Support for Louisiana.

The state we're in is provided by.

Every day I go to work for Entergy.

I know customers are counting on me.

So Entergy is investing millions of dollars to keep the lights on and installing new technology to prevent outages before they happen.

Together, together.

Together.

We power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred B and Ruth Zigler Foundation and the Zigler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you.

I mean the odds are slightly working out.

You know, they're a little below what an average season would be.

Obviously, it's hurricane season again.

What's brewing in the Gulf?

Colonoscopy is used to be a screening age 50, and now we're seeing that patients really could benefit from a colonoscopy starting at age 45.

Closing out Women's Health Month and anything to do with the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.

And, you know, they'll come.

Usually teachers will ask you to talk, to have someone talk on a subject that they're going to be teaching that week.

You know, so it kind of depends on what's what, you know, what they're going to be teaching.

Do our kids fully understand the legal system?

I always felt like kind of gaslit as a child.

It's like, I know I'm not crazy and I know these things that happen.

And a look at art rocks.

Hi, everyone.

I'm Kara St. Cyr You may have noticed I'm in a different location this week here at LPB.

We're doing some renovations in the studio.

For the next couple of weeks I'll be here in the control room.

But we start tonight's news with woes at the Capitol.

Lawmakers have less than a week to finalize the budget.

Wednesday, some representatives refused to approve a measure lifting the spending cap favored by Governor John Bel Edwards until the Senate released the spending plan.

Some House members voted to block that same resolution that would lift that spending cap from making it to the House Appropriations Committee.

Lawmakers did come to an agreement, though.

They're expected to let the appropriations panel discuss the resolution Friday as long as the committee waits to vote.

And now to other news making headlines across the state.

The state is suing FEMA over surging flood insurance rates.

The agency is adopting a new system that would use age to estimate a home's flood risk.

The system then gives a premium based on that number.

Louisiana homeowners can expect an average increase of 134% over the course of a few years.

Plaquemines Parish is expected to see the highest increase.

FEMA says the new system is a fair assessment since it's based on the individual home.

Louisiana is joining nine other states and several parishes in this lawsuit.

Attorney General Jeff Landry confirmed that the paperwork was filed Thursday.

A new study launched by the Army Corps of Engineers provides guidelines on how to manage the Mississippi River.

The $25 million project will address issues like flooding, environmental restoration and water supply, among other things.

Both Louisiana and Mississippi State officials lobbied for it.

They specifically requested a focus on the Army Corps regulations surrounding the Bonnet Carre spillway and its role in flood protection.

The study will also focus on environmental issues in other states like Tennessee and Alabama.

Opera Southern of Southern University put on a special opera performance honoring the late Emmett Till.

The opera will tell Emmett’s story in three acts, starting with his journey from Chicago to Mississippi, ending with his death and the subsequent trial that famously acquitted two white men.

The opera's composer, Charles Lloyd Jr, is currently the professor of music and director of choirs at Southern University.

He says the original iteration of his opera did not depict the violence of Till's death because it was too emotionally charged.

But in the latest edition, he ran at the scene saying it was necessary for the story.

The opera debuted on May 16th to a full house.

A Louisiana lawmaker says the Gators are overpopulated and he's sick of it.

Louisiana alligators are protected by various laws enacted to keep the population at a healthy number.

But in the past 50 years, the number of gators has expanded from 100,000 to 3 million, which for perspective is three times the population of the sunshine State.

State Rep Chad Brown says the alligator boom is spilling into human populated areas, which could be dangerous.

He's proposing a bill that would loosen hunting restrictions and expand the hunting season.

Brown’s resolution cleared the House House Natural Resources Committee.

Without objection, the Committee of 100 for Economic Development, the Council for a Better Louisiana and the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana released their 2023 reset Issues initiative.

The initiative has 55 policy recommendations and nine policy briefings which focus on four key areas tax and spending policies improving education, improving infrastructure and public safety.

It's been studied by a national consultancy.

It's been studied by our own legislature.

The results are positive.

These are the things that can make a difference in Louisiana.

You know, everything's cumulative.

I know many of you have been around long enough to know.

You look back ten, 15 years.

We were doing this back then, Right.

We need to change our tax code.

