Friday, February 18, 2022
Monday, February 14, 2022
Facing Britain's Ugly History
An excerpt from the New York Times -
David Olusoga Wants Britain to Face Its Past. All of It.
For more than a decade, the historian and broadcaster’s work has focused on bringing his country’s uglier histories to light. Recently, more people are paying attention.
By Desiree Ibekwe
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| Olusoga in a scene from the docu-series “One Thousand Years of Slavery” on the Smithsonian Channel, for which he served as an executive producer.Credit...Smithsonian Channel |
LONDON — In December, when a British court cleared four Black Lives Matter protesters of criminal damages for toppling the statue of Edward Colston, a 17th-century slave trader, in June 2020, it was thanks in part to David Olusoga’s expert testimony.
Olusoga, a historian whose work focuses on race, slavery and empire, felt a duty to agree to address the court on behalf of the defense, he said in a recent interview, since “I’ve been vocal about this history.”
At the trial in Bristol, the city in southwest England where the Colston statue was toppled, Olusoga, 52, told the jury about Colston’s prominent role in the slave trade and the brutalities suffered by the African people Colston sold into slavery.
The closely watched court decision was greeted with concern by some in Britain and relief by others, and Olusoga’s role in the defense offers just one recent example of his work’s impact on British society.
Olusoga’s comments in court are consistent with a frequent focus of his wider work as one of the country’s most prominent public historians: that long-forgotten or buried past injustices can be addressed in the present day in public-facing, accessible media.
Olusoga’s latest TV work is “One Thousand Years of Slavery,” which premieres on the Smithsonian Channel on Monday. The show, which he executive produced alongside Bassett Vance Productions, a production company helmed by Courtney B. Vance and Angela Bassett, takes a wide-ranging, global look at slavery through the familial stories of public figures like Senator Cory Booker and the actor David Harewood.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/07/arts/television/david-olusoga-black-history.html
FAMU Student's Star Shining Bright
An excerpt from WCTV.TV -
FAMU student’s design featured in Target stores nationwide
By Raghad Hamad
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| Kah’Milah Ledgester's Target 2022 design submission. (FAMU Communications) |
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) - A Florida A&M University student won Target’s 2021 HBCU Design Challenge, bringing her design to Target stores nationwide.
Participants created t-shirt designs and graphics for Target’s 2022 Black History Month campaign challenge, and Kah’Milah Ledgester, a senior graphic design student at FAMU, won a top three reward.
“This was my challenge as a creative,” Ledgester said. “I felt elated because I did something that scared me.”
Her work, according to the Adel, Georgia, native, highlights Black women and the vibrancy that surrounds them. Ledgester stated that she wanted to demonstrate the beauty of Black women through this project.
https://www.wctv.tv/2022/02/07/famu-students-design-featured-target-stores-nationwide/
Caramel Corn
From Bon Appetit -
Making Caramel Corn Is Easier Than It Has Any Right to Be
It’s caramel corn’s world and I’m just living in it.
BY JESSIE SHEEHAN
Here’s how to make my caramel corn:
Heat your oven to 250° F and prepare a baking sheet by lining it with parchment paper and securing that paper at each corner with a little cooking spray. Next, make 10 cups of unsalted popped popcorn. You can do this (my favorite way) by microwaving ½ cup unpopped kernels in a large microwave-safe bowl covered with a microwave-safe plate on high for 6–8 minutes depending on the strength of your microwave. Or, if you’re not as fond of your microwave as I am, you can place ½ cup unpopped kernels and 1 Tbsp. vegetable oil in a large, covered pot on the stovetop over medium heat and pop away, shaking the pot over the flame periodically. (More details here, if you need them.) Transfer the popped corn to a large bowl.
Now it’s caramel time. In a medium pot over medium-high heat, bring 1 cup light brown sugar, ¼ cup Lyle’s Golden Syrup or light corn syrup, 2 Tbsp. molasses (which will give the corn a little bit of a Cracker Jack feel), and 10 Tbsp. unsalted butter to a boil, stirring occasionally with a rubber spatula. Let the caramel boil without stirring until thick and fragrant, about 3 minutes. Now take the pot off the heat and whisk in 1 tsp. Diamond Crystal kosher salt, ½ tsp. baking soda, and 2 tsp. vanilla extract. Pour the caramel over the popcorn and stir to coat.
Scrape the coated corn onto the prepared baking sheet—you’ll need to pile it on—and bake, stirring every 20 minutes, until the caramel has darkened slightly and the popcorn is dry to the touch, about 1 hour. Let the caramel corn cool to room temp before giving it away in cute little bags, serving it in a large bowl, or indulging straight from the baking sheet.
