Latest news with #Melnick
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Opelousas Museum launches Neighborhoods Project
OPELOUSAS, La. () — Historic preservation has always been a priority as Opelousas continues to evolve. Now, Patrice Melnick with the is continuing that mission with the Where We Live: Opelousas Neighborhoods Project. 'The main idea of the project is to highlight the neighborhoods, and they have names like the Brickyard and the Oil Mill and Garland, and they're commonly known, but they don't appear on maps. So, we want to raise the profiles of the neighborhoods especially the profiles of the people who lived there,' Melnick said in an interview with News 10. The way the museum plans to accomplish that goal is by having residents take pictures in their neighborhoods along with written stories about their memories. 'At the end of the project, which will be the end of the year, we're going to print some of those photographs and we're going to have an art show,' said Melnick. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now Melnick is also asking for assistance in labeling these special areas on a map of the city. 'We have one map that has the neighborhoods,' Melnick explained. 'Some of them may be wrong. So, we encourage people to we have a blank map with an invitation for people to come and draw in where their neighborhoods are. And even what's cool in each neighborhood.' With so much history in the city, Melnick says the people who live in it will tell the story of the city in the most genuine way possible. 'People are very proud of where they come from,' Melnick said. 'They're proud of their neighborhoods. It's a part of their identity. They have memories and a lot of associations, a lot of time that has to do with family and community. And so, it's exciting to hear those stories and to share them. And maybe it'll create a stronger sense of community between us.' For more on the Opelousas Neighborhoods Project, visit the link. Senators itching for Trump green light to move on Russia sanctions Concerns grow over river diversion project in Atchafalaya Basin Opelousas Museum launches Neighborhoods Project A Quiet Week of Weather With Near Normal Temperatures… Trump team emphasizes immigration in Boulder response Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
New York Times
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
John Jasperse Starts La MaMa Moves! Honoring a Female Lineage
It begins with a line of women in black dresses, advancing toward us. As the tide of their bodies turns back, one more woman emerges through them. She holds our attention with both otherworldly fluidity and a flashing of claws. She points at us with casual command, then shimmies. As she walks away, she looks over her shoulder with the tiniest of smirks. Something witchy is happening in John Jasperse's 'Tides,' which had its premiere at the start of the 20th anniversary of the La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival. Much of the magic derives from the casting. The pointing woman is Jodi Melnick, who has been bewitching audiences for decades. Later Vicky Shick, another veteran spell caster, wags a finger. But the hidden force is Jasperse, a choreographer whose compositional skill and artistry channel the talents of these exceptional performers into the special sorcery of contemporary dance. 'Tides' honors a particular lineage. Melnick, Shick and Cynthia Koppe have ties to the postmodern luminary Trisha Brown, an early Jasperse inspiration. Younger dancers in 'Tides,' Maria Fleischman and Jace Weyant, have been students of Jasperse and Melnick. As the dancers combine and recombine or line up together and shield their eyes from the moon, there are suggestions of the older dancers taking the younger ones under their wings. Some drama comes from Hahn Rowe's oddly aerating score, which ranges from poltergeist noises to techno beats. Ben Demarest's lighting lines the sides of the stage for sections that resemble catwalk modeling, illuminates the back wall to highlight dancers curiously conjoining body parts and partially blinds us with oncoming headlights. But the main charge of 'Tides,' one of the most engrossing dance works I've seen this year, comes from the choreography: a strong structure kept supple and alive with little slippages and surprises. 