A New Swamp Fire

A New Swamp Fire
The Oxford American
March 15, 2015

Since their inception more than a decade ago as a band of teenage musical wunderkinds, Feufollet has been leading a revival in Cajun music and bringing the traditional tunes of Acadiana to a wider audience. Their last album, En Coulouers (2010), earned a Grammy nomination and a nod from Elvis Costello, who called it “the most beautifully melodic album I’ve heard all year.”

In the years since, the members of Feufollet—which means “swamp fire”—have been pursuing diverse musical careers and retooling the band after the departure of former lead singer Anna Laura Edmiston, who ran off to join the circus, literally. (Edmiston left the group under amicable terms in 2012 to tour with Cavalia: Odysseo, a theatrical circus created by one of the founders of Cirque du Soleil.)

Next week, Feufollet will release Two Universes, their first album in five years. The album debuts vocalist and fiddler Kelli Jones-Savoy, as well as a strikingly different sound: less accordion and more honky-tonk. It signals a radical departure from the Cajun music tradition on which Feufollet built their identity and is the first of their albums not sung entirely in French. Although Jones-Savoy displays a brilliant bilingualism, her roots are in the old-time music of North Carolina, and this translates into her songwriting.

And Two Universes is a showcase for songwriting. Feufollet’s earlier albums relied heavily on the band’s arrangements of traditional Louisiana tunes, while this album features their own songs almost exclusively. For those of us who have enjoyed their music without ever comprehending a word of the French, it is a pleasure to finally be able to appreciate their talents as lyricists, as in the duet “Red Light,” where Jones-Savoy and Feufollet co-founder and frontman Chris Stafford trade off harmony and opposing viewpoints:

I saw an end, but you saw a start
I declared it over, thought I had played it smart
But you built a castle from all that fell apart
I saw an end, but you saw a start

I was curious about the story behind this new project, so last month I spoke by phone with Jones-Savoy and Stafford. I caught them at Stafford’s music studio in Lafayette, getting ready for a spring tour.

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Ingredient: Rum

The Ingredient: Rum
Avenue Edmonton
January 2015

Rum is experiencing a spike in popularity, not just in the glass but on the plate as well. But whether you sip it, marinate your chicken with it or bake it in a cake, there is so much more to this liquor than tiki drinks and pirates.

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Wendy Posts It

Wendy Posts It

Wellesley

Autumn 2014

The Wellesley network went into high gear when it moved onto Facebook. On “community,” alumnae dole out advice, provide support through crises, and form lasting bonds. And then there are the stories that are the stuff of legend.  

Alice Kunce ’05 had never been so scared. Her younger sister lay in a hospital bed with the deathly pallor of a wax figure. Ellen, then 21, had been born with a malformed heart and had undergone numerous surgeries, including the installation of a mechanical valve when she was 10. Because of her sister’s condition, Kunce and her family were no strangers to hospitals. But this time was different because the doctors didn’t have a plan.


A bacterial infection had sent Ellen to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia with sudden congestive heart failure. In such cases, antibiotics would typically kill the infection, but Ellen had proved allergic to the standard class of medicines. The physicians said that if left untreated, the infection would slowly kill her.

Ellen’s doctor, a young, bleary-eyed resident, had given her the hospital’s last dose of streptomycin, an older antibiotic normally used to treat tuberculosis in the developing world, and it seemed to be working. However, as the doctor informed Kunce and her family, he was unable to get any more.
“What do you mean you can’t get any more?” screeched Kunce. “This is one of the top cardiac-care facilities in the world.”

“I mean, this drug is not available,” the doctor told her. “We don’t have it. We can’t get it. You can even put it on Facebook, but this medicine does not exist.”

But “put it on Facebook” is just what Kunce did. On the group called Community for Wellesley Alums in Withdrawal, which had been started a few months before, Kunce posted a message that began: “***Who has drug connections??***” After explaining her sister’s situation, she closed, “I am reaching out and activating the Wellesley Network!! Please, crosspost as necessary!!! Streptomycin. 1 gram per vial. 1 vial per day.”

Then she went to sleep.

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The Expert: What I know about ... Diamonds

The Expert: What I know about ... Diamonds
Avenue Edmonton
May 2014

If you've never seen a diamond in the flesh, Graham Pearson can describe them in detail

Who: Graham Pearson
Age: 48
Job: Geologist

Experience: He has been chased by polar bears in the Northwest Territories, ostriches in South Africa and a nine-foot-long cobra in Namibia — all while in pursuit of diamonds. As the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Arctic Resources at the University of Alberta, he routinely travels the world gathering samples from deep inside the earth’s crust that tell him how diamonds form, where they come from and how old they are.

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Perfect Vision

Perfect Vision

Avenue Edmonton
April 2014

Two globetrotters create a home base that keeps them coming back, no matter where they go

Sitting in Larry Louie and Joanna Wong’s sleek living room in Rossdale — carefully curated with their collection of fine art, photographs and artifacts collected on their travels — you might feel you were sitting in the lobby of an international  boutique hotel.

But that’s just what these consummate globetrotters were looking for in a home. In addition to being an optometrist, Louie is an award-winning documentary photographer and, over the years, his work has taken the couple to places like Nepal, Tibet, Jordan, Mali and Indonesia, just to name a few.

“The minimalist look, simple lines — that’s what inspired us to create a more modern-looking house,” explains Louie.

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The Grand Experiment

The Grand Experiment
Wellesley
Winter 2014

Can what’s special about Wellesley classes be translated into digital courses for thousands?

Last September, for the first time in 10 years, I enrolled in a Wellesley class. But instead of walking across the leaf-strewn green and through the doors of Pendleton East, I logged on to Anthropology 207x from my home computer, while balancing a baby in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

For the next several months, my newborn daughter and I, and roughly 19,250 other people around the world, participated in the College’s grand experiment in online education. In the past two years, higher education has been shaken to its core, and those vibrations have been felt even in the hallowed halls of Wellesley College. And it’s all because of a little four-letter word: MOOC (rhymes with “spook”).

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The New Evolution of Dinosaurs

The New Evolution of Dinosaurs
New Trail
Autumn 2013

Work by researchers based at the U of A has challenged many basic assumptions about dinosaurs while greatly expanding the number of known species

On an afternoon in May, drivers zip down Anthony Henday Drive in Edmonton and children race home from school, all unaware that, in a wooded creek bed just a few hundred metres away, U of A paleontologists and about a dozen students are busy unearthing treasures buried nearly 73 million years ago.

This site, just a few minutes’ drive from campus and not far from the Century Park LRT station, is one of the university’s best-kept secrets: a graveyard containing the remains of at least a dozen dinosaurs.

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Dinosaur Hunters
Meet four researchers at the U of A who are changing the way we think about dinosaurs

Unearthing a Pack of Albertosaurus

When Phil Currie floated down the Red Deer River in the summer of 1996, he wasn’t intending to change our very ideas about the makeup of dinosaur social networks. He was just on the trail of a good mystery.

His research in the archives at the American Museum of Natural History in New York had turned up important evidence from a 1910 field expedition in southern Alberta led by the famous bone collector Barnum Brown. On that one outing, Brown had uncovered a bonebed with bones from nine different Albertosaurus, a type of tyrannosaur, making it one of the biggest finds in paleontological history.

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