🗣 @dionnewarwick pic.twitter.com/Hrl3QTnFIP
— Twitter (@Twitter) December 21, 2020
🗣 @lauren_lablue pic.twitter.com/gbzG3ukvxK
— Twitter (@Twitter) December 21, 2020
Sunday, December 27, 2020
An Unexpected Blessing, Year After Year
An excerpt from USA Today -
Decades ago, a mystery man spent thousands to give an Ohio family 'a nice visit from Santa Claus'
By Mark J. Price, Akron Beacon Journal
 |
| Mary Arnold sits at a table with her nine children on Dec. 23, 1955, to look for gift ideas in the Beacon Journal after receiving $100 from a mysterious benefactor in Akron. The kids, from left, are Carla, 3, Gary, 5, Mona, 9, Gale, 8, Cathy, 14, Donna, 7 months, Gerald 2, John 7, and Royal 11. Beacon Journal File Photo |
AKRON, Ohio — Santa Claus really did exist.
Helen Arnold met him unexpectedly in 1953 while shopping at Polsky’s department store in downtown Akron.
The brief encounter changed her family's lives. From that year to 1965, the Arnolds had a generous secret Santa at Christmastime.
With her weekly pay as a dishwasher, Helen had only $37 to spend on gifts in 1953. Her husband, Roy, had been laid off from the Akron Sanitation Department, and the couple had eight kids — Cathy, Royal, Mona, Gale, John, Gary, Carla, and Gerald — and would soon welcome a ninth, Donna. A 10th child, Marsha, had died as a baby.
They resided in a small home below a nearby bridge. In addition to the family of 10, Helen’s parents, brother, two sisters, and their three children also lived there.
Royal Arnold, 76, of Akron understood that it was a struggle for his parents to pay the bills. He even offered to make do with less so that his siblings might have more.
“I remember telling her that ‘If you don’t have enough to get me a Christmas gift, don’t worry about it,’” he said.
Royal was 9 years old in 1953 when he and three siblings accompanied their mom to Polsky’s. They were browsing the bargain basement when a stranger approached them.
“Are these your children?” the man asked Helen. “They’re lovely children and well-behaved.”
Before Helen knew what was happening, the stranger placed a $20 bill in her hand and said: “Buy them something nice for Christmas.”
He then disappeared into the bustling crowd. It happened so fast that Helen didn’t get a good look at him, but she later described him as short, white and slim, maybe 50 years old with graying brown hair.
“All I remember is holding my mother’s hand and my mother was shocked,” Royal said.
It was a Christmas miracle. Helen went home that night and jotted a note to the Akron Beacon Journal, now part of the USA TODAY Network:
(This is Faye. Please click the link for the rest of the story. It gets better and better.).
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/12/24/secret-santa-helped-akron-ohio-family-christmas-over-decade/4010569001/
Patient asks if I can also fix teddy bear just before being put off to sleep... how could I say no? pic.twitter.com/WOKFc5zr91
— P. Daniel McNeely (@pdmcneely) September 30, 2018
He Created Science Kits for Kids
An excerpt from CNN -
This California teen started a nonprofit to help kids learn about science. He just got accepted into Stanford
By Simret Aklilu, CNN
(CNN)Every year, high school seniors anxiously wait for college admissions letters, hoping they get accepted into their dream schools. Ahmed Muhammad was one of them.
So when Muhammad got accepted into Stanford University, he was delighted. "It was a dream come true," Muhammad told CNN. "It still doesn't feel real."
He will become a first-generation college student.
Over the course of his high school career at Oakland Technical, the California native has taken nine college classes on top of his high school workload -- no small feat for a senior who not only tutors students and plays as point guard for his school's varsity basketball team, but also runs a nonprofit that designs science kits for kids.
The nonprofit, Kits Cubed, became the main focus of his personal statement for Stanford University.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/25/us/cali-teen-science-stanford-trnd/index.html
A 19 year old + A Billionaire = A Christmas Miracle
An excerpt from the Chicago Sun-Times -
How a young woman on Chicago’s West Side infused a billionaire with the Christmas spirit of giving
But in a fairer society, there would be so much less need for charitable giving to begin with.
By CST Editorial Board
At the end of a year that has seen particular hardships and struggles, hundreds of charitable organizations working to ease the pain got early Christmas gifts in the form of surprise multimillion dollar donations.
