Daily Archives: August 28, 2021

This weekend, listen to a collection of narrated articles from around The New York Times, read aloud by the reporters who wrote them.

Charles H. Loeb was a Black war correspondent whose articles in World War II were distributed to papers across the United States by the National Negro Publishers Association.

In an article for Atlanta Daily World, published in October 1945 two months after Hiroshimas ruin Mr. Loeb told how bursts of deadly radiation had sickened and killed the citys residents. His perspective, while coolly analytic, cast light on a major wartime cover up.

The piece contradicted the War Department, the Manhattan Project, and The New York Times and its star reporter, William L. Laurence, on what had become a bitter dispute between the victor and the vanquished. Japan insisted that the bombs invisible rays at Hiroshima and Nagasaki had led to waves of sudden death and lingering illness. Emphatically, the United States denied that charge.

But science and history would prove Mr. Loeb right.

Written and narrated by Miriam Jordan

With tens of thousands of immigrants helping to catalyze its development, Northwest Arkansas has emerged as one of the countrys fastest-growing metropolitan areas. Brimming with optimism, it is wooing newcomers with cheaper housing, a world-class art museum, upscale restaurants and forested bike trails.

But as much of the U.S. economy comes back from the coronavirus pandemic, the decades-long influx of immigrants that fueled such enormous expansion in places like Arkansas has begun to stall, posing challenges to the region and the country at large.

Written and narrated by Neal E. Boudette

George Brian McGee, a finance executive in Florida, was driving home in a Tesla Model S operating on Autopilot, a system that can steer, brake and accelerate a car on its own, when he dropped his phone during a call and bent down to look for it.

Neither he nor Autopilot noticed that the road was ending, and the Model S drove past a stop sign and a flashing red light. The car smashed into a parked Chevrolet Tahoe, killing a 22-year-old college student, Naibel Benavides.

One of a growing number of fatal accidents involving Tesla cars operating on Autopilot, Mr. McGees case is unusual because he survived and told investigators what had happened: He got distracted and put his trust in a system that did not see and brake for a parked car in front of it.

Written and narrated by Kevin Roose

For months now, the crypto-obsessed have been buzzing about the rise of community NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, a kind of digital collectible that combines the get-rich-quick appeal of cryptocurrency with the exclusivity of a country club membership.

Kevin Roose, a Times technology columnist, decided to join one such community, the Pudgy Penguins, out of boredom and a desire to explore a more serious undercurrent for years, technologists have been predicting the rise of the metaverse, an all-encompassing digital world that will eventually have its own forms of identity, community and governance.

Written and narrated by Taylor Lorenz

Marissa Meizz was out to dinner with a friend in the East Village in Manhattan in mid-May when her phone started buzzing. Texts kept coming in, and they all wanted to know: Had she seen the TikTok video?

She clicked the link and a young man appeared onscreen. If your names Marissa, he said, please listen up. He had just overheard some of her friends say they were deliberately choosing to hold a birthday party when she was out of town that weekend. You need to know, he said. TikTok, help me find Marissa.

After getting in touch with the man who posted the video, which amassed more than 14 million views, Ms. Meizz confirmed that she was the Marissa in question and that it was her friends who had conspired to exclude her from their party.

Within days of her revelation on TikTok, Ms. Meizz received more than 5,000 messages. Strangers invited her to their birthday parties, housewarmings and weddings. Some who lived outside New York City asked if she could set up a post office box so they could be pen pals.

I was like, OK, how can I use this to help people? she said. The answer: Ms. Meizz decided to hold a meet-up.

The Timess narrated articles are made by Parin Behrooz, Claudine Ebeid, Carson Leigh Brown, Anna Diamond, Aaron Esposito, Elena Hecht, Elisheba Ittoop, Emma Kehlbeck, Marion Lozano, Anna Martin, Tracy Mumford, Tanya Perez, Margaret Willison, Kate Winslett and John Woo. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Ryan Wegner, Julia Simon and Desiree Ibekwe.

Read more:

The Black Reporter Proved Right By History and a Fatal Tesla Crash: The Week in Narrated Articles - The New York Times

The Accommodation begins with the bombings. The 1950s terror spree that racist Dallasites unleashed on Black residents whod dared buy homes in a then-white neighborhood. The dozen or so packages of dynamite hurled at South Dallas houses that rocked the city, yet led to no criminal conviction. The shameful episode that local elites have fought to see forgotten but that, the books author writes, sprung right up out of the spiritual heart of the white community, the heart darkened by nineteenth-century specters.

A 34-year-old work set for republication this September, The Accommodation is an unusual book with an unusual backstory. Jim Schutze, a long-time acerbic city columnist and white man, wrote the text in the mid-1980s after many evenings buried in Dallas Public Library archives. The end-product may fairly be called a journalistic account, blending straight reportage and opinionated analysis, of race and civil rights in mid-20th century Dallas. But the 260-page book is also amateur history and historiographical critique, newsy play-by-play and grand political theory. It is a fierce indictment, occasionally indiscriminate and overwrought, that still hits its target. It is, perhaps above all, a pleasure to read.

The Accommodation almost never saw the light of day. In 1986, the books Dallas-based publisher unexpectedly scrapped it due to either poor pre-sales or political pressure, depending on who you ask. A year later, a New Jersey press gave the book a small release but decided against a second run. Schutze then handed over the rights to Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, who pledged to find a publisher, but after the two men had a falling out, Schutze says, Price simply sat on the book for decades. Thus, an obscure books legend grew.

