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What are your plans after high school?

I want to serve my community in the fire department or the police department.

Who is/was your favorite teacher?

Ms. Meraiah Young

Who has had the greatest influence on you, why?

I actually have two. My dad has always pushed me to try harder and Coach Tommy Byler, he never gives up on any of us.

What is your favorite movie?

Chasing Mavericks

If you had a chance to have dinner with one person from history, who would it be?

Abe Lincoln

If you could go back, what advice would you give “freshman” you?

Live every moment. The good and the bad!

What was your most memorable moment from your senior year?

Making history with my soccer teammates

Who would you count on to uplift your spirits when you’re feeling down?

My mom. She always helps me see it’s not that bad.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Still serving my community, living my best life

In trying times, it can be difficult to find and focus on positives.
During its “Refocused Coffee & Conversation” virtual meeting on April 24, the Vermilion Chamber of Commerce found that many business owners are indeed finding some highs among lows of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic.
The Chamber is meeting virtually with business owners to connect, share ideas, and find out how they are navigating these uncertain times. Chamber President Megan Landry-Lalande said this is providing a productive opportunity for all involved. “The Chamber’s goal through the Refocused Coffee & Conversation Virtual Meetings,” Lalande said, “is to get a pulse on our members, connect them with like-minded industry professionals and find innovative ways to help them through either connections or resources.”
Some of the highs provided from businesses included:
• Increase in sales
• Manufacturers understanding the situation to help others
• Business remains open
• People are no longer stock-piling goods
• Extending premiums and decreasing rates to help clients
• Increase in production
• Partnering with the community to assist where needed
• Foregoing disconnection of electricity to help as long as we can
• Able to help businesses get financial resources and help with loan paperwork
• Received PPP loan to get employees back to work
• Finding innovative ways to recognize people through awards and recognition
• Being able to keep everyone on the payroll
• Learning virtual tactics to continue to assist clients

Business owners also shared various approaches to operating during this time. One said they are learning to be flexible. Another mentioned finding ways to give back to the community, while another focused on outreach and finding ways to help promote students and schools. One recommendation centered on creating partnerships with other small businesses. “Remember who is helping you now” served as a strong message. Another piece of advice is essential now and in the future. “Support local as best as we can.”
One question asked during the meeting is what bright spots have been seen during these times and it returned some positive answers. Among them:

• Reevaluate operating systems – online & virtual
• Causing different generations to come together to develop remedies
• Having more mobility
• Teaching people how to be more digital
• Forcing people to slow down and have more appreciation
• Employees having more appreciation for a Team; cross-training workforce - teams overlapping to get things done
• Learning to reset and reevaluate
• Having more time to work on internal tasks – goals & employee evaluations
• Taught us a lot of what’s important = family, connections and relationships
• Allowing time to work on the business and not just within the business

No playbook existed for how people and businesses could respond to the pandemic. However, people and businesses are learning more about handling it each day. The Vermilion Chamber will continue to connect with its members to help promote new, better ideas to respond to uncertain times and more importantly to get people connected!
“The first virtual meeting has shown how much our community is finding positives during this time of discontent,” Lalande said. “Businesses are reassessing and reevaluating their business processes and goals and finding ways to reconnect with their employees and clients.
“Through these informal meetings, we are truly embodying of mission to “create a positive business and community environment.”

Elise Vincent, a North Vermilion graduate, was the leadoff hitter for Northwestern State this year. The senior was off to a great start, starting in all 22 games. She was batting .323 and scored a team-high 20 runs. She stole 12 out of 13 bases. Entering the season she was a preseason All-Southland Conference First team member.

Where were you when you got the news the season was over?

I was at my home in Natchitoches. It was the weekend after my coaches told us that our conference game had been suspended.

What was your reaction?

I was downstairs with my sister when I first got the message from my coaches. I was super upset and cried a lot. I’m not a super emotional person, but getting that news was really heartbreaking and just crushing.

It looks like you were having a great season. What do you attribute that great start to, in your senior year?

I credit all the hard work I had put in in the fall and pre-season, but I also credit the support of my teammates and coaches. They helped me to grow even more confident in myself because they supported me and had my back no matter what.

What is your job as a lead-off hitter?

As the lead-off, it was my job to “set the table.” So basically, it was my job to get on base as often as I could, it didn’t matter how.

When will you graduate?