The money — some $4.2 billion in the last four months — was donated to 384 organizations across the country by the philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, and she says her inspiration was a young Black woman on Chicago’s West Side, Alycia Kamil.
“In March, a 19-year-old girl in Chicago sent a group text to her friends suggesting they buy supplies for people in their neighborhood who had lost their jobs,” Scott, the former wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, wrote recently, expressing her admiration for Kamil. “She posted two Google forms — one for people who needed help and another for people with help to give — and by two days later they’d raised $7,000.”
Two days. That’s all it took. And with that money, Kamil and her friends were able to deliver $200 to $300 worth of groceries to 30 families.
“I wanted to do a more hands-on thing to be considerate of the people who, even if they get the money, they have to take the bus and then bring all these groceries on the bus,” Kamil told USA Today. “It’s about the importance of understanding communal living. We should all be able to resource and depend on each other.”
We can’t think of a better expression of the Christmas and holiday spirit. But it’s a reminder, as well, of the great and growing wealth inequality in our country, made worse by the pandemic, that makes such charitable giving so necessary.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/12/24/22197522/alycia-kamil-chicago-mackenzie-scott-donation-editorial
The Black Wall Street Massacre
An excerpt from the NY Times -
The Haunting of Tulsa, Okla.
A recently unearthed mass grave may soon provide answers about what happened to victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
By Brent Staples
The Tulsa, Okla., police department set the stage for mass murder in the spring of 1921 when it deputized members of a mob that invaded and destroyed the prosperous Black enclave of Greenwood. The armed marauders who swept into the community in the early hours of June 1 wreaked havoc in the spirit of a police directive that urged white Tulsans to “Get a gun, and get busy and try to get a nigger.”
They murdered at will while forcing Black families from their homes. They looted valuables that included jewelry, furs and fine furnishings. They used torches and oil-soaked rags to set fires that incinerated homes, churches, doctors’ offices, hotels and other businesses across an area of 35 square blocks.
The first day of June was less eventful on the other side of the tracks, in white Tulsa’s business district. In his 1968 memoir, “Oklahoma Boy,” Ross Warner recalls that his work took him to the First National Bank building, on the corner of Fourth Street and Main. “From time to time on June 1,” he writes, “we heard sirens and, on looking out of the window, saw trucks headed south on Main Street with Negro bodies in them. We saw at least 30 or 40 hauled away in this fashion.”
A few years after the appearance of “Oklahoma Boy,” the Tulsa County undersheriff, E.W. Maxey, told a local historian that as a teenager he, too, had been present on Main Street that day in 1921. He recalled seeing five or six trucks moving up the street carrying Black bodies “stacked up like cordwood.” He had no idea where the dead were taken but presumed they were being hauled “out somewhere” to be disposed of in ditches.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/26/opinion/tulsa-race-massacre-mass-grave.html?referringSource=articleShare
Wednesday, December 23, 2020
Black Men Have the Shortest Lifespans of Any Americans. This Theory Expl...
https://www.propublica.org/article/black-men-have-the-shortest-lifespans-of-any-americans-this-theory-helps-explain-why
The Skepticism is Justified
An excerpt from the New Yorker -
African-American Resistance to the COVID-19 Vaccine Reflects a Broader Problem
By Jelani Cobb
Yet, for Black America, the story extends far beyond Trump. In September, when Walter Kimbrough, the president of Dillard University, a historically black institution in Louisiana, announced that he had volunteered for a vaccine trial, and encouraged his students do likewise, the Internet exploded with references to the Tuskegee experiment. In that four-decade-long medical scheme, which began in 1932, nearly four hundred African-American men with syphilis were led to believe that they were receiving treatment, but were, in fact, left untreated, so that doctors could chart the course of the disease. In the nearly fifty years since the experiment was exposed, it has become a central reference point for understanding Black Americans’ relationship to the medical establishment. The story of Henrietta Lacks—a Black woman who died in 1951 of cervical cancer, and whose cancerous cells had been harvested for research, without her knowledge, by Johns Hopkins Hospital, replicated, sent to labs around the world, and later sold commercially—has likewise become shorthand for medical exploitation. That history, chronicled in works such as Harriet Washington’s “Medical Apartheid” and Dorothy Roberts’s “Killing the Black Body,” is, in part, what hampered efforts to recruit African-American volunteers for the trials, and now hampers efforts to get African-Americans vaccinated.
