The Southeast Advocate (12/18/14)

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Girl Scouts launch online cookie sales in January ä PAGE 5G

THE SOUTHEAST

ADVOCATE

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THURSDAY DECEMBER 18, 2014 H

COURSEY • HARRELLS FERRY • MILLERVILLE • OLD JEFFERSON • PARKVIEW • SHENANDOAH • TIGER BEND • WHITE OAK THEADVOCATE.COM

We’ve got beads.We’ve got sunshine.We’ve got a parade.

Darlene Denstorff AROUND THE SOUTHEAST

DDENSTORFF@ THEADVOCATE.COM

Project Purr offers cats for adoption Project Purr Baton Rouge is hosting its weekly pet adoption program Saturday and Sunday at Petco, 1653 Millerville Road. Cats will be at the store from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Project Purr Baton Rouge is a nonprofit formed in 2010 to support the Companion Animal Alliance of Baton Rouge in stopping the euthanasia of thousands of adoptable cats each year at the community shelter. For information, visit www.projectpurrbr.org.

Jones Creek Area Business Associations’s Christmas parade king Daniel Rowe tosses candy to the crowd on Sunday.

Must be Christmas

Grand marshal Bodi White tosses a cap to the crowd.

Holiday movie at library

The Jones Creek Regional Library is hosting a movie night for youths and adults. The library’s TGIF Movie Day is from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Friday for adults. Relax from a hectic work week with a feature-length movie with a holiday theme. Popcorn and punch will be served. Call (225) 756-1180. Teen Movie Day starts at 2:30 p.m. Saturday. Celebrate the holidays by watching a hilarious movie about a man who was raised by Santa’s elves. Refreshments will be served.

Craft lessons for adults

If a movie is not your thing, visit the Jones Creek Regional Library Monday for craft night. Adults are invited to learn how to make a craft during the program, which starts at 6:30 p.m. Call (225) 756-1180. Contact Southeast Advocate Editor Darlene Denstorff by phone, (225) 336-6952 or (225) 603-1998; or email southeast@theadvocate.com.

A child reacts to passing floats in hopes of catching trinkets.

Advocate staff photos by JOHN OUBRE

A paradegoer grabs beads on Sunday as the Jones Creek area’s annual Christmas parade rolls down the street on Sunday.

Lab pairs self-reliance,cooperation in high school techies BY C.J. FUTCH

in her computer architecture class. “Try three before you ask Mi’Yana Solomon said she me,� John Richardson, who dinever considered herself a rects St. Joseph’s Academy’s techie. When she decided she Computer Sciences program, wanted to try to get a job with said. “When they run into a her school’s student-run com- problem, they have to try to puter help desk, she wasn’t solve it three different ways on sure how it would go, especially their own before they ask me when she learned the first rule for help.�

cfutch@theadvocate.com

It’s a way of thinking that can be a culture shock for a lot of students, said Claire Luikart, a 2007 graduate of St. Joseph’s who returned to the school after college as technology special projects manager. It can be intimidating, and not just because of the expectation of self-reliance. The all-girl Catholic high

school has a reputation for producing tech-savvy students, and the help desk and 3-D printing lab are run by the savviest. It’d be easy to assume that this kind of self-reliant attitude would limit collaboration, but, in fact, it tends to make the collaboration more sophisticated, because each student is required to approach problems in

a unique way, Richardson said. This way of learning gives each student a deeper understanding of each system they’re learning, he said, and that doesn’t apply just to the computer lab. “We take them to conferences and they give presentations. When the time comes to take äSee LAB, page 2G

Gingerbread houses more than just sweet treats for Southside woman BY C.J. FUTCH

cfutch@theadvocate.com

Advocate staff photo by C.J. FUTCH

Melissa Parrino adds peppermint detailing to her gingerbread replica of the Orangerie.

Melissa Parrino has many niches, but her daughter, Katie Guitreau, who works at the LSU AgCenter’s Botanic Gardens, agrees that baking is one of them. It goes a little deeper than just baking, though. Parrino builds gingerbread houses, and fairly elaborate ones at that. This year, as part of a group gingerbread-house-making workshop held at Guitreau’s workplace, Parrino created a foot-high edible replica of

a Burden property building known as the Orangerie — a former citrus greenhouse now used by the Botanic Gardens for events. The nonprofit organization recently renovated its kitchen, and Parrino admits she offered to teach the workshop partly because of the new kitchen space. “It’s so much roomier than my kitchen at home,� she said, nodding at the piles of candy of every possible shape, flavor and description that littered the kitchen island, along with long sheets of baked ginger-

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bread. “As you can see, this can take up a lot of room,� she said. Not to mention time. In reality, after the baking is done, you can have a house constructed and decorated inside a couple of hours. But as Guitreau, who follows in her mother’s footsteps when it comes to perfectionism, points out, “there’s always a little bit more you can do.� Parrino has been decorating and giving her houses as gifts during the holidays for decades, going back to her days as a cafeteria manager at

Magnolia Woods Elementary school. “I’d bake the gingerbread in the ovens at school, but I’d wait to put it together and decorate it until the kids were in the lunchroom. It became something to look forward to, for the students and for me,â€? she said. Each year, she would make a couple and, on the last day before Christmas break, give away the houses to students chosen in a random drawing. “They waited for gingerbread time,â€? she said. äSee GINGERBREAD, page 2G

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