Sunday, December 27, 2020
An Unexpected Blessing, Year After Year
An excerpt from USA Today -
Decades ago, a mystery man spent thousands to give an Ohio family 'a nice visit from Santa Claus'
By Mark J. Price, Akron Beacon Journal
 |
| Mary Arnold sits at a table with her nine children on Dec. 23, 1955, to look for gift ideas in the Beacon Journal after receiving $100 from a mysterious benefactor in Akron. The kids, from left, are Carla, 3, Gary, 5, Mona, 9, Gale, 8, Cathy, 14, Donna, 7 months, Gerald 2, John 7, and Royal 11. Beacon Journal File Photo |
AKRON, Ohio — Santa Claus really did exist.
Helen Arnold met him unexpectedly in 1953 while shopping at Polsky’s department store in downtown Akron.
The brief encounter changed her family's lives. From that year to 1965, the Arnolds had a generous secret Santa at Christmastime.
With her weekly pay as a dishwasher, Helen had only $37 to spend on gifts in 1953. Her husband, Roy, had been laid off from the Akron Sanitation Department, and the couple had eight kids — Cathy, Royal, Mona, Gale, John, Gary, Carla, and Gerald — and would soon welcome a ninth, Donna. A 10th child, Marsha, had died as a baby.
They resided in a small home below a nearby bridge. In addition to the family of 10, Helen’s parents, brother, two sisters, and their three children also lived there.
Royal Arnold, 76, of Akron understood that it was a struggle for his parents to pay the bills. He even offered to make do with less so that his siblings might have more.
“I remember telling her that ‘If you don’t have enough to get me a Christmas gift, don’t worry about it,’” he said.
Royal was 9 years old in 1953 when he and three siblings accompanied their mom to Polsky’s. They were browsing the bargain basement when a stranger approached them.
“Are these your children?” the man asked Helen. “They’re lovely children and well-behaved.”
Before Helen knew what was happening, the stranger placed a $20 bill in her hand and said: “Buy them something nice for Christmas.”
He then disappeared into the bustling crowd. It happened so fast that Helen didn’t get a good look at him, but she later described him as short, white and slim, maybe 50 years old with graying brown hair.
“All I remember is holding my mother’s hand and my mother was shocked,” Royal said.
It was a Christmas miracle. Helen went home that night and jotted a note to the Akron Beacon Journal, now part of the USA TODAY Network:
(This is Faye. Please click the link for the rest of the story. It gets better and better.).
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/12/24/secret-santa-helped-akron-ohio-family-christmas-over-decade/4010569001/
Patient asks if I can also fix teddy bear just before being put off to sleep... how could I say no? pic.twitter.com/WOKFc5zr91
— P. Daniel McNeely (@pdmcneely) September 30, 2018
He Created Science Kits for Kids
An excerpt from CNN -
This California teen started a nonprofit to help kids learn about science. He just got accepted into Stanford
By Simret Aklilu, CNN
(CNN)Every year, high school seniors anxiously wait for college admissions letters, hoping they get accepted into their dream schools. Ahmed Muhammad was one of them.
So when Muhammad got accepted into Stanford University, he was delighted. "It was a dream come true," Muhammad told CNN. "It still doesn't feel real."
He will become a first-generation college student.
Over the course of his high school career at Oakland Technical, the California native has taken nine college classes on top of his high school workload -- no small feat for a senior who not only tutors students and plays as point guard for his school's varsity basketball team, but also runs a nonprofit that designs science kits for kids.
The nonprofit, Kits Cubed, became the main focus of his personal statement for Stanford University.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/25/us/cali-teen-science-stanford-trnd/index.html
A 19 year old + A Billionaire = A Christmas Miracle
An excerpt from the Chicago Sun-Times -
How a young woman on Chicago’s West Side infused a billionaire with the Christmas spirit of giving
But in a fairer society, there would be so much less need for charitable giving to begin with.
By CST Editorial Board
At the end of a year that has seen particular hardships and struggles, hundreds of charitable organizations working to ease the pain got early Christmas gifts in the form of surprise multimillion dollar donations.
The money — some $4.2 billion in the last four months — was donated to 384 organizations across the country by the philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, and she says her inspiration was a young Black woman on Chicago’s West Side, Alycia Kamil.
“In March, a 19-year-old girl in Chicago sent a group text to her friends suggesting they buy supplies for people in their neighborhood who had lost their jobs,” Scott, the former wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, wrote recently, expressing her admiration for Kamil. “She posted two Google forms — one for people who needed help and another for people with help to give — and by two days later they’d raised $7,000.”
Two days. That’s all it took. And with that money, Kamil and her friends were able to deliver $200 to $300 worth of groceries to 30 families.
“I wanted to do a more hands-on thing to be considerate of the people who, even if they get the money, they have to take the bus and then bring all these groceries on the bus,” Kamil told USA Today. “It’s about the importance of understanding communal living. We should all be able to resource and depend on each other.”
We can’t think of a better expression of the Christmas and holiday spirit. But it’s a reminder, as well, of the great and growing wealth inequality in our country, made worse by the pandemic, that makes such charitable giving so necessary.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/12/24/22197522/alycia-kamil-chicago-mackenzie-scott-donation-editorial
The Black Wall Street Massacre
An excerpt from the NY Times -
The Haunting of Tulsa, Okla.