In this context, conversations about the vaccine are inevitably balancing acts between the unknown likelihood of contracting, or succumbing to, the virus and the known medical history of the African-American population. Such concerns are not walled-off by discipline, which is why the coercive approach of the N.Y.P.D. this spring, and the events that sparked the months of Black Lives Matter protests this summer, also contribute to a broader skepticism about—if not the science itself—the good faith of the system in which it exists. On Monday, Thomas Fisher, a Black E.R. physician at the University of Chicago Medicine, told me that “our essential people are getting sick, but being pushed to deliver food and drive Ubers, and things like that, without P.P.E.” He added, “It’s hard to imagine that we won’t also reflect maybe these same inequities with the distribution and uptake of this vaccine.”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/african-american-resistance-to-the-covid-19-vaccine-reflects-a-broader-problem
Tuesday, December 22, 2020
Great Chocolate Muffin Recipe
An excerpt from Mashed -
These Costco copycat chocolate muffins are better than the real thing
By Molly Allen
Biting into a Costco muffin is an experience like no other. The texture is on point, the flavor is great, and they're huge. They're perfect for sharing or munching on all morning long. And while the blueberry and poppy seed versions are delicious options in their own right, there's just something so incredible about Costco's chocolate muffins.
Now, you can reproduce those giant, moist, and flavorful chocolate muffins in your own kitchen with this recipe. With just a handful of ingredients, a few minutes of your time, and a whole lot of chocolate chips, you'll have freshly baked Costco copycat chocolate muffins ready at home in no time.
Read More: https://www.mashed.com/290597/costco-copycat-chocolate-muffins/?utm_campaign=clip
Job Hunting Advice
An excerpt from CNBC -
If you say any of these 6 things during the job interview, don’t expect to get an offer: Career expert
By J.T. O’Donnell, Contributor
Each and every little thing you say (yes, even just one sentence) during a job interview shapes whether or not a hiring manager thinks you are a strong fit for the job.
And sometimes, it may be tempting to give an answer that felt right at the time, but in hindsight was extremely poor and made you seem weak or average. That’s why it’s important to remind yourself in advance of what to resist saying.
Here are six responses to avoid if you want to boost your chances of landing an offer, along with tips and examples of what to say instead:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/15/if-you-say-any-of-these-things-during-job-interview-dont-expect-an-offer-says-career-expert.html
Sunday, December 20, 2020
Tuesday, December 15, 2020
Sunday, December 13, 2020
Beware of Mad Men
An excerpt from OkayPlayer -
Chris Rock On Joe Biden’s Election Win: “I Wasn’t Jumping For Joy”
By Elijah Watson
“You know, Donald Trump did this thing… Like, when security companies build new locks or security systems, they hire crooks to show you the weaknesses of the system. Well, Donald Trump showed us the weakness of our government,” Rock said. “Now, it’s up to Joe Biden and Congress and the Senate to get rid of those weaknesses—to instill safeguards that actually protect us from unqualified, mad men and mad women, so that we never have to be at the mercy of a person that does not exhibit empathy and competence.”
https://www.okayplayer.com/news/chris-rock-joe-biden-election-win-fargo.html
Thursday, December 10, 2020
We’ve teamed up with @Kaepernick7! Introducing Change the Whirled Non-Dairy, the flavor that's supporting the fight to dismantle systems of oppression and empower Black and Brown people. Coming to freezers in 2021! Learn more: https://t.co/7c0Se2vut4 pic.twitter.com/LY90ObEwCj
— Ben & Jerry's (@benandjerrys) December 10, 2020
A Dog Walks Into A Walmart . . .
An excerpt from the Washington Post -
A dog was missing for weeks. Then it wandered into Walmart and found its owner working at the register.
By Sydney Page
June Rountree and her husband circled their neighborhood night after night looking for their beloved lost dog Abby.
Rountree, 60, realized the dog was missing Nov. 8, when she went to the backyard of their home in Dothan, Ala., and instead of seeing her 4-year-old black-and-white dog, she was horrified to see only Abby’s collar and leash, which was secured to a ground stake.
Despite their efforts, there was no sign of Abby, and the Rountrees were beginning to lose hope.
