Columns

One of my favorite things to do is go thrifting. Maybe this is a throwback from my childhood or maybe I am still evolving slowly into my mother, but there is nothing like the thrill of finding a quality item at a great price.

DEAR EDITORS: I am grateful for the excellent coverage of the ice storm damage in East Carroll parish and heartened by the expressions of solidarity for the citizens of Minneapolis in the last two issues. And it was simply a delight to see 4-H members with their champion animals, which took me back to the late 1950s when I exhibited my Black Angus bull Cecil (RIP) at shows in Lake Providence, Tallulah, Delhi, and Baton Rouge.

“Folks outside of Lake Providence often misunderstand Black youth by assuming we don’t have big goals or that we won’t succeed, but that is far from the truth,” said 16-year-old Jer’Miya James, a 10th grader at General Trass High School (GTHS).

Editors' note: Meg was mentioned in Cassie Condrey's January 29 column as a friend living in Minneapolis. We invited her to provide her perspective for our readers as it is rare that we receive a firsthand account of a moment in time such as this. There are many voices to be heard, of course, and some of them can be found in your social media accounts and through your internet and television news consumption. We hope to provide our readers with a more nuanced version of the simplified, bombastic approach of most larger news organizations. We hope you take something meaningful from this account.

We as a parish have weathered something intense in the last two weeks. There was the storm; the threat of escaped inmates we believed to be dangerous; the efforts to help; the venting and frustration.

When life hits us hard, our first instinct is to go into survival mode. We tighten our grip and stay on edge, listening for the next bad report. As a healthcare provider, I’m trained to look for danger signs, warning symptoms, and the things that could go wrong. And last week, there were plenty of those.

Mic check. One.

I am sitting here on a Monday morning wondering what the rest of the week is going to bring us in this parish. The sheriff’s office is getting calls from people who are hungry and cold, with nowhere to go and nowhere to get food. You feel so helpless and just despairing because, well, you are in a similar situation with no way to help anyone else.

Have you ever cheated? At cards, on a test, or on someone? In college, I took a class on the Gospel of John. I think it would’ve been a great class had I paid a lick of attention.

Iheardawomansaytheother day she was a control freak. It started me wondering. Am I a control freak? I guess in some ways, I am. It has taken a long time, but I have finally learned, though, that there are things I cannot control. So after much thought, I decided to share some of those things with you.