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TRAVEL: Port Antonio is Jamaica’s Hidden Gem

By goodblacknews on January 25, 2015
(Image: VisitJamaica.com)
(Image: VisitJamaica.com)
Looking for an island getaway, and considering a retreat to Jamaica? Negril, Montego Bay and Ocho Rios are great, but why not try something different? Jamaica’s resort town of Port Antonio is described as picture perfect— a panorama of nature’s finest work.
On any visit, travelers to this secluded gem can explore the majestic Blue Mountains, swim in the Blue Lagoon, raft the Rio Grande, relax at Somerset Falls or discover Nonsuch Caves.  A visit to Port Antonio would be incomplete without a sampling of its world famous jerk chicken or pork in its original home.

“Visitors to Port Antonio are always in for a special treat with its diverse and laidback offerings of adventure and natural beauty,” said Paul Pennicook, Jamaica’s Director of Tourism. “With more travelers seeking authentic local lifestyles, Port Antonio, the birthplace of jerk cooking, is a great option for those wanting to experience the best of Jamaica’s cuisine, history and adventure.”

DO:

Blue Mountain Bicycle Tour: A remarkable way to see the island, this riding tour takes sightseers down the mountainside and along rolling hills. Ideal for singles, couples or families who wish to experience and photograph the world-famous Jamaican Blue Mountains and lush, tropical countryside – all while riding in the fresh Jamaican air.

Rio Grande Rafting: One of the more coveted outings in Port Antonio is a bamboo rafting tour down the gently winding Rio Grande.  Originally used as a means of transporting banana crops from the local plantations to the bustling harbor, the rafting tours are now a popular leisure activity once championed by the likes of Hollywood icon Errol Flynn. Legend has it that Flynn enjoyed gathering his well-heeled guests for midnight rafting excursions under a canopy of stars. Experienced guides who are knowledgeable about the river and its ecosystem, including a bird sanctuary (parts natural wonder and serene escape), man the bamboo rafts. Swimming in the river is perhaps the best part of the journey.

Somerset Falls: Somerset Falls is a world class setting for guests to chill out, take a swim and refresh.  Spanish settlers, who occupied the island over 400 years ago, built aqueducts and dams that are still visible today. The breathtaking waterfall is hidden in the rainforest, where the Daniels River cascades down a narrow gorge of lush ferns. Here, sun worshipers can settle in for a lovely day of sunning, relaxing and bathing in picture-perfect deep rock pools.
STAY:

Port Antonio thrives on its seclusion, intimacy and luxury, offering visitors an array of inns, beachfront cottages and villas, such as:

Great Huts, starting at US$89 per night including breakfast: www.greathuts.com.

Hotel Mocking Bird Hill, starting at US$236 per night including taxes: www.hotelmockingbirdhill.com.

Goblin Hill Villas, which ranges from US381 to $450 per night, for a 2 bedroom villa, including a housekeeper: www.goblinhill.com.

Trident Hotel, which ranges from US$540 to $990 per night including breakfast, depending on the season: www.geejamcollection.com.

EAT:

Jamaica’s diverse history has impacted its culinary offering. The cuisine features a mix of  cultural influences  – Chinese, European, Indian and African – creating an eclectic and tasty combination that is uniquely Jamaican.  Port Antonio is well known for its jerk pork and chicken, particularly in Boston Bay, but a number of the area’s inns and villas are known for their gourmet dining. There are a variety of restaurants which provide excellent Jamaican staples including fresh seafood.  Some of the popular spots include Dickie’s Best-Kept Secret and Bryan’s Bay for local fare, Restaurant Mille Fleurs, at Hotel Mocking Bird Hill for eclectic Euro-Caribbean cuisine, Woody’s Low Bridge Place and Anna Bananas for a fun family atmosphere or Bushbar at Geejam Hotel for sophisticated Asian-influenced Jamaican cuisine.
article by Kimberly Wilson via blackenterprise.com

Long-Lost Recording of Martin Luther King Jr. Speech at UCLA Discovered (AUDIO)

By goodblacknews on January 25, 2015
Martin Luther King Jr. speaks at UCLA in 1965
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at UCLA about a month after his triumphant march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, that made civil rights history. (Photo: UCLA)

Clarification posted Jan. 21: The UCLA Library also has recordings of the speech in its collection, available for listening by special arrangement but not online.
A long-lost audio recording of a 50-year-old speech delivered at UCLA by the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. has been unearthed in a storage room in the communication studies department, which will put it online. The 55-minute speech (embedded below) went live on January 15, King’s birthday, four days before the national holiday honoring him.
“It’s a speech of importance that deserves to be released on a day of importance,” said Derek Bolin, a 2013 UCLA graduate who found the recording while working as a contract archivist. Over the years, King’s visit to UCLA became a proud part of campus lore. The spot where the civil rights leader stood to deliver his speech, at the base of Janss Steps, is now marked with a plaque and is a stopping point on some campus tours.
The speech, recorded originally on 7-inch, reel- to-reel tapes, will become part of the UCLA Communication Studies Speech Archive, an online collection of more than 400 speeches delivered on campus by politicians, activists, entertainment personalities and other newsmakers primarily during the 1960s and ’70s. Like King, the speakers were brought to campus by UCLA’s now-defunct Associated Students Speakers Program. With donations from alumni, the department began last year to digitize the speeches and upload them to YouTube. So far, more than 180,000 listeners have tapped into the online archive.

