#Caroline McNair

[thephoenixandthecrocodile]

Short Story: The Martyr and the Widow

Synopsis: Marcus, also known as Heva's Bane, is the most feared and wanted rebel in the Killbraugha. He is literally fearless except when it comes to professing his love for his best friend's and second in command's sister: Caroline. With his feelings growing harder and harder to hide each passing day, Marcus desperately desires to tell her how he feels, but how can he when she is still grieving her murdered husband?

This is a short story featuring rebel leader Marcus Galloway (he/him), his second-in-command Kerry McNair (they/he), and Kerry's sister, Caroline McDermott (she/her). They are three sides characters from the book I'm currently querying: For the Next Killer Who Dies (the one about queer anthro crocodiles giving the middle finger to colonial asshats).

The Martyr and the Widow

Mars 21st 1825 – McDermott’s Cottage, Marston County, Killbraugha

Marcus knew this was a mistake but said nothing as Kerry led him down the winding road to Caroline’s cottage, the lush green hills of the Killbraugha offering an eternal peace and quiet found nowhere else. Even now, when Hevian forces flooded the land and the Ilkhatal rose up in righteous rebellion following Marcus’ and Kerry’s every command-even the foolish ones and there had been many. So many painful lessons learned, so many good Ilkhatal lost. A burden God gave to them for reasons unknown. A burden given or a burden taken? Were he and Kerry destined to this lonely, bloody life or was there another way, hidden from them by their pride and Kerry’s lack of faith? What did that matter on the road to lovely Caroline? Why bring that doom and gloom to her door, one who had already lost so much and would only lose more?

It was rare to see Caroline, the war making it unsafe to be with the ones they loved, so when Kerry asked Marcus if he wanted to tag along, how could he refuse? Only God knew if Kerry would see her again before the end. Now, however, it was clear that Marcus had been a fool, placing his own desires before the needs of his friends and the cause. He had plenty of chances on their journey to her cottage to turn back and return to his duties as a guerilla leader and bane of the colonial Hevians, but he said nothing, allowing himself to be led to his doom.

Caroline, oh perfect Caroline. Marcus would die happy if he could see her one last time and yet it would be the sight of her that killed him. Caroline, who was too pristine for any mortal of this world, including her late husband who Marcus led to his death. Not purposely, no, his feelings for Caroline made him mad, but did not make him a dishonorable traitor. No, Caroline’s husband met his fate the same way as many of Marcus’ other soldiers: a hate filled Hevian and a well-aimed bullet. The same way Kerry and Marcus would meet their fates, leaving Caroline alone with her grief and three young sons. Unfair, but that was the Hevian’s nature. Destroy everything beautiful and gentle in their unending quest for conquest and bloodstained wealth.

They stepped down a steep slope, Marcus’ already tight suit tightening further as he tried to keep his balance. It was safer to approach the cottage from the backroads then down the gentle, sloping main road, but it was also more difficult. Kerry cursed every time they got dirt on their usually pristine sack suit, the Ilkhatal taking great pains to maintain their appearance despite hating the flirtatious attention it attracted. “I do it for myself not them,” they said when Marcus asked them why they bothered if they wanted people to leave them alone. Marcus knew Kerry was a handsome Ilkhatal despite never finding anyone personally attractive, well, until Caroline anyway. Beautiful Caroline. For so long Marcus thought he was the Kerry type of asexual: no desire for anyone ever. Then he met Caroline and felt a desire never felt before, discovering that being ace was far more nuanced and beautiful than he originally assumed.

Not that he shared his thoughts with his prickly friend, half of their bad temper originally from the fact that Kerry stopped growing once they hit 5’4 (unlike Marcus who felt like he never stopped growing). If Kerry had been short and stout maybe they wouldn’t have felt the need to cut everyone down to size, but, no, poor Kerry never outgrew their lanky, scarecrow phase. Their body so thin it suggested they didn’t need to eat to survive. Their thin and sharp snout added a hint of standoffishness, but their glorious and meticulously groomed horns that curved in before flaring out added to everyone’s confusion. So many Killers would gladly trade in their ears and all their teeth for Kerry’s exquisite horns.

And so, the desperate and the arrogant tried their luck only to bleed from Kerry’s acerbic tongue and if they persisted Marcus would intervene, often times his reputation and his Minotaur like frame enough to scare them away. There were always those few though, those stupid few…Kerry, despite being able to fend for themselves, always came out of those fights worse for wear than Marcus, griping that they didn’t need help, but a sheepish smile betraying their gratitude. Occasionally Marcus would receive a thank you later in the night, but most of the time it was understand instead of said.

While Marcus’ size and strength benefitted him when it came to terrifying Ilkhatal and Hevians alike and attracting people whenever a leader was needed, it was a nuisance in every other aspect of his life. On the battlefield, he was at home, his presence often enough to turn the tide, but outside the battlefield, he was a misfit, unwanted and unwelcomed. Outside he felt he could breathe and move freely, but in establishments and other people’s homes he felt like a Minotaur surrounded by glassware. One wrong move and he would shatter everything. All of his clothes had to be custom tailored, and every normal sized utensil felt like it was made for children when he held it. Whereas Kerry purposely made a statement with their appearance but wanted to be ignored, Marcus purposely ignored his appearance despite wanting to belong.

Marcus’ razor-sharp teeth were chipped and one or two were missing. The scales that ran down his wide and flat snout were broken, missing, or dulled by dirt from the battlefield. He only took care of his bull-like horns because it terrified the Hevians, inspiring more than a few horror stories they published in their journals and newspapers. The horror stories that shouldn’t have inspired as much pride as they did.

They reached the bottom of the slope and walked around the mossy stone cottage built to withstand the ravishes of time. Faint smoke issued from its short chimney, the warm spices of a stew brushing across their nostrils. Frantic motion crossed the few windows as they approached the front door and two young boys in overalls burst out, squealing, “Uncle ‘Erry!”

The boys latched onto Kerry’s legs, nearly knocking them over.

Cathal, the oldest of the boys came halfway up Kerry’s waist, surely worrying Kerry who was exhausted of constantly being the shortest Ilkhatal in the room. Cathal’s long and narrow snout was too big for his head, and he looked like he was going to fall forward every time he took a step. That didn’t prevent him from swaggering with pride, showing off his first grown up teeth jutting from his lips, adding to his lopsided appearance.

Harry, the youngest of the two, came up to Kerry’s hips and was already as lanky and coordinated as a weathered scarecrow. His white fluffy ears were long enough to be used as wings and the thinner patches of fur revealed that he had taken to the habit of tying his ears back out of embarrassment. Wide yellow eyes took up most of the boys’ faces adding to the comical phase of early childhood every Ilkhatal went through growing up. Their horns were mere knobs on top of their heads (although as Kerry shepherded them inside, Marcus noticed Cathal’s horns were worn suggesting the impatient boy tried to file in the sharpness associated with adult Ilkhatal) and their scales were still soft and leathery.

“Here are my little monsters,” said Kerry, waddling into the stone cottage, Marcus awkwardly hovering behind him, just outside the front door, “Where’s your mother?”

“Putting Elliot te sleep,” Cathal false whispered, “So we have te be quiet.”

This was wrong. There was no place for him here. Fool, what a fool. Marcus half turned around to walk away when he heard Caroline’s throaty voice.

“Ah, Kerry, good te see yeh. Where’s Marcus?”

He swallowed, praying his heart would stop pounding against his chest, and adjusted his ill-fitting suit as she approached him.

“Marcus, what are you doing out there? Come in! I haven’t seen you in so long.”

Caroline was perfect in every way, a sign of God’s very existence, for who else could create a being like her? Tall and severe like the Kanas Mountains that surrounded Killbraugha. The roughness of the countryside and being married to a rebel had worn away all superficial beauty, but left behind a true and tested soul more beautiful than the most precious jewel in all of Telamacre. She shared Kerry’s thin and sharp snout, and (smaller) twirling horns. Her ears, however, were smaller and covered in less fur. Her high collared, grey and blue dress was stained and mended multiple times and her rough hands bore the scares of motherhood and poverty.

“Ah, yes, uh thank yeh,” he nodded hesitantly as he walked into the small cottage, his enormous size making it feel more cramp than it actually was.

His dark eyes instinctively swept the room, an exit plan forming in the back of his mind. The cottage consisted of one room, the only exit the front door and three small windows. Blankets lined around the roaring fire, the wooden crib resting before the warm flames.

“Forgive the mess,” Caroline whispered, resting a hand on his arm, “I tried te clean before you two arrived, but Elliot wouldn’t fall asleep and these two were fighting.”

“Fighting?” asked Kerry, sitting down on a splintering chair, the two boys jumping on his lap, “Now, what did I tell you two about fighting?”

“Make sure yeh can win before yeh start,” recited the oldest boy.

“Thank you, Kerry,” Caroline's sarcasm drawing a mischevious smile from her sibling, “Come, Marcus, sit down.”

He gulped as her hand glided off his arm and he bumped into a bushel of herbs hanging from the ceiling. He took a step back with ‘oh’.

“Sorry,” smiled Caroline, delicately pushing the herbs out of his way.

That sweet, warm smile inspired one of his own and he almost leaned forward before catching himself with an embarrassed cough and sat on Kerry’s right. The children stared at him curiously. He had only been here a few times before and they had been so young, no one could expect them to remember him. They slowly glanced back at their uncle and Harry grabbed his ear.

“Woah there! I need that.”

“Harry,” Caroline quietly scolded as she pulled the kettle from the fire, “We don’t grab ears!”

“You’ve got a strong grip,” said Kerry, rubbing his ear.

“They’re really fuzzy,” grinned the young Ilkhatal.

“Yes, Kerry inherited Grandpa Ross’s ridiculously hairy ears,” smirked Caroline, pouring three glasses of tea.

“They’re not ridiculously hairy,” frowned Kerry.

Caroline shot him a knowing glance. Harry stood up in his lap, stepping on Cathal’s hand in the process, and nuzzled his snout against Kerry’s furry ear, giggling.

