Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

Birdville school trustees will hold a special board meeting on Juneteenth to consider removing long-held Confederate imagery from one of its high schools.

The move comes after hundreds of students from Richland High School marched last week to call for the end of their schools Rebel mascot.

The virtual board meeting, set for 4 p.m. Friday, includes an action item to remove the mascot and related imagery and begin the process of naming a new mascot.

The discussion comes on Juneteenth, which commemorates the day in 1865 when slaves in Texas learned of their emancipation at the end of the Civil War.

Recent graduate Makayla Klie, who started a petition to do away with the Confederate branding, is hopeful that the board will take action where previous efforts to completely remove the imagery failed.

The first thing youre told as a freshman is to go look up Johnny Rebel on Google, she said referring to the personification of Confederate soldiers that has been used in music, literature and propaganda. The school has a spirit club called the Johnny Rebs. Its so blatantly racist. Its always bothered me, Klie said.

In 1993, Birdville completely did away with the Stars and Bars Confederate flag that used to be flown at Richland High events and had once been painted on the gym floor. The current Rebel flag is red and blue, with colors similar to those on the Confederate flag, with five stars to represent each letter in Rebel and RR written across it.

Various earlier efforts to eliminate the remaining Confederate imagery failed, including one in 2015.

Current efforts to do away with the Rebel mascot came after nationwide protests over the mistreatment of black people, especially in regards to police brutality.

Richland High had about 2,000 students this past school year, about 45% of them white, 36% Latino, 9% black and 6% Asian.

A petition to preserve the Rebel mascot has about 3,300 signatures. It says doing away with the mascot would also lead to the abolishment of various associated names, such as the Johnny Rebs and the Dixie Belles drill team.

Richland High school does not support racism in anyway [sic], wrote the recent graduate who started that petition. Racism will not simply disappear due to the Rebel mascot to change. People who are racist will remain racist even if the mascot changes.

Students at other schools are also pushing to shed symbols associated with racist history.

At the University of Texas, for example, dozens of athletes have said they want the school to stop using The Eyes of Texas song, which has been criticized for its connection to minstrel shows that used characters in blackface.

Other area schools long ago moved away from the Rebel mascot. In the 1970s, Dallas Thomas Jefferson High School changed to the Patriots, while the University of Texas at Arlington took up the Maverick mascot. Fort Worths Southwest High School changed to the Raiders in the 1980s.

View post:
Is this North Texas school district finally ready to shed its Confederate imagery? - The Dallas Morning News

SYDNEY, June 16, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Author Trish Teske takes readers on an adventurous journey of hope set in an Australian bush fantasy world in her debut book, Gruntz: Finding zO. zO is home to Gruntz, human-like creatures inspired by the quintessential Australian animal, the koala. Their ears are furry, their skin is like velvet and they have claws. Readers can experience the universal themes of good versus evil, overcoming adversity and the importance of home and finding a best friend through this very relatable imaginary world.

The story follows 10-year-old grunt, Flynn, who was orphaned after a devastating bushfire five years earlier. He has been trying to fit in for what seems like forever. Now, just when he has made it onto the under-thirteen Dragons football team, the bully, Spike challenges him to a most despicable dare that could cost him everything. As the story unfolds, however, the two boys backgrounds are more similar than you can imagine.

Gruntz characters may look different but they experience the very same feelings as many young readers. They share the emotions of fun, happiness, loneliness, sadness and most of all the feeling of belonging. In the town of zO, there are champions and heroes, bullies and a villain.

Having grown up in regional North Queensland, I have always felt a deep connection to the Australian bush and bush life, says Teske. This was the inspiration for the setting of this story including the personal experiences of drought, bushfires and adversity. Throughout my life, I have always been inspired by those who fought for our country, so I drew on my personal experience and the importance of legacy to build this theme into the story. I wanted to empower young readers to manage situations of bullying by encouraging open communication and by building understanding and compassion between those involved. I made sure to share the emotional journey of both Flynn and his bully, Spike, to show how true resolution can be achieved.

Gruntz: Finding zO exposes current and contemporary Australian themes including bushfire, exclusion, bullying and war through a less confronting medium enabling young readers to connect with the characters challenges and experiences.

