Shelly Adams was welcomed as the newest princess during the Krewe of Hephaestus Princess Club luncheon held at the Petroleum Club of Morgan City on Feb. 22. Princesses are wives of kings of Hephaestus.
They were greeted with a toast from King Hephaestus LX Al Adams and Chairman of the Board Valerie LeBlanc.
DEAR ABBY: I refer to my husband as “the most single married man” I know. He turns off the lights, turns off the heat and turns off the TV while I’m still watching or still plan on being home.
His latest “single” thing is that he planned a birthday dinner out with our son and other family members. Guess what? I found out about it from the birthday boy. We have been married almost 50 years. All our children are in their 40s.
I have spoken to him numerous times about his forgetting my presence in a room, but I have never been excluded from a family birthday until now.
I am thinking of writing a book titled, “The Most Single Married Man I Know.”
What should I be doing differently?
FORGOTTEN WOMAN IN NEW HAMPSHIRE
DEAR FORGOTTEN: If this has been going on since you and your husband were married, accept that he is someone who is unusually centered on himself.
If this is something relatively recent, he may need to be physically and neurologically evaluated by his physician.
If there is nothing “wrong” with him, recognize it’s time to fend for yourself. Remember to monitor the thermostat, keep a flashlight handy and be prepared to explore activities you enjoy in case your husband “forgets” to include you in the future.
DEAR ABBY: My best friend’s father recently passed away. A memorial has been planned on the day of a wedding I had agreed to attend with my girlfriend.
In this situation involving two significant one-time life events, is it more courteous to defer to the living or the dead?
UNSURE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
DEAR UNSURE: Much depends upon your relationship with both of these people. Because your best friend may need emotional support during this sad time, I am inclined to suggest that you go to the memorial — and have your girlfriend attend the wedding so you will be represented.
If you explain the circumstances to the person who sent the wedding invitation, there should be no hurt feelings.
DEAR ABBY: I recently received a board game as a present. The problem is that I don’t like the game. I live alone on disability with a very limited income and don’t have anyone to play it with me anyway.
When I mentioned to the giver that I was thinking of returning it, they almost burst into tears. The giver is a relative of a close friend and lives with her. I really could use the money. What should I do?
WONDERING IN WISCONSIN
DEAR WONDERING: I have said this before, and it’s worth repeating: Once a gift is given, it belongs to the recipient to do with as they please. Because you don’t like the game, have no one to play it with and need the money, return the darn thing. Your mistake was announcing your intention to the giver.
***
To order “How to Write Letters for All Occasions,” send your name and mailing address, plus check or money order for $8 to: Dear Abby — Letter Booklet, P.O. Box 447, Mount Morris, IL 61054-0447.
Berwick High School sophomore Cherish Lewis, holding certificate at right, was recognized by the St. Mary Mary Parish School Board on Thursday for her poetry. Her poem "A Broken Home" appears in Expressions, a national publication featuring poetry by young people. Shown from left are her sister Ashlyn; mother Tanisha Lewis; brother Kevin Lewis Jr.; father Kevin Lewis Sr.; Cherish Lewis; and Berwick High Principal Paul Broussard.
The Review/Bill Decker
The St. Mary Parish School Board recognized the Students and Employees of the Month at Thursday's meeting in Centerville.
The Review/Bill Decker
State lawmakers will convene their regular session at noon on Monday, putting a number of political and policy issues on a collision course over the next three months.
For example, the House and Senate are expected to debate a ban on critical race theory in classrooms.
Should teachers focus on how race has influenced public policy and American life, or would such an approach be too schismatic?
Conservatives and liberals can’t seem to agree on an answer to that question.
When the issue was debated earlier this year by the Mississippi Senate, Black senators walked out of the chamber to protest the proceedings.
It’s uncertain how Black lawmakers in Louisiana will react to the matter being debated here in the coming weeks, but legislation on critical race theory will probably be heard alongside another bill to redraw the state’s congressional districts.
The Legislature concluded its special session on redistricting last month, producing a new congressional map that closely resembles the districts now in place.
Black lawmakers and Democrats opposed the congressional map because it didn’t create an additional majority-minority district dominated by minority voters, despite the state’s racial population mix.
The Black Caucus, among others, asked Gov. John Bel Edwards to veto the proposed congressional map, which seems more likely with each passing day.
The debate during the special session was already racially charged, and the addition of critical race theory legislation will do little to improve the mood of the House and Senate in the regular session.
At the same time, a bipartisan select committee will be investigating what Edwards knew and did about the death of Ronald Greene, and the involvement of the Louisiana State Police.
The investigation promises to be a can’t-miss sideshow to the session circus, and could in turn affect the trajectory of a number of bills targeting reforms at state police.