“Ow! Harry!” snapped the oldest Ilkhatal, hopping off Kerry’s lap.

Quiet!” Caroline hushed as the baby made a noise.

The room froze as Caroline held her hand out, watching the crib like a hawk, but thankfully the baby settled back to sleep. Caroline sighed with relief before rounding on her children, “Behave you two or you can go outside and do your chores.”

The sons promised to be good as Caroline passed out the tea.

“How do you take yours, Marcus?”

“It’s fine like this. Thank yeh.”

“I can get you cream. I have a little left over.”

“Oh, no, please. It’s perfect,” Marcus stumbled over his own words and took a sip to settle his nerves.

He looked down in surprise as Cathal pulled on his sleeve.

“Cathal! Be polite,” snapped Caroline, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. How may I help yeh?” Marcus asked, ignoring Kerry’s amused smile.

“I don’t know yeh and Ma says I should introduce myself te strangers. I’m Cathal,” said the young boy, sticking out his hand.

Marcus wrapped two fingers around his small hand and shook it.

“Marcus Galloway.”

The small Ilkhatal nodded his head and looked him over.

“You’re big.”

“Cathal!”

“Yes, I am.”

“My Da was small. I don’t wante be small.”

“I want Uncle ‘Erry’s ears,” grinned Harry, curling up against Kerry’s chest.

“There is nothing wrong with my ears!”

“They could be used as carpet, Kerry,” said Caroline.

“Wow!” said Cathal, his eyes widening as he placed his hand inside Marcus’ large hand, “Ma, look!”

“Shh, Cathal. And well, he’s a grown Ilkhatal. You’re still young.”

“But look,” he moaned.

Marcus held out his arm as Cathal mournfully examined his muscles, Caroline huffing as she struggled to contain her embarrassment before jumping out of her chair, reprehending herself under her breathe.

“What’s wrong, Cara?” asked Kerry.

“I forgot Farmer Knealey promised me a bit of beef for our stew. I’m sorry, but Kerry, Marcus, could you look after the children for a half hour? He lives just down the road.”

“Woah!” said Cathal, hanging from Marcus’ arm as he rose from his chair.

“Yeh can’t go alone!” Marcus interjected before anyone else could, “It’s not safe.”

Another sound from the crib and Kerry throw him a crossed glare.

“She’ll be safer without us than with us,” he hissed, “We’re the wanted ones, remember?”

“I’ve been alone for a long time now, Marcus,” said Caroline, her warmth subsumed by a steely determination, “I assure you I can take care of myself.”

“Please, Mrs. McDermott,” he whispered, immediately wondering why he went with such a formal address, “Let me accompany yeh. No one will recognize me. I assure yeh. I am a master at disguises.”

Another sentence that made him want to kick himself, especially as he registered Kerry’s judgmental look. Caroline glanced at her fussing baby before saying, “Very well, Marcus, if you insist.”

One could hardly call this his most successful disguise, a battered and mended cloak draped around his suit and a large harvest hat that barely fit his head, his horns piercing through the straw, ruining it for any future use. Kerry told him it made him more conspicuous but Caroline said nothing and so he followed her out dressed like the fool he was. They walked to Knealey’s farm in silence, Marcus trying hard to swallow normally as his heart pounded in his long ears. He did his best not to spend too much time watching Caroline’s every move, but his eyes naturally gravitated towards her. She no longer wore her black mourning clothes, but the sorrow and lost was still palpable, as if it replaced her bones and blood and she would disappear without it. He was a fool and a sinful Ilkhatal for coveting a widow still trapped in her loss. Her husband died only two years ago. He didn’t even get to meet Elliot before the end. Selfish idiot!

“Thank you for coming with me,” she said, holding a wicker basket containing the small, wrapped piece of meat and random vegetables.

“I could not let yeh travel alone.”

Thick, white clouds crawled across the clear blue sky, softly blanketing the gentle slopes, and shielding them from the burning sun. In the distance stood the towering and jagged Kanas Mountains, their peaks lost in the lazy clouds. Unmoving, intimidating but beautiful, so much like Caroline.

“If it was out of nothing more than your misguided sense of duty, then you insult me,” she snapped with uncharacteristic defiance and anger, “Imagine being arrogant enough te think I need protecting because I am lowly mother and a widow, as if I haven’t survived without yeh or Kerry for months at a time. Or did yeh imagine I’d be grateful that I finally had a strong partner te protect me. That I spend every day terrified for my life and the life of my sons and if only someone would come save us-”

She stopped short and her ears flickered in embarrassment as she held her basket closer to her body and avoided his astonished gaze.

“Mrs-Caroline,” he began, his tongue unable to move without tripping over itself.

Oh, to speak what was in his heart. To embrace her and tell her he loved her and that he came because to be separated from her for even a moment was pure torture. How he wanted to beg please, please love me too.

“I’m sorry I offended yeh,” he settled, avoiding her gaze, “I-It grieves me that I’ve convinced yeh I could ever think so little of yeh. I know what yeh are capable of and I-“

Worship you for it.

“Whatever your reason,” she began, her full on accent disappearing as she regained her composure, “I’m glad you are here. It is nice te have company now and then.”

“Yeh sound like Kerry.”

A rare half smile flirted across her snout.

“I hope they help more than they cause trouble.”

“I would be lost without them. They are the leader I wish I could be.”

He felt her gaze travel over his large form, and he chose to believe it was a gaze of compassion.

“They are fond of you,” she said, “I’ve never heard them praise anyone but you.”

“There isn’t much te praise.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

He raised his brows in unexpected joy, and she added, “Kerry tells me you were once part of the Order of St. Thomas, is that true?”

“Yes,” he replied, wondering why he always had to feel unstable around her.

Why couldn’t he just be honest and risk the shame and rejection?

“I was raised by the monks, but I never took my vows. The Hevians saw te that.”

“And now you’re a rebel," she said and Marcus frowned at the unspoken question.

“When the Hevians burnt down the monastery, they not only took everything from me, but they also took away our god. I had no other choice but te join the IFM. We will only be free te preach the true religion, amongst other things, once they are destroyed.”

“Will God forgive you for that?”

“It is God who placed me on this path. This is His plan for me.”

Her face softened as she glanced his way.

“And what will you do once we are free?”

“I will rebuild the monastery and leave it in proper hands.”

“You will not preach there?”

His frown grew.

“I cannot, in good conscience, preach His Word on such holy ground.”

“Where will you go once the monastery is rebuilt?”

“I don’t know. Wherever God needs me, I suppose.”

They walked around a bend and saw her house, a little less than a mile away, the black smoke crawling across the cloudy sky. He awkwardly scratched the bridge of his nose as Caroline broke off a piece of wheat and played with it.

“Thank you for coming over. I know it is unsafe and you are busy, but I enjoy having you and Kerry around. It is good for the boys.”

“They’re good boys. Rambunctious, but good boys.”

“They’re excited. They love Kerry.”

“They’re good with them.”

“They’re an ideal unty.”

They walked in silence before Caroline threw the piece of wheat away and refused to look at him.

“Do you ever see yourself with a family?”

He choked on his own breath as he stumbled forward, tripping over his large feet. She grabbed his arm and he swallowed, his heart threatening to burst out of his chest, his mind screaming at him to escape before he did something foolish. Her grip warm, even though the cloak and suit, and he wanted to shift deeper into her arms until she held him close, stroking his back and telling him it was ok. He was home. He was hers.

“I’m sorry if it’s a forward question,” she said, her ears lowered and her own snout twisted and turned with embarrassment, but there was a wild and determine look in her eyes, as if she had been wrestling with a great beast and this was to be the end of them both.

“It’s a surprising question,” he said, swallowing his fear and desire.

She looked down as she slipped her hand from his arm.

“An Ilkhatal who sacrifices everything for his god and country, should not die alone.”

“Such a Ilkhatal is not made for a family.”

She stared at him, her cold, grey eyes flashing.

“Why?”

It was an accusation as much as a question.

“I already married one rebel and we had three boys. Why would it be different for u-”

She caught herself and looked away, her face twisted in embarrassment.

“Caroline!”

He didn’t know how or why, but he held her close by her arms, one of her hands resting on his broad chest, the other holding the basket between them.

“I’m sorry,” he said, taking a step back, his mind spinning, his world no longer making sense.

She placed the basket on the ground and grabbed his large, callused hands.

“Marcus?”

By God, she was beautiful, the only pure being on Telamacre. So much like the Kanas Mountains, a towering figure of strength and untouchable virtue. No, not a being of stone, but a living, breathing woman who could shatter God himself with a glance, but who also needed trust and love. Someone to share the burden of this world with. He was the wrong Ilkhatal. He had only known the demanding righteousness of God and the brutality of war.

“Caroline, if things were different, if I was different. I would…”

She took off the harvest hat and let it fall to the ground as she gently rested a hand on his scaly cheek.

“I don’t think you are destined te fade away after this war nor are you meant te carry that burden alone. Our God is not that cruel.”

“It is our own foolishness that invites cruelty inte this world,” said Marcus, avoiding her gaze.

“Then don’t be a fool who thinks he can decide for the both of us,” she said, a harshness entering her voice, “I know what you are, who you are, and what that means for us. I’m no fool, but I love you.”

His eyes widened as he met her earnest gaze.

“And that means embracing you for who you are, the good and the bad.”

He wrapped his hands around her own and brought them to his chest.

“Long have I loved yeh, Caroline,” he said gasped, her own strength and courage providing him the push he needed, “but I cannot give myself te yeh, just yet. Not the way a husband should. The war…it requires too much of me.”

“Then we marry when we are free,” she said, closing her eyes and nuzzling her snout against his, almost as if she was searching for forgiveness or acceptance.

He tightened his hold on her hands and nervously returned her affection.

“But know this, Marcus. From this moment forth, I am yours and you are mine. Whatever you can give me, I will accept. You’ve lived a dark and lonely life for so long, Marcus, but no more.”