Three weeks later, an unlikely and perhaps miraculous turn of events left them convinced Abby is either the luckiest or the smartest dog in town.
Rountree, a longtime cashier at Walmart, was busy working her regular shift at register No. 6 on Nov. 28.
She heard a commotion, then looked up and saw a dog inside the store over by the ice machine. People were trying to catch the dog as it ran around.
“I said, ‘It can’t be,’ ” said Rountree, who then watched staff members trail the dog as it darted through the aisles.
“I was like, ‘What in the world is happening?’ ” said Danielle Robinette, 42, a customer service associate at the Walmart. “I’m a huge animal lover, so I just followed her, and she ran up to register No. 6.”
It was Abby.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/12/04/missing-dog-walmart-reunion/
Tarantino's Top 12 Films. Do You Agree?
From Far Out -
From Scorsese to Spielberg: Quentin Tarantino picks the 12 greatest films of all time
By the Far Out Staff
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/quentin-tarantino-12-greatest-favourite-films-ever-scorsese-spielberg/
50 Rarely Seen Historical Photos
From Bored Panda -
50 Rarely-Seen Historical Photos That Might Change Your Perspective On Things
By Liucija Adomaite and AustÄ—ja AkavickaitÄ—
https://www.boredpanda.com/amazing-rare-historical-photos/
Advice for Teens
From Buzzfeed -
Adults Are Sharing Things That Teenagers Today Should Avoid, And It's Actually Helpful
TBH, good advice for any age...
by Ryan Schocket, BuzzFeed Staff
https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanschocket2/adults-share-things-teens-should-avoid
Wrongfully Imprisoned
An excerpt from Unilad -
Man Who Was Wrongfully Imprisoned For 8 Years Overturned His Own Conviction And Became A Lawyer
BY: EMILY BROWN
 |
| A man who was wrongly imprisoned for sexual assault aged 17 managed to overturn his conviction and now works as a defense lawyer to free other people who have been wrongly convicted. |
He explained:
Everyone has a constitutional right to an effective attorney. And so therefore, my constitutional right was violated by not having an effective attorney.
Using newspapers he had access to in prison, Adams identified attorneys litigating cases that could support his argument and managed to work with one to begin drafting a habeas petition. In 2004, Adams’ case was taken on by the Innocence Project, who told him they didn’t understand ‘how on Earth you are in here with 28 years’.
Eight years after his arrest, the Innocence Project argued Adams’ case to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. The court unanimously overturned Adams’ conviction on the grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel, and in February 2007 he had all charges against him dismissed.
Following his release, Adams enrolled in college and received his associate’s degree, followed by a bachelor’s in criminal law. In May 2015 he graduated from Loyola University Chicago School of Law and went on to be hired by the Innocence Project.
He now works for his own private practice and uses his power as a lawyer to prevent people facing the same fate he did.
https://www.unilad.co.uk/news/man-who-was-wrongfully-imprisoned-for-8-years-overturned-his-own-conviction-and-became-a-lawyer/
The Sacrificial Lambs
An excerpt from the NY Times -
How Black People Learned Not to Trust
Concerns about vaccination are unfortunate, but they have historical roots.
By Charles M. Blow
The unfortunate American fact is that Black people in this country have been well-trained, over centuries, to distrust both the government and the medical establishment on the issue of health care.
In the mid-1800s a man in Alabama named James Marion Sims gained national renown as a doctor after performing medical experiments on enslaved women, who by definition of their position in society could not provide informed consent.
He performed scores of experimental operations on one woman alone, an enslaved woman named Anarcha, before perfecting his technique.
Not only that, he operated on these women without anesthesia, in part because he didn’t believe that Black women experienced pain in the same way that white women did, a dangerous and false sensibility whose remnants linger to this day.
When he finally got his experiments to be successful, he began to use them on white women, but he would begin to use anesthesia for those women.
As medical writer Durrenda Ojanuga wrote in the Journal of Medical Ethics in 1993: “Many white women came to Sims for treatment of vesicovaginal fistula after the successful operation on Anarcha. However, none of them, due to the pain, were able to endure a single operation.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/06/opinion/blacks-vaccinations-health.html
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (Official Music Video) - Black Vi...
https://youtu.be/32r_aoIFndw
Black Brass
An excerpt from the NY Times -
‘Is Austin on Your List?’: Biden’s Pentagon Pick Rose Despite Barriers to Diversity
With retired Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III’s nomination to be the first Black defense secretary, the Pentagon comes face to face with its record as a place where people of color struggle to climb.
