Teddy Bear - LOUISIANA
Jambalaya, Zydeco, Creole, Cajun, Jazz, Mardi Gras . . . all of those immediately bring to mind the beautifully diverse state of Louisiana. Some Louisiana urban environments have a multicultural, multilingual heritage, being so strongly influenced by a mixture of 18th-century French, Haitian, Spanish, Native American, and African cultures that they are considered to be exceptional in the America. This exceptionalism has presented in numerous ways, giving us (for example) jazz and zydeco music as well as creole and cajun cuisine and one of the biggest annual parties in the country, Mardi Gras. Though Louisiana’s top natural resources include fertile soil, natural gas, and oil, it is also the biggest producer of salt in the United States. Louisiana is the only U.S. state with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are equivalent to counties. The state's capital is Baton Rouge, and its largest city is New Orleans. It was on October 20, 1803 that the United States Senate ratified the Louisiana treaty, securing approximately 828,000 square miles of territory for around $15 Million. That purchase doubled the size of the United States and would ultimately result in the addition of 13 states to the union. Known as "The Boot", "Child of the Mississippi", "The Bayou State", "Sportsman's Paradise", "The Creole State" and "The Sugar State", Louisiana's Official Nickname is "The Pelican State" and their Official State Flower is the beautiful, majestic, fragrant, consummately Southern "Magnolia". This design pays homage to this spectacular state. The state outline is filled with the milky white petals of the stunning southern Magnolia, the Louisiana State Flower. This is layered with the bold, red pepper "Louisiana". A lot of people don't know that Teddy Bears came about as the result of a hunting trip in Mississippi back in 1902. Then President, Theodore Roosevelt, hadn't had much luck hunting bear that day. Some men from his hunting party cornered a bear for him to shoot. He felt this was rather unsportsmanlike and refused to shoot the bear. A couple of days later, a political cartoonist named Clifford Berryman published a cartoon in the Washington Post that poked a little fun at the President's refusal to shoot the bear. A shop owner in Brooklyn saw the cartoon and came up with the idea to make a stuffed bear and dedicate it to the president. He called the stuffed animal, "Teddy's Bear". Later, the shop owner, Morris Michtom, obtained permission from the President to use his name and mass produced the toy bears. This charming bear is an excellent souvenir of that fabulous Louisiana vacation or a terrific gift for your favorite Cajun.
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