In the last several weeks, downtown Shreveport has announced the opening of four new restaurants and the re-opening of a favorite that had briefly closed. What gives? The restrictions of COVID-19 have been hard on eateries. First came mandates for curbside and delivery only, extensive PPE requirements and limited dine-in occupancy.

Maura Querbes Pugh is living proof that one bad apple doesn’t spoil the entire batch – or in the case of 2020, the entire year. Despite the pandemic and subsequential quarantine, Pugh made lemonade from lemons and shared them with Shreveport via her very first cookbook: “Covid Culinary Chronicles.

New Year’s resolutions are much easier to keep when they involve friendship, sunshine and a lot of encouragement. Camp Gladiator (CG) is a unique place to get fit in 2021. With outdoor workouts meeting all over Shreveport-Bossier multiple times of day, there’s no excuse not to get moving, meet your goals – and make new friends.

For 14 years, the Greater Shreveport Chamber of Commerce has been nominating 40 young professionals from the area to compete in the 40 Under Forty Award.

Each year, the Greater Shreveport Chamber’s Young Professional Initiative has highlighted 40 of our region’s most dynamic and accomplished young professionals who are engaged in our community as entrepreneurs, executives and managers in the public, private and non-profit sectors.

Erin Turner, for most of her life, decided not to get a flu shot. “I never got sick,” she says. That is, until 2014. “I got really sick. The flu got me and two of my children. It knocked me down for two weeks. I told myself, ‘never again.’” Since then, she and her four children have been getting vaccinated against influenza annually.

There are four commercial stations in the incubator that are fully equipped with ovens, refrigerators and everything you would expect in a commercial kitchen. The entrepreneurs who use the facility pay a nominal fee each month and book slots to reserve the facility’s use.

The 12-song collection paints the singer/ songwriter’s self-portrait as she journeyed from Shreveport to Los Angeles chasing her musical dreams. Along the way, Macleod romps through Americana with everything from a country ballad to greasy blues and even Southern gospel.