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Thursday, January 13, 2022

Don't Pet!

An excerpt from Reader's Digest - 

If You See a Dog with a Red Collar, This Is What It Means

By Wendy Rose Gould

TOM MEAKER/GETTY IMAGES

Red is the universal sign for “stop.” We see it on stop signs and stoplights around the world. It’s a prominent color for police sirens and fire trucks, and we even use the color when talking about “red flags.” Red gives us reason to pause and be cautious, and it’s why some pups wear red dog collars or bandanas or use red leashes.

“Red is the signal that this pet is aggressive and needs space from both people and other animals,” explains Dr. Brian Evans, veterinarian and medical director of virtual vet care company Dutch. “These are pets that have been known to snap or bite at passersby, attack other dogs, or lunge at people. These pets may be perfectly fine at home with their owner but become overly protective of them when they are out.”

In some cases, red dog collars might also be worn by service or working dogs that shouldn’t be pet. Usually, they’ll have on a vest that says “service dog” or “emotional support,” which is often accompanied by a phrase like “Do not pet.”

https://www.rd.com/article/red-dog-collar/

SSSS Code on Your Boarding Pass

An excerpt from Conde Nest Traveler -  

What to Know If An SSSS Code Shows Up on Your Boarding Pass

The mysterious code means a passenger is flagged for additional—and sometimes invasive—TSA screening.

BY ASHLEA HALPERN

For travelers lucky enough not to know, SSSS stands for Secondary Security Screening Selection. It’s the Transportation Security Administration’s way of flagging airline passengers for “enhanced” screening. An SSSS code stamped on your boarding pass overrides pre-approval through a Trusted Traveler Program such as TSA PreCheck and can add 15 to 45 minutes (or more) to your boarding process.

Unfortunately, there are many groups of travelers who are no strangers to being flagged repeatedly for invasive TSA screenings. But for fliers privileged enough to have a usually smooth process through security, the SSSS codes can come as a shock.

https://www.cntraveler.com/story/what-to-know-if-an-ssss-code-shows-up-on-your-boarding-pass

Thursday, December 30, 2021

Black-Owned Small Kitchen Appliances @ Target Only

An excerpt from The Kitchn - 
This New Black-Owned Small Appliance Line at Target Has Some of the Best Stuff I’ve Ever Tested — and Y’all, Lots of It Is on Sale! (Sorry folks.  This was published before Christmas when the sales were happening).
By SAVANNAH WEST

Credit: CRUXGG


For Black families, connection and community have been centered in the kitchen for centuries, especially around the holidays. Just in time for this year’s festivities, Target dropped a new collection of stylish and affordable kitchen electronics from CRUX in partnership with Ghetto Gastro, and I can’t wait to incorporate some of these pieces into my own holiday traditions.

If you haven’t heard of Ghetto Gastro, they’re a Bronx-based culinary collective comprised of chefs and food enthusiasts that formed back in 2012 and now includes members Jon Gray, Lester Walker, and Pierre Serrão. Last year, the group and CRUX co-founder Shae Hong launched a wildly popular, exclusive line of seven CRUXGG products in partnership with Williams-Sonoma. The double rotating waffle iron sold out in just 48 hours! Based on the success of that collection, Ghetto Gastro partnered with CRUX again on an even more competitively-priced line of electric countertop appliances only available at Target, and they’re flying off the shelves again.


1000 New Texans Arrive Every Day!

An excerpt from the NY Times - 

1,000 New People Arrive in Texas Every Day. Half Are Newborns.

A surge in births in Texas comes amid a declining birthrate nationwide. 

By Edgar Sandoval

All across Texas, the cry of newborn babies has become a common sound at hospital maternity wards.
Credit...Matthew Busch for The New York Times

SAN ANTONIO — Every three minutes, a child is born somewhere in Texas.

At one hospital in North Texas, 107 babies were delivered over 96 hours this summer, shattering local records. At a hospital in San Antonio, more than 1,200 babies have been born this year, up nearly 30 percent since 2018.

Across one of the nation’s fastest-growing states, an average 1,000 new Texans arrive every day. Half of them are newborns.

“Our population is going up. So just with that, I would expect our birthrates to increase,” said Shad Deering, a department chair with the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio. “We will become very busy.”

