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A generous anonymous donor has made it possible for the Community Concert Association of Morgan City to award four $1,000 Marlene Hendrix Memorial Music Scholarships instead of a single scholarship. Recipients are Abram Gilder of Berwick High School, Harley LaRocca and Zachary Ingram of Morgan City High School, and Mallory Perry of Patterson High School. All excelled in music, academic activities and volunteer work. LaRocca will attend LSU and major in music composition/vocal performance. Gilder will enroll in Louisiana College to major in worship leadership. Ingram plans to major in music composition and instrumental education at Nicholls State University. Perry will attend the University of Louisiana at Lafayette to major in music education/band director or arts center director. CCA President Floyd Cloutier and board members presented scholarships recently. Front row from left are Perry, Gilder and LaRocca. Back row from left are board members Geri Bourgeois, George Ramirez, Nell Lamury, Harry Porter and Doylene Porter, and Cloutier. Ingram was unable to attend.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a book review on “A Little Piece of Light” (Hachette Books), by Donna Hylton with Kristine Gasbarre.

Donna Hylton opens her memoir, “A Little Piece of Light,” with an admission of guilt and remorse for her crimes. However, this isn’t where her story begins. From as early as she can remember, Donna’s life was marked by torment at the hands of her caregivers. Beginning with her birth in Jamaica and shifting to her move to New York when she was adopted, each phase of her existence promised relief, yet delivered disaster.
When the author was 19, she was sentenced to 25 years to life for kidnapping and second-degree murder. It was in prison where she realized that her history of mental, physical and sexual abuse wasn’t unique. Donna grew to view the women around her as family and took every opportunity to educate herself while incarcerated. What she experienced prompted her to devote her life inside (and eventually outside) prison to the rehabilitation of society’s castoffs.
Hylton endured so much suffering that swaths of the read take summary form. While her traumas are gut-wrenching, she keeps a reserved distance from the most lurid details and focuses more on her survival techniques (which largely involved blacking out) and destroyed self-worth. The result is a wide-angle-lens shot of how abuse impacts women over the course of their lives.
While any yearlong period of her journey is book-worthy, Hylton condenses her experiences into one read. In doing so, her life stands as a case study illustrating how prison reform efforts and support for women in abusive situations can transform individual lives and society.
Since her release, Hylton has continued her fight for women who have no voice. Her story stands as a harrowing, yet powerful, picture of what’s possible when women escape brutality and encounter hope, even in the most unlikely of places.
—Online:
www.donnahylton.com/

BATON ROUGE (AP) — Gov. John Bel Edwards says he'll call Louisiana lawmakers back for a third special session this year.
He's trying to get taxes passed to fill gaps in the budget year that starts July 1, after a special session cratered Monday without a tax deal.
The Democratic governor says he's disappointed. And he placed blame squarely on House Republican leaders and what he described as a "Caucus of No in the House."
In the session's final minute, House GOP leaders helped block a second vote on a sales tax bill with a higher tax rate than they supported. It's unclear if the bill could have reached the two-thirds vote needed to pass since it fell a handful of votes short earlier.
Edwards hasn't set a start date for the next special session. Louisiana budget special session collapses without tax deal
Louisiana lawmakers failed to reach a tax deal by Monday’s deadline, cratering their second special session this year without agreement and passing a budget that would force deep cuts across state government next month.
The House and Senate couldn’t agree on what level of taxes to raise in the budget year that begins July 1, and the House ended at midnight in meltdown as lawmakers tried to scramble to bring up a sales tax bill that was opposed by House GOP leaders.
“We’ve just got a little more work to do. It’s going to take a little more time,” said Edwards, a Democrat.
Disagreements about the size of the problem, the amount of money to raise and the approach to take couldn’t be bridged.
In the session’s final hour, Rep. Walt Leger, the House’s top-ranking Democrat, pleaded with his colleagues to approve a sales tax bill backed by the Senate to raise about $500 million. House Speaker Taylor Barras and House GOP leader Lance Harris opposed the measure, which raised more money than they supported, and the bill fell six votes short of the 70 needed to pass.
Harris’ smaller sales tax bill to raise $400 million only got 38 votes a short time later.
When Republican Rep. Julie Stokes sought to bring Leger’s bill back for a second consideration in the session’s final minute, Barras and Harris helped block the vote and let the clock run out, even as Leger shouted: “Vote for the bill. Avoid the special session!”
It’s unclear if the bill could have reached the two-thirds support needed to pass, but shouts and boos filled the House floor as Barras announced time had expired on the session.
Rep. Andy Anders, a Vidalia Democrat, told his colleagues: “I’m really disappointed in this whole process ... It’s hard to go home.”
Edwards had wanted lawmakers to replace $648 million in temporary taxes expiring July 1. But the governor couldn’t win support for the full amount in the Republican-led Legislature, and backed the Senate proposal in the session’s final days. Edwards placed blame for the session’s failure squarely on the House Republican leadership.
“It is a sad day for the state of Louisiana. You saw a minority in the House clearly let politics take priority over people. Our state deserves better,” he said.
Lawmakers were in their sixth special session since Edwards took office in 2016, all of the sessions involving Louisiana’s continuing financial problems, which have stretched over a decade. And they’re headed to a seventh one.
Nearly $1.4 billion in temporary taxes, mainly sales taxes, passed by lawmakers in 2015 and 2016 are expiring when the new financial year begins. Increases in other tax types lessen the gap, leaving Louisiana estimated to bring in $648 million less in general state tax dollars next year.
The centerpiece of tax negotiations involved the expiration of a 1 percent sales tax hike enacted two years ago that would drop the state sales tax rate to 4 percent in July. The House initially voted for Harris’ proposal to renew one-third of the expiring tax, to have a sales tax rate of 4.33 percent on July 1. The Senate backed a 4.5 percent rate.
The difference was 17 cents in sales taxes on every $100 of spending.
Democrats, particularly members of the Legislative Black Caucus, also held out until they got passage of an expansion of a tax break program for the working poor. And both the House and Senate agreed to scale back an individual income tax break that Louisiana allows for taxes paid to other states, raising about $34 million for next year.
Edwards vetoed an earlier version of the budget that reached his desk that is similar to what won final passage Monday night, saying the cuts were too catastrophic to enact.

VACATION BIBLE
School 9 a.m. to noon June 25-29, at First Baptist Church, 1915 Victor II Blvd., Morgan City. Children starting kindergarten through finished sixth grade invited. For early registration call 985-384-5920 or visit www.fbcmc.org.