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 Bea and Ruth B Ziegler Foundation and the Ziegler 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.

And it's both a good time and a bad time for for offshore wind.

New activity in the Gulf of Mexico and what that means for Louisiana.

19,000 kids were once registered and now they're missing.

Louisiana's truancy rate topped the national average.

In order to be productive citizens, we also need to be healthy.

And so the state will need to spend some time focusing on that going forward.

The State of Louisiana's Health.

I want his story to be seen and heard.

A long lost legend resurfacing nearly 40 years later.

New information on the Madison Brooks tragedy that occurred on January 15th.

The 17 year old charged with first and third degree rape will be tried as an adult, along with three other suspects, two who are 18 years old and one who was 28.

Of course, alcohol has been at the center of the horrible events that ultimately took the life of the LSU coed that evening.

Her blood alcohol level was nearly four times the legal limit.

And now to other news making headlines across the state.

LSU Tigers leading wide receiver is no longer facing misdemeanor charges for carrying an illegal weapon.

19 year old Malik Neighbors was approached by police officers Monday in New Orleans during a mardi Gras parade when they spotted an L-shaped object in his pocket.

Neighbors was arrested when he told officers he did not have a permit.

The charges were dropped Wednesday afternoon on the condition that his gun not be returned to him as carnival season ended in tragedy for some, leaving one teenager dead and a four year old injured.

Police responded to gunfire on a popular parade route late Monday, eventually taking a 21 year old into custody.

The police superintendent says two guns were recovered from the scene.

The man in custody was charged for illegally carrying a weapon.

And now second degree murder.

Homicide investigators are looking for any information and trying to identify a motive.

They're also investigating whether another shooter was involved.

Governor John Bel Edwards budget was presented to lawmakers this week.

His proposal emphasizes teacher pay raises, transportation projects and funding for education.

About 45.7 billion will go toward this year's spending plan, which is a little less than last year's 46.1 billion.

The governor also wants to set aside money for FEMA payments for hurricane damage, updating Louisiana's voting systems and repair funding for state buildings.

This will be the governor's last budget proposal.

She will not be able to run for governor again as he's reached the term limit.

Lawmakers will convene April 10th when session begins to vote on the spending plan.

And there is action happening in the Gulf of Mexico on offshore rigs, with drilling on federal waters opening the waters for more oil and gas drilling.

But then Wednesday, news of the first offshore wind auction took place.

There was going to be a delay on that we had heard.

So to explain, all this change is now professor emeritus of the LSU Center for Energy Studies, David Dismukes.

Welcome.

Thanks for being here.

First, what do you make of oil and gas drilling?

Well, it's positive news.

As you know, There's been a stall throughout most of this administration on all new activity.

So for us, it helps put people back to work.

It creates new jobs, but it also continues a revenue source of generation.

You know, a lot of the dollars that we get through go Mesa and other funding sources from the federal government go into environmental and coastal restoration projects so that those are important things that have been at a loss for us during that delay.

And it looks like those are picking up and the light may be turn on when with the reality of the war in Ukraine and that, you know, the U.S. is not producing this.

The other people who are not the ones you want to be producing it.

Right.

Right.

You know, it's hard to know what the entire motivation is on that.

You'd hope that would be part of it.

I think part of it had to do with some of the quid pro quo that were traded off during the Inflation Reduction Act passage.

Yes.

And and probably some of this this litigation probably doesn't help matters, at least for the administration from that perspective.

So I'm sure some light bulb went off.

It may have been a combination of them.

But, you know, for us it's a good outcome and a compromise, it seems, anyway.

And it's very good for Louisiana.

It is.

And you know, the US it is.

I think it's and as you mentioned before, it's very good timing, not only because of the war that's going on in Eastern Europe right now, but a lot of major energy companies as they've set out their capital budgeting plans for the next year, the next two years.

I think Exxon has done this show, maybe BP as well.

They've all talked about increasing investment in opportunities in the Gulf of Mexico as an area where they want to earmark that in kind of backing away after getting burned on some of these write downs that they've had in Eastern Europe and in Russia in particular, bringing those kind of back home to more stable environment.

So it's a good timing for us.

Hopefully it'll carry through.

There won't be delays, there won't be lawsuits.

The environmental review process won't be unnecessarily long.

Yeah, So we'll just have to see how it all plays out with the fast track of this new oil and gas drilling.

There was said to be a delay in the wind energy, but that's not happened this week because the auction or they've already begun that process now.

Yeah, it was a big surprise seeing that this morning or today.

We'll see where that goes.

There.

Three blocks, I believe, that are going to be up one offshore from Lake Charles and then two off of Galveston, same places that we had not seen before.

Right.

Right.

So it's a unique opportunity.

First of the Gulf is kind of a mixed bag right now.

It's both a good time and a bad time for for offshore wind.

