Hasta La Gadget!

If you actually cook at home with any regularity, then you have to deal with meal planning since you don’t want something with a short shelf life to go bad before you cook it. The worst of this is normally produce, as plants need to be in the perfect environment to stay crisp and fresh. Not maintaining the right temperature and humidity means that your greens will look wilted and unappetizing pretty quickly.

The best method to keep your plants super fresh is to keep a garden, but that’s not possible for everyone. The next best option would likely be the Prepara Classic Herb Saver. This is a little plastic capsule that will keep your fresh herbs living and healthy for up to three weeks, which trust me, is a big deal. It keeps the stems of your green in question submerged in water so that despite being removed from the root it can maintain its life for longer.

You only need to put your herbs on the plastic grate, rinse them off, enclose the plant in the plastic capsule, and put it on top of the reservoir which you’ll need to fill with fresh water. This will not only help you keep them longer, but you won’t have to worry about them getting stuck under other food in the plastic bag from the grocery store and being forgotten about. This is a $20 purchase that you might find yourself getting multiples of.

Available for purchase on Amazon
[ The Prepara Classic Herb Saver makes sure you don’t have to toss out soggy plant matter copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

No refuge could save the hireling and slave/ From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.

The third verse of the Star Spangled Banner, which curses escaped slaves to the grave for joining with the British, is going from obscure to infamous, thanks in part to Jon Schwarz’s article on The Intercept about Colin Kaepernick and his refusal to stand for the national anthem. Jason Johnson’s July 4th article on the anthem, on The Root, “Star-Spangled Bigotry: The Hidden Racist History of the National Anthem”, has also started to go viral since Colin took his seat.

Now people are talking about getting rid of the anthem, or at least no longer standing for it. I’ll give some reasons for why we might want instead to expunge the third verse and replace it with something authentic and better.

Critics have zeroed in on the fifth and sixth lines of this verse, quoted above: “No refuge could save the hireling and slave/ From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.” Even though one history website claims that the verse refers to the impressment of captured American sailors, it’s impossible to imagine that Key would wish death upon Americans forced to serve on British naval ships. There seems to be little doubt that the reference is to the Colonial Marines, a battalion composed of slaves who had escaped to the British and volunteered to fight with them as equals, and thus to fight for freedom.

Companies from this battalion had participated when British troops vandalized the city of Washington and burned the White House in August 1814, just a few weeks before the attack on Ft. McHenry that found Frances Scott Key witnessing the battle from behind British lines. It must have been the ultimate perversion, in Key’s mind, that runaway Negro slaves from the Colonial Marines, traitors who had not earned their freedom, would fight with the British to take away his and his country’s very well-deserved freedom. As a lieutenant, he had already faced the British battalion that included these men in their march toward Washington. He, along with his entire unit, had been routed. For Key to find himself aboard a British ship during another attack must have been agony.

Ft. McHenry flag, George Henry Preble, 1873

There’s another line in the same verse that tells how very deep Key’s agony and antipathy ran, a line not highlighted in the media I’ve looked at so far. The verse begins with a description of “that band who so vauntingly swore” to destroy the nation and goes on to celebrate that “their blood has wash’d out their foul footsteps’ pollution.” Everyone seems to think that this refers to the British, but it’s hard to imagine that “their foul footsteps’ pollution” refers to the British generals with whom he was amiably negotiating aboard the HMS Tonnant just before the battle.

I wonder instead if Key was reliving his memory of the Colonial Marines penetrating Washington. (I am using this sexualized language to try to imagine how Key would have thought about it.) What makes me think so? “Pollution” is a religious term that fits with other religious language Key uses. In religion, it refers specifically to what happens when an unholy/impure/forbidden thing is brought into a holy space such as a temple. The concept of pollution is often pressed into service to support the worst kind of racism – here it perfectly describes what it would mean to a slaveowner to see armed Black men, men who grabbed their freedom for themselves, marching on the White House to burn it. And just as pollution in most cultic religions is washed away by the blood of a sacrificial animal, so here in Key’s perverse verse, the blood of Black men would “wash away their pollution”.

The Battle of Ft. McHenry was part of a combined land and sea assault on Baltimore. The day before the attack, the Colonial Marines had participated in the assault’s first phase, the Battle of North Point. Things didn’t go as the British had hoped. Once the naval attack failed, the second day of the land assault was called off, and the Colonial Marines, along with the rest of the British forces, decamped. The total dead among the British was small from a modern perspective, less than 50 (the number of wounded was about 300), and only a handful of Colonial Marines died in the battle. But their blood and their defeat was enough to satisfy Key.

