Support for Louisiana.

The state we're in is provided by Entergy.

Louisiana is strengthening our power grid throughout the state.

We're reinforcing infrastructure to prepare for stronger storms, reduce outages, and respond quicker when you do need us.

Because together we power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred B 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.

Meet Louisiana's new climatologists.

The man with a plan to keep us up to date on all things weather related.

And high school students discover the power of poetry in a statewide competition and its shrimping season.

We head out for harvest time and then into the kitchen with Louisiana's leading seafood product.

Let's get started.

With.

The.

Hello, everyone, I'm Karen LeBlanc.

We'll have much more on those top stories in a moment on this week's edition of Louisiana, the State we're in.

But first, New Orleans Tulane University will receive nearly $23 million to help develop revolutionary new technology to treat cancer.

President Joe Biden made the announcement this week.

Our family knows a few of as many.

You do.

The surgery happens and you have to wait a week or more to see if the two of us can move forward.

And anxiety waiting in the unknown is just excruciating.

But today, we're a step closer to relieving that burden on patients and families.

The president and the First Lady toured Tulane's medical research facility to see new scanning technology that will let doctors quickly distinguish between healthy and cancerous cells during surgeries.

Since losing their eldest son Beau, to brain cancer, the Bidens have championed the moonshot initiative in hopes of cutting cancer deaths in half over the next 25 years.

Access to high speed internet is vital in today's world, but many rural areas are still struggling to get connected.

Well, next week we'll learn more about the state's plans to further expand broadband access to thousands of homes and businesses and outlying areas.

The expansion is the second phase of a program known as granting unserved municipalities broadband access, or gumbo.

Under President Joe Biden's bipartisan infrastructure law, Louisiana will receive more than $1.3 billion in grant money to improve connectivity.

Governor Jeff Landry will hold a press conference Monday to discuss how that money will be used to help benefit struggling communities.

Construction on some of the projects could begin as early as next spring.

As New Orleans gets ready to host some big events like the Super Bowl and concerts from superstar Taylor Swift.

We have some good news.

So far this year, the city's violent crime rate has dropped 26% compared to the same period last year.

That's according to data from the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

The decline mirrors similar drops in many major cities across the country.

A perceived rise in crime has played a huge role in recent elections, and will likely be a focus in this year's presidential race.

State lawmakers are also working to address a half billion dollar budget shortfall next year.

In a joint legislative Budget Committee meeting this week.

Lawmakers discussed whether or not to renew a temporary teacher stipend.

Education advocates argue that ending the stipend would worsen Louisiana's struggle to attract and retain qualified teachers.

Lawmakers are also looking at redirecting the state's motor vehicle sales tax to the general fund.

Under current law, that revenue is dedicated to a huge backlog of infrastructure projects.

The looming budget gap is largely caused by lawmakers decision not to renew a half cent sales tax approved in 2018, to address a prior fiscal cliff.

Governor Jeff Landry and some lawmakers are still pushing for changes to the state's constitution, which they say will give them more flexibility to address Louisiana's budget problems.

All from the hashtag to headlines.

Here is what's trending this week.

Blues musician and Louisiana legend buddy Guy is stepping away from the stage.

Now, the 88 year old guitarist says he's ready to slow down and stop touring.

He was born and Letchworth, Louisiana, and he moved to Chicago in the 1950s.

Now guys get this.

Never had a formal guitar lesson, but he went on to make 19 records and many other collaborations with friends.

He won eight Grammys and was also named an LPB Louisiana Legend in 2014.

Congratulations to buddy Guy and thanks for entertaining us all these years.

Well, a new docu series about LSU athletes premieres next month on Amazon's Prime Video.

Money game.

We'll focus on gymnast Libby Dunn and Heisman winner Jayden Daniels and women's basketball star Angel Reese and a flashy Johnson.

Now they'll talk about the pros and the cons of being not only athletes, but social media sensations and how these Nil deals have changed their lives.

The six part series kicks off September 10th.

And speaking of reality shows, okay.

Two LSU former Tiger Girls will be joining the Dallas Cowboys cheer squad.

Now, the Cowboys cheerleaders have gotten lots of attention lately from the Netflix series America's Sweethearts, Ariel Bromfield from White Castle, and I Hate It at Hammon took home several awards during their time with the LSU dance squad.

Both say they have always aspired to be Cowboys, cheerleaders.

And by the way, I watched that reality show on Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.

Congrats!

It is super tough to make that team.

My goodness.

All right, well, moving on to the Paris Olympics might be over, but the Paralympics are just getting underway.

Jillian Albert from Shreveport will compete in the para canoe kayak sprint.

Albert was born without one leg bone, and she was treated at Shriners Hospital in Shreveport, where she now works making prosthetics for people with disabilities.

