Sara Pagones

Mar 16, 2025 | nola.com | Sara Pagones

Most people don’t embark on their life’s work until early adulthood, but Elizabeth “Betsy” Nalty's lifelong dedication to volunteering was ignited when she was very young, watching her mother’s community work in the post WWII era and getting involved in civic endeavors herself when she was just a child.

Mar 14, 2025 | nola.com | Sara Pagones

Riding electric bicycles and most other motorized vehicles on Mandeville’s sidewalks will be illegal, the Mandeville City Council decided Thursday, citing the danger they pose to pedestrians. Council member Cynthia Strong-Thompson pushed the measure, saying the issue came to the fore last August after a man was nearly hit by an e-bike, which she said can reach speeds of 35 mph and can come up on an unwitting pedestrian very quickly.

Feb 11, 2025 | nola.com | Sara Pagones

A kitchen table chat about what was missing in Slidell’s Carnival experience led to the formation of what has become the season’s largest and most anticipated event on the northshore, the 700-plus-member Krewe of Poseidon, which is marking its 10th anniversary this year. Captain Ronny Kastner says he and the others sitting around that table thought it would take two years to launch Poseidon. But members of the coed krewe pressed for a faster start.

Feb 4, 2025 | nola.com | Sara Pagones

When Rosemary Clement takes her royal ride through Slidell on Feb. 16 as the very first queen of the Krewe of Antheia, the experience won’t exactly be old hat, but more like old crown. After all, Clement, who taught several generations of Slidell children dance and gymnastics, has been a queen a whopping eight times — all of them after she turned 50. Her role with Antheia won’t even be her first time to be a krewe’s inaugural queen.

Jan 14, 2025 | nola.com | Sara Pagones

Slidell minister Norman Farve can still feel the power of Martin Luther King Jr.’s words when he listens to recordings of his speeches, even though it has been nearly 57 years since the civil rights leader and Baptist pastor was killed by an assassin’s bullet in Memphis, Tennessee. “The way he speaks — ‘I have a dream!’ His speaking is drawing,” said Farve, pastor of Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in Slidell.