Latest news with #Wortham
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
Louisiana police officer arrested after shooting woman's dog
A Louisiana police officer has been arrested after shooting a dog Sunday afternoon. A video began circulating Monday, June 2, on Facebook depicting a dog being shot by a Cullen, Louisiana, police officer. The video was graphic and showed the owners close proximity to the firearm being discharged. Webster Parish Sheriff's Office arrested Reginald Ferguson, 54, Tuesday, June 3, after an investigation was initiated. Ferguson was acting as a reserve police officer for Cullen on June 1. According to Webster Sheriff's Office, Ferguson was not commissioned at the time of the shooting. "When he shot those two shots, they were very close proximity to the dog's owner," Sheriff Jason Parker said. "It could have been a lot worse, if that lady would have been struck by one of those bullets." The Shreveport Times sat down with dog owner, Deshanna Wortham, who described the events of that terrifying encounter. Wortham said on Sunday, June 1, she was cooking in her kitchen when she heard a knock on the door. "I seen a car parked in the road," she said. "So, I thought it was one of my children who didn't want to pull in the driveway." She said she went outside, and her dog, Tank, followed. When she got outside, Ferguson was standing in her yard yelling, "Get that dog back." Wortham asked the officer to please get in his car so she could put Tank away, but that is when Ferguson's voice got high pitched. Following that interaction, she immediately began filming on her phone. "Thank God I did," she said. This video contains violence. Shortly after she began filming, Tank ran around the fence barking and got between her and Ferguson. "He took out his gun and just pointed it at him," Wortham said. "I'm like, 'You could have just obeyed me and got in your car, let me put my dog up, and I could have seen what you come over here for.'" Tank was shot in the shoulder, and bullet fragments were found in his leg. As of Monday afternoon, Tank was still being evaluated and likely was going to lose his leg. Wortham said Ferguson could have easily shot her. "I'm standing like four feet away from him," she said. "The bullet could have ricocheted, anything could have went wrong." Following the shooting, Wortham went inside her home to take care of Tank, and Ferguson called for backup. Once other officers arrived on scene, Ferguson requested that Wortham come outside. She went outside, and Ferguson said he was going to arrest her. Wortham immediately went back inside and locked the door. "They finally left," she said. It is still unclear why Ferguson came to Wortham's home in the first place. Ferguson was arrested Tuesday morning for illegal use of a weapon, a felony. According to Parker, this charge was determined after detectives collected evidence and body cam footage. Statue 14:94 reads, "illegal use of weapons or dangerous instrumentalities is the intentional or criminally negligent discharging of any firearm... where it is foreseeable that it may result in death or great bodily harm to a human being." "You better know exactly where that bullet is going to go and have a very good reason to do so," Parker said. Ferguson was booked into Bayou Dorcheat Correctional Facility with a bond set at $25,000. This is not the first time Ferguson has been arrested. In 2022, he was arrested on five charges for simple cruelty to animals and three charges for aggravated felony cruelty to animals. In that case, Webster Parish Sheriff's Office located two dead horses on his property, and several other horses with their ribs and bones showing. The Shreveport Times has reached out to Cullen Police Department but has not received a response. More: Louisiana woman posts viral TikTok video after citation for wearing shorts and crop top Makenzie Boucher is a reporter with the Shreveport Times. Contact her at mboucher@ This article originally appeared on Shreveport Times: Louisiana police officer arrested after shooting a dog
New York Times
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
At Houston Grand Opera, ‘This Is a Good Time'
