Well, that is absolutely true.

And I can't know that he told that joke and I took that joke and modified it to to suit the purpose of the presentation.

So I've always appreciated that that that church is not in the televised version of the show.

I got left on the cutting room floor, but I want to I want to reintroduce to people because they're very special.

This presentation you heard Linda mention and Kathy Berry introduced, sitting with C.C.

today.

But really the three of us were kind of the team that put this together.

Kathy had worked for me, as many of you know, every year that I was in elected office and since retired, but came back to help with some of the research for the program and help us select photos for the coffee table book that is for sale in connection with the show.

And Linda, of course, is the executive producer to help out.

And she's the real brains behind the television version of this on the presentation.

I do love it's pretty much me talking for 3 hours, a lot of music and you can't do that in TV.

You have to have other things.

And Linda was really the genius behind putting other things together.

So I'm glad some of you have seen it.

It's going to be on again on March 1st and second, 7 to 9 on LP, so you'll be able to see it again.

Somebody asked me, how do I get a copy of it?

DVDs are for sale when you watch the show, as is the coffee table book, which is a whole other story that we did during the course of the year with a fascinating photographer who has traveled around the country documenting the state, and all of her work is dedicated to the Library of Congress.

So everybody in the world can have access to the 100,000 plus photographs she's taken and all the photographs that are in the book that accompanies the presentation are available free and free of charge.

So that's a nice little, little add on.

But it was a lot of fun to put this together.

And so let me dispel one myth right at the outset not to put down on Mississippi at all.

Could have called it while Louisiana, Missouri, Louisiana, New Jersey, but just sounded better while Louisiana, eight Mississippi.

And the answer to that is pretty simple.

We have for a couple of reasons.

We have no ethnic majority in Louisiana.

About 40% of us are white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, about 32% are African-American, and 28% are everything else, primarily French, Spanish, Creole, living predominantly in south Louisiana and Catholic.

And that's what makes us unique, as well as the fact that the Mississippi River empties into the Gulf of Mexico through only one state, ours.

And it creates a lot of economic opportunities for us and a lot of identity and significance for the state of Louisiana.

So what I wanted to do today was not tell you what's in the show.

Some of you have already seen it and some of you may hopefully watch it another week or two.

So I'm going to go over some things that literally got left on the cutting room floor, some things that I would like to have had in the show.

But we just didn't have time in all the 4 hours.

But before I do that, because show you about a five minute clip of highlights from the show, you'll recognize some faces in here that are actually in this room, that are that are part of the presentation.

You in Louisiana is a human gumbo that exists nowhere else in America is found in predates the 13 colonies.

And it's we've obviously come from European and African roots that gave rise to its existence more than five centuries ago when New Orleans, not Ellis Island, not even before, was the gateway to the new world.

It's the culture.

70% of your body is just through the hole in the center.

Oh, no, it's a big one.

You're not going to be all that you don't know.

But the food, the news, the cultures, we kind of learn all that together.

And, you know, people are finding out.

I talk about that we are all here on a warm up.

We had a typical day cooked up General Will in the morning at 630.

Our normal people listen to the radio.

It comes over the radio because there has been shot.

Find out it was myself and a couple of technicians in the room.

I had never seen a dead man before, but it sure as here I am picking up the body of the president of the United States, laying on the table and helping get dried blood.

All it it's so important.

And we feel that people understand the reality and the truth of location.

They were real places and there were also places where African-American culture was created with barbed wire continuing to home, home to make sure that when people visit plantations, that they are getting the full experience, especially the people that were enslaved, who maybe not a lot of people in Louisiana, I don't believe that we have a Buffalo herd right here, actually.

So we're we've got to realize that there's food that we recognize here in the state of Louisiana and down here in the corner of southwest Louisiana.

And I understood that if you mean that during the sale of our whole grains and all of those to provide the kind of care we need for children that are down and blind, our little Asian farm, highways, hospitals, schools, okay, I'm for it.

This is by saying I will not for change.

I will not compromise, you know, And so having just kind of let that stop, that soul food flavor, I want to put just a moment for the stomped out of the room chef with a little something that they think it's a Cajun Creole dish.

It's really a dish that's represented on everybody in the country and in world brewing.

What is that?

While we kind call the Louisiana population our gumbo, if you didn't know how to make meatballs, by the time you were five years old, maybe you're out of town for 40 years after the whole, but always beautiful and really big in civil war.

Remember when you were given the name the Soul Queen in New Orleans, you decided that you're back within the only place that people are and for whom.

Now we're on our TV watching college baseball.

It feels like people should know more about your contribution to Louisiana.

It's kind of a big deal.

Disproportionate impact on music and sports and for our size of our population.

The impact Louisiana made on the world is unparalleled.

You hungry?