But regardless of whether you share it with your pals or eat every last kernel solo, consider yourself warned: Caramel corn this good and this easy will be made again (and again, and again).
Let's Teach Them Our History
An excerpt from Slate -
What Happens to Middle School Kids When You Teach Them About Slavery? Here’s a Vivid Example.
The topic is emotional. That’s not a bad thing.
BY MARY NIALL MITCHELL AND KATE SHUSTER
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| Group project of eighth grade class at Olentangy Orange Middle School in Lewis Center, Ohio. Photo by Kristin Marconi and Christine Snivley |
When she found the advertisement for Maria, an eighth grader named E.D. was struck by the details in it. The ad was posted in a local newspaper, in 1846, by an enslaver in Tennessee. When Maria escaped, she was only 18 or 19 years old. She did not act alone. Maria ran with “a free man” named Henry Fields. For faster transport, Maria and Henry also liberated a gray mare. Maria’s enslaver suspected Henry had his free papers with him. But he was certain that Henry carried something else: a fiddle.
E.D.’s teachers had asked their students to respond creatively to an ad they found in Freedom on the Move, a digital collection housed at Cornell University of thousands of ads by enslavers and jailers seeking the return of self-liberating people, printed in American newspapers before emancipation. E.D. decided to make Henry’s fiddle. She made it life-size, out of cardboard and papier mâché. She covered it with a collage that tells the story of Henry and Maria’s flight. The enslaver placing the ad suspected “they will make for Kentucky and from there to a free state.” So E.D. used the image of a running horse, a “Welcome to Kentucky” sign, and a heart symbol—this last because E.D. wondered “if Maria and Henry were in love.” E.D. pasted a copy of the ad on the fiddle seven times, for the number of times the ad ran in the newspaper. It was her personal monument to Henry and Maria and their acts of resistance. “My fiddle represents Henry and Maria’s story, their fight for freedom,” E.D. explained, “but it also represents all of the thousands of other stories just like theirs, waiting to be told.” She carried the fiddle to school in a violin case.
E.D. and her teachers, Kristin Marconi and Christine Snivley, who teach middle school students in Ohio, were part of a virtual learning community created for Freedom on the Move by the Hard History Project. The goal of these workshops was to tap the genius of teachers to build a bridge between the digital archive and K–12 classrooms. As a crowdsourced archive, FOTM was built with the public in mind. Still, it takes the expertise of teachers to reach, arguably, FOTM’s most important readership: young people.
We are in a cultural moment in which teaching about racism and the world it has made is both essential and controversial. Critics rallying under the banner of “anti-CRT” describe this teaching as divisive and disturbing. But we can’t teach the history of the United States without teaching about slavery. And of course, they’re right about the emotions involved—there’s nothing comfortable about slavery. But they’re missing something: There’s a lot of good, and even joy, to be had in talking about the relentless and omnipresent resistance to slavery that we see again and again in newspapers before the Civil War, in ads seeking the return of self-liberating people.
Lifelong Readers
An excerpt from The Atlantic -
Why Some People Become Lifelong Readers
A lot rides on how parents present the activity to their kids.
By Joe Pinsker
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| Chris J. Ratcliffe / Getty |
They can be identified by their independent-bookstore tote bags, their “Book Lover” mugs, or—most reliably—by the bound, printed stacks of paper they flip through on their lap. They are, for lack of a more specific term, readers.
Joining their tribe seems simple enough: Get a book, read it, and voilà! You’re a reader—no tote bag necessary. But behind that simple process is a question of motivation—of why some people grow up to derive great pleasure from reading, while others don’t. That why is consequential—leisure reading has been linked to a range of good academic and professional outcomes—as well as difficult to fully explain. But a chief factor seems to be the household one is born into, and the culture of reading that parents create within it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/09/love-reading-books-leisure-pleasure/598315/
No Welcome Wagon Here
An excerpt from NBC News -
‘We don’t look like them’: Black figure skaters face barriers to entry from a young age
Figure skating has long excluded Black athletes. The disparity can be seen from youth competitions all the way up to Team USA.
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| Michael Baker.Courtesy Shirley Brown |
Before figure skating practice, Michael Baker would ask his mom to let him out of the car before they got to the entrance of the ice rink.
“He would say, ‘Mommy, why don’t you just drop me here?’” Shirley Brown, Baker’s mom, told NBC News. “And I knew exactly why he was doing it.”
They still haven’t replaced their beat-up 2007 Toyota Rav 4, one in a long list of sacrifices made to support Baker’s skating. Brown has delayed her retirement. They can’t go on vacation.
