Many of us aspire to a life in the arts. For evidence of that, you only have to look at the massive popularity of long-running shows like American Idol and The Voice. Apparently, competitive sketching does not make  compelling viewing, so we don’t see TV shows about visual artists. But there are many people who have…

The tension between town and country has been around since the Industrial Revolution. It exists in every developed nation where there are cities. The fact is, cities depend on surrounding rural regions to produce food. And rural regions depend on cities to produce manufactured goods, even as basic to their survival as tractors and shovels. But because of…

One of the knocks we frequently hear about being an entertainer in Acadiana, is that if you don’t play Cajun or Zydeco music, you’re not going to work. If it’s true that the exception proves the rule, you’re not going to find a bigger exception to that rule than Flip Orley. Flip doesn’t play an accordion…

In 1994, a guy called Jeff Bezos was working in banking when he decided to start up his own business, selling books online. Most people thought that was a stupid idea, for two reasons. One, nobody would want to give a total stranger their credit card number. And, two, if you wanted to buy a…

You’re probably familiar with the saying, “Nothing personal, it’s just business.” People use it as a justification for doing something that’s going to advantage them, to the detriment of someone else. The underlying assumption is that wise-business-decisions and personal feelings are opposites. There’s nothing more personal than taste. So, how wise is it, when launching a business,…

The difference between men and women is a subject that’s been examined from perhaps the beginning of time. Whether you believe the conversation starts with Adam and Eve, or a couple of organisms crawling out of the primordial soup, commentary about what sets genders apart is the province of everyone from archaeologists to comedians. You’d be…

When we talk about a successful business, we usually talk about the idea behind it. We tend to do that because a single moment of inspiration is more exciting to talk about than the years of hard work it takes to build a business. But there’s also another quality that’s vital in making the leap from…

You’re probably familiar with the saying, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” At the same time that saying was coined in England, here in the United States, the sentiment was quite different. In 1790 the Federal Government passed the first Copyright Act, which made imitation illegal. We’re still in the process of working out exactly what…

You might remember a guy called Zach Barker. Zach used to be the director of the startup business incubator, Opportunity Machine. Zach had a basic business philosophy which he summed up in three words, “Get stuff done.” It sounds simple. But in reality, in business, the difference between success and something less is the ability to…

In Acadiana there are a lot of things that differentiate us from the rest of the country. The biggest of all of them is music. You can live in Kansas and learn to make a gumbo. You can live in California and row a pirogue. But there’s no way in the wide world that you…