Like literary contraband, young Dallasites over the last decade passed around a Dropbox link leading to a photocopied version of the book. No one seems sure who made the copy. On Amazon, The Accommodation listed for hundreds of dollars and D Magazine profiled the phenomenon in a piece titled The Most Dangerous Book in Dallas. As the now-75-year-old Schutze interprets it, millennial-age residents were encountering a Dallas still viciously riven by a north-south divide and allergic to talking about why. His book spoke to a burning question: Why is the city like this? Now, with Prices blessing, the local publisher Deep Vellum will let everyone digest Schutzes answers.

The books thesis is this: Dallas, despite its boosters claims, is a place crafted stem to stern by white supremacist violence and expropriation. Yet, through an anti-democratic alliance between the citys business class and conservative Black clergy members, Dallas managed to avoid the riotous convulsions of the civil rights era seen elsewhere in America. The city maintained a relative peace with precious little justice, the titular accommodation, which Schutze believes hampered the development of independent Black leadership and the advancement of white attitudes.

Dallas commands a part of Texas that is much more Southern, with stronger roots in slave culture, than many outsiders realize, Schutze writes. To make the case, he recounts the 19th-century influx of enslavers to North Texas, where he argues slavery then was likely even crueller than in the Deep South. He reviews post-Civil War federal reports recounting floggings and murders that permeated Dallas, and describes the city in the 1920s as a hotbed of KKK activity. As the Black middle class fitfully grew, he describes how the city used legal hocus pocus to vaporize property rights, clear neighborhoods, and push as many Black residents as possible into segregated housing projects. These very pressures, he details, led Black housebuyers to venture into South Dallas, where working-class whites responded with dynamite.

Black Dallasites fought back, defending their homes with guns as necessary, butin Shutzes tellingthe public square stayed rather quiet. Bull Connor sicced his dogs in Birmingham and Watts burned in Los Angeles, but Dallas saw just a few picket lines outside downtown stores. The key player, he says, was the Citizens Council, a coterie of business elites that controlled the city council, elected entirely at-large, and ran Dallas like a pre-democratic city-state. With a fine-tuned sense of when to co-opt a leader or cut ties with one who veers too far-right, the council was adept at propaganda and substituting tokenistic reforms for justice. The group ultimately sowed the enduring myth of Dallas as a rational Southwestern city of convenient commerce. Members of the Citizens Council also composed the grand jury that, after finding the 1950s bombings plot involved respected white community leaders, asked to be disbanded. Still, the city did not burn, and blatant segregation persisted from the State Fair to graduation ceremonies.

For Schutze, a turning point came finally in the late 70s, when a movement of Black homeowners spearheaded a lawsuit that overturned the at-large city council system, leading to district elections that the Citizens Council couldnt control. The book ends hopefully. But, in a new foreword, County Commissioner Price argues that little has actually changed in Dallaseven in todays era of Black Lives Matter uprisingsand many locals still see the city as a uniquely white-washed place.

Jerry Hawkins, now the director of Dallas Truth, Racial Healing and Transformationan anti-racist nonprofitwas one of those Dallas residents who discovered The Accommodation through a Dropbox link years ago. He tore through the PDFs. These were things I had never heard of, he says. Nobody talked about this stuff.

Hawkins says hes shared the photocopied version with numerous acquaintances, and he references it at talks where he finds that even lifelong Dallasites dont know the history of the bombings and similar events. He says The Accommodation spreads well thanks to its reputation as a banned book and because its written like a telenovela. With a friend, Hawkins formed a reading group to discuss each chapter. This book has created a whole bunch of other things, he says, noting that the actor William Jackson Harper, a Dallas native, wrote a 2018 play based on the story.

At the same time, Hawkins doesnt actually buy a core piece of the books thesis. He thinks Schutze undersells the history of Black activism in Dallas, not because of ill will but because of ignorance. The notion that Dallas didnt really have a civil rights movement is kind of a myth thats perpetrated in the way the author tells the tale, he says. Im not saying hes intentionally leaving things out. Im saying he probably doesnt even have the key to the door to get that information; I mean the Black Panther Party was in Dallas, and hes not going to be in those meetings.

Hawkins plans to help flesh out the story of Black Dallas himself. Hes editing a collection of essays called A Peoples History of Dallas, set for release next year, and hes researching another project, with a working title of How to Build a Racist City.

Schutze himself has called for further attempts to unravel Dallas past. In a recent article, he described his own book, with some exaggeration, as the only attempt anybody has made so far to solve a glaring unavoidable riddle: Why is the city like this? He then urged new and younger authors to soon produce a better answer to the question.

Here is the original post:

Dallas' Hidden History of Terror - The Texas Observer - The Texas Observer

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. Its Friday, Aug. 27. Im Gustavo Arellano.

Cal State Channel Islands history professor Frank P. Barajas is living the barrio nerd dream.

Born and raised in Oxnard, he attended Moorpark College before embarking on an academic career across California. But Barajas came back home in 2001, as one of the founding faculty members of Channel Islands, the most recent Cal State campus to open. Since then, he has taught a generation of students about American history, California history, Chicano history and the many intersections between the three.