Baker, 17, dreams of one day competing in the Olympics. But even if he has the talent to make it, the family worries the cost may hold him back.
Baker started skating at 13, when he signed up for lessons at a mall on his birthday. A coach saw that Baker had talent and offered to teach him.
“In the beginning, it was very, very, very tough,” Brown said. “I find that it’s an elitist sport. You’re not welcomed by some of the parents. We don’t look like them.”
Baker is the only Black skater training at his rink in New Jersey.
From formal gatekeeping to high barriers to entry, the sport has a long history of excluding Black figure skaters. There aren’t any Black skaters on the U.S. team competing at this year’s Olympics, and the last time an African American skater competed at the Games was 16 years ago. There aren’t many Black fans, either. U.S. Figure Skating, the sport’s national governing body, found that only 2 percent of fans were African American. This disparity can also be seen throughout the sport.
Friday, February 4, 2022
Saturday, January 29, 2022
What's the Story Behind Wavy Walls?
An excerpt from Family Handyman -
If You See a Wavy Brick Wall, This is What It Means
By Karuna Eberl
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| CONSTRUCTION PHOTOGRAPHY/GETTY IMAGES |
Serpentine "crinkle crankle" walls are an ancient, aesthetic idea that deserves a second look.
Every once in a while you might notice a brick wall that serpentines instead of cutting straight across. These so-called crinkle crankle walls are more common in England, but are found here and there in the U.S. as well. Their jump across the Atlantic is probably thanks to Thomas Jefferson, who directed them to be built at the University of Virginia (UVA) in the 1800s.
“Thomas Jefferson was such a genius,” says Gary Porter, technical director at the Masonry Advisory Council. “Authorities at the time thought that Jefferson invented this design. However, he was merely adapting a well-established English style of construction.”
What Are Those Wavy Brick Walls Called?
The term crinkle crankle walls probably came from the Old English word for zigzag. Sometimes they are also called ribbon, wavy, radius, serpentine, sinusoidal or crinkum crankum walls. The Dutch engineers who originally built them in England called them slang muur, which translates to snake wall.
Why Are They Wavy?
They serpentine for economy and strength, and likely also aesthetic reasons.
A single row of bricks laid in a sine wave pattern is as strong or stronger than a standard straight wall and requires fewer bricks. (In the case of UVA’s walls, about 25 percent less.) That’s because straight walls need two rows of bricks and sometimes buttresses to survive over time, whereas wavy walls need just a single row.
“So it was more efficient, and that’s why they did it,” says Porter. “These walls actually act like an arch, and so that makes it strong for wind loads that might push on the wall.
12 Cello Piece Performed All By Himself!
From Upworthy -
Cellist performs a piece for 12 cellos all by himself and it's absolutely stunning
A Legacy Unveiled
An excerpt from the Washington Post -
An old Virginia plantation, a new owner and a family legacy unveiled
By Joe Heim
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| Sharswood in Gretna, Va., was built in the middle of the 19th century and at one point was the hub of a sprawling plantation. The Pittsylvania County property now consists of 10½ acres. Out of the frame behind the large tree at right is a cabin that may have been used by enslaved people as a kitchen and laundry for the main house as well as a residence. (Heather Rousseau for The Washington Post) |
GRETNA, Va. — There was so much Fredrick Miller didn’t know about the handsome house here on Riceville Road.
He grew up just a half-mile away and rode past it on his school bus every day. It was hard to miss. The home’s Gothic revival gables, six chimneys, diamond-paned windows and sweeping lawn were as distinctive a sight as was to be seen in this rural southern Virginia community. But Miller, 56, an Air Force veteran who now lives in California, didn’t give it much thought. He didn’t know it had once been a plantation or that 58 people had once been enslaved there. He never considered that its past had anything to do with him.
Two years ago, when his sister called to say the estate was for sale, he jumped on it. He’d been looking, pulled home to the place he left at 18. His roots were deep in this part of Pittsylvania County, and he wanted a place where his vast extended family, many of whom still live nearby, could gather.
The handsome house set on a rise had a name, it turned out. Sharswood. And Sharswood had a history. And its history had everything to do with Miller.
Slavery wasn’t something people talked much about in this part of Virginia when Miller was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. And other than a few brief mentions in school, it wasn’t taught much, either.
The only time he remembers the subject coming up was when Alex Haley’s miniseries, “Roots,” was broadcast in 1977.
“For a lot of us, that was our first experience with what really happened during slavery,” he said. “It just wasn’t discussed.”
Miller assumed his ancestors had been enslaved. But where and when and by whom were questions that were left unasked and unanswered.