We will be watching and cheering you on.

Well, now for some good news.

Students from diverse backgrounds are stepping into the limelight to recite poetry verses with passion and precision.

The Poetry Out Loud program not only fosters a love for literature, but also honed public speaking skills and serves as a springboard for creative pursuits beyond high school.

Take a look.

Seven years.

Childless marriage passed.

A son A son is born at last.

So exactly limbed and fair.

Full of good spirits.

Mean and air.

As a long life promised.

Yet in less than six weeks.

Dead.

Grisham.

Lock as a Ruston High senior.

Performing in front of a national audience in Washington, D.C., as the 2024 Louise Hanna Poetry Out Loud champion.

And so it's a roller coaster of emotions, but a lot of a lot of high notes.

Even though I'm sharing, like, gritty, real, raw emotion, it's that catharsis is really nice.

And so it's joy the whole time.

Were you in the poetry before participation?

not any more than like what I got to read in high school English.

But after this petition, after this competition and, like, starting this competition, I'm really into it.

And how it relates to art and the rest of the world, how poetry has changed that history, what poetry looks like now, different styles and stuff like that.

Gresham is parlaying his poetry performances into college success.

He's headed to Texas State University to study musical theater.

Poetry Out loud has made me unafraid to face emotions on stage, and so I'm bringing with me an excitement to be raw and real and whatever characters I'm portraying.

Rise and fall.

Precise execution.

As we moved into the next song without stopping to chest heaving above a seven lead stride.

Dana Richardson, a two time Louisiana State Poetry Out Loud champion, says her lyrical experience and exposure to poetry informs and inspires her singing career.

I love the mom.

I love.

Who we.

Poetry Out Loud definitely helped me gain confidence when it came to being on stage in front of a lot of different people.

Also, when I had to learn the poems, I would have to learn them and then recite them with inflection and with emotion.

So now when I get up to perform and sing in front of people, I can sing with emotion.

I can touch the audience not only with my words.

Poetry Out Loud definitely steered me in the direction to perform in front of others.

Poetry Out Loud invites high school students in grades nine through 12 to memorize and recite a poem of their choice in competitions at the state and national levels.

We are in our 20th year, and the program was started by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation, and it was designed for English teachers to implement in their classrooms to find another interesting way of bringing poetry to students.

And it is accompanied by, curriculum guidelines and other resources to help teachers and other adults who are bringing poetry to students, to really find, the interesting parts of poetry to connect with.

Each state winner receives an all expense paid trip to Washington, D.C. to compete at the national finals.

Grisham chose the poem appetite to perform.

I was drawn to poetry that spoke to the ways that the poets were dissatisfied about something.

I really find there's a lot of beautiful art in what we want to change about the world.

There's lots of great art about beauty and love and satisfaction, but I think there's equally beautiful art about dissatisfaction and the dark side of our emotions that we don't always want to feel.

It gives them self-confidence.

It helps with public speaking.

so there are all of these other skills that are obtained through the process of participating in the program.

But then for students who are pursuing, creative and artistic careers, it really gives them a platform to, practice those skills, leverage the the connections that they make at the competition levels through regional, state and national levels and, and gives them, a great platform to launch their careers and go, far beyond their, their wildest dreams.

Performing alliteration, rhyme, rhythm and stanza animates and humanizes poetry text taught in high school curriculums.

Poetry Out Loud aims to inspire deeper connections with the written word and perhaps a few future poets.

You can learn more about poetry out loud.

See the full list of poems, rules and learn how to participate at Poetry Out Loud.

Dawg.

In this week's Louisiana Speaks, we're introducing you to Louisiana's new state climatologist, Jay Grimes.

He's been a trusted source of weather information and a familiar face as a longtime weather caster.

Now, he's working to streamline the way the state collects, organizes, and communicates important weather data to help everyone from farmers to construction workers.

As you'll see, Grimes considers his new role as sort of weather librarian.

I'd like to introduce you to Louisiana's new state climatologist.

He is Jay Grimes.

Now, if you're in the metro, Baton Rouge area, he is a familiar face.

He is a long time, weather forecaster for WA for almost 30 plus years.

But for the rest of the state, he might be a new face.

So welcome.

Well, thank you very much for having me.

It's a great opportunity to to meet some of the other folks in the state here.

So obviously you have the qualifications for the job, but what's interesting is that you actually created or updated the job description for state climatologist.

Yeah, there's some truth to that.

over the years, there have over about the last 50 years have only been three state climatologist.

And by the way, I was in the interim from 91 to 2003.

So, the state climatologist is housed at LSU on the main campus.

And frankly, the university never had a need to create a job description because the baton was handed from person to person.

