Slidell senior lives out FFA motto
BY MARGARET ALBERT Contributing writer
At 7:30 a.m. on Jan. 30, the barns of the St. Tammany Parish Fair Grounds were humming with the confident, calm energy and excitement of agricultural students readying their show animals for competition in the 2025 Louisiana Southeast District Junior Livestock Show At 8 a.m., high school students filed into the show ring, each leading a Southdown lamb for the Sheep Showmanship competition.
Among the contestants was Northshore High School senior Hudson Galloway a contender who entered the show ring with his 11/2-year-old lamb, Magnolia, and waited for the judging instructions.
But Galloway was no ordinary contestant; prior to the festivities, the Slidell resident was chosen to reign with the show’s queen, Hammond high school senior Eliza Foster The king and queen were chosen based on their individual achievements in livestock activities,
PROTECTIVE PLANTING
NFL, volunteers plant trees to help protect
BY WILLIE SWETT Staff writer
historic Madisonville lighthouse
Dozens of volunteers plant-
ed bald cypress trees around the nearly 200-year-old Tchefuncte River Lighthouse for a wetlands restoration project on Feb. 4 — the latest restoration event organized by Louisiana environmental groups in partnership with the NFL ahead of the Super Bowl held in New Orleans on Feb. 9.
BY WILLIE SWETT Staff writer
In a surprise move, the St. Tammany Parish Council has voted unanimously to add two new members to the parish’s Library Board of Control, a recently overhauled body that for more than two years has been at the center of controversy over access to library materials with sexually explicit and LGBTQ+ themes.
Ahead of the Feb. 6 council meeting, it appeared the council would have to choose between appointing lawyer Charles Branton, endorsed by the parish’s Republican Party, and retired schoolteacher Dinah Thanars, nominated by a Democratic council member, to fill a lone vacancy, which opened in
Both potential appointees added in surprise vote ä
A day after ex-Navy SEALs and others helped install an oyster reef in Leeville, volunteers from corporations such as Entergy and Dow Chemical and local nonprofits planted 600 cypress trees near the 1837 lighthouse, which sits on the edge of a tiny peninsula west of Madisonville near where the Tchefuncte empties into Lake Pontchartrain.
The area is “very, very vulnerable to hurricanes,” said Madisonville Mayor Jean
Pelloat. During Hurricane Ida, the water likely rose between 8 to 12 feet in that area, he estimated, damaging the lighthouse’s steps.
In October, St Tammany Parish began a $1.6 million restoration project to protect the lighthouse, one of the oldest in Louisiana, from storm
surges and coastal erosion.
The lighthouse would be lost to the water, Pelloat said, if not for the parish’s restoration project, which includes building a sea wall to protect it from storm surges.
The new cypress trees just planted will help protect the land from stormwater
and prevent erosion, Pelloat said. “That land area is our first defense here in Madisonville.”
The area around the lighthouse was once home to cypress trees, said Kristi Trail, director of the Pontchartrain Conservancy, which helped organize the event in partnership with NFL Green, the league’s sustainability initiative. But the high levels of salt that came into the lake from the Gulf of Mexico through the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet caused many trees to die, she said.
Since the outlet was shut down in 2009, salinity levels have lowered, she said. After testing, the conservancy determined the soil was once again suitable for cypress trees.
There used to be a lot more
ä See PLANTING, page 2A
Poseidon will roll again with new units, bands
BY SARA PAGONES Contributing writer
The Krewe of Poseidon will mark its 10th anniversary when it rolls down the Slidell parade route on Feb. 15, a milestone that might make it tempting for the group to rest on its laurels. But looking back instead of forward isn’t the way Poseidon does
things. Captain Ronny Kastner stresses the need to keep the parade fresh, with new units, bands and other features to surprise paradegoers and keep them coming back for more. A decade in, that’s still the philosophy for the 750-member krewe that has seen its membership grow consistently and has the distinction of being the largest on the northshore.
“Is the parade fun for everyone? Artistry, pageantry, revelry — we try to touch on all of that,” Kastner said. “Some only focus on what’s fun for the rider.”
This year, Poseidon will have 26 floats, including for the first time, two floats that the krewe owns: two double tandems for its maids and another for the grand marshal. Tandem floats are something of a rarity on the northshore, Kastner said. The parade normally features 10 or so bands, and this year will feature the large band Alcorn State University from Mississippi for the first time.
ä See POSEIDON, page 2A
STAFF PHOTOS BY SOPHIA GERMER
People gather for a news conference on Feb 4 in front of the Tchefuncte River Lighthouse near Madisonville during an NFL Green tree planting
Volunteers from Entergy and Dow help plant tree seedlings near the Tchefuncte River Lighthouse.