“People didn’t want to talk about this stuff because it was too painful,” said Dexter Miller, 60, a cousin of Fredrick’s who lives in Java. “They would say, ‘This is grown folks’ business.’ And that’s how some of the history was lost.”
Another cousin, Marian Keyes, who taught first in segregated schools and later in integrated schools from 1959 to 1990, said that for a long time there was little teaching about slavery in Pittsylvania County.
“We weren’t really allowed to even talk about it back then,” said Keyes, who turns 90 this year and lives in Chatham. “We weren’t even allowed to do much about the Civil War and all of that kind of stuff, really.”
Even outside of school, when she was growing up, Keyes said, the subject of slavery was avoided.
“I just thought everything was normal,” she said, “because that was the way of life.”
But the unspoken history left a gulf.
It wasn’t until after Fredrick Miller bought Sharswood in May 2020 that its past started coming into focus. That’s when his sister, Karen Dixon-Rexroth and their cousins Sonya Womack-Miranda and Dexter Miller doubled down on researching their family history.
What neither Fredrick Miller nor his sister knew at the time was that the property had once been a 2,000-acre plantation, whose owners before and during the Civil War were Charles Edwin Miller and Nathaniel Crenshaw Miller.
Miller.
Fredrick Miller and so many members of his extended family were born and grew up in the shadow of Sharswood — and perhaps it was a clue to a deeper connection. It wasn’t uncommon after emancipation for formerly enslaved people to take the last names of their enslavers. But establishing the link required more research.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/01/22/virginia-plantation-slavery-owners-history/
Congratulations Dr. Overbey!
An excerpt from the Elk Grove Tribune -
Dr. Jennifer Overbey Named Physician Of The Year For Methodist Hospital
Posted by Dr. Jacqueline "Jax" Cheung | Jan 21, 2022 | Community & Events
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| Dr. Jennifer Overbey |
Physician of the Year
Methodist Hospital recently announced that Dr. Jennifer Overbey, the Chairperson of Obstetrics and Gynecology, has been awarded Physician of the Year of Methodist Hospital. In the history of Methodist Hospital, Dr. Overbey is the first woman and African American to receive this award. Congratulations Dr. Overbey!
https://elkgrovetribune.com/dr-jennifer-overbey-named-physician-of-the-year-for-methodist-hospital/
Bath & Body Works Celebrate Black History Month
An excerpt from Stylecaster -
Bath & Body Works Is Launching Its First Black History Month Collection — With a Huge Donation
by ELIZABETH DENTON
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| Photo: BATH & BODY WORKS. |
When I hear a popular brand is launching a collection for Black History Month (or Pride, or Women’s History Month, etc.) I’m a little cynical. Before supporting, I need to make sure the brand is actually giving back to the community in some way, whether in terms of employment (such as when Target hired LGBTQ+ designers for its Pride tees) or a monetary donation of some sort. With Bath & Body Works’ first-ever Black History Month collection, I don’t have to worry. Not only is this collection really, really cute, but the brand is also making a $500,000 donation.
“This Black History Month, Bath & Body Works is proud to continue its longstanding commitment to the Columbus and National Urban Leagues through a $500,000 donation,” Ronak Fields, community relations and philanthropy, said in a statement. “These funds will support underserved communities with workforce development and economic empowerment programs throughout America. I am grateful for the opportunity to work at Bath & Body Works and side-by-side with passionate associates who are committed to uplifting our neighbors.”
https://stylecaster.com/beauty/bath-body-works-black-history-month/
Fall Asleep in 2 Minutes!
@justin_agustin Technique to falling asleep in 2 minutes! Insp. AsapSCIENCE on YT #sleep #fallasleep #insomnia #insomniac #learnontiktok #howto ♬ You - Petit Biscuit
Monday, January 17, 2022
Restoring a Refuge For Black Travelers
An excerpt from Fast Company -
On Route 66, a family is restoring the only gas station built for Black travelers
The Threatt Filling Station offered refuge for Black travelers driving through Oklahoma. Now, the Threatt family hopes to turn it into a historical center.
BY KRISTI EATON
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| [Photo: courtesy of the Threatt family, National Register of Historic Places/ NPS, Rhys Martin/courtesy Oklahoma Route 66 Association] |
If you were to travel on Route 66 in the early 1900s, you probably passed the Threatt Filling Station, a family-owned gas station for Black travelers traversing the famous route from Chicago to Southern California.
But after closing in the 1970s, the station eventually fell into disrepair. Now the Threatt family is looking to revitalize and preserve it.
“It’s a part of Black history within the state of Oklahoma,” Ed Threatt said. “For him to acquire 160 acres of land in the Jim Crow era, that’s no small feat.”
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