He rested a scaly and clawed hand on her cheek and closed his eyes as he nuzzled his snout against hers. His arm snaked around her waist as she grabbed at his suit, their snouts rubbing and nipping at each other’s scales. How long had he wanted to hold her like this? To speak of his love and have it returned. To submerge himself in her warmth and love and know that he had a home when this war was over. That he had a purpose beyond the battlefield.

He slowly opened his eyes and took a step back, his arm still around her waist, and their snouts barely touching. She looked at him expectantly, her dignity and discipline slowly returning.

“I am yours and your are mine,” he whispered and they both smiled and he knew God heard their vows and accepted them.

She pecked his cheek before breaking away and picking up her basket, glancing at him shyly as she offered her hand. He took it and kissed it before they walked towards the cottage, hand in loving hand. 

#writers on tumblr #queer writers #demiromantic #queer anthro crocs #queer anthro crocodiles #anthro crocodile #anthromorphic crocodile #character relationships #short story #my writing #Marcus Galloway #Caroline McNair #Kerry McNair #aromantic #demiromantic character #aromantic character

[daviddshiki]

The Adventures of David Dashiki-Stories of an African American Hero...Year of the Black Man-2024

The first and greatest Black orator of the twentieth century was not, as a young printer in Jamaica, a natural speaker: this young, private, intense activist taught himself through trial and humiliation until he learned to speak with fiery immediacy to audiences of any size." The excellence and power of Garvey's oratory was the single most uncontroversial of his attributes, Garvey's enemies were as dazzled by his speeches as his admirers. The fluency of his speeches lay in the fact that he had something to say, something which touched so deeply that it constituted an outpouring from the heart and found response in his hearers." (Historian's reflection on the impact of the oratory of Marcus Garvey).

I was raised in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York-(Daddy Dashiki speaks). If you have never heard of it, it is the sports capitol of the universe. We played everything with ball in it...Punch Ball, Stick Ball, Baseball, Softball, Stoop Ball, Box Ball, Dodge Ball, Football and when Bill Ware's brother discovered a new kind of ball at his local high school, we played Soccer in the streets. Injury comes with sports part and parcel. The mash unit for me was the kitchen table and the doctor was DeDe Dashiki, my mother.

With so many scrapes and bruises, I suffered battle fatigue. One day, I asked Mama De De if there was not another remedy besides IODINE . It was as painful as Hell. I explained to her. Well, not in that language. She stared me down. " Would you prefer to do this yourself? You need to act like the man you profess to be. All puffed up but only air inside. Of course, it hurts. That is what tells me it's working. " To this day, I remember those words. " There are times when we have to suffer and sacrifice to achieve a cure. That pain shows us that we are moving toward our goal. For what we want to accomplish in this Year of the Black Man 2024..will require a little sting. Our forefathers understood that. They endured that pinch in spite of the fact that there was no safety or relief in sight. What we overlook is that our opposition wants us to focus on the imminent pain and not the goal. Since we are what we think about most of the time, focusing on the impending discomfort will make the racist living conditions of being Black in America more palatable in comparison to the prick. De De was right as always. There were greater sacrifices made. Dr. Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, Herbert Lee, Roman Ducksworth, Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Caroline Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, Louis Allen, Henry Hezekiah Dee, Charles Eddie Moore, Oneal Moore...Those were the fighters who did not run from conflict. They stood fearlessly. The sting did not threaten them. Therefore , we have a responsibility, a mandate to be unafraid, to be steadfast in this struggle. In this way, we honor our dead.

We must act for the freedom promised. We must act because we are in a war against our existence but has never been declared . We must act for so many lives have been lost. We have suffered but America has even more so. With all of the killings, lynchings, segregation, discrimination, prejudice, racism , bias, bigotry, injustice, inequity and hatred, what has America gained? What it has lost is the full and complete contribution of an erudite, scholarly, creative, dynamic, dignified, loyal and industrious segment of its citizenry, Badass Black Folks. We are not where we should be or could be since all of us are not free.

Black Men, we must respond because our country needs us to keep the vision of America ever present in the mind and heart of its people. Why should we be the victims of a mentally deficient few? Why do we suffer the indignities and insults of the injured illiterates? Why should we have to fight for rights granted every other ethnic group in the country save us? . No! We stand up and make our desires, rights and wishes known. We prepare ourselves and especially our children for a life that white people in America enjoy. We fall no longer for the strategies inflicted upon us daily. There is nothing wrong with us except that you refuse to release us from the bonds and chains of racism. We have long ago paid our dues. In this moment, we want to collect on the debt you owe us. We have worked for it. We have earned it. We deserve it and we are willing to endure the IODIE to attain it.

This is what we know and are ready to act on. America has not made any commitment about securing for African Americans all the rights guaranteed all of its white citizens,

There has been a war declared on Black citizens by white citizens to prevent them from acquiring said rights. This is evident in every state in the union. There is a uniformity of negative treatment toward Blacks in America

The effort to maintain a state of second -class citizenship for Black Americans is fostered through the school system.

Black schools are providing an inferior product of education for its Black children.

Whereas white education is designed to prepare white children for success in the world with the complete and full cooperation of the system , parents, and political power brokers.

Black children who demonstrate high academic achievement are in the minority in Black schools and considered an anomaly. The rate of failure far exceeds high scholarship. The schools have inferior outcomes and more children are referred to special education than to specialized high schools. It is a system designed toward genocide rather than academic freedom.

There is no concern that these schools have been failing Black children for decades. If they were NON -profit enterprises, they would go under, have to close shop. These institutions of learning in a sentence can be described as follows, " Throw them into special education and close the door."

Black Men , We have to organize and act. Forget the IODINE. ACT!!!!!

#education #politics #culture #quotes

[winsonsaw2003]

I'm Looking For Descendants Of Major John Frederick Aldophus McNair (1828-1910)

I'm looking for descendants from Major John Frederick Aldophus McNair to share for some information.

Major John Frederick Aldophus McNair(1828-1910),son of Major Robert McNair & Elizabeth Catherine ?.He married 1stly, Sarah des Granges Paine & 2ndly, Madalena Vallence.His issue:- i) Elizabeth Alcock McNair(1851-1921)married Thomas Scott.Their issue:- ai)Robert Frederick McNair-Scott(1870-1957)married to Alice Eliza Nystrom. His issue:- bi)Thomas Frederick McNair-Scott(1901-2001)married to Mary Dwight Baker. His issue:- ci)Robert McNair Scott. cii)Carolyn McNair Scott. bii)Alice Irene McNair-Scott(1903-?)married to Rudolph Camerer. biii)Ronald Guthrie McNair-Scott(1906-1995)married to Mary Cecilia Berry. His issue:- ci)Gillian Mary McNair Scott born in 1931.She married to Charles Ivor Mervyn Williams. Their issue:- di)Oliver Mervyn Williams born in 1953. dii)Richard Charles Williams born in 1955. diii)Lucinda Mary Williams born in 1956.She married to Philip Carspecken. div)Samuel Thomas Morgan Williams born in 1959.He married to Isabel Tara Mary Macauley. cii)Thomas Michael McNair Scott(1935-2002) married to Susannah Hodges. His issue:- di)Simon Guthrie McNair Scott born in 1960. dii)Sarah McNair Scott born in 1966. ciii)Alison Linda McNair Scott born in 1936.She married to Laurence Charles Kevin Kelly. Their issue:- di)Rosanna Mary Kelly born in 1964. dii)Rachel Sophia Kelly born in 1965. civ)Valerie Susan McNair Scott born in 1939.She married to Thomas Frank Dermot Pakenham. Their issue:- di)Anna Maria Pakenham born in 1965. dii)Eliza Pakenham born in 1966. diii)Edward Melchior Pakenham born in 1970. div)Frederick Augustus Pakenham born in 1971. cv)Nigel Guthrie McNair Scott born in 1945.He married to Anna Margaret Colquhoun. His issue:- di)Robert William McNair Scott born in 1970. dii)Alastair Nigel McNair Scott born in 1972. diii)David Ronald McNair Scott born in 1973. div)Benjamin Guthrie McNair Scott born in 1976. biv)Beatrice McNair-Scott(1909-?). bv)? McNair-Scott married Patrick Wyndham Murray-Thriepland. aii)Lilian Susan Scott(1871-1887). aiii)Amy Elizabeth Scott(1873-1948)married to Hobart John William Barlee. ii)Robert Frederick McNair(1851-1857). iii) James William Augustus McNair(1853-1940) married Caroline Mary Hodgson.His issue:- ai) Grace Edith McNair(1882-1946) married John George Murray.Their issue:- bi) James Bell Murray(1907-1934). iv)George McNair(1857). v)Grace McNair(1859-1902) married E. Stanley Smith. vi)Annie Frederica McNair(1863-1913) married to Charles Stringer. His issue:- ai)Alice Mary Stringer(1885-?). aii)Charles John McNair Stringer(1893-?) married ?. His issue - bi) ? Stringer(1926-?). bii)Cedric McNair Stringer married?. vii) Arthur Wyndham McNair(1872-1965) married Elizabeth Eva Dawn Griffith.His issue:- ai) Jean Ivy Dawn Madalena McNair(1906-?) married Neville David Watts-Russell.Their issue - bi)Jane Watts-Russell(1936-?). bii) David O'Reilly Watts-Russell(1944-?) married Susan Elliott.His issue:- ci) Edward David Watts-Russell. cii) Miranda Watts-Russell. ciii) Emily Susan Watts-Russell. civ) Tabitha Rose Watts-Russell. aii) Ian Arthur John Griffith McNair(1904-1986) married Daphne Margaret Whitworth. His issue - bi) Ian Alexander McNair(1940-?). bii) Flora Mary Rose McNair(1942-?). biii) ? McNair(1946-?). aiii)Douglas Fenn Wyndham McNair(1914-?) married to Rosemary Dew Monro.His issue:- bi) Duncan John Michael McNair(1945-?). bii) Bruce Wyndham McNair(1946-2005). aiv)Captain David McNair(1916-1999) married to Cecily Winifred Cyane Hawksley. bi)Robert Sheridan Hawksby McNair(1946-?). bii)Marilyn McNair(1947 -?). av) Elizabeth Primrose McNair(1919-?). Please contact me at :- [email protected]