2025 St. Tammany Parish Carnival parades
St. Tammany Parish’s Mardi Gras
Feb. 14
Mystic Krewe of Titans Slidell 6:30 p.m.
Feb. 15 Bilge (boat parade) Slidell Noon
Poseidon Slidell 6 p.m.
Feb. 16 Antheia Slidell 1 p.m.
Pearl River Lions Pearl River 1 p.m.
Feb. 21 Eve Mandeville 7 p.m.
Feb. 22 Krewe de Paws Slidell 10 a.m. Tchefuncte (boat parade) Madisonville Noon
Mystic Krewe of Olympia Covington 6 p.m Mona Lisa & MoonPie Slidell 7 p.m.
Feb. 23 Dionysus Slidell 1 p.m. Push Mow Abita Springs 2 p.m.
Feb. 28 Selene Slidell 6:30 p.m.
Mar 1
Mar 4
(wagon parade) Slidell 10 a.m. Bogue Falaya Covington 10:30
Mar. 9 Mardi Paws
Mar. 15 Krewe du Pooch
Source: Arthur Hardy's Mardi Gras Guide
POSEIDON
Continued from page 1A
“It has 200 members, probably the biggest we’ve seen in Slidell,” Kastner said. Paradegoers will also see some of the same groups that Poseidon likes to stick with every year, he said, but even those will include some new wrinkles. The Shriners, who are a big part of the parade, will include a group driving Tin Lizzies along with the motorcycles and dune buggies people are accustomed to seeing.
Two years ago, the krewe surprised paradegoers with a fireworks show, visible from the start of the route on Pontchartrain Drive, before the parade began rolling. That will happen again this year, but a skywriter will also follow the route with blue and pink smoke — signature colors for the coed krewe followed by white.
“You’ve got to change it up. A lot of krewes lack
LIBRARY
Continued from page 1A
December following a board member‘s resignation.
But a last-minute change to the council’s agenda allowed it to appoint both.
In phone interviews, Thanars and Branton expressed diverging views on how to approach access to library materials for children under 18, a question that has dogged the library system. Both said they are committed to compromise and want to ensure the parish’s voters in March renew a library tax, which provides 96% of the library’s funding.
“I think we need to address children’s access to sexually explicit materials,” Branton said, when asked by phone what he thought the board needed to focus on most right now He said books like “Gender Queer” and “Sex is a Funny Word” should be
PLANTING
Continued from page 1A
land around the lighthouse, Trail said. Now, the newly planted tree roots will act like a “hand gripping the soil,” she said, holding the ground in place and preventing erosion.
“I think it’s an important reminder that even here on the northshore, we are still
imagination,” Kastner said. When people ask how the krewe will top a given parade, Kastner says he views that as a challenge. Poseidon has met a few challenges in its first decade. The krewe began with a group of friends sitting around a kitchen table mulling over what was missing from Slidell’s Carnival scene. Kastner thought the launch would take two years, but when members pressed for a faster start, that’s what Poseidon did
The krewe persuaded the city to amend its regulations to allow a ninth parade, and in its third year, the group successfully petitioned the Slidell City Council to let it roll at night. Before the pandemic, the krewe had grown to 792, and while numbers dropped during the 2021 pandemic shutdown, it’s nearing that high mark once again. Kastner said people are still asking to ride. A group of 70 original members have paraded every year and were honored
“at a minimum restricted.”
Restricting access to certain books, he suggested, was important to do ahead of the March vote in order to appeal to the public.
Library policy currently requires any books with sexually explicit material to be placed in the adult section, which people under 18 can only access with parental permission. Branton said he was planning to meet with the parish’s library director and would look into whether any further policies were needed.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said, saying there is only seven weeks before that election.
Thanars, meanwhile, was more skeptical of restricting access to books, recalling that she read “any and everything” as a kid.
The retired schoolteacher was nominated in January by Council member Jimmy Strickland, who promised to nominate a Black person
a coastal community,” Trail said. Wearing waders and earmuffs, volunteers rode airboats out the mouth of the Tchefuncte River and along the lakefront over to the lighthouse, which is inaccessible by car For some, it was their first time in the loud, fan-powered boats. In the swamp behind the lighthouse, the volunteers dug basketball-sized holes in the mud for the cypress sap-
community engagement, 4H and Future Farmers of America leadership, as well other accomplishments. And they serve as ambassadors for the livestock show Foster has showed livestock since sixth grade, and because her parents also showed livestock in their youth, she was a “livestock legacy” contender. But Galloway was a relatively new competitor This was only his second year, and he was the first in his family to do so. Galloway began 4H involvement in junior high butdidnotbecomeinterested in competition until the end of his sophomore year of high school. He started out showing a Nubian doe goat, and then switched to a Southdown lamb.