'Tides' made for a thrilling but incongruous start to La MaMa Moves, which continues though Sunday. The festival is customarily a home to the fledgling and never-quite-arrived ends of experimental dance. A premiere by Jasperse, a major choreographer whose work has appeared at major theaters like Brooklyn Academy of Music, could be read as an anniversary treat and an act of generosity — or as a troubling symptom of a dance ecosystem in crisis. Two shared programs this past weekend were back to festival business as usual: a lot of first-draft ideas and one undersung delight. In 'dance for no ending,' Jesse Zaritt and Pamela Pietro tried all kinds of things — entering along the walls as if playing a vertical game of Twister, hurling props onto the stage, wrestling, drawing, making ironic announcements through a bullhorn. None of the zaniness, though, was actually fun or funny. Jordan Demetrius Lloyd is a thoughtful, talented choreographer when he has multiple bodies at his disposal. But his solo 'Mooncry' was vanishingly thin. After some throat-clearing business of entering and exiting the stage, he read names of audience members and threw mints at them. The work, he said while standing on a pile of books, was research into crying. But the research seemed to be in early stages, hitting on a strong idea only occasionally, as when he wittily hung a wig on a microphone stand next to a fan. In the other shared program, Megumi Eda addressed intergenerational trauma in her solo 'Please Cry.' Her grandmother was a nurse in the Japanese military during World War II but never discussed the experience. She taught Eda not to cry. We learned some of this as Eda livestreamed herself and talked to her dead grandmother on her cellphone, shared home movies, wore a nurse's coat and thrashed against a wall. A standout dancer decades ago in the company of Karole Armitage, Eda remains striking, but the work was inchoate. That kind of deficiency is to be expected from this festival, but so are discoveries like Nic Gareiss. A virtuoso step dancer in Irish and Appalachian traditions, Gareiss isn't unknown in New York: He's been presented at the Irish Arts Center and last week at the Uptown Rhythm Dance Festival. Nevertheless, he's an underexposed treasure. At La MaMa, Gareiss was joined by Alexis Chartrand, who plays French Canadian fiddle tunes on a Baroque violin. Gareiss scuffed and scraped the sanded floor, easing into fancy flatfooting and tucking in surprises like knocking heels and clicking toes. Much of the time, he stayed in place with his feet directly underneath him and danced, as it were, under his breath — murmuring, whispering. He spoke of his collaboration with Chartrand as a 'meshing of sonic intimacies,' and so it mainly was, starting quiet and getting quieter. At one point, Gareiss, an unassuming charmer, made a comment about being in an experimental theater and gave audience members permission to express themselves in 'noises of pleasure.' He also mentioned being 'a petulant queer child' who rebelled against his Irish dance teacher's prohibition against scraping feet. In those two comments, perhaps, was an answer to how a traditional dancer like Gareiss (out and proud in a traditional field) fits into the frequently undercooked avant-gardism of La MaMa Moves and how he quietly invigorated it.
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Texas leaders quiet amid the biggest measles outbreak in decades
Texas is facing its worst measles outbreak in decades, as cases have jumped from two to 124 in just one month. A child is dead, 18 more are hospitalized and the worst is likely still ahead, public health experts say, as Texas' decreasing vaccination rates leave swaths of the state exposed to the most contagious virus humans currently face. State and local health officials are setting up vaccine clinics and encouraging people to get the shot, which is more than 97% effective at warding off measles. But neither Gov. Greg Abbott nor lawmakers from the hardest hit areas have addressed the outbreak publicly in press conferences, social media posts or public calls for people to consider getting vaccinated. State and local authorities in West Texas have not yet enacted more significant measures that other places have adopted during outbreaks, like excluding unvaccinated students from school before they are exposed, or enforcing quarantine after exposure. The response to Texas' first major public health crisis since COVID is being shaped by the long-term consequences of the pandemic, experts say — stronger vaccine hesitancy, decreased trust in science and authorities, and an unwillingness from politicians to aggressively push public health measures like vaccination and quarantine. 'Everybody is so sensitive to the vaccine topic due to COVID,' said Ector County Judge Dustin Fawcett. 'We need to be very careful about how we address this topic … Our job is to provide the resources, not to tell people what they need to do.' If there was ever an appetite for more aggressive government response to a disease outbreak, it's long gone in Texas, said Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at UTHealth Houston. 'I think there's less political will now' than before COVID, she said. 'Texas is such an independent state. People don't want to be told what to do, forgetting that what they do can affect others. And measles is an example of that.' When Clark County, Washington identified its third measles case in January 2019, the county quickly declared a public health emergency. The state soon followed suit. 