Hart helped ‘tiny kids’ flee shooting
Actor Melissa Joan Hart said she and her husband helped a class of kindergartners that was fleeing the Nashville school shooting earlier this week.
Hart said in a video posted on Instagram on Tuesday that her children attend a school next to the private Christian Covenant School. She said she and her husband, Mark Wilkerson, had been headed to her kids’ school conferences Monday when they helped some students get away from the shooting that killed six people.
“We helped a class of kindergartners across a busy highway,” she said, her voice breaking, “that were climbing out of the woods — that were trying to, um, escape the shooter situation at their school. So we helped all these tiny little kids cross the road and get their teachers over there, and we helped a mom reunite with her children.”
Hart said she moved to Nashville from Connecticut and that her kids had attended a school near Sandy Hook Elementary when 26 children were shot and killed there in 2012. “This is our second experience with a school shooting with our kids being in close proximity. Luckily we are all OK,” she said.
She said she recorded the video Monday, but it was too raw to post that day. “I don’t know what to say anymore,” she said. “Enough is enough.”
Hill, Megan Thee Stallion to perform at Essence Fest:
Hip-hop takes center stage at this summer’s Essence Festival of Culture in
New Orleans as the event commemorates the 50th anniversary of the genre with performances by Lauryn Hill, Megan Thee Stallion and Jermaine Dupri.
Hill will mark the 25th anniversary of her album, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.” The event will also laud Dupri, a producer and founder of the So So Def record label, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary.
Rap artist Doug E. Fresh will curate special performances by other hip-hop pioneers.
The festival is set to run June 30 through July 3. Other artists scheduled to perform so far include Monica, Wizkid, Coco Jones and Kizz Daniel.
Grisham’s sequel to ‘Firm’ out in fall:
Attorney Mitch Mcdeere of John Grisham’s “The Firm,” will soon be back in action. Doubleday announced Wednesday that Grisham’s “The Exchange,” a sequel to his million-selling breakout book from 32 years ago, will be published Oct. 17. The new novel takes place 15 years after Mcdeere
and his wife, Abby, helped expose underworld ties at a Memphis firm. The Mcdeeres are now in New York, where he’s a partner in the world’s largest international legal practice.
“During a trip to Libya, his trusted associate is kidnapped, and an execution is threatened unless an enormous ransom is paid. Only Mitch can facilitate the exchange, and I hope readers have as much fun with the novel as I am writing it,” Grisham said in a statement.
Actor William Daniels is 96. Actor Shirley Jones is 89. Musician Herb Alpert is 88. Actor Christopher Walken is 80. Actor Rhea Perlman is 75. Guitarist Angus Young is 68. Actor Ewan Mcgregor is 52. Actor Erica Tazel is 46. Actor Brian Tyree Henry is 41. Trumpeter Christian Scott is 40. Musician Jack Antonoff is 39.