On a recent morning at the Wortham Theater Center, home of Houston Grand Opera, the orchestra was playing through the intense score of Missy Mazzoli's 2016 opera 'Breaking the Waves.' Led by the conductor Patrick Summers, the players fine-tuned eerie glissando slides and dug into Mazzoli's creaking, scratching effects. At the same time, a few floors down, the young bass Alexandros Stavrakakis was at a coaching session, trying to find depths in the often dry Landgraf in Wagner's 'Tannhaüser.' Stavrakakis was singing his role for the first time, like the rest of the 'Tannhaüser' cast — a bold move for a Wagner opera at a major company. It was a reminder of another moment when old and new came together in Houston. In 1987, the Wortham opened with a pairing that was also a kind of manifesto: Verdi's 'Aida' and the world premiere of John Adams's 'Nixon in China,' a statement that opera's past and present could surge toward the future in Texas. At that point, it had been just over 30 years since Houston Grand Opera's scrappy beginnings, but it already had a reputation for being the rare American company fully invested in fostering new American work. It has been an early adopter of populist innovations like above-the-stage translations and outdoor simulcasts. It has shown resilience, too: Displaced for a season when the Wortham was flooded by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, the company moved to a convention center and didn't miss a performance. Now, at 70, it continues to be a model for the field. With many opera companies in a doom loop of shrinkage caused by rising costs and stagnant (or worse) earnings, Houston has proved an exception. Driven by creative leadership and generous donors, its programming budget has risen steadily. By this summer, its endowment will have increased to nearly $120 million — almost double what it was five years ago. 'I'm trying to push the boundaries of self-esteem for H.G.O.,' said Khori Dastoor, 44, the company's chief executive since 2021. 'It starts with deciding and feeling that we can be leaders, instead of always comparing ourselves with bigger markets and larger institutions.' Even a success story in opera is one of struggles: for audiences, for fresh repertory, for relevance. The larger of the Wortham's two theaters has a capacity of about 2,400, significantly fewer seats than some major American houses, yet a standard like 'La Bohème' was only 70 percent sold this winter. Still, the company's ticket sales are stronger than just before the pandemic. Labor relations are calm. A robust reserve fund created after Harvey has provided a cushion for experimentation. Over a few days of rehearsals and interviews recently, the high quality of the work was clear. The orchestra has an easy rapport with Summers, the music director since the late 1990s. The chorus rehearses nights and weekends, with a group that includes teachers, doctors and lawyers as well as professional singers — but, led by Richard Bado, who has been with the company since 1984, it made a nuanced, mighty sound at the close of 'Tannhaüser.' More unusual, everyone attested to a palpable sense of stability and warmth, in a field better known for deficit cycles and fraught relations among employees and management. 'A lot of the time you don't really recognize the good times when they're happening,' said Dennis Whittaker, a bassist in the orchestra for almost 30 years. 'But this is a good time.' As Houston grows, its larger peers are on ever more tenuous footing. The Metropolitan Opera, still the country's titan, has been forced to raid its endowment and trim its performance schedule. Lyric Opera of Chicago and San Francisco Opera's seasons have been slashed to roughly 40 main stage performances of six titles, around the same volume Houston has maintained for years. But because of legacy labor contracts and other overhead costs, Chicago's annual budget is over $70 million and San Francisco's nearly $90 million, figures that are perilously difficult to cover as productivity declines. Houston spends just $33 million for a similar output. Without consistent sellouts, Dastoor is not looking to add more main stage productions any time soon, but she is insistent that the company does need to get bigger. 'Maintenance of the current audience will lead to failure,' she said. 'The only viable path to sustainability is growth.' After World War II, the city's appetite for opera was whetted by touring visits from the Met, and Walter Herbert, a German conductor who had fled the Nazis, saw an opening. Houston Grand Opera was inaugurated with Strauss's 'Salome' — then still a daring choice that showed the venturesome spirit at the company's core. Finances were touch and go in those early years, but star singers like Jon Vickers and Beverly Sills began to appear, and in 1972 David Gockley, just 28, succeeded Herbert as general director, remaining in the position until 2005. Gockley had vision and charisma at the right moment, with Houston's wealth exploding as the oil industry boomed. In 