'You gotta jump on this,' said public health director Dr. Alan Melnick. 'Measles is one where you have to jump on it right away, and all hands on deck.' The county ordered all unvaccinated students in the county to stay home from school for 21 days, whether or not they'd been exposed. Melnick said this was a difficult decision, but he saw it as the only way to stop the highly contagious disease from spreading like wildfire through the schools. 'It doesn't matter whether it's rural or urban. If you have congregate settings and if you have susceptible, exposed people, you have to do it,' he said. 'Or you're not going to get control over this.' Clark County's outbreak ended four months later, with 71 total cases and no deaths. The public health response cost $2.3 million. Melnick said Texas' fast rising case counts worried him, and he was shocked that unvaccinated students in the area were still being allowed to go to school. 'I'm just blown away,' he said. 'This is not politics. I'm just talking science and medicine here.' School districts in Texas are required to exclude unvaccinated students for at least 21 days after they are exposed to measles. Because measles is so contagious and can remain in the air for up to two hours after an infected person has left the area, large numbers of students could be excluded from school at once, Texas Department of State Health Services spokesperson Lara Anton said. But to proactively exclude unvaccinated students before they are known to be exposed requires the Texas health commissioner to declare a public health emergency, which can be activated when there is a health threat that potentially poses a risk of death or severe illness or harm to the public. Anton said there are no plans to declare an emergency at this time, noting that more than 90% of Texans are vaccinated for measles. State and local authorities are also recommending that unvaccinated people who have been exposed to measles quarantine at home for 21 days. But that quarantine period is not enforced or tracked, Anton said. In Ector County, where there have been two confirmed cases, Fawcett said he doesn't anticipate state or local authorities pursuing widespread shutdowns like during COVID. 'We haven't really been given guidance of what perhaps even we should do' in case of a county outbreak, he said. 'My best guess is to provide resources and information. There's not going to be a call to quarantine, or any of that, unless an outbreak happens at a particular educational facility.' In a statement, Andrew Mahaleris, Abbott's press secretary, said Texas was prepared to 'deploy all necessary resources to ensure the safety and health of Texans,' noting that DSHS was helping local authorities with epidemiology, immunization and specimen collection, and had activated the State Medical Operations Center to coordinate the response. House Speaker Dustin Burrows, a Republican from Lubbock, said in a statement that he was closely monitoring the situation, and was praying for the family who tragically lost their child. 'At this time, there are no local unmet needs, but we are remaining vigilant and will respond as needed,' he said. State Rep. Ken King and state Sen. Kevin Sparks, Republicans who represent Gaines County, did not respond to requests for comment about the measles outbreak. Neither they nor Abbott or Burrows have posted publicly about the outbreak. The last few weeks have felt like deja vu for Lubbock public health authority Dr. Ron Cook. A deadly disease is on the warpath. There's a vaccine that can save lives. But too many in his community simply won't take it. 'There's all kinds of social media stuff, anecdotal treatments, or people saying, 'let's have a measles party,' or this is just big government overreach,' he said. Cook and his team are having to battle long-standing misinformation about the measles vaccine, as well as new concerns from people who developed anti-vaccine views during the pandemic, he said. The number of people requesting vaccine exemptions for their children has almost doubled since 2018, to almost 100,000 families in 2024. Anytime a community drops below 95% vaccination status, they are vulnerable to a measles outbreak, Troisi said. Gaines County, the epicenter of the outbreak, has among the lowest vaccination rates in the state at 82% in 2024 but half of counties in Texas are below the recommended vaccination rate. That's a lot of people who might get the measles, Troisi said. 'This is entirely due to low vaccination rates. Measles spreads because kids aren't vaccinated,' she said. 