Greetings, Georgia.

It's Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023 — Groundhog Day!

This is Georgia Today.

TOP STORIES

✭ Mental health advocates rally at Capitol for continued service improvements

State department of behavioral health Commissioner Kevin Tanner says he is pushing for better pay for health service workers and new incentives to encourage college students to go into the field. (Jill Nolin/Georgia Recorder)

When last year’s behavioral health parity bill was signed into law, Janet Norris was sitting in a Bartow County jail cell.

A lot has changed for her since then. After struggling with addiction for 27 years, the Cartersville resident found recovery through mental health court. She says the program saved her life, reunited her family, and set her on a path to becoming a peer specialist and addiction counselor to help others. 

And on Tuesday, Norris joined advocates at the state Capitol — just a couple weeks shy of her one-year anniversary of sobriety — to push for more reforms and resources for others facing their own behavioral health challenges.

• “That’s why I’m here — to be a voice of courage for the other ones who can’t be and who aren’t where I am,” she said.

Norris was among the hundreds of mental health advocates pushing for measures that will grow the behavioral health workforce, increase access to services, and expand the state’s behavioral health care system.

✭ It's Black History Month. Here are 3 things to know about the annual celebration

President Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, and their family are joined by former President George W. Bush, Laura Bush, Rep.John Lewis, former foot soldiers, and other dignitaries in marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday and the Selma to Montgomery civil rights marches, Selma, Alabama, March 7, 2015. (National Archives - P030715PS-1619)

February marks Black History Month, a tradition that got its start in the Jim Crow era and was officially recognized in 1976 as part of the nation's bicentennial celebrations. It aims to honor the contributions that Black Americans have made and to recognize their sacrifices.

Here are three things to know about Black History Month:

• It was called Negro History Week before it was Black History Month.
• There's a new theme every year. Each year, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History chooses a different theme for Black History Month. This year, the theme is "Black Resistance."
• Recent controversies over how race is taught echo a time when Black history was often ignored.

For many, recent events such as the police killings in 2020 of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, for example, and the ongoing controversy surrounding critical race theory — an academic framework stating that people who are white have benefited from ingrained racism in American institutions — look like a recurring pattern, said Marvin Dulaney, president of the ASAALH.

• "I grew up in Ohio and we didn't learn about a single African or African American man or woman who had ever done anything in history," the 72-year-old Dulaney said.

GPB NEWS HEADLINES

Little Richard poses during a visit to Macon in 2005. (The Telegraph Archives)
 

• A new documentary film about Little Richard, the Macon-born architect of rock ’n’ roll, is a nuanced exploration of his life and career and the path he forged for generations of entertainers.
   
• The Gainesville Times reports that a Hall County fire crew accidentally left the stove on when they left the station to respond to a house fire Sunday morning. They responded to a fire at their own firehouse.
   
• Gov. Brian Kemp has proposed $35.7 million in the amended fiscal 2023 budget to create a rural workforce housing fund. 

WHO KNEW?

✭ Jellyfish for dinner? It's all about the proteins

University of Georgia researchers are working to develop a market for jellyfish proteins with the goal of helping the state’s struggling seafood harvesters.

Cannonball jellyfish or jellyballs are abundant off Georgia’s coast. But right now there’s really only one commercial use for them: crunchy, dried and salted.

Plus, a trade war with China halted exports years ago. So researchers want to break them down into gelatin and powder to make them more marketable.

UGA food science doctoral candidate Peter Chiarelli is leading the studies aimed at using collagen proteins in ways that don’t involve consuming the whole jellyball.

• “So you can go into the food industry and sell it as a food ingredient or a food supplement,” Chiarelli said. “Maybe you can make a gelatin and use that in different types of dessert products. You can also use it in soups and stews. And yes, there’s a huge industry right now for cosmetics.”

Chiarelli says one hurdle to the research is actually getting the jellyballs, which fetch a low price for harvesters. And then of course, there’s the unusual taste.

Check out our latest Political Rewind podcast episode:

• Atlanta mayor, Dekalb CEO tout training center compromise; Okefenokee input opens

Tune into GPB Radio and GPB.org at 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. for Political Rewind.

Today's guests: A special look at Atlanta's housing crisis with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Alan Judd, Willoughby Mariano, and Kevin Riley.