The book shows that bullying can be turned around if understanding and trust are part of the change. Gruntz: Finding zO presents the importance of planning to protect families, bushland and wildlife from bushfire, which is pivotal to the plot, as well as remembering the bravery and sacrifice of those past and present defending our world. The value of community and intergenerational relationships is also promoted, demonstrating how loving and safeguarding those closest to you helps protect everyone and everything in your community.

Gruntz: Finding zO

By Trish Teske

ISBN: 9781504320016 (softcover); 9781504320023 (electronic)

Available at the BalboaPress Online Bookstore, Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the author

With Leigh, her husband of over forty years, Teske lives on a leafy hilltop overlooking the lakes in northern New South Wales. She shares her passions of a cappella singing, reading, cooking, house renovating, motor homing, mosaics, costuming, gardening and volunteering with her much-loved family and friends.

Balboa Press Australia is a division of Hay House, Inc., a leading provider in publishing products that specialise in self-help and the mind, body and spirit genre. Through an alliance with the worldwide self-publishing leader Author Solutions, LLC, authors benefit from the leadership of Hay House Publishing and the speed-to-market advantages of the Author Solutions self-publishing model. For more information or to start publishing today, visit balboapress.com.au/ or call 1800 050 315.

Continue reading here:
New Middle Grade Fantasy Book Sheds Light on the Importance of Love, Community and Australian Wildlife After Bushfire - GlobeNewswire

Tackling a war and a pandemic ever since the six-week ceasefire due to coronavirus outbreak expired, Yemen has been thrown into a disarrayed health system. Yemen, as Arab worlds poorest country, is lacking food and medicine supplies since even the United Nations is struggling for funds as its humanitarian appeal for the country fell $1 billion short of what aid agencies needed this month. Also Read - Coronavirus in Maharashtra: State Records 3,874 Fresh Cases; Mumbai's Highest 136 Deaths

With coronavirus surging throughout the country and the conflict between the Iran-aligned Houthi movement and Saudi Arabia, which is backed by the US, UK and France, has pushed the impoverished country to the verge of famine. It has undoubtedly gutted Yemens infrastructure while displacing several families and also resulted in widespread malnourishment while shattering the healthcare system. Also Read - Leander Paes Ready With His 'New Version' But Concerned About Tokyo Olympics Future

Pained at the sufferings of the innocents, Twitter poured out its grief on the micro-blogging site as heart-wrenching videos and pictures from Yemen flood the Internet. While one user wrote, The ongoing conflict in Yemen has created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. The malnutrition crisis gets worse with every day that the war continues. Half the total population, around 14 million at risk of famine -says #UN. Please save #Yemen (sic), another tweeted, #Yemen The enormous damage caused by the American Saudi aggression against Yemens right to self determination will remain for generations to come. In Saada, Yemen a Yemeni child is kissing the photos of his siblings taken from him in this unjustifiable and immoral war (sic). Also Read - COVID-19 Weekly Wrap | Over 2 Lakh Cases Recorded in 20 Days; Total Tally Nears 4 Lakh-Mark, Death Toll Soars to 12,948

Check out Twitters reaction on the news here:

We pray that Yemen makes it through this political conflict and pandemic without any further loss!

Here is the original post:
Heartbreaking! Twitter Sheds Tears Over 'World's Worst Humanitarian Crisis' as War Tears Yemen - India.com

COVENTRY, England Speech is one of the most uniquely human characteristics. Its origins, however, remain one of the great mysteries of human development. New research now shows that chimpanzees exhibit a characteristic that might reveal some of the first steps in the evolution of human speech.

Several years ago, researchers noticed that monkeys signaled each other by smacking their lips and using strange open-close mouth patterns. What they found most interesting about this behavior is that the rate at which the monkeys made these mouth movements was very similar to the rate humans move their mouths when speaking: about 5 Hertz, or 5 open-close cycles per second.

At the time researchers thought this mouth-moving behavior might be related to human speech. They only observed this behavior, however, in primate species like orangutans and gibbons, which arent as closely related to humans as other African ape species.