You go down to the Gold Coast, people down on my name.

Are we?

You recognize Richard?

Of course.

Part of the story we're trying to tell was about the fascinating mix of cultures that have come to America through the port of New Orleans and settled in Louisiana, but also the disproportionate impact that a state our size about midway in population in America has had on so many different aspects of American life and how we've influenced or been a part of so many special moments like what Richard was able to experience.

So I want to go through a couple of things for you that that didn't make the show.

And I start with sports because sports is a big part of our lives and one of the things I hate is that there is no Pete Maravich in the show, and that was because we had to really go through what we're going to do to force everything into 4 hours.

And we were going to put Pete well, we talked about basketball because a lot of talk about basketball or we're going to put him or I talk about the Serbs or the influence of Croatians on Louisiana because Maravich there four generations are witches and sons of bitches that have been oyster drummers in Baton Rouge.

And Maravich was one of those imported ones, but we couldn't fit him in there.

And I hated that.

Louisiana, a Louisiana and an adopted Louisianan are the names on two of the most significant awards in sports, the NFL Coach of the year is name for Eddie Robinson from Baton Rouge coach to Grambling and the NCAA Coach of the year in baseball is named for our adopted son, Skip Bartman.

Didn't mention any of the sportscasters the impact it Louisiana's had on the sportscasting world.

When you think about names, you're going to recognize, obviously, Tim Brando, Bryant and Greg Gumbel, both from New Orleans.

And if you watch television sports nowadays, ESPN, SCC Network, all of what you see.

You got Marcus Spears, you got Booger McFarland, you got Ryan Clark, all of the analysts.

Terry Bradshaw has been at it for quite a while, obviously from Shreveport, Kaylee Hartung from Baton Rouge.

Now a female commentator.

And an interesting little tidbit, if you watch the NFL, I know many of you in this room do, and you hear these expert referees now.

Now we've got commentators that are referees that tell you what the flag ought to look like.

Terry McAuliffe, you should recognize Terry Macaulay's name a Louisianan, grew up in Hammond and not actually born here, but grew up in Hammond, went to Southeastern, graduated from LSU, lives in north Louisiana.

Now he is one of the deans of NFL officiating and is one of the main folks on TV.

You'll see him today.

Speaking of the NFL, the NFL gives an award, The NFL Man of the year, it's been given every year, most recently has been named after Walter Payton since about the year 2000.

Since 2000, there've been 22 winners, NFL man of the year, five of them are Louisianans.

Peyton Manning, Eli Manning, Warrick Dunn from here in Baton Rouge, and the last two winners in a row.

If you watch the Super Bowl, Andrew Whitworth and Dak Prescott.

Dak Prescott from Whorton in north Louisiana.

So the NFL Man of the year two years in a row has been a native Louisianan.

And I mentioned Pete all time leading scorer in basketball history.

But this is one of the more fascinating tidbits that didn't make the cut.

The all time leading scorer in American high school basketball is a guy named Greg Pro Protocell, who played from for Barb in Northwestern part of the state.

Same vintage time.

I'm Johnny English and I were playing at Baton Rouge High in the 1970s.

I remember him well.

We didn't play against him.

He is the all time leading scorer in American high school basketball history.

Number two and number three are from the same area as Greg Purcell.

It's about a 100 mile area.

You draw a circle around and the top three scorers all time in high school basketball are Louisianans.

Some of you may remember guy's name, Bruce Williams.

He went to play at fluorine.

Jackie Moreland, an older guy from Mendon, Louisiana, played at Louisiana Tech.

Pretty a pretty impressive impact on the world of sports, not to mention what you'll see in the show.

We really didn't have time to delve into Louisiana literature as much as I would have liked to.

We have Ernest Gaines in the show.

We have my favorite, James Lee Bach in the show.

But listen to some of the authors from Louisiana who deserve mention in a show like this, but who have had, again, a disproportionate impact on on American literature to Harry Williams, Robert Penn, Warren, both professors at LSU for long periods of time.

Ana Bontemps was a leader of the Harlem Renaissance Movement in New York and Louisiana.

Kate Chopin, one of the first female writers who was actually had the audacity to write about liberation of females of women is a Louisianan.

Rebecca Wells from Alexandria wrote Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, which I'm sure some of you or your wives have read or heard about.

Helen Prejean wrote the book Dead Man Walking, that became an in a very famous movie.

And Robert Harling wrote and directed Steel Magnolias, which was long before we had a movie tax credit in Louisiana, was a very impactful movie on American society.

And those are just the ones who didn't grow up in New Orleans.

Listen to the list of folks who are from New Orleans in the literary world.

Walter Isaacson in modern day fabulous writer Tennessee Williams and Walker Percy both spent a lot of time in New Orleans writing.

