Little Known Black History Fact: Black Astronauts
By D.L. Chandler
The late Ronald McNair, Col. Guion Bluford, & Maj. Frederick D. Gregory
On this day in 1978, NASA graduated its first group of Space Shuttle astronauts which signaled a new day for the space program. Among the group of 35, three Black men went on to leave their mark on history as explorers of space.
Maj. Frederick D. Gregory of Washington, Col. Guion Bluford of Pennsylvania, and the late Ronald McNair of South Carolina were the first Black astronauts to join NASA’s elite Space Shuttle program ranks. Col. Bluford became the first African-American in space after flying on a mission aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger. Maj. Gregory is the first African-American to pilot an orbiter craft and also the first to command a space shuttle mission, doing so in 1985 and 1989, respectively.
For the first time ever, there will be a black Lady Liberty on a coin
By AJ Willingham
A new commemorative coin from the U.S. Mint and Treasury features a fresh depiction of Lady Liberty. With a crown of stars in her hair and a toga-like dress, she's as patriotic as ever. She's also, for the first time on an officially minted coin, portrayed as a black woman.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN ALGORITHMS DESIGN A CONCERT HALL? THE STUNNING ELBPHILHARMONIE By LIZ STINSON
Caption: Caption: Herzog and De Meuron designed the main concert hall of Hamburg's recently opened Elbphilharmonie with the help of algorithms.IWAN BAAN
Remembering Octavia Butler: “This country views people like Butler and like Oscar as aliens and treats people like us like we’re from another planet” Salon speaks to Junot DÃaz about the late, great California sci-fi writer, whose work is resonating again By SCOTT TIMBERG
Octavia Butler, who was born Pasadena, California, in 1947, practically created her own genre — a singular type of science fiction that used the form to explore racism, sexism and the earth’s degradation. Growing up, Butler often accompanied her mother on housecleaning expeditions; she was frequently told that black girls could not become writers. But thank to her perseverance and the assistance of the famously grouchy Los Angeles science-fiction writer Harlan Ellison, she became one of the field’s most important authors in the years before her death in 2006 near Seattle.
Best known for the novels “Kindred” and “Parable of the Sower,” Butler has recently garnered interest for her cultural and political prescience. Much of the energy behind the Butler revival has come from her native Southern California. The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens acquired her papers, where they sit alongside those of Jack London, Charles Bukowski and Christopher Isherwood. (A Butler exhibition is planned this spring.)
You’re Doing Allowance Wrong Don’t start it too late, don’t link it to chores, and don’t skimp. Here’s how to do it right.
By Ron Lieber
When it comes to kids and money, there are few topics that cause more confusion for parents than allowances. When should you start? Should it depend on the completion of chores? If you give too little, are you a scrooge? If you give too much, will your kids become brats?
Alas, most parents, acting on their own or following the lead of others, get allowances wrong. They start too late, they hand over too little money and responsibility, and they tie the money to the completion of household tasks while asking nowhere near enough in the way of household cooperation. In short, they don’t focus enough on how their kids use money, nor do they push them hard enough around the house, rendering their adult-making efforts wholly half-assed.
28 Of Barack Obama’s Greatest Achievements As President Of The United States
by Tod Perry
As the first African-American elected President of the United States, Barack Obama became a pivotal figure in American history even before his inauguration. But after winning a second term in 2012, his achievements in office have made him one of the most transformative presidents of the past hundred years. He took office with a country in peril and led it through the Great Recession, two wars, civil unrest, a rash of mass shootings, and changing cultural demographics. In the 2008 campaign he called for change and eight years later we are living in a more prosperous country because of it.
Here are 28 of President Obama’s biggest accomplishments as President of the United States.
Survey reveals disconnect between police and public attitudes
By Scott Clement and Wesley Lowery
Two-thirds of the nation’s police officers say the deaths of black Americans during encounters with police are isolated incidents, not a sign of broader problems between law enforcement and black citizens, according to a Pew Research Center poll released Wednesday.