In this new study, the research team,led by scientists at the University of Warwick, looked for these mouth signaling patterns in chimpanzees specifically. Of course, chimps are humans closest relatives in the animal kingdom. They looked at four different chimpanzee populations: captive chimpanzees in Edinburgh Zoo and Leipzig Zoo, and wild chimpanzees from the Kanyawara and the Waibira sanctuaries in Uganda.

Using video recordings taken of the chimps while they groomed each other, researchers say the monkeys made lip-smacks at an average rate of 4.15 Hertz very close to the 5 Hertz rate of human speech. This indicates that evolution relied on primate lip-smacking behavior when forming the vocal system of human speech thats still around today.

CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER & GET THE LATEST STUDIES FROM STUDYFINDS.ORG BY EMAIL!

Our results prove that spoken language was pulled together within our ancestral lineage using ingredients that were already available and in use by other primates and hominids, says senior author Dr Adriano Lameira, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick, in a press release.This dispels much of the scientific enigma that language evolution has represented so far.

He adds that the different chimpanzee populations studied exhibit different lip-smacking behavior. Its almost as if each community has its own mouth-moving language. We found pronounced differences in rhythm between chimpanzee populations, suggesting that these are not the automatic and stereotypical signals so often attributed to our ape cousins, he says. Instead, just like in humans, we should start seriously considering that individual differences, social conventions and environmental factors may play a role in how chimpanzees engage in conversation with one another.

Lameira points out the need to protect chimpanzee populations so they can continue to be studied. If we continue searching, new clues will certainly unveil themselves, he concludes. Now its a matter of mastering the political and societal power to preserve these precious populations in the wild and continue enabling scientists to look further.

The study is published in Biology Letters.

Like studies? Follow us on Facebook!

Here is the original post:
Chimpanzees help shed light on origins of human speech, study reveals - Study Finds

The first time Lyell CEO Rick Klausner looked at what PACT Pharma was trying to accomplish with neoantigens, non-viral T cell engineering and cancer, he felt they couldnt get it done. But in the 3 years since theyve launched, Klausner has become a believer.

Now, hes a believer and a partner.

Early Thursday morning, Klausner and PACT CEO Alex Franzusoff announced a plan to jointly pursue one of the Holy Grails of oncology R&D. Blending their technologies and bringing a wide network of leading experts to the table, the two companies are working on a personalized T cell therapy for solid tumors. And an IND is in the offing.

The collaboration joins the Lyell team, which has been concentrating on overcoming the exhaustion that afflicts the first generation of cell therapies, with a PACT group that has developed tech to identify a patients unique signature of cancer mutations and use a non-viral method to engineer their T cells into cancer therapies.

I spent some time on Wednesday talking with Klausner and Franzusoff about the deal, which comes with an undisclosed set of financials as Lyell invests in the alliance.

Unlock this article along with other benefits by subscribing to one of our paid plans.

SUBSCRIBE SIGN IN

Read the original here:
Chinese vaccine developers have begun to shed some secrecy around Covid-19 candidates. What do we know? - Endpoints News

In this op-ed, Ignacia Fulcher explains how this Juneteenth, Black people are working to shed intergenerational trauma by protesting for justice.

Ill never forget my first run-in with the police. It was the summer after I graduated high school. My friends and I went to a popular beach town in New York. Sure, it was after hours, but there were tons of other teenagers hanging out, most of them white. My friends and I were not. After an hour or so of hanging out in the sand and finally talking to my crush (swoon) with our toes in the water, a cop came up to our group telling us to disperse. And so we started to walk towards our cars thinking that the warning would be the end of our encounter. It wasnt.

The officer asked where we were from, and not believing us, asked for our IDs. The panic started to set in. My friend Kirsten messed up on one of those rules our parents taught us always keep your ID on you. Kirstens ID was in her car and that got this particular officer annoyed. He asked her where she lived and when she answered, he didnt believe her, or the fact that her name was decidedly Irish when she, according to the officer, was obviously not.

While this was happening, the boy I liked had clammed up and clenched his fists while standing next to me. In that moment I felt the anger and fear he was feeling. As we were reprimanded, the white teens on the beach stayed unbothered. Usually you feel invincible when youre that young like you can do anything and nothing can touch you. That isnt the reality for Black youth. Standing on the beach I went to thousands of times before, I realized being Black was a liability.