We spent a day last month with Dr. Deering and his staff and witnessed the arrival of several new residents to the Lone Star State.

~~~~~~~~~~

Between 2010 and 2020, the state’s population grew by four million — or the entire population of neighboring Oklahoma. Babies made up the largest number of new arrivals to Texas (about 48 percent), with migrants from other states (31 percent) and countries (21 percent) rounding out the rest.

And hospitals are trying to keep up.

“It has not slowed down,” said Michelle Stemley, vice president of patient care at Baylor Scott & White All Saints Medical Center in Fort Worth, which broke its four-day delivery record this summer.

The surge in births comes amid a declining birthrate nationwide. Couples have waited longer to have children, a trend that continued during the coronavirus pandemic and an uncertain economy, Mr. Potter said.

But a spike in sales of pregnancy tests — a 13 percent increase since June of last year — may signal that a so-called millennial baby boom may be on the horizon, according to Nielsen’s data and Bank of America’s research.

Many longtime Texans are contributing to the uptick in tiny new residents.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/26/us/texas-newborns-birthrate.html



What Does Home Mean To You?

From the Bitter Southerner - 

A Letter From Home

By President Jimmy Carter

President Jimmy Carter. Photo by Dustin Chambers

https://bittersoutherner.com/a-letter-from-home/jimmy-carter

10 Black Women Who Made History in 2021

From mymajicdc.com - 

10 Black Women Who Made History In 2021

By BreAnna Holmes

1. Michaela Coel

73rd Primetime Emmy Awards - ArrivalsSource:Getty

Michaela Coel is the first Black Woman to win an Emmy for ‘Limited Series Writing’!

2. Beyoncé

59th GRAMMY Awards - Press RoomSource:Getty

Beyoncé Makes History As The Most Grammy Awarded Artist Ever!

https://mymajicdc.com/playlist/black-women-who-made-history-in-2021/item/2

Thursday, December 23, 2021

Sacramento man sold home to make 2022 film 'North Central' about track a...



Designing HBCU Clothing for Urban Outfitters

An excerpt from WXii12.com - 

North Carolina A&T student helps design HBCU clothing line for Urban Outfitters

By Louie Tran

Ulia Hargrove - North Carolina A & T State University

GREENSBORO, N.C. —

A North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University student helped design an HBCU clothing line for Urban Outfitters.

U'lia Hargrove, a native from Henderson, North Carolina, is a junior at North Carolina A&T. She's double majoring in fashion merchandising and design and supply chain management.

Hargrove finished a 10-week internship with Urban Outfitters in Philadelphia. It took place from June to August.

During her experience, Hargrove said she had the chance to work as a buying intern and in a summer class where she was able to work alongside four other HBCU students to help design an HBCU collection line.

Each intern was responsible for designing the outfits, including the colors, style, material, accessories, etc., she added.

Hargrove helped design a clothing line that represented North Carolina A&T. The collection included sweatpants, sweatshirts, tote bags, varsity jackets and playing cards.

https://www.wxii12.com/article/north-carolina-aandt-student-helps-design-hbcu-clothing-line-for-urban-outfitters/38562106#

Critical Race Theory Explained With a Cake

From CNN - 

This Cake May Change Your Mind on Critical Race Theory



https://www.cnn.com/videos/opinions/2021/12/20/critical-race-theory-elliot-williams-kneads-to-know.cnn/video/playlists/elliot-williams-kneads-to-know/

He Broke the NFL's Color Barrier. Have You Heard of Him?

An excerpt from Slate - 

Why Isn’t Kenny Washington an American Icon?

The forgotten story of the man who broke the NFL’s color barrier—before Jackie Robinson got to Major League Baseball.

BY JOSHUA NEUMAN

Washington at UCLA, where he played in the late 1930s.
Courtesy of Kirk Washington

If you were able to go back in time and tell sports fans of the late 1930s and early 1940s that a young Black athlete would become an American icon for breaking a color barrier, they’d likely think you were talking about Kenny Washington. Few would imagine you were describing Jackie Robinson, who followed Washington at UCLA as a football and baseball player. In 1940, a Los Angeles Times sports writer worried that Washington was irreplaceable on the gridiron. “It is going to take a piece of doing,” he wrote, “for Jackie Robinson to fill his shoes.”