Archivist Derek Bolin (left) and Tim Groeling, chair of the UCLA Department of Communication Studies

The timing of the speech is significant. King delivered it on April 27, 1965, one month and two days after the triumphant march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, that is depicted so movingly in the new biopic “Selma.” The film’s director, Ava Marie DuVernay, attended UCLA in the early 1990s as an undergraduate English major, according to registrar records.
The march and protests leading up to it paved the way for passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The federal legislation that prohibits racial discrimination in voting was signed into law four months after King’s UCLA visit, said Paul Von Blum, a senior lecturer in the department and in African American studies, who participated in the civil rights movement as a young man.
“It’s tremendously important,” Von Blum said of the speech. “It shows that Dr. King recognized that American universities were crucial in the movement for social justice. Students, especially at elite universities, were kind of the foot soldiers of the movement.”
The audio recording would have been completely forgotten had Bolin not noticed King’s name on a list of campus speakers. Tapes of the speech weren’t in the two cabinets that stored the recordings of the 365-plus speeches he had already processed. So he scoured the storage room where tape reels had languished for decades. Eventually, he found a cabinet that had been hidden from view by shelving, old beta players and other out-of-date audiovisual equipment.

CW Network Announces Animated Black DC Comics Heroine "Vixen" Series

By goodblacknews on January 25, 2015
The CW network has enjoyed major success with the hit show “Arrow” and the spin-off series “The Flash.” “Vixen” will take place in this same DC Comics universe, which differs from what can be found in the comic books. The announcement for the show was made earlier this month at the Television Critic’s Association press tour. Arrow producer Mark Guggenheim will serve as the executive producer for the series.
The story centers on Mari Jiwe McCabe, a descendant of an African warrior named Tantu. Tantu asked Anansi the Spider to create a totem that would grant the powers of the animal kingdom to whoever wore it. The powers were to only be used to protect those in need and Tantu became a hero. The totem was passed down his family line until it reaches Vixen.
McCabe grew up in a small village in the fictional African nation of Zambesi, M’Changa province. After her family was killed by her uncle as a result of the Tantu Totem, McCabe moved to America to become a model in New York. After becoming a popular star, McCabe returned to Africa and took back the Tantu Totem from her uncle and thus became the Vixen. The character debuted in 1981, and she has been a part of the Justice League and the rouge Suicide Squad.
The Vixen series will are on the CW’s Seed offshoot, which is the online portion of the network. Appearances from the Arrow and the Flash are expected according to a promo shot. There has not been an announcement on which actress will voice the character.
article by D.L. Chandler via blackamericaweb.com

In a U.S. First, New Orleans Finds Homes for All its Homeless Veterans

By goodblacknews on January 24, 2015
Image
US Navy veteran Ray Charles Griggs receives keys to his new home in New Orleans, December, 2014. New Orleans became the first US city to end veteran homelessness on Jan. 2 after housing 227 people in less than six months. (Photo Courtesy of UNITY of Greater New Orleans)

Most people celebrate the New Year by making resolutions. The city of New Orleans rang in 2015 by keeping one.

At 6 p.m. on Jan. 2, social workers in New Orleans moved the city’s last known homeless veteran into his new apartment – becoming the first US city to effectively eliminate veteran homelessness.
Homelessness advocates around the country are hailing New Orleans as a model for cities around the country looking to end homelessness, not just for veterans, but for all people needing a permanent home.
“The solutions that work for veterans are the solutions that work for all people,” says Laura Zeilinger, executive director of the US Interagency Council on Homelessness. “The problem is absolutely solvable when we invest in the practices that we know work.”
This time last year, nearly 50,000 US veterans had no home to call their own, according to an annual count. On Independence Day, first lady Michelle Obama launched the Mayor’s Challenge to End Veteran Homelessness. Since that time, more than 300 mayors, six governors, and 71 other local officials have joined the pledge to house every veteran by the end of 2015.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu took that pledge one step further, promising to meet the goal by the end of 2014.
“We owe our Veterans our eternal gratitude for their service and sacrifice to this nation, and making sure they have a place to call home is a small but powerful way we can show our appreciation,” Mayor Landrieu said in a statement Wednesday, announcing that New Orleans had housed all known veterans in the Crescent City.
In total, the city has placed 227 veterans in housing since the start of 2014.
Other cities have made huge strides in this area as well. Both Phoenix and Salt Lake City have managed to house all chronically homeless veterans, who have experienced long-term homelessness. The city of Binghamton, N.Y., successfully housed its 21 homeless veterans in November 2014. However, New Orleans is the first major city to be able to meet the needs of all homeless veterans, according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
“There’s been a lot of skepticism as to whether this is a problem that we can actually solve and I think that [New Orleans’ progress] is a proof point for us as a nation that this is something that can actually be done,” says Ann Oliva, HUD’s deputy assistant secretary for special needs.