The findings underscore a stark disconnect between many rank-and-file officers and the public and reveal that scrutiny since the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown has prompted many officers to be less aggressive in day-to-day policing.
It’s more expensive than ever to raise a child in the U.S.
By Abha Bhattarai
It’s more expensive than ever to raise a child in the United States, where families will shell out an average of $233,610 from birth through age 17 — or about $13,000 a year — according to new figures from the government.
The ballooning price tag, a 3 percent increase from a year earlier, comes at a time when day-care costs can exceed university tuitions and homes prices have skyrocketed to record highs. Families in urban areas in the Northeast, such as New York and Boston, were likely to pay even more — an average of $253,770, or roughly $14,000 a year — because of higher housing and child-care costs, according to a report by the Department of Agriculture.
An excerpt from the Undefeated - (YEAH Clemson!!!)
POTS & PANS: BLACK ATHLETES NOW DOMINATE WHERE THEY ONCE WERE BANNED Alabama and Clemson teams are defined by power, speed and quickness
BY JEFF RIVERS
But no matter which team wins, Alabama of the SEC and Clemson from the ACC exemplify how big-time college football is played: The teams are defined by power, speed and quickness. And much of that power, speed and quickness – the vogue term is “athleticism” – comes from the teams’ black players.
Indeed, while I watch Monday night’s game, I’ll think of the heroic men and women who made the integration of big-time sports in the South possible. They filed the legal briefs. They marched. They prayed.
And years before black athletes integrated their fields of dreams, young black men and women faced the jeering mobs and the on-campus isolation and ostracism to integrate state colleges in Dixie.
Your car wants to say hello. And that’s only the start.
By Steven Overly
Toyota’s empathetic car of the future is there for you. You’ve had a frustrating day at work; it plays soft music and lowers the temperature. You’re lost in an unfamiliar neighborhood; it offers to take over the driving. You start to nod off at the wheel; it taps you on the shoulder and starts up a conversation.
This unconventional interplay between the driver and automobile is central to concept cars that Honda and Toyota unveiled at the annual CES technology conference in Las Vegas this week. In the not-so-distant future, vehicles will not only be safer or more efficient. They will be our companion, watching our every move.
Black parents take their kids to school on how to deal with police
By Janell Ross
It is a Saturday afternoon in early December, and Room 104 at Anne Arundel Community College is packed, all 150 seats taken. There are moms with oversized Louis Vuitton bags from which they produce items such as granola bars and string cheese. But there are more fathers than mothers and a few elementary-school-aged kids. Most of all, there are teens with Beats headphones draped around their necks like electronic jewelry.
Organized by the Arundel Bay Area Chapter of Jack and Jill of America Inc., “Race & the Law” was one of more than 225 similar events held around the country last year and more than 50 such events scheduled across the nation in the first three months of 2017. They are places where anxious black parents bring their children in hopes of preparing them for potentially fateful encounters with the police. They are, in essence, mini boot camps for children about how to be black in 21st-century America.
HOW I HIJACKED A PLANE & SPENT THE NEXT 44 YEARS LIVING IN CUBA By ALEXANDER ZAITCHIK
DURING THE 1960S AND EARLY ‘70S, dozens of American citizens hijacked commercial airliners and took them to Cuba. Most of them were young radicals of one stripe or another; many were black nationalists. Before Washington and Havana signed the Anti-Air Piracy Act of 1973 in a joint attempt to stop an almost comical flow of airplanes south, many of the "skyjackers," as they were called at the time, received asylum from Castro’s Cuba upon landing. One of these men was Charlie Hill, a 22-year-old revolutionary with a group called the Republic of New Afrika. Hill arrived in Havana by way of an unscheduled stop on a TWA plane in November 1971, punctuating an unlikely escape from a statewide manhunt in New Mexico. Then and still the subject of a warrant for the murder of a New Mexico police officer, Hill is among the last remaining refugees from last century’s high tide of skyjacking. He is now 67 years old and beginning to go frail. He receives a Cuban pension of 200 pesos ($10) a month, which isn’t enough to live on, and supplements it with occasional tour guide work.
