Mama Said

Today, June 15th, is my Mom's birthday.  She would have been 97.

This day, like all others, I'm reminded of the many pearls of wisdom she shared with my brothers and I while we were growing up.

Like . . .

---Tell me who you follow and I'll tell you who you are.

---Birds of a feather flock together.

---Where there's smoke, there's fire.

---No matter where you are or what you're doing, somebody's watching.  What do they see?

---Always do more than expected, and you'll always have a job.

---It's your responsibility to greet people, what they do in response matters little.

---The folks that give you advice don't pay for your mistakes.

---It takes two people to fight.  You have a choice on whether or not to engage.

And my favorite . . .

In response to my going away to college, which was unheard of in those days, Mom would say to those who questioned that decision,

"The same God who took care of her here, will take care of her wherever she goes."

It is this last one that stays with me the most and gives me peace.

Why Read?

Excerpts from Medium -

The Reading Habits of Ultra-Successful People

Want to know one habit ultra-successful people have in common?

They read. A lot.

In fact, when Warren Buffett was once asked about the key to success, he pointed to a stack of nearby books and said, “Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.”
Buffett takes this habit to the extreme — he read between 600 and 1000 pages per day when he was beginning his investing career, and still devotes about 80% of each day to reading.

~~~~~~~~~~

And these aren’t just isolated examples. A study of 1200 wealthy people found that they all have reading as a pastime in common.

But successful people don’t just read anything. They are highly selective about what they read, opting to be educated over being entertained. They believe that books are a gateway to learning and knowledge.

~~~~~~~~~~

There are many examples of successful people dropping out of school or foregoing a formal education, but it is clear that they never stop learning. And reading is a key part of their success.

https://medium.com/life-learning/the-reading-habits-of-ultra-successful-people-d565b26f15f5#.mnzkgoplg

Quote

From Vox -

"If there are 300 million guns in the United States, and we impose a tax of $3,600 per gun on the current stock, we would eliminate the federal government deficit. But $3,600 is coming nowhere close to the potential damage that a single weapon could cause." [Stephen Williamson]

A Housing Option

http://thevanual.com

Introducing Malcolm Gladwell's "Revisionist History" Podcast

What's Your #GradAdvice? | GOOD

People Powered Tesla

http://www.wired.com/2016/06/best-new-gren-energy-tech-right-underfoot/?mbid=nl_61316

A Victory Lap in Their Blood

An excerpt from The Atlantic -

A Victory Lap in Blood
Forty-nine people die in Orlando, Florida, and Donald Trump wants a pat on the back.
By RON FOURNIER

Obama shouldn’t resign, but you should consider a different line of work after suggesting today that the president might somehow be involved in the Orlando massacre. A baseless, disgraceful lie.

You could argue that it’s important to give the enemy a name. OK, let’s do that:

Islamic extremism. Islamic extremism. Islamic extremism.

Radical Islam. Radical Islam. Radical Islam.

Wait for it… No, ISIS didn’t crumble.

You’re wrong, Donald Trump. Words don’t win wars.

But your words do undermine the commander-in-chief. Your words do exploit fears, stir prejudices, and divide Americans. Your words might even win you the election.

Which is the point, right? In March, you said talk about terrorist attacks “is probably why I’m number one in the polls.”

Forty-nine innocent people dead and you took a victory lap in their blood.

Congratulations.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/a-victory-lap-in-blood/486836/?utm_source=nl-atlantic-daily-061316

Why Daddy?

From the Science Creative Quarterly -

A DIALOGUE WITH SARAH, AGED 3: IN WHICH IT IS SHOWN THAT IF YOUR DAD IS A CHEMISTRY PROFESSOR, ASKING “WHY” CAN BE DANGEROUS
by W. Stephen McNeil

http://www.scq.ubc.ca/quarterly011/0101mcneil.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Vox%20Sentences%206/13/16&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All

Stamp Collecting

An excerpt from Atlas Obscura -

“The stamp collecting community basically is synonymous with old white guys,” says Don Neal, the newsletter Editor in Chief at ESPER (Ebony Society of Philatelic Events and Reflections). ESPER, founded in 1988 and named after its creator, Esper G. Hayes, set out to change that limiting definition. Hayes, a stamp collector, met the black Olympian Jesse Owens a stamp show in the ‘70s, where she waited in line for his autograph. They were the only two black people at that show. After a solemn handshake, she pledged to Owens that she would do something to help African-Americans in the philatelic community.