In his off time, Barajas has devoted himself to writing essays and books about the history of Chicanos in Ventura County. His first book, Curious Unions: Mexican American Workers and Resistance in Oxnard, California, 1898-1961" came out in 2012 and took readers from the earliest days of Mexicans in Ventura County to a young Cesar Chavez, whose time organizing in Ventura County made him describe it years later as the most vicious place where his United Farm Workers had tried to organize.

Now, Barajas has published Mexican Americans With Moxie: A Transgenerational History of El Movimiento Chicano in Ventura County, California, 1945-1975. Its a weighty title, but Barajas wisely doesnt allow academic jargon to get in the way of great stories the rest of Southern California should learn because, you know, Ventura County is part of Southern California.

Barajas answered a couple of questions I sent him. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

What drives you to cover all this? The history of Mexican Americans in Ventura County seems like such a niche topic for folks who arent from there.

I find it critical that colonized people write their own history, as Chinua Achebe charged in his relaying of Until the lions have their historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter proverb. That is why I quote him at the start of Mexicans Americans With Moxie. Because if we dont write our own histories, outsiders will, and we may not like how we are portrayed.

For the rest of Southern California, Ventura County is usually thought of in stereotypes. Conservative eastern suburbs, super-rich Ojai, blue-collar Oxnard, Ventucky and a bunch of farmland. How does your book go past this facile understanding?

Conservatism, socioeconomic fault lines around race and ethnicity were normalized and experienced in my development. But Oxnard, the city where I was born and raised, ran this gamut with folk on its beaches and northside and its working-class barrios. Ethnic Mexicans in positions of power and authority were few. In Mexican Americans With Moxie, I wanted to tell the story of how people my people struggled and strived to live their lives with dignity at work and in their communities.

Whos one activist in your book that people should know about as an unsung hero or shero of Southern California?

Thats a tough question because there are two must really know about heroes/sheroes for me. And that is Roberto Flores [father of noted musician Quetzal Flores] and Rachel Murguia Wong.

As a UCLA student in the late 1960s, Flores championed the cause of agricultural workers and demanded educational justice for Chicanas/os. He did this as a founder of the Brown Berets in Oxnard and as an organizer for the UFW. Flores selfless community activism lives to the present as he continues at the Eastside Caf in El Sereno and is part of the reclamation of unoccupied houses owned by Caltrans to place families in affordable homes.

As a married, middle-class mother of four children during the Chicano movement, Murguia Wong served on several college and community advisory boards, and volunteered her time widely. As an employee and later a board member of the Oxnard School District, she worked indefatigably to ensure equity in the delivery of an equitable education to all schoolchildren. Ultimately, Rachel, as a school board trustee, fought to make sure that the district fully complied with federal Judge Harry Pregerson ruling to desegregate its schools, classrooms and provide a culturally relevant instruction to children delivered by a diverse faculty and staff.

This is your second book on Ventura County Mexican American history. Any plans for a third volume that takes us to the present day?

There is this idea that el movimiento Chicana-Chicano dissipated into oblivion with the 1980s and many ethnic Mexicans of the Chicana/o generation selling out to become Hispanics. However, in the conclusion of Mexican Americans With Moxie, I proposed the research and writing of how women and men of el moviemento went on to careers in education, housing, law and healthcare, and the world of nonprofits to serve people in the agricultural communities of Ventura County. After a bit of rest and the regaining of my footing from the pandemic, I am going embark on this [next] project with a new sense of urgency and anger, as time is of the essence and people, especially youth, must know this history for the continuation of positive social change.

And now, heres whats happening across California.

Note: Some of the sites we link to may limit the number of stories you can access without subscribing.

California Democrats urge Biden to send us Afghan evacuees: And this was before a suicide attack near the Kabul airport killed dozens, including 13 U.S. military members. Los Angeles Times

Californias top court declines to overhaul death penalty. This despite the wishes of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who wanted to overturn scores of death penalty convictions. Los Angeles Times

Visually incantatory and deeply affecting: Loyola Marymount University professor Anna Harrison reviews Rebel Hearts, the recently released documentary about the Los Angeles congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary nuns who antagonized the Archdiocese of Los Angeles hierarchy during the 1960s for their fervent championing of Matthew 5:5 by fighting for better working conditions, including smaller class sizes and greater institutional support. Commonweal

Gentefication vs. Gentrification: Montebellos new Blvd Market container food hall is now open. But dont dismiss it as a mere hipster magnet theres purpose here (shoutout to author Sean Vukan, my former student at Orange Coast College). L.A. Taco

Two former Chicano arts centers in Highland Park become historic landmarks: Speaking of Chicano history, Centro de Arte Publico and the Mechicano Art Center get some support in the beyond-gentrified neighborhood. Eastsider L.A.

'The Times' podcast

Our new weekday podcast, hosted by columnist Gustavo Arellano, takes listeners beyond the headlines. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts and follow on Spotify.