[artisticlegshake]

24SEVEN BIRMINGHAM RESULTS 2017/18

Mini Solos:

1st Audrey Mayernik - EVOLVE STC

2nd Liv Garrett - THE HARGEST

2nd  Cece Feruson - BIRMINGHAM DANCE

3rd Halima Amin - BIRMINGHAM DANCE

4th Brennan Sanders - BIRMINGHAM DANCE

5th English Smith - MISS AMY'S

5th Vivian Wiginton - JILL'S

5th Blakeley Peterson - AMPLIFIED

6th Leila Winker - THE HARGEST

7th Lilly Wehby - BIRMINGHAM DANCE

7th Aubrie Barber - EXTREME DANCE

8th Caroline Wilder - EXTREME DANCE

8th Katelyn Freidt - ELEMENT HUNTSVILLE

9th Campbell Kent - THE FACTORY

10th CJ Smith - SOUTHERN SENSATIONS

10th Erica Grace McNair - DANCE FUSION

Junior Solos:

1st Marion Norris - ABJ STC

2nd Arianna Quant - STARS STC

3rd Eliza Farr - EVOLVE STC

3rd Chloe Lois Pickrell - ABJ STC

4th Madeline Kurz - BIRMINGHAM DANCE STC

4th Kendall Crabtree - BIRMINGHAM DANCE STC

4th Haley Wilson - RENNER STC

5th Sophia Ormstedt - NORTH ALABAMA

6th Abbigayle Busenlehner - ENCORE

6th Anna-Katherine Risalvato - JULIE'S

7th Kaylin Motton - HEIDI KNIGHT

7th Maggie Ray - ABJ

7th Ethan Morris - MISS AMY'S

8th Makayla Spencer - RHYTHM

8th Quincy Wilson - BIRMINGHAM DANCE

9th Cate Geer - BIRMINGHAM DANCE

10th Ainsley Raegan Dobbs - ACPA

10th  Lulu Gray - THE HARGEST

#24seven birmingham

[ericfruits]

Our pick of the decade’s eight best young economists

“THE SOLUTION in Vietnam”, said William DePuy, an American general in 1966, “is more bombs, more shells, more napalm.” But where exactly to drop it all? To help guide the bombing, the Pentagon’s whizz kids calculated the threat posed by different hamlets to the American-backed government in South Vietnam. Fed with data capturing 169 criteria, their computer crunched the numbers into overall scores, which were then converted into letter grades: from A to E. The lower the grade, the heavier the bombing.

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Almost 50 years later, these grades caught the eye of Melissa Dell, an economist at Harvard University. Those letters, she realised, created an unusually clean test of DePuy’s solution. A village scoring 1.5 and another scoring 1.49 would be almost equally insecure. But the first would get a D and the second an E, thus qualifying for heavier bombing. To judge the effectiveness of the onslaught, then, a researcher need only compare the two. Simple.

Or not. Inconveniently, the scores had not survived: only the letter grades (and the 169 indicators underlying them, preserved because of an IBM lawsuit). To resurrect the algorithm that linked the two, Ms Dell embarked on what she calls a “treasure hunt”. She stumbled on an old journal article which suggested the army had removed hundreds of musty records waiting to be catalogued by the National Archives. She tracked those files to Fort McNair where a military historian dug out the matrices she needed to reverse engineer the algorithm.

That kind of tenacity is one reason why Ms Dell, who is still in her 30s, is among the best economists of her generation. We arrived at that conclusion based on an investigative strategy somewhat less sophisticated than those for which she is celebrated: we asked around, seeking recommendations from senior members of the profession. They named over 60 promising young scholars. We narrowed that list down to eight economists who we think represent the future of the discipline: Ms Dell and her Harvard colleagues Isaiah Andrews, Nathaniel Hendren and Stefanie Stantcheva; Parag Pathak and Heidi Williams of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Emi Nakamura of the University of California, Berkeley and Amir Sufi of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Taken together, they display an impressive combination of clever empiricism and serious-minded wonkery. They represent much of what’s right with economics as well as the acumen of top American universities in scooping up talent.

This is the fourth time we have assembled such a list, and a pattern emerges. The first group, from 1988, was dominated by brilliant theorists who brought new analytical approaches to bear on long-standing policy questions. Back then, theorists were treated like the “Mozarts” of the profession, according to one member of that generation. Two of these maestros have since been to Stockholm to collect Nobel prizes: Paul Krugman in 2008 and Jean Tirole in 2014.

In those days, empirical work enjoyed less prestige. As Edward Leamer of the University of California, Los Angeles noted earlier in the 1980s, “Hardly anyone takes data analyses seriously. Or perhaps more accurately, hardly anyone takes anyone else’s data analyses seriously.” It was easy for economists to proclaim a seemingly significant finding if they tweaked their statistical tests enough.

By 1998 theory was giving way to a new empiricism. One member of the cohort we chose that year, Harvard’s Michael Kremer, was arguing that randomised trials could revolutionise education, much as they had revolutionised medicine. Another, Caroline Hoxby of Stanford, showcased the creative potential of a “quasi-experimental” technique: the instrumental variable. She wanted to know whether competition for pupils improved school quality. But this was hard to gauge, because quality could also affect competition. To untie this knot, she employed an unlikely third factor—rivers—as an “instrument”. Places densely reticulated by rivers tend to be divided into many school districts, resulting in fiercer competition between them. If these locales also have better schools, it is presumably because of that competition. It is not because better schools cause more rivers.

This cohort’s Mozart—the empiricist with, if anything, “too many notes”—was Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago. In his view, “Economics is a science with excellent tools for gaining answers but a serious shortage of interesting questions,” as Stephen Dubner, a journalist, once put it. In pursuit of more compelling questions, he roamed freely, carrying his tools into unconventional and even quirky areas of research (penalty kicks, sumo and “The Weakest Link”, a game show). The result was “Freakonomics”, a bestseller written with Mr Dubner, and a phalanx of imitators.

Ten years later, many of our picks of 2008 also excelled in empirical work. Esther Duflo of MIT institutionalised the randomised trials that Mr Kremer helped pioneer. Jesse Shapiro of Brown University—still under 40, but we are not allowing double dipping—delighted in some of the same empirical virtuosity as Mr Levitt.

The work exemplified by these two waves of economists (and many others) amounted to a “credibility revolution” in the discipline, wrote Joshua Angrist and Jörn-Steffen Pischke, authors of the revolutionary movement’s textbook, “Mostly Harmless Econometrics”. Like many revolutions, this one was founded on a change in the mode of production: the introduction of personal computers and digitisation, which brought large bodies of data into economists’ laps.

Like all revolutions, this one was followed by a backlash. The critics lodged three related objections. The first was a neglect of theory: the new empiricists were not always particularly interested in testing formal models of how the world worked. Their experiments or cleverly chosen instruments might show what caused what, but they could not always explain why. Their failure to distinguish mechanisms cast doubt on how general their findings might be. Like jamming musicians who never write anything down, they could not know if their best grooves would return in new settings.

The second objection was a lack of seriousness. “Freakonomics” had encouraged an emerging generation of economists to trivialise their subject, their critics alleged, somewhat unfairly. “Many young economists are going for the cute and the clever at the expense of working on hard and important foundational problems,” complained James Heckman, a Nobel laureate, in 2005.

The new empiricists were also accused of looking for keys under lampposts. Some showed more allegiance to their preferred investigative tools than to the subject or question under investigation. That left them little reason to return to the same question, unless they found more neat data or a new oblique approach. This hit-and-run approach makes some scholars nervous, since even a perfectly designed one-off experiment can deliver a “false positive”.

Delving deeper

Where does that leave today’s bright young things? This year’s cohort has certainly picked up its predecessors’ empirical virtuosity. Their papers are full of the neat tricks that enlivened the credibility revolution. Mr Pathak and his co-authors have compared pupils who only just made it into elite public schools with others who only just missed out, rather as Ms Dell compared villages on either side of the Pentagon’s bombing thresholds. The study showed that the top schools achieve top-tier results by the simple contrivance of admitting the best students, not necessarily by providing the best education. Ms Dell and her co-author showed that bombing stiffened villages’ resistance rather than breaking their resolve.

Ms Williams has exploited a number of institutional kinks in the American patent system to study medical innovation. Some patent examiners, for example, are known to be harder to impress than others. That allowed her to compare genes that were patented by lenient examiners with largely similar genes denied patents by their stricter colleagues. She and her co-author found that patents did not, as some claimed, inhibit follow-on research by other firms. This suggested that patent-holders were happy to let others use their intellectual property (for a fee).

Our economists of 2018 also show great doggedness in unearthing and refining new data. Ms Dell is interested in the economic consequences of America’s decision to “purge” managers from Japan’s biggest companies after 1945. To this end she is helping develop new computer-vision tools that will digitise musty, irregular tables of information from that time.

For a paper called “Dancing with the Stars”, which shows how inventors gain from interactions with each other. Ms Stantcheva and colleagues painstakingly linked some 800,000 people in a roster of European inventors to their employers, their location and their co-inventors in order to find out what sorts of propinquity were most propitious. Mr Hendren has joined forces with Harvard’s Raj Chetty (another of our alumni of 2008) to exploit an enormous cross-generational set of data from America’s census bureau. The data link 20m 30-somethings with their parents, who can be identified because they once claimed their offspring as dependents on their tax forms. The link has allowed Mr Hendren to study the transmission of inequality from one generation to the next.

The 2018 cohort’s combination of clever methods and dogged snuffling out of data comes along with a rejection of some of the more frolicsome manifestations of earlier new empiricists. Many of them display an admirable millennial earnestness. They are mostly tackling subjects that are both in line with long-standing economic concerns and of grave public importance. Ms Williams seeks a more rigorous understanding of technological progress in medicine and health care, which many commentators casually assert was the largest factor in improving people’s lives over the past century. Ms Dell is interested in the effects of economic institutions, such as the forced labour used in Peruvian silver mines before 1812. The lingering consequences of that colonial exploitation are visible, she says, in the stunted growth of Peruvian schoolchildren even today.