It's there have been a lot of challenges in the industry right now, particularly with projects along the Eastern seaboard and just big capital projects in general.

As you can imagine, when you've got, you know, really high interest rates and higher cost of financing and the uncertainty of that with not knowing where the Federal Reserve is going to go.

I mean, you watched the stock market the last few days, and I think we're going to continue to see that kind of volatility.

It creates a big macroeconomic overhang on big projects like this.

But, you know, it's it's it's very encouraging to see that moving.

The public sale notice has gone out.

I think they're going to be offering comments on that.

I think the administration, from what it appears, is going to be looking at tying some provisions, particular with local content and other things into the sale.

So we'll just have to see how that plays the building time of getting construction, the erection of these very tall turbines, which I didn't realize some of them were 750 feet tall.

So these are huge structures in the Gulf, but before that would be even operating to help with energy.

Is that years, years, years away?

Yeah, it's going to probably be some years away.

A lot of developers are prioritizing the projects that are on the Eastern seaboard.

It'll be interesting to see what this interest is.

It's a bit of a mixed bag.

New York just had an open solicitation the last several months and it had pretty good response rate despite the fact that we've got these challenges.

It'll be interesting to see how this one comes out, how what with the royalty payments are going to be on the leases themselves.

A lot of those Atlantic seaboard leases went for considerable amounts of money.

So it's a big investment.

You don't want to leave sitting around and operating on.

But these are unique structures as you've noted, high technology, a handful of people that make these things and they lend themselves even more than, say, normal manufacturing activities, the supply chain challenges.

And we're already starting to see that with some of the developments right now.

So again, it's kind of a mixed bag right now.

We'll just have to see how it all plays out.

All right.

We at least there's been some harmony on both sides and maybe a compromise.

So both will move forward.

But it's a good thing that the oil and gas is two for us.

Yeah, it's good for us.

It's good for for labor force development in Louisiana and really continuing that moving on in this next era with offshore wind.

David, good to talk to you.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

Okay.

A new study by the Associated Press and Stanford University found that about 19,000 Louisiana students are unaccounted for on the education map.

These absences cannot be explained.

Most of the missing kids account for about 2% of the total population of school age children in the state.

Roxanne Welch with the Family and Youth Service Center has been sounding the alarm for months.

So recently there was a study released by Stanford University and the Associated Press that said that 19,000 kids were missing in Louisiana off the educational map.

So when you hear something like that, it sounds like a really loaded sentence.

19,000 kids missing from Louisiana schools.

But what does that actually mean?

It's horrifying to me because, first of all, 19,000 children have no options in life, period.

They don't have an education and they also don't have somebody to watch to see if something's going on.

So school serves a lot of purposes.

And so they don't have that anymore.

But that means 19,000 kids were once registered and now they're missing.

But what about the ones who were never registered to begin with?

So you're saying you think the number is much larger?

I'm certain that the number is much larger because we have people who will call us and tell us about children that are in their house, that they've never seen anybody anywhere around ongoing school.

And so the neighbors are concerned.

Grandmothers are concerned because they're grandchildren have not been in school.

You've got the police that will pick up a child and the child and tell them, you know, I want to go to school.

I'm not allowed to go to school because I live with my grandmother and she can't sign the papers.

Things like that.

Lots of different reasons.

And those kids are not on the radar screen.

Those kids are not listed as the 19,000 because they were never registered to begin with.

So for the kids, the 19,000 that are listed, I mean, in your experience, why aren't they coming to school?

Because the study says that there's really no data showing why.

I can tell from experience.

I can tell you one.

And really, it's common sense.

Why?

First of all, you had the problem that you have family issues.

And family issues by themselves will cause all kinds of trouble.

And I was an educator for a very long time.

And I knew I knew when the children were very young, second and third grade, usually because it's second and third grade, that's when the kids require help from home.

Right.

And so if they're not getting the help from home, then you start seeing that the papers are not checked and the papers are not sent that sign and the child starts struggling with school and child starts not wanting to come to school and the mama is sleeping or the mom is working double shifts.

Mom's doing that.

She can child's school.

So there's a lot of different reasons.

It's not just, you know, a neglectful parent.

There could be.

All kinds of reasons.

It could be a grandmother that's raising a child and she's ill and she's doing the best she can.

You really have to look at these things one at a time.

You every single case that we've ever seen is different because the circumstances are different.

The children are different, the parents are different, The families different.

The system is different for that particular child.

And so you really have to pay attention to these type of things.

Why?

Because kids.

Kids, it's their nature to want to learn.

It's all of our nature.

And so there's got to be a reason.

Now, sometimes it's because you're so far behind that you really just honestly don't want to be there anymore because it's embarrassing and you're all of a sudden in a foreign land with foreign language, with people you don't know, with people who are critical because you don't know.

