Valedictorian Arianna Alexander (photo via omnifeed.com)
CHICAGO — Kenwood Academy‘s valedictorian, Arianna Alexander, wants to go to college to learn about business. As it turns out, she has a number of options.
“It was a lot to take in. I received emails, letters. It was just like, ‘Come here, come here!’ They were bombarding me with all this information,” Arianna said.
Arianna hails from Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. She graduated with a 5.1 grade point average on a 4.0 scale.
She was accepted to 26 universities, including six Ivy League schools. Her scholarship offers total more than $3 million. “I feel like it means I can afford college and I don’t have to worry about it. I feel like that’s an issue for a lot of people my age,” Arianna said.
Her father encouraged her, after another Kenwood student was offered more than $1 million in scholarships a few years ago. “I planted the seed in Arianna’s mind that you can do the same thing. So when the process got started and a million was achieved, let’s go for two. I said let’s go for three and she did it,” said Pierre Alexander, Arianna’s father.
Arianna is the baby of the family. She has three older siblings. “It was a big blessing, because I’ve already put three through college. Now I don’t have to worry too much about her,” Pierre said.
Arianna has also picked a school, thanks to Paul Brush, one of her teachers. She plans to attend University of Pennsylvania. “He said, ‘Do you know about the Wharton School of Business?’ I said, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,'” Arianna said.
“As teachers, we have a big moment to play with the lives that we have in our classrooms,” Brush said.
Her family has also influenced her. Arianna recounted her dad’s words: “Work hard, pray on it, and don’t give up. No matter what happens, you did your best.”
“My wife and I have always stressed to her, if you do your best, you will be the best. So we try to make sure she upholds to that,” Pierre said.
“So as long as you work hard, I feel like there is always a way for you,” Arianna said.
After all, there is still more to achieve besides high school. “When she graduates from Penn, that will be a second goal. We expect bigger and better things for her,” he said.
Arianna said she wants to be an entrepreneur and plans to own four restaurants. She’s already working on the menus.
First Lady Michelle Obama (photo via wikipedia.org)
According to cnn.com, first lady Michelle Obama will be guest editing the July/August edition of “More” magazine. Not only will this be the magazine’s first guest editor, but Obama will be the first First Lady to guest edit an entire magazine issue, according to a statement released by the publication. “The First Lady is the ultimate MORE woman,” said More Editor-in-Chief Lesley Jane Seymour.
The magazine also revealed the issue will highlight women Obama said influenced her during her six years in the White House. The First Lady has previously been featured on the cover of People, Time and Vogue just to name a few. But, the road to the White House wasn’t all glamorous.
It’s been a busy and public week for Obama. She made headlines Tuesday when she gave an emotional commencement speech to a group of students in Chicago, her hometown, speaking about the harsh realities of gun violence in the city and discussing her own experience growing up on the South Side.
“I know the struggles many of you face: how you walk the long way home to avoid the gangs; how you fight to concentrate on your schoolwork when there’s too much noise at home; how you keep it together when your family’s having a hard time making ends meet,” Obama said.
More magazine is a publication designed as a “stylish guide for women of influence.” Obama’s guest-edited edition will be available June 23.
John Legend hasn’t been keeping quiet on police brutality or mass incarceration. Now, he is taking it a step further with his essay for Vulture speaking out on the suicide of Kalief Browder, the young man who spent three years on Rikers Island without a conviction.
Legend is justifiably upset about Browder’s treatment while incarcerated, and he recalls meeting him in 2013 after seeing him in a television interview.
From Vulture:
New York failed Kalief. The list of things that went wrong in his case begins with his first encounter with the NYPD, whose practice of targeting black teens is well documented. The idea that being accused of stealing a backpack would lead to his arrest and detention would be absurd if it weren’t actually tragic. He should not have been tried as an adult, or had prosecutors, defenders, and judges so overwhelmed with cases that he waited three years for trial, violating his constitutional right to swift justice. He should not have been held in an adult jail where he would spend 700 to 800 days of those three years in solitary confinement. He should not have spent one day being abused by guards or the others incarcerated there.
This Martin Luther King Day, Governor Cuomo publicly released findings from a task force he began last year to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 18. Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice found that the patterns and practices at Rikers violate the human rights of adolescent males in jail. Rikers shouldn’t even have a youth unit. The RNDC, where Kalief spent three years, where 18-year-old Kenan Davishanged himself this week, should not exist. Right now legislators in Albany are considering legislation that would end the automatic prosecution of 16- and 17-year-olds as adults, and remove youths like Kalief from Rikers and other jails throughout the state. Kalief died because our system is broken, and lawmakers can act now to stop tragedies like this in the future.
Wendell Johnson readies his bed at the Salvation Army shelter September 23, 2005 in Houston. (Photo: Getty Images)
A new report from Coalition for the Homeless reveals that the number of unsheltered homeless people in the Houston area has dropped by 46 percent since 2011.
The statistics come from a “point-in-time” count of people who were experiencing homelessness on January 29, 2015, in the greater Houston area (Harris County and Fort Bend County) in Texas. The annual canvass found that there were 4,609 people either staying in emergency shelters, transitional housing or safe havens, or unsheltered (living in places not meant for human habitation, such as abandoned buildings or under bridges). In 2011, that number was 8,538. This puts the current homeless rate at 1 out of every 1,130 residents. That number was 1 out of every 450 residents in 2011. Just under 60 percent of those displaced citizens are black.
“It’s incredible,” said Marilyn Brown, president and CEO of Coalition for the Homeless in the Houston Chronicle’s article available behind the newspaper’s paywall. “When we see the result—that the number of homeless has been cut in half—we see we’ve gone from managing homelessness to ending it.” With 58 percent of the total homeless population installed in some type of housing, all signs point to that being true.