She killed her abuser before he could kill her: After 17 years locked up, she’s taking on justice system After 17 years behind bars, one woman is lobbying for the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act By NATALIE PATTILLO, NARRATIVELY
Dadou, now fifty, has been out of prison for seven years. She’s actively lobbying for a bill that could have potentially saved her from incarceration. The Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act (DJSJA) — sponsored by New York State Senator Ruth Hassell-Thompson and Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry — has been inching its way into state law since 2011. “Sending survivors of domestic violence who act to protect themselves to prison for long sentences is incompatible with modern notions of fairness and humanity,” Hassell-Thompson wrote in a 2013 press release.
To compete with Silicon Valley for engineers, aerospace firms start recruitment in pre-kindergarten
By Samantha Masunaga
They are starting to reach out earlier to potential employees — as early as elementary school or even pre-kindergarten — to get them interested in science and math. And they’re recognizing the challenge they have building awareness with a generation that never had a real space race, but grew up with Google, Snapchat and Apple as part of their daily lives.
“This is something that’s very critical to our member companies,” said Dan Stohr, spokesman for the Aerospace Industries Assn. trade group. “They’re putting serious money into this, to the tune of millions of dollars a year.”
Lockheed Martin Corp. has launched a program called Generation Beyond aimed at encouraging middle school students’ interest in deep space exploration. The initiative includes a class curriculum, a downloadable Mars weather app and a traveling school bus modified so that children riding it can see the Martian landscape through the windows.
“One of the things we’ve been seeing is that this generation of students doesn’t necessarily know or have grown up with Lockheed Martin, as their parents did,” said Steve Hatch, the company’s director for central talent acquisition, of current college students. “As we look at the competition, how do we go attract that talent sooner … but at the same time, get them interested in STEM.”
GUYS WHO GROW UP WITH SISTERS ARE BETTER BOYFRIENDS By MEAGAN DRILLINGER
"Men with sisters tend to be better listeners," says Murray. "By and large, women use more words than men do. If you're around people who talk more, then you're exposed to a lot more words. But boys, as a consequence, may not express themselves so much through words, but through behavior and their physicality.
First African-American Astronaut To Board The International Space Station NASA’s Jeanette Epps just made history.
By Lilly Workneh
Astronaut Jeanette Epps made African-American history on Wednesday when NASA announced that she’ll be the first black American astronaut to board the International Space Station.
While NASA has sent 14 black astronauts into space over the decades, none have ever stayed aboard the ISS as a crew member. Epps will be the first African American and the 13th woman to call the ISS home since the space station was founded in 1998. Epps, who is from Syracuse, New York, will join astronaut Andrew Feustel as a flight engineer on Expedition 56 in May 2018, according to NASA. She will also stay on board for Expedition 57.
An excerpt from the New York Times: California Today By MIKE MCPHATE -
It was this weekend in 1968 that Mr. Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay” was released.
In August 1967, the Georgia-born soul singer had come to San Francisco to do a series of gigs at Basin Street West, a storied club at the time.
According to Jonathan Gould, the author of a forthcoming biography of Mr. Redding, the rock promoter Bill Graham offered Mr. Redding the use of his houseboat up in Sausalito.
While relaxing there with his guitar, he is thought to have sketched the lines:
Sittin’ in the mornin’ sun
I’ll be sittin’ when the evenin’ come
Watching the ships roll in
And then I watch ’em roll away again, yeah
Later, the guitarist Steve Cropper helped to fill out the rest of the song and it was recorded in November. But Mr. Redding never heard the single.
Just 18 days after the studio session, he died in a plane crash in Madison, Wis., on Dec. 10, 1967.
He was 26.
On Jan. 8, 1968, the “Dock of the Bay” album was released. The single rose to No. 1 on Billboard’s pop chart and stayed there for four weeks. It was the biggest hit of Mr. Redding’s career.
Feed Your Kids Peanuts, Early and Often, New Guidelines Urge By RONI CARYN RABIN
Peanuts are back on the menu. In a significant reversal from past advice, new national health guidelines call for parents to give their children foods containing peanuts early and often, starting when they’re infants, as a way to help avoid life-threatening peanut allergies.
If broadly implemented, the new guidelines have the potential to dramatically lower the number of children who develop one of the most common and lethal food allergies, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the institute’s director, who called the new approach “game changing.”
Most Distinctive Obituary Euphemism for 'Died' in Each State
By Simon Davis
If you’re an American alive today, chances are you’ve heard or used one of over 100 different euphemisms for death. A common reason many people don’t just say someone has “died” is a desire to not want to appear too harsh. This happens not just in everyday conversation, but also in obituaries we read in newspapers and increasingly online.
Are some expressions for dying more prevalent in obituaries than others? Are there regional variations? To find out the answers to these questions, I reached out to Legacy.com, a leading online provider of paid death notices. According to the data they provided, in 2015, they hosted 2,408,142 obituaries across the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Of those, 1,341,870 included one of their 10 most common euphemisms, or the word died.
Most computer science majors in the U.S. are men. Not so at Harvey Mudd By Rosanna Xia
Veronica Rivera signed up for the introduction to computer science class at Harvey Mudd College mostly because she had no choice: It was mandatory. Programming was intimidating and not for her, she thought.
She expected the class to be full of guys who loved video games and grew up obsessing over how they were made. There were plenty of those guys but, to her surprise, she found the class fascinating.
She learned how to program a computer to play “Connect Four” and wrote algorithms that could recognize lines of Shakespeare and generate new text with similar sentence patterns.
When that first class ended, she signed up for the next level, then another and eventually declared a joint major of computer science and math. Cheering her on were professors who had set out to show her that women belonged in computer science just as much as men did.
And as a result, many of Hong Kong’s poor make their way to McDonald’s — not for a meal, but for a good night’s sleep. As the BBC reported, “as night falls, the fast-food restaurant becomes a temporary hostel, attracting dozens of the city’s poorest people.” In the U.S., those non-customers would typically be kicked out, but in Hong Kong, the opposite is true: McDonald’s Hong Kong told the AP that “we welcome all walks of life to visit our restaurants any time” and aims to be “‘accommodating and caring’ to customers who stay a long time in restaurants ‘for their own respective reasons.'”
The man who helped teach Kevin Durant and the Warriors that ‘Life Goes On’ After this man’s life-changing accident, his foundation caught some game-changing attention
BY MARC J. SPEARS
The man in the wheelchair needed help from his friends to go up three steps to get near Kevin Durant in the VIP section. The timing wasn’t the greatest, as it was nearly 1 a.m. at a San Francisco nightclub just weeks after the stunning news of the NBA star’s plans to join the Golden State Warriors. And security guards were making sure he had his space and privacy.
However, something told Durant to let Arthur Renowitzky and his wheelchair through. And once Renowitzky spoke to Durant, the two formed a relationship that remains bonded with a bracelet.
“He just wanted to tell me how he got to that point and how encouraged he still was even through his circumstances,” Durant told The Undefeated. “I thought it was inspiring. He handed me a bracelet and I’ve been wearing it ever since …
“You never know when you’re going to be in contact with angels. I feel like he is one of those guys at just the right time, the perfect time, he was put in my life. Hopefully, he feels the same way.”
THE VOICES IN OUR HEADS Why do people talk to themselves, and when does it become a problem?
By Jerome Groopman
I often have discussions with myself—tilting my head, raising my eyebrows, pursing my lips—and not only about my work. I converse with friends and family members, tell myself jokes, replay dialogue from the past. I’ve never considered why I talk to myself, and I’ve never mentioned it to anyone, except Pam. She very rarely has inner conversations; the one instance is when she reminds herself to do something, like change her e-mail password. She deliberately translates the thought into an external command, saying out loud, “Remember, change your password today.”
Verbal rehearsal of material—the shopping list you recite as you walk the aisles of a supermarket—is part of our working memory system. But for some of us talking to ourselves goes much further: it’s an essential part of the way we think. Others experience auditory hallucinations, verbal promptings from voices that are not theirs but those of loved ones, long-departed mentors, unidentified influencers, their conscience, or even God.
CAN TECHNOLOGY MAKE FOOTBALL SAFER? A high school in Fort Lauderdale is using everything from state-of-the-art helmets to robots to prevent head injuries.
By Nicholas Schmidle
But Kivon went to St. Thomas primarily to play football. The school has produced more pro players than any other high school in the country. By the time Kivon enrolled, the St. Thomas Aquinas Raiders had won eight state championships and two national titles. Moreover, the school had embarked on a potentially radical experiment. The head football coach, Roger Harriott, had been instituting changes to make the game safer. He limited practices to ninety minutes, and got the school to acquire a pair of motorized human-size robots, wrapped in foam, which players could tackle, saving their teammates from unnecessary hits. Harriott hoped to put St. Thomas at the vanguard of football safety while remaining champions.
“Football is just a vehicle to make these kids better young men,” Harriott said. One day this fall, he told his team, “Ultimately, it’s for you to become a champion in life—a champion husband, a champion father, community leader, colleague.”
HitchBot, the robot that had hitchhiked its way across Germany, the Netherlands and across Canada without incident, survived just over two weeks and 300 miles in the United States after being vandalized beyond repair and abandoned on a street in Philadelphia. (hitchBOT)
My father came here illegally. But in many ways he was a red-blooded American
By Hector Becerra
My father was like so many immigrants of his generation from Mexico: Coming north, without proper papers, looking for work and a better life for their families. Over the years, my father and people like him were demonized by those who felt they were ruining California and praised by others who believed their work ethic and labor were a boon to the state.
During the tough times, it was easy to feel like an outsider, alienated for not being American. That wasn’t quite my dad.
He had a sixth-grade education, thanks to a Mexico whose stamina for relentlessly poor governance and knack for driving out its citizens was impressive. So he carved out his own learning, going to night school in L.A. to get his high school degree soon after his arrival.
My father read Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Steinbeck and Melville from our childhood porch in Boyle Heights. In spiral notebooks he composed verses to Mexican songs about his hometown in Jalisco state, like the one he first penned as a teenager, just a few years after his father died when he was 12 — and just a few years before he crossed into the U.S. in the trunk of a car.
By 1980, he had become a legal resident, and no longer had to worry about being caught in a work raid.
STARMAN Neil deGrasse Tyson, the new guide to the “Cosmos.”
By Rebecca Mead
Tyson attended public schools, and was not a distinguished student. He was social, and teachers criticized him for being inattentive. When speaking to other educators, he stresses the importance of reaching not just the A students, who are already likely to succeed, but the B students, who might succeed if they were more deeply engaged by their teachers. He is on the board of the Harlem Educational Activities Fund, which seeks to offer such encouragement to students in public schools. Calvin Sims, a former chairman of the fund, says, “To have someone in Neil’s position talking about these great ideas, and to do it in a humorous and animated way—and to have someone who looks like them do that—I think means the world.” Not long ago, Tyson’s elementary school, P.S. 81, invited him to give a commencement address; he declined. He recalls telling the administrators, “I am where I am not because of what happened in school but in spite of it, and that is probably not what you want me to say. Call me back, and I will address your teachers and give them a piece of my mind.”