We need to do better in education.

We need to do better in transportation.

I know it's cumulative, but we have gotten some improvement.

June 1st is the official start of hurricane season, which means the Louisiana weather experts are looking out to the Gulf to see if there are any disturbances after a relatively mild 2022 season here in the state.

Barry Keim, our state climatologist, has what we're expecting this year.

So thank you so much for joining us.

So let's start with the basics.

So we're expected to be in an El Nino this year.

So what does that mean for us?

El Ninos are good news for the tropical season.

So right now, the forecasts are actually for a near-normal or perhaps even a below normal season.

And it's because of that El Nino.

The two main factors that we really look at are the sea surface temperatures across the breeding grounds.

Now they're above normal.

That's a predictor for an above normal season.

But then the second piece that you have to put in there is whether or not you're in La Nino neutral or in El Nino conditions.

Right now, we're in neutral conditions.

It looks like we're going to be in an El Nino in the heart of the hurricane season.

That's good news, is that takes the numbers down.

So we have one indicator saying above normal, another saying below normal.

The we end up with a forecast saying something near normal, except that the El Nino is probably a little bit more important than the sea surface temperatures.

Hence an average season is 14 named storms this year.

They're predicting at least the Colorado State group, they're predicting 13 named storms.

So we're just one one tick off of a normal season.

Yeah, slightly below normal.

Correct.

But of course, I mean, this doesn't mean that we won't see any hurricanes.

The possibility just because it's an average or maybe even a slightly below normal average prediction does not mean that, you know, we won't have above normal numbers.

And even if we have below normal numbers doesn't mean we won't get hit great example was 1992.

That year we had very cold sea surface temperatures.

All the predictions were for a below normal season.

And guess what?

It was a below normal season.

Except we got Hurricane Andrew that year.

Yes.

So, Andrew, the first storm of the year, the storm all the way into the deepest part of August.

But look at, you know, that storm ravaged Florida and did a pretty good number on Louisiana as well.

Yeah, Baton Rouge, especially because normally whenever you're thinking about hurricanes, kind of Baton Rouge is always kind of missed somehow.

But Hurricane Andrew, I think it was directly over Baton Rouge was an eye.

Well, yeah, it made landfall near Morgan City, tracked around the west side of of Baton Rouge.

And of course, that put Baton Rouge in the on the strong side of the storm.

And, you know, it wreaked havoc in Baton Rouge.

I was here for that one.

And I was without power for, I don't know, ten days or something.

It was not a good time.

It was definitely brutal.

But we got a little bit off track.

Let's get back on it.

So how long are we expected to stay in an El Nino?

And also, whenever you think about last year, that was also a pretty mild year.

Is that what we were in an El Nino?

But last year, I believe we were in neutral conditions the two seasons before 2020, 2021, which brought us Laura and Ida and Zeta and so on and so forth.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, the list goes on right now.

It's just, just, it's just the beginning.

We were in a, in a mild La Nina those years.

La Nina is tend to, you know, increased opportunities for hurricanes by reducing wind shear and we got a load of them.

So I mean, in those years, last year, I believe it was neutral.

This year it looks like we're going to be in an El Nino, which should knock the numbers down or hold them down.

Hopefully it will be something close to normal, hopefully maybe a little below normal, and hopefully they'll stay away from Louisiana.

We certainly have paid our dues the last few years.

Well, this year, currently it looks like there's some activity in the Gulf.

Is that expected to develop into anything?

No, There is a little tropical disturbance in the Atlantic right now.

There's too much wind shear right now.

The sea surface temperatures just aren't quite what they need to be and they just expect this to fizzle out.

But we still need to keep an eye on it.

I mean, strange things happen.

We never say never in the weather business, but but right now, it just doesn't like anything for anybody to be concerned over.

All right.

So we're in an El Nino year that means slightly below average for hurricanes.

Is there anything else that people need to know about this upcoming hurricane season?

Well, bottom line is, if you're in Louisiana, you always need to be on your A-game no matter what the forecast is telling us, because you never know.

We've been hit in these quiet years.

So get your plan in place and, you know, buckle up your chinstrap and and just get ready and hopefully nothing will happen.

