Danny Heitman AT RANDOM
In
springtime Louisiana, nature often crosses the threshold
I didn’t mean to start something when we replaced our roof in January. But our new set of shingles soon pointed us to other things that needed to be fixed: the rotting windowsill, the cracked siding, the lattice along a carport so frayed by the years that it looked like lace nibbled by moths.
So we’ve been writing checks to men who arrive in trucks, and they work their magic with lumber, caulk and paint
Looking around our place in these early days of spring, I sometimes feel as if our house is a grand old ship in drydock, getting its seams sealed so we can safely sail through the wet and wind of another Louisiana summer
What’s pleased me most I guess, was the arrival of our handyman, Bob, to refasten the threshold on our front door It had finally worked loose after bearing a million footsteps the back and forth of a family that has never quite decided which is best, going out or coming home.
Like most gifted carpenters, Bob loves a level surface and a straight line, and it was a joy to see him plumb up the threshold and secure it, with a perfect grasp of geometry, where it needed to go. He had, with this simple repair, clearly redrawn a boundary between outside and in, and I felt that some small part of my world made sense again.
Even so, I’ve lived in Louisiana long enough to know that when spring arrives, the border between outdoors and indoors is easily crossed. That thought came to mind the other day when I spotted a salamander, bright and brown
ä See AT RANDOM, page 2G
ATKINSON DAVIS, Toptoe Dancewear owner
How was the name for
Lake Providence settled?
BY ROBIN MILLER Staff writer
Think about the fog that sometimes settles just above the Mississippi River’s muddy water
Sometimes it happens in the morning, other times in the evening, and in the early 1800s, it obscured evil lurking behind its thick curtain. Now picture steady traffic of merchant boatmen on keelboats and flatboats transporting their 19th-century wares downriver from Ohio and Pennsylvania. Their adrenal glands had to be working overtime, especially when floating past the infamously labeled Bunch’s Bend in East Carroll Parish, named for a murderous pirate known as Captain Bunch and his gang.
Author Georgia Payne Durham Pinkston wrote in her 1977 book, “A Place to Remember: East Carroll Parish, La. 18321976,” that Captain Bunch and his “cut-throats” hid out in the old river cut-off, now known as Bunch’s Bend.
The perfect pointe shoe is found at this Baton Rouge dance store
BY JOY HOLDEN Staff writer
When young 13-year-old ballerina Merci Higdon walked through the doors of Toptoe Dancewear in Baton Rouge, she was greeted by classical music, chandeliers and a professional ballet performance on TV. Higdon, who played Clara in The Nutcracker — A Tale From The Bayou,” was there for a shoe fitting.
Owner Londyn Atkinson Davis, who took over the store in 2024, welcomed her in by name.
From pointe shoe fittings to shopping for dance clothes, Toptoe Dancewear has been a dance retail institution in Baton Rouge since 1985, when Shirley Brock opened it.
This is the fun part.”
FILE PHOTO Lake Providence’s port along the Mississippi River during lowwater days in 2012. Merchant boatmen considered the community a safe haven along the river
“He and his crew would lie in wait for flatboats going down the Mississippi River enroute to New Orleans,” Pinkston wrote. “The pirates boarded the boats, killed the crewmen and took their boats and goods.”
“It’s such a blessing. It’s so fun. And you’re still a part of dance,” said Davis, who was a Golden Girl at LSU, of running the store. “But everybody’s happy They all come in here for the same thing. They want to get dressed up. They want to get their new shoes
Toptoe specializes in dance shoe fittings, especially pointe toe shoes, because each shoe fits each dancer’s
Tami ParrinoPassman, left, asks how Merci Higdon’s shoe fits as her mom, Vanessa, watches on at Toptoe Dancewear
The boats were easy pickings, so the boatmen treaded lightly Bunch’s Bend was located approximately 10 miles north of the town of Lake Providence. Reader Baker Boyd inquired about how the town, which stands across the river from Mississippi just below the Louisiana-Arkansas state line, got its name. “My high school played basketball games in that area,” the Baker reader said. “I’ve always been curious as to how the town got its name.”