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/17/starman
Hollywood sign altered to read 'Hollyweed'
By Laura Nelson
Los Angeles residents awoke New Year's Day to find a prankster had altered the famed Hollywood sign to read "HOLLYWeeD." (Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)
MY PRISON CELL: LEARNING TO HEAR ON A CARDBOARD PIANO
By Demetrius Cunningham
On my bottom bunk bed, I sat in deep thought. I had an unusual problem. The prison choir that I sang in needed a piano player, and they needed one quickly. I thought to myself, How could I teach myself to play? I had no prior experience with the piano, but I can still remember running down the hallways of my grandmother’s house as a boy. Every time I ran past her old upright piano, I would slam all the keys at the same time. Sometimes in the mornings before school, as I listened to cassette tapes of my favorite R. & B. and gospel songs by Mary J. Blige and John P. Kee, I imagined myself playing the piano. I sang in the church choir from the age of seven on. In the sixth grade, I learned to play the xylophone. I had an uncle who played piano professionally at Las Vegas casinos and on cruise ships. When he came to visit, I sat in awe as he played our upright. Music has been my constant companion. It’s like my DNA has tiny quarter notes infused into it.
One day while I was watching TV in my cell, I flipped past a show on BET that highlighted famous musicians, including the gospel singer Andrae Crouch, who described his first piano. It was made out of cardboard. I had an idea that was literally out of the box.
The first moment I could, I searched for a cardboard box. I wandered by cells, examining the garbage. I rummaged through every trash bag I could find. I soon realized that it was tissue day. Every Tuesday, the institution hands out hundreds of rolls of tissue, one roll per inmate. I knew that there would be plenty of cardboard boxes around. I found a large empty box abandoned at the end of the gallery. I tore off the top flaps and quickly went back to my cell.
Bay Area stalled in a wireless traffic jam By LOUIS HANSEN
Silicon Valley, capital of high-tech and hub of innovation, is stalled in a wireless traffic jam of its own making. Increasing demand for data — driven by the products made by Bay Area tech companies – and lagging infrastructure coupled with intense local politics have helped create the dropped calls, frozen videos and blank web pages on our screens.
Industry analytics company RootMetrics ranks San Jose at 49 and San Francisco at 58 out of 125 metropolitan areas in quality of mobile network service. That puts the Bay Area ahead of Santa Rosa (122) but lagging far behind Modesto and Sacramento (7 and 8).
Germany Grapples With Its African Genocide
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
WATERBERG, Namibia — In this faraway corner of southern Africa, scores of German soldiers lie in a military cemetery, their names, dates and details engraved on separate polished tombstones.
Easily missed is a single small plaque on the cemetery wall that gives a nod in German to the African “warriors” who died in the fighting as well. Nameless, they are among the tens of thousands of Africans killed in what historians have long considered — and what the German government is now close to recognizing — as the 20th century’s first genocide.
A century after losing its colonial possessions in Africa, Germany and its former colony, Namibia, are now engaged in intense negotiations to put an end to one of the ugliest chapters of Europe’s past in Africa.
During German rule in Namibia, called South-West Africa back then, colonial officers studying eugenics developed ideas on racial purity, and their forces tried to exterminate two rebellious ethnic groups, the Herero and Nama, some of them in concentration camps.
One Breath Into This Breathalyzer Can Diagnose 17 Diseases
By Laura Geggel, Senior Writer
A single breath into a newfangled breathalyzer is all doctors need to diagnose 17 different diseases, including lung cancer, irritable bowel syndrome and multiple sclerosis, a new study found.
Researchers invited about 1,400 people from five different countries to breathe into the device, which is still in its testing phases. The breathalyzer could identify each person's disease with 86 percent accuracy, the researchers said.
Below is an introduction to the story that follows.
In February, Jennifer Lackey, a philosophy professor at Northwestern University, where I teach journalism, invited me to speak to a class she teaches at the Stateville Correctional Center, a maximum-security prison an hour outside of Chicago. Her students, fifteen men, are all serving long sentences, mostly for violent crimes. Some will be at Stateville until they die. I talked with the students about storytelling, and had them complete an exercise in which they described their cells.
