Monday, February 14, 2022
Caramel Corn
From Bon Appetit -
Making Caramel Corn Is Easier Than It Has Any Right to Be
It’s caramel corn’s world and I’m just living in it.
BY JESSIE SHEEHAN
Here’s how to make my caramel corn:
Heat your oven to 250° F and prepare a baking sheet by lining it with parchment paper and securing that paper at each corner with a little cooking spray. Next, make 10 cups of unsalted popped popcorn. You can do this (my favorite way) by microwaving ½ cup unpopped kernels in a large microwave-safe bowl covered with a microwave-safe plate on high for 6–8 minutes depending on the strength of your microwave. Or, if you’re not as fond of your microwave as I am, you can place ½ cup unpopped kernels and 1 Tbsp. vegetable oil in a large, covered pot on the stovetop over medium heat and pop away, shaking the pot over the flame periodically. (More details here, if you need them.) Transfer the popped corn to a large bowl.
Now it’s caramel time. In a medium pot over medium-high heat, bring 1 cup light brown sugar, ¼ cup Lyle’s Golden Syrup or light corn syrup, 2 Tbsp. molasses (which will give the corn a little bit of a Cracker Jack feel), and 10 Tbsp. unsalted butter to a boil, stirring occasionally with a rubber spatula. Let the caramel boil without stirring until thick and fragrant, about 3 minutes. Now take the pot off the heat and whisk in 1 tsp. Diamond Crystal kosher salt, ½ tsp. baking soda, and 2 tsp. vanilla extract. Pour the caramel over the popcorn and stir to coat.
Scrape the coated corn onto the prepared baking sheet—you’ll need to pile it on—and bake, stirring every 20 minutes, until the caramel has darkened slightly and the popcorn is dry to the touch, about 1 hour. Let the caramel corn cool to room temp before giving it away in cute little bags, serving it in a large bowl, or indulging straight from the baking sheet.
But regardless of whether you share it with your pals or eat every last kernel solo, consider yourself warned: Caramel corn this good and this easy will be made again (and again, and again).
Let's Teach Them Our History
An excerpt from Slate -
What Happens to Middle School Kids When You Teach Them About Slavery? Here’s a Vivid Example.
The topic is emotional. That’s not a bad thing.
BY MARY NIALL MITCHELL AND KATE SHUSTER
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| Group project of eighth grade class at Olentangy Orange Middle School in Lewis Center, Ohio. Photo by Kristin Marconi and Christine Snivley |
When she found the advertisement for Maria, an eighth grader named E.D. was struck by the details in it. The ad was posted in a local newspaper, in 1846, by an enslaver in Tennessee. When Maria escaped, she was only 18 or 19 years old. She did not act alone. Maria ran with “a free man” named Henry Fields. For faster transport, Maria and Henry also liberated a gray mare. Maria’s enslaver suspected Henry had his free papers with him. But he was certain that Henry carried something else: a fiddle.
E.D.’s teachers had asked their students to respond creatively to an ad they found in Freedom on the Move, a digital collection housed at Cornell University of thousands of ads by enslavers and jailers seeking the return of self-liberating people, printed in American newspapers before emancipation. E.D. decided to make Henry’s fiddle. She made it life-size, out of cardboard and papier mâché. She covered it with a collage that tells the story of Henry and Maria’s flight. The enslaver placing the ad suspected “they will make for Kentucky and from there to a free state.” So E.D. used the image of a running horse, a “Welcome to Kentucky” sign, and a heart symbol—this last because E.D. wondered “if Maria and Henry were in love.” E.D. pasted a copy of the ad on the fiddle seven times, for the number of times the ad ran in the newspaper. It was her personal monument to Henry and Maria and their acts of resistance. “My fiddle represents Henry and Maria’s story, their fight for freedom,” E.D. explained, “but it also represents all of the thousands of other stories just like theirs, waiting to be told.” She carried the fiddle to school in a violin case.