ä See CURIOUS, page 2G
STAFF PHOTOS BY JAVIER GALLEGOS Store employees Meia Starns, left, and Allye Covington try on pointe shoes at Toptoe Dancewear on March 5.
I quit Facebook and tapped into my real-life feed
BY SANDRA ZAID
Contributing writer
I quit Facebook eight years ago. I walked away with the solemn drama of someone abdicating an imaginary throne, like there should’ve been a tiny digital crowd gasping as I pressed “deactivate.” There wasn’t, of course; just me, my laptop and the uncomfortable realization that absolutely no one would notice.
Human Condition
For years, I’d been curating this strange museum of repetitive selfies, political rants, and birthday reminders for people I’m pretty sure I once met in the ’70s near a locker but couldn’t pick out of a lineup today
My feed felt less like real life and more like a reality show written by algorithms — faker than a puppy filter and somehow louder than an actual puppy
Why did I walk away from Facebook? At some point it hit me: I couldn’t possibly have 800 friends.
I can’t even keep five houseplants
alive. Maintaining all those “connections” was basically emotional juggling with strangers who vaguely remembered my last name.
I couldn’t possibly have 800 friends; I can’t possibly have 80 friends — true friends. So, I left.
I walked away from the drama of two middle-aged neighbors
engaging in a heated showdown over the exact height of their garage sale lawn sign.
I walked away from my aunt’s numerous noble charitable deeds. These were largely unknown and highly questionable.
I walked away from my twicemarried niece’s exuberant life in
and manager
SHOES
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Davis and her employees keep detailed binders of notes on customers’ preferences, sizes and unique needs. Parrino-Passman, the manager and pointe shoe guru, knows what each teacher at every school and studio in Baton Rouge prefers for their dancers and she uses that wealth of knowledge in each fitting.
After retreating to the back to the seemingly endless supply of pointe, ballet, jazz and tap shoes
— Parrino-Passman returned with two options for Higdon to try on.
“We want your metatarsals to be protected,” Parrino-Passman said as she presented Higdon with a new pointe shoe in a Russian style.
“I have to make sure that you can articulate the shoe. Let’s go to the barre, to that parallel first position.”
Higdon tested out the new shoe by following Parrino-Passman’s commands: Push up one point. Turn out. Pull the fifth position Step out to a second position and plié.
“It’s not that we do any kind of alterations, but every shoe is different. Like this shoe, one shoe goes two sizes up, the next shoe goes two sizes down. It’s all crazy Especially with pointe, it depends on how the foot is structured What foot’s gonna work with that shoe?,” Davis said, gesturing to all of the shoe boxes in front of her
From customer to owner
After graduating from LSU in 2023, Davis bought the store from past owner Denise Dobson. She has brought new energy and new customer service to the store, expanding the dance store’s reach around the country Through setting up e-commerce on the website, transitioning to a point of sale system, launching a
AT RANDOM
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my physical skills have improved with age, but I have gotten better, I think, at catching the wriggly things that tend to trespass into our house in the warm months. I’ve learned to stalk my quarry slowly, usually with a wash cloth or handkerchief
social media presence, custom designing costumes and bringing her Gen Z fervor coupled with an old-school work ethic, Davis has increased the business and brand.
“She has totally revolutionized the store,” said Vanessa Higdon, Merci’s mother who has been a faithful customer for over a decade. “She’s made it so much easier for us to order, which has been wonderful. She set up the whole computer system, which everything used to be handwritten.”
By the time she was in high school, Davis was a Silver Stepper at Parkview Baptist, and in college, she was part of LSU’s Golden Girls for four years. Competition, coaching and choreography were mainstays in her life.
Toptoe became another home for her during those 10 years of dance. As she was nearing graduation, she was nervous about what to do next.
“I still never thought this was ever an option. It never crossed my mind,” Davis said.
Three weeks later, she called Toptoe, and they let her know that the store was being sold. Dobson encouraged Davis to work at the store for a while to see if she was interested in buying it. If she didn’t, the store was likely to close.
