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THE EAST JEFFERSON
ADVOCATE
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WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 4, 2015 H
METAIRIE • KENNER • HARAHAN • JEFFERSON • ELMWOOD • RIVER RIDGE THENEWORLEANSADVOCATE.COM
Lynne Jensen
Recipe for community tradition
Barbecue pitmaster shares history, hope in Central City
THROW ME SOMETHIN’
BY TIFFANY POWELL
St. Paul Lutheran marks 175 years During the past months, St. Paul Lutheran Church and School have been celebrating 175 of service to the Marigny community. Events will wrap up this weekend with a neighborhood block party from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and a second-line parade, candlelight worship and potluck supper from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday at the church, 2624 Burgundy St. at the corner of Port Street. Saturday’s block party will include a main stage with musicians, including Charmaine Neville, Jon Roninger, Ryan Gregory Floyd and Naydja Cojoe. Local authors, including Mona Lisa Saloy and Bill Norris, will chat about their works and sign books. Neighborhood champion awards will be presented to those making outstanding contributions to the community, including Eugene Cizek, Richard Campanella and pastors Robert and Sherdren Burnside. An interactive experience called The Music Box Roving Village will be presented, along with performances by St. Paul’s cheerleaders, drumming circle and gospel choir. A variety of food will be sold, and visitors can tour
grew up,” said Conyers, who was raised in Manning, South Carolina, and moved to LouiWhen Howard Conyers cooks siana to work at the Stennis barbecue, the recipe includes Space Center in 2009 after community traditions as well earning a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and materials scias pork and savory sauce. It would be hard for his ence from Duke University. A traditional South Carolina neighbors in Central City to miss the fragrance of a whole barbecue uses a whole hog, so hog simmering and crisping none is wasted. Smoke tenderfor hours over oak and hickory izes the tougher, less-desirable embers, in pits that Conyers meats that were accessible and his welder father built us- to those laboring as slaves or ing steel, sheet metal, cinder sharecroppers. “They couldn’t blocks and an old refrigerator. be selective to get ribs, pork “Barbecue is about commu- shoulder,” Conyers said. “They nity, a celebration; it’s how I used what they had.” Special to The Advocate
Photo provided by HOWARD CONYERS
Chef Linda Green, left, checks out Howard Conyers’ work during the New Orleans fundraiser for South Carolina families affected by recent flooding there.
A MELODY
Photos provided by New Orleans Women in Technology
Rajan Vyas, Monika Madhav and Nyasa Madhav build a tower with straw connectors.
Program allows girls to create with technology
Eva Jacob Barkoff
Advocate staff report
AROUND JEFFERSON
No chewing allowed: Shoe donations to help SPCA
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In the mood for
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If you have any extra pairs of gently worn shoes, the Jefferson SPCA could use them to raise money. All donated shoes will be redistributed throughout the Funds2Orgs, a network of microenterprise partners in developing nations. Funds2Orgs, based in Orlando, Florida, helps nonprofit organizations, churches and civic groups raise money for specific projects. And the proceeds from the Jefferson SPCA shoe donation fundraiser will be used to help start and grow businesses as well as to feed, clothe and house needy families in countries such as Haiti, Honduras and other developing nations. Shoe donations can be dropped off through Tuesday at five locations in Jefferson and Orleans parishes: the Jefferson Animal Shelter, east bank location, No. 1 Humane Way, Harahan; the Jefferson Animal Shelter,
“In the Carolinas, it might make some upset if they did not find a whole pig roasting,” Conyers said. “Barbecue strictly meant whole-hog barbecue, cooked over all wood. No Kingsford, gas, it was none of that.” Barbecuing a whole hog takes a lot of time and labor. “It couldn’t happen if everyone didn’t come together,” Conyers said. The results are worth it, however, creating a meal that can serve an extended family of 50 or 60 people. Everyone
Advocate staff photos by SHERRI MILLER
Jessica, June, 3, and Banks, 1, Lunsford play piano together recently at Audubon Park in New Orleans. Lafargue Pianos set up the instrument in the park for its ‘Let’s Play NOLA!’ campaign encouraging people to play music for the sheer joy of it.
Ashley Soleimani, Lily Adelzadeh and Jade Ku take a stab at ‘Heart & Soul.’
Children ages 4 to 17 and their parents worked together on technology-related projects during Bring Your Daughter to Hack Day, held recently at the University of New Orleans. New Orleans Women in Technology organized the event for the second year. Sponsorship by 365 Connect, UNO and GE Capital made the event free for about 75 children who attended. Boys were welcome at the event, but its specific purpose was to encourage girls to engage with technology at a young age. The kids and parents worked on one of four projects, targeted to different age groups, in which they dealt with fundamental concepts in engineering, coding and video production. About a dozen coaches from the New Orleans tech community were on hand to help. For children ages 4-8, the workshop was Thinkarella’s STEM Laboratory. Thinkarella provides hands-on experiments to inspire the next generation of makers, builders, shapers, doers and inventors. Cherie Melancon Franz, of New Orleans, created the program, which expanded to Mandeville this year. Like the other teachers at Bring Your Daughter to Hack Day, the teachers from Thinkarella donated their time, helping the younger children with activities including creating stars that twinkled with battery power and vibrating noise machines based on plastic cups. For children ages 8-12, the proj-
Monika Madhav and Nyasa Madhav make fingerprints. ect was the Electric Girls Work Bench, in which they explored the basics of electronic engineering, learned to use a soldering iron and experimented with circuit boards. They used a conductive dough to complete electrical circuits and light a bulb and used the vibration devices from cellphones to make small robots move. Electric Girls is a project of Flor Serna, who started it in 2014 in response to her experience as an audio engineer in a male-dominated field. Electric Girls meets Saturday mornings in the Idea Lab at St. Martin’s Episcopal School in Metairie. The cost is $600 for a 12-week session; scholarships are available. Children ages 11 and up had a choice of participating in the äSee TECHNOLOGY, page 2G