Coronavirus cases are spiking in the LAPD as officials finalize vaccination mandate and others push back: Brings a whole new meaning to blue flu. Los Angeles Times

California homicide rise becomes recall rallying cry, but experts question Newsoms role: Im just surprised the anti-Newsom folks havent blamed the Lakers post-season flameout on him ... yet. Los Angeles Times

Attacks on transgender women expose MS-13 gangs grip on MacArthur Park: Every day, people who do business in the legendary greenspace must pay for a commodity those in more affluent neighborhoods do not even know exists the right to be left alone by a gang. Los Angeles Times

How a Black prosecutor called out racism in the D.A.'s office: Writing under the alias Spooky Brown Esq., Adewale Oduye wrote a series of searing essays last year blasting the administration of then-L.A. County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey. Los Angeles Times

Scandal-plagued Chabad of Poway returns to family control as independent board steps down: Former Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein pleaded guilty last year to tax fraud in a case that has roiled the Jewish community of San Diego County. The Forward

The ecology of good weed: A dispatch from an organic marijuana farm in the Emerald Triangle region of Northern California. Nautilus

When COVID-19 hit the indigenous communities in L.A., this group stepped in: My colleagues and I have written many times about the efforts of Comunidades Indgenas en Liderazgo (CIELO) and Executive Director Odilia Romero, but its great to see them profiled in a fancy fashion magazine! Vogue

An afternoon with La Jolla surf legend Woody Ekstrom: Magic always happens when you stop by Captain Kenos in Encinitas. La Jolla Light

Crear Studio hopes to give O.C. artists of color a home in Santa Ana: Its the latest project of the chingona author and literary activist Sarah Rafael Garcia. TimesOC

Living that mullet lifestyle: Southern Humboldt man leads in championship hair event. Jesse McKee is one of the top 25 finalists in the USA Mullet Championship. Godspeed, good man, and lets rock Queensrche in your Pontiac 79 Trans Am when youre down here in SoCal. Times-Standard

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Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com.

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A new book talks about the history of Chicano activism in Ventura County - Los Angeles Times

Weidner said the name of the lake came from the village of Marburg that was removed in order to insert the lake.

YORK COUNTY, Pa. Lake Marburg started over 50 years ago to give green space for all Pennsylvania residents within 25 miles.

Ranae Weidner, who is an environmental education specialist, says this park started with an idea from the 1960's when Maurice Goddard was in charge of what was then the Department of Forest and Water. The organization wanted to get a greenspace of park with 25 miles in the state.

Goddard convinced the government to set aside $70 million of land to preserve it for Pennsylvanians and that's where project 70 came from.

Weidner said if you can do it outside you can almost do it all at Codorus.

The the name of the lake came from the village of Marburg that was removed in order to insert the lake, according to Weidner. It was your typical small town of about 40 houses and leveled everything in order to put the lake in.

There are stories of people swimming through houses under the lake which is not true, Weidner said.

"It's your general local rumor, its local legend."

There are no structures underneath the lake other than the infrastructure that used to be there, Weidner said.

The old roads and bridges that were lost become visible as the lake level gets lower throughout the year

"But there are no houses no churches or mills or anything like that," said Weidner.

The park is open all year long from sunrise to sunset.

For more information on lake, click here.

The rest is here:

The history behind Lake Marburg - FOX43.com

From the rise of click and collect to the advent of dark kitchens, the very concept of the restaurant is undergoing major changes. Even before the pandemic hit, consumers were moving away from the physical location of the restaurant, a transformation which has only been accelerated by coronavirus. These new ways of eating question the very identity of the restaurant itself, and invite us to investigate its origins.

The history of the restaurant is entwined with the history of France, its birthplace.

The word restaurant as we understand it today was accepted by the Acadmie Franaisethe body that governs the official use of the French languagein 1835. Until then, the restaurant also called bouillon restaurant (restorative broth), was a dish composed of meat, onions, herbs, and vegetables. A broth with medicinal and digestive properties, its aim was to restore peoples strength.

The term restaurant therefore initially had a medical connotation, and the places that sold this healing broth in the 1760s were also called health houses.

The first restaurant as we know it today opened in Paris in 1765 on the Rue des Poulies, today the Rue du Louvre. On the front of the shop is engraved the Latin phrase from the Bible:

Venite ad me omnes qui stomacho laboratis, et ego vos restaurabo.

This translates as, Come to me, those whose stomachs ache, and I will restore you.

The owners name was Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau. Other writings mentioned a certain Mr Boulanger. The establishment sold restauran dishes such as poultry, eggs, buttered pasta, and semolina cakes, whose light color was said to have health benefits. It first enjoyed culinary success thanks to its signature dish of poultry with chicken sauce, which was renowned throughout Paris.

The philosopher Denis Diderot mentions the restaurant as early as 1767 in a letter to his correspondent and lover, Sophie Volland:

If I have acquired a taste for the restorer? Really yes; an infinite taste. The service is good, a little expensive, but at the time you want . . . . It is wonderful, and it seems to me that everyone praises it.

The writer douard Fournier also describes it in his book Paris dmoli: Mosique de Ruines (Paris Demolished: Mosaic of Ruins), published in 1853:

Nearby, in the Rue des Poulies, the first Restaurant opened in 1765, which was later transferred to the Htel dAligre. It was a broth establishment, where it was not allowed to serve stew, as in the catering trade, but where poultry with coarse salt and fresh eggs were served without tablecloths, on small marble tables.

Roze de Chantoiseau is said to be the first to propose the innovative concept of serving food without a fixed schedule, at an individual table and offering a choice of dishes, the price of which was indicated in advance, on the outside of the building.

