Arizona's First Black-Owned Spa

An excerpt from Travel Noire - 

The Jenesis House: Arizona's First Black Woman-Owned Resort

Black Owned Business , Phoenix , United States , Prescott , United States

By Ayah A.

                 Photo courtesy of The Jenesis House

Jenesis Laforcarde is the creator of The Jenesis House, an adults-only wellness resort specializing in providing a luxury self-care experience. A 13-room destination retreat, The Jenesis House will be heavily inspired by African and Asian influences, in reflection of Laforcarde’s cultural background.

The resort will be located in historic Prescott, AZ, a place where the stars shine bright and water meets the desert, creating a healing oasis. The city is within proximity to Phoenix, Sedona, and the Grand Canyon Railroad. Downtown Prescott is just four minutes away from the resort, and Watson Lake is just a short 13-minute drive away.

Born in Oxford, England and raised in Okinawa, Japan, Laforcarde is currently based in Phoenix, Arizona. With a background in fashion and branding, she has lent her creative expertise to numerous global brands, including CBS radio, xoNecole, Reshoevn8er, and Sax Agency.

Having felt there was a void preventing people from experiencing health and wellness in a place that that exudes tranquility and style, Laforcade set out to fill that void. Set to open in late 2022, The Jenesis House will provide the ultimate in relaxation and self-care in a beautiful, intimate, and innovative setting.

“The last few years have forced many people in this world to reevaluate the options that they have to mitigate the stresses that life imposes upon us all,” said Laforcade. “With that in mind, The Jenesis House is an ideal solution that will help people relieve stress in an enjoyable and safe environment.”

The resort will include 13 cabin studios, each with a deep soaking tub, private meditation garden, and a living moss wall to create a natural air filter. The full-service spa will provide holistic healing services, from caviar rose petal facials to muscle healing massages. In addition, the resort will be home to a Nordic spa and plunge pool. A centuries-old tradition that alternates hot, cold, and relaxation for an out-of-body experience, the Nordic spa will be Prescott’s first.

https://travelnoire.com/the-jenesis-house-arizonas-first-black-woman-owned-resort

He's Paying It Forward Big Time

An excerpt from Essence - 

This HBCU Alum Turned a College Fair Into An Organization That Generated $52M in Scholarships-Here's How

CREDIT: SHENAY RIVERS

“With grades like these, you won’t even get into community college.” 

When Andres Martin recalls his final days of high school, they aren’t with much fondness. His guidance counselor told him his options were limited leading up to graduation. Fortunately, through the support of his family, he pivoted and looked into schools with programs that aimed to not only provide a traditional curriculum but also offer college success skills for incoming freshmen. 

The Connecticut-native didn’t have much insight into Historically Black Colleges and Universities as a teen. 

“I remember my mother and my aunt trying to encourage me to keep my head up and be positive,” he said. “This led to me to move in with my aunt in Dallas and attend an HBCU tour to view schools like Texas Southern, Prairie View A&M, & Grambling State. I ended up learning about a lot of strong legacies and impactful leaders who graduated from HBCUs and envisioned myself being on one of these campuses.” 

Shortly after the tour, Martin applied and was accepted into Grambling State University, which ultimately changed the now 31-year-old’s life. Also a graduate of Howard University, Martin said he often volunteered on-campus as a way to reach back and expose aspiring college students to the value of the HBCU experience they would have otherwise had no idea about. In fact, despite some preconceived notions, these institutions have been making an impact in the lives of their students that extend beyond the classroom. 

UNCF reports a “whopping 25% of African American graduates with STEM degrees come from HBCUs. Eight HBCUs were among the top 20 institutions to award the most science and engineering bachelor’s degrees to black graduates from 2008-2012. An HBCU graduate can expect to earn an additional $927,000 in their lifetime, which is 56% more than they could expect to earn without their HBCU degrees or certificates. From start to finish, an HBCU education is a setup for success.” 

Martin wanted to give back to HBCUs and encourage enrollment, so he created HBCU Night in 2019, a non-profit organization that creates awareness for Historically Black Colleges & Universities through large-scale events like college and resource fairs. These programs, Martin says, are critical to addressing access gaps Black students have when applying for college. 