Today, it’s Washington who’s been engulfed by Robinson’s shadow. In the decades since Washington broke the NFL’s color barrier in 1946—the year before Robinson got to the Brooklyn Dodgers—the league has hardly acknowledged his importance, especially compared with the way Major League Baseball has burnished Robinson’s legend. A 2006 exhibition at the Pro Football Hall of Fame called “Breaking Through: The Reintegration of Pro Football” focused on the Cleveland Browns’ Marion Motley and Bill Willis—half of the sport’s “forgotten four” of pioneering Black players, along with Washington and Woody Strode (who signed with the Los Angeles Rams two months after Washington). In 1946, Motley and Willis integrated the All-America Football Conference, a newly formed league that launched without a color barrier. Washington, meanwhile, was the first of the four to integrate pro football.

This year is the 75th anniversary of Washington’s groundbreaking season, and he’s barely a footnote in the annals of sports history. During the lead-up to this past Super Bowl, a CBS segment at last acknowledged his singular breakthrough—calling it a “Jackie Robinson moment.” So why, all these decades later, don’t we talk about Jackie Robinson’s debut as a “Kenny Washington moment”? Why did America forget Kenny Washington?

https://slate.com/culture/2021/12/kenny-washington-nfl-color-barrier-rams-jackie-robinson-football-history.html

Erin Jackson smashes AMERICAN RECORD in Salt Lake 500m | NBC Sports


Monday, December 20, 2021

Denzel Washington Pays Tribute To His Late Mother


A Celebrity Holiday Cookbook

Wolf Entertainment - 

The “One Chicago” Holiday Cookbook


The casts of Chicago Med, Chicago Fire, and Chicago P.D. are inviting you into their kitchens and are sharing some of their favorite holiday recipes in the One Chicago Holiday Cookbook, available to download here.

"One Chicago" Holiday Cookbook

https://wolfentertainment.com/news/special-delivery-the-one-chicago-holiday-cookbook/ 

Black Girls Sport Mentorship

An excerpt from the Washington Post - 

Black girls are more apt to drop out of sports. This mentorship program aims to change that

By Andrew Golden

Zoe Matthews, a 14-year-old midfielder from Southlake, Tex., is an aspiring soccer player. She participates in the Voice in Sport mentorship program, which paired her with National Women’s Soccer League player Brianna Pinto. (BJ Garcia)

Ifeoma Onumonu was asked recently what she saw when she looked at the National Women’s Soccer League logo. Until that moment, the NJ/NY Gotham FC forward hadn’t reflected too deeply about the image or what it signified.

But Onumonu’s first thought was about what it didn’t represent: her. She said she believes the silhouette of a woman with a ponytail kicking a soccer ball depicts a White woman. And as a Black woman, she was reminded of the trophies she won growing up that looked the same as the logo — not like her.

“Trophies that I have that represent a person are White girls,” Onumonu said. “This is not me. I do not see myself in these trophies. I do not see myself in this logo, you know? When you don’t see yourself in something, you don’t know if that is something that’s achievable for you.”

Onumonu grew up not having a Black, female role model in soccer, which she said affected her career trajectory because she didn’t realize it was possible for someone who looked like her to play professionally. Now, after finishing her fifth season in the NWSL, Onumonu wants to serve as a reminder to young, Black soccer players that there is a place for them in the sport.

She became a mentor for Voice in Sport (VIS), a company that encourages advocacy for women’s sports and aims to provide mentorship to Black female athletes ages 13 to 23. Onumonu is also on the board of the Black Women’s Player Collective (BWPC), an organization formed by Black players in the NWSL to advocate for opportunities and build a community for Black women in soccer.

While some members of the BWPC have already been mentoring girls through VIS, the two organizations recently announced a formal partnership through which the BWPC will host three free mentoring sessions per month to young, Black female athletes. The goal of the program is to make an impact both on an individual level and more broadly.

“If girls see themselves in sport through this mentorship program, stay in the game and then get more confidence and develop leadership skills, I really believe they will go on to drive significant change in the industry,” said Stef Strack, the CEO and founder of VIS. “It’s going to take time to prove that out, obviously, but that’s what we’re hoping.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/12/20/nwsl-players-mentor-young-black-athletes/