At that time, in pre-Revolutionary France, the only place to eat outside the home was in a tavern or inn. But these places only offered tables dhtes (guest tables) with a single dish, at a price that was not fixed in advance, where people only came at a fixed time. The quality was not always goodpeople who went to these places did so to eat and not to enjoy the taste of a dish. Roasters and caterers who were also present at the time could only sell whole pieces and not individual portions.

This new way of eating was a great success, and this style of restaurant spread and evolved. The notion of the pleasure of eating became predominant, gastronomy developed and, to a certain extent, became more democratic. Before then, the only people who ate very well in France were the members of the court at Versailles and other nobles who had their own personal cooks.

On the eve of the French Revolution, many of the hundred or so restaurants in the capital were very well known. Customers came to these places to sample dishes that pleased their taste buds, not simply to sate their hunger.

The restaurant of the time was a luxurious place that could be found mainly in the Palais-Royal district of Paris. Here lived an affluent, elite clientele capable of affording meals, which, although no longer reserved for aristocrats, were no less expensive for it.

The great novelty of the time was the introduction of the menu. Restaurants often offered a huge selection of dishes, so, as historian Rebecca Spang notes, diners were usually invited to choose from a smaller selection of these, displayed on a menu (derived from the Latin minutus).

Antoine Beauvilliers, a former officer of the kitchen of the Count of Provence, brother of the King, was the first private cook to leave his master and set up his own restaurant business in Paris. In 1782, he opened Le Beauvilliers in the Palais-Royal district on Rue de Richelieu.

This very luxurious place quickly became a huge success because it offered its customersmainly aristocratsthe chance to eat as if they were in Versailles. The setting was magnificent, the service impeccable, the wine cellar superb, and the dishes exquisite and carefully presented on magnificent crockery. For many years, its cuisine was unrivaled in Parisian high society. Le Beauvilliers is thus considered the first French gastronomic restaurant.

In the years before and after the French Revolution, many cooks who had previously worked for members of the nobility followed Beauvilliers example and opened their own restaurants. Quality cuisine based on recipes, rituals, and new ways of eating moved from the private kitchens of the aristocracy to the public kitchens of high society.

French gastronomic restaurants emerged, and famous and luxurious brands such as Vry, Les Trois-Frres Provenaux (which imported brandade de morue and bouillabaisse to Paris from the south), or the restaurant Le Grand Vfour, which is still in service, were created.

Continued here:

The forgotten history of the world's first restaurant - Fast Company

Penn has a long history of studying of the Middle East, going back to the late 1700s when it was the first university in the nation to offer Arabic-language instruction. That commitment continues today with the Universitys Middle East Center (MEC), and its newly appointed faculty director, Harun Kk. Kk, associate professor in the Department of History and Sociology of Science, took up the role in July from interim director John Ghazvinian.

Just in the few weeks since he took over as director, Harun has turned out to be a tireless advocate for the needs of the Center,and demonstrated a deep concern with understanding and listening to the needs of the staff, says Ghazvinian, who will stay in an executive director role. He will bring a fresh perspective and a respected voice for understanding our region in its deeper historical context. But most important of all, hes just a great guy. He leads with humility, decency, and openness.

Kk is a historian of early modern Ottoman science, whose groundbreaking scholarship focuses on what he calls practical naturalism, a pragmatic way of engaging with nature that is impervious to theoretical concerns and, sometimes, to the truth.

His research has focused on everything from the Ottoman medical marketplace to minting practices and from natural philosophy to gunpowder recipes.

He says he took a circuitous path on the road to becoming a historian of science, coming from a background in philosophy. He arrived in Annapolis, Maryland, as an undergrad from Turkey to study the classics at St. Johns College. Eventually he did a masters in history in Turkey and committed to a Ph.D. in history of science, specializing in the 17th and 18th centuries, what he calls a very lackluster period for the empire.

It was not a popular area of expertise in Ottoman history like the times of Mehmed the Conqueror or Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, who are so fascinating they made Netflix series about each of them, he says. I look at the relationship between monetary culture and science at a pretty low point in the history of the empire.

His new role as head of the MEC is offering him a chance to expand his knowledge of Middle Eastern studies, as well as provide additional programming on Turkey and the Ottoman Empire.

His immediate goals are to reapply for the Title VI federal funding that keeps the center up and running and establish the vision of the next grant cycle, which will have three focuses: diverse voices and perspectives; inclusion and access; and environment, society, and the global Middle East.

I think my role first and foremost is to maintain all the good things that the Centers already doing and bolster them, he says.

For Kk, what sets Penns Middle East Center apart from others at universities across the country is the amount of public programming and public outreach, from providing lesson plans and training for K-12 educators to partnering with the NaTakallam program, which connects forcibly displaced people with language and cultural exchange at schools in the Delaware Valley and beyond.

Penn is an institution of excellence and the Centers public outreach gets that excellence into the community, he says.

The Center got off to a quick start even before the fall semester started, organizing a virtual Rapid Response panel on Aug. 24 about the unfolding events in Afghanistan. The Centers first in-person event since spring 2020 will take place on Sept. 14. Twenty Years Later: The Legacy of 9/11, moderated by political scientist and former MEC director Robert Vitalis, will feature six panelists including Spencer Ackerman, contributing editor and former senior national security correspondent for The Daily Beast; Vincent Ciuccoli, a Marine Corps officer with extensive deployment experience in the Middle East and North Africa; and Iraqi poet, novelist, and essayist Sinan Antoon.

