BOCAGE COUNTRY CLUB HIGHLAND JEFFERSON TERRACE KENILWORTH PERKINS SOUTHDOWNS UNIVERSITY CLUB
ADVOCATE THE SOUTHSIDE
T H E A D V O C AT E.C O M
|
W e d n e s d ay, O c t o b e r 29, 2025
If you would no longer like to receive this free product, please email brtmc@ theadvocate.com.
1GN
Danny Heitman AT RANDOM
Halloween’s grim tidings make me love life all the more On morning walks, I’ve been watching a yard down the street where a graveyard is slowly blooming from the lawn. Each day, or so it seems, a new novelty tombstone has sprouted from the grass, part of a growing tableau that also includes plastic skeletons that offer me gruesome smiles. Halloween decorations this ambitious take time, and my neighbors have been adding to their display when they find spare moments. A few days ago, I spotted an open box in their carport with more grisly supplies for their work in progress. A bony white toe spilled from the edge of the cardboard container, and a slender skeletal finger beckoned from the far corner. The dome of a skull gleamed from within. For a man of a certain age, such morbid theater should be sobering, but I chuckle each time I stroll past the makeshift cemetery that appears each October a stone’s throw from my house. That’s the sly paradox of Halloween, I suppose. In winking at death, it sharpens our joy at the simple fact of being alive. Within my own yard, the season has brought gentler tidings of mortality.
STAFF PHOTO BY MICHAEL JOHNSON
Diesel poses with his handler, Mona Gills-Collins, left, and owner, Judge Louise Hines, outside the courtrooms at the 19th Judicial District Court in Baton Rouge.
A helping paw Meet Diesel the dog, a comforting service animal behind the BR court’s witness stand BY MARGARET DELANEY
W
Staff writer
PHOTO BY DANNY HEITMAN
A skeleton sports a snazzy bow tie as he greets visitors to a yard in south Louisiana in advance of Halloween. Our trees, increasingly bare, tell me that legions of leaves are dying as the year does. The annual leaf drop used to frustrate my ambitions for a perfectly manicured lawn, but my late neighbor, Zelda Long, taught me to change my priorities. Zelda had faced a few challenges that deepened her sense of what’s really important, and she urged me to stop fretting about fallen leaves. She’s been gone a dozen years now, but I think of her each autumn when the leaves
hen Diesel gets up in the morning — after eating his food, taking a stroll in the backyard and sniffing through the house — his day is just beginning. His day truly begins when he puts on his vest. Diesel is a 10-year-old Labrador and golden retriever mix who works at the 19th District Judicial Courthouse in Baton Rouge. The pup lives with Judge Louise Hines when he’s not in the office providing emotional support for children, adults, jury members, lawyers and judges in the courthouse building. With the gentleness of a golden and the intelligence of a lab, Diesel is spoiled rotten by all who see him in the courthouse. An overflowing basket of toys sits in the back room of the judicial offices, surrounded by desks and papers. Bright green tennis balls, stuffed Christmas elves, a torn-up turquoise blue llama and
PROVIDED PHOTO BY LOUISE HINES
Children from OMG, the Outstanding Mature Girlz conference, play with Diesel. The group was formed to create fun, informative public awareness platforms for girls in the Baton Rouge area.
frayed tug-of-war ropes lay piled up in Diesel’s designated corner. Hines originally had Diesel working in the District Attorney’s Office with her starting in May 2017. When Hines was an assistant dis-
trict attorney in Baton Rouge, she was working a case where a child was abused and needed to take the stand in order for the case to move forward. That day, Hines brought in her three-legged dog, Goose, who is now 16 years old and retired — and Goose worked his magic. The child in the case felt more comfortable. So Hines looked into official means of a trained facility dog to assist in more cases — that’s when she met Diesel. “I wanted the Eeyore of dogs,” Hines said, referencing the mellowed donkey character in “Winnie-the-Pooh.” “And Diesel was perfect.” Diesel is on loan from Canine Companions, a dog training agency that breeds Labrador-golden retriever mixes to become facility dogs. These facility dogs can work anywhere — at physical or occupational therapy clinics, special education courses, child life specialties or criminal justice placements. Courthouse Dogs Foundation, a
ä See DIESEL, page 2G
ä See AT RANDOM, page 3G
Do ghosts haunt the stage of N.O.’s Le Petit Theatre? A stage crewman is silhouetted against a backdrop while building the set inside Le Petit Theatre for the opening of ‘The Lehman Trilogy.’ STAFF PHOTO BY CHRIS GRANGER
BY ANNETTE SISCO Staff writer
When the curtain rises on a theater stage and a hush falls over the darkened seats, there’s a moment in which reality and fantasy seem to merge. That’s when theatergoers might sense a presence. Or, some might say, a ghost. Recently a reader queried Curious Louisiana about the spirits
rumored to inhabit the oldest, most historic theater in New Orleans: Le Petit Théâtre de Vieux Carre, a 324-seat, 1922 venue in the French Quarter. “Does Le Petit Theatre have … ghosts?” the reader asked. The answer is yes. Yes, of course it does. “John Grimsley, our technical director, has worked at the theatre on and off for a long
while, and he is well versed in the ghosts and ghost sightings,” Don-Scott Cooper, the producing executive director of Le Petit, wrote in a matter-of-fact email. On a recent morning, Grimsley was overseeing a crew of builders, preparing the set for the opening of “The Lehman Trilogy.” At 68, Grimsley has the bearing, and the beret, one would expect of a theater
ä See CURIOUS, page 3G