Instances like these are ingrained in the bodies of Black people. For so long, people in positions of power most often white people have directed violence toward us, causing the trauma we experience to be passed down from generation to generation. So, when I first got news of police killing of George Floyd, everything paused in this familiar way. I thought to myself, here we go again. Having to witness video after video of Black people being killed already takes a toll, and in the midst of a pandemic in which Black people are disproportionately dying its a recipe for sheer exhaustion. But this Juneteenth, as people continue to take to the streets to demonstrate against police brutality, to say Black Trans Lives Matter, to call for justice, I can see the hope that we not only inherited trauma from our ancestors, but joy and resilience too.

I saw the names of the individuals killed as a result of White supremacyGeorge Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arberyand thought, not a damn thing has changed. Im going through what my parents went through, what my grandparents went through, and their parents all the way down the line, over and over again. History repeats itself and the wounds it makes dont heal in one lifetime if at all. And, how could we heal when we keep being killed?

Intergenerational trauma was originally researched in Holocaust survivors and their family members. Since then, researchers found that other survivors of mass trauma passed down an array of behaviors such as authoritarian parenting styles, lack of community trust, anxiety, and shame. In an article on intergenerational trauma for the American Psychological Association's Monitor on Psychology, Tori DeAngelis wrote that researchers found transgenerational effects, are not only psychological, but familial, social, cultural, neurobiological, and possibly even genetic. Dr. Joy DeGruy coined the term Post Traumatic Slave Disorder, which is a theory that describes the phenomenon of certain survival and stress traits being triggered in the descendants of African slaves passed down generation to generation, resulting in adaptive behaviors for the better or for the worse. Intergenerational trauma is funny like that.

Read more:
On Juneteenth, Black People Are Using Protest to Shed Intergenerational Trauma - Teen Vogue

Massachusetts allowed restaurants to resume outdoor dining with restrictions on June 8, following nearly three months of takeout and delivery only. During the week of June 8, over 100 restaurants in and around Boston quickly opened up their patios; here are details on many of those. Others are taking a slower approach.

Each week, well highlight a few more patios that are reopening in the Boston area right here, as well as any other pertinent info and updates regarding outdoor dining. (Note that this will not be a comprehensive list as there are hundreds of patios in the region, with more to come as cities and towns find ways to quicken and ease the permitting process.) Know of a recently opened patio thats especially spacious, comfortable, and following safety protocols well? Hit up the tipline.

PATIOS NOW OPEN (OR OPENING THIS WEEK)

OTHER OUTDOOR DINING UPDATES

Sign up for our newsletter.

477 Cambridge Street, Allston, MA 02135

Read more:
Boston-Area Patio Updates, Summer 2020 (Updated Weekly) - Eater Boston

It goes without saying that Juneteenth should be more widely recognized as a national holiday. Instead, its known as a Texas state holiday, commemorating the day a Union general rode into Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, to declare that all slaves were now free. Nevertheless, Black people around America have reclaimed this holiday as their independence day; this year feels especially important in light of the continued Black Lives Matter protests. When we saw that Black People Eats put together this list on Instagram of Black-owned restaurants with patios that are offering Juneteeth specials, we wanted to give these businesses some more attention. So, what are you waiting for? You can get a meal for just $6.19 in Chicago all weekend long!

2205 W Montrose Ave, Chicago, IL 60618

An adorable breakfast cafe that caters a balanced blend of healthy food and guilty pleasures, Lizzy J Cafe can meet all of your needs this Juneteenth. Enjoy outdoor seating in this divine oasis.

Juneteenth Special: French Toast Side Any Flavor ($6.19)

17093 S Jodave Ave, Hazel Crest, IL 60429

Smoked meats are the name of the game at Maes Que House, a Hazel Crest restaurant just past the tip of South Side Chicago. With a few tables outside, Maes Que House is allowing patrons to dine in again.

Juneteenth Special: Pork, Turkey, or Chicken Mini Tips with Fries ($6.19)

1200 E 79th St, Chicago, IL 60619

Featuring an eclectic menu that highlights dishes from varying cultures, The Woodlawn is offering a flatbread special on Juneteenth that includes the Gyro, Italian Beef, Buffalo Chicken, and Jambalaya.