Ms Stantcheva studies tax, perhaps the least cute subject in the canon. As well as investigating the public opinions and values that shape today’s tax systems, she also studies taxation’s indirect and long-term consequences. Taxation can, for example, inhibit investments in training or scare off the inventors who drive innovation. On the other hand, successful professionals often have to work hard as a signal of their ability to their bosses, who cannot observe their aptitude directly. That rat race, she points out, limits their scope to slack off even in the face of high top rates of tax. With Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics (the most obvious omission from our list in 2008) and another co-author, she has explored how tax rates affect rich people’s incentives to work, to underreport income, and to bargain for higher pay at the expense of their colleagues and shareholders. When that third incentive predominates, top rates as high as 80% might be justified.   

Mr Hendren’s work on the market’s failures to provide health insurance was, he says, “ripped from the headlines” of the Obamacare debate. His more recent research on social mobility is almost as topical. The son of a black millionaire, he has found, has a 2-3% chance of being in prison. Among white men only those with parents earning $35,000 or less have odds of incarceration that high. Black disadvantage is not confined to bad neighbourhoods. Mr Hendren and his co-authors have discovered that black boys have lower rates of upward mobility than white boys in 99% of America’s localities. Young black women, on the other hand, typically earn a little more than white women with similarly poor parents. This research with Mr Chetty should inform a broad swathe of thinking about race in America.

Crisis? What crisis?

In short, our picks of 2018 are looking for the intellectual keys to important social puzzles; they are willing to move lampposts, turn on headlights or light candles to find them.

Mr Pathak provides a good example of this question-driven, issues-first approach. In his work on school choice he began by examining the matching algorithms that many American cities use to decide which pupils can attend oversubscribed schools. Previous systems encouraged parents who were in the know to rank less competitive “safety schools” above their true favourites. Mr Pathak’s research has helped promote mechanisms that allow parents to be honest.

Now that these improved formulae have caught on, Mr Pathak’s algorithmic expertise is less urgently required. A different kind of economist, committed to the algorithms more than the schools, might have dropped education for problems tractable to similar approaches in other fields. But Mr Pathak is exploring other ways to improve school quality instead.

This habit of sticking with big questions should make this generation of scholars less vulnerable to the curse of false positives. But this is not the only way in which the new crop is helping to clean up the academic literature. One rule of thumb when reading journals is that dull results that nonetheless reach publication are probably true, but that striking, eminently publishable stories should be taken with a pinch of salt. Mr Andrews’s quantitative work on these problems seeks to weigh out the appropriate salt per unit of splashiness. According to his calculations, studies showing that the minimum wage significantly hurts employment are three times more likely to be published than studies finding a negligible impact. Knowing the size of this bias, he and his co-author can then correct for it. They calculate that minimum wages probably damage employment only half as much as published studies alone would suggest.

Mr Andrews has also scrutinised the instrumental variables that featured so heavily in the credibility revolution. To work well, an instrument (such as the river networks Ms Hoxby used as a proxy for school competition) should be tightly linked to the explanatory factor under examination. Often the link is weaker than economists would like, and their efforts to allow for this may be less adequate than they suppose. Mr Andrews and his co-authors have reassessed the reliability of 17 articles published in the profession’s leading journal, suggesting better ways for economists to handle the instruments they use. “No econometrician has generated more widespread excitement than him in a very long time,” according to Edward Glaeser of Harvard (one of our 1998 batch).

So how have these question-driven economists tackled the biggest economic question of the past decade: the global financial crisis? That disaster posed a problem for quasi-experimental empirical methods, which work better for data-rich microeconomics than for macroeconomics, where the data are less plentiful. The scope for macroeconomic experimentation is also limited. On April Fools’ Day an economist circulated an abstract purportedly co-written by Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen in which the former central bankers revealed they had raised and lowered interest rates randomly during their stints in office in a covert experiment known only to themselves. In reality, as Ms Nakamura points out, the Federal Reserve employs hundreds of PhDs to make sure its decisions are as responsive to the economy (and therefore non-random) as possible.

None of today’s bright young macroeconomists have reinvented their sub-discipline in the wake of the Great Recession in the way that John Maynard Keynes did after the Great Depression (although Keynes was already 52 when he published “The General Theory”). If they had they would have drawn more attention from the nominators of this list.

Yet, unlike our batch in 2008, this year’s group does contain two economists who have carried the credibility revolution some way into macroeconomics. Ms Nakamura, who writes many of her papers with Jon Steinsson, also at Berkeley, has used micro methods to answer macro questions. Working with the Bureau of Labour Statistics she has unpacked America’s inflation index, examining the prices for everything from health care to Cheerios entangled within it. Whereas macroeconomists typically look at quarterly national data, her work cuts up time and space much more finely. She has divided America into its 50 states and the passage of time into minutes. This has let her shed light on fiscal stimulus and the impact of monetary policy as seen through the half-hour window in which financial markets digest surprising nuances from Fed meetings.

One of her most provocative papers is also the simplest. She and her co-authors argue that America’s slow recovery from its recent recessions is not the result of a profound “secular stagnation” as posited by Larry Summers (one of our 1998 picks). Rather it reflects the fact that the rise in the number of working women, rapid for several decades after the war, has since slowed. In the past, the influx of women put overall employment on a strong upward trajectory. Thus after a recession, the economy had to create a lot of jobs to catch up with the rising trend. In more recent decades, employment trends have flattened. Thus even a relatively jobless recovery will restore the economy to its underlying path.

Our final pick, Mr Sufi, is, like Ms Nakamura, exploiting voluminous data unavailable to scholars of previous downturns to understand the Great Recession. Had America merely suffered from an asset bubble in housing (like the dotcom bubble of the 1990s) or a lending mishap (like the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s), it could have weathered the storm, he feels. But high levels of household debt made the spending fall unusually severe and the policy response (a banking rescue and low interest rates) surprisingly ineffective. Mr Sufi and Atif Mian of Princeton University find evidence for their macro-view in a micro-map of debt, spending and unemployment across America’s counties. The households of California’s Monterey county, for example, had debts worth 3.9 times their incomes on the eve of the crisis. Spending cutbacks in counties like this accounted for 65% of the jobs lost in America from 2007 to 2009, they estimate. The Obama administration’s failure to provide more debt relief for homeowners with negative equity was the biggest policy mistake of the Great Recession, they say.

Because they want to change the world, not just delight in its perversity, many of these economists engage closely with policy. Ms Stantcheva now sits on France’s equivalent of the council of economic advisers. Mr Sufi is pushing for mortgage payments to be linked to a local house-price index, falling when the index does, but allowing the lenders a small slice of the homeowners’ gains if the market rises. He and Mr Mian have also proposed linking student-loan repayments to the unemployment rate of recent graduates.

Intriguingly, this concern for real-world outcomes is pushing some of these young economists back towards theory. In recommending a policy reform, an economist is saying that it serves some objective better than the status quo. That objective needs a theoretical rationale. A goal like improving well-being might seem bland and unexceptionable. But most policies hurt some people while helping others. How should society weigh the hurt against the help?

Ms Stantcheva and Emmanuel Saez of Harvard have proposed a theoretical framework that accommodates different answers to that question (utilitarian, libertarian, Rawlsian, and so on). Meanwhile Mr Hendren has calculated that the American tax system is implicitly willing to impose $1.5-2 of hurt on rich people to provide $1 of help to the poor. That provides one possible benchmark for evaluating new policies.

Engaging with policy can take a toll. “I’ve testified in about 15 different school-committee meetings,” says Mr Pathak. “I’ve had families shouting at me.” But it is also stimulating, he adds, not just because it helps people, but also because it enriches research. “Testifying in school-committee meetings is one of the richest sources of research ideas I’ve ever had.”

When Thomas Menino, Boston’s long-serving former mayor, expressed concern that the city’s policy of busing kids to their school of choice across the city was undermining the sense of community around some schools, Mr Pathak looked into “walk zones”, which reserve systems some places for children living within walking distance. Seemingly innocuous details of such schemes turned out to have far-reaching effects. The theoretical subtleties he uncovered proved to be “incredibly rich”, Mr Pathak says, keeping him fruitfully busy for a couple of years on something that “there’s no way we would have looked at...without interacting with Boston and the mayor.” By answering practical questions rigorously, economists can both make themselves useful and be spurred in interesting new directions.

The importance of fingerwork

Mozart’s first biographer claimed that the child prodigy composed his music feverishly in his mind, without ever coming to the “klavier”. Many people came to believe that he could compose whole masterpieces while walking after dinner, travelling in a carriage or “in the quiet repose of the night”.

More recent musicology casts doubt on this account. Much of Mozart’s work was sketched out, or even improvised, on a keyboard; he is thought to have done little composition without one.

The theorists of the 1980s resembled the mythical Mozart of the popular imagination, completing beautiful deductive theories with their minds, before seeing how they played in the real world. The best young economists of today more closely resemble the less magical Mozart described by later scholars. Just as he walked back and forth between his compositional sketches and his piano, they move back and forth between their theoretical notation and their empirical instruments, searching for the keys to knowledge.

This article appeared in the Christmas Specials section of the print edition under the headline "Sweet and serious songs"

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[theblackguywhotips]

BDS 251: David West – World Traveler Rod and Justin discuss listener feedback, Kyle Lowry being sorry, Bob McNair regrets apologizing, Cam Newton's car hit by dump truck, NFL concussion settlement is broken, Lebron going after Saban, Lebron producing a civil rights documentary, Lebron supports women coaches, Brandin Cooks traded, Manziel, RG3 signed to Ravens, Ravens will be questioned in Kaepernick lawsuit, Dirk gets surgery, Drew Brees got hustled, Sebastian Telfair restraining order, Matt Barnes supports Stephon Clark, Joel Embiid hollas at Rhianna, Marvin Bagley's hook up, Caroline Wozniacki, girl kicked off Volleyball team because her Instragram, Von Miller catches a shark, Stedman Bailey coming back after shot in the head, Edelman reported school threat, MSU scandal grows, David West, golfer gets injured, Bucks make the play-offs, Noel suspended, NBA expands fan voting, NBA 2k draft, Big 3 law suit and a racist college coach.

