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DEAR ABBY: Several months after we met, my partner asked me to move into her home. That was three years ago. She told me she had a son who was living with her, but that he would soon be moving into his own place. I have never loved anyone the way I do her, but her son is a different story.
What she didn’t tell me before I moved in was that he is 37 years old and hasn’t worked more than three weeks in his life. He is not physically or mentally disabled. In fact, he is extremely bright in the tech field. He is totally dependent on his mother to pay for everything, including his car. He buys nothing.
She gives him a hefty “allowance” for doing her yardwork. He has no shame about being a slacker, and she keeps saying she wants him out on his own, but she sets no deadlines. I want her to set a departure date. Her son has to grow up, get a job and move out six months after that, just as my daughter and son both did. They now have families and are economically sound.
I want my partner and me to have our own home together. She’s pushing marriage, and I’m thinking I should use my head and move back to Florida. I have no security here and I do not want any responsibility for him. Any advice?
SMARTER WOMAN

DEAR SMARTER WOMAN: Your partner may be pressing for marriage, but you absolutely shouldn’t do it under these circumstances. Set a departure date at which time either her son moves out, or you do. I agree that the man (37!) needs to move out and accept responsibility for himself, but it won’t happen as long as Mama is his enabler.

DEAR ABBY: At family gatherings, I can’t get a word in edgewise. When I try to join the conversation, invariably someone — usually my wife — cuts me off, dismisses what I have to say as “fiction” and shuts me down. It is extremely disrespectful and I feel humiliated and embarrassed by her comments. My silence does not mean consent.
She and the family live by the rule that the one who speaks loudest speaks best. I have complained privately to her to no avail. She won’t admit there’s a problem. She says these verbal free-for-alls are a part of her “culture.” I love her and the family, but have begun to withdraw as much as I can from these gatherings. For what it’s worth, I’m fairly well-educated, stay reasonably well-informed, have traveled quite a bit and believe I could add worthwhile and valid input to our gatherings, if I had the chance. Please advise.
UNHEARD MAN
OF THE FAMILY

DEAR UNHEARD: You may be the “man of the family,” but your wife assumed the dominant role the first time she dismissed what you were saying as “fiction.” You may love her and her overbearing, disrespectful family, but what has been going on is a part of no “culture” I have heard of. Nothing will change until you either insist that she be sensitive to your feelings, treat you with respect and refuse to attend gatherings if you are not allowed to fully participate.

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Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has concluded the last of 477 bill signings for the 2021 regular legislative session, and among hundreds of new laws are a slew of criminal justice measures a reform group calls “encouraging.”
“The 2021 legislative session saw the Pelican State continue to move in the right direction with common-sense, practical criminal justice reforms,” said Right on Crime, a nationally focused Texas-based nonprofit.
The group tracked more than 70 bills during Louisiana’s two-month legislative session and was appointed to the Survivor Informed Task Force, a victims’ rights initiative approved by the House and Senate, 97-0 and 37-0, respectively.
“Numerous bills were passed that will improve policies around victims’ rights, pre-trial reform, fees and fines, and strengthening reentry,” Right on Crime Louisiana State Director Scott Peyton wrote.
In an interview, Peyton cited various policy developments such as the Louisiana Work Opportunity Tax Credit, which provides tax breaks for employers hiring former prison inmates.
Louisiana is the highest incarceration state in the country, according to the advocacy group Sentencing Project. The leading predictor of recidivism, or returning to jail or prison, is unemployment.
Peyton suggested the most impactful legislative development was not a new law, but a bill that failed: House Bill 479, which he described as “all stick and no carrot.”
Sponsored by Rep. Debbie Villio, R-Kenner, the measure would have reduced parole eligibility and “good time” credits for inmates exhibiting good behavior and self-improvement activities. Inmates released from correctional facilities also would have received reduced support services.
Newly signed bills include House Bill 46 by Rep. Ted James, D-Baton Rouge. It lowers the timeframe for prosecutors to file misdemeanor charges from 45 days to 30 days. The purpose is to limit jail time for those either waiting to be accused of a crime or released from custody.
House Bill 216 and House Bill 248 eliminated juvenile justice court costs and lowered probation and parole fees, which disproportionately affect low-income individuals.
The conservative Legislature also passed House Bill 652, a Democratic-sponsored bill eliminating incarceration for possession of fewer than 14 grams of marijuana.
Edwards referred to “advanced criminal justice reform” in his final bill signing statement last week and acknowledged the bipartisanship that made it possible.
“While much has been made of a handful of controversial bills, the reality is that this legislative session has produced many good laws that will improve the lives of Louisianans,” he said.
“We did this through bipartisan cooperation and compromise. As we have proven time and time again, the people of Louisiana are best served when all of us put aside our differences and focus on projects, programs and progress for all,” he said.
Edwards, a Democrat, worked with the Republican-dominated Legislature similarly to 2017, when a divided state government enacted the Justice Reinvestment Initiative.
The initiative’s goal is to reduce prison admissions by 10% by 2027, saving nearly $300 million.
“Accountability is important to victims and taxpayers,” said Peyton, adding “you can be tough on crime and fair on crime.”
The reform group said it already is preparing for the 2022 legislative session and hopes to advance proposals relating to split-jury retroactivity – a nonunanimous jury conviction process banned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 – and solitary confinement.

