Tuesday, November 21, 2017
Monday, November 20, 2017
History Lesson
An excerpt from Atlas Obscura -
Meet Ann Gregory, Who Shattered Racist and Sexist Barriers in the Golf World
An unheralded sports pioneer, she was known as “The Queen of Negro Women’s Golf.”
BY NATASHA FROST
IN 1959, ON A WARM August evening in Bethesda, Maryland, Ann Moore Gregory ate a hamburger and went to bed. That night, every other player in the United States Golf Association Women’s Amateur tournament, which began the next day, was eating a traditional players’ dinner at the Congressional Country Club. But Gregory, the only African-American player in the tournament, had been barred from the clubhouse. So, she said later, she ate by herself. She was “happy as a lark. I didn’t feel bad. I didn’t. I just wanted to play golf, they were letting me play golf,” she said. “So I got me a hamburger, and went to bed.”
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ann-gregory-golf-african-american-civil-rights
Meet Ann Gregory, Who Shattered Racist and Sexist Barriers in the Golf World
An unheralded sports pioneer, she was known as “The Queen of Negro Women’s Golf.”
BY NATASHA FROST
IN 1959, ON A WARM August evening in Bethesda, Maryland, Ann Moore Gregory ate a hamburger and went to bed. That night, every other player in the United States Golf Association Women’s Amateur tournament, which began the next day, was eating a traditional players’ dinner at the Congressional Country Club. But Gregory, the only African-American player in the tournament, had been barred from the clubhouse. So, she said later, she ate by herself. She was “happy as a lark. I didn’t feel bad. I didn’t. I just wanted to play golf, they were letting me play golf,” she said. “So I got me a hamburger, and went to bed.”
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ann-gregory-golf-african-american-civil-rights
Sunday, November 19, 2017
Friday, November 17, 2017
Thursday, November 16, 2017
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.
~~~~~~~~~~
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
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.
~~~~~~~~~~
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
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.”
~~~~~~~~~~
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/
‘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.”
~~~~~~~~~~
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/
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/
Wednesday, November 15, 2017
Hijab Barbie
From the New Yorker -
Barbie Gets a Hijab
By Christina Binkley
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
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 |
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/
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/
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