Remarkably, this is not the first time people have cried out against the third verse, but not for the reason you might think. In 1905, a magazine called Every where printed an op-ed that said, “these lines, as is well known, referred when written to the British army…but it seems a little bloodthirsty to still be wiping out their foul footsteps’ pollution, after being at peace with England…ninety years or so”. By then, the memory of the Colonial Marines and the original context of the verse had been totally forgotten.

Even more remarkably, a new verse for the Star-Spangled Banner was written in 1861 by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (father of the famous jurist), who hailed from Boston, a center of the abolitionist movement. It goes in part: “When our land is illumined with Liberty’s smile,/…By the millions unchained who our birthright have gained/ We will keep her bright blazon forever unstained!” Written in 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War, Holmes’s verse was a clarion call to wage war against the Confederacy, which he called “a foe from within…the traitor that dares to defile/ the flag…”.

If you haven’t heard of his verse, it’s not because it immediately dropped from view. In fact, it was widely published alongside the original verses, including the third verse, in songbooks of the era. So even abolitionists, less than 50 years after Key wrote the song, did not realize that the third verse was about slavery.

Holmes’s words looked prophetically toward a future when millions of slaves would be freed and able to exercise the birthright and freedom that should come to everyone born in the United States. Holmes, like Key, was also concerned about pollution, about what “defiles” and “stains”, but for him the pollution was the institution of slavery itself. What is so painful is that a century and a half after the Civil War, we are still suspended between Key’s verse against the slaves and Holmes’s verse against slavery.

In “Star-Spangled Bigotry”, Johnson links to a moving video about the anthem that was created by students at Morgan State University, the historically black college in Baltimore, and uploaded in May. These students did an extraordinary service to their country. Their video concludes at 12:00 with a black choir singing Key’s horrific third verse in fullest harmony, while images of modern American racism flash across the screen. The serendipity that enabled their video, and the sources that draw on it, to be in place just in time for Kaepernick’s act of refusal is probably thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement. But whatever the reason, it is a moment of grace, and we should seize it.

Even with so many important issues pressing upon us, it’s clear that we really do need to change our anthem. But getting rid of the Star Spangled Banner seems unlikely. What if an act of Congress were to swap out the third verse with an updated version of Holmes’s abolitionist verse? Officially adding this verse – and singing it – would acknowledge that we are still struggling mightily to become a home of the free, and it would look forward to a time when the country will be “illumined with Liberty’s smile”. Making the change won’t free anyone, of course, but it would give official, national recognition to the fact that we not only have a long way to go, but that we are determined to get going, not just as a protest movement, but as a nation.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

In boxing, one of the fundamental necessities of the sport is the presence of a good cornerman. In an article written a few years ago providing insight into and describing the sine qua non of the cornerman, the author declared, “he [the cornerman] must be a psychologist, able to assist the fighter through the emotional minefield that is the preparation for combat. A strategist, a General, able to see what it’s going to take to secure victory and offering the kind of tactical advice that can be put into practice in the crucible of battle”.

Everybody needs a cornerman.

Though our society is now more digitally connected than it has ever been, these progressive gains in popularity have not grown without consequence. Heartbreaking news stories on facebook and twitter and instagram share photos and videos that reveal the devastating truth we were once technologically blind to. Other trends have grown, too, and not for the better. As we approached the new millennium, suicide rates were trending in a hopeful direction: down. In the past decade, though, suicide rates have risen more than a quarter and have experienced a compound annual growth rate every year since. Competition has become commonplace and self-worth is based on views or likes or follows. We have built ourselves carefully constructed facades to share parts of our lives we believe others should see and hope that they do. Subterfuge has become the foundation for connection but that foundation is quivering. Likes and comments create the emotional minefield but they don’t help you through it. The people providing this digital validation are behind a screen and they need to be with you on the other side of it. We need to be with each other on the other side of it. We need more cornermen.

World suicide prevention day is September 10th. If you haven’t told someone how extraordinary they are in a while, do that then. Remind them that they are more than what the internet tells them they are. Help someone recognize the importance of their existence and that nothing would be the same if they were not here.

Nothing would be the same if you did not exist.

Remind them they have someone in their corner. Someone to motivate, aid recovery, make the tough losses more bearable and the victories more triumphant. Try to be that person for someone else. Someone you love or someone you know or maybe even someