Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette Blogs

Maybe comic Manny Oliveira learned how to make sharp observations about people when he served as a counselor in the U.S. Air Force for a few years in the ’70s. That can be a funny place, after all, especially since Oliveira was stationed far, far away from any actual combat.

“For four years, while I was there, there wasn’t a single attack in San Antonio, Texas. I was watching it,” Oliveira said by phone this week. “Everything’s funny in the military. It takes a half hour to ask a question and three months to get a decision.”

Beaufort military officials say the area’s military and private-public housing developments are not affected by a new Corps policy that requires registered sex offenders to move out of on-base housing or apply for a waiver to live there.

“It’s not an issue for us,” said Maj. James Jarvis, spokesman for Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort. “We don’t have any registered sex offenders living in the housing near the air station or out at (Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island) or in the military housing at the Naval Hospital. We also haven’t received any waiver requests.”

By Jason Crane • Special to the Guide

Once again, the Savannah Music Festival features a world-class list of performers from a wide array of genres — far too many, in fact, to list in full in these pages. So what follows is a selection of highlights you might want to pencil in early; for the full schedule of the festival's events, click here.

• Academy of Ancient Music: 6 p.m. March 27 at the Wesley Monumental United Methodist Church. OK, “Ancient” may be pushing it — the music they’re performing is less than 300 years old — but whatever you call it, the Academy of Ancient Music is one of the world’s premier period ensembles. And they’ll be playing one of the classics: Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. For 40 years, the AAM has been playing baroque music and other early works the way they were meant to be played. In fact, an AAM concert is about as close as you can get to what you would have heard had you been in the crowd with Bach himself.

A Louisiana student was arrested after allegedly slapping a teacher this week, about a week after a Battery Creek High School teacher resigned after a student slapped him.

The 12-year-old Louisiana student stood up and tried to leave class before he was dismissed Tuesday, and his teacher put her arm out to stop him. The student began yelling and cursing at the teacher before slapping her arm, The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported.