Trailblazing Trumpeter

From The Sacramento Bee - 

Sacramento trumpeter Cynthia Robinson co-founded Sly and the Family Stone

The Family Stone, with Cynthia Robinson (center). Ross Brandes

BY CHRIS MACIAS

cmacias@sacbee.com

Cynthia Robinson, the trailblazing trumpeter who co-founded Sly and the Family Stone and later was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, died Monday in Sacramento following a battle with cancer. She was 71 years old. 

Robinson was a distinctive personality in a group known for defying musical boundaries. She was the rare female African American trumpeter to play in a chart-topping band, and her horn licks were hallmark to songs including “I Want to Take You Higher” and “Dance to the Music.”

http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article46631655.html

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article46631655.html#storylink=cpy

Happy Thanksgiving Wherever You Are

A New Kind of Card Game

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/forget-spades-you-need-to-play-this-fun-card-game-at-thanksgiving_565491f4e4b0258edb32fec1?utm_hp_ref=black-voices

http://www.cardsforallpeople.com/product/cards-for-all-people-original-pack

Great Thanksgiving Listen from StoryCorps & Google

For Your Viewing Pleasure

From The New Yorker -

Now Streaming: The Golden State Warriors

BY STEVE MCPHERSON

An excerpt -

After a historically dominant 2014-15 season that saw the Golden State Warriors secure the N.B.A. title and become only the tenth team in N.B.A. history to win sixty-seven or more games, it’s not entirely surprising that, this year, the squad has bolted out to a historic 15-0 record while outscoring opponents by 14.4 points per game. What is surprising is the landmark agreement the team has reached with Netflix: it will be releasing its entire season next weekend to better facilitate binge-watching.

“We try to stay abreast of current trends in media consumption,” N.B.A. commissioner Adam Silver said, at a press conference announcing the deal. “In this day and age, N.B.A. fans want to watch games when and how they like, so it just makes sense to release all sixty-seven of the Golden State Warriors’ remaining games at once.”

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/now-streaming-the-golden-state-warriors?mbid=nl_151124_Daily&CNDID=27124505&spMailingID=8286786&spUserID=MTE0Mjg5NDEzNjM4S0&spJobID=802375160&spReportId=ODAyMzc1MTYwS0

Short Story Vending Machines

http://magazine.good.is/articles/short-story-vending-machines-short-edition?utm_source=thedailygood&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailygood

Responding With Humor

From The Guardian -

National emergency? Belgians respond to terror raids with cats

An official request for citizens to avoid tweeting anything that could inform terrorists what is going on resulted in a national outbreak of pet pics

My favorite - Super Cat!

Preach!

Jill Scott Sings "Strange Fruit"

EZSTAX Clothing Organization System

Sweet Potato vs. Yam

NASA is Hiring Astronauts. Do You Qualify?

License Plate Rage

From The Morning News -

IH8YRST8
by Jess Stoner

Studying drivers across the country for signs of license-plate prejudice—or, why everyone loves Vermont drivers and hates Texans.

An excerpt -

I learned something new when we moved back to Colorado from Texas last year: People who live so far above sea level have razor-edged opinions about outsiders.

While I procrastinated for weeks in getting new license plates, drivers wouldn’t let me change lanes—sometimes informing me of their refusal with their middle fingers—one even gleefully made the Longhorns hand gesture when he cut me off.

I swear, I am a classically trained defensive driver. It wasn’t my driving. It was my Texas plates.

The prejudices that arise when drivers encounter different state license plates are largely unstudied. This is unfortunate because, according to my field research, they play a role in determining driver behavior and they reinforce stereotypes many drivers didn’t even realize they held.

For example, Coloradans’ dislike for Texans might be explained by the fact that they’re moving here. According to the Census Bureau, 24,431 people who lived in Texas in 2013 had listed Colorado as their place of residence a year later, versus the 18,277 Coloradans moving to Texas in that same period.

