In the first issue of The Piney Woods Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1 dated June, 1997, we published an article based on a portion of some fairly non-technical surveys we conducted to re-inform ourselves about the economic base, and the social, cultural, and political characteristics of the population in North Louisiana, where we contemplated the establishment of a new publishing venture. Call it "market research." The margin of error would have been vast, very likely, but I meant to do it anyway, after spending upwards of 20 years away from the sight, smell, and pace of activities in the Piney Woods of my earlier lifetime.

Ten years in the fleshpots, bright lights, and concrete of Slidell/St. Tammany Parish, the apotheosis of Economic Progress on the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain, driven headlong by thousands of Pretty Pushy People from Up North, continuing to out-prosper the otherwise sadly declining New Orleans central city.

Followed by ten years in Southern New Mexico at Las Cruces, the thriving city on the banks of the Rio Grande just up the road from the far-West Texas outpost of El Paso. Las Cruces lives well off an amazingly diverse agriculture, thanks to the impounded irrigation waters of the fabled river, plus an education elite connected to the local NM State University, and super high-tech government work at White Sands, the top-secret weapons development complex adjacent to the US Air Force Stealth Fighter unit at Holloman AFB on the edge of the White Sands National Monument outside Alamogordo. The first A-bomb test was up at the north end of the big desert, fifty miles or so from Las Cruces, which nestles near the three-way conjunction of the American states of Texas and New Mexico, and the state of Chihuahua, south of the international border in the Republic of (Old) Mexico. The food establishments of Las Cruces sell precious few grits.

After foregoing my birthright Redneck citizenship in those culturally diverse times and places for two whole decades, I might expect to suffer the emotional equivalent of the "bends" upon returning to the pace of a more rural Southern life in the Piney Woods. Maybe. Thus my decision back in the waning years of that departed Second Millennium to "check it out", to take readings on the atmospheres, wind directions, etc., before peeling off for a final landing. So to speak.

What the statistics proved was what I suspected anyhow: The State of Louisiana, and North Louisiana especially, had sprung a serious leak - of people, and political representation. The old Eighth Congressional District, the North Central Piney Woods bastion represented so ably in Congress for many years by the venerable A. Leonard Allen, Dr. George Long, Speedy Long, Harold McSween, and (almost) Earl K. Long, was no more, having vanished from the political landscape in the reapportionments of the Seventies and later. The Fifth District, once securely anchored around the Northeast Louisiana Delta farm country, was stretched all the way down the river past Avoyelles almost to Baton Rouge, in search of enough votes to make the required count. While reaching out a bit to collect the necessary population, the Fourth remained fairly-well put, with the Shreveport-Bossier metro base anchoring the always conservative-leaning Northwest.

In the State Legislature, the Cajun Southwest, the six-parish Greater New Orleans metro area, and the Baton Rouge Southeast, increasingly dwarfed the influence of the Piney Woods North.

These metamorphoses of jurisdiction are endlessly interesting to political junkies, who comb the election returns and district lines for trends and match-ups that stir their blood like the nostalgia of sports fans remembering the hits, runs, and errors of the 1949 World Series, or the passes thrown and missed in some long-dead Super Bowl.

We reported in early and later editions of The Piney Woods Journal what many have known for years: young high school and college graduates and working families, often our best educated and qualified folks, are leaving Louisiana. Teachers. Management professionals. Technology workers. Construction specialists. High wage earners; the cream of our population.

The news has filtered out now into the "mainstream" press of the State. In recent editions, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and the Gannett triumvirate of North Louisiana at Alexandria/Monroe/Shreveport have reported in some details the latest in the continuing decline of population, both statewide to other states, and from North Louisiana to the South. Of special interest to the New Orleans daily is that each of the six metro-area parishes - except Slidell/St. Tammany, of course - had a net out-migration of population during the past five years.

While the New Orleans metro area (that is to say, Orleans, LaFourche, St. Bernard, St. Tammany, St. John, St. James) continues to contain about a third of the total population of the State and is thus in no danger of losing its relative clout in any political match-up within the State, the trend is not healthy for the State as a whole relative to the Southern region and the nation as a whole. It is pointed out that Louisiana is the only Southern state now losing population. The numbers are increasingly significant and alarming; if the decline continues, we could lose still another Congressional district by the end of this decade

One of the few positives emerging from the condition is that in every political race on the ticket for this coming October 4 election, from police juror to governor, virtually every candidate gives top platform priority to economic development. The provision of jobs that are both challenging and financially rewarding will not be achieved quickly, nor easily, nor by one person alone. But maybe we're on track to begin turning the ship, when everyone agrees it's adrift. We didn't get in this shape overnight, but one thing can change pretty fast, if we decide: our attitude and a determination to do things differently.

OK, so this is pretty long, and maybe it's an "editorial." But I continue to be haunted by the statement of Gov. Mike Foster at his second inaugural, not quite four years ago: "We don't have much time . . . unless we change things, Louisiana will become a state that just didn't make it." We can do better.

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