Kk says hes as hopeful as anybody that this semester will be as normal as possible and welcomes the opportunity to partake in a side of academic life he hasnt seen before through his work at the Middle East Center.

Im very narrowly specialized, as is every historian, and the Center is going to give me a broad overview of what's happening in the field and help me develop a vision of what the field of Middle East Studies is and should be. Im really looking forward to that.

Continued here:

Harun Kk brings science, philosophy, and history to the Middle East Center | Penn Today - Penn Today

Two days before the journalist Claire McNear published her book, which was billed as a definitive history of Jeopardy!, its beloved host, Alex Trebek, died of pancreatic cancer, thrusting the game show into a period of uncertainty unlike any its staff had ever seen.

McNears 2020 book, Answers in the Form of Questions, had argued that Jeopardy!, a television staple that first premiered in 1964, was on the precipice of significant change, with some key figures who had helped shape the show for decades stepping back.

But the loss of Trebek in November raised a new existential question for the show: Could Jeopardy! continue to be a success without its trusted, even-keeled captain, who had been its face for more than 36 years?

For McNear, one of the most critical chapters in the shows history had just begun.

Nine months later, McNears report for The Ringer on the man who had been chosen to succeed Trebek the shows executive producer, Mike Richards would change the course of that history.

McNear had listened to all 41 episodes of a podcast that Richards had recorded in 2013 and 2014, when he was executive producer on The Price Is Right, and discovered that he had made a number of offensive and sexist comments, including asking two young women who worked on the podcast whether they had ever taken nude photos, and referring to a stereotype about Jews and large noses.

Days after the story was published, Richards, 46, resigned from his role as host, saying that the show did not need the distraction. Sony, which produces the show, said he would remain as executive producer. (Mayim Bialik, the sitcom star who had been tapped to host prime-time Jeopardy! specials, will temporarily take over weeknight hosting duties.)

In an interview, McNear, 32, who writes about sports and culture for The Ringer, discussed her personal relationship to Jeopardy!, the impact of her reporting and the shows future. The conversation has been edited and condensed.

Every Jeopardy! fan has their own early memories of the show and a story of what drew them to it. Why did this show become so important to you?

I was never one of those superfans who would watch every single night and know all the statistics and the pantheon of all the greatest players. I had watched it with my parents growing up, but I was not one of those hard-core people. It wasnt until my fianc and I moved in together, about five years ago, that we got cable it was the first time I had cable since I was a little kid. And I remember having this light-bulb moment: Oh my God, we can record Jeopardy! every night. And because of my day job, I started getting to write about it.

Two weeks ago, the big hosting announcement dropped: Richards had been chosen. Knowing what you knew about him at the time, what was your reaction to the decision?

As I had started to write about Jeopardy! more and watch it more seriously, I learned more about the world. I met the fans; I met the people who make the show. And I kept hearing things from people close to the show: that the host-search process might not have been as aboveboard as the way that it was being described publicly, and a number of staff members had fairly grave concerns about him. I wanted to know more about his past and his genesis as a television personality because he had been really open about the fact that, in addition to producing, he wanted to host.

What led you to his podcast?

He has talked about it in interviews but also, literally, its listed or at least it was in his official Jeopardy.com bio, that he hosted a comedy news show as a college student called The Randumb Show. And I tried to find as much as I could about that show, but it was all taped in the 90s. It did lead me to the podcast with the exact same name, which is the one that he hosted as the executive producer of The Price Is Right.

So youre sitting there listening to these episodes. At what point do you start to become unsettled by his comments?

It became extremely clear to me very quickly that those things were kind of dotted throughout the episode: He uses sexist language; he uses ableist language; he uses ugly slurs and stereotypes. Theres a lot of stuff that we did not transcribe in the story that is in there and paints this broader picture of what The Price Is Right was like as a workplace. And he was the co-executive producer at the time he was the boss, and he was mostly just talking to his employees.

How long did it take to listen to all 41 episodes?

What I will say is it was not a terribly glamorous reporting process. I live in Washington, D.C., and there was one point a couple weeks ago where my air-conditioning broke overnight. And so I spent the whole next day sitting in my living room with an ice pack on my stomach, listening to Mike Richardss podcast episodes. It was not like what they show in the movies.

You wrote in your book that when Trebek first started as host in 1984, fans were actually wary of him following Art Flemings run. Do you think fans would accept any new host of Jeopardy! with enthusiasm right now?

I think Sony was always going to be in a difficult place because its not going to be Alex Trebek. Fleming was this sort of genial, affable, friendly guy who was very upfront about not knowing the answers to any of the clues and he was just happy to be there and he needed the sheet in front of him. And then of course, Alex Trebek cultivated this image that he could probably beat all the contestants on any given night. He was this very erudite figure who got all his pronunciations just so. There were fans that didnt like that at first because they loved the Art Fleming version of the show. I think that does speak to the fact that Jeopardy! fans might struggle with a new host any host but theres certainly a history of people coming to admire even a very different host of Jeopardy!

Trebek always said that its the game, not him, that kept viewers coming back. With all youve seen over the past eight months, do you think thats proving to be true?