By Helene Cooper
WASHINGTON — Retired Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, who is on the brink of becoming the first Black man to be secretary of defense, rose to the heights of an American military whose largely white leadership has not reflected the diversity of its rank and file.
For much of his career, General Austin was accustomed to white men at the top. But a crucial turning point — and a key to his success — came a decade ago, when General Austin and a small group of African-American men populated the military’s most senior ranks.
As a tall and imposing lieutenant general with a habit of referring to himself in the third person, General Austin was the director of the Joint Staff, one of the most powerful behind-the-scenes positions in the military. His No. 2 was also a Black man, Bruce Grooms, a Navy submariner and rear admiral. Larry O. Spencer was a lieutenant general who was the arbiter of which war-fighting commands around the world got the best resources. Dennis L. Via was a three-star general who ran the communications security protocols across the military.
And Darren W. McDew, a major general and aviator with 3,000 flight hours, was a vice director overseeing the plans the Joint Staff churns out.
At one point in 2010, the men thought they should capture the moment for posterity since nothing like that had happened before and likely would not happen again. They summoned the man who had made it happen, their boss, Adm. Mike Mullen, President Barack Obama’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, into a room for a photo.
“What is this about?” Admiral Mullen asked when he walked in.
“History,” General McDew replied.
 |
| From left, Brig. Gen. Michael T. Harrison, Lt. Gen. Larry O. Spencer, Lt. Gen. Dennis L. Via, Adm. Mike Mullen, Lt. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, Rear Adm. Bruce Grooms and Maj. Gen. Darren W. McDew in 2010. Most of these men went on to higher ranks.Credit...via Darren W. McDew |
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/us/politics/biden-lloyd-austin-defense-secretary.html?referringSource=articleShare
Saturday, November 28, 2020
Agreed?
From Time -
The 10 Best Movies Based on a True Story
By the Time Staff
https://time.com/5910721/best-movies-based-on-true-story/
The First DACA Rhodes Scholar
An excerpt from CNN -
This student just became the first Latino DACA recipient to win the Rhodes Scholarship. He says it's all because of his elementary school teacher
By Nora Neus, CNN
(CNN) In second grade, Santiago Potes walked into Marina Esteva's gifted and talented classroom at Sweetwater Elementary School in Miami, Florida, for the first time.
He was an undocumented immigrant from Colombia who entered the country when he was 4 years old. Esteva said she quickly noticed his intelligence and wanted to nurture him toward success.
Now, Potes is the first Latino DACA recipient to be awarded a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship.
On Saturday, the Rhodes Trust announced that Potes, a 2020 graduate of Columbia University in New York, would be one of the 2021 Rhodes Scholars.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/26/us/santiago-potes-latino-daca-rhodes-scholarship/index.html
Tuesday, November 24, 2020
Top Black Grad!
An excerpt from Black Enterprise -
STUDENT WHO TOOK 21 AP COURSES BECOMES THE FIRST BLACK MALE VALEDICTORIAN AT HIS HIGH SCHOOL
by BLACK ENTERPRISE Editors
Congratulations Rawlin Lee Tate Jr. This is something to be truly proud of! 🎓🎆 https://t.co/jObG4Uo7sb
— Jennifer Jones Newbill (she/her/hers) ✨ (@JenNewbill) November 17, 2020
https://www.blackenterprise.com/student-who-took-21-ap-courses-becomes-the-first-black-male-valedictorian-at-his-high-school/
No Licking!
Oh hi, moose. We have strict instructions about your snack habits. #jasper #Alberta 🇨🇦 pic.twitter.com/xSNo7YBrXS
— Carolyn Campbell (@_CLCampbell) November 15, 2020
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/22/americas/canada-warns-moose-lick-cars-trnd/index.html
Even the Robots Are Biased
An excerpt from the NY Times -
Can We Make Our Robots Less Biased Than We Are?
A.I. developers are committing to end the injustices in how their technology is often made and used.