A recently unearthed mass grave may soon provide answers about what happened to victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
By Brent Staples
The Tulsa, Okla., police department set the stage for mass murder in the spring of 1921 when it deputized members of a mob that invaded and destroyed the prosperous Black enclave of Greenwood. The armed marauders who swept into the community in the early hours of June 1 wreaked havoc in the spirit of a police directive that urged white Tulsans to “Get a gun, and get busy and try to get a nigger.”
They murdered at will while forcing Black families from their homes. They looted valuables that included jewelry, furs and fine furnishings. They used torches and oil-soaked rags to set fires that incinerated homes, churches, doctors’ offices, hotels and other businesses across an area of 35 square blocks.
The first day of June was less eventful on the other side of the tracks, in white Tulsa’s business district. In his 1968 memoir, “Oklahoma Boy,” Ross Warner recalls that his work took him to the First National Bank building, on the corner of Fourth Street and Main. “From time to time on June 1,” he writes, “we heard sirens and, on looking out of the window, saw trucks headed south on Main Street with Negro bodies in them. We saw at least 30 or 40 hauled away in this fashion.”
A few years after the appearance of “Oklahoma Boy,” the Tulsa County undersheriff, E.W. Maxey, told a local historian that as a teenager he, too, had been present on Main Street that day in 1921. He recalled seeing five or six trucks moving up the street carrying Black bodies “stacked up like cordwood.” He had no idea where the dead were taken but presumed they were being hauled “out somewhere” to be disposed of in ditches.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/26/opinion/tulsa-race-massacre-mass-grave.html?referringSource=articleShare
Wednesday, December 23, 2020
Black Men Have the Shortest Lifespans of Any Americans. This Theory Expl...
https://www.propublica.org/article/black-men-have-the-shortest-lifespans-of-any-americans-this-theory-helps-explain-why
The Skepticism is Justified
An excerpt from the New Yorker -
African-American Resistance to the COVID-19 Vaccine Reflects a Broader Problem
By Jelani Cobb
Yet, for Black America, the story extends far beyond Trump. In September, when Walter Kimbrough, the president of Dillard University, a historically black institution in Louisiana, announced that he had volunteered for a vaccine trial, and encouraged his students do likewise, the Internet exploded with references to the Tuskegee experiment. In that four-decade-long medical scheme, which began in 1932, nearly four hundred African-American men with syphilis were led to believe that they were receiving treatment, but were, in fact, left untreated, so that doctors could chart the course of the disease. In the nearly fifty years since the experiment was exposed, it has become a central reference point for understanding Black Americans’ relationship to the medical establishment. The story of Henrietta Lacks—a Black woman who died in 1951 of cervical cancer, and whose cancerous cells had been harvested for research, without her knowledge, by Johns Hopkins Hospital, replicated, sent to labs around the world, and later sold commercially—has likewise become shorthand for medical exploitation. That history, chronicled in works such as Harriet Washington’s “Medical Apartheid” and Dorothy Roberts’s “Killing the Black Body,” is, in part, what hampered efforts to recruit African-American volunteers for the trials, and now hampers efforts to get African-Americans vaccinated.
In this context, conversations about the vaccine are inevitably balancing acts between the unknown likelihood of contracting, or succumbing to, the virus and the known medical history of the African-American population. Such concerns are not walled-off by discipline, which is why the coercive approach of the N.Y.P.D. this spring, and the events that sparked the months of Black Lives Matter protests this summer, also contribute to a broader skepticism about—if not the science itself—the good faith of the system in which it exists. On Monday, Thomas Fisher, a Black E.R. physician at the University of Chicago Medicine, told me that “our essential people are getting sick, but being pushed to deliver food and drive Ubers, and things like that, without P.P.E.” He added, “It’s hard to imagine that we won’t also reflect maybe these same inequities with the distribution and uptake of this vaccine.”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/african-american-resistance-to-the-covid-19-vaccine-reflects-a-broader-problem
Tuesday, December 22, 2020
Great Chocolate Muffin Recipe
An excerpt from Mashed -
These Costco copycat chocolate muffins are better than the real thing
By Molly Allen
Biting into a Costco muffin is an experience like no other. The texture is on point, the flavor is great, and they're huge. They're perfect for sharing or munching on all morning long. And while the blueberry and poppy seed versions are delicious options in their own right, there's just something so incredible about Costco's chocolate muffins.
Now, you can reproduce those giant, moist, and flavorful chocolate muffins in your own kitchen with this recipe. With just a handful of ingredients, a few minutes of your time, and a whole lot of chocolate chips, you'll have freshly baked Costco copycat chocolate muffins ready at home in no time.
Read More: https://www.mashed.com/290597/costco-copycat-chocolate-muffins/?utm_campaign=clip
Job Hunting Advice
An excerpt from CNBC -
If you say any of these 6 things during the job interview, don’t expect to get an offer: Career expert
By J.T. O’Donnell, Contributor
Each and every little thing you say (yes, even just one sentence) during a job interview shapes whether or not a hiring manager thinks you are a strong fit for the job.
And sometimes, it may be tempting to give an answer that felt right at the time, but in hindsight was extremely poor and made you seem weak or average. That’s why it’s important to remind yourself in advance of what to resist saying.
Here are six responses to avoid if you want to boost your chances of landing an offer, along with tips and examples of what to say instead:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/15/if-you-say-any-of-these-things-during-job-interview-dont-expect-an-offer-says-career-expert.html
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