Its important to note that as much as there has been all this change at Jeopardy!, there are also a lot of things that are exactly the same as they have been for years. A lot of the people who work there have been there for decades and spent their entire professional life making Jeopardy!

The Jeopardy! machinery is mostly intact and unchanged. But I think there is a great amount of sadness and fear among Jeopardy! fans and among the Jeopardy! staff that this whole episode with Mike Richards has damaged this universal appeal that its had for all these decades, that it was this totally neutral space that was not partisan. It was never flashy; it was never trying to get in the headlines or be the thing that you debated over dinner. And now it very much is, and its possible that when they do bring in a permanent host, people will talk about it a bunch at the beginning, and then it will just kind of settle back down to being the same old Jeopardy! But its possible that its lost that sheen of being unimpeachable.

See the original post:

She Wrote the History of Jeopardy! Then She Changed It. - The New York Times

Bostons chance to select the citys first elected Black mayor could be slipping away, with voters more concerned about neighborhood issues housing, schools and crime than making history.

A new Emerson College/7News poll confirms what has been reported before that Acting Mayor Kim Janey has failed to inspire voters and capitalize on her incumbency just two and a half weeks before the preliminary election.

The move to force the other leading Black candidate, City Councilor Andrea Campbell, to drop out of the race has also completely fallen flat.

Campbell in fact has nearly as many supporters as Janey, according to the poll, which shows Janey in third place at 16% and Campbell in fourth at 14%. The top two vote-getters in the Sept. 14 preliminary election earn a spot in the November final.

And theres little evidence in the poll to back the speculation that Janey is being hurt by black residents splitting their vote between her and Campbell.

Janey, the citys first black non-elected mayor who took office in March when former Mayor Marty Walsh left, and Campbell together are drawing 55% of the black vote, which means nearly half of all black voters are choosing other candidates.

The Emerson/7News poll also reveals that its City Councilor Michelle Wu who is drawing the most broad-based support, especially among younger voters and liberal voters. Wu leads the poll overall with 24%, followed by City Councilor Annissa Essaibi-George at 18%. A quarter of all voters are still undecided, meaning theres plenty of time for late movement in the race.

Wus proposed housing solutions like rent control and her strategy to blitz every neighborhood in the city with block parties and other events, seems to be the most effective. Shes also running high-energy TV ads featuring her smiling face and proposals like making the MBTA free.

She and Essaibi-George have been helped by the fact that both are at-large councilors who have triumphed before in citywide elections. Janey and Campbell are district councilors.

Janeys campaign strategy of using her office to run the citys coronavirus-fighting program and tout city programs and grants has not been enough to impress more voters.

Campbell, meanwhile, has been on the rise, running TV ads backed by a super PAC that showcase her background growing up in Boston. But neither candidate has been able to break through to the No. 2 spot, which would guarantee them a place in the November final election.

Janey has been unable to inspire voters the way that former Boston city councilor and current U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley did in her successful bid to oust former U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano. Pressley ran a bold campaign, taking on the white power structure that had been propping up Capuano and others.

If Pressley had decided to run for mayor, shed be way ahead, ensuring Boston would pick its first ever elected black mayor. But she passed on the race and instead focused on her career in Congress and status as one of U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs squad.

And the fact is that if Wu wins, shed be Bostons first ever Asian American mayor.

Link:

Battenfeld: Boston voters could pass on making history with first elected Black mayor - Boston Herald

Watermill, N.Y.

When scholars examine a famous artists early work, the temptation is to search for portentsto find in classroom studies any nascent motifs that point to future prowess and foretell mastery as inevitable.

One of the refreshing aspects of Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making, 1948-1960 at the Parrish Art Museum is that the curators havent surrounded this period with an aura of destiny. One walks through the three rooms and sees the artist testing out a bewildering variety of styles and subjects without ever settling on one. Not until 1960, when he was in his late 30s, did he discover the formulafigures lifted from American comic books, outlined in black, filled in with bright primary colors and abstracted by Ben-day dotsthat became a defining signature of Pop Art.

Until then, as the show succinctly documents, Lichtenstein roamed blithely through the annals of art and illustration. He painted tank-like figures that recall the Surrealism of Max Ernst and the eccentric classicism of John Graham (The Diver, c. 1948-49). He made tapered sculptures in wood and metal that invoke African and Northwest American Indian art (King, c. 1951). He satirized U.S. history painting (Washington Crossing the Delaware, c. 1951) by flattening the heroic figures of Emanuel Leutzes panoramic canvas in the manner of Picassos Three Musicians.

Elements of his later style are visible but not yet synthesized. Images of cartoon animals from about 1958installed in a section of the show titled Glimmers of Poplack the flat-toned audacity of his post-1960 paintings. A brush-and-ink drawing of a reclining Bugs Bunny renders his buck-toothed head as if he were a hallucination or perhaps one of De Koonings Woman paintings. Two drawings of Mickey Mouse are more disturbing than droll.

Read more here:

Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making, 1948-1960 Review: Before His Career Popped - The Wall Street Journal

This week, the North Carolina Senate passed a bill limiting the teaching of race, gender and sex in public schools. Rodney Pierce, a teacher at Red Oak Middle School in Battleboro, spoke with WRAL's Lena Tillett about how this bill could change the way he teaches history.