Galloway is a polite, softspoken young man with a tendency toward modesty
by the krewe with 10-year medallions.
This year, Poseidon will have plenty of specialty throws for its anniversary and to this year’s theme, “What A Wonderful World.”
“There will be lots of light-ups and things that show the anniversary,” he said. The krewe is bringing back umbrellas, but these will have the Poseidon merman on top rather than the mermaid tail that graced earlier versions.
This year’s royalty, Jimbo Borchert and Deanna Reine, will have specialty throws to share as well.
Krewe members got a sneak preview of what the 10th anniversary ride will look like at a meeting last month. Those pre-parade gatherings have become a draw in themselves, with several hundred people attending.
But even as Poseidon is poised for its big 10 celebration, Kastner has his eyes toward the future “I’m thinking about 11 and 12,” he said.
to the board in response to the board’s discussion about the YA novel “The Hate U Give,” which Strickland said revealed how “out of touch” the all-White board was. Citing her husband’s health, board member Carole Gillio resigned shortly after that December board meeting, creating the vacancy
The board ultimately kept the novel in the adult section due to sexually explicit materially found on one page. Asked in a phone interview about the discussion around the “Hate U Give” novel, Thanars said she thought it showed why it was important to have people with different life experiences on the board, but said she was “fine” with the board’s decision to keep the book in the adult section.
Thanars said she just questioned the restriction’s effectiveness. “Kids can access anything on their phone,” she said. “What are you going to do? Ban their phones?”
lings. Jared Lyons, a portfolio manager at Entergy, said he’s done other tree-planting events with the company but this was the first time he had to take an airboat to get to a site. The saplings were wrapped up in plastic to guard against nutria, which like to gnaw on baby tree roots, Trail said. Around 18 to 24 months from now, her group will return to take the nutria protectors off
“In my sophomore year I decided to take the opportunity to show animals. I began with goats and moved to lambs,” he said. When asked how long he had been working with Magnolia, “Oh, I’ve had her since she was born,” he said. As president of the Northshore High’s chapter of FFA, Galloway is also the barn manager and coordinates the livestock team that maintains the animals and orders feed as needed.
Lauren Mura is incredibly proud of her son, who she said mostly played video games before becoming involved in ag classes, 4H and FFA.
“I do not worry about Hudson,” she said. “His involvement with FFA and the responsibilities he’s been given have increased his confidence tremendously Hudson was the emcee for the recent banquet. Communications are an important facet of FFA training, and this was evident at the banquet.” Galloway’s ag teacher at Northshore High School, Caitlyn Negueloua, said of him, “I believe he was chosen king because he is such a strong young advocate for the ag and livestock industry He was one of my first students, and I am extremely grateful and honored to have seen him grow into the young leader he is today He’s the type of kid to be there for others and determined to get the job done.”
In general, Thanars said it was important for the Library Board to be “nonpartisan.”
“There needs to be some compromise,” she said by phone.
The second board seat came open when board member Robert H. Belknap decided to resign in order for Branton and Thanars to join the board, Council member Joe Impastato said. “He did a great thing to try to bring people together,” Impastato said of Belknap’s decision.
Some attendees at the meeting questioned whether such a last-minute decision to amend the agenda and fill the newly created vacancy was fair or legal. One person argued the council should hold off on appointing anyone new until the federal lawsuit filed by three former board members over their removal is resolved.
The council’s lawyer Emily Couvillon, said the additional
and even after that, they will continue to monitor the area’s salinity and water levels. Trail said the NFL’s involvement was important to highlight land loss in Louisiana “to the rest of the country and the world,” she said. “We have a real crisis down here.”
Email Willie Swett at willie.swett@theadvocate. com.
vacancy was considered a “verbal off-floor agenda item,” and adding the agenda item required a unanimous vote, which it received, as did both nominations.
Thanars will now fill out the rest of Belknap’s term and be up for a reappointment again in June 2025, while Branton will fill out Gillio’s term and be up for reappointment in June 2026.
Email Willie Swett at willie.swett@theadvocate. com.
The FFA motto gives its members words to live by: “Learning to Do, Doing to Learn, Earning to Live, Living to Serve.” At the end of the Sheep Showmanship event, Galloway and Magnolia left the ring with the designation of Reserve Champion (second place). In the past two years, Galloway has aspired to and modeled the work necessary to set and achieve goals within a short time period. He seems to be living out the FFA motto and has set the bar high for whoever follows him as next year’s king of the Southeast District Livestock Show