[mihaelabodlovic]

Gary McNair’s work-in-progress ‘Locker Room Talk’, directed by Orla O’Loughlin, Traverse Theatre.

The photographed performance features Alison Peebles, Jamie Marie Leary, Rachael Spence and Caroline Deyga.

©Mihaela Bodlovic. www.mihaelabodlovic.co.uk

[gadgetsrevv]

EURO 2020 qualifying: Northern Ireland 0-1 Germany live | Sports| German football and major international sports news | DW

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Northern Ireland 0-1 Germany

(Halstenberg 48′)

48′ GOAL! Northern Ireland 0-1 Germany (Halstenberg)

This time they make it count! Klostermann’s cross is flicked on by Brandt before Halstenberg lashes a fierce volley into the top corner under pressure from a chasing defender.

47′ How are they not in front?!

After biding their time in breaking the host’s press, Germany struggle to execute a goalscoring opportunity with Klostermann stinging the palms of Peacock-Farrell.

SECOND HALF

We’re back underway in Windsor Park. Germany need to raise their game after the break or hope their hosts tire if they’re going to claim top spot in Group C. 

Would this team be faring any better?

A look at the Germany side that faced Northern Ireland in 2017. 

HALF-TIME VERDICT

Both sides have squandered glorious goal scoring opportunities, but Northern Ireland had the better of the first-gal exchanges. Neuer, Süle and Tah have all had to come to their sides rescue, while at the other end Löw’s charges are struggling for ideas when it comes to carving out clear-cut chances of their own. Germany knew they were going to have a tough time against the Group C leaders and can count themselves lucky to still be level at the break. 

45′ Werneeeeerrrrrr!

A rare moment for the visitors as they get in behind Norther Ireland’s backline. A lovely pass over the top finds Klostermann who squares to Werner. Unmarked six yards out, he fails to beat Peacock-Farrell.

45′ WHAT A CHANCE!

A heart in mouth moment for Germany on the stroke of half-time. McNair whips a low cross into the box which is spilled by Neuer, Washington tries to pounce, but can’t given that Tah ends up sitting on the bal before Neuer gobbles it up.

44′ Half chance at best

Brandt tries to get the ball into the danger area from the right onyl to see his corss deflected to the edge of the area. Kroos is poised and ready, but sends a first-time volley into the ground and wide fo the target.

41′ Do you agree?

39′ Tah enters the fray

Germany are forced into an early change as Ginter is replaced by Tah after picking up an injury. 

38′ Close!

A lovely move down the right for Northern Ireland sees sizzling low cross that Washington narrowly fails to reach in front of goal.

37′ No firepower

It has to be said for all their attacking talents, Germany are struggling to create chances in front of goal.

34′ Getting to grips

Northern Ireland could easily have broken the deadlock in the opening exchanges, but Germany are now asserting themselves more positively on proceedings, winning back possession more quickly and decisively.

31′ Saved by the offside flag

McNair looks to release Washington in behind with an early pass, but the Northern Ireland striker is stopped in his tracks by the offside flag.

28′ Penalty claim – golden chance!

Germany have a shout at a spot kick as Werner’s shot deflects behind for a corner off the outstretched arm of Cathcart. No penalty given, but the visitors almost take the lead from the corner. A flick on finds Süle, who fails to get any power a stab at the ball from six yards out. 

24′ Freund eyes positive results

RTL co-commentator and former Germany international Steffen Freund: “They haven’t had it easy so far, but for Germany the minimum requirement against Nothern Ireland is four points from two games and that should suffice in Group C.”

21′ Best chance for Germany…

…goes begging and again it’s because of poor decision making. This time Reus is the guilty party as he went it alone in a crowded box when Werner had made the perfect run as the man over. The Dortmund man’s shot in blocked and Werner didn’t waste much time in sharing his thoughts on the situation.

18′ What a waste

Gnabry and Brandt have switched flanks and it almost makes an immediate impact with Germany breaking in transition with Werner. However, with time and space on his side the Leipzig striker fails to pick out the right pass. 

16′ Tough nut to crack

Germany enjoy their first extended period of possession under a cacophony of cat calls and whistles. The ball is worked to Gnabry on the edge of the box as the chance comes to nothing with the Bayern star crowded off the ball.

13′ Leading by example

Niklas Süle is forced to intervene with the hosts long-ball tactics causing problems and heads clear from the long throw that follows his clearance. He was bellowing at his teammates in between takes – Germany haven’t looked sharp, but Süle has.

10′ No calm in the storm

Northern Ireland are really taking the game to the visitors and have had the better of the opening 10 minutes.

7′ Chance at the other end

Germany break after the missed chance, but when Werner cuts inside his shot comes off the back of Brandt as the counter fizzles out.

7′ WHAT A SAVE!

That’s why Neuer still pips ter Stegen to the No1 jersey. Germany concede possession under a press presenting Washington with a golden opportunity to open the scoring. Neuer rushes off his line to close the angle and makes a huge save one-on-one. 

6′ First shot of the game

An extended period of possession for Northern Ireland produces the first sight of goal as Washington fails to connect cleanly on a strike that loops over the bar under Neuer’s watchful gaze.

4′ Testing the waters

First corner of the game goes the hosts way, but the delivery is wasteful and the following throw fails to produce a chance on goal.

3′ Ear plugs needed

Joachim Löw referred to the Northern Irish fans as “some of the loudest we’ve experienced, regardless of whether their team are winning or not” and the home fans are certainly drumming up a real racket.

KICK OFF!

After a rendition of Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline and both side’s respective national anthems the ball is rolling in Belfast! Can Germany bounce back from the defeat to the Netherlands?

Reus in preferred position

Löw went on to explain that tonight’s approach would take on a 4-3-3 shape with Reus dropping into the No10 position with Brandt starting out wide on the left. A chance for both Dortmund stars to shine, but expect them to interchange throughout the 90 minutes.

Joachim Löw talking to RTL

“It’s obviously an important game. You’ve got to do everything you can to take three points following a home defeat. Northern Ireland sit top of the group, but our only aim is to pick up a win. It will be tough – Northern Ireland are particularly tricky at home, but we’re well aware of just how important tonight’s clash is.”  

There’s only one Audi Völler?

One Northern Irish journalist has been sharing a momento from the 1982 meeting of these two sides with his German colleagues, who spotted a slight typo in the squad lists. 

Oh captain, my captain

Hopefully Manuel Neuer doesn’t pull a Lukas Hradecky and leave the national pennant in the changing room. The Leverkusen goalkeeper suffered the mishap last night as he captained Finland for the first time. 

Still no Havertz

The Bayer Leverkusen prodigy has struggled to carve out a role in the 3-4-3 set-up, but with a change in system, was expected to start tonight, especially given the absence of Gündogan. However, Löw had other ideas and has plumped for Brandt in midfield. The two are best friends off the pitch so something tells us Kai won’t begrudge Brandt getting the nod.

Leipzig triumvirate

With Klostermann, Halstenberg and Werner all featuring from the off, tonight’s clash with Northern Ireland is the first time Germany’s first eleven has had three Leipzig representatives. 

Confirmed line-ups: Northern Ireland

Just three players – Peacock-Farrell, Evans and Saville – have kept their place following the 1-0 win over Luxembourg. 

Confirmed line-ups: Germany

There are two changes to the side that lost to the Netherlands as Marcel Halstenberg replaces the injured Nico Schulz. The switch to a four-man backline has cost Jonathan Tah his starting berth with his former Leverkusen teammate Julian Brandt adding an extra body in midfield. 

— Northern Ireland will have to keep Serge Gnabry quiet if they have any aspirations of keeping a share of the spoils on home turf. The Bayern winger, who received the full backing from Löw before the clash with the Netherlands, has scored eight goals in his nine international appearances for Die Nationalmannschaft.

— Friday’s 4-2 defeat was a significant set-back for Germany, not only the loss in itself, but the manner in which it happened. A positive response is a must in Belfast even if talk of Joachim Löw’s demise was somewhat premature.  

— Will Germany be able to produce more worldies tonight? 

— Among the questions Löw needs to answer is what to do about Timo Werner in a Germany shirt. After a strong start to his international career, he’s now only got goals in the rout against Estonia and in the Nations League against the Netherlands since the World Cup warm up matches.

Löw has tried him in a few positions but there is a school of thought that he’s better with a strike partner, as he has at club level — Werner has got five in three Bundesliga games for Leipzig this season. He’s played all across the front three for Germany of late but the paucity of strikers means there’s a heavy weight on his shoulders.

— Joshua Kimmich was the player sat alongside Löw in the press conference ahead of the game and the Bayern Munich man is ready for a battle.

“We need to react, and that’s something that we will do,” he said. “Anyone who thinks tomorrow will be a walk in the park is completely off the mark.”

— We know that Löw will be keeping faith with one of the old guard tonight in Manuel Neuer but is there any way back for Boateng, Müller and Hummels? A fair number of people in the German press have suggested so in the wake of the defensive errors that cost Germany on Friday night. 

It’s difficult to see Löw going back on such a public, and big, call at this point and the reasons remain largely sound. But anything less than a win tonight and those calls may become louder.

 “Northern Ireland play with one central striker, which means for us that we only need two central defenders instead of three,” the coach has said. It’ll be interesting to see whether that’s Ginter or Tah. History suggests Löw will go with the former.

— Here’s how the German squad are preparing themselves for later on. It looks like they’re operating in more of a function room than a gym, but I guess they had the relevant permissions.

— Amid the talk of changes and recriminations after Friday’s display, it’s worth remembering that Germany had won 14 straight games in major tournament qualifiers since October 2015 before that game. Surely they can’t go two in a row, can they?

