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W e d n e s d ay, M ay 14, 2025
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Jan Risher LONG STORY SHORT
Everyday bids for connection
PROVIDED PHOTO
Zachary High students, from left, Savannah Franklin and Melissa Nolan, check the frames in a beehive. The beekeeping program at the school started in 2023 with a state grant.
SWEET STUDIES
Zachary students add beekeeping, honey collection to their high school experience
BY ELLYN COUVILLION Staff writer
When Zachary High’s agriculture students learned they’d be studying bees firsthand, they weren’t so sure about it. They worked with chickens and goats, raised vegetables and flowers and tended fruit trees, but bees? “The students were a little scared,” said Melissa Brumbaugh, who with her husband, Bubba Brumbaugh, teaches the Zachary High ag classes. “Now they say, ‘Can we please go to the bees?’ ” The study of bees took flight at the high school in 2023, after it applied for and received a $10,000 grant from the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry that provided bees, hives, beekeeping suits, hoods, gloves and classroom books. The 25 juniors and seniors who take the classes, either as a required science or an elective, have become experienced beekeepers since then. Every month they check on the six beehives that are kept on the nearby campus of Port Hudson Academy and collect honey twice a year for the students to bottle and hand out at school district events. The name of the honey is “Z-Hive
STAFF PHOTO BY JAVIER GALLEGOS
The queen bee of the hive is marked with a white dot, middle right, made by a paint pen to easily be able to spot it at Janway Farms on March 12. Honey,” a name voted on by the Zachary community. “We talked about selling it, but we don’t want to compete with local beekeepers,” said Joseph Bassett Jr., a student in the program and a junior at Zachary High. “We give it out at every-
thing we go to.” This year, a second, $10,000 grant awarded to the school from the Louisiana Department of Education will boost the number of hives to 11, allow-
ä See BEES, page 2G
When my husband asked if I’d watched the video he sent, I said no — I’d seen it, meant to and then forgot. “You should watch it,” he said. So, I did. He had sent a video on how basketball defense has evolved since the 1960s. It turns out, these small moments — even a video about the history of basketball defense — may matter more than we realize. Background: He has sat with me through enough basketball games to hear me go on and on about how I don’t understand how players get away with what they do. Like a broken record, I keep saying, “That should be a foul,” as players without the ball push and shove each other. Perhaps he was gently trying to get me to consider that I can’t watch 2025 basketball with 1985 eyes — whatever his motive, he knew I would be interested. Learning about the Gottman Institute research on “bids for connection” really resonated with me. “Bids for connection” are defined as gestures from one partner to another seeking attention, affection or engagement. The research explains that the “bids” can be small — like a simple question or larger, like an outright request for help. With decades of research as evidence, many believe that the way a partner responds to these bids determines the tenor of a relationship. When someone consistently turns toward the bid and acknowledges it properly, the relationship typically grows in a positive direction. For example, if one partner says to another, “Check out that view,” a partner “moving toward” the bid for connection would look at the view and respond along the lines of, “Wow, that’s amazing!” A partner who “turns away” from the bid doesn’t look up and responds with something along the lines of “mm-hmm.” And a partner who “turns against” the bid responds with, “Really, you had me look up for that?” Over time, the responses add up. Not to paint too rosy a picture — my husband and I drive each other crazy sometimes — but scrolling through his messages, I realized these little nuggets he often shares are a part of the way he seeks connection. For example, he sent a photo of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile spotted outside BLDG 5, a callback to the Route 66 road trip he and I took in September 2020, when we were on the same path as the Wienermobile for four straight days — at Cadillac Ranch outside Amarillo, standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, at the Wigwam Hotel in Holbrook, Arizona and more. We found ourselves at the same hotels and landmarks over and over again. We came to be on a first name basis with the drivers. The Wienermobile was a reminder of how shared experiences, no matter how quirky, continue to bind us. We laughed about it then, and we still laugh about it now. Individual tiny threads of relationships bind together to make a stronger fabric. Then there is the video he sent of the president of Mexico getting “la limpia,” a type of cleansing with plants and smoke considered a traditional healing ritual that aims to cleanse the body and soul of negative energy,
ä See RISHER, page 2G