GUYS & DOLLS LEAGUE
Week 1 (June 24)
...................................W L
Johnny’s Wrecker.......4 0
3rd Baptist Church......4 0
Naughty But Nice.......4 0
Hensgens Bros..........4 0
Boss..........................3 1
Hustler’s....................1 3
Thibodaux’s Finest II..0 4
Bach’s........................0 4
SNAFU......................0 4
Bye............................0 4
Weekly high scores: Dustin Fuselier 279, 225, 213 games, (717) series; Kenny Keton 245, 265, (709); Anthony Falgout Jr. 208, 245, 237; Hunter Boudreaux 202, 225, 211; Eric Morrison 263, 234; Adam Adams 255, 200; Kelvin Smith 205, 223; Gerard Labit 279; Chris Mayon 267; Marcus Jones 246; David Boudreaux 235; Mark Hebert 226; Patrick Thibodeaux 224; Larry Jones 222; Devin Hidalgo 220; Schaun Reed 211; Harold Thourot 210; Johnny Lirette 208; Glen Robinson 203; and Mark Corbin 201.
PETROLEUM LEAGUE
Week 2 (June 30)
..........................................W L
That’s How we Roll............8 0
Steelwood Lanes................6 2
Satchel of Richards............ 5 3
M. C. Paint & Body...............4 4
Antebellum Renov..............4 4
1st Resp. Heat/Cool............3 5
Chabill’s...............................3 5
Allen’s TV Cable.................2 6
Conrad Industries...............1 7
Bye.....................................0 4
Weekly high scores: Anthony Falgout Jr. 244, 234, 262, (740); Rick Sartwell 237, 244, 241, (722); Tamara Aucoin 212, 211, 234, (657); Wally Arcemont 247, 206; Jerry Pillaro 233, 204; Mark Kleimann 208, 203; Miles Suire 204, 217; Kenny Keton 268; Mike Kapp 226; Patrick Thibodeaux 206; Larmen Jenkins 204; Bryson Benoit 203; Collin Deslatte 201; and Jason Pye 200.

A new report by the federal Office of the Director of National Intelligence doesn’t use the term “flying saucers” or even “UFOs,” but says there are dozens of instances of “unidentified aerial phenomena” that it can’t explain.
The report does not mention aliens, or even hint that the “aerial phenomena” might be connected to explorers from other worlds, but some people are suggesting — or saying outright — that this is the first time the feds have admitted that there might be little green men visiting us from someplace far away.
It’s true that the feds have for decades been mostly silent on the subject, but this isn’t the first admission that something funny might be going on. For example, the muckraking columnist Drew Pearson reported in July 1952 that the Air Force was watching “a mysterious rash of flying saucers” and that officials admitted they “could be space ships from another planet.”
Pearson said the reasoning behind that admission was that “it will soon be possible for us to build a space ship to visit the moon,” therefore a more advanced civilization could already have a spaceship and “could be keeping this planet under surveillance through flying saucers.”
Had he asked around, Pearson would have found at least a handful of UFO believers in south Louisiana.
In summer 1949, for example, a flying saucer made a visit to her sister’s house especially memorable for a Mrs. Dardeau of Ville Platte.
The Ville Platte Gazette reported on its front page on July 14, 1949, that she and her sister, Mrs. Edward Wolff, were sitting on the lawn of the Wolff residence in Alexandria “when they became aware of a saucer zooming overhead.”
They said it was the size and shape of a plate, flew lower and slower than an airplane, made no sound, and had a yellow light in the center. The sisters were “emphatic that it could not be anything else but a saucer.”
The Alexandria Town Talk’s editors scoffed at the story, but N. L. Martin and his son Gene believed it because they’d seen saucers themselves. They told the Crowley Post-Signal that about 9 o’clock on the morning of July 11 they were driving near Prairie Hayes in Acadia Parish when they saw two of them. They were “of an aluminum color … kept glinting in the sunlight” and “would spin in a clockwise motion and reverse themselves.”
Then, in October 1951, something the newspapers called “The Thing” appeared over south Louisiana.
“Many honest and sober residents reported seeing an eerie stationary ‘red pencil of light’ hovering over the horizon at night, and no one seems to have a plausible explanation for it,” the Lafayette Advertiser reported on Oct. 26, 1951.
Henry Mullins of the Civil Aeronautics Administration was on duty at the Lafayette airport when he got a call about 6:15 p.m. from a man in Milton who’d seen whatever it was.
“I told him that possibly it was a reflection of gas flares. Then I went out and looked and it didn’t look like a reflection at all.” Mullins described a “pencil of light” south-southeast of the airport.
“The ‘pencil’ was not horizontal but up and down, and it had no base,” Mullins said. “There were ... only a few low stratus clouds far to the east. So, the lack of clouds, plus that the light had no base, rules out the possibility of a reflection of a fire.”
The red pencil hung around for an hour and then just “faded away,” Mullins said.
Mrs. Clarence Leger described it as “about three feet long and about as wide as a baseball bat.”
This time, however, there was an explanation. The sighting was still the talk of the town when one of the men who flew military jets came home on leave from Korea. He explained that these new-fangled aircraft left something called a “vapor trail” that often picked up reflections from the setting sun or even from moonlight. Skeptics said that might explain the “pencil,” but what they saw sure didn’t seem like vapor.
None of these folks could have been more convinced of alien visitors than a cousin of mine who, when we were teenagers in the early 1960s, dreamed that a delegation from another world came to take her to their planet and make her their queen. In the dream, her daddy wouldn’t let her go because he thought the spaceship didn’t look safe. (She couldn’t ride in my third-hand ‘49 Ford for the same reason.)
She readily admitted that all of it was a dream, but I’m pretty sure that for a long time after that she watched for wise creatures who knew a queen when they saw one, and hoped that her daddy wouldn’t be around when they showed up for real.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, "Cajuns and Other Characters," is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.