ESPER members at a 25th anniversary event in 2013. (Photo courtesy of Don Neal)

In reaction to Owen’s death in 1980, Hayes made good on that promise: ESPER’s global society is now 28 years old and 300 members strong. It hosts booths at stamp conventions around the country, supports youth organizations, convenes social events and provides a network for African Americans in philately.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/want-to-make-america-more-inclusive-start-with-stamps

Summer Camps

An excerpt from The Root -

10 STEM Summer Camps for Students of Color

Summer camps across the country are boasting access to science, technology, engineering and math for students of color.  BY: SHERRELL DORSEY

1. Black Girls Code Summer Camp

About the curriculum and experience: Day camps provide 10 days of hands-on, project-based instruction in which girls engage in tech instruction. The camps run for six hours a day and include lunch, breaks, community building, field trips and, of course, coding. No prior coding experience is required.

Camps offer a space where girls of color can learn computer science and coding principles in the company of other girls like themselves, along with mentorship from women they can see themselves becoming.

Age requirement: 11 to 14 years

Locations and dates (to register, click the links below): 

• Washington, D.C.: June 27-July 12
• Los Angeles: July 18-29
• Chicago: July 18-22
• Boston: July 25-Aug. 5
• San Francisco Bay Area: Aug. 1-12
• New York City: Aug. 15-26

Registration for other cities to be shared soon and available here.

Cost: $300 for two-week camps in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, New York City, Boston and Washington, D.C., and $150 for one-week camp in Chicago. For all camps, a limited number of need-based scholarships will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/lists/2016/06/10-stem-summer-camps-for-students-of-color/?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content%26

When You Love a Sport That Doesn't Love You

From RadioLab -

Surya Bonaly (Photo Credit: Getty Images/Getty)

At the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan, one athlete pulled a move that, so far as we know, no one else had ever done in all of human history.

Surya Bonaly was not your typical figure skater.  She was black. She was athletic. And she didn’t seem to care about artistry.  Her performances – punctuated by triple-triple jumps and other power moves – thrilled audiences around the world.  Yet, commentators claimed she couldn’t skate, and judges never gave her the high marks she felt she deserved.  But Surya didn’t accept that criticism.  Unlike her competitors – ice princesses who hid behind demure smiles – Surya made her feelings known.  And, at her final Olympic performance, she attempted one jump that flew in the face of the establishment, and marked her for life as a rebel.

This week, we lace up our skates and tell a story about loving a sport that doesn’t love you back, and being judged in front of the world according to rules you don’t understand.

http://latifnasser.com

You have no idea where camels really come from | Latif Nasser

Dads are the Real Heroes | Father's Day - 60 sec | Dove Men+Care

A Father's Tribute to His Daughter

An excerpt from Essence 2009 -

Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Veteran Journalist Ed Gordon: Daddy's Little Girl

I always wanted a child. But, like many men, when I dreamed of becoming a father I dreamed of having a boy, a "little man" to follow in my footsteps. I wanted a son who would make me the proudest father in the gym after he hit the game-winning basket and then gave me a wink as he took the arm of the finest girl in the school. Yes, I fell victim to this all-too-common male fantasy. It never occurred to me that I might have a little girl.

When I found out that my wife, Karen, was pregnant, I was elated and ready to take on the task of fatherhood. There was one snag: The ultrasound showed that the blessing would be delivered in pink, not blue. I told my brother, who was already a father to a daughter, that another girl was on the way. He said, "You're about to experience a love that is unmatched, a special unconditional love." He assured me I'd get over my macho desire for a boy. I took his assurance, but I couldn't help wondering why I had never dreamed of having a daughter.

Certainly I've always thought little girls are just as important as boys. I abhorred the practice in some societies of selling or killing infant girls because they weren't considered to be as valuable as boys, who might grow up to help support their families. But I started to wonder if, unknowingly, I might have absorbed the idea of girls as second-class citizens. Well, if I did, I was about to get an education.

Taylor Nicole Gordon, now 12, has brought an immeasurable joy to my life, and no little hardheaded boy could ever take her place. Since the day she was born, I have not once lamented the fact that I didn't have the next Michael Jordan or Colin Powell. In fact, I've embraced the idea that I may have the next Serena Williams or Condoleezza Rice.

I admit I might be more interested in taking a boy to football practice than I am in dropping Taylor off at her dance class. But I am just as sure that I couldn't have been more pleased the day she nailed a dance routine she'd been having trouble with. Just hours before her recital, we'd been in the basement as she tried, frustratingly, to master the routine, and I guaranteed her she could climb this mountain. That night my pride swelled as I watched my daughter onstage hit every move. I knew that my chest wouldn't have been any higher if she had just run an 80-yard touchdown.

http://www.essence.com/2009/03/24/veteran-journalist-ed-gordon-daddys-litt

http://www.essence.com/2016/06/06/ed-gordon-essay-daddys-still-got-you?xid=20160612

A House Divided

Excerpts from the Huffington Post - 

‘A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand’: Ken Burns’ Stanford Commencement Address

A mentor of mine, the journalist Tom Brokaw, recently said to me, “What we learn is more important than what we set out to do.” It’s tough out there, but so beautiful, too. And history—memory—can prepare you.

I have a searing memory of the summer of 1962, when I was almost nine, joining our family dinner on a hot, sweltering day in a tract house in a development in Newark, Delaware, and seeing my mother crying. She had just learned, and my brother and I had just been told, that she would be dead of cancer within six months. But that’s not what was causing her tears. Our inadequate health insurance had practically bankrupted us, and our neighbors—equally struggling working people—had taken up a collection and presented my parents with six crisp twenty dollar bills—$120 in total—enough to keep us solvent for more than a month. In that moment, I understood something about community and courage, about constant struggle and little victories. That hot June evening was a victory. And I have spent my entire professional life trying to resurrect small moments within the larger sweep of American history, trying to find our better angels in the most difficult of circumstances, trying to wake the dead, to hear their stories.

~~~~~~~~~~

You know, it is terribly fashionable these days to criticize the United States government, the institution Lincoln was trying to save, to blame it for all the ills known to humankind, and, my goodness, ladies and gentlemen, it has made more than its fair share of catastrophic mistakes. But you would be hard pressed to find—in all of human history—a greater force for good. From our Declaration of Independence to our Constitution and Bill of Rights; from Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the Land Grant College and Homestead Acts; from the transcontinental railroad and our national parks to child labor laws, Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act; from the GI Bill and the interstate highway system to putting a man on the moon and the Affordable Care Act, the United States government has been the author of many of the best aspects of our public and personal lives. But if you tune in to politics, if you listen to the rhetoric of this election cycle, you are made painfully aware that everything is going to hell in a handbasket and the chief culprit is our evil government.

~~~~~~~~~~

For 216 years, our elections, though bitterly contested, have featured the philosophies and character of candidates who were clearly qualified. That is not the case this year. One is glaringly not qualified. So before you do anything with your well-earned degree, you must do everything you can to defeat the retrograde forces that have invaded our democratic process, divided our house, to fight against, no matter your political persuasion, the dictatorial tendencies of the candidate with zero experience in the much maligned but subtle art of governance; who is against lots of things, but doesn’t seem to be for anything, offering only bombastic and contradictory promises, and terrifying Orwellian statements; a person who easily lies, creating an environment where the truth doesn’t seem to matter; who has never demonstrated any interest in anyone or anything but himself and his own enrichment; who insults veterans, threatens a free press, mocks the handicapped, denigrates women, immigrants and all Muslims; a man who took more than a day to remember to disavow a supporter who advocates white supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan; an infantile, bullying man who, depending on his mood, is willing to discard old and established alliances, treaties and long-standing relationships. I feel genuine sorrow for the understandably scared and—they feel—powerless people who have flocked to his campaign in the mistaken belief that—as often happens on TV—a wand can be waved and every complicated problem can be solved with the simplest of solutions. They can’t. It is a political Ponzi scheme. And asking this man to assume the highest office in the land would be like asking a newly minted car driver to fly a 747.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ken-burns/ken-burnss-commencement_b_10430204.html