Believe it or not, we haven’t even discussed the regular session’s centerpiece yet. Lawmakers and the administration are sitting on more than $2.8 billion in one-time money that needs to be spent.
The extra cash comes courtesy of federal pandemic aid and state surplus dollars.
The Legislature and administration have a lot of different ideas about how to use the dough, although they don’t all necessarily overlap.
Even though Louisiana hosts non-fiscal sessions during even-numbered years, meaning no tax bills that increase revenue for the state, this regular session is going to have a rather strong fiscal vibe.
Lawmakers will consider instruments on the state sales tax structure, local auditing functions, the inventory tax and other related topics.
Lawmakers also plan to debate a possible ban on transgender athletes, looser vaccine requirements, changes to abortion laws, an expansion of the medical marijuana program, a prohibition on plastic bags and the relevance of Confederate holidays. In between those issues, they’ll discuss the death penalty, drunk driving, wind farms, gun rights and the availability of pornography on college campuses.
There are nearly 1,200 bills filed so far for the regular session, and more are coming.
From a policy perspective, it will be a potpourri session, offering a little something for everyone.
On the education front, there’s a bill to allow students to opt out of classroom instruction, but still retain the state dollars assigned to them. There’s another to eliminate the appointed members of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.
As for big picture political changes, a pair of lawmakers have filed bills calling for another constitutional convention to replace Louisiana’s 1974 Constitution.
Rep. Stuart Bishop, R-Lafayette, also has a constitutional amendment to add a fourth term to legislative term limits beginning with the 2023 elections.
Bishop said the current three-term structure results in too much experience being lost. “The staff and lobbyists have become the institutional knowledge,” he said.
Ambitious would be one way to describe the upcoming regular session. Busy would be another.
So would frenetic. As such, over the next three months, lawmakers will need as few distractions as possible.
Unfortunately, the regular session will be packed with them, and there’s no turning back now.
I hope that won’t mean another special session will be needed.
We’ve seen plenty of those over the last couple of terms, and most of them were called to finish up work lawmakers couldn’t complete on time.
This go around, however, could be different.
Maybe.
For more Louisiana political news, visit www.LaPolitics.com or follow Alford on Twitter @LaPoliticsNow
When I bring up the subject of Ukraine with friends here in Louisiana, the response is more often than not some interest and a bit of concern, but that’s about all.
They don’t feel they are really affected. So should my state feel more empathy about events halfway around the world?
Maybe it’s just me. But I never thought such an event would happen.
To think that in 2022, Russia went to war attacking Ukraine, and in doing so upended the balance of power across Europe and the Baltic countries. And in so doing, we here in Louisiana and throughout the nation will see a substantial hit to our own pocketbooks.
It’s concerning that I write this column sitting in my comfortable armchair and drinking coffee while at this very moment somewhere in Ukraine people are fleeing bombs from Russian artillery.
Mothers leave all their worldly possessions and escape with crying children to questionable protection in underground subway stations.
Over a million Ukrainians forced to flee to other parts of the country or to other countries.
One moment you are shopping, going to a local Starbucks and enjoying family meals together. Then you quickly flee the onslaught of tanks and the raining down of missiles.
This is not an effort of ethnic cleansing like the Nazis undertaking the elimination of the Jews.
You wouldn’t be able to tell any physical difference between Ukrainians, Byelorussians, and Russians.
They share a similar culture and speak the same or close to the same language.
No, what we are seeing unfold is a warped effort to stamp out the flame of democracy. We are watching Putin’s regime moving quickly towards a resemblance of Stalin’s Russia or Hitler’s Germany.
And this military uprising directly affects our living standards here in Louisiana.
The price of oil has risen to over $100 a barrel, doubling what the cost was in January. The price of gasoline at the pump is above $4 gallon.
The cost of most consumer goods, particularly items at the grocery store, will take a significant upsurge.
Products across the board are both imported and exported from the Russia.
Louisiana sends aerospace products, automotive products, machinery, chemicals, poultry, soybeans and soybean meal.
The state brings in from Russia crude petroleum ($424 million); refined petroleum ($321 million); iron ore ($82.7 million); palm oil ($60.3 million); and coffee ($57.5 million). In fact 12.6% of all Louisiana imports come from the Soviet Union. All these purchases have been frozen, with suppliers having to look for other markets, often at much higher prices.
Our investments in the financial markets are taking a hit. No one knows how long this will last. All these figures show that we here in Louisiana are not exempt from the effects of these world events. We all pay a significant price.,
This international instability also raises the question of America’s defense capability. We in America are particularly vulnerable to cyber attacks. There are loud calls for more military spending that could require raising taxes. And will a compulsory draft be reinstated?