'And kids aren't vaccinated because there is so much misinformation out there. There's so much distrust of government.' The only answer, other than letting measles rip through whole communities of unvaccinated children, is to increase vaccination rates, Troisi said. Katherine Wells, public health director for the City of Lubbock, said they've vaccinated more than 100 people over the weekend, many of whom said they felt like measles wasn't a big enough threat to justify getting the shot before now. In previous outbreaks, some areas have taken more extreme measures to enforce vaccination, either by revoking religious exemptions or, in the case of an outbreak in New York in 2019, mandating people in the most impacted areas get the shot, with a $1,000 fine for non-compliance. The Orthodox Jewish community at the heart of the outbreak challenged the order in court, but it was upheld by a judge. "A fireman need not obtain the informed consent of the owner before extinguishing a house fire," Judge Lawrence Knipel wrote in his ruling. "Vaccination is known to extinguish the fire of contagion.' But Troisi and other public health experts don't anticipate similar action in Texas. Since the pandemic, Texas' elected leaders have shown more support for the opposite, opposing vaccine mandates and loosening Texas' vaccine exemption rules. There are bills proposed this session that would make it easier for parents to opt out of vaccines and prohibit schools from excluding unvaccinated students during an outbreak like the one Texas is currently facing. It remains to be seen whether the current measles outbreak will impact the direction of these bills, but Dr. Peter Hotez, a leading vaccine expert and dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said he's not optimistic that this will be a turning point. 'There was no auto-correction after 40,000 Texans needlessly died because they refused the COVID vaccine,' he said. 'It just spilled over more to childhood immunizations. So I don't know what brings us back, exactly.' We can't wait to welcome you to the 15th annual Texas Tribune Festival, Texas' breakout ideas and politics event happening Nov. 13–15 in downtown Austin. Step inside the conversations shaping the future of education, the economy, health care, energy, technology, public safety, culture, the arts and so much more. Hear from our CEO, Sonal Shah, on TribFest 2025. TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Jackson voters face delay as absentee ballots not ready. What's the hold-up?
Absentee voting was scheduled to start Tuesday for Jackson's municipal election, but city officials have said they will not be able to have ballots ready until Friday. Alex Melnick, a Ward 7 resident, told the Clarion Ledger she attempted to vote absentee at Jackson City Hall Tuesday around 2:30 p.m. But when she arrived at City Hall, Melnick said city officials told her the ballots were not ready. "I went in. I said 'is this where I vote absentee?' They said 'yes.' And I said, 'alright I would love to do that,'" Melnick said on Wednesday. "And then they said the ballots aren't ready." Melnick, an adjunct professor at Millsaps College who also works at a nonprofit, said she decided to vote absentee this year due to a wedding she will be attending the week of Jackson's election, which is on June 3. Primary elections are just weeks away, set for April 1. According to the Mississippi Secretary of State's 2025 election calendar, Tuesday, Feb. 18 was the earliest day to vote by an absentee ballot, which are supposed to be available in the municipal clerk's office. Kevin Parkinson, a candidate for the Ward 7 seat on the Jackson City Council, notified the Clarion Ledger about the city's absentee voting not being in place Tuesday night. He said the city is already struggling with low voter turnout and the fact that the absentee ballots were not ready on the designated date is not helping. "Our campaign feels disappointed that the absentee ballots are not available in accordance with the Secretary of State's calendar," Parkinson said. "Groups like senior citizens and active military personnel who care passionately about the future of Jackson deserve the right to vote, and this interruption is upsetting." In this year's election, 20 candidates are set to challenge Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba's position holding the top office in Jackson, as well as 35 candidates who are vying for a seat on the council. Election strategies: Ashby Foote, the Jackson City Council's lone Republican, is running as an Independent. Why? After speaking with Melnick about her experience, the Clarion Ledger contacted Jackson's Municipal Clerk Angela Harris, as well as Jackson Spokesperson Melissa Payne. The Clarion Ledger also spoke with Frances Hampton, Jackson's Ward 5 election commissioner, but she said to contact Harris for a statement. A little before 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Payne responded in an email, explaining that ballots were not printed because the city did not know who all the party candidates are. "The party executive committees make those decisions and then tell the City," Payne said. "It was only yesterday that the courts finally ruled on whether one of the prospective mayoral candidates would be allowed on the