E.D. and her teachers, Kristin Marconi and Christine Snivley, who teach middle school students in Ohio, were part of a virtual learning community created for Freedom on the Move by the Hard History Project. The goal of these workshops was to tap the genius of teachers to build a bridge between the digital archive and K–12 classrooms. As a crowdsourced archive, FOTM was built with the public in mind. Still, it takes the expertise of teachers to reach, arguably, FOTM’s most important readership: young people.
We are in a cultural moment in which teaching about racism and the world it has made is both essential and controversial. Critics rallying under the banner of “anti-CRT” describe this teaching as divisive and disturbing. But we can’t teach the history of the United States without teaching about slavery. And of course, they’re right about the emotions involved—there’s nothing comfortable about slavery. But they’re missing something: There’s a lot of good, and even joy, to be had in talking about the relentless and omnipresent resistance to slavery that we see again and again in newspapers before the Civil War, in ads seeking the return of self-liberating people.
Lifelong Readers
An excerpt from The Atlantic -
Why Some People Become Lifelong Readers
A lot rides on how parents present the activity to their kids.
By Joe Pinsker
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| Chris J. Ratcliffe / Getty |
They can be identified by their independent-bookstore tote bags, their “Book Lover” mugs, or—most reliably—by the bound, printed stacks of paper they flip through on their lap. They are, for lack of a more specific term, readers.
Joining their tribe seems simple enough: Get a book, read it, and voilà! You’re a reader—no tote bag necessary. But behind that simple process is a question of motivation—of why some people grow up to derive great pleasure from reading, while others don’t. That why is consequential—leisure reading has been linked to a range of good academic and professional outcomes—as well as difficult to fully explain. But a chief factor seems to be the household one is born into, and the culture of reading that parents create within it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/09/love-reading-books-leisure-pleasure/598315/
No Welcome Wagon Here
An excerpt from NBC News -
‘We don’t look like them’: Black figure skaters face barriers to entry from a young age
Figure skating has long excluded Black athletes. The disparity can be seen from youth competitions all the way up to Team USA.
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| Michael Baker.Courtesy Shirley Brown |
Before figure skating practice, Michael Baker would ask his mom to let him out of the car before they got to the entrance of the ice rink.
“He would say, ‘Mommy, why don’t you just drop me here?’” Shirley Brown, Baker’s mom, told NBC News. “And I knew exactly why he was doing it.”
They still haven’t replaced their beat-up 2007 Toyota Rav 4, one in a long list of sacrifices made to support Baker’s skating. Brown has delayed her retirement. They can’t go on vacation.
Baker, 17, dreams of one day competing in the Olympics. But even if he has the talent to make it, the family worries the cost may hold him back.
Baker started skating at 13, when he signed up for lessons at a mall on his birthday. A coach saw that Baker had talent and offered to teach him.
“In the beginning, it was very, very, very tough,” Brown said. “I find that it’s an elitist sport. You’re not welcomed by some of the parents. We don’t look like them.”
Baker is the only Black skater training at his rink in New Jersey.
From formal gatekeeping to high barriers to entry, the sport has a long history of excluding Black figure skaters. There aren’t any Black skaters on the U.S. team competing at this year’s Olympics, and the last time an African American skater competed at the Games was 16 years ago. There aren’t many Black fans, either. U.S. Figure Skating, the sport’s national governing body, found that only 2 percent of fans were African American. This disparity can also be seen throughout the sport.
Friday, February 4, 2022
Saturday, January 29, 2022
What's the Story Behind Wavy Walls?
An excerpt from Family Handyman -
If You See a Wavy Brick Wall, This is What It Means
By Karuna Eberl
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| CONSTRUCTION PHOTOGRAPHY/GETTY IMAGES |
Serpentine "crinkle crankle" walls are an ancient, aesthetic idea that deserves a second look.
Every once in a while you might notice a brick wall that serpentines instead of cutting straight across. These so-called crinkle crankle walls are more common in England, but are found here and there in the U.S. as well. Their jump across the Atlantic is probably thanks to Thomas Jefferson, who directed them to be built at the University of Virginia (UVA) in the 1800s.