“I started working and fell in love, and it happened really quick,” Davis said.
‘They grow up here’
Training for employees at Toptoe includes memorizing the different retail brands and shoe size variations.
Meia Starns, a former Parkview Baptist Silver Stepper who works at Toptoe, reflects on being a part of pointe fittings from the other side of the shoe. Parrino-Passman fitted Starns for her first pair of pointe shoes when she was in middle school.
“I remember sitting in the same
as a makeshift net
Chicago, New York City and Miami. I know she struggles to pay her bills.
Yes, I walked away from fantastic stories no one could believe. Party after party Perfectly made-up faces. Slender bodies and extravagant manicures. Expensive dinners and gourmet dishes. Very expensive wine. I walked away from it all.
I downsized my circle. Not in a minimalist, Scandinavianfurniture way — just in a “maybe I only need a handful of actual humans” way
I am downsized to my cellphone and to writing to the kind who texts back with words instead of cryptic reaction GIFs. When I stopped scrolling through other people’s lives like it was a never-ending soap opera, something weird happened. Time appeared. Whole stretches of it. Empty and quiet and a little terrifying, like when the power goes out and you suddenly hear your own breathing.
So, I started reading again. Real books. Sentences with beginnings,
CURIOUS
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A safe haven Chris Sanders, director of the East Carroll Parish Library branch in Lake Providence, says the town is named for God’s divine protection.
“If the boatmen could make it through that part of the river alive and without being robbed, they knew they were safe,” Sanders said. “So, they called that point in the river past the bend, ‘Providence.’”
Pinkston’s book points out that a trading post stood at Providence, where the boatmen could regroup. She adds that the merchants finally figured out a way to stop the slaughters.
“Eventually, a group of Kentucky flatboat crews tied their boats together and floated past the bend,” the author writes.
“When Bunch and his men boarded, the well-armed crews met them and slaughtered every pirate, making the river safe.”
middles and ends. I wandered into corners of the internet where people argued thoughtfully instead of exclusively in memes. My brain, which had been surviving on digital junk food, remembered what vegetables tasted like.
The whole exit was deeply uncinematic. No one begged me to stay No violins were playing. Facebook didn’t send a search party But I gained this small, miraculous thing: privacy Silence. The blissful freedom of not knowing what my former elementary school classmate had for breakfast.
And it turns out that not knowing everything about everyone is its own kind of peace. So yeah, I traded the digital circus for a quieter life. And honestly, it feels a lot more like mine. Zaid lives in Denham Springs.
Human Condition submissions of 600 words or fewer may be emailed to features@ theadvocate.com. Stories will be kept on file and publication is not guaranteed. There is no payment for Human Condition.
PROVIDED IMAGE BY BETTMANN/CORBIS Though this painting by J.L.G. Ferris, titled ‘The Capture of Pirate, Blackbeard, 1718,’ shows the pirate and his crew attacking at sea, a pirate known only as Captain Bunch made similar attacks on merchant vessels from a bend in the Mississippi River approaching Lake Providence.
Louisiana day and spotted a green lizard on one of our bookcases, as confident in his claim to the shelf as a volume of Hemingway or Proust. I’m no longer startled by the presence of a June bug
exact spot like it was yesterday and doing the same stuff that I ask girls to do now whenever I’m fitting them. It’s a full-circle thing, because I got to experience it, and now I get to give that experience to someone else,” Starns said.
When a ballet class from a local studio moves up to pointe, or dancers from a studio graduate to pointe shoes, Toptoe opens exclusively for those dancers and celebrates their first pair with pictures. Experiences like this make it memorable for Toptoe’s customers.
“This store is a combination of quality and knowledge, and it’s been a mainstay for my family They truly know what families need,” Vanessa Higdon said.
Allye Covington, another Toptoe employee, has been a customer since she was in high school in Shreveport. She and her family would drive four hours specifically for Toptoe shoe fittings. ParrinoPassman invited Covington to work at the store because of her knowledge.