Seventy-two percent of Black students take on debt as they seek their degrees, as opposed to 56% of their white peers. And while college enrollment in this group has increased significantly over the years, African American enrollment at the nation’s most elite colleges has remained mostly the same. 

Martin has been making significant strides to change that. To date, HBCU Night has facilitated 1,611 scholarship offers amounting to more than $52 million. He recently sat down with Essence to discuss the incredible impact of HBCUs and why his organization is transforming the college fair experience. 

https://www.essence.com/news/money-career/hbcu-night-andres-martin/

Did Gruden Have a Problem With Black Players? Is that Why He Reduced Their Numbers?

An excerpt from FiveThirtyEight - 

The Raiders Had More Black Players Than Any NFL Team. Then Jon Gruden Took Over The Roster.

By Michael Tesler

The racial makeup of the Raiders changed substantially after Jon Gruden took over.
ETHAN MILLER / GETTY IMAGES

Years before Jon Gruden resigned in disgrace as the Las Vegas Raiders’ head coach over a series of racist, misogynistic and homophobic emails, Chip Kelly faced scrutiny over his record on race during his tenure as head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles. 

Running back LeSean McCoy, who was traded from the Eagles to the Buffalo Bills in 2015, told ESPN The Magazine later that year that Kelly was eager to jettison the team’s “good Black players,” adding, “there’s a reason he got rid of all the Black players — the good ones — like that.” McCoy wasn’t the only one to question the racial motives behind Kelly’s roster moves: ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith said after McCoy was traded that Kelly’s personnel decisions “leave a few brothers feeling uncomfortable.” Tra Thomas, a former offensive lineman and assistant coach for the Eagles,¹ voiced those same concerns when he asserted that a number of Philadelphia’s players thought there was a “hint of racism” in the locker room under Kelly’s leadership.

The accusations against Kelly — now the coach at UCLA — prompted my own statistical investigation into how race might matter in NFL roster decisions. My analysis of data collected on each player’s racial background from Best Tickets’ Unofficial 2014 NFL Player Census² found that the 10 teams in 2014 who had Black people in the key leadership roles of head coach and/or general manager had significantly more Black players on their rosters than the 22 other NFL teams. No team did more to drive that year’s statistically significant negative correlation³ between whiter team leadership and having fewer Black players on NFL rosters than Kelly’s Eagles. In fact, the significant differences⁴ between the percentage of Black players on the Eagles (50.9 percent) and the rest of the NFL (68.3 percent) were beyond the statistical threshold that the courts and federal bureaucracy generally recognize as potential discrimination.

Meanwhile, the team most responsible for driving the positive correlation between African American general managers having more Black players on their rosters in 2014 was none other than the Raiders. Under the leadership of the team’s African American general manager, Reggie McKenzie, the Raiders (then playing in Oakland) had a higher share of Black players on their roster (79.2 percent) than any other NFL team in 2014. According to data compiled on the racial composition of each NFL team’s roster by ProFootballLogic,⁵ the Raiders also had the NFL’s highest percentage of Black players (82.3 percent) in 2016 — the year that McKenzie won executive of the year honors after the team’s impressive 12-win showing. It’s probably not a coincidence, either, that the two teams with the next highest shares of Black players, the Giants and Bills, also had African American GMs. Indeed, the five NFL teams with Black GMs in 2016 had rosters that were, on average, 75.4 percent Black, compared with 67.7 percent for the 27 teams that did not — a statistically significant difference⁶ in percent of Black players that we can be confident was not simply due to random variation.

The Raiders’ racial composition was virtually identical in 2017, the year before Gruden began his second stint as the team’s head coach. While there’s no publicly available data on the racial composition of NFL rosters after 2016, my admittedly crude coding⁷ of the team’s roster once again found that 82.0 percent of the Raiders’ players were Black in 2017. But the number of Black players on the Raiders sharply declined soon after Gruden became the Raiders’ “de facto football czar.” By the end of the 2018 season, McKenzie had been fired, and Gruden assumed even more control over the Raiders’ personnel decisions. That included changing the roster’s racial composition: My analysis of the team’s rosters found that the share of Black players on the Raiders declined from 82.0 percent in 2017 to 69.0 percent in 2019 and 67.1 percent in 2020 and 67.2 percent in 2021.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-raiders-had-more-black-players-than-any-nfl-team-then-jon-gruden-took-over-the-roster/