I mean, the odds are slightly working out.

You know, they're a little below what an average season would be, obviously.

But again, it doesn't mean we won't get hit.

So just be prepared.

Yeah, the finger.

Fingers crossed.

You got it.

Absolutely.

All right.

Well, thank you so much for coming in and talking with us.

My pleasure.

not a defense to any criminal prosecution under Louisiana law, then it's imperative the public have a thorough understanding of the criminal justice system.

But how can the state promote this type of understanding?

Louisiana Supreme Court judges began tackling this problem with the judges in the classroom, lawyers in the classroom program.

The goal is to teach youth the basics of the law and the consequences of their actions.

Louisiana Supreme Court Justice John L Weimer and Peggy Catogna, the executive director of the Louisiana Center for Law and Civic Education, both sat down with me to talk about the dire need for legal professionals in the classroom.

So you created a task force to encourage judges to reach out to the youth.

It ties into an initiative called Judges in the Classroom with students in the courtroom.

So can you tell me a little bit about what this program actually is?

Sure.

This program began many, many years ago, some 20 years ago, when Ben Jones, a district judge in Monroe, initiated the program.

And the program developed over the years and was utilized by judges to go into classrooms, but also teaching civics to also teach them about personal responsibility, respect for the law and the consequences of inappropriate behavior.

And, Peggy, I mean, you do a lot of the groundwork for this program.

You help find judges, you help find lawyers.

Can you tell me a little bit about what it's like finding these people and also what the reception has been like to the program?

Well, it's it's very simple.

We we have a database with social studies, teachers and school principals.

And we get the word out that there is this program.

And if they would like a judge or a lawyer to visit their students to complete a form and submit it to me to the LC, LC and on the form and they can put which topic they would like addressed.

And it's very easy for me to, you know, just one email or one phone call to find a judge or a lawyer, and then we hook them up and that's it.

I can do it in 5 minutes sometimes start to finish.

Yeah.

And it seems I mean, we were talking earlier and you said a lot of these judges are really enthusiastic to join the program and go speak to these kids.

This last year has been phenomenal.

We had more students impacted than ever, ever before, at least in the last 15 years that I've been involved.

And I can tell you of all the many, many judges that I asked to do a program, maybe two or three couldn't do it.

That's amazing.

You know, And there is they are so pleased to be asked and they will do it if it's humanly possible.

And that's amazing considering how busy a judge is.

Exactly.

But we really need more classrooms to go to.

You know, that that would be the best thing in the whole world.

So what are the most common topics that teachers are asking these judges to come in and explain?

You know, there's two things.

There's the academic and then the one, you know, there's the inappropriate behavior of juveniles.

But for academically, it's it's always the the three branches is always popular.

And anything to do with the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.

And, you know, they'll come.

Usually teachers will ask you to talk, to have someone talk on a subject that they're going to be teaching that week.

You know, So it kind of depends on what's what, you know, what they're going to be teaching as to which topics they request.

And I know you've kind of touched on this a little bit, but I mean, what do you two both hope the overall impact of these programs will be that know young people or involved in the juvenile justice system would be helped from that goal?

This interview is part one of two interviews I did with Louisiana's Supreme Court justices.

Stay tuned next week for the rest.

May wrapped up the end of Women's Health Month as it comes to a close.

Baton Rouge General Hospital wants women to prioritize screenings and preventative health care.

Make sure you take a look.

So this is the last month of Women's Health Awareness Month.

Are there any particular illnesses that affect women in Louisiana?

Yeah, we do.

So in Louisiana, we have a very diverse population.

And actually, here in East Baton Rouge Parish, we have the second highest rates in the state for breast cancer.

And so when we look at breast cancer, usually it's identified on an annual mammogram.

What we see here in even in East Baton Rouge Parish, but nationally, is that amongst women who get diagnosed with breast cancer, black women tend to have a higher mortality rate.

We're not sure if that's necessarily because maybe they're finding their cancers later, maybe their cancers are more aggressive or maybe is it is it because they're systemic issues in health care?

So that's one trend that we know of that's affecting us locally and that we also see on a national scale.

Wow.

Anything else?

I mean, what about HPV?

That's something that affects a lot of women nationwide.