And right now we've got cold feet that change the entire landscape.

So we've got kids who have missed three years, three years of school, plus half of the year of the dead because the kids got hit around March.

And so what happens in school is for the first part of school, they're teaching them skills, teaching them skills, teaching them skills.

And in about March and April, they start bringing them all together and they're connect those skills.

Right.

There's no connection now, but there was no connect there.

So you missed that year to four years and then the following year they tried so hard to get the kids set up on Zoom and and Google Classroom so the kids could go on to these classrooms and virtually.

So they had to get virtual computers.

They had to get the children hotspots.

They had to do all of these things.

It was a very difficult task.

And so some of the kids never got didn't get the computers at all until well into the next year.

So you've got that.

And if you if you think if you are suddenly zapped into a foreign country with foreign language, with everything different, would you want to go to school when every single time you opened your mouth, you were wrong?

They stopped wanting to go to school, and then they become very angry children because they didn't want to go to school and things got in their way.

And so you become very angry.

And then to a certain point, you just become angry people because options have been removed.

If you don't have school.

Your options are very limited in life and people are going to survive.

So it's a big problem for all of us.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk about this really serious issue.

I mean, the report was very shocking for a lot of people.

But thank you so much.

Thank you.

The health of Louisiana's citizens is in flux.

Like most of the country, our residents are experiencing shorter life spans and bouts of poor mental health episodes.

Allison Plyer with the National Conference on Citizenship shed some light on why Louisiana ranks so low.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Glad to be.

Here.

So these numbers are pretty shocking whenever you look at them at first.

Let's start with the life expectancy.

So Louisiana has the third shortest life expectancy among Americans.

Right.

Why is that?

Well, it's particularly bad news because obviously life expectancy in the U.S. fell in the first year of COVID, and unlike other developed countries, were able to turn that around and increase their life expectancy.

The second year hours continued to fall.

And Louisiana is, as you said, the third lowest life expectancy.

There's a number of things that came along with COVID, in addition to, you know, 18,000 people dying in Louisiana from COVID, seen drug overdoses skyrocket by 30%.

And Louisiana has a higher than average rate of drug overdose deaths.

Now, also gun suicides, which are the majority of ways that guns actually cause death or suicides, sadly.

And Louisiana also is higher than the national average, and those skyrocketed about 10%.

We've also seen increased traffic fatalities.

So there's, you know, obviously, the mental health issues that you mentioned are a big component of of of these increasing deaths.

Right.

And I mean, you would think, you know, three years after the pandemic, we would see some sort of improvement.

But I'm looking at the mental health numbers and it says 40% of Louisianians report symptoms of anxiety or depression.

And why are we not seeing any of those improvements?

Yeah, and that was as recently as December of 2022.

Right.

So just a couple of months ago.

Yeah.

And that's only among adults.

And obviously there's mental health issues that teenagers and young people are experiencing as well.

You know, Louisiana has had some of the most severe, of course, disasters in the last three years, which have compounded the stress of the COVID crises.

Right.

Louisiana parishes, every single one has had at least 12 disaster declarations in the same time frame that we've had COVID going on.

So that causes a lot of anxiety and depression.

And then we've had power outages.

We've had, you know, more hours of power outages across the state than than any other state in the nation over the last ten years.

So, you know, if our if our infrastructure were more resilient, you know, and we could be more resilient in the face of these disasters, that would help a lot.

And then, of course, there's long COVID.

That's right.

Yeah.

And currently, 31% of Louisianans who have experienced COVID say they're experiencing long-covid, which can be really debilitating.

For some folks.

That means they just can't even go to work.

So nationwide, you know, long COVID is going to continue to be an issue.

And doctors are saying there's not enough research about how to treat it, which is which is a problem.

Right.

If doctors don't know how to help you get better than it, then these are symptoms that people can really struggle with for a long time.

Now you're a researcher, which means you look at data like this all the time.

Have you ever seen, you know, ranks and scores this low before?

Well, you know, sadly, Louisiana often ranks very low in the nation.

But I think what's really concerning is that the nation is ranking so low.

And in many of these, you know, life expectancy has not turned around in the last year and a half, as it has for other wealthy countries.

The thing about gun suicides, for example, is about three times as high in the U.S. as it is in other countries.

Also, pregnancy related deaths in the U.S. are twice as high as they are in other wealthy countries.

And and in Louisiana, they're three times as high as they are in the U.S., Right.

So Louisiana often is at the bottom of rankings, but the U.S. itself is is not doing well on health measures compared to other wealthy nations.

Do you see this improving anytime soon?

I mean, it's been nearly three years, almost since the pandemic hit and we went on lockdown.

But, you know, these numbers have been lingering and it seems like they've been getting worse.

I mean, do you see this improving any time soon?