But Bill Marvel explained in a 2008 article for Denver’s 5280 magazine, “Don’t Mess With Colorado,” that the state’s hatred for all things Texas could be as ancient as the latter’s 19th-century “territorial ambitions.” Or that it might be the result of the real-life versions of The Simpsons’ Rich Texan who move north and mess with Coloradans’ livestock and screw over skiers and hikers by privatizing trails. Or maybe it’s simply a reaction to Texans like Walter Cliff of Amarillo, who was so pissed when he couldn’t find a Bud Light on his Colorado vacation in 2012 that he wrote a letter to the editor of the Durango Herald: “Heads up, Durango, not everyone likes that locally brewed beer.”

http://www.themorningnews.org/article/ih8yrst8

Making Art Accessible to the Visually Impaired

From The Daily Good -

3D Printing Brings Classical Artworks to the Blind and Visually Impaired

by DJ Pangburn

An excerpt - 

Dillon tells GOOD that he and his current company, Adventure Club, hit upon the idea of making art accessible to the visually impaired with Unseen Art. Under this project, which recently launched an Indiegogo campaign, artists volunteer to scan, model, and 3D-print classical artworks so that they can be experienced through touch by those who can’t experience the pieces visually.

http://magazine.good.is/articles/unseen-art-3d-print-classical-works-for-the-blind-visually-impaired?utm_source=thedailygood&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailygood

An Accident

On Thursday, there was a bad accident involving one of the teachers' buses that transport our teachers that live in Ruwais (an hour away; two hours roundtrip) and Ghyathi (an hour-an-a-half away; three hours roundtrip) to and from school.

Our little town doesn't have enough housing to support all of our teachers, so they have to live in these next neighboring towns.  If they choose to live in Ruwais, it is shared accommodations (three people living in four bedroom/four bath apartments). If they want single housing, then they must commute another half hour further.

The saving grace is that transportation is provided.

I don't care how you slice it though, the commute is tough.

Usually the bus is full, with teachers and their kids.  Because it was a Thursday, several people had driven so they can get home earlier, resulting in just a handful on the bus.

Side note - Thank God, special arrangements were made for me to live locally.  I live alone in an apartment next door to my school.

The roads are almost always filled with caravans of trucks taking goods to and fro. There isn't a railroad in this country, so this is the only way we can get merchandise that we need.  Trucks and buses must drive in the right lane, with cars using either lane.

On Thursday, a bus carrying four teachers, ran into the back of an 18-wheeler that was either stopped or had slowed way down.  (Currently, there are no shoulders to move over on, as there is construction going on for hundreds of miles in both directions, widening the roads).

The driver was instantly killed, and one of the two teachers from my school is in critical condition.  He was airlifted to Abu Dhabi to the nearest trauma center.  The other two teachers were from the local high schools - one from the girls' and the other from the boys'.

I was coming home from an appointment in Abu Dhabi when I got the call.  Two people were taken to Ruwais Hospital, and the other two (including the critical man) were taken to local hospital here.

I stopped by the hospital in Ruwais to check on those folks.  Thankfully, their injuries were minor, and after a few hours, they were released.

Then I drove to my town with plans to stop by the hospital to see the other two teachers.

What I saw when I drove up was heartwarming.

There were hundreds of people, most of the town it looked like, who were holding vigil at the hospital.  Scores of men, standing in clusters in the parking lot, were giving updates to new arrivals as they headed towards the main entrance.  Women were lining the walls solemnly holding each other and praying.

It was like this for hours.

At 8:00 pm the helicopter arrived to transport the critical patient to the city.  It took a couple of hours to get him from the room to the helicopter.  But as he was being wheeled down the hospital corridors, scores and more of men surrounded the bed and walked out with him.  When they got outdoors, the number grew even more.

It was an incredible sight to see.

In tough times, people come together.

It's human nature, evident in places far and wide, all over the world.

Coming to America

From Essence - 

Coming to America: My Personal Journey from Refugee to ESSENCE Editor

By Yolanda Sangweni

As I look at the Syrian refugees, spilling out onto European borders, desperate for a safe harbor, and listen to all the US politicians debating whether they’ll allow them into their states, I wonder who they are envisioning as these refugees. Do they see me and my family?  

My mother was a political prisoner in South Africa. 

She wasn’t as well-known as other political prisoners like Nelson Mandela, or the current South African president, Jacob Zuma, but she was one of the countless African activists whose resistance to the apartheid government was met with imprisonment. She certainly wasn’t a criminal. 