“I told her we’d love for her to be one of our fitters, because she understands it from a practical standpoint. The little ballerinas we all adore, but pointe shoes are such a niche that you got to get that right. If you don’t, it’s just detrimental to the dancers and their ankles,” Parrino-Passman said.
Today Davis is comfortable with her career There’s something to being in the world of dance retail that fits her, she said. She wants Toptoe to be the place where dancers feel comfortable, too.
“We really try to make this neutral ground,” she said. “We don’t have favorites. A lot of these dancers grow up in this store. It’s their place. They may switch studios. They may switch schools, but they grow up here.”
Email Joy Holden at joy.holden@ theadvocate.com.
who’s made its way into the living room and is thrashing itself against a lamp. My wife has carried caterpillars in with the houseplants. She also brings in less prickly gifts, such as a branch of azalea blossoms she placed in an urn-size vase this month. The white flowers loom like the horn of a Victrola as we sip coffee, hinting that Easter will soon cross our threshold, too. Email Danny Heitman at danny@dannyheitman.com.
But as is the case with so many stories and legends, Pinkston points out a second story associated with the town’s name.
“The other account relates that when settlers moving westward from the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi to homestead reached this beautiful lake abounding with all kinds of fish and the woods filled with fruits and animals for food, they gave thanks to Providence for this bountiful supply,” she writes.
“Many of them searched no further, but made their homes here.”
Between the two stories, Pinkston admits in her writing that the pirates are more exciting And Sanders sticks to that story at the library because, well, the pirate tale has roots. The bend in the river north of Lake Providence is still named for Captain Bunch, and the 18-mile road trail near the town also bears the pirate’s name.
As for the boatmen transporting goods through the pirates’ gauntlet, they often were the same travelers who took the 500mile Natchez Trace north toward home, because their boats were built only to float downstream. They sold their boats for lumber in New Orleans, then hit the Natchez Trace by either foot or horseback, where they eventually faced a new set of bandits and criminals, which earned the route its nickname of “The Devil’s Backbone.”
But the boatmen were looking to God while on the river They were grateful to reach Providence, which was the town’s original name when its charter was adopted in 1812, the same year Louisiana became a state.
Yes, there was a Lake Providence, but that name applied only to the oxbow lake left formed when the Mississippi River changed course. The town, simply known as Providence, was forced to relocate more than a mile east from its original location bank in 1848 because of the river’s flooding.
A postal mix-up
Its name became an issue with the postal service in the early 1900s when mail from Providence, Rhode Island, began getting mixed up with that of Providence, Louisiana.
So, Providence, Louisiana, became Lake Providence. Still, residents referred to the town by both names. According to Pinkston, state Rep. J. Martian Hamley sponsored a bill in
the Louisiana Legislature in 1935 to officially rebrand the town’s name to conform with that on the Post Office: Lake Providence. Another interesting story about the town happened in 1863, when Gen. Ulysses S. Grant brought his Union Army for a visit to dig a canal to rejoin the oxbow lake to the Mississippi River This story is documented by a Louisiana state historical marker on the town’s Levee Road. Grant’s troops occupied the town, using it as a supply depot and base during the Vicksburg Campaign in 1862 and 1863.
Though Lake Providence is actually more than 40 miles upriver from Vicksburg, Mississippi, Grant developed what he thought would be a perfect strategy for bypassing Confederate troops on the opposite side of the Mississippi River
Grant’s canal
He “ordered the digging of a canal here to connect the Mississippi and Lake Providence,” Pinkston writes. “Grant planned to take the Federal gunboats through the Tensas (River) and other streams and bypass the guns of Vicksburg and approach the city from below.”
Troops worked under the direction of Gen. James McPherson from January to March 1863, when they breached the levee. The canal was 100 feet long and only 5 feet wide by that time. The Mississippi’s waters rushed in with such fury that it flooded the town, and McPherson immediately evacuated his troops to higher ground.