Investment adviser Vitaliy Katsenelson pointed out a historic model of how quickly world events can change, and gave as an example Russian Dmitry Shostakovich’s 7th, “Leningrad” Symphony. Shostakovich completed it in 1941. He was in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), and the city was surrounded by the Nazis, blockaded, completely cut off from the rest of Russia. The Germans were bombing day and night. People were dying of hunger.
This symphony starts out peacefully – the first 7 minutes are just about normal everyday life. Then in minute 7 you start hearing the faint sound of drums – that’s the German army marching on Russia. Minute by minute the drums grow louder, and then all peace is gone and then war. This symphony portrays well the irony and tragedy of what is happening right now. If Shostakovich were alive, he would have renamed this symphony “Kiev.”
Yes, we all have a stake in this war, and we all need to be concerned, whether we like it or not.
Peace and Justice
Jim Brown
Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com. Readers can also review books by Jim Brown and many others he has published by going to http://www.thelisburnpress.com.
The St. Mary Parish School Board recognized the district's Principal and Teachers of the Year at Thursday's meeting in Centerville. From left are Principal of the Year Ronnie Louis of B.E. Boudreaux Middle School; Alicia Williams of Hattie Watts Elementary, the Elementary Teacher of the Year; Crystal Guidry of Patterson Junior High, the Middle School Teacher of the Year; and Ponchella Doucet of Franklin Senior High, the High School Teacher of the Year.
The Review/Bill Decker
BATON ROUGE---The governor’s Climate Initiatives Task Force met Wednesday for the first time since unanimously passing a climate action plan in January, the first of its kind in the Gulf South.
Fifty public meetings into its 16-month existence, the task force is shifting gears from planning to executing its 84-step action plan. A bipartisan infrastructure act signed into law by President Joe Biden provides a unique opportunity to fund these efforts.
Louisiana is set to qualify for billions of dollars for road repairs, extreme weather preparedness, public transportation, broadband expansion and more. Another $179 billion in competitive federal funds is up for grabs to fund infrastructure projects, with special consideration for climate-focused efforts.
While task force members were optimistic about the prospect of federal funding, they also reckoned with the political uncertainty.
“I really want to encourage folks to pay attention to what’s already being rolled out” in the Louisiana Legislature, Flozell Daniels, president of the Foundation for Louisiana, said, referring to proposals to shield the state’s oil and gas industry from the changes.
“Much of it is designed to undermine the considerable work that’s been put into this plan, and we should acknowledge that,” Daniels said.
Federal dollars present a chance to set the task force’s goals in motion–a chance that may not come again for a long time.
“This really is a generational opportunity, and that may be putting it mildly because I don’t know the next time it’s going to come,” Gov. John Bel Edwards told task force members. “But this is a rare opportunity to invest in our state, but also to make good on the commitments in the climate action plan.”
Edwards described a “symbiotic relationship” between the state’s action plan and the federal infrastructure law: The climate action plan helps secure federal funding, which, in turn, helps the state execute the climate action plan.
Not only is Louisiana “more impacted by climate change than any other state in the country,” but it is also “doing more than any other state” to adapt, the governor said.
Because climate change largely determines where grant money goes, Louisiana is a strong competitor for federal funds.
The task force brought its action plan to Edwards’ desk just under three months after Biden signed the federal infrastructure bill.
Task force member Camille Manning-Broome agreed that the combined federal and state efforts create a “once in a generation opportunity” to accomplish climate goals.
Leaders from around the state and the country convened in New Orleans for a workshop Monday and Tuesday to talk about how Louisiana can build a competitive advantage in grant applications.
Edwards said he made clear to everyone there that the climate action plan is going to drive the way the state approaches the federal law.
The oilfield site restoration program, which spends roughly $8 million annually, is one program that could benefit from formula funding under the law, said Blake Canfield, a member of the legal advisory group for the task force and an attorney for the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources.
The restoration program, established in 1993, focuses on plugging abandoned oilfields, which can deteriorate over time and release oil and gas into the environment.
Canfield said there are about 4,600 orphan wells in the state, a number that is projected to increase. Louisiana could qualify for $150 million to $160 million in federal funding to expand operations, which would “completely transform this program,” Canfield told the task force.
Task force chair Harry Vorhoff called the program a “work in progress, but a fantastic opportunity to really chip away” at greenhouse gas emissions.
The governor and task force members expressed high hopes that the federal infrastructure law will help make Louisiana’s climate action plan a reality.
“Know that I will do whatever I can every single day that I’m governor to advance this cause,” Edwards said.
