Author Archives: michaelpatrickwelch

Picture this: you’re stuck in a time warp, which forces you to re-experience the same rehashed ideas over and over and over and over. Maybe until someone gets it right? Or perhaps no one ever will. Do you keep watching? … Continue reading →

During times when traditional farmers can be found working their soil, Brandi Shelley and her father and brothers are out on the water on Bayou Hertesa near Port Sulpher, Louisiana, tending to dripping wet cages full of growing oysters. “The summer is the busiest season for … Continue reading →

Having run out of well-recommended Netflix products to consume, I poured myself a thick bubble bath and a glass of rosé. I lay down in the warm water to watch comedian Amy Schumer’s new stand-up special, Growing. Many had written … Continue reading →

On the drive out to my young daughter’s Montessori school in the New Orleans suburb of Chalmette each morning, she became fixated on some funny voices emanating from my radio. I’d randomly tuned into the Walton and Johnson show, a … Continue reading →

FROM HER OFFICE OVERLOOKING FRENCHMEN, New Orleans’s most musical street, Jan Ramsey commands OffBeat magazine, which has reported on the city’s music scene in painstaking detail for three decades, promoting musicians who might otherwise never receive a lick of press. Ramsey, who … Continue reading →

All photos by Rick Olivier Recreational charter-fishing captains don’t elicit the same sympathies given to, say, fleets of weather-beaten men eking out a living harvesting oysters from the punishing seas. Over the last several decades, many have abandoned commercial fishing … Continue reading →

Until last year’s removal of New Orleans’s Confederate statues made national news, Mayor Mitch Landrieu was largely unknown outside of his city. Today, he’s the latest Democratic flavor of the month. Landrieu followed up the release of his new book, Standing in the … Continue reading →