Truman Capote is a New Orleans native and rice LAMB interview with the Vampire Cokie Roberts, John Kennedy Toole, who wrote Confederacy of Dunces, which if you hadn't read it, you got to read it.

If you read it, if you're in Louisiana and it's it's tremendous.

Stephen Ambrose Obviously, the D-Day books and all those great historical books and Michael Lewis, who wrote Moneyball and Blind Side, all those contemporary books about sports is as a New Orleans native.

And I wish we could have gone into a little bit more detail about about Louisiana's impact on on the literary world.

We do have a book, as I make a shameless plug for this coffee table book, which you can purchase and help help me, which, by the way, gets all the proceeds from from what we've done.

But the coffee table book was kind of an add on to what we were doing.

Linda knew of a lady named Carol Highsmith who was also going to be the subject of a documentary herself, the lady who's traveled around the country documenting America.

And we asked her if she'd like to do a book about Louisiana.

And everything kind of fell into place.

And we said, Let's just make it an adjunct to Louisiana.

Mississippi.

So Carol spent most of the time last year traveling around the state, photographing Louisiana.

And I wrote them the book, the copy early that just got cut lines for the book and an introduction.

But it's a beautiful coffee table book.

And we just want you to see a little bit about Carol's perspective on doing that on Long Island.

I'm not so sure of recording it as a document.

You know, people looked at me like you know, what is the whole point of this reflection to show?

So that many, many hundreds of thousands of years from now we can see what America would like now.

Okay, now I'm donating every hour, which I take to the Library of Congress and feel so honored, you know, with the Library of Congress, place that they value it.

So this is the highest resolution camera on Earth.

So the best thing about this camera is one of our projections is the standard projection.

And I'm working with the highest, most people here on Earth.

I want 1500 people paid one octave for it.

So I'm on the edge of digital photography.

Then I have to have that for my turkey and then I have a little reading.

Sorry, that's not funny.

But if I can't catch my photography like that, I can put my little camera through the genuine cameras.

Rather, again, that's a fun to look at.

Oh, baby, you are one of those are you know, you think well that well, but I don't mean for the art.

It's not it is a document of what I saw So I'm recording us visual All of we are a little bit better in the one most of the time I do take the picture, Mike.

The tiger is really unbelievable.

It's a double truck in the book and actually there are four of those prints that are for sale as well supporting LP.

And if you're a Tiger fan, you're going to want to get the mike the tiger.

I'm telling you, it's it's a fabulous picture.

So a lot of the a lot of the show is all about Louisiana names because our last names reflect the huge diversity and ethnicity that makes Louisiana different.

And we got a lot of names in the show, but we got a lot of names that got left out of the show as well.

And we'll give you a couple perspectives on on people who you see name tags here at the Rotary Club or beyond.

This is in the show, this one little excerpt.

But if you see names like Shek, Snyder, Waguespack, Haydel, Rube Miller, email Trish Vicknair, Toots Lambert, post Shays Meringue.

They are the what?

The Germans who came to Louisiana, most of whom settled in the outside of New Orleans and locked as almonds in the desert almonds area.

The lake of the Germans.

They all think they're Cajuns because they've been they've morphed into the Cajun society.

But when you have those last names, their roots are essentially from Germany.

The Irish have a significant influence as well.

They came in in the 1950s or so or 1840, stuck to Louisiana and had a huge impact on politics, particularly in New Orleans in the late sixties and early seventies.

Before we had single member districts, before we voted based upon a small geographical part that you were in and you got to pick from somebody in that area.

We elected legislators at large, and in the early 1970s, New Orleans was represented by two cases an O'Brien ion, an O'Keefe, a McGettigan and a Sullivan, all Irish surnames, all representing.

That was the New Orleans delegation.

If you were an Irish, you want to represent New Orleans.

There's a huge swing Sicilian influence.

Kathy in the in the show you saw, she said, Well, you're not Italian.

If you can't cook a meatball about time you five years old.

Well, the people who came to Louisiana weren't Italians because Italy didn't exist yet.

They were Sicilians when they first came in the mid 1850s, New Orleans was the largest Sicilian population city in America.

Chicago was second at the time.

That's all changed with Ellis Island.

But the Sicilians who came to Louisiana got off the boat in New Orleans with these long, multi syllabic, multi vowel names that nobody could understand.

And so the clerk who welcomed these people basically identified where they were from by looking at the manifest of the ship.

And so Pietro, whatever his last name was, became Peter Palermo because he was from Palermo on the ship manifest.

And that's the way a lot of the surnames that you see in Louisiana today were manifested.

That's in the show.

What would did not make the show.

It is particularly of interest, I think, to those of us who call Baton Rouge home is this if you want to take nourishment in the greater Baton Rouge area, you are going to buy food and drink products from a wholesale or retail company that is owned by operated mostly still today by a Bologna, a Christian, a FRC, a D, Vincent, a Faraji, a Cora, Amanda, a Montalbano or a has a lot to.