By David Berreby
 |
| Chris S. Crawford, a computer scientist at the University of Alabama. “I personally was in Silicon Valley when some of these technologies were being developed,” he said, and more than once, “I would sit down and they would test it on me, and it wouldn’t work. And I was like, You know why it’s not working, right?”Credit...Wes Frazer for The New York Times Over the past decade, evidence has accumulated that “bias is the original sin of A.I,” Dr. Howard notes in her 2020 audiobook, “Sex, Race and Robots.” Facial-recognition systems have been shown to be more accurate in identifying white faces than those of other people. (In January, one such system told the Detroit police that it had matched photos of a suspected thief with the driver’s license photo of Robert Julian-Borchak Williams, a Black man with no connection to the crime.) There are A.I. systems enabling self-driving cars to detect pedestrians — last year Benjamin Wilson of Georgia Tech and his colleagues found that eight such systems were worse at recognizing people with darker skin tones than paler ones. Joy Buolamwini, the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League and a graduate researcher at the M.I.T. Media Lab, has encountered interactive robots at two different laboratories that failed to detect her. (For her work with such a robot at M.I.T., she wore a white mask in order to be seen.) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/22/science/artificial-intelligence-robots-racism-police.html |
Kaep's Message
1,363 days of being denied employment.
— Colin Kaepernick (@Kaepernick7) November 23, 2020
Still putting in work with @E_Reid35
Still going hard 5 days a week. #StillReady#StopRunning pic.twitter.com/iMeJ03IRuB
Free Period Products
Proud to vote for this groundbreaking legislation, making Scotland the first country in the world to provide free period products for all who need them. An important policy for women and girls. Well done to @MonicaLennon7 @ClydesdAileen and all who worked to make it happen https://t.co/4lckZ4ZYIY
— Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) November 24, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/world/europe/scotland-free-period-products.html
"Racism is a Public Health Threat"
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/11/23/racism-public-health-threat-american-medical-association/6400945002/
Monday, November 16, 2020
Sunday, November 15, 2020
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
Another First
An excerpt from Black Enterprise -
MEET THE FIRST BLACK WOMAN TO RECEIVE A PH.D. IN NEUROSCIENCE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER
by Dana Givens
 |
| Image via University of Rochester Alumni |
Dr. Monique Mendes has become the first Black woman to receive a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Rochester. The Jamaican-born, first-generation college graduate says the announcement came as a shock to her, not even realizing she had done so until informed.
“I didn’t know I was the first Black woman, but I’m excited,” said Mendes to Diversity Education. “I feel empowered; I really want other students in the Rochester city schools, just around Rochester that are Black, who are people of color that know that this is possible and that they can pursue a Ph.D. in neuroscience.”
Her desire to obtain her degree came after she became apart of the McNair Scholars Program at the University of Florida, a program designed to help undergraduate students from low-income and marginalized backgrounds offering financial assistance in addition to mentorship to help them prepare for their doctoral degree. From there, her interest grew and she became more immersed in studying the complexities of the brain, hoping to establish a career in neuroscience.
https://www.blackenterprise.com/meet-the-first-black-woman-to-receive-a-ph-d-in-neuroscience-from-the-university-of-rochester/
The Youngest Composer for the NY Philharmonic
An excerpt from Black Enterprise -
THIS 12-YEAR-OLD IS SET TO BECOME ONE OF THE YOUNGEST COMPOSERS FOR THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
by Dana Givens
Teaching music to children has been said to offer positive growth during their early development. For one Brooklyn girl, her love for music led her to continue her dream toward composing original work while achieving remarkable milestones.
Grace Moore is a young musician who is poised for greatness and achieved a huge milestone this week. WPIX 11 reported that the seventh-grader is one of the youngest composers to enter the New York Philharmonic. Moore is enrolled in the organization’s Very Young Composers program designed to teach participants as young as 8-years-old how to create original scores. The members of the program will also get to see their work performed by professional musicians in the orchestra.
https://www.blackenterprise.com/this-12-year-old-is-set-to-become-one-of-the-youngest-composers-for-the-new-york-philharmonic-orchestra/
Making History @ Annapolis
An excerpt from CBS Baltimore -
Midshipman 1st Class Sydney Barber Will Be The First Black Woman To Lead US Naval Academy’s Brigade
By CBS Baltimore Staff
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (WJZ) — For the first time, a Black woman will serve as the U.S. Naval Academy’s brigade commander.
