SHORT TAKES : Gaines Is La. Humanist of Year

Ernest Gaines, best known for the television adaptation of his work, “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” was named Louisiana’s Humanist of the Year. “Gaines is at once an historian, psychologist, and sociologist of the Louisiana he loves so much,” James Olney, chairman of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, said Thursday. His works include “The Sky Is Gray,” “A Gathering of Old Men,” “Bloodline” and “Of Love and Dust.” Gaines, 56, has been professor of creative writing and writer-in-residence at the University of Southwestern Louisiana since 1984.