Yeah.

So the Gardasil vaccine has been around for maybe over 12 years now, but it is still hard to we're still having a hard take rate.

Fortunately, the Gardasil vaccine has been approved for women into their forties now.

And so that could be a way we reduce cervical cancer further.

But yes, so interestingly, cervical cancer right here in Louisiana is actually more common than than it is in many other states.

And so definitely, if we could talk to patients about getting the Gardasil vaccine, many patients that were too old to get it when they were kids because it didn't come out then, could now get it as adults and they could see reduction in their risk of cervical cancer, potentially throat cancer and anal cancer even.

And you said that that's you know, cervical cancer is high here in Louisiana.

Is that because of HPV?

It is because of HPV.

And so we know that there's high risk strains of HPV that are related to cervical cancer.

And the ones we have here in Louisiana are are we think that we have some that are kind of more specific to our area here, which is which is kind of interesting.

Okay.

Well, outside of cancer and HPV, are there other chronic illnesses that affect women in Louisiana more than other places?

There are.

So here in Louisiana, with the diversity of the population, we have good food.

We have we do a lot of partying down here.

So we have a really high, high rate of chronic conditions, things like diabetes, obesity.

We have a lot of smoke smokers that still have significant risk factors to their health.

We have quite a few patients that have chronic hypertension and we see a high rate of kidney disease.

And so these kind of chronic conditions are ideally treated in with a primary care model.

And so unfortunately, I think one barrier to care in Louisiana is just that a lot of patients don't have a primary care doctor.

And so when they find out about these problems, you know, maybe things are a little more advanced or a little more far along than they when they when they could have found out, you know, years before.

Right.

So it's all about preventative care, really?

Yeah.

So I think ideally all Louisianans should have a primary care doctor, someone who knows their health history, someone that they can call when they're sick.

You know, I think we're all using the urgent care all the time when we feel bad, but really kind of like having a primary care home to manage your chronic conditions that you may not even know about is sort of the most important thing women can do at any age of their life.

All right.

So everything seems to go back to preventative care.

So that means get your screenings, go and get your shots and just make sure that everything's okay.

Go to those doctor's appointments.

Yeah.

And you know, what I'll say about that is I think patients, when they think about the gynecologist, they think, Oh, well, that's just my pap smear.

But it's so much more than that.

You know, ideally when you go to your GYN and you're going to be talking about wellness, you're going to be talking about your exercise habits, what you eat, you're gonna be talking about how is your sex, You're going to be talking about how are your bowels working?

You know what I mean?

What is your breast health look like?

And so really, it's the whole picture.

And so, you know, I think trying to reframe it as instead of just I need my pap smear, it's how how well am I going?

Yeah.

Am I am I up to date on all the screenings that I need?

You know, one quick thing.

Colonoscopies used to be screening age, age 50.

And now we're seeing that patients really could benefit from a colonoscopy starting at age 45.

So that's something that we've adjusted just in the last couple of years.

And then the other thing is a lot of patients are skipping out on their mammograms.

And so getting a mammogram every year after the age of 40, even if you don't have a primary care doctor, even if you don't have a gynecologist, try to find somewhere to get a mammogram.

All right.

So preventative care, that's what everything comes down.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think so.

All right.

Well, thank you so much for talking with us.

Two, one.

So the bottom line is to make sure that you don't skip your monthly doctor's appointments and make sure you go to those screenings.

Now, moving on to something special, the emphasis of Mike Weary’s art is about the plight of African-American men.

He draws inspiration from current events, history and his own personal experiences.

And all of that brings his artwork to life.

Dorothy Kendrick presents this week's Art Rocks episode.

I don't paint for aestetics, I paint for feeling and story.

I want you to pay attention to the painting.

I want you to engage with it.

I don't want it to be.

Oh, this is something to look pretty on my wall and you forget about it.

I don't want that to be the conversation.

I want there to be a deeper conversation.

A why while you're staring at the painting.

I use a darker style.

Gothic, Dorian Gothic is what I've phrased it as and is just a reflection of being black in the South its mccabe we have a good time.

Our culture is beautiful.

We're beautiful.

But there's a very dark past with that and trying to cope with that.