Midshipman 1st Class Sydney Barber will be the commander for the spring semester, the academy’s commandant said.
Credit: US Naval Academy
The first female brigade commander ever was then-Midshipman Juliane Gallina, who served in 1991.
Barber, a graduate of Lake Forest High School in Illinois, is a mechanical engineering major and aspires to commission as a Marine Corps ground officer.
https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2020/11/09/midshipman-1st-class-sydney-barber-will-be-the-first-black-woman-to-lead-us-naval-academys-brigade/
Tuesday, November 3, 2020
Saturday, October 31, 2020
April 7, 2020
Was April 7, 2020 the day that sealed the fate of America?
By Thom Hartmann
On April 18, Bob Woodward recorded Jared Kushner saying that Trump had taken control away from the doctors and was going to open the country back up. So what might have provoked that? What was happening right around that time?
Trump’s official national emergency declaration came on March 11, and most of the country shut down or at least went partway toward that outcome. The economy crashed and millions of Americans were laid off, but saving lives was, after all, the number one consideration.
Trump put medical doctors on TV daily, the media was freaking out about refrigerated trucks carrying bodies away from New York hospitals, and doctors and nurses were our new national heroes.
And then came April 7, 2020, when the New York Times ran a front-page story with the headline: “Black Americans Face Alarming Rates of Coronavirus Infection in Some States.”
Across the American media landscape, similar headlines appeared at other outlets, and the story was heavily reported on cable news and the network news that night. White American conservatives responded with a collective, “What the hell?!?”
Rush Limbaugh declared soon after that “with the coronavirus, I have been waiting for the racial component. … The coronavirus now hits African Americans harder—harder than illegal aliens, harder than women. It hits African Americans harder than anybody, disproportionate representation.”
It didn’t take a medical savant, of course, to figure out that would be the case. African Americans die at disproportionately higher rates from everything, from heart disease to strokes to cancer to childbirth.
~~~~~
Tucker Carlson, the only primetime Fox News host who’d previously expressed serious concerns about the death toll, changed his tune the same day, as documented by Media Matters for America.
Now, he said, “we can begin to consider how to improve the lives of the rest, the countless Americans who have been grievously hurt by this, by our response to this. How do we get 17 million of our most vulnerable citizens back to work? That’s our task.”
White people were out of work, and Black people were most of the casualties, outside of the extremely elderly. And those white people need their jobs back!
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/10/was-april-7-2020-the-day-that-sealed-the-fate-of-america/
At 102 years old, my great aunt, born the year of our last great #pandemic, made her way to the ballot box to cast her #vote. If she can do it, you can too! #Vote #VoteEarly #Election2020 pic.twitter.com/3nFCB3c4Ei
— Quentin Youmans (@QuentinYoumans) October 21, 2020
Then and Now
https://www.boredpanda.com/young-celebrities-kids-then-and-now-digital-art-ard-gelinck/
Saturday, October 17, 2020
Blacks Pay More
An excerpt from Complex -
Study Shows Black Americans Are Paying More to Own Homes
BYJOE PRICE
In a new study from MIT, it has been reported that Black Americans are often forced to pay more than any other group of individuals to own a home.
CNN reports that Black homeowners on average pay more in mortgage interest, mortgage insurance, and property taxes than other homeowners. Written by Edward Golding, MIT's executive director of the Golub Center for Finance and Policy, the paper concludes that the vast difference between what Black homeowners and white homeowners pay indicates that it's considerably more difficult for Black homeowners to accumulate wealth through ownership at the same rate as white homeowners.
The differences between mortgage payments is $743 per year, mortgage insurance premiums $550 per year, and property taxes at $390 per year. Totaling $13,464 "over the life of the line," the gap could result in up to $67,320 in lost retirement savings.
"The small differences compounding over the life of the mortgage and during home ownership can add up," writes Golding. "Even if it is a few hundred dollars a year here and there, it can amount to another year's salary families would otherwise have."
https://www.complex.com/life/2020/10/black-americans-pay-more-to-own-homes-study-shows
A Hotel Where Women Reign
An excerpt from Insider -
A new hotel in DC features a Ruth Bader Ginsburg portrait made from 20,000 hand-painted tampons — and that's not even the wildest design
By Melissa Wiley
Called Hotel Zena, it features over 60 bold and provocative artworks dedicated to female empowerment and those who have fought for women's rights.
