When I was a kid, I grew up surrounded by relatives. My mom had five brothers and sisters. On average, they had 4.3 kids per family. Add that to the five kids in our household, and you had the makings of quite a cousin party, pretty much all the time. My mom’s father gave up trying to remember the names of his 29 grandkids. He gave us numbers based on our ages. I was #3. My youngest brother, Chris, hated the fact that he was #27. Read more
My friends, I’ve written on many occasions this year about COVID-19 vaccines and how important they are to our economy and future as a nation. Never one to speak in weakness, I made sure to get both doses of my (Pfizer) COVID-19 vaccine as soon as I qualified. Done. Read more
I’ve got a video (2:34) for you today. This is an interview filmed earlier this year. In it, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana Chief Data Officer Somesh Nigam talks about his work identifying early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in Louisiana. Read more
I have to admit… I don’t know too many people who are looking back fondly on 2020. It was a hard year, and COVID-19 — and our responses to it – caused an unimaginable amount of damage. In looking back through my files, I was shocked at the challenges the virus created and the damage it did. Read more
We are, as a state, at a critical point in our battle with COVID-19. After a brutal year where we lost more than 10,000 fellow Louisianians, saw hundreds of thousands of businesses close or downsize and nearly half a million people lose their jobs, we now have a way out of this COVID mess. Read more
As strange as it seems, I got bullied a lot when I was a kid.
I could hardly blame the other kids; I was a prime target for bullying. By the time I was 11, I was overweight, wore glasses and those old metal braces, and had a really bad complexion. With five kids, money was tight, and my mom, God love her, made a lot of my clothes herself. And cut my hair herself. Read more