ballot. We were simply unable to move forward with printing ballots until that ruling came down." Payne is referring to the Tuesday court hearing between the Jackson Democratic Executive Committee and Democratic mayoral candidate Ali M. ShamsidDeen. In early February, the committee disqualified ShamsidDeen's candidacy from the mayor's race due to his not meeting residency requirements. ShamsidDeen took the committee to court over their decision, but a special judge upheld ShamsidDeen's disqualification from the race. "As a result, the democratic committee is now reviewing the ballots," Payne said. "We expect their approval of the ballots promptly." See who's running: City Hall drama at the 11th hour: Lumumba announces his decision on running for mayor Additionally, Payne said the city only received the qualified list of Republican candidates on Tuesday as well. "We plan to have everything in place so that absentee voters can pick up their ballots on Friday," Payne said. Calls to both the Mississippi Republican Party and the Jackson Democratic Executive Committee were not answered. Elizabeth Johnson, the MS SOS' communications director, said there is no penalty for municipalities who fail to have absentee voting available on the start date. According to the MS SOS website, absentee voting is available either in person at the municipal clerk's office in the county of the voter's residence or via mail. Homicides in Jackson: Has Jackson seen a decline in homicides over the past 5 years? See what the data shows Here are the requirements for those wanting to vote absentee in-person: Any registered voter who is a bona fide student, teacher or administrator at any college, university, junior college, high, junior high, or elementary grade school whose studies or employment at such institution necessitates his or her absence from the municipality of his or her voting residence on the date of any primary, general or special election, or the spouse and dependents of that student, teacher or administrator if such spouse or dependent(s) maintain a common domicile, outside of the municipality of his or her voting residence, with such student, teacher or administrator. Any registered voter who is required to be away from his or her place of residence on any election day due to his or her employment as an employee of a member of the Mississippi congressional delegation and the spouse and dependents of such person if he or she shall be residing with such absentee voter away from the municipality of the spouse's voting residence. Any registered voter who is away from his or her residence within the municipality on election day for any reason. Any person who has a temporary or permanent physical disability and who, because of such disability, is unable to vote in person without substantial hardship to himself, herself or others, or whose attendance at the voting place could reasonably cause danger to himself, herself or others. The parent, spouse or dependent of a person with a temporary or permanent physical disability who is hospitalized outside of his or her residence within the municipality or more than fifty (50) miles distant from his or her residence, if the parent, spouse or dependent will be with such person on election day. Any person who is 65 years of age or older. Any member of the Mississippi congressional delegation absent from Mississippi on election day, and the spouse and dependents of such member of the congressional delegation. Any registered voter who will be unable to vote in person because he or she is required to be at work on election day during the times at which the polls will be open or on-call during the times when the polls will be open. CCID: After years of controversy, the new CCID Court opens. See who the appointed judges are And for those who want to vote absentee by mail, here are the requirements: Any person who is temporarily residing outside of their municipality of residence, and the ballot must be mailed to an address outside the municipality. Any person who has a temporary or permanent physical disability and who, because of such disability, is unable to vote in person without substantial hardship to himself, herself or others, or whose attendance at the voting place could reasonably cause danger to himself, herself or others. The parent, spouse or dependent of a person with a temporary or permanent physical disability who is hospitalized outside of his or her county of residence or more than fifty (50) miles distant from his or her residence, if the parent, spouse or dependent will be with such person on election day. Any person who is 65 years of age or older. Any incarcerated individual who has not been convicted of a disenfranchising crime. Residency of incarcerated individuals is determined by the residence of the person prior to his/her incarceration. This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: What caused Jackson MS absentee voting delay?
