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Thursday, November 16, 2017

10 ways to have a better conversation | Celeste Headlee

Gallaudet football players communicate with sign language

What It Takes to Be the World’s Fastest Marathon Runner

Gift Air Travel This Holiday

An excerpt from Conde Nast Traveler -

The Skyhour App Is the Easiest Way to Gift Air Travel
by Betsy Blumenthal

We know what we’re asking for this holiday season.

Rather than receiving yet another cable-knit sweater from your great aunt this Christmas, imagine that you’re instead gifted four ‘skyhours’—at $60 each, that’s $240 toward the flight for your next vacation.

That’s the aim of Skyhour, a new app designed to simplify the process of gifting air travel. Launched on October 23 with backing (and industry guidance) from JetBlue Technology Ventures, the corporate venture arm of JetBlue Airways, the platform aspires to make gifting and receiving flights a seamless, single-site process.

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You don’t need to register with Skyhour to gift hours—pretty convenient when you're running to that birthday party and totally forgot to buy a present—but you do need to set up an account in order to claim them, and create a profile that contains some personal details (name, e-mail, age) and your passport information. Recipients can then apply the hours they’ve received to their selection, and, presto! They’re going to Mexico. Fortunately, for those of us who already know what we want for our birthday (hey, six months isn’t that far away), you can also request hours.

https://www.cntraveler.com/story/the-skyhour-app-is-the-easiest-way-to-gift-air-travel

Quote

Asked how Trump's un-presidential behaviour will influence future presidents, Biden dryly replied: “I think it will, God willing, go down as the single exception in American history.”

http://mashable.com/2017/11/14/joe-biden-donald-trump-presidency-stephen-colbert/#q9Mj3a.EgOqb

Another FAMU Success Story

An excerpt from IndieWire -

‘Mudbound’: Dee Rees, Faith, and the Long Path She Took to Make Her Epic Oscar Contender
With festival hit "Mudbound," Dee Rees proves what she can do with a sprawling southern drama of scale and scope. Netflix backing may prove to be an advantage.
By Anne Thompson

Dee Rees is a tall woman of fierce charisma. She’s the kind of director who talks fast, ideas coming so quickly that those less inclined can barely keep up. And yet her output has been slow: After Focus Features snapped up her breakout 2011 feature debut “Pariah” at Sundance, it was four years before HBO Film’s Emmy and DGA-award-winning 2015 biopic “Bessie.”

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When Rees left Nashville for college, her Methodist Church staged its annual rite of passage: Students declared their schools and accepted small scholarships from the community. “I was going to study business administration at Florida A&M, at the height of Reaganomics,” Rees said in an interview at a Netflix conference room. “This older woman, Miss Dunlap, pressed a handful of change in my hand, probably what she would have put in the communion basket. She’s giving me a fistful of coins, but I felt it was so much more. I just got how important it was. I was intending to make my parents proud and do well, but I felt the weight of those coins. There was no turning back, not having done the thing.”

Rees brought that moment into her adaptation of Hillary Jordan’s post-World War II novel. (Rees shares credit with Virgil Williams.) When Ronsel Jackson (“Straight Outta Compton” star Jason Mitchell) leaves home to join the Army, his mother Florence (Mary J. Blige) turns her back as he departs. Rees was inspired by her paternal grandmother, who thought it bad luck to watch someone going away. “I wanted to set the stakes,” said Rees. “You wouldn’t feel Ronsel’s coming home if we didn’t see him leaving. It was important to show that he was a son of the community and everybody’s investment is riding on him.”

http://www.indiewire.com/2017/11/dee-rees-mudbound-director-oscars-netflix-1201895509/


First African-American Woman to Graduate from Vassar

An excerpt from Variety -

Zendaya to Star in, Produce Movie About First African-American Woman to Graduate From Vassar
By Dave McNary

Zendaya will produce and star in the thriller “A White Lie,” playing the first African-American woman to graduate from Vassar College, Variety has learned.

The project is based on Karin Tanabe’s book “The Gilded Years,” which told the true story of Anita Hemmings, a light-skinned, African-American woman who was the descendant of slaves and passed as white so she could attend Vassar during the 1890s. She’s pulled into her elite world where she’s treated as a wealthy, educated white woman who finds romance with a moneyed Harvard student.

http://variety.com/2017/film/news/zendaya-a-white-lie-anita-hemmings-1202614131/

How To Remove 7 Common Carpet Stains

Walking while black

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Hijab Barbie

From the New Yorker -

Barbie Gets a Hijab
By Christina Binkley

Mattel’s Barbie modelled on the American fencer
Ibtihaj Muhammad has muscular legs and wears a hijab.
Photograph courtesy Mattel
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/barbie-gets-a-hijab?mbid=nl_Daily%20111417%20Subs&CNDID=27124505&spMailingID=12357255&spUserID=MTMzMTgyODE2ODQxS0&spJobID=1281339144&spReportId=MTI4MTMzOTE0NAS2

How the Right Politicized Roy Moore's Sexual Misconduct Allegations: The...

History Maker

An excerpt from Salon - (Bold is mine)

This week Tiffany Haddish makes “Saturday Night Live” history. That’s not funny
The “Girls Trip” star is the first black female comic to host “Saturday Night Live.” Ever. Let that one sink in
By MELANIE MCFARLAND

“Can you believe I will be the very #first black female comedian host?!?” she asked in a Nov. 7 tweet and Instagram post.

Can I believe it? Actually yes, I can. And I submit that answer with a mixture of emotions. Haddish, the breakout star of the surprise theatrical hit “Girls Trip,” is a tremendous comedian deserving of a higher profile. What’s more, “SNL” is featuring her just as her career is taking off; following a stint on NBC’s underappreciated summer comedy “The Carmichael Show,” she’s set to co-star in Tracy Morgan’s upcoming TBS comedy “The Last O.G.” (which, along with “Girls Trip,” is probably the reason she landed this hosting gig).

Indeed, Haddish deserves applause for making history, something I’d say is increasingly difficult to do in a show that’s been on the air for 43 seasons and has had 566 hosts as of this writing.

https://www.salon.com/2017/11/11/this-week-tiffany-haddish-makes-saturday-night-live-history-thats-not-funny/

Ta-Nehisi Coates on words that don't belong to everyone | We Were Eight ...

Principal of Lake Mary High School Dr. Reynolds jumps in on step team ro...