After nearly six decades, court action continues in the St. Mary Parish public schools desegregation lawsuit after a ruling that could expand the case into a new aspect of the school system.
The School Board’s regular monthly meeting was Thursday, after the deadline for this edition. The agenda included a possible closed-door session to discuss the 57-year-old desegregation case, Boudreaux, et al v. School Board of St. Mary Parish.
On Feb. 9, a federal court ruling in Lafayette rejected an attempt by the School Board’s attorneys to prevent discovery, the process by which attorneys provide information through documents and depositions, from moving into the makeup of the district’s special education program.
The School Board argued that special education is not among the benchmarks by which school districts have been judged in determining whether they have been desegregated.
Those factors, called Green factors after the Virginia case in which they were outlined, gauge desegregation progress in staff assignments, faculty assignments, facilities, extracurricular activities and transportation.
The School Board had noted that the plaintiffs didn’t bring up special education until May 2021 in the 1965 lawsuit.
The plaintiffs argued that the School Board is obligated to operate its student programs in a nondiscriminatory way, including gifted education, discipline policies and special education.
The court ruling cited previous cases in which rulings allowed examinations of racial balance in areas not explicitly identified as Green factors.
“After considering the arguments of the parties, and specifically considering the posture of this case, the Court agrees that the topic of special education is relevant to the analysis of the Green factors,” the ruling said. “The Court further finds that the School Board has not shown good cause to limit the discovery, that is, the School Board has not shown that the plaintiffs’ requests are annoying, embarrassing, oppressive, or unduly burdensome.”
The ruling does require the plaintiffs to tailor their requests for information to be more specific about what information about policies they’re seeking and the time frames involved.
Attorney Robert L. Hammonds, who represents the School Board, said Wednesday that the ruling, while it doesn’t outright block discovery related to special education, it left open the possibility of objections at later proceedings.
The Green factors are the key to a resolution in the case. When a district can show that it has successfully dealt with segregation in each of the five Green factor areas, it can be found to have achieved “unitary status.” That means freedom from direct judicial oversight of the district as a result of the lawsuit.
Court filings in the case indicated that in 1975, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Putnam was ready to rule that the St. Mary school system had achieved unitary status. But he didn’t sign the order, and the case seemed to drift away into legal limbo.
In the last few years, the case has become more active again in what attorneys described as part of a move to resolve decades-old desegregation cases.
But attorneys for the plaintiffs have been joined by attorneys from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and the new lawyers have not gone gently into the legal texts of closed lawsuits.
Early voting begins Saturday for municipal elections in Patterson and Franklin.
Early voting will be 8:30 a.m.-6 p.m. each day Saturday through March 19, excluding Sunday. If you’re eligible to vote in the election, you can vote at either Registrar of Voters Office. They’re located at the St. Mary Parish Courthouse in Franklin and at the Morgan City office, 301 Third St. You’ll need a photo ID to vote.
In Patterson, three proposed amendments for the city charter are on the ballot:
—No. 1 requires candidates for mayor to have either a high school diploma or its equivalent before qualifying to run.
—No. 2 requires the police chief to be at least 21, to have lived in Patterson for at least a year before taking the job and to be Peace Officer Standards Training-certified.
—No. 3 allows the police chief to receive a salary increase in the same four-year term in which the City Council approves the raise. Currently, the charter prohibits changes in the chief’s salary from taking effect until after the term when the changes are approved.
If the amendment passes, a cut in the chief’s pay would still have to wait until after the current term, but a raise could take effect immediately.
A seat on the City Council became open when Sandra K. Turner resigned in July, when she moved from the city limits. Ray Dewey Sr. was the lone candidate to qualify to run for the remainder of Turner’s term. Dewey took office Tuesday night.
Likewise, Tammie Moore of Four Corners was the only candidate who qualified to run for the St. Mary School Board seat left vacant when member Sylvia Lockett died in October.
Moore remains on the board after being appointed as Lockett’s interim successor.
Franklin voters are also due to pick City Council members.
Two races for the five-member council emerged in qualifying.
Ian Jonas Ruskoski is challenging incumbent Lester “Motor” Levine Jr. for the council’s at-large seat.
In District C, Ella Prevost Hamilton qualified to run against incumbent Larry Guilbeau.
Mayor Eugene Foulcard and council members Jaime Robison, Chuck D. Autin and Joseph H. Garrison qualified without opposition.
Franklin Banner-Tribune
P.O. Box 566, Franklin, LA 70538
Phone: 337-828-3706
Fax: 337-828-2874
Morgan City Review
1014 Front Street, Morgan City, LA 70380
Phone: 985-384-8370
Fax: 985-384-4255