Already a Hub for the Arts, New Brunswick, NJ Enters Its Jazz Age

By goodblacknews on January 24, 2015
Thursday nights at Hotoke are a part of a resurgence of the New Brunswick jazz scene. Instrumentalists performing there have included the drummer Rudy Royston and his quartet. (BEN SOLOMON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)

This month’s cold snap did not deter the drummer Rudy Royston, a fixture on the New York jazz scene, from making his way to New Brunswick, where on a particularly frigid Thursday night, he could be found burning up the bandstand at Hotoke, a restaurant and lounge on George Street.

Mr. Royston had a hole in his schedule to fill, and fill it he did, his drumming a polyrhythmic whirlwind propelling a quartet through war horses like “On Green Dolphin Street” and “Autumn Leaves.” Mr. Royston said he relished getting back to basics out of the glare of Manhattan.

“These gigs are foundation gigs,” he said, before launching into his set. “We play tunes, play the room, deal with management. They are at the root of jazz.”

But the larger significance of the set was that it was happening at all. The George Street of old, hollowed out by postwar suburbanization, was a dark and lonely place after 5 p.m., save for the odd prostitute prowling the stretch leading to Albany Street. The mere existence of a jazz room was something of a miracle.

After fits and starts, however, New Brunswick has now become a destination for jazz. The coming months will see established instrumentalists on Thursdays at Hotoke; singers on Wednesdays at the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Albany Street; aspiring artists on Tuesdays at Tumulty’s Pub, a holdover from George Street’s bad old days; and a funk-fusion band on the first Friday of the month at Destination Dogs, on Paterson Street. Festivals and one-off concerts at museums, art galleries and the like will fill out the schedule as the year unfolds.

Historically, New Brunswick’s native sons have contributed to jazz, from the stride pianist James P. Johnson, a Jazz Age innovator, to the avant-garde bassist Mark Helias, who came out of Rutgers University’s groundbreaking jazz studies program in the 1970s.

But jazz as a commercial enterprise didn’t gain a toehold in New Brunswick until Johnson & Johnson built its new headquarters there. Opening in 1983, it spawned redevelopment, like the Hyatt lounge and other cultural hot spots catering to a new, wealthier crowd.

By the 1990s, those spots included theaters, like the George Street Playhouse and Crossroads Theater Company, and music spaces, like the Raritan River Club on Church Street, where the influential pianist Kenny Barron, then a Rutgers professor, offered full sets of solo playing rarely heard when he performed in Manhattan clubs. Another establishment with new owners, Steakhouse 85, now operates at the River Club’s former address.

Outside Hotoke. (BEN SOLOMON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)

Despite the general improvement in New Brunswick’s fortunes, the city’s night life suffered during the 2008 recession, according to Virginia DeBerry, a writer and local jazz enthusiast.

“Everybody’s pocket was strained,” she said. “Jazz just wasn’t happening in town.”

But the downturn had an upside. It spurred Ms. DeBerry, along with fellow enthusiasts Michael Tublin, a New Brunswick city employee, and Jim Lenihan, an engineer, to form the New Brunswick Jazz Project. In the spring of 2010, the three started knocking on doors, brokering deals with local businesses interested in hosting jazz. This year, the project, which once booked two shows a month, will book three or four a week.

R.I.P. Chicago Cubs Legend Ernie Banks, 1st Black Player in Team History

By goodblacknews on January 24, 2015
The Chicago Cubs' Ernie Banks poses in 1970. The Cubs announced Friday night that Banks had died. The team did not provide any further details. Banks was 83.
The Chicago Cubs’ Ernie Banks poses in 1970. The Cubs announced Friday night that Banks had died. The team did not provide any further details. Banks was 83

Baseball’s Chicago Cubs report that Hall of Fame shortstop Ernie Banks has died. “Mr. Cub,” who began his career in the Negro leagues, was the first black player for the team — eighth in the majors overall — and played in 14 All-Star games in his 19 seasons, all with the Cubs.
“Forty-four years after his retirement, Banks holds franchise records for hits, intentional walks and sacrifice flies and in RBIs since 1900,” MLB.com reports. “He likely holds club records for smiles and handshakes as well. … His 2,528 games are the most by anyone who never participated in postseason play. Chicago never held him responsible for that and believed he deserved better.”
Banks, who was 83, was named National League MVP in 1958 and 1959, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.
His back-to-back MVP awards were among the few given to players on losing teams, notes The Associated Press:

