originated in India but has be cultivated in southern and eastern Asia since prehistoric time.

We know it here in Louisiana as an excellent ingredient in a lot of Cajun recipes like Eggplant Seafood Casserole, Eggplant Dressing or as a meat substitute in Italian recipes like Eggplant Parmesan. Susan has had some White Eggplant vines growing in her back yard and they have all started coming in. I brought several home planning on doing a little research online on a good way to cook them. However, the cable crew was replacing lines in my neighborhood and my Internet was down. I remembered how much fun I’d had in the past researching recipes so I started breaking out my old recipe books.

Those of you who have followed this column over the past several years know my true historical love is local history with an occasional deviation. Up front this writer does not claim a great deal of knowledge in today’s subject — only love and interest. “A Brief History of the Holy Bible in English”. Being a Mason some 70 years we are exposed to the subject with the Knight Templars as the principal information source. J. Luther Jordan, of Mansfield and world leader of masons back in the mid-1900’s, could have done a much better jobs with this subject.

Hero Sandwich A Hero is a sandwich that is loaded with meat and veggies. The best part is you can tailor-make it to make your taste buds dance. The following lists are merely suggestions. You can add everything from the list or pick and choose according to your preferences.

For the bread you need a long baguette- style loaf. Long loaves in the grocery stores are usually 18” to 24” in length. If you would like your sandwich to be longer, consider making your own. You can use any flavor of bread. French, Italian, and some of the Artisan breads work well for this.

Measure the interior of your oven. Make your loaf at least 4” to 6” shorter, to allow for air circulation. Remember, you need a sturdy loaf to hold up under the weight of the filling.

It is assumed that if you are a weekly follower of this column that you are patriotic and would enjoy a better understanding of “The Great Seal of America”. On July 4, 1776 after voting to approve the Declaration of Independence the Continental Congress advanced the following resolution “Franklin, Adams and Jefferson be a committee to develop a seal of the United States of America”. Of these three founders two suggested a seal of biblical images. While we celebrate the Declaration of our Independence the seal was formed at the same date and has all but been forgotten as a 1776 document. The Continental Congress adopted the Great Seal at the same time.

Bat-Thirty

A long time ago my friend Butch Golsan and I came up the phrase, “It’s almost Scotch-Thirty”, meaning time to get the Club Soda and Dewars Scotch ready. I’m applying it now to that special time late into dusk when there is still dim light in the sky and the sun is almost gone but it’s dark in yards and woods. This is that brief and brittle time when you can spot a few bats swooping and scurrying across the evening sky. If you’re lucky that is because I haven’t seen any for a long time until just last week.

Many of us wake up in the morning, go to work, attend to our daily list of things to do, and go to bed at night without giving a single thought to the freedom we have in this country to do just that. When someone asks us how we will be celebrating the Fourth of July, our thoughts go to picnics in the park, watching colorful blasts of fireworks explode in the night sky, or enjoying a day off from work to get some housework and errands done, or to go to lunch and shopping with a friend.

But our minds are on how we will spend the day (and some of are wondering how we can get away without sampling Aunt Betty’s awful tasting potato salad), without considering those activities are actually luxuries we can only afford because of the dedicated men and women who fought so bravely to preserve the freedom we have.

There are certain incidents in history that we should be reminded of from time to time before they are forgotten. The Berlin Wall is this type of historical fact and our youth should be taught of it so they will know.

The end of World War II left Germany divided into two sections — the West was Democratic under the U.S., Britain and France and the east was Communist under the Soviet Union. The city of Berlin, Hitler’s old capital of Nazi German and located deep in the eastern part of Germany, was divided into East Berlin and West Berlin.

There are some stories of old that should never be lost. They should be told to our children and grandchildren. The following true story that occurred following the Battle of Mansfield is just such an incident that sheds light on a familiar subject possibly in a different respect. During the Battle of Mansfield, one of the bloodiest in the war and last major victory of the Confederates, General Taylor ordered the La. Crescent Regiment forward to attack the 130th Illinois led by Major Reid. The Yankees were behind a rail fence and as the rebels charged Gen. Mouton, Col. Beard, Lt. Col. Clack, Major Canfield and seven of the ten Captains were killed along with 55 Rebel soldiers and 150 wounded. Prince Camille de Polignac, a French born aristocrat, took charge and defeated the 130th Illinois Regiment.