Sylvan Esso is the Durham, NC duo of vocalist Amelia Meath and electronic musician Nick Sanborn. This weekend they will be at Bayou Music Center downtown in Bayou Place.
Sylvan Esso was not meant to be a band says their bio at Sylvan Esso.com. "But, Amelia Meath had 
written a song called "Play It Right" and sung it with her trio Mountain Man. She's met Nick Sanborn, an electronic producer working under the name Made of Oak, in passing on a shared bill in a small club somewhere. She asked him the scramble it, to render her work his way. He did the obligatory remix, but he sensed that there was something more important here than a onetime handoff: Of all the songs Sanborn had ever recast, this was the first time he felt he'd added to the raw material without subtracting from it, as though, across the unseen wires of online file exchange, he'd found his new collaborator without even looking.
Ali Siddiq is stand-up comedian, public speaker, and writer out of Houston. Ali’s unique style of stand-up began behind the walls of 
incarceration, an incubator for interesting experiences and good stories.
People received their first taste of Ali Siddiq when he appeared on HBO's DEF COMEDY JAM and LIVE FROM GOTHAM, and in 2013 he was named Comedy Central's "#1 Comic to Watch".
The album, the third in Broussard’s independently released SOS (“Save Our Soul”) series, finds him re-imagining a series of standards that are easily identified as lullabies—songs such as “Danny Boy,” “Sweet Baby James,” “Moon River,” among others, which are calming, soothing and enticing all at the same time. The 11-song album also includes two Broussard originals, "Bedtime" and "Gavin's Song."
While the songs might be geared to younger ears, Broussard’s soulful signature sound, expressive vocals and sweeping orchestration offer a universal appeal for listeners of all ages. “I wanted this to be a recognizable covers album,” Broussard explains. “Danny Boy” and “Moon River” were songs I could never imagine recording. But when I did my research and heard the various versions of these songs, especially the Andy Williams’ renditions, I was so taken. I was never a big Andy Williams fan, but all of a sudden, I found his voice so spectacular. There is grace attached to every one of his performances that I wanted to emulate throughout this entire record. No other artist had done this to me.”
The project was inspired by Rebekah Phillips, an award-winning children’s book illustrator who happens to be the wife of one of his longtime friends. “For years we had spoken about doing a project together,” Broussard says. “Then I ran into her at a concert and the idea came up again. I ended up writing the book on my plane ride home between Washington D.C. and Atlanta.”
“The book and the album go hand in hand, at least in spirit,” Broussard suggests.
A portion of the proceeds from sales of both the album and the book will be donated to Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. As a Louisiana native, this hospital holds a special place in Broussard’s heart. Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital is Louisiana’s fastest growing children’s hospital treating more than 100,000 patients annually from across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. For more information, visit https://ololchildrens.org/
Broussard’s charitable efforts extend well over a decade, beginning with his self-released album Bootleg to Benefit the Victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and his efforts to organize the Momentary Setback Fund to provide financial assistance to those displaced by both Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. He’s also taken part in a USO tour to entertain troops in the Middle East. More recently, he established his SOS Foundation as a conduit to help raise money for other worthy causes, such as the United Way and Habitat for Humanity.
One morning in the summer of 1999, Shukriya Barakzai woke up feeling dizzy and feverish. According to the Taliban’s rules, she needed a Maharram, a male guardian, in order to leave home to visit the 
doctor. Her husband was at work, and she had no sons. So she shaved her 2-year-old daughter’s head, dressed her in boys’ clothing to pass her off as a guardian, and slipped on a burka. Its blue folds hid her fingertips, painted red in violation of the Taliban’s ban on nail polish. She asked her neighbor, another woman, to walk with her to the doctor in central Kabul.
To top it off: rude customers, whose abuses restaurant staff are often obligated to tolerate. And lately, testy diners have only gotten more impatient as they emerge from 
the pandemic shutdowns.
Cornett, off work for a few weeks, realized he received enough money through unemployment benefits to start saving — for the first time. He wondered if the work he loves would ever entail a job that came with health insurance or paid leave.
Nicole Krauss’s Beautiful 
Letter to Van Gogh on How to Break the Loop of Our Destructive Patterns
Early one morning, Linsey Marr tiptoed to her dining room table, slipped on a headset, and fired up Zoom. On her computer screen, dozens of familiar faces began to appear. She 
also saw a few people she didn’t know, including Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical lead for Covid-19, and other expert advisers to the WHO. It was just past 1 pm Geneva time on April 3, 2020, but in Blacksburg, Virginia, where Marr lives with her husband and two children, dawn was just beginning to break.
Over Zoom, they laid out the case. They ticked through a growing list of superspreading events in restaurants, call centers, cruise ships, and a choir rehearsal, instances where people got sick even when they were across the room from a contagious 
person. The incidents contradicted the WHO’s main safety guidelines of keeping 3 to 6 feet of distance between people and frequent handwashing. If SARS-CoV-2 traveled only in large droplets that immediately fell to the ground, as the WHO was saying, then wouldn’t the distancing and the handwashing have prevented such outbreaks? Infectious air was the more likely culprit, they argued. But the WHO’s experts appeared to be unmoved. If they were going to call Covid-19 airborne, they wanted more direct evidence—proof, which could take months to gather, that the virus was abundant in the air. Meanwhile, thousands of people were falling ill every day.