Juneteenth Special: Flatbread Special ($6.19)

1072 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, IL 60642

Frontiers outdoor space is a breezy haven away from the streets of Chicago, and though their Juneteenth special is a $6.19 martini, youd be remiss not to also order some delicious meats served right off their patio grill.

Juneteenth Special: Martinis ($6.19)

1415 N Wood St, Chicago, IL 60622

A New Orleans-inspired outpost in the heart of Wicker Park, Ina Mae embraces their funky, Southern-style roots with a delicious Juneteenth special.

Juneteenth Special: Nola Hot Sausage Sliders ($6.19)

756 E 111th St, Chicago, IL 60628

A quintessential Chicago food truck that roams where it may, Lexington Betty Smoke House will be located in Pullman all weekend, serving up their Juneteenth special.

Juneteenth Special: Mini Rib Tips with Fries or Smoked Chicken with Fries ($6.19)

756 E 111th St, Chicago, IL 60628

Soul food, meet vegan. Unbelievably good eats await you at Matani Restaurant, even if youre not a plant-based diner.

Juneteenth Special: BBQ Cauliflower ($6.19)

717 W Maxwell St, Chicago, IL 60607

One of the coolest, underground Chicago handouts, Phlavz has more than enough spacious outdoor seating, awash in violet neon lights.

Juneteenth Special: Jerk Chicken Sammich ($6.19)

1368 E 53rd St, Chicago, IL 60615

Dont believe you wont believe it? Try Cant Believe Its Not Meat for yourself and let us know.

Juneteenth Special: Hotdog & Fries ($6.19)

1660 E 55th St, Chicago, IL 60615

This straightforward restaurant has been giving back to the neighborhood since they opened. Having gifted over 150,000 free meals to people in the community, Litehouse is a shining beacon of hope in Hyde Park.

Juneteenth Special: Fire Glazed Salmon Bowl ($6.19)

7101 S Yates Blvd, Chicago, IL 60649

This neighborhood breakfast cafe is the perfect place for some peace and quiet. Slow down and grab a coffee and a panini here.

Juneteenth Special: Breakfast Panini or Turkey Bacon Avocado with a 16 oz Black Iced Coffee ($6.19)

The rest is here:
11 Black-Owned Restaurants With Patios Offering Juneteenth Specials This Weekend - UrbanMatter

In mid-May, Boor and Charles Hemminger, another architect with a restaurant-heavy practice, put together some designs to see if they could get enough socially distanced seats into a dining room to stay in business. San Francisco hadnt yet issued its specific guidance for how restaurants could open, but the architects had the gist. They turned bars into prep stations, because they couldnt figure out how to give people bending an elbow enough elbow room. They moved tables farther apart, thought about barriers, and took over patio and parking spaces where the restaurants had them.

They learned a few things. Risk of infection is a combination of how much exposure someone gets and how long they get it. And while customers might spend an hour or two in a restaurant, staff are there all night. Patron-to-patron infection is a thing were worried about, but a bigger risk is patron-to-staff, Boor says. Those are the people youre concerned with protecting. If they get sick, the whole operation goes down.

Without significant changes to how much street space a restaurant is allowed to take up, Boor and Hemminger couldnt really make outdoor dining plausible. In a restaurant operating on the typical dining model of table service, I have not yet seen a case where outdoor seating would make up for the amount of lost indoor seating due to distancing, Boor says. Even the ones that come close require some pretty big assumptions about making that outdoor seating usable, like building something like wind screens and heating elements. Few cities in the US have year-round pleasant weather in the evenings, whether thats because of heat, humidity, cold, or rain. So restaurants trying to expand their borders are going to have to build some kind of nimbus of infrastructure to minimize the picnic-in-the-rain vibe. Of course, the more enclosed an outdoor space is, the more it is like an indoor spacewith all the concomitant risks.

Many restaurant owners are hoping that cities will give them more space by taking it away from cars. That would include parklets that replace streetside parking. (These require strong barriers around their perimeter and a floor built level with the sidewalk, because streets often slope downward toward curbs to redirect rainwater and debris into gutters). And then you have to figure out how to actually build the things. Abueg says San Franciscos rules only let a parklet extend 6 feet into the street; Berkeley seems likely to ask for barriers 2 feet thick. That only leaves 4 feet of space for tables.