“Thomas Jefferson was such a genius,” says Gary Porter, technical director at the Masonry Advisory Council. “Authorities at the time thought that Jefferson invented this design. However, he was merely adapting a well-established English style of construction.”
What Are Those Wavy Brick Walls Called?
The term crinkle crankle walls probably came from the Old English word for zigzag. Sometimes they are also called ribbon, wavy, radius, serpentine, sinusoidal or crinkum crankum walls. The Dutch engineers who originally built them in England called them slang muur, which translates to snake wall.
Why Are They Wavy?
They serpentine for economy and strength, and likely also aesthetic reasons.
A single row of bricks laid in a sine wave pattern is as strong or stronger than a standard straight wall and requires fewer bricks. (In the case of UVA’s walls, about 25 percent less.) That’s because straight walls need two rows of bricks and sometimes buttresses to survive over time, whereas wavy walls need just a single row.
“So it was more efficient, and that’s why they did it,” says Porter. “These walls actually act like an arch, and so that makes it strong for wind loads that might push on the wall.
12 Cello Piece Performed All By Himself!
From Upworthy -
Cellist performs a piece for 12 cellos all by himself and it's absolutely stunning
A Legacy Unveiled
An excerpt from the Washington Post -
An old Virginia plantation, a new owner and a family legacy unveiled
By Joe Heim
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| Sharswood in Gretna, Va., was built in the middle of the 19th century and at one point was the hub of a sprawling plantation. The Pittsylvania County property now consists of 10½ acres. Out of the frame behind the large tree at right is a cabin that may have been used by enslaved people as a kitchen and laundry for the main house as well as a residence. (Heather Rousseau for The Washington Post) |
GRETNA, Va. — There was so much Fredrick Miller didn’t know about the handsome house here on Riceville Road.
He grew up just a half-mile away and rode past it on his school bus every day. It was hard to miss. The home’s Gothic revival gables, six chimneys, diamond-paned windows and sweeping lawn were as distinctive a sight as was to be seen in this rural southern Virginia community. But Miller, 56, an Air Force veteran who now lives in California, didn’t give it much thought. He didn’t know it had once been a plantation or that 58 people had once been enslaved there. He never considered that its past had anything to do with him.
Two years ago, when his sister called to say the estate was for sale, he jumped on it. He’d been looking, pulled home to the place he left at 18. His roots were deep in this part of Pittsylvania County, and he wanted a place where his vast extended family, many of whom still live nearby, could gather.
The handsome house set on a rise had a name, it turned out. Sharswood. And Sharswood had a history. And its history had everything to do with Miller.
Slavery wasn’t something people talked much about in this part of Virginia when Miller was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. And other than a few brief mentions in school, it wasn’t taught much, either.
The only time he remembers the subject coming up was when Alex Haley’s miniseries, “Roots,” was broadcast in 1977.
“For a lot of us, that was our first experience with what really happened during slavery,” he said. “It just wasn’t discussed.”
Miller assumed his ancestors had been enslaved. But where and when and by whom were questions that were left unasked and unanswered.
“People didn’t want to talk about this stuff because it was too painful,” said Dexter Miller, 60, a cousin of Fredrick’s who lives in Java. “They would say, ‘This is grown folks’ business.’ And that’s how some of the history was lost.”
Another cousin, Marian Keyes, who taught first in segregated schools and later in integrated schools from 1959 to 1990, said that for a long time there was little teaching about slavery in Pittsylvania County.
“We weren’t really allowed to even talk about it back then,” said Keyes, who turns 90 this year and lives in Chatham. “We weren’t even allowed to do much about the Civil War and all of that kind of stuff, really.”
Even outside of school, when she was growing up, Keyes said, the subject of slavery was avoided.
“I just thought everything was normal,” she said, “because that was the way of life.”