I am graduating this May. We won’t be having a commencement, but we are having a virtual ceremony, and they may have a ceremony for us to walk in in August.

In four years at Northwestern, how many “Bs” did you make as a final grade? What class did you make the B in? How did you handle it?

I only made one B and it was in Physics II. At first, I was upset about it, but what helped me to get over it was to remember that I’m not perfect, no one is. And just because I didn’t get an A doesn’t mean I won’t be successful. Being a perfectionist, this was a hard lesson to learn.

What is next for Elise? Are you returning for another year, or are you moving on? What will determine if you stay or go?

So I don’t know what the future holds. I would love to go back to NSU and play my final year, but I’ve also applied to medical school. So if I’m accepted into medical school, I, unfortunately, will not be able to go back to NSU.

Med school? What type of doctor do you want to be?

Medical school has been something I’ve dreamed of for a long time. At this point, I’d love to become an orthopedic surgeon, but I am open to the possibility that my interests will change in medical school.

Why do you want to be a doctor?
Being a doctor would allow me to be in a field where I get the opportunity to learn continually. Not only that, but I would be able to help and interact with a wide variety of people and have an impact on their lives.

Your thoughts on COVID-19 and how it has changed the world?

I think that this pandemic has had a major impact on the world. I think it’s been an eye-opening experience for many. One of the things I think that it’ll impact the most is people’s hygiene. This virus had made people more aware of their habits, and I think this will help people to be more aware of their hygienic practices to help limit the spread of diseases. But I think that this has also helped to bring everyone together in a sense. What I mean is that neighbors and even strangers are helping each other tremendously, and everyone is doing the best they can to be there for everyone.

If you move on, will there be a strange feeling on how your softball career ended? Or will you be OK with it because you have been playing since you were a freshman at Northwestern?

I would be upset. I honestly don’t like the idea that this is how my career could end, I mean it’s not what I had planned. I would, however, be happy to have had the opportunity to even play in college at all. I know many don’t have that opportunity, so I know I was blessed with the chance to play softball for as long as I did. If I don’t get to run out on that field again, I’d be upset, but I’d also be happy for all the memories I was able to make and for all the wonderful people who made the experience truly wonderful.

Looking back, was Northwestern the right choice?

100%. It was the place that helped me grow, athletically, and personally; being their helped me to grow more as a leader and as a better person overall. If I had to choose again, I wouldn’t change a thing because the people I met along the way at NSU helped mold me into who I am today, and I’ll always be grateful for the opportunity I had.

Did the four years go quickly?

Yes! It honestly went by so fast. I still remember what it was like being a freshman and hearing the seniors tell me to soak it all in because it’ll fly by. I kept joking all year that I thought the seniors in my freshman year were being dramatic, especially about how their bodies were always hurting, but I was wrong. I found out the hard way that they were not dramatic. From being a shy freshman to being senior captain honestly felt like the blink of an eye.

How tough was it to balance school with playing softball?

It was challenging, honestly. To succeed, 100 percent, you have to have good time management skills. The days were always super long, from 6 a.m. weights/conditioning to class, and then finally to practice took up much of the time. Not to mention finding times to eat, study, and complete study-hall hours. Then there are the away games where you often miss classes and have to become your own teacher (especially during the season) and do everything you’d normally do at home on a bus. The best advice I could honestly give is to get a planner and never schedule super hard classes on a MWF because you will never be in that Friday class.

What was the most memorable game or play that stands out over the last four years at Northwestern?

Beating Baylor last year was fun and memorable. Honestly, the most memorable games were the ones where, as a team, we were all playing together and truly for each other. I think that’s what upsets me the most about not being able to finish this season because this year, our team was truly special, and at every practice and game, we all genuinely pulled for each other.

When did you realize you had the talent to play at the next level?

It was when I was 12, and I was playing in a tournament in Georgia with my older sister’s 18-U team. I was playing right field and our pitcher mis-pitched. I wasn’t worried about it at the time, but I did what I was taught to do and went all out for the ball, diving and catching it. I honestly didn’t think it was that big of a deal, but the next thing I knew, the pitcher ran up to me and hugged me and kept saying how proud and thankful she was for me. I can’t say exactly what she said, but she said I saved her. And then, after the game the opposing coaches asked my coach about me, wondering where I was committed to. The look on their faces when he told them I was only twelve made me proud and helped me realize that I had the skill to play at a higher level.