I was so taken by what they wrote that I suggested that they develop these stories about the space, which, for some, had been home for twenty years. Over the past ten months, I have worked with them from draft to draft to draft. This process was not without obstacles. Sometimes, Jennifer couldn’t return my marked-up drafts because the prison was on lockdown. One student missed class for a month because, after surgery, he had to wear a knee brace, which the prison considered a potential weapon. Another student was transferred to a different prison. (I continued working with him by mail and phone.) One despaired at my comments and edits, writing to me that “this must be my last draft because clearly I’m incapable of doing it correctly.” But with encouragement and gentle nudging they kept going. Below is one of five of these stories that will appear on the site this week.
—Alex Kotlowitz
MY PRISON CELL: A PLACE KEPT COMPULSIVELY CLEAN
By Ramon Delgado
It’s not uncommon for me to receive a compliment from other inmates who take notice of how neat and organized I keep my cell. I love cleaning. Maybe a little too much.
I’ve been cleaning practically all my life. My mother demanded it from us. I can remember the day my mother put a mop in my hands. I was just six years old. We were living on the second floor, in the back end of a four-unit apartment building. There were five of us in a two-bedroom apartment. While my mother was showing me how to hold the mop handle—one hand at the top of the mop stick and the other in the middle—and how to maneuver it across the floor, my older brother and younger sister were each busy with a small rag in their hands, wiping dust off the few pieces of furniture we owned. This is how we cleaned our house every Saturday morning. So I come by my compulsion honestly.
To bring a divided country together, start with a little spit
By Susan Svrluga
Anita Foeman’s students had just gotten the results from their genetic tests, and they couldn’t wait to talk.
One said her dad cheered when she told him she has Zulu roots. A girl with curly red hair said her family always gathers around a Nativity scene on Christmas Eve and sings carols over the baby Jesus, and this year, after learning that she’s 1 percent Jewish, she said: “We’re going to sing the dreidel song!”
When a white student said that 1 percent of his ancestry was African, two black students sitting next to him gave him a fist bump and said: “Yes! Brother.”
“Some people have never had a happy conversation about race,” Foeman said. But in her class at West Chester University, there’s laughter. Eagerness. And easy connections where there might have been chasms. “Our differences are fascinating,” she said.
At a time when tensions over race and politics are so raw, the stakes, Foeman said, seem particularly high. Her students have been talking all fall about riots, building walls, terrorist attacks, immigration, the election. “You can feel it buzzing around the halls like electricity,” Foeman said.
A Mom Put A Message For Her Teen Son On A Vodka Bottle If He Ever Tried To Drink It People are applauding Cheryl’s “extra” parenting methods.
By Tanya Chen
11 Ways to Be a Better Person in 2017 By ANYA STRZEMIEN
My favorite - #3
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/28/style/ways-to-be-a-better-person-in-2017.html?action=click&contentCollection=fashion®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=sectionfront
Love of sewing patterns leads to world-class collection
by Jennifer Mcdermott
If a costume designer wanted to recreate a World War I era wraparound dress, a 1940s zoot suit or even a bodice from 1875, the sewing patterns are in Rhode Island.
The University of Rhode Island has the largest known collection of sewing patterns in the world, according to the collection's curator, Joy Spanabel Emery, and the United States Institute for Theatre Technology.
About 50,000 are on paper and 62,000 are in an electronic database. They're at the university because of Emery's love of patterns.
Emery donated her personal collection of patterns and periodicals to the university years ago and has painstakingly sorted through the donations sent there as word spread about the growing repository. Three more boxes full just arrived to be added to the overflowing filing cabinets.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-12-patterns-world-class.html#jCp
FLYERS’ WAYNE SIMMONDS IS TRYING TO ADD SOME COLOR TO HOCKEY He’s having his best season ever, and he wants more than NHL fans to know that
BY DARYL BELL
Philadelphia Flyers right winger Wayne Simmonds is on a mission to change hockey’s appearance.
Enjoying arguably his greatest season ever, Simmonds wants to be revered as more than a player. He wants to be thought of as a role model, and he believes he’s on his way to becoming one.