And that's that's the sassy and Italian influence on how we get nourished in South Louisiana.

If you are from.

Well the little small country, relatively small country of Lebanon has made a significant impact in Louisiana, particularly on politics.

They're probably less than about 5000 Lebanese families in Louisiana.

But listen to the names that you'll recognize from Louisiana politics.

Ayoob Akerele, Reggie Mansour, Boustany, Shehabi Abraham Hike and a doctor named DeBakey.

Those are all Lebanese names, all primarily from the southwest corner of Louisiana that have had a profound impact on on Louisiana politics.

Now, in the show, I mentioned that back when we had phone banks, I used to look through phone books.

We don't have them anymore.

But, you know, about ten years ago, phone books were still pretty common.

And in doing some research, Cathy now would look at phone books to kind of figure out numbers of people who were in certain areas.

And this little part is in the show.

But I think it's interesting.

So I'll mention it, if you know somebody who is named Bordelon, Coco Cuvee, all those had to sell Grimmie all aboard LeMoyne Bayou, Mauro, Roy Rabelais or Tarzan.

Write it down there from a Vols parish or from somebody in their immediate families from a Bulls parish.

And if you're the same meeting or seeing the name tag that somebody says they're a font know or a foray or a LaFleur or a swallow or a Vidrine, they're from Evangeline Parish, Bill Plante And there are hardly any laborers in Evangeline Parish, and there's hardly any Fontana who's in the Vols parish.

It's like the Berlin Wall between those two.

But but don't ask me why.

But that's the case.

Let's see what else I want to tell you in the time I have, oh, the epicenter of Broussard's in the world is Abbeville, Louisiana.

In the Abbeville phonebook, a town of about 12,000 people, one out of every 30 listings as a Boudreaux I'm sorry was a Broussard Broussard And it used to be in the clerk's office.

And I did a little work in the clerk's office years and years ago.

When you walk into the clerk's office where they file all the records and the filing cabinets were A, B, Bruce, R, C, D, E, and the whole filing cabinet.

So I'm kind of running out of time.

So let me let me you saw in the show a little clip the the animation, the animation with the mouth.

Well, that was done by Bill Joyce.

Bill Joyce is an Academy Award winner from Shreveport, Louisiana.

He had a great little book.

I want it for animated shorts, short films, the fantastic flying books of Mr. Maurice Les Moore.

A few years ago, we got Bill to do animation in the show, and that was one example of it.

I'm going to tell you how it fits in, and this is in the show, but this is how I'll conclude that animated face that you saw accompanies me telling the story of the one time I leave Louisiana to tell to talk about in the other place.

And we actually go to Mississippi and we go to Mississippi because back in the 1950s, Mississippi was dry.

You could not sell liquor in Mississippi.

Some counties had quietly legalized it.

We're making a lot of money selling bootleg whiskey.

But the legislature was called into session to decide whether or not to legalize whiskey or not.

And they had a big conference, big banquet opening night of the session like they'd be here.

All the legislators were here, all the pros.

We should legalize all the ants.

We shouldn't legalize it.

We're all present.

And a leader of the Mississippi legislature was a guy name Noah Sweat.

His nickname was Soggy.

Soggy Sweat.

Soggy Sweat was called upon to address the crowd that night and to give them the definitive answer whether or not whiskey should be legalized or not.

And this is what he said when we got up and addressed the crowd.

The best example I know of of a politician talking out of both sides of his mouth, this is what Soggy Sweat said.

He said, I had not intended to take a position on such a controversial issue at this time, but I never, ever, ever shied away from controversy.

And you've asked me how I feel about whiskey.

I'll tell you how I feel about whiskey.

If when you say whiskey, you mean the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, the defiles innocents, the throes reason destroys the family.

Yeah.

Literally takes bread from the mouths of little children.

If you mean that evil drink that topples a Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious, living into the bottomless pit of degradation and despair and shame and helplessness and hopelessness.

Certainly I'm against it.

But if when you say whiskey, you mean all I love conversation.

The philosophic one lady alone is consumed in Goodfellas, gathered together, puts a song in their heart, left on their lips in the warm glow of contentment in the eyes.

If you mean Christmas cheer, if you may not stimulate and drink Puts a spring in old gentleman, step on a frosty, crisp morning.

If you believe that drink that enables a man to magnify his joy and happiness and forget, if only for a moment laughs, heartaches and sorrows and tragedies.

If you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasury untold millions of dollars to provide the tender care we need for our little crippled children are deaf, dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm to build highways and hospitals and schools.

I got on for it.

This is my stand.

I will not retreat.

I will not compromise.

He could get elected in Louisiana and.