Another Thursday added to music festival

Another Thursdayadded to music festival
NEW ORLEANS -- The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is adding another Thursday to its events at the Fair Grounds -- the first major expansion in 10 years.
In addition, the city of New Orleans is adding a free, two-day Mo' Music Festival on the French Quarter riverfront on the Monday and Tuesday between Jazzfest weekends.
The changes make the spring music festival an almost continuous 11-day marathon.
The dates for 2003 are April 24 through May 4.
To help pay for the Thursday addition, festival organizers landed a major new sponsor, Popeyes Chicken and Biscuits, and a $100,000 contribution from the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp., which is financed by hotel and motel taxes.
The Popeyes commitment was described as the largest single-year corporate sponsorship in the festival's history, although festival organizers refused to release details. The company will sponsor the opening Thursday and the festival's Blues Tent, and will sell crawfish etouffee, but not its signature fried chicken because another company already holds that Jazzfest concession.
The music lineup for the next festival will be announced in the spring.
The festival also announced it will list a limited number of hotel rooms at special rates on its Web site, www.nojazzfest.com.
Group seeks to restorehex signs on Dutch barns
READING, Pa. -- A group in Berks County is working to restore hex signs, the decorative stars commonly seen on Pennsylvania Dutch barns that preservationists say are rapidly vanishing.
"These old barns are getting torn down, or the owners can't afford to get the hex signs repainted, so they are slowly vanishing," says David W. Fooks, executive director of the Kutztown Pennsylvania German Festival and director of the Pennsylvania German Heritage Center at Kutztown University.
The signs were first used on barns in the 19th century.
There has been debate over whether they carried a superstitious meaning to protect barns and farm animals from disease or evil spirits.
Fooks has joined with master hex-sign painter Eric A. Claypoole and others to locate and repaint Berks County's fading signs.
"I consider Eric somewhat of a local treasure because I think he is the only artist left who will go up on a barn and paint," Fooks says.
Fooks says Claypoole has begun restoring the hex signs using funds contributed by the festival, the heritage center, the Berks County Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Dutch Hex Tour Association.
Because many farmers cannot afford the $300 cost to repaint the signs, which usually measure about 4 feet in diameter, their numbers have dwindled.
"It's the No. 1 attraction in Berks County," Fooks said. "We can't just let it fade away."
Councilman proposeschanging street names
MACON, Ga. -- Ask for directions to First Avenue in Macon, and you might get four different answers.
The city map shows four separate First Avenues, and they're not the only duplicated street names. There are three Wilson Streets and a couple of Cordele Avenues.
In all, 95 streets in Macon share 42 names -- meaning the city map is littered with same-name streets that can confuse out-of-towners and slow down emergency workers.
To eliminate the confusion, Councilman James Timley is drafting a plan to change some street names.
"What's happening is that the emergency responders are having some trouble because of the same street names," Timley says. "We just don't need that to happen because it could be a life-or-death situation."
Under Timley's plan, the city would simply add direction designations to most of the same-name streets.
For example, the two Cordele Avenues are about four miles apart. One would keep its name, but the other would change to Cordele Avenue East.
But at least four streets will need to be completely renamed. C Street, Jackson Street, Second Avenue and Third Avenue, all near the airport, will be renamed so travelers are not confused.
The policy will prevent streets from being renamed after living people, service clubs, lodges, fraternal organizations, churches or schools.
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