How will playing softball prepare you to become a doctor?

Softball has taught me a wide variety of skills that will help me, including time management, competitiveness, strong work ethic, and leadership skills. But the most important lesson it’s taught me is how to cooperate.
Being a member of a team, you won’t always like or agree with everyone, but you have to be able to work with them to succeed. Like my dad often says, you have to learn how to be “your sister’s keeper,” which means that you’re there for teammates (or as I see them, sisters) no matter what. Teamwork is tough, and your teammates will be super different from you in both the way they think and act. But softball, and sports in general, has provided me with an outlet to learn vital interpersonal skills that everyone in the medical field should have.

by Michelle Malkin

The Great Toilet Paper Scare of 2020 has come to end, but don't breathe a sigh of relief just yet. The Spring Meat Stampede is here.
At my local Costco in Colorado Springs on Monday, fresh chicken breast was nowhere to be found. Nationwide, bacon prices doubled. Wholesale pork prices for ham, ribs and loins rose between 12% and 32% over the last seven days. COVID-19 outbreaks among the nation's major meat processing plants have shut down nearly 20% of the country's fresh pork production. Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods has shuttered five facilities so far because of sick and no-show workers; Tyson Foods warns "the food supply is breaking" and "millions of pounds of meat will disappear" by May 1 after the mega-corporation idled its largest pork plant in Iowa, a beef plant in Washington state and another meatpacking facility in Indiana.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to compel the nation's biggest meat processors to stay open and stave off shortages. How exactly the feds will "address liability issues" (which Tyson Foods execs complained about to Trump) and force union leaders to comply remains unclear. Whether the order actually heads off mass hysteria is also iffy. As we saw with the toilet paper rush, Chicken Little-ism is contagious. Warnings about shortages induce shortages. Admonitions of "Don't hoard the Charmin" failed in the face of mob behavior. Same with "Don't hoard the hocks."
With meat prices rising, the economic landscape looks bleak. While gas is less than $2 a gallon, much of the nation is still locked down and off the streets, out of the cars and in no hurry to get on planes or trains. The latest Consumer Price Index summary reveals rising rent prices and costs of medical care services on top of spiking meat prices. With nearly 26 million Americans now out of work, signs of impending stagflation loom. That "V-shaped recovery" is more like a "P.D." recovery: Pipe Dream.
More candor from all the Beltway "experts" about what we face would be helpful to our suffering citizenry. While we're at it, this nation must confront the dangers of dependency on the globalized, homogenized methods of producing meat and other key products in our food supply, which is concentrated in the hands of a quarter of giant multinational corporations who press for unlimited alien workers in exchange for low food prices. An estimated 30% of America's meat production employees are foreign-born. As usual, "Open Borders Inc." reaps all the benefits while we're left holding an empty grocery bag.
Let's remember: Tyson Foods was embroiled in an illegal immigrant smuggling racket two decades ago. The company has paid Swamp lobbyists like Republican Ed Gillespie millions of dollars to push for illegal immigrant amnesty. And Big Meat coordinates with refugee resettlement racketeers to import tens of thousands of cheap laborers from Asia, Africa and Latin America into the heartland.
Just one example: Tyson fundamentally transformed Waterloo, Iowa, by working with faith-based government contractors to ship in thousands of low-wage Burmese refugees to fill jobs at the meat plant now at the center of a coronavirus outbreak. Since 2002, 9,143 refugees from 37 countries have resettled in Iowa (which doesn't include so-called secondary migration, or friends and relatives moving to Iowa from their primary settlement location). Taxpayer-subsidized Catholic Charities, Lutheran Services and the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants have reaped millions dumping them across Central Iowa -- and abandoning them in cultural, linguistic and economic ghettos at the mercy of exploitative employers.
As Refugee Resettlement Watch founder and investigator Ann Corcoran reports, "The dark underbelly of the giant globalist meatpacking industry in the US is being exposed as large numbers of slaughterhouse workers are creating US hotspots for the spread of the Chinese virus."
A decentralized system of meat and poultry production would enhance food security, national security and public health. Demographic conquest fueled by big business' insatiable appetite for cheap labor, by contrast, is making us sick to our stomachs in more ways than one.

Michelle Malkin's email address is MichelleMalkinInvestigates@protonmail.com. To find out more about Michelle Malkin and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.