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The Saint James Parish Libraries are proud to announce the successful conclusion of our 2025 Summer Reading Program, “Jazzed Up: Decades of Discovery.” Over the course of eight weeks, families, children, teens, and adults from across the parish participated in a vibrant celebration of literacy, creativity, and culture. Each week was themed around a different decade, from the 1920s through the 1990s, giving residents a chance to learn and play through the lens of the past.

Happy Birthday wishes to Beulah Jackson on August 2nd. Love, from your family and friends. Happy Birthday wishes to Shia Jenkins on August 8th. Love, from your family and friends.

LAKE OF THE PILGRIMAGE OF CATS: The front page of the Friday, February 22, 1952, edition of The River Parish Journal had a picture of Governor Earl K. Long looking over an advance copy of the Louisiana issue of Holiday magazine. The March edition of that publication devoted 25 pages of text and 35 photographs of Louisiana. On the cover of the magazine was a full-color photograph of a cypress swamp at the Lake of the Pilgrimage of Cats, Marksville. That is new to me. I’ve never heard of that before. Does anyone know more about that? Two local fishermen, Cyril and Myril St. Romain, were photographed in the magazine. The magazine editors also write: “You haven’t seen your USA until you’ve met this moon-dipped and myth-haunted Dixie belle who bosses man-sized industries and whips up meals that are too good for a king.” The spiritual quality of the state is summed up in one paragraph of the article, “She’s the strange sister of the family, this State of Louisiana—the Frenchy one, never quite accepted in the household of the South, and yet never denied, because she is so rich and so different, and so much fun.”