And in this last go around, it became evident that wait a minute, the the administration doesn't really know what the state climatologist is doing or what they would like him to do.

So I had an opportunity to sit down with, three of the vice presidents of the system, and we sort of outlined the job.

Now, keep in mind, when we were doing this, I had no idea that they were going to turn around and ask me if I was interested.

So you created your own job description.

Love that.

But what's interesting about this job is the evolution of the state, climatologist position.

historically, it's been directly, under LSU.

You're now a state employee under the governor's Office of Homeland Security reporting directly to the governor.

How does that change?

the duties historically, in terms of what the state climatologist does.

I don't think it's going to change things much.

And keep in mind, yes, I'm I'm an employee of Gazette, but I'm also still an LSU employee, so I've in fact, I what I'm envisioning is that I'm going to take those two agencies and be a bridge between them and hopefully my role in terms of the two groups will be close to seamless.

Now, obviously, for the office of, Emergency Management, my focus there is going to be severe weather and, and analysis of that.

And my role there is not to be necessarily a lead weather forecaster, but it's support services.

Obviously, much of the focus of the information on severe weather still comes from the National Weather Service.

So I'm a support person in that aspect.

On the from the LSU side, probably the simplest way to describe it is I will be the state's weather librarian.

So the state Office of Climatology is a resource for not just the university, but for businesses and private, citizens to, retrieve weather information, principally historic information.

Now, one of the things I hope to do is to expand that and get a little bit more into the, short and medium range outlooks, particularly for the agricultural sector, which has been sometimes maybe not.

Well supported in terms of weather and climate services.

So my LSU focus, a lot of it will be on supporting the ag sector in the state.

Well, Jay, you certainly have some wacky weather to monitor.

I mean, we've had some, recorded, busy hurricane seasons.

climate change.

I mean, it is interesting times for you to take this position.

what do you see as some of the challenges that come with your new job?

Well, one of the things I like to point out to people, we've created this, scientific debate that has become a political problem, climate change, and how you interpret that.

And what does it mean?

Well, in the short answer, first off, there's always been climate change.

And we can see that in the climate history of Louisiana.

Just in the last 100 years, it's not something that's brand new.

so part of my job is going to be to kind of balance two groups here and be able to serve them both equally.

My role here will be to help people, maybe in some ways, to decide, what side of the fence they're on.

I am a climate change believer.

I do believe that humans have had an impact on the climate, but I think that sometimes it gets to an alarmist state and that's not really doing anybody any good.

So let's bring down the rhetoric.

Let's cool down the Jets and talk about this from a scientific basis, not a political basis.

So it's interesting.

Louisiana's agriculture industry looks to you as sort of the Farmer's Almanac, if you think about it.

Right.

It can be that way.

Yeah.

And one of the key roles we play is monitoring drought in particular.

In fact, that has been the real motivation that got me involved in coming back to the state climatologist position, all along.

But we're going to do more than that.

And we want to be able to provide the, the industry with more information than just simply, oh, it's dry.

We want to do a better job of giving farmers a heads up on what is coming and sort of a measure of the intensity of conditions like drought.

But we're heading into a winter that could very well be a rather wet winter that creates the flood issue.

And in between the summer and the winter, we're looking at what most experts are expecting to be a hyper active hurricane season.

What is your vision as Louisiana's new state climatologist?

Well, my vision here first off is to link goes up and LSU, not just the state climate office, but to bring those two agencies together and be an example, not the leader in that process, but an example of what those agencies can do to better, inform the community.

The next thing that is to to bring the state office, the operation up to a, a level that hasn't been seen before in terms of its ability to adapt and provide unique, tailored information to the commodity groups that that choose to ask for it.

And I think that user is out there as we, they become more familiar with the state climate office, are going to be very pleased with what we're capable of developed, developing and delivering to them in the coming months.

All right.

Well, thank you so much.

And again, welcome and congratulations again.

Louisiana's new state climatologist, Jay Grimes.

Thank you.

In our month long focus on Louisiana's homegrown bounty, our digital team looks at why Louisiana leads the nation in shrimp harvesting.

Shrimping is a way of life across the state, fostered by generations of family owned businesses.

And August is the start of the white shrimp season in our harvest of the month report.

We head out on the water to explore Louisiana's shrimping legacy.

Hi, friends, I'm Krystal Bessey with the Louisiana Farm to School program.

This month's Louisiana Harvest of the month lives in both fresh and saltwater, and it can be found all over the world here in Louisiana.

These little creatures take on a delicious and unrivaled flavor due to the nutrient rich waters of the Gulf.

It's shrimp.

Since the 1800s, shrimp have been the backbone to commercial fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, and it's vital to the culture, heritage, and livelihoods of many Louisiana families.