The coalition of homeless services providers said their success stems from the The Way Home, a local collaborative model adopted in 2012 with the goal of eradicating homelessness by installing permanent housing units and creating a coordinated intake, needs assessment and triage system that gets people the help they need more efficiently. article by Kenrya Rankin Naasel via colorlines.com
I received a press release this morning with the following:
“Marvel and Stephen King are proud to announce the next chapter in the bold epic Dark Tower series. Coming this September, THE DARK TOWER: THE DRAWING OF THE THREE –THE LADY OF SHADOWS #1 continues the epic story through the eyes of one of the series fan-favorite characters [Odetta Holmes]. Perfect for new and old fans alike, the rich and vibrant world of the Dark Tower series comes alive like never before! New York Times Bestselling writers Peter David & Robin Furth alongside rising star artist Jonathan Marks bring the action from Mid-World to our world in this exciting new installment! The Gunslinger Roland and his companion Eddie Dean, the troubled young man with the ability to open doors to other worlds are now united. Together, they will find the Dark Tower. But first they must locate the 3rd member of their ka-tet, residing in our world. Enter Odetta Holmes, a wealthy Civil Rights activist living in the South. But Odetta has a dark secret, and a darker side. To uncover that secret, we’ll have to go back to the beginning…A bold new chapter begins as Odetta Holmes makes her entrance into this landmark series. Don’t miss Stephen King’s THE DARK TOWER: THE DRAWING OF THE THREE –THE LADY OF SHADOWS #1, when it comes to comic shops and digital devices this September!”
This is obviously a comic book/graphic novel adaptation of the literary series – the second book in the novel series is titled “The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three” – so don’t get too excited. But I mention it because there is a film adaptation of the massive “Dark Tower” series that’s been in some form of development for at least 4 years (I recall writing about it on the old S&A site, prior to 2011). Most recently, earlier this year, Sony Pictures has announced that it had teamed with MRC (the a diversified global media company) to co-finance the film adaptation of the first book in the series, with plans for more, which Sony will distribute, along with a TV series based on the novels.
Also, as fans of the book series will already know, the Odetta Holmes mentioned in the above breakdown of the upcoming new installment, happens to be one of the alternate personalities of Susannah Dean – the paraplegic with multiple personalities, who, by the way, also happens to be a black woman. Odetta was the original name that she was born with – a civil rights activist though more of a pacifist, in contrast to Detta Walker, the other personality. During her time as Odetta, Susannah was the daughter of Daniel and Alice Holmes, a wealthy black couple, living in New York City. At the age of five, the serial killer Jack Mort dropped a brick from a high balcony on Odetta’s head, placing her in a coma. Out of this traumatizing incident, Odetta’s damaged mind created a completely separate, second personality named Detta Walker.
The disparity between Odetta’s two personalities approaches the level of polar opposites. Odetta is a morally righteous intellectual with a significant level of education and class who participates in civil-rights protests. Detta is a violent, base individual ruled by sexual desire and fueled by hatred towards the white people Odetta passively resists. The two personalities are completely unaware of each other’s existence – at least initially. Eventually, Odetta and Detta are forced to recognize each other’s existence, and they then combine to create the singular personality of Susannah Dean.
Initially, years ago, Universal Pictures initially planned to turn Stephen King’s mammoth novel series “The Dark Tower” into a feature film trilogy, as well as a network TV series, with Ron Howard, Brian Grazer and Akiva Goldsman, to direct (Howard), produce (Grazer) and write (Goldsman) respectively.
However, Universal later dropped the project over budget concerns, and word on the street was that Warner Bros picked up where Universal left off, with the 3-headed monster (Howard, Graze, Goldsman) still very much spearheading the thing.
Skip to 2012, when it was revealed that Goldsman would soon be delivering an amended draft of the script to Warners, which addressed the budget issues, and if the studio OK’d what he delivered, the project would be good to go.
And adding to excitement that the project seemed to be getting closer to becoming a reality was word that Russell Crowe would be replacing Javier Bardem, who had long been attached to play the lead role of gunslinger Roland Deschain – which wasn’t a big surprise, since Crowe, Howard and Grazer have worked together at least twice in the past.
But the one character we are most interested in, in all this, who also happens to be one of the key characters in the sprawling epic work, is obviously Susannah Dean/Odetta Holmes/Detta Walker, who will apparently be at the center of the next chapter in the book series.
The “Dark Tower” series, which King himself considers his magnum opus, is a cross-genre work, including elements of science fiction, fantasy, horror and western, with 8 novels in the series, published between 1982 and 2012.
Here’s a plot summary: In the story, Roland Deschain is the last living member of a knightly order known as gunslingers and the last of the line of “Arthur Eld”, his world’s analogue of King Arthur. Politically organized along the lines of a feudal society, it shares technological and social characteristics with the American Old West but is also magical. Many of the magical aspects have vanished from Mid-World, but traces remain as do relics from a technologically advanced society. Roland’s quest is to find the Dark Tower, a fabled building said to be the nexus of all universes. Roland’s world is said to have “moved on”, and it appears to be coming apart at the seams. Mighty nations have been torn apart by war, entire cities and regions vanish without a trace and time does not flow in an orderly fashion. Even the sun sometimes rises in the north and sets in the east. As the series opens, Roland’s motives, goals and age are unclear, though later installments shed light on these mysteries. Along his journey to the Dark Tower, Roland meets a great number of both friends and enemies. For most of the way he is accompanied by a group of people who together with him form the Ka-tet of the Nineteen and Ninety-nine, consisting of Jake Chambers, Eddie and Susannah Dean, and Oy.
And so the question I’ve always had is, who should play Susannah Dean?