1974, the company produced Thomas Pasatieri's 'The Seagull,' its first commissioned work of dozens to date. Over the next few years it gave the first fully professional performances of Scott Joplin's 'Treemonisha' and a landmark version of Gershwin's 'Porgy and Bess,' with both productions transferring to Broadway. The company formed a close relationship with the composer Carlisle Floyd, who helped found its young artist program. Gockley brought in some audacious interpretations of the classics, as well as musical theater that made sense alongside Verdi; in 1984, Houston was the first opera house to present Sondheim's 'Sweeney Todd.' Few other big companies would have had the patience and flexibility to germinate Meredith Monk's unconventional 'Atlas.' The opening of the Wortham brought gleaming facilities, including an 1,100-seat second theater for more intimate pieces. When the Houston Symphony, which had collaborated with the opera since its founding, wanted to move on, Summers was hired to build a house orchestra. After shaping an ensemble up for the challenge of scores like Wagner's 'Ring' and Mieczyslaw Weinberg's 'The Passenger,' which toured to New York in 2014, Summers will step down as artistic and music director after next season. 'I admire Khori immensely,' he said, 'and I wanted to stay long enough into her tenure to give her continuity. Now it feels like a natural stopping point.' Finding his replacement is a priority for Dastoor, who trained as a soprano and attended 'Tannhaüser' rehearsal with an open score in her lap, tapping out the piano part on the pages with her fingers. She came to Houston from Opera San José in California, which she led after a period working for the Packard Humanities Institute, a large family foundation that gave her insight into the mind-set of wealthy donors. She has already shown skill at fund-raising: In 2023, a $22 million gift from Sarah and Ernest Butler was the largest in the company's history. But the city's donor base has long been said to be unusually committed. 'It's a very Houston thing: 'It has to be the best, and if it is, I will support you,'' Bado said. 'So the support has not waned.' Claire Liu, the chair of the company's board, said: 'Houston started as a really entrepreneurial environment, full of handshake deals. So people trust each other; people help each other. You have an incredibly philanthropic community. They want the city to be successful.' Where will all that growth go, if not into main stage offerings? Marc Scorca, the chief executive of Opera America, a trade group, said that Houston, like its peers, needs 'to show artistic and civic value outside the walls of the opera house, the opera bubble.' Under Gockley's successor, Anthony Freud, the company invested in works that emerged from the community, like a mariachi opera and an oratorio based on interviews with immigrants in the Houston area. Dastoor successfully tried out a Family Day performance this fall, and recently brought child-friendly work to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, which attracts huge crowds. Forays like this outside the Wortham, already a focus of the company's education and community partnerships, are expected to be an ever greater part of operations. 'If we're going to 70, 80, 100 venues every season,' Dastoor said, 'doing hundreds of events, that all informs the main stage. It isn't on the side.' Dastoor doesn't rest on the company's laurels or dismiss the obstacles it faces. 'We don't want to play to half-empty houses,' she said. 'We want to find a sweet spot, to grow with the community and see what they respond to.' The result, as everywhere in opera, is a mixture of chestnuts and riskier fare. Next season leans on 'Porgy and Bess,' an audience favorite that will get nine performances, and runs of the stalwarts 'Hansel and Gretel' and 'The Barber of Seville.' But there will also be Robert Wilson's enigmatic staging of Handel's 'Messiah,' the company's first production of Puccini's 'Il Trittico' and a revised version of Kevin Puts's 'Silent Night' that will travel to the Met. The young artist program, the Butler Studio, will put on Carlisle Floyd's masterpiece, 'Of Mice and Men,' in the Wortham's smaller space; using that smaller theater more often is an aim for the coming years. A major fund-raising campaign is in its early stages, of a size that Dastoor hopes will ensure the company's freedom from year-after-year anxieties, once and for all. 'We could get off this hamster wheel,' she said. 'My legacy, I hope, will be building an audience for opera in a modern American city.'
