Though Toyota’s legendary J70 Land Cruiser hasn’t been manufactured or sold in Japan since 2004, the rugged four-wheel drive pickup’s domestic fan base never stopped clamoring for its return. It seems Toyota heard them after all, as the automaker is gearing up to produce around 200 J70’s domestically every month for one year, and for one year only.
We love a waterproofed Kindle, and we put one through hell , but that’s an aftermarket mod, not a feature that comes standard. If you want waterproofed reading on the cheap(er), the new Kobo Aura H2O is for you.
Long before her Emmy-nominated turn as a bipolar CIA officer on Homeland, Claire Danes played typical teenager Angela Chase. In doing so, she showed an entire generation, including me, that high school was not a perfect place, and that was totally fine. My So-Called Life debuted 25 years ago this week.
We’ve already heard reports that Uber was allegedly ordering and canceling Lyft rides in an attempt to sabotage the competition. Well, it turns out that was just the tip of the iceberg — Uber apparently has a whole secret plan in place to take down…
Today, we look at Instagram’s new video sharing app called Hyperlapse, imagine a world with a truly unified inbox, prepare for school with the 10 best tablets available, and more! Read on for Engadget’s news highlights from the last 24 hours.
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We’re almost completely out of summer, and as fall approaches we expect football, TV premieres (and cancellations, the turning of the leaves and of course one more thing: iPhone leaks. Apple’s next gen phone is just weeks away from its debut and as…
During a year rife with recalls (mostly of the automotive sort), HP has been forced to recall more than six million laptop power cords following multiple reports of them overheating and more. The recall is for both the United States and Canada, and covers cords sold from September 2010 up through the summer of 2012. The recall was announced earlier … Continue reading
Snapchat is becoming ubiquitous with messaging, and that’s never been more evident than with today’s news of their valuation and user-base. A fresh funding round tells us that those backing Snapchat are doing so at a $10 billion valuation. That’s not just rare air for a messaging app — it’s an exclusive club not many startups can claim to be … Continue reading
The funeral service for Michael Brown, filled with music, celebration, and challenge, is over. There’s other news: the earthquake in Northern California, ISIS. The cameras move on. The Time magazine cover this week: “The Tragedy of Ferguson.”
The New York Times magazine cover June 29, 1990, was “The Tragedy of Detroit.” Same phrase 24 years ago. That cover was 23 years after the 1967 Detroit “riots.” That’s 47 years. The Rev. Al Sharpton ended his words at Mike Brown’s funeral with, “We are required in his name to change the country.” Will we?
In Detroit 1967, 43 people were killed in the streets, most of them blacks gunned down by police or the National Guard. Eventually President Johnson sent in 4,700 federal troops. Afterwards “For Sale” signs sprang up in white neighborhoods. Developers built shopping malls beyond Eight Mile and a mass exodus began. The story of Detroit is a long and lingering one. Then it was white suburbs vs. a black city. There have been racial tensions in St. Louis for just as many years. But this time, St. Louis County particularly North County, has grown more black while whites move further out to the exurbs. One quote from the 1990 article by then black Mayor Coleman Young, echoes today: “White people find it extremely hard to live in a neighborhood they don’t control.”
Why do I contrast these two cities, when I could draw incidents from dozens of others? Why do I have a 1990 magazine? Because I and my family lived in Detroit in the summer of 1967 and because I lived in St. Louis before that.
I was serving a church in St. Louis Hills, just inside the south county line; my husband served a congregation in North St. Louis. We went back and forth. I got into trouble in my all-white congregation, when I marched in solidarity and protest in the streets of St. Louis after the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four Sunday School girls. My picture just happened to appear on TV. About me, congregation members said, “She’s very nice. It’s just that she has this problem: she likes Negroes.”
Four years later, living and serving in Detroit, I was eight and a half months pregnant when in July, 1967, we saw the smoke begin to rise. Later that night, while hearing “This Land is My Land; This Land is Your Land” play on TV, the trailer across the bottom said “Curfew. Everyone must be off the streets.” Well, people did not leave the streets. The city burned, night after night. The police and military guns were protecting major stores and aimed at us, the inner city residents. I was young, then, but I remember the moment it became so clear (even after working in the Civil Rights movement) that change will not come just because there has been a tragedy. National TV cameras had left Detroit when President Lyndon Johnson came on TV and said that things were calm now and, “The troops are gone.” The troops were not gone.