But the unspoken history left a gulf.
It wasn’t until after Fredrick Miller bought Sharswood in May 2020 that its past started coming into focus. That’s when his sister, Karen Dixon-Rexroth and their cousins Sonya Womack-Miranda and Dexter Miller doubled down on researching their family history.
What neither Fredrick Miller nor his sister knew at the time was that the property had once been a 2,000-acre plantation, whose owners before and during the Civil War were Charles Edwin Miller and Nathaniel Crenshaw Miller.
Miller.
Fredrick Miller and so many members of his extended family were born and grew up in the shadow of Sharswood — and perhaps it was a clue to a deeper connection. It wasn’t uncommon after emancipation for formerly enslaved people to take the last names of their enslavers. But establishing the link required more research.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/01/22/virginia-plantation-slavery-owners-history/
Congratulations Dr. Overbey!
An excerpt from the Elk Grove Tribune -
Dr. Jennifer Overbey Named Physician Of The Year For Methodist Hospital
Posted by Dr. Jacqueline "Jax" Cheung | Jan 21, 2022 | Community & Events
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| Dr. Jennifer Overbey |
Physician of the Year
Methodist Hospital recently announced that Dr. Jennifer Overbey, the Chairperson of Obstetrics and Gynecology, has been awarded Physician of the Year of Methodist Hospital. In the history of Methodist Hospital, Dr. Overbey is the first woman and African American to receive this award. Congratulations Dr. Overbey!
https://elkgrovetribune.com/dr-jennifer-overbey-named-physician-of-the-year-for-methodist-hospital/
Bath & Body Works Celebrate Black History Month
An excerpt from Stylecaster -
Bath & Body Works Is Launching Its First Black History Month Collection — With a Huge Donation
by ELIZABETH DENTON
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| Photo: BATH & BODY WORKS. |
When I hear a popular brand is launching a collection for Black History Month (or Pride, or Women’s History Month, etc.) I’m a little cynical. Before supporting, I need to make sure the brand is actually giving back to the community in some way, whether in terms of employment (such as when Target hired LGBTQ+ designers for its Pride tees) or a monetary donation of some sort. With Bath & Body Works’ first-ever Black History Month collection, I don’t have to worry. Not only is this collection really, really cute, but the brand is also making a $500,000 donation.
“This Black History Month, Bath & Body Works is proud to continue its longstanding commitment to the Columbus and National Urban Leagues through a $500,000 donation,” Ronak Fields, community relations and philanthropy, said in a statement. “These funds will support underserved communities with workforce development and economic empowerment programs throughout America. I am grateful for the opportunity to work at Bath & Body Works and side-by-side with passionate associates who are committed to uplifting our neighbors.”
https://stylecaster.com/beauty/bath-body-works-black-history-month/
Fall Asleep in 2 Minutes!
@justin_agustin Technique to falling asleep in 2 minutes! Insp. AsapSCIENCE on YT #sleep #fallasleep #insomnia #insomniac #learnontiktok #howto ♬ You - Petit Biscuit
Monday, January 17, 2022
Restoring a Refuge For Black Travelers
An excerpt from Fast Company -
On Route 66, a family is restoring the only gas station built for Black travelers
The Threatt Filling Station offered refuge for Black travelers driving through Oklahoma. Now, the Threatt family hopes to turn it into a historical center.
BY KRISTI EATON
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| [Photo: courtesy of the Threatt family, National Register of Historic Places/ NPS, Rhys Martin/courtesy Oklahoma Route 66 Association] |
If you were to travel on Route 66 in the early 1900s, you probably passed the Threatt Filling Station, a family-owned gas station for Black travelers traversing the famous route from Chicago to Southern California.
But after closing in the 1970s, the station eventually fell into disrepair. Now the Threatt family is looking to revitalize and preserve it.
“It’s a part of Black history within the state of Oklahoma,” Ed Threatt said. “For him to acquire 160 acres of land in the Jim Crow era, that’s no small feat.”