New York Times
20-02-2025
- Health
- New York Times
When Your Moral Compass Is Compromised
When Jennifer S. Wortham was a teenager, her younger brother Patrick started acting out and getting in trouble at school. Their stepfather had recently died and their mother was struggling. If anyone could help get Patrick back on track, she thought, it was the Catholic priest who had become a close family friend. The priest was no longer living near their home in California, so that summer, she and her mother sent Patrick to stay with him in Texas. At the time, Patrick begged not to go. More than a decade later, the family found out why. The priest had been molesting both Patrick and his younger brother, Michael, since they were about 10 years old. The discovery 'completely destroyed my family,' said Dr. Wortham, who is now a researcher at the Human Flourishing program at Harvard. She suffered for years, feeling guilty and heartbroken over having unknowingly facilitated some of the abuse. 'We never celebrated Christmas together ever again,' she said. 'We couldn't all be together.' The experience led Dr. Wortham to study the topic of moral injury, or the deep distress that can emerge when you feel that your values have been violated, either by yourself or someone else. The resulting feelings of powerlessness, guilt and shame can lead to mental health problems like anxiety, depression and even suicidal behavior. 'Why are you experiencing all these feelings? It's because deep down, at your core, who you are is actually being challenged, threatened or violated,' said Dr. Tessy A. Thomas, a physician and bioethics researcher in Danville, Pa., who has studied moral distress among health care workers. In other words, she said, it can feel as though your very integrity is at stake. How do you recognize moral injury? Egregious betrayals, like what Dr. Wortham and her family experienced, can create psychological distress — but so can 'relatively small, everyday events,' said Dr. Connor Arquette, a plastic surgery resident at Stanford who has researched moral injury. 'These moments often make us feel uneasy, even if we can't immediately articulate why,' he said. And over time, people may reach a breaking point. Say that you value fairness, Dr. Arquette said, but your team at a large academic hospital has been instructed to go above and beyond for a particularly wealthy or well-connected patient. If other patients aren't receiving the same level of attention, you may feel as though your morals are being compromised, he added. 'Moral distress,' a precursor to moral injury, was coined in the mid-1980s in reference to nurses who felt they were being obstructed from doing what was morally correct while on the job. Later, in the '90s, the psychiatrist Jonathan Shay created the term 'moral injury' to refer to veterans who were psychologically harmed by carrying out orders that violated their beliefs, such as instructions to kill or harm civilians. The term has been applied to other groups as well: Teachers, health care workers, government officials and public safety professionals may encounter mandates that threaten to compromise their values, witness morally repugnant behavior or become a victim of somebody else's transgression. In the last five years, there has been 'an explosion of research' on moral injury, said Dr. Harold G. Koenig, Dr. Wortham's mentor and a psychiatrist at Duke University who, with his team, created scales to measure these emotional wounds. Dr. Wortham and her colleagues have proposed modifying the American Psychiatric Association's D.S.M.-5, psychiatry's classification of mental health conditions, to include the notion that moral problems could contribute to a mental health condition. In December, after more than a year of review, the A.P.A. agreed. The change will appear in September. The addition helps validate the term 'moral injury,' Dr. Koenig said. Now, he added, more research can be done to further define it and examine its effects on mental health outcomes. How do you handle moral injury? There isn't a quick fix to address moral injury. But taking action can be an important step in the healing process. Speaking up and asking for change is one option. Dr. Wortham went so far as to meet with Pope Francis, who later spoke with a group of sexual abuse survivors, which included her brothers, and apologized for the failings of the church. She is working with a team of experts to develop a moral injury guide for those who counsel clergy abuse survivors and their families. There might be situations where your hands are tied — at work, for example — that make you question whether this is the right environment for you, Dr. Arquette said. When faced with moral injury, experts say that building moral resilience is crucial. Dr. Thomas does this with a daily ritual: Every time she washes her hands she thinks about the challenges that others may be facing. Then she finds a way to make a simple gesture, like checking in with a colleague who is having a stressful day. These small acts of compassion help bolster one of her core values: integrity. 'I can't change all those external things that are happening,' she said. 'The only thing I can control in the moment is my attitude and my behavior.'