An African-Canadian, Simmonds is an oddity. According to the National Hockey League, only 16 players of African descent have played in a game this season.
“I’m playing the game I love,” he said. “For me, I’m just trying to set an example for kids who are like me, who have been in my situation. They can look up to me as an example. If I can make it, they can make it, too. When I was a young kid, I looked up at people as inspiration. Willie O’Ree was the first African [-Canadian] to play. He was my goal.”
Simmonds knows his history and is aware that he’s earning a lofty place in NHL lore. He’s playing well enough to earn an All-Star team berth. His quiet but confident play and demeanor stands out on the rink. It also stands out away from the arena.
A bachelor millionaire, Simmonds can arguably walk through any black neighborhood with his uniform on and not be recognized. By contrast, because of his hockey notoriety, he would need a police escort to trek through a white enclave dressed in a suit.
As a black woman who wears her hair straight, I was used to using products geared for women of color. However, when I lived in the Middle East, I was forced to try something different. When I went to my local salon and asked about a perm, they had no idea what I was talking about, and recommended I get a Keratin Hair Treatment instead.
I've always been game to try new things, so I thought, "What the heck."
Long story short, I got the Keratin and have been using this for the past five years.
When I first started out getting the treatment, the formula was really strong, resulting in face masks for everyone in the place.
Thankfully, they have steadily improved on it and now there is very little odor. I still made sure the room was well ventilated, but it wasn't a big deal at all.
The reason I'm writing about this is two-fold.
First, to introduce folks to it who might not have considered this as an alternative to straightening their hair.
And second, to let you know this is something you can do at home.
Truth be told, now that I'm back in the US, I knew the local black salons wouldn't provide the service, and I wasn't interested in searching to find someplace else. Nor was I interested in paying the enormous fees that are usually charged for the service. I've always been comfortable taking care of my hair, including giving myself perms and regularly coloring it, so I researched and found the product on Amazon and did it myself for the first time three week ago.
I was thrilled with the result.
In a nutshell, here's how it works.
1) Wash your hair with a clarifying shampoo that strips your hair of any product. Your hair will feel rough.
2) Blow dry it thoroughly.
3) Apply the Keratin Hair Treatment to tiny sections of your hair, using a small-tooth comb to make sure it's on every strand. Leave on for about 30 minutes.
4) Do Not Wash Out.
5) Blow dry it thoroughly.
6) Flat iron hair.
7) Wait until the next day to wash it. I use a Keratin Shampoo and Conditioner that helps to prolong the treatment.
That's it.
If you're still a little queasy about doing this, check out this video.
Here are the products I used:
This is the shampoo I used, along with the Keratin Hair Treatment and comb.
A regular small-tooth comb works just as well.
This is the shampoo & conditioner I use.
Once the application is complete, it lasts about six months. I can walk in the rain, fog, and other damp weather conditions without my hair curling up. My hair feels healthy and strong.
I wash it; blow dry it and flat iron it and I'm able to wake up with my hair ready to go until it's time to wash it again.
As I've said many times before, I should have been in sales because when I find something that I like, I want the world to know about it.
An App to Help Black Women With Hair Care By CRYSTAL MARTIN
Ms. Thompson and her longtime friend Jennifer Lambert introduced their app to digitize the hair salon vetting process for black and Hispanic women, a group largely ignored by the beauty app craze.
“Sometimes you get lucky with your 11 hours of Yelp research, but we’re trying to streamline that process,” Ms. Lambert said.
Swivel users select a desired service and indicate their hair type. The services list includes traditionally black hairstyles — cornrows, twist-outs, Bantu knots, silk press — and addresses hair types like curly, kinky and transitioning from relaxed hair to natural. Based on that information and the user’s location (Swivel is available only in New York City at the moment), the app offers a list of salons selected for their skill and service level. Either Ms. Lambert or Ms. Thompson has visited each of the salons on the app.