All of this suggests that the best plan might be to forget about piecemeal parklets and just close streets altogether. Pedestrian-only plazas are common in many other parts of the world, but less so in car-happy America. The mayor and city council of Berkeley initially promised a huge number of street closures to accommodate outdoor dining, but the drawings Abueg and Morris came up with depict a much reduced and more realistic visionshort stretches of converted street, with maybe a block here and there fully closed to automobile traffic. They even encountered resistance to the idea of closing a particularly obvious candidate, Center Street, which extends west from the UC Berkeley campus into the citys downtown. Center is lined with restaurants that run the gamut of cuisines and price points; it has a museum at one corner (with a skyscraping hotel under construction). The stretch is a block from a subway station, and the area is full of students. Seems perfect, right?

But Abueg says she got pushback from a landlord there, just as she did at another Berkeley retail street also identified as a candidate for closure. Restaurant owners are clamoring for expanded dining, but sometimes the people who own their buildings are just used to the idea of customers arriving in cars. And some of the restaurants have come to depend on pick-up and delivery services like DoorDash and Uber Eats, with drivers who want to pull up out front. And many of San Franciscos and Berkeleys restaurant districts also have high populations of unhoused people who live and sleep on public sidewalks. Restaurants have never had to take responsibility for those spaces. In places like that, where the open seating will be shared by multiple restaurateurs, who will be responsible for the clean-up or for unhoused folks? she asks. So that got complicated.

Read all of our coronavirus coverage here.

Protecting the staff will still be a challenge, even if everyone is eating outside. Abuegs sketches anticipate that there will be no table service; people will order from windows at the restaurants and carry their orders to tables, like at a mall food court. Thats an assumption we made with the concept, that the fewer touchpoints the better, instead of a server going back and forth, Abueg says. You clean up after yourself, and it would also require that everybody would have an app on their smartphone to see a menu and order, so youre not standing queued up together.

Here is the original post:
The Design and Science of Patio Dining During a Pandemic - WIRED

Summer officially arrives Saturday so that means its time to spruce up your patio.

Here are some great deals from different retailers that will make your outdoor living space the talk of the town. And you wont have to break the bank.

The River Brook Patio Sectional with Cushions, part of the Kathy Ireland Collection, is available at Wayfair.

The River Brook Patio Sectional with cushions (see photo directly above), part of the Kathy Ireland Collection, is available at Wayfair.

Theres plenty of other River Brook Patio Sectionals available here and prices start around $1,100 and swell to above $3,200.

The Navarro 9-ft. Outdoor Auto Crank Umbrella from Kohl's is priced under $60.

This Kohls Navarro 9-ft. Outdoor Auto Crank Umbrella is a steal at $57.36. They come in blue, red and tan and will keep any backyard shady while the sun is out.

This Aksel Steel Wood Burning Fire Pit retails for $137.99 on Wayfair.com.

The Aksel Steel Wood Burning Fire Pit sells for $137.99 at Wayfair.com. The antique-copper bowl finish comes with a built-in log rest and fire tool. This firepit cannot be placed on wood decks.

The AECOJOY 13'8' Patio Awning makes any space looks elegant.

Amazon.com has this AECOJOY 138 Patio Awning Retractable Sun Shade available for only $279.99. The patio awning is ideal for shading of windows, in balcony, courtyard, patio, cafes and restaurants with back porches, providing protection from UV rays and make the space looks elegant. It is water and UV resistant.

The frame is built with rust-resistant, powder-coated aluminum frame, lightweight design but solid structure can resist a certain scale wind (under level 5), retractable mounting brackets have double strand steel rope, more durable.

The Sunjoy 10'x10' Hampton Softtop Steel Gazebo with Netting retails for around $112 on Amazon.

The Sunjoy 10x10 Hampton soft-top steel gazebo with netting can be had for $112 on Amazon.com. It comes with a vented canopy, includes guy ropes for additional stability and comes with full length mosquito netting. It is made of Polyester canopy fabric. Some assembly is required.

Go here to see the original:
Here are 5 must-have items for your outdoor patio - SILive.com