I feel like in some way it symbolizes bringing light from the dark, but also just with value.

It shows more depth coming from those dark areas.

I painted James Baldwin because I usually paint people who are influential to me and through his readings and I listen to a lot of his speeches, dating back.

But the one line that always sticks out for me and hits me on my core, he said to be Negro in America and to be relatively conscious is to be in a constant state of rage.

And my entire life I've always felt this state of rage and not really knowing how to place it other than in art.

The way he is so on the nose, he doesn't hold back.

He tells you exactly like it is.

And for me personally, I always felt like kind of gaslit as a child.

It's like, I know I'm not crazy and I know these things are happening.

I know a lot of it has to do with my skin color and having someone like Baldwin explain it and say it's so clearly to me, in particular to young black men and black children in general and telling us about our history.

It's just a lot and it just hits home and it gives me he gives me courage to just paint what I want to paint and speak on the issues that I want to speak on.

To see his painting of James Baldwin.

It's almost like you're peering into his soul.

Baldwin is the soul of America because there were some things that he helped us to realize and to see.

And no matter how far we try to get away from it, we always come back to him and what he's written.

I painted Nelson Mandela because I find that he was one of those revolutionaries that was lost in time.

They nicened him up.

They made him seem a lot less radical than he was.

Same with Martin Luther King and just being in apartheid and being in Africa in general.

Sometimes we forget just how much colonization affected that region is, not just America.

This is a global thing.

Racism in general is all white.

Supremacy in general is.

I want to uplift those figures that rail against the status quo of the world in general.

I grew up learning all these figures in our history.

My parents were very serious about teaching us our history more than just what our schools were telling us.

I found Junebug dangling from an oak.

That's the name of it.

And I have been having conversations with an older gentleman that would walk past my studio on a daily basis.

And the painting came about from just me looking at his face and saying, I see a lot of story here.

And he told me about himself and he told me about him being an artist actually, and conveniently, and for me to kind of make that connection.

And it's a weird thing is like I paint these men and the story always has some type of relevance cross with other men and other people of color in general.

I actually had a man standing in front of the painting and he was just looking at it and I walked up and I said, Look, you know, do you like it?

He was like, Yeah, man, it reminds me of my uncle also.

Okay, what about it?

He's like, Just bring an emotion.

And he was saying his uncle was lynched in the eighties in Shreveport.

And this entire painting, my writing stemmed from lynching and anti-lynching bills that hadn't been passed at the time yet.

And to have that context lay into it is just always eerie, otherworldly, sometimes.

The man's name is Brian, but we call him Junebug because the black community, everybody got along with Junebug or somebody in their family named Junebug, and that's the cultural tide I wanted to keep for us.

There's also a Junebug on his lip, and that's just signifying the other side of the white viewer that may see that and go, Oh, he's talking about the bug and trying to just correlate the humanity in Junebug, the person versus someone who may not see the human and only see the inside.

Summer Dream 2020 is an extremely important painting for me, is the one that I kind of hoard and I try to just put it in exhibition and when it's not, I kind of just put off too.

I don't like too many people to see it.

It's like my baby.

It's important to me because I was creating it right around the pandemic and I suffer from extreme anxiety sometimes, and the pandemic just heighten that for me.

And obviously that was around the time that we had the social unrest in 2020.

And it's just been odd because I painted this painting in February, March of that year, and George Floyd was murdered in May that year.

But everyone sees this as a George Floyd painting and it's just eerie and otherworldly.

Sometimes how art mimics life is very personal for me.

Mike Weary does take commissions for his art, so if you want to learn more about him and his pieces, make sure to check out lpb.org.

And that's our show for this week.

Remember, you can watch anything LPB any time, wherever you are with our LPB PBS app.

You can catch LPB news and public affairs shows as well as other Louisiana programs you've come to enjoy over the years.

And please like us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for everyone at Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

I'm Kara St. Cyr until next time.

That's the state we're in.

Every day I go to work for Entergy.

I know customers are counting on me.

So Entergy is investing millions of dollars to keep the lights on and installing new technology to prevent outages before they happen.

Together, together.

Together.

We power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred Bea and Ruth B Zigler Foundation and the Zigler Art Museum, located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you.