Billy Crystal's Muhammad Ali tribute - 15 Rounds (1979)

Online Legal Aid

An excerpt from the Huffington Post -

Legal Aid With a Digital Twist

by Tina Rosenburg

Matthew Stubenberg was a law student at the University of Maryland in 2010 when he spent part of a day doing expungements. It was a standard law school clinic where students learn by helping clients — in this case, he helped them to fill out and file petitions to erase parts of their criminal records. (Last week I wrote about the lifelong effects of these records, even if there is no conviction, and the expungement process that makes them go away.)

Although Maryland has a public database called Case Search, using that data to fill out the forms was tedious. “We spent all this time moving data from Case Search onto our forms,” Stubenberg said. “We spent maybe 30 seconds on the legal piece. Why could this not be easier? This was a problem that could be fixed by a computer.”

Stubenberg knew how to code. After law school, he set out to build software that automatically did that tedious work. By September 2014 he had a prototype for MDExpungement, which went live in January 2015. (The website is not pretty — Stubenberg is a programmer, not a designer.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/opinion/legal-aid-with-a-digital-twist.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Ffixes&action=click&contentCollection=opinion&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection&_r=0

Possible Solution

An excerpt from Good -

An Unexpected Solution To Our Organ Donor Crisis
by Alicia Kennedy

There are currently more than 120,000 Americans waiting for a life-saving organ transplant, and every day, another 22 will die before they receive one. Procuring organ donations is a notoriously complicated and unpredictable business (for starters, something tragic usually needs to happen to a donor first), and can’t come close to meeting demand.

Researchers have been hard at work seeking a safer, more reliable way to increase the organ supply. For awhile, one method in particular seemed to be gaining traction: Figure out how to grow a human organ in an animal, then harvest it as needed. However, late last year, the government revoked all funding for this type of research in what the Mercury News called “a startling reversal of policy, reminiscent of the Bush administration's 2001 ban on embryonic stem cell funding.”

To many, the idea of human-animal hybrids (a.k.a. chimeras) provokes an unease straight out of our darkest sci-fi landscapes. But at UC-Davis, one reproductive biologist Pablo Ross persists in his exploration of the field despite a lack of funding. For now, Ross does something called “gene editing.” The process is more than a little reminiscent of Frankenstein: First, he takes a pig embryo and deactivates the gene necessary for developing a pig pancreas. Then, a few days later, he adds in human stem cells to grow a human pancreas instead.

https://www.good.is/articles/pigs-as-organ-factories

Sherman for President

An excerpt from the Huffington Post -

Richard Sherman Wants Billionaires To Pay For Their Own Damn Stadiums
Sherman said that’d be a top priority if he ever gets a desk in the Oval Office.
By Juliet Spies-Gans

Thinking on his feet and improvising what he’d want his campaign slogan to be — he settled on “Make America the place you want to raise your kids” — Sherman put forth what he deemed to be a “pretty ingenious plan for our economy”: make the rich pay for their own toys.

“I’d get us out of this deficit,” he told Clayton. “I’d stop spending billions of taxpayer dollars on stadiums and probably get us out of debt and maybe make the billionaires who actually benefit from the stadiums pay for them. That kind of seems like a system that would work for me.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/richard-sherman-billionaires-stadium_us_57597ff6e4b0e39a28acb20f?ir=Black+Voices&section=us_black-voices&utm_hp_ref=black-voices