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| View of the exterior of Hotel Zena, seen from Thomas Circle in northwest Washington, DC. Hotel Zena |
https://www.insider.com/dc-women-rights-hotel-features-ruth-bader-ginsburg-portraity-2020-10#called-hotel-zena-it-features-over-60-bold-and-provocative-artworks-dedicated-to-female-empowerment-and-those-who-have-fought-for-womens-rights-2
HBCU Virtual College Fair
An excerpt from the Sacramento Bee -
Black students in California offered CSU, UC alternatives at HBCU virtual college fair
BY MARCUS D. SMITH
President and CEO Dr. Alan Rowe and his wife, Donna, founded the U-CAN foundation in 1988 when looking to enroll their son in a four-year college or university. They realized the limited resources and programs for Black students and started a foundation that would shape scholars in Sacramento – and California – for the next 40 years.
The HBCU college fair has now expanded throughout the entire state of California.
The United College Action Network (U-CAN) is hosting its 21st Annual Historically Black College and University (HBCU) College Fair online, in accordance with public health regulations.
U-CAN’s goal is to give California’s Black student population the opportunity to attend a four-year university. What started with just five students admitted in 1989 has grown to thousands of students accepted to various HBCUs across the country with their on-the-spot admission annual college fair.
The fair began on Wednesday and will end on Saturday. Registration is free and available every day of the virtual fair online at ucangotocollege.org.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/equity-lab/article246425780.html
Expelled From 10 Schools - Now Ph.D.
An excerpt from Black Enterprise -
THIS BLACK MAN GRADUATED WITH HIS PH.D. AFTER BEING EXPELLED FROM 10 SCHOOLS
by Dana Givens
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| Image via Tommie Mabry |
The pursuit of higher education looks different for each person—with so many barriers standing in the way of obtaining a college degree for many marginalized groups. One man was able to beat all of the odds from his upbringing and is now celebrating earning his Ph.D.
As a child, Dr. Tommie Mabry was expelled from 10 different schools all before entering high school. Fast forward to December 2019, he was able to celebrate a huge milestone, finally obtaining his Ph.D. after a difficult journey of pursuing his education.
“My mom and dad [have] all my books in their house, they’re proud and they’ve come to all my graduations. Hopefully, if God says the same, they will be there at my Ph.D. graduation in December,” Mabry told Because Of Them We Can. “My mom said she didn’t think I would make it and now [I’m] the only doctor she knows.”
https://www.blackenterprise.com/this-black-man-graduated-with-his-ph-d-after-being-expelled-from-10-schools/
The Million Man March - 25 Years Ago
From Esquire -
The Million Man March Inspired a Generation. Here Are Photos From the Historic Event.
On Oct. 16, 1995, Black men from across the country marched on Washington, D.C.
By The Esquire Editors
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| Attendees at the Million Man March carried signs and raised their fists in the symbol for Black power. |
Oct. 16, 2020 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Million Man March, an event in which Black men from across the country poured into Washington, D.C. as a sign of unity. The event was massive. More than 11,000 buses delivered passengers in the days ahead of the event, according to the New York Times, with planes and trains ferrying even more. Celebrities like Will Smith, Stevie Wonder, and Diddy (then Puff Daddy) attended, along with civil rights icons like Jesse Jackson Jr. and Al Sharpton.
“I lost my mind,” Virgil Killebrew, who attended the march, told USA Today. “It wasn’t the speeches. It was the excitement. ... You felt the truth of all these people saying, ‘Black Power.’”
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| A wide shot of the National Mall on the day of the March. |
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/g34385811/million-man-march-1995-photos/
The Nation's Most Pressing Problem
An excerpt from the NY Times -
END OUR NATIONAL CRISIS The Case Against Donald Trump
BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Mr. Trump stands without any real rivals as the worst American president in modern history. In 2016, his bitter account of the nation’s ailments struck a chord with many voters. But the lesson of the last four years is that he cannot solve the nation’s pressing problems because he is the nation’s most pressing problem.
He is a racist demagogue presiding over an increasingly diverse country; an isolationist in an interconnected world; a showman forever boasting about things he has never done, and promising to do things he never will.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/16/opinion/donald-trump-worst-president.html
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