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
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| 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.”
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
Wednesday, January 12, 2022
Traveling by Train
From Newsbreak -
I spent over 160 hours traveling to major US cities by train for $299. Here are 10 things that surprised me
By Kaitlyn Cheung
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| A few things surprised me about traveling by train. | Kaitlyn Cheung |
WOW!
@shopping666 My baby is six years old, and he gets up at six every day to cook for himself, do housework and then go to school❤️👏👏#GEICOGiveHappy #shopping666 ♬ original sound - Smarthome shopping
Friday, December 31, 2021
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
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| 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
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| 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
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| 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
Source:Getty
Michaela Coel is the first Black Woman to win an Emmy for ‘Limited Series Writing’!
2. Beyoncé
Source:GettyBeyoncé 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
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
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| 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.
Critical Race Theory Explained With a Cake
From CNN -
This Cake May Change Your Mind on Critical Race Theory
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
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| 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?
Monday, December 20, 2021
A Celebrity Holiday Cookbook
Wolf Entertainment -
The “One Chicago” Holiday Cookbook
"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
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| 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/
Saturday, December 18, 2021
Fix it, Black Girl
Fix it, Black Girl. Fix us, Black Girl. Nurse us, Black Girl. Teach us, Black Girl. Be the help, Black Girl. Clean up our messes, Black Girl. Vote for us, Black Girl. Don’t complain, Black Girl. Let us touch your hair, Black Girl.
— Hannah Drake (@HannahDrake628) October 15, 2019
He's Bringing Black Illustrations to the Medical Field
An excerpt from NBC News -
Meet the student bringing Black illustrations to the medical field
Chidiebere Ibe said he hopes his creations will help change the field of medical illustration, which is predominately white and male.
By Char Adams
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| Chidiebere Ibe started drawing medical illustrations featuring Black bodies about a year ago. "I made a deliberate action to constantly advocate that there be inclusion of Black people in medical literature,” he told NBC News.Chidiebere Ibe |
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| Chidiebere Ibe. Courtesy Chidiebere Ibe |
Have you ever seen a medical illustration featuring a Black body? Social media users admitted they hadn’t when an image of a Black fetus in a Black woman’s womb went viral this month.
Chidiebere Ibe, 25, is behind the image. The Nigerian medical student, who will enter Kyiv Medical University in Ukraine next month, describes himself as a self-taught medical illustrator. He said he’s spent at least a year learning to draw anatomy, focusing on Black skin every step of the way.
“I wasn’t expecting it to go viral,” Ibe, an aspiring pediatric neurosurgeon, said of the image in an interview. “I was just sticking up for what I believe in, advocating for equality in health through medical illustrations. I made a deliberate action to constantly advocate that there be inclusion of Black people in medical literature.”
He began publishing the images on social media, showing conditions like empyema thoracis and seborrheic eczema on Black skin. Many of the images show skin conditions prevalent with Black people, combating a misrepresentation that often leads to misdiagnosis. The fetus illustration went viral after a Twitter user shared the photo, writing, “I’ve literally never seen a black foetus illustrated, ever.” The post was retweeted more than 50,000 times, and the illustration garnered more than 88,000 “likes” on Instagram and even made its way to TikTok. Ibe drew praise from medical professionals far and wide.
“Little did I understand what the drawing meant to a lot of people. On my LinkedIn, on my Twitter, on my Instagram, I read the comments and they really touched me. I was crying,” Ibe said. “It was amazing to see how good people felt about it. People could see themselves in the drawing.”
Adding Color to the Nashville Stage
An excerpt from Buzzfeed News -
Jason Isbell Is Tired Of Country’s Love Affair With White Nostalgia
“I think it’s possible to acknowledge that you have benefited from a system that’s unequal without feeling shame or even guilt from it.”