“Banks’ best season came in 1958, when he hit .313 with 47 homers and 129 RBIs. Though the Cubs went 72-82 and finished sixth in the National League, Banks edged Willie Mays and Hank Aaron for his first MVP award. He was the first player from a losing team to win the NL MVP.
“Banks won the MVP again in 1959, becoming the first NL player to win it in consecutive years, even though the Cubs had another dismal year. Banks batted .304 with 45 homers and a league-leading 143 RBIs.”

article by Christopher Dean Hopkins via npr.org

Retired Brooklyn Bus Driver Frederick McClendon Cruising On Easy Street by Winning $7M Lottery

By goodblacknews on January 23, 2015
mc

Frederick McClendon (pictured), a Brooklyn retired city bus driver, will be living the good life from here on in, after claiming his winnings in the New York Lottery’s Cash4Life draw game and winning the top prize of $7 million, according to the New York Daily News.

The 51-year-old young retiree purchased his winning tickets from a liquor store in his borough on November 24th then checked his numbers the day after the drawing. When McClendon returned to the liquor store to check on the numbers that had been drawn, the clerk actually told him that a winning ticket had been purchased there.
The news increased his urgency to see if he had won, “I checked my ticket right in the store, and the store clerk gave me a printout of the results,” McClendon told Newsday. “That’s when I knew I had won big.”
When he told his wife and family about his run of luck, they didn’t believe him; they kept saying, “It’s just like, you’re lying.”
McClendon decided to claim his winnings at the Lottery headquarters on December 1 and a lump sum payment of $4.3 million after withholdings is his payment preference.
McClendon plans on spending his winnings on his family and setting up some college funds for the children.  “It’s about my family,” he told the New York Daily News. “I love my family.”
article by Ruth Manuel-Logan via newsone.com

TLC Exceeds $150,000 Kickstarter Goal to Produce 5th and Final Album in 72 Hours

By goodblacknews on January 23, 2015

TLC
TLC sent the signal up and fans, including pop star Katy Perry, answered.
T-Boz and Chilli surpassed their $150,000 goal on Kickstarter to raise money for the production of their fifth and final album. At this time, the pair raised $172,319 via donations from more than 1,542 people in 72 hours. At this rate, TLC is on course to more than exceed $200,000 as it has 28 more days to raise funds for the album.
The Kickstarter achievement was welcomed by a very happy T-Boz and Chilli, who broke the good news via Twitter on Thursday.
T-Boz tweet
Chilli tweet
News of TLC exceeding its goal triggered an enthusiastic response Perry, who donated $5,000 to the cause, according to E! News.
“Nothing but love for #demtlcgirls ahhh I’m SO EXCITED! I can barely focus here at work! Love you ladies with all I have! ❤ xoxo #BACKEDbyTLCArmy #TLC2015Takeover #LookWhoRunninThangs #BOOM” the “Roar” singer tweeted.
“Thank You ladies for letting me be a direct part of this adventure.I have loved you since the beginning.We have been through alot together and I want to tell you both that you are my Superheros. Congratulations, and Keep on Kickin Ass Ladies!”
“I love this!! TLC is forever!!..pledged and done!! woooo!!”
article via eurweb.com 

NAACP Image Awards to Honor Spike Lee With President's Award

By goodblacknews on January 22, 2015

Spike Lee will be honored at the NAACP Image Awards this year, where the iconic filmmaker will receive the President’s Award.

NAACP president and CEO Cornell William Brooks calls the Do the Right Thing director a “trailblazer” and a “champion for minorities.”
Brooks continues, “His expansive body of work examining race relations, colorism in the Black community, the role of media in contemporary life, urban crime and poverty, and other political issues reflect the fullness of the humanity of people of color — particularly African-Americans.”
The President’s Award is chosen by the NAACP president and recognizes special achievement and distinguished public service. Past honorees have included President Bill Clinton, Muhammad Ali and, most recently, Kerry Washington.
Lee has had an active career, churning out a film per year on average. His latest movie, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, is a romantic horror comedy that follows a scholar who becomes cursed after a run-in with an ancient African artifact. It was partially funded through Kickstarter.
The 46th NAACP Image Awards will be broadcast live on February 6 at 9 p.m. Check your local listings for details.
article by Evelyn Diaz via bet.com
Ratings: 'Empire' Adds More Viewers as Fox Tops Wednesday

Ratings: 'Empire' Adds More Viewers as Fox Tops Wednesday

By goodblacknews on January 22, 2015