— This has been widely acknowledged as a rebuilding period for Germany but Kai Havertz, probably the best regarded of the country’s latest generation, hasn’t quite made the breakthrough on the international stage. Could tonight be his night?

—  Here’s Michael O’Neill on the size of the task for Northern Ireland tonight. 

“It [a positive result] would be right up there in terms of great Northern Ireland results,” the Northern Ireland boss said. “We’ve had big nights here in the past — the wins against England [2005] and Spain [2006] — but ultimately they never really led to anything.

“They didn’t lead to qualification. It was just a great experience and a great night for the fans. A result tomorrow night not only will be that but will also be a key factor in terms of qualification for Euro 2020.”

Northern Ireland face Germany and the Netherlands twice each in their next, and last, four qualifiers.

—  Northern Ireland top this qualifying group with four wins from four but have yet to play one of the big boys. All four wins have been fairly narrow, with Michael O’Neill’s men yet to score more than twice. A 1-0 friendly win over Luxembourg also speaks to a lack of real potency at the front end.

But O’Neill made history by taking his side to Euro 2016 and they’re defensively sound, with Premier League regulars Craig Cathcart and Jonny Evans the main men at the back. There’s bound to be a feverish atmosphere at Windsor Park, it could prove a tough task for Germany.

— Further back on the pitch, questionable defensive displays from fellow center backs Jonathan Tah and Matthias Ginter against the Netherlands have increased the pressure on Bayern Munich’s Niklas Süle as the leader of the defense.

But the former Hoffenheim man recently admitted that organization is a part of the game he has to work on.  “In my communication off the field, I am very strong. On the pitch, I am still lacking a little bit to be considered a real defensive leader,” he said last week. 

With Jerome Boateng and Mats Hummels consigned to the international wilderness, the squad do seem to lack a bit of nous and experience. Joachim Löw will hoping Süle and his teammates develop it over the rest of this campaign.

—  We know that the absence of Nico Schulz will force at least one change for Germany tonight but there’ll surely be more given the nature of the performance against the Netherlands. Julian Brandt, who has impressed for new club Borussia Dortmund largely from the bench, said he’s looking to get more than cameo appearances for the national side too.

“Of course 10 minutes isn’t my aim, that’s clear,” the 23-year-old told broadcaster Sport 1 at the weekend. “I can imagine we might switch from five at the back to four against Northern Ireland which gives someone the chance from the bench.” Will he be the man? It feels like Germany might need a player of his creative talents to unlock hosts who seem likely to sit deep.

— For the stat nerds out there, this will be Germany’s 18th game against Northern Ireland. The last meeting came in a World Cup qualifier in 2017, a game that Germany won 3-1 thanks to goals from Sebastian Rudy, Sandro Wagner and Joshua Kimmich. Germany’s record in this fixture is 11 wins, four draws and two defeats. The last defeat came in Euro qualifying back in 1983 — Norman Whiteside’s goal was enough to win the game in Hamburg.

— There were also calls for Mats Hummels to return after the defensive frailty on show in Hamburg. Löw has poured cold water over that, and quickly too. Amidst all of that talk and the Havertz hope, there’s also the goalkeeper question. What of Marc-Andre ter Stegen? He will sit on the bench, again. That ends that then.

— Excluding Gündogan from this graphic, who would you play in your starting XI for Germany tomorrow night? Tweet us your answers at DW Sports!

— In Belfast, Germany will be without Nico Schulz (ligament tear in his foot) and Ilkay Gündogan (flu). Löw seemed to suggest that Gündogan would have started, but without him perhaps there’s a chance for Kai Havertz?

— Hello! Germany are licking their wounds a bit after their defeat to the Dutch in Hamburg. There were question marks about style of play as Joachim Löw’s rebuild took a blow. Perhaps it was just a reality check for this Germany side, who are maybe not as good as they think they are? In any case, they have the chance to set the record straight on Monday night.

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#Uncategorized #Euro 2020 #germany #Northern Ireland EURO 2020 qualifying: Northern Ireland 0-1 Germa

[limejuicer1862]

F WORD WARNING

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Amanda Earl

is a Canadian poet, publisher, prose-writer, visual poet and editor who lives in Ottawa, Ontario. Her first and only poetry book so far is Kiki (Chaudiere Books, 2014). Amanda is the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the fallen angel of AngelHousePress. Connect with Amanda on Twitter @KikiFolle or visit AmandaEarl.com for more information.

The Interview

1. What inspired you to write poetry?

I didn’t even realize I was writing poetry until my mid thirties. I scrawled on pads of paper from my parents’ workplaces, all kinds of confessional stuff and complaints and lists. I made notes on index cards about everyone I knew and filed them in a metal box. I just wrote. I didn’t label it. I heard nothing but poetry by men from early childhood and up, whether it was in school or recitations by my father: Shakespeare, Victorian morality poetry, Edward Leer. I liked the rhyming and the sound play, and the images, but I rarely related to it. I dismissed the thought of poetry from my head.

In my mid-thirties, I was going through a period of depression and searched the Internet for solace. I came across the poet Mary Oliver’s poem, Wild Geese, Lorna Crozier’s Carrots (https://jeveraspoetryanthology.weebly.com/carrots.html) poem and also Gwendolyn MacEwen’s fascinating and dark mythological poems. These excited me and made me realize that perhaps I was also writing what could be called poetry. I still wasn’t sure.

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

My father, I suppose, but it didn’t feel like an introduction. He was always reciting poetry to me as a child.

3. How aware were you of the dominating presence of older poets?

More like the domineering presence. Since school curricula for literature were dominated by dead white men, I knew nothing about women poets until I found them in my Internet search in the 90s.  I wish I’d known about Plath and Sexton in my teenage years; although what darkness I would have dredged up back then under their influences… When I first started to realize I was writing poetry, it took me some time to find out about poets like Anne Carson who is willing to step out of traditional form to make poetry out of the long lost fragments of Sappho, accordion books about grief, little chapbooks placed in a box so readers can rearrange at will. Or Caroline Bergvall and her mesmerizing engagements with Old Norse. There’s just so much possibility out there for poetry and yet quite often the same white men, dead or alive, have their work published again and again and win prizes and are taught as the poetry that matters.

4. What is your daily writing routine?

According to Mason Currey in his book, Daily Rituals: Women at Work, the photographer Diana Arbus ritual was sex. (https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-daily-routines-10-women-artists-joan-mitchell-diane-arbus?fbclid=IwAR2fXdj7OUukk2c_-RUU8mxIhor8FRPaSWU3yJ0_f_W0t_DzUR8LQ3y3ej0) I usually start my day off with a good wank and at least an hour of pervy chat with a few random strangers. I shivered this morning after a particularly good orgasm. After that I drink Irish Breakfast tea, burn some incense and write or go outside, if it’s not too hot or cold, and wander about until I have no choice but to write. I carry a red journal with me for snippets of overheard conversation, some weird sound play that comes to me, or a doodle. My red journals are smeared in paint and tea stains.

5. What motivates you to write?

1. Lorca’s concept of the duende (https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Spanish/LorcaDuende.php) Death is near. I don’t want to be immortal, I just want to continue the conversation. I’m influenced by ghosts, such as Oscar Wilde and Djuna Barnes, Leonora Carrington, Jean Cocteau and Beatrice Wood.

2. Alienation. In some ways I live the standard North American life, but in others I don’t. I write and publish others full-time. I don’t have a nine to five job. I don’t drive. I don’t own property. I live downtown. My husband and I are in a passionate and open marriage. I write to reach out to that one kindred misfit in hope that they feel less alone. The Tragically Hip song “It’s a good life if you don’t weaken,” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwNVxvczgCs&feature=youtu.be) comes to mind. “Let’s get friendship right.”

6. What is your work ethic?

I follow three principles: whimsy, exploration and connection. I want to play; I want to learn new stuff and I want to write things that connect with those alienated by convention and the lonely. I punched a timecard as a late teen and I saw my parents punching those same damn cards. I loathe systems and routines and any attempts by external authorities to dictate my time, so I rebel against any system. I write because I breathe. It’s just part of me. Writing isn’t as tough as plumbing or surgery.

I serve the work rather than dictating what the work will be. I once spent three months learning about the sonnet because the manuscript I was working on had to be made up of sonnets, not because I wanted to but because the content required it somehow.  I wrote three of the damn things and gave up. They were awful. That manuscript remains unpublished.

I try to remain grateful and humble to have the opportunity to write. Sometimes my work gets published, which is a huge honour. I try to be careful not to let my ego tell me how great I am, because I’m not. I’m just in the right place at the right time and have found the right publisher somehow. This happens rarely.

I try not to take up too much space and leave space for writers who do not have the benefits granted by white colonialist publishing policies and attitudes that continue to prevail. I try to promote and publish 2SLGBTQIA, BIPOC, and D/deaf and disabled writers and look for ways I can support them when I can. I don’t do this enough.

7. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

I read the Exorcist, Mad Magazine, Archie Comics and Harlequin romance novels as a youngster. These works gave me a sense of irreverence that is important for my writing. In high school and university I studied French, German and Italian and finally got excited by literature. Dante made me fascinated with Heaven and Hell; Kafka made me fear insects; Baudelaire made me want to drink red wine. Rimbaud showed me that synaesthesisa, which I have, was not just something I experienced. Later I read Milton’s Paradise Lost. Early influencers of the long poem, I suppose, and the epic. I am writing an anti-epic these days. Red wine isn’t something I can stomach easily anymore. Now and then I’ll have a little Lagavulin in the tub.

8. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

Nathanaël for Je Nathanaël, for working in the spaces between genres and writing so beautifully of the body. Sandra Ridley for her ability to write long, mesmerizing poems and read them as if they are incantations. Christine McNair for syntactic daggers, sounds that are bitten off, and charm. Anne Carson for her sense of play and versatility. Canisa Lubrin for Voodoo Hypothesis, which is the only book she’s written so far, and it’s brilliant. I am awed by the skill in these poems, not just on a poetic level (diction, imagery, lineation, structure, balance) but also by the power of one writer’s willingness and ability to so effectively dismantle and bring to light the ongoing effects of racism while offering in-depth and tangible illustrations of the othered. Alice Notley for the Descent of Alette, a most extraordinary long poem. rob mclennan for his prolific writing and quiet poetry and bizarre wee stories. Amber Dawn for brave femme truths and incorporating subjects that are traditionally taboo in mainstream CanLit, such as sex work. Joshua Whitehead for the sheer invention and brilliance of Full Metal Indigiqueer which takes down the literary canon so skillfully. The writers in the anthology Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back Edited by Sandra Alland, Khairani Barokka & Daniel Sluman (http://ninearchespress.com/publications/poetry-collections/stairs%20and%20whispers.html) for the versatility and beauty of their writing. It’s good writing and more people should be aware of it. Ian Martin for self-deprecating comedy. Erín Moure for Elisa Sampedrin. Lisa Robertson for the gift of the sentence. Gary Barwin for his whimsy and willingness to play in numerous genres and media.

I wish Djuna Barnes was here. I’m always looking for a modern-day equivalent. Nightwood was an exquisite and poetic novel.

9. Why do you write, as opposed to doing anything else?

I don’t just write. I also play with paint, make visual poetry, which some might say is a form of writing, run two small presses, which do a bunch of things. I spend too much time on social media. I make countless lists. I watch a lot of films and tv. I listen to music. I wank. I fuck my husband. We cook glorious meals together. I go on long rambles and spend a lot of time in cafés. I cry and worry every day for the persecuted in this topsy turvy era where the Ogre in the House of White is making us all fear that the end of the world is close.

All these activities and emotions enter into my writing in some way.

10. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

I don’t know. I focus less on being a writer and more on writing. Writer sounds like a title and titles have a bunch of preconceived expectations I can’t satisfy. Same with poet. I just write.

But I guess, I’d tell them to be gentle on themselves, surround themselves with books, art, film and whatever inspires them. Ignore prescriptive rules, such as write what you know. Heather O’Neill, a fiction writer I admire, once said that for her to write, she has to be angry about something. At least that’s what I remember her saying at an Ottawa International Writers Festival event.

For me, I have to feel emotion of some sort, whether it is anger, sadness, love… I guess I would say to the person who wants to write that they are going to have to make sure that they don’t numb themselves. It’s easy in this era to want to numb ourselves against all the pain and suffering and power games going on, but when we numb ourselves, we don’t feel and if we don’t feel, it’s hard to respond. Writing, whether it’s directly political or not, is a response to what’s around us. I think it takes a great deal of empathy to write. It takes close listening and close watching.

Find a mentor. I’ve been fortunate in that rob mclennan has been extremely supportive of my work. He’s been honest when the stuff is shite. I still remember taking my first of his poetry workshops in 2006 and him telling me I was writing zombie poems.

He’s published many of my chapbooks through above/ground press and my book, Kiki through Chaudiere Books. He always encourages me to write and he has introduced me to many of the poets I mention in my list of influences and more. He does this not only for me, but for numerous others. It’s amazing!

11. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

I was fortunate to have received a grant from the City of Ottawa for Beast Body Epic, a long poem that I began a few years after a major health crisis in 2009 and have been tinkering with ever since. So I’m going to finish tinkering and submit the manuscript for the fourth time toward the end of the year.

I have a smaller manuscript called The Milk Creature and Mother Poetry, inspired by Diana di Prima, one of the women active in the Beat poetry scene.

I’m working on The Vispo Bible, a life’s work to translate every chapter, every book, every verse of the Bible into visual poetry. I began in 2015 and have completed about 300 pages so far.

In 2018, I began work on a novel. Its working title is The Nightmare Dolls’ Imperfect Reunion. It’s about women, health, ageing, friendship, gender, and it has a helluva soundtrack. (https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5B1GAgN046EdtrBLXiNoni?si=NIbexI5mQqKnr54qfmJ7ZQ)

Amanda Earl is a Canadian poet, publisher, prose-writer, visual poet and editor who lives in Ottawa, Ontario. Her first and only poetry book so far is Kiki (Chaudiere Books, 2014). Amanda is the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the fallen angel of AngelHousePress. Connect with Amanda on Twitter @KikiFolle or visit AmandaEarl.com for more information.

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Amanda Earl F WORD WARNING Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.

[overcomerecords]

Houston Texans players help Project 88’s Game Day Gala raise a record $360,000 for college readiness

Ericka Graham remembers exactly what motivated her to apply for college.

"When you’re from a background like mine," she acknowledged onstage at Eccelsia, site of the fourth annual Game Day Gala. "You think of college as a place to party, and have fun and get internships."

But in 2014, Ericka, a low-income high school educator turned college readiness instructor, wrote "Why do you want to go to college?" on her classroom’s white board and was taken aback by her students’ answers – and how much they differed from her own.

"When you come from a background of poverty, you want to go to college to break that cycle," she told the packed room of past and present Houston Texans players.

One was her own husband, NFL tight-end Garrett Graham and co-founder of Project 88, an organization which aims to improve the student to guidance counselor ratio in local under-served communities.

Additional members of the Texans family including Kevin and Caroline Walter, Hannah and Cal McNair, Holly and Austin Alvis, Amanda and Jon Weeks, Meghan Cushing, and LaToya and Chester Pitts – who co-emceed the Friday night soiree with KHOU-11’s Chita Craft – donned jeans and jerseys for the cause.

By evening’s end, they scored an educational touchdown and raised a record $360,000 toward initiatives with Advise TX, EMERGE Summer Support Program and BridgeYear advisers.

"I truly believe that when we add more advisers, we’re helping entire generations of families," Ericka explained.

ArtAttack transformed the space into an upscale tailgate – a far different scene than the one that pastor Chris Seay’s congregation worships in on Sundays – complete with Monarch Hospitality Group’s steak frites carving station, Parmesan truffle fries, wild boar pasta and Wagyu sliders.

Later, raffle ticket-holders played a competitive round of "Heads or Tails" for a $2,500 IW Marks gift card.

And before DJ Kenny Klips kicked off the dance party, Mayde Creek High School college adviser Zachary Lawrence helped Ericka present his student and guest speaker, Arman Yazdian, with a burnt orange jersey from the University of Texas at Austin, where Yazdian – a first-generation college student – plans to enroll next fall.

Go team.

Source Article

The post Houston Texans players help Project 88’s Game Day Gala raise a record $360,000 for college readiness appeared first on OVERCOMERECORDS.

Read More At: http://www.overcomerecords.com/houston-texans-players-help-project-88s-game-day-gala-raise-a-record-360000-for-college-readiness/

[deniseyallen]

Portman, Brown Announce Members of Bipartisan Commission to Recommend Candidates for Judicial Vacancies in Ohio's Southern and Northern Districts

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) today announced the members of the bipartisan judiciary advisory commission that will assist them in identifying the best candidates to fill vacancies on the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Northern Districts of Ohio. The Southern District has court locations in Cincinnati, Columbus, and Dayton and serves more than five million Ohioans in 48 counties.  The Northern District has court locations in Akron, Cleveland, Toledo, and Youngstown and serves approximately 5.9 million citizens of the 40 northernmost counties in Ohio.

Elizabeth Smith, a Partner at Vorys, Sater, Seymour, and Pease LLP, will chair the commission. The other members of the bipartisan commission are as follows:

-           Ted Adams, Vice President and Senior Counsel, L Brands

-           Michael J. Beazley, City Administrator, Oregon, Ohio

-           Tim Cosgrove, Partner, Squire Patton Boggs

-           Michael Crites, Partner, Dinsmore & Shohl, LLP, Former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, United States Department of Justice

-           Rebecca Cull, Partner, Kohnen & Patton LLP

-           Caroline Gentry, Partner, Porter Wright

-           Joyce Goldstein, Partner, Goldstein Gragel LLC

-           Art Hernandez, Director of Global Compliance, RPM International Inc.

-           Emily Houh, Professor of the Law and Contracts, University of Cincinnati College of Law

-           Matt Jolson, Assistant General Counsel, Nationwide Insurance

-           Kurt Kaufman, Attorney at Law

-           Cathy Kilbane, ‎Senior Vice President, Secretary and General Counsel, The Sherwin-Williams Company

-           Peter Kirsanow, Partner, Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff LLP

-           Mark Kuhn, County Prosecutor, Scioto County

-           Michael Lenzo, Chief Legal Counsel, The Ohio House of Representatives

-           Sandy McNair, Partner, Schwarzwald McNair & Fusco LLP

-           Margaret Murray, Partner, Murray & Murray

-           Mike Oestreicher, Partner, Thompson Hine LLP

-           Leah Pappas, Partner-in-Charge, Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP

-           Aftab Pureval, Clerk of Courts, Hamilton County

-           Lisa Radigan, Vice President and Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer, Diebold, Inc.

-           Carole Rendon, Partner, Baker & Hostetler LLP, Former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, United States Department of Justice

-           Frederick L. Ransier, III, Partner, Vorys, Sater, Seymour, and Pease LLP

-           Marquettes Robinson, Shareholder, Thacker Robinson Zinz, LPA

-           Mark Wagoner, Partner, Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, LLP

-           Christopher Walker, Associate Professor of Law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law

-           Mark Weaver, Partner, Isaac Wiles Burkholder & Teetor, LLC

The bipartisan advisory commission process was first established by Sen. Brown and former U.S. Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH), and Sens. Portman and Brown have carried on the tradition.

Sens. Portman and Brown accepted and reviewed applications for the Commission earlier this year.  The process yielded a strong field of candidates to serve on the Commission, and the senators are confident the commissioners they are announcing today will provide informed and constructive counsel in choosing Ohio’s federal judges.

The President of the United States nominates U.S. district court judges based on recommendations from U.S. senators. Nominees must then be confirmed by the full U.S. Senate. Federal district courts are general trial courts that hear both civil and criminal cases.

###

  from Rob Portman http://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ContentRecord_id=6C310982-8A11-4A37-96F7-2B2ABEC22620