I was 9 years old when a group of policemen came banging on the door in the middle of the night, searching for her. They took her to the police headquarters and brought me with her. In later years, I would learn that this was the beginning of the psychological torture often inflicted on prisoners of conscience, because why else would you bring a 9-year-old child into a police station and make her watch as a close confidant—a man I considered an uncle—fingered my mother as the woman the police were searching for. 

“Yes, that’s her,” he said somberly.

The police regularly took my mother in for questioning about her political activity. The last time, in December 1986—the time they took me in with her—they held her for six months. It doesn’t seem long when you consider other activists, like Mandela, who were behind bars for most of their adult lives. To a 9-year-old child, those months were an eternity. And yet, we were among the lucky ones because my aunt lived in Harlem and had been petitioning the human rights group Amnesty International to start a letter-writing campaign. People around the world—people we’d never met—wrote impassioned letters to the South African government, pressuring authorities to either charge my mother or release her. It worked. 

I remember my mother’s elation, and panic, the days after her release. Joy at being reunited with her family, and anxiety at knowing that the police could be back at her door. It’s the psychological torture many activists often spoke of. Soon after her release, with little more than a few dollars and suitcases of our belongings, my mother and I were on our way to New York City. Amnesty International had helped secure us refugee status in America. 

And so, we were refugees. 

I’ll never forget the cantankerous immigration officers who treated us like we had the plague because of that stamp: “Refugee.”  

“Do you speak English?!” they shouted impatiently. 

“Do you have any money?” 

In my mother’s passport, which she saved as a keepsake until her death in 2012, it was written “$49.”

We came to America with $49. 

On those long immigration lines, my mother, the entrepreneur, the first to graduate from college among her siblings, the hope—was just another refugee, begging for entry. On those lines, lawyers, doctors, mathematicians, scientists, humbled themselves in the face of severe ignorance because they knew this was better than what they were leaving behind back home.

I think about this as I watch the Syrian refugee crisis and listen to politicians call for President Obama to bar them entry. Back when I first came to the U.S., the running thought was that African refugees were bringing AIDS. Today, Syrian refugees are said to be bringing terrorism to our shores. What is fact and what is prejudiced fiction?

I dare not say I have a solution to the crisis because I don’t, but I keep thinking about my own family, and the Syrian families who are going to unbelievable lengths in search of a better life.

I keep thinking about what would have happened had my mother and I not been allowed to come into the United States. She would have most likely gone back to prison. She may have become one of the countless South African activists who simply disappeared. I may have never become the woman I am today: fully African; wholly American. 

http://m.essence.com/2015/11/17/coming-america-my-personal-journey-refugee-essence-editor?xid=111815

Happy Birthday Zadie!

Actually Zadie's birthday was yesterday, Nov. 19th.  She turned the big 5 (Oh!).

Here's a birthday greeting from her cousin.  Too cute not to share.

The Ultimate Guide to In-N-Out Burger Menu Hacks | Foodbeast Labs

“They might have guns but we have flowers”

I Thee Dread

From The Atlantic Daily/New York Magazine -

I THEE DREAD

November 17, 20159:32 a.m.

Avoid the South If You Don’t Want to Be a Bridesmaid

By Jessica Roy

Photo: WeddingtonWay.com

Louisiana is a beautiful state with lovely people, delicious food, and a rich history, but I would not recommend living there unless you want to be forced to be a bridesmaid in someone's wedding. Hey, it's just math.

Priceonomics recently crunched the numbers to determine which states had the highest number of bridesmaids per wedding. Unsurprising for anyone who's ever watched Say Yes to the Dress Atlanta, the South dominates this trend. Brides in Charleston, South Carolina, for example, have five bridesmaids on average, while in Birmingham, Alabama, there's a 26 percent chance the bridal party will have seven or more bridesmaids. Congrats, girls in Birmingham, for having seven friends.

If you want to avoid the stress of being a bridesmaid, it's probably best to avoid the South altogether. Actually also the northeast. And California. Maybe just move to New Mexico?

http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/11/here-are-the-states-with-the-most-bridesmaids.html?utm_source=atl-daily-newsletter#