By Elamin Abdelmahmoud
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| Jason Isbell during soundcheck at the Ryman Auditorium, Oct. 19, 2021 |
When you’re standing in front of the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, you might feel under siege. It sits a few feet away from Nashville’s rowdy Broadway strip, which means you have to wade through an army of bros and bachelorettes — folks who descend upon the city for a good time, if your idea of a good time is throngs of partyers in matching outfits, open-top buses aggressively blasting music, and more country cover bands per square inch than you can possibly count.
In sharp contrast to the loud nostalgia cosplay that surrounds it, the 2,300-seat auditorium, with its imposing Victorian Gothic architecture and distinctive stained glass windows, projects dignity and history. It’s one of music’s holiest sites, a storied hall that has been dubbed the Mother Church of Country Music. Everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Willie Nelson has a reverence for it. Word is Harry Styles once planned a whole tour just so he could perform here.
In mid-October, I arrived for the second show of Jason Isbell’s eight-night residency at the auditorium. The occasion is a perfect marriage of artist and venue: Isbell is one of America’s most potent songwriters, and the Ryman is a cathedral of song. For Americana fans, the singer-songwriter’s annual residency here has become a coveted pilgrimage. It’s for good reason that Isbell has come to be associated with the Ryman: In 2015, he played four consecutive nights backed by his band, the 400 Unit. He expanded this to six in 2017. In 2018, he did another six and released a live album called Live From the Ryman. In 2019, Isbell and his band performed at the venue for seven shows. This year, they’re doing eight. Every single one of these runs has sold out.
But if the Ryman has become a kind of home for Isbell, this year’s residency carried a different energy. It was historic. For seven of the eight evenings, he had a different Black woman opening for him. In an industry and genre that is consistently failing white women and is downright hostile to Black women, the choice to feature these openers is a small revolution.
The openers vary in age, fame, and career stages. Between them, they cover a variety of genres under the roots music umbrella, ranging from country to soul, blues to folk, Americana to rock ‘n’ roll. For many of them, it was their first time playing the Ryman at all.
History in the Making at Jackson State
An excerpt from Yahoo Sports -
Jackson State legends beam over Travis Hunter's trailblazing choice, a decision they never had in segregated South
By Dan Wetzel·Columnist
Had college football recruiting services been around in 1963, scouts would have flocked to 33rd Avenue High School in Gulfport, Mississippi, to watch a gifted, mobile, do-it-all quarterback named Lem Barney.
At 6-foot and with game-breaking speed, Barney would have been a five-star recruit long before his Hall of Fame career as a defensive back/return man (and even punter) for the Detroit Lions.
He may have even been rated as high as current 18-year-old Travis Hunter, who hails from Suwanee, Georgia, but like Barney six decades prior, can play all over the field – defensive back, cornerback, kick returner. Hunter is considered the No. 1 recruit nationally in the Class of 2022.
Of course, there were no scouting services back in Barney’s day. There was hardly any attention paid to him at all. Gulfport’s schools were still segregated almost a decade after the Supreme Court ruled such a thing illegal. Such was the racist foot-dragging in Mississippi.
Barney and so many young African American men like him were largely ignored; including by the major universities of the South, which still fielded all-white teams. Alabama head coach Bear Bryant or Ole Miss coach John Vaught didn’t consider a kid from 33rd Avenue High, no matter how good he was.
So Barney went off to Jackson State, a Historically Black University located about 160 miles north of his home, where he joined a Southwest Athletic Conference (SWAC) that was so brimming with talent, he had to switch to defense to find playing time.
Even now at 76 years old, there are no regrets. Jackson State football, SWAC football, HBCU football, he says, forged him to the point where he was a Week 1 starter in the NFL.
“I was so nervous,” he said years later.
Not so nervous that it prevented him, on the first drive of that first game, from intercepting Green Bay legend Bart Starr and returning it for a touchdown. It turns out, he hadn’t missed a thing by not going to those big-name schools, he says.
Still, when word broke Wednesday that Hunter, a generations-later, Lem Barney play-a-like, had stunned the football world by signing with Jackson State despite being coveted by the powerhouses that once refused to even consider someone like him, there was no minimizing the significance.