“Grant’s canal remained an open ditch and a breeding ground for mosquitoes until 1953,” Pinkston writes. “Sen. Russell Long, son of Huey P. Long, went to Congress at the urging of local people and introduced a bill to have the government fill up the canal. According to a report, Sen. Long remarked, ‘Since the federal government dug it, it’s only fitting that the federal government fill it up.’” The United States government complied, filling all but about 1,000 feet of the original canal, which can still be seen today from an elevated boardwalk and observation pier across Lake Street from the Byerley House Visitor Center The boardwalk also includes interpretive markers that tell the story of the area and provides a picturesque view of the oxbow lake.
Do you have a question about something in Louisiana that’s got you curious? Email your question to curiouslouisiana@ theadvocate.com. Include your name, phone number and the city where you live.
STAFF PHOTO BY JAVIER GALLEGOS Owner
Londyn Atkinson Davis poses with a pointe shoe at Toptoe Dancewear in Baton Rouge.
Students win medals at JewQ championship
Regional finalists from Baton Rouge brought home gold, silver, and bronze medals from the recent 2026 JewQ International Jewish Knowledge Championship
The delegation traveled to New York City to compete against fellow young scholars from 25 countries The contest is a Scripps spelling bee-style competition, but tests their Jewish knowledge. The Baton Rouge students outperformed 4,500 of their peers from across the globe.
The delegation was led by the Kazens of Juda Hebrew School
JewQ is a program of CKids International, Chabad’s global children’s network, reaching more than 200,000 Jewish children across 63 countries who do not attend Jewish day schools. In public school, many of them are the only Jewish students in their class, and spend months studying independently to earn their place on this international stage
DAR honors good citizens from high schools
Four area high school seniors were hon-
ored at the regular monthly meeting of the Baton Rouge Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution on March 16 at the Main Library at Goodwood
Jean Hamilton Chaudoir DAR Good Citizens chair, announced the following winners:
n Alex Michael Klumpp, St. Michael the Archangel High School
n Razia Kylee Rosenbrook, Baton Rouge Magnet High School
n Maximos “Max” Nextarious Tsolaskis, LSU Lab School
n Also honored was Elise Nexsina, Episcopal High School, who was unable to attend Rosenbrook was also named the DAR Good Citizens essay contest winner for the chapter She will now be considered for additional recognition and awards, including scholarships through the Louisiana State Society of the DAR.
The DAR Good Citizens Award honors high school seniors who exemplify four core traits: dependability, service, leadership and patriotism. These qualities must be demonstrated consistently in school, home and community life. The award includes certificates, lapel pins that may be worn on graduation robes and other gifts.
Chapter Regent Alice Wynn Welch Fresina congratulated the winners for their civic, academic and leadership achievements as well as for the outstanding essays submitted. Rosenbrook and Klumpp read their essays to the membership.
COMMUNITY
March Madness
BR DAR
With thousands of Shell men and women across thestate,we areworking everyday to reduce emissions, while increasing efficiencyinour operations
Our tomorrowdepends on whatwedotoday.Together, we arepowering progress forabrighterfuture. Louisiana is where we live andwe’re proud to call it home
PROVIDED PHOTO
The Broadmoor Methodist United Women in Faith hosted a mission event on March 21 titled March Madness Mission for Louisiana missions. Shown are, from left, Susan Lyle, Marsha Arrighi, Beverly Boudreaux, Daphne Toney, Christy Harelson, Ann Middleton, Carol Wiltz, Lenora Lockett, Cynthia Swanson and Sally Genovese.
PROVIDED PHOTO
Four area high school seniors were honored on March 16 at the Baton Rouge Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution’s monthly meeting Shown are, from left, Jean Hamilton Chaudoir, Alex Michael Klumpp, Maximos Max’ Nextarious Tsolaskis, Razia Kylee Rosebrook and Alice Wynn Welch Fresina.
PROVIDED PHOTO PEO Chapter C
PEO Chapter C members met March 23 at Tina Lamb’s home. Guest speaker Renee Nevils used silver pieces brought by members to determine authenticity and explained how to find this information independently Gathered are, front row, from left, Linda Talbot, Brenda Hutchinson, Lyn Taylor and Wanda Blakely; middle row, Lamb and Connie Shaver; back row, Barbara Brown and Rose Ann Martin.