 

Slave Codes: Crash Course Black American History #4

https://youtu.be/gu9RIGGXeNo

He Says What We're Thinking

From Bored Panda - 

Dude Keeps Protesting Annoying Everyday Things With Funny Signs (30 New Pics)

By Jonas Grinevičius and Greta Jaruševičiūtė

The man, the legend, the incarnation of wit and humor, Dude With Sign cannot be stopped. He’s an overwhelming force of nature on the internet, speaking the truth in a world full of illusions, one silly yet poignant cardboard sign at a time.

The face behind the vastly popular Dude With Sign project is none other than New Yorker Seth Phillips who teamed up together with Jerry Media founder Elliot Tebele to make the project come true. What started out with a simple cardboard sign (“Stop replying-all to company-wide emails”) turned into a massive success, well, not literally overnight, but still within a very impressive few months. Now, two years after launch, Dude With Sign boasts a jaw-dropping 7.7 million followers on Instagram.

dudewithsign

dudewithsign

dudewithsign

https://www.boredpanda.com/funny-dude-holding-signs-protesting/

She Invented a Comb for "Afro Hair"

An excerpt from AfroTech - 

This Engineer Invented A Comb For 'Afro Hair' — Now, She's Working On Getting More Black Women Into Her Field

By Samantha Dorisca

Photo credit:  BBC

United Kingdom-based engineer Youmna Mouhamad has created a tool catered specifically for Black women by a Black woman.

Mouhamad’s inception of the Nyfasi Deluxe Detangler bloomed when she worked as a nanny while studying to earn her Ph.D. in physics, BBC reports.

As she watched a young girl’s hair get washed and conditioned, the child’s eyes began to fill with tears due to the experience. This moment would cause Mouhamad to embrace a new academic journey and switch to studying engineering.

“I shifted to engineering because I always had a desire to work on things that I can touch with my hands, and I love the process of taking an idea and actually creating something,” Mouhamad says to BBC.

To bring her vision to life, Mouhamad would attend an enterprise fellowship at the Royal Academy of Engineering. Here, she was able to create a focus group to develop an effective product pooling adolescent girls and women to test the prototype, which provided stellar reviews.

https://afrotech.com/youmna-mouhamad

Phillis Wheatley: Crash Course Black American History #7

https://youtu.be/a3l9Pmza7Gs

Kane Brown, H.E.R. - Blessed & Free (Official Video)

https://youtu.be/dNim8ChJyI0

Retired FBI boss finds new career driving a school bus

https://youtu.be/qKCCPlZU8QU

Detroit's Comeback Linked to Restoring It's Only HBCU

From Yahoo News - 

Detroit's comeback efforts linked to an 85-year-old HBCU making a return of its own

By Marquise Francis

Dr. D’Wayne Edwards in front of what used to be the
Lewis College of Business in Detroit.
(Pensole Lewis College of Business and Design)

The Lewis College of Business in Detroit had been Michigan’s only historically Black college or university (HBCU) for more than seven decades before it was shuttered in 2013 due to financial hardship and a steep decline in enrollment. But eight years after closing, the school is set to make a return — only this time under a slightly new name and an entirely new mission.

Former Air Jordan designer Dr. D’Wayne Edwards is refounding the school as the Pensole Lewis College of Business and Design with an all-around focus on design, a nod to the Pensole Design Academy he founded in 2010, the country’s first academy dedicated to footwear design.

“Of the HBCUs that are in existence today, very few of them have a focus on design,” Edwards told Yahoo News. “We hope what we’re doing by reestablishing Lewis College is that it’ll help people look at Detroit as an epicenter for creativity and design.”

The Pensole Lewis College of Business and Design will be the first HBCU to focus solely on design — from footwear to furniture and packaging — and will offer students both two-year and four-year degrees, as well as special certificates, working directly with corporate partners to help students’ transition into careers after graduation.

Edwards said he wants to provide opportunities for the city of Detroit and Black youth. More than three decades ago, he said, he was only the second Black footwear designer in the entire footwear industry. Today there are fewer than 200 globally, and across the design industry as a whole, Black people make up less than 4 percent.

https://news.yahoo.com/detroits-comeback-efforts-linked-to-an-85-year-old-hbcu-making-a-return-of-its-own-211113117.html

The Top Ten Inventions That Changed the World - Agree?