Supply Chain Chaos Explained
An excerpt from the Mercury News -
Q&A: What got us into this supply chain mess? When will it end? Stanford professor has answers
Kostas Bimpikis explains what it will take to end our supply chain nightmare
By LISA M. KRIEGER
Confronted by a pandemic, we suddenly couldn’t find what we needed: Hospitals ran short of N95s and ventilators, auto manufacturers didn’t have crucial components and store shelves suddenly emptied of everything from sneakers to sofas.
Kostas Bimpikis, an associate professor of operations, information and technology at Stanford Graduate School of Business, talked with this news organization about how to keep our supply chains reliable – even when the world is upended. His remarks have been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What did COVID-19 reveal about our supply chain?
A: It revealed two things. The first is how interconnected supply chains are. A disruption in Italy, Taiwan or Korea may be felt all over the world. The second thing it revealed was how fragile the supply chain is. Any deviation from normal operations creates a huge shock all over the world.
Q: What got us into this mess?
A: One trend is so-called “just in time” manufacturing. Typically, firms produce only as much inventory as they need to satisfy short-term sales. It keeps costs low. They do not necessarily hold excess inventory.
The second reason is the specialization of product lines. For example, cars are being manufactured that consist of thousands of components. Disruption in a supplier for a specific component – such as a small screw somewhere in the car — may hold up production of the entire car.
And the third thing is outsourcing and globalization of manufacturing. So a disruption in Taiwan, for example, affects our domestic supply chain, as well.
Q: What’s driving these trends?
A: Typically, companies take the view of minimizing costs, maximizing speed, maximizing efficiency and maximizing choice for consumers.
Costs are minimized by having very low “safety stocks,” because carrying excess inventory is very costly. Maximizing speed and efficiency means lean operations and “just in time” manufacturing. Maximizing choice for customers points to the specialization of the line. You can buy Nike sneakers in a zillion colors.
These have big advantages, but they do have disadvantages.
At the beginning of the pandemic, the shortages were mainly driven by a surge in demand for products. Now, more of the problems originate from problems with the supply chain.
Google's Treatment of Black Women Under Investigation
Excerpts from NBC News -
California investigates Google’s treatment of Black women workers
A state agency has already interviewed several Black women who have worked at Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company.
By Reuters
California’s civil rights regulator is investigating Google’s treatment of Black female workers following alleged incidents of harassment and discrimination, according to two people familiar with the matter and emails from the agency seen by Reuters.
Attorneys and analysts at the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) have repeatedly interviewed several Black women who have worked at Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company, about their experiences there, according to the documents and the sources. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing the work.
Questions have centered on alleged harassment and discrimination in the workplace, according to the emails. Conversations have taken place as recently as last month, one of the sources said.
The DFEH declined to comment.
Google said it is focused on “building sustainable equity” for its Black workers and that 2020 was its largest year for hiring what it calls “Black+” workers, a designation inclusive of people belonging to multiple races.
~~~~~
For years Black men in the tech industry have said they have faced disparaging comments and discouraging experiences, such as being shut out of offices because security guards and colleagues questioned whether they actually worked there.
As more Black women have joined the workforce, such complaints have increased. Seven current and former Google employees told Reuters this year about being marginalized on projects as Black women and not taken as seriously as colleagues with different backgrounds.
Also earlier this year, an investigation by NBC News revealed that several Black, Latino, and other Google employees of color who had reported incidents of bias and discrimination were instructed to take medical leave. Some said they were eventually pushed out of their roles at the company.
Artificial intelligence researcher Timnit Gebru has said Google fired her a year ago for criticizing its lack of workforce diversity and for fighting managers who objected to publishing a critical paper she co-wrote. Erika Munro Kennerly, who oversaw diversity and strategy teams at Google before resigning last year, told magazine Corporate Counsel in January that “there’s an overall tone of being undervalued” as a Black woman at Google.
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