After that everyone had more guns. In 1992, after the Rodney King beating in LA, over 2,300 people were injured.
Guns and more guns. We had hoped the tragedy of Sandy Hook would change things.
Cameras will leave Ferguson for now. But we dare not forget yesterday’s headlines. (Just where have the child immigrants at our southern border gone in the past few weeks?)
And we need to do more than remember headlines, lest names change but headlines be merely repeated. Systematic problems can be addressed: community organizing, political engagement, voter registration, commitment to truly integrated public schools, facing the militarization of law enforcement.
At the funeral Michael Brown’s name was recognized as being now known around the world with the potential for his young life becoming a turning point for change. A Church of God in Christ pastoral representative whose own son had been gunned down on the streets asked, “Will things ever get better? Will justice ever be achieved?” Including himself and his wife he said to the parents of Michael and the parents of Trayvon Martin, “You didn’t choose to be part of this group, but we have a special calling, to be agents of change.”
Last week Missouri Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson said, “When these days are over and Mike Brown’s family is still weeping … We need to thank Mike Brown for his life and we need to thank him for the change he’s going to make that is going to make us better.” The days ahead will be hard, very hard. We need to call for and work urgently towards justice, peace and reconciliation.
Oh, and the baby I was carrying in July 1967 in Detroit? He was born, but a few weeks late. His birth story goes, “He wasn’t so sure he wanted to come into this world.” For over 20 years he has been a public high school vocal music teacher, creating community among teenagers not only by singing together, but through listening to each others’ stories, pain, and joy, in their own lives and internationally through global music.
Last week, my wife and I ventured north to the Emerald City for a college orientation at the University of Washington, UDUB. It brought back vivid memories, of a long time ago, when my parents and I stepped foot on the hallowed grounds of Syracuse University.
Oh wait, no it didn’t.
You see my parents never did any of the mishegas I find myself doing on behalf of my daughter’s higher education.
An hour and half long seminar on the University’s health resources and facilities, sign me up.
A 45 minute tutorial on dorm room organization, save me a seat.
A 5-mile walking tour of the enormous campus including a detailed explanation of the university’s extensive recycling program and a thorough explanation of the difference between Composting material and Organic Waste, that’s a memory-maker.
Al & Isabel Siegel would have none of that nonsense.
Here’s the way it all went down for me. When I was 12 we took a family road trip to Hamilton in Canada to visit my mom’s sister and her family. On the way up Route 81, my father spotted the unmistakable buildings of Syracuse University.
We pulled off the highway, rolled up East Adams Street, followed by a slow cruise down Comstock Ave. and looped back to Route 81. The “tour” lasted all of 5 minutes. No sooner did we turn onto the NY State Thruway did my father turn around and pronounce…
“That’s where you’re going to college.”
No inordinately expensive application counselors.
No SAT tutors.
No exploration of any other choices.
Nor was any of that necessary.
It was Syracuse University.
And if the check cleared, my father reasoned, they’d accept my boy.
Because UDUB is on the quarter system, school doesn’t start for another 3 weeks. And I’ll be returning for another trip. This time to drop her off and move all her belongings into her room. She’s in a crappy dorm but she’s on the 8th floor and it has a hotel-like view of Union Bay.
I’m sure it will be a gut wrenching, 3 Kleenex box affair. Which again differs from that day 26 years ago when my parents shlepped me and my crap up to Sadler Hall on a cold Saturday in late September.
We drove for 4 & 1/2 hours.
My parents smoked their way through three packs of cigarettes, interrupted only by some fevered fighting. We dragged the boxes into the building because Al wasn’t about to dole out 8 bucks to rent a hand truck.
We met my roommate and his parents from a very wealthy area of Long Island. My father, from the mean streets of the Bronx, assumed they were mobbed up and whispered to me, “don’t accept any favors from him.”
And that was it.
Dad shook my hand. Mom cried a little. They bought some more cigarettes and got back in the car for the 4 & 1/2 hour drive back.
And then, it started snowing.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