Yeah, You know, I think there's a lot of sort of opportunities and challenges ahead.

Right.

Speaking of infrastructure, we know there's a lot of funding coming from the federal government to strengthen infrastructure, and that'll be going over probably a decade.

You know, the state can do a lot to improve, improve health and mental health.

One thing we know is that states that don't have paid sick leave, that there are more people because of the stress of not being able to take off work and be paid, actually have mental health crises, have there's more gun suicide, more overdose deaths.

And so so states can actually help by saying, hey, we need to have paid sick leave or at least let localities pass ordnances to require paid sick leave in their jurisdictions.

All right.

So is there anything else about the study that stuck out to you, Anything that people should know?

You know, I think that, you know, the next many years are going to be really important ones for building the health of our communities.

Right.

To come out of this in order to be productive citizens, we also need to be healthy.

And so the state will need to spend some time focusing on that going forward.

Well, thank you so much for joining us this evening.

We appreciate having you in.

Thank you.

And now a story about a legend from the past.

A man who was in the first class of levees, Louisiana legends.

Baton Rouge native Jeanne Callahan.

Big name in the television and film industry.

A two time Oscar winner in set design art direction.

He told the L.A. Times in an interview it was his job to get the right look and feel for a show from locations and interiors.

Memories of Callahan came rushing back for us this week when a Baton Rouge woman walked into our studios saying that she had this amazing memorabilia that was his apparently left behind in the house that he grew up in, and she inherited it.

That's where our story begins.

I want his story to be seen and.

Heard the story.

Gina Gaspard in Baton Rouge wants to be seen and heard, is captured in a gold mine of American television and film history.

It belonged to Jean Callahan, a Baton Rouge native and one of Hollywood's most accomplished art directors and production and set designers of all time.

He twice won Academy Awards out of four nominations.

I left Louisiana 43 years ago not to escape, but to seek a career that seemed impossible to pursue here.

A belated thank you, Barbra Streisand.

He did.

Funny Girl.

There are personal notes like that one from Barbra Streisand and letters, dozens and dozens of them and hundreds of photographs.

As Callahan worked to get the right look and feel for a movie set, a time capsule of TV and film history left behind in these boxes.

So how did Gina, a complete stranger, come to own Callahan's memorabilia here?

1951 Wisteria Avenue in Baton Rouge as Garden District is the house where Jean Callahan grew up and lived until after he left LSU and Louisiana and began his career.

Gina rented that house in 1995, several years after his death.

You are not a relative.

I am not sure.

You had never met Jim Callahan.

How did you ever come to possess these treasures?

I was living in his house, renting it, and the bank called.

I knew it was going to be they were going to sell it.

And they said, if you want anything in there, take it.

Because we're coming tomorrow with a truck and everything in there is going to the dump.

So I thought maybe there's a headboard back there, some piece of furniture, a lamp, something like that.

And on the way out, I saw this, the Oscar.

Actually the Oscar nomination plaque Callahan received in the art direction category from 1964.

It's for the film America America, directed by the great Elia Kazan.

It won Callahan his second Oscar.

He won his first two years earlier for The Hustler with Paul Newman.

Among the findings, photos of Natalie Wood, who starred in Splendor in the Grass with a then unknown Warren Beatty.

Afraid seeing thanks.

But Callahan was one of LP's first Louisiana legends.

This is from his acceptance in 1990, in which he speaks almost prophetically about Louisiana's film industry.

My work in film has taken me to cities all over the world, and it gave me a truly wonderful and exciting life.

While I was away, I convinced several producers, including the irascible Otto Preminger, that they could make their films here in Louisiana.

They, in turn, sang our praises to other producers, which possibly may have encouraged others to come here.

Louisiana has so much to offer and has greatly varied geography.

It's lovely.

Modern cities, small picturesque towns and villages and exotic swamps, bayou, vast plains and rolling hills and well-maintained historical sites.

To this, we can add skilled labor who will help the producers and filmmakers capture Louisiana on film.

And finally, we add our legendary hospitality, which is seduced every company that I know that has worked for you.

I have now finally returned to Baton Rouge, though I was sad that you can't go home.

Okay.

They were wrong.

I am home and maybe I never really left.

Callahan was so genuine and unaffected by his fame, loved by so many people that I've talked with this week.

Who knew him?

Yeah.

I think it's amazing that she was able to find all of this stuff just sitting in our house.

Yeah, it was in the back of the house.

So there's much more about Callahan in our Louisiana Digital Archives website at L.A. Digital Media dot org.

That's right.

You can learn about his life for this generation and everyone.

That is our show for this week.

Remember, you can watch anything lvb any time, wherever you are with our Lvb anytime app.

You can catch Lvb 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 Andre Mora and.

I'm crossing her.

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 Ziegler Foundation and the Zeigler 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.