Danny Heitman
Baton Rouge Advocate
Baton Rouge, LA, United States
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Past articles by Danny:
In Louisiana, good food and good talk go together
As a child of Louisiana, I learned early that in this part of the world, we’re champion eaters and champion talkers. But only recently did it occur to me that → Read More
Lent a time to slow down and pay attention
If Lent were put before a focus group, I’m not sure that the feedback would be encouraging. A season touched by reflections on mortality doesn’t sound too appealing. → Read More
Spring in Louisiana brings gifts too big to ignore
A friend in Georgia sees the annual blooming of Carolina jessamine as the brightest sign that spring is on the way. → Read More
A winter sycamore teaches me again that emptiness can be a good thing
A few days ago, I found myself thinking again about our old sycamore, which usually manages to bare its big canopy by the close of each January. → Read More
For a lesson in abundance, I watch backyard birds
In the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when lockdowns kept many of us at home, I focused more on life just beyond my window. With my work and social → Read More
For a Louisiana gardener in winter, the best tool is hope
The approach of Christmas in south Louisiana last month seemed, at first glance, like a poor time to think about gardening. An arctic blast had plunged the mercury below freezing, → Read More
In the bleak midwinter, I sample the lives of the great
In my south Louisiana Catholic childhood, youngsters were encouraged to read about the lives of the saints to learn how to be good. I still have on my living room → Read More
Christmas promises that everything broken can be whole
As we decorated the house for Christmas this month, I made sure a bottle of glue was close at hand. We pack our decorations carefully each year, but time takes → Read More
At an autumn class reunion, I found being together was better than Facebook
We were at my wife’s high school reunion last month when Kelly, her fellow alum, discovered that his smartphone was missing. “I’m not worried,” he told us with a shrug. → Read More
Acorns remind me that in broken times, life tends toward renewal
The Christmases we find in greeting cards and TV specials is invariably a New England holiday, one touched by pointed firs and blankets of snow. Each December, when I want → Read More
For a true Louisiana Yuletide, how about a Christmas tree studded with camellias?
Last December, at my wife’s suggestion, we harvested a bowl of camellia blooms and placed them at the center of our holiday table. Their hearty blaze of color, more vivid → Read More
Waiting for purple martins, I remember Carter Russell Lee
I’ve interviewed hundreds of people in a long journalism career, and Carter Russell Lee is among the standouts. Lee, a retired Exxon employee who lived in Baton Rouge, was celebrated → Read More
Mystery solved: Vandals at my birdfeeder really were raccoons
A couple of weeks ago, I got a head start on Halloween by sharing a story here about mysterious visitors to my yard after dark. As I mentioned then, autumn → Read More
In an age of Zoom, I wonder about the future of mentors
Summer reading, as we all know, is something we’re supposed to do just for fun, with no real aim to learn a big idea or ponder an important question. → Read More
For my late mom, Queen Elizabeth was a fellow grandmother
When my wife and I visited London in 2019, our rented flat was pretty spare, though someone had left an umbrella near the door in a humble nod to hospitality. → Read More
A summer garden reminds me that beauty can grow from loss
While writing about Chris and Sharon Werner’s backyard in 2003, I learned a lesson about gardening and life that I’ve tried to keep in mind each time fate throws me → Read More
LSU's Jerry Ceppos perfected the art of gratitude
As the longtime dean of LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication, Jerry Ceppos recognized how deeply online culture had changed the way people connect. He devoted a good bit of → Read More
As another summer closes, my reading plans meet reality
Thanks to The Wall Street Journal, which publishes a front-page feature each day on quirky cultural happenings, I recently learned about a Japanese inn where lodgers can pay to have → Read More
David McCullough's message still needed in Louisiana
The death this month of bestselling historian David McCullough at 89 made me think of our first meeting in 1995 — an exchange that didn’t start out on a promising → Read More
Danny Heitman's 'At Random': Resolving again to act locally
This year, my wife and I spent some time and money on several home improvement projects, decisions we’re happy we made. With age, though, I’m slowly learning that any home → Read More