From Teal Tango - 

Top 10 Inventions That Changed the World

By Archana Kabra

https://www.thetealmango.com/featured/top-inventions-that-changed-the-world/

Maliya Kabs is BACK with the oldskool vibes! 🎶

https://youtu.be/GXG9WVXBbus

Stanford researchers build self-navigating smart cane for the visually i...

https://youtu.be/N8JZXI2oyqk

The older guy didn’t think I could pull off a Sam Cooke song #IG Officia...

https://youtu.be/YAI6oPuqpN0

The fight against seat belts 1984

https://youtu.be/glmcMeTVIIQ

Passing | Official Trailer | Netflix

https://youtu.be/trwq3CNCMkU

He Turned his Passion Into Business

From Kulture Hub - 

How Maori artist Sam Mangakahia turned his passion into a successful business

https://kulturehub.com/sam-mangakahia-art-passion-into-business/

Abraham, Martin & John

https://youtu.be/bOfY_4zbV_k

A Symphony of Soul

From UDiscoverMusic - 

Motown Gems Reimagined On ‘A Symphony Of Soul‘ With Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

The set is introduced by Marvin Gaye’s ‘Abraham Martin & John,’ featuring new, additional vocals by Beverley Knight.

By Paul Sexton

Two tracks also feature newly-recorded vocals by distinguished British soul stars Mica Paris, who accompanies Jimmy Ruffin on his 1966 classic “What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted,” and Beverley Knight, who sings alongside Marvin Gaye on his 1969 version of “Abraham Martin & John.”

The album was recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at Mark Knopfler’s British Grove Studios in west London. A Symphony of Soul complements the musicality of the songs with an orchestral backdrop set against the original vocal stems and parts, typically recorded on a mere four tracks compared to the almost limitless number available in modern recording. The treatments thus add a new layer to these timeless songs while remaining faithful to the beauty of the originals.

Pre-order A Symphony Of Soul, which is released on November 19.

The full A Symphony Of Soul tracklist is:

1. Dancing In The Street – Martha Reeves & The Vandellas

2. Reach Out I’ll Be There – The Four Tops

3. I Heard It Through The Grapevine – Marvin Gaye

4. What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted – Jimmy Ruffin with Mica Paris

5. The Tears Of A Clown – Smokey Robinson & the Miracles

6. I’ll Be There – The Jackson 5

7. I Hear A Symphony – The Supremes

8. Abraham, Martin & John – Marvin Gaye with Beverley Knight

9. My Girl – The Temptations

10. Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me) – The Temptations

11. With You I’m Born Again – Billy Preston & Syreeta

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/news/motown-symphony-of-soul-royal-philharmonic/

Worst Best Oscar Snubs. I Agree With Number 4, 5, and 23.

From WorkandMoney - 

Worst Best Picture Snubs in Oscar History

By Tony Adame

The Academy Awards represent the pinnacle of what a movie can be. Since 1927, they've awarded statuettes to the best moviemaking every year. But in that time, they've made some mistakes.

None of those mistakes are more visible than when there's a big miss on the final award of the night — Best Picture. Whether it's politics or recency bias or whatever excuse you want to make for Academy Award voters, these are the worst Best Picture snubs in the history of the Oscars. 

23. Pulp Fiction (1994)

90srandomstuff/Twitter

Oscar year: 1995

Best Picture winner: Forrest Gump

Best Picture nominees: Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Quiz Show, The Shawshank Redemption

Best Director winner: Robert Zemeckis, Forrest Gump

Bottom line: It's not every year you get three of the most beloved films of all time in a single Best Picture category, but that's what we got in 1994, with "Forrest Gump" winning Best Actor (Tom Hanks), Best Director (Robert Zemeckis) and Best Picture. 

No offense to "Gump" fans. It was the third-best movie on the list of classics behind "The Shawshank Redemption" and Quentin Tarantino's breakthrough film "Pulp Fiction" for which he won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar. 

https://www.workandmoney.com/s/worst-best-picture-snubs-oscars-ab31fbe6195c4f24