Today we set out to the Louisiana waterways to fish out just what makes these tasty crustaceans so appealing.

To.

Shrimping has a long history here in Louisiana, and the shrimp industry is dominated by family owned and operated businesses, like the one we're going to see today.

I'm here with Lance and his son, David Natsios, third and fourth generation fishermen and owners of the Annamarie Shrimp Company.

Thank you so much for welcoming us on your boat today.

Well, I appreciate it.

So, can you tell me a little bit about how you got into shrimping?

So, I grew up in a trapping camp, and we lived off of all the natural resources, and that was one of the things I did as a child, was shrimp.

And my grandfather and both sides of my family were both in the commercial fishing industry.

So tell me a little bit about how you guys actually go about catching shrimp here on the boat.

So this boat is equipped with, outer trawls.

It's called, we have these 40ft outriggers we put down, and we pulled a trawl with some outer doors, and, the trawl skims along the bottom and has a tickler chain, because the shrimp are in the sediment, and the chain kind of makes them jump up in front of the net.

And, we pause for usually about three hours, and then we pull them up and then start sorting.

you know, we use a lot of extra gear to eliminate or reduce the amount of bycatch we produce.

we have, total excluder devices that we've modified in order to let out more bycatch.

How long does your crew stay out on the boat?

So, this boat, usually when it leaves the dock, it goes out for two weeks at a time.

we have a plate freezer on it.

So, you know, we're not holding something that is perishable that needs to get off in a few days.

So, we process our shrimp while we're out harvesting them.

We have two different species of shrimp that we target and, brown shrimp and white shrimp, but specifically white shrimp.

We're always usually after white shrimp because our white shrimp grow larger inshore and nearshore.

Hello, I'm Judy.

My hand and I teach nutrition and food sciences at LSU.

And I'm a person who loves good food and harvest of the month.

Today we're here in downtown Baton Rouge cooking with Saskia.

Spend her.

Today we're going to be making some delicious shrimp tacos.

You're going to love them.

These beautiful wild caught shrimp that we have in front of us are from Annamarie Shrimp Company.

And they come with a shell.

You notice that it's got the head on it and the shell.

And today we're going to both use the shrimp that's inside the shell and use the shell to make a delicious shrimp stock.

How do you make your shrimp stack?

I keep my shrimp stock fairly simple.

I'll take the peel from the shrimp along with the heads, and I just add a little salted water.

Not too heavily salted at the time.

If you're peeling a lot of shrimp, you can make your stock right ahead.

But if you're just doing a single serving or a couple serving as you can freeze these and then come back later and make a stock next time, you may be cooking shrimp again and have a little bit more shells.

We've peeled some shrimp and now we're getting the shrimp onto a baking sheet.

Going to put some bell peppers some onion a little pino.

So you have cumin, paprika.

There's little chili powder in there.

Salt, pepper garlic and onion powder.

Okay, okay.

All right.

I'm going to disappear from the camera for a minute, and, put this in the oven so we can get that going.

All right.

Thank you.

And this recipe will be available on the Seeds to Success website.

Oh, that looks delicious.

I just want to say that I can easily eat three ounces of shrimp.

And that provides about 80 calories, most of which come from protein since they're very low in fat.

But the fact that they do have is really high in omega three fatty acids, which are good for you.

One of the things that we wanted to make sure everybody knew is that shrimp come in different sizes.

Yeah.

So shrimp, they'll come in many, many different sizes and you're buying them.

But it basically relates to how many shrimp on average you're getting per pound to a bag.

So if the number is greater per pound then obviously smaller shrimp okay.

So it's time for us to assemble our shrimp tacos.

We have a wonderful display here of toppings that we can put on our shrimp tacos.

Put just about everything on my shrimp.

There.

Maybe some salt, some.

Squeeze a little lime on top.

Rest.

And now we're going to eat some delicious Anna Marie shrimp tacos.

Yeah.

All right, all right.

Are you ready?

I must say, one.

You can check out extended versions of harvest of the month at LPB Dawgs harvest.

And while there, take a look at our digital first programs like Ritual and Safe Haven.

That's all@lpb.org.

Well, that's our show for this week.

Remember, you can watch anything LPB any time, wherever you are with our LPB 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 and Instagram for everyone at Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

I'm Karen LeBlanc.

Until next time.

That's the state we're in.

Support for Louisiana.

The state we're in is provided by Entergy.

Louisiana is strengthening our power grid throughout the state.

We're reinforcing infrastructure to prepare for stronger storms, reduce outages, and respond quicker when you do need us.

Because together, we power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred B 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 by Visit Baton Rouge.

And the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting and viewers like you.

Thank you.