THIS IS NOT WHAT WE NEED HERE IN NORTH CAROLINA. >> OR TENNESSEE, THEY SAW SIMILAR IMPACTS AS WELL. >>> REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS IN THE SENATE PASSED A BILL THAT WILL CHANGE HOW SOME TEACHERS LEAVE CLASSES. IT WOULD PROHIBIT THEM FROM PRO PROMOTING CERTAIN CONCEPTS, LATE CRITICAL RACE THEORY, WHICH IS A GRADUATE LEVEL FRAMEWORK THAT EXAMINES HOW RACISM AFFECTS OUR LIVES PICKET BAND SEVEN CONCEPTS BUT IT CAN BE PART OF ASSIGNED MATERIALS. WE ARE JOINED BY RODNEY PIERCE IN BATTLES BOROUGH, NORTH CAROLINA. FIRST THINGS FIRST, THE SCHOLARLY PRACTICE OF CRITICAL RACE THEORY, IS THAT BEING TAUGHT IN NORTH CAROLINA'S PUBLIC SCHOOLS? >> NO, MA'AM. THAT IS A LAW SCHOOL COURSE PICKET IS NOT BEING TAUGHT IN NORTH CAROLINA PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND I BELIEVE THAT THIS IS JUST ANOTHER ISSUE THAT HAS BEEN BROUGHT UP BY CERTAIN POLITICAL PARTIES TO SCORE POINTS DURING MIDTERM ELECTIONS OR DURING GENERAL ELECTIONS IN THE FUTURE. >> IS SIGNED INTO LAW, WHAT THIS BILL CHANGE HOW YOU TEACH HISTORY? >> IT CAN CHANGE HOW I TEACH HISTORY BECAUSE ONE OF THE CONCEPTS IS TEACHING HISTORY THAT MAY MAKE, OR TEACHINGS CONTENT THAT MAY MAKE A STUDENT FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE, FEEL DISCOMFORT, GUILT, ANXIETY OR SOME TYPE OF ANGUISH OR PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS. IF YOU LOOK AT ANY PART OF HISTORY, IT CAN MAKE A STUDENT FEEL LIKE THAT PICK A FIGHT TALK ABOUT THE FOUNDING OF AMERICA, SOMEONE COULD LOOK AT THE SONS OF LIBERTY BEING A GANG, WHEN YOU CONSIDER WHAT THEY DID TO THE PROPERTY OF REDDISH OF VISUALS BY SETTING FIRE TO IT AT SOME POINTS. THEN YOU CAN HAVE A STUDENT WHO MAY FEEL SOME SORT OF WAY ABOUT THE ACTIVE SLAVE TRADE IN THAT STUDENT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE WHITE. I HAD AN ARAB STUDENT TODAY TALK ABOUT THE ARAB PART IN THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. YOU CAN HAVE AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDENTS WHO FEEL LIKE YOU ARE MAKING THEM FEEL INFERIOR. THERE ARE PARTS ABOUT HISTORY WE NEED TO LEARN THAT TEACHERS MAY BE AFRAID TO TEACH SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY ARE AFRAID OF MAKING A STUDENT FEEL DISCOMFORT. >> YOU TOUCHED ON THIS A BIT, BUT I WANTED TO RUN THROUGH THE BAND CONCEPTS FOR TEACHERS. ONE IS RACE OR SEX IS INHERENTLY SUPERIOR, ANY INDIVIDUAL FEEL DISCOMFORT BECAUSE OF THEIR RACE OR SEX AND THE U.S. WAS CREATED IN ORDER TO OPPRESS MEMBERS OF A RACE OR SEX. CAN YOU TEACH SOCIAL STUDIES WITHOUT ADDRESSING THESE ISSUES? >> WHEN YOU TEACH THOSE STUDIES, YOU HAVE TO ADDRESS RACE AND YOU HAVE TO ADDRESS GENDER. WHEN THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, WHEN OUR COUNTRY'S GOVERNMENT WAS FOUNDED, THERE WERE NO PEOPLE OF COLOR IN THE WOMB, NO WOMEN IN THE ROOM. WHAT TYPE OF GOVERNMENT DO YOU THINK WAS BEING SET UP AND WHO DO YOU THINK IT WAS TO BENEFIT WHEN THERE WERE NO OTHER PEOPLE IN THE ROOM? A GOOD PERCENTAGE OF THE MEN IN THAT ROOM ENSLAVED MEN AND WOMEN WHO LOOKED LIKE ME, YOU KNOW? THINK ABOUT IT FROM THE VIEWPOINT THAT THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE ITSELF HAS A LINE IN THERE AND THAT SAYS MERCILESS INDIAN SAVAGES, THAT IS WRITTEN BY ONE OF OUR FOUNDING FATHERS, THOMAS JEFFERSON. WHAT ABOUT INDIGENOUS STUDENTS AND HOW DO THEY FEEL ABOUT THAT LINE? THERE ARE PARTS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE THAT WE MAY FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE TEACHING OR BRINGING TO THE ATTENTION OF YOUR STUDENTS SIMPLY BECAUSE IT CAUSES CALLS ONE CERTAIN STUDENT A CERTAIN TERM FEEL LIKE THEY ARE OFFENDING THEM.

The rest is here:

Battlesboro teacher says new NC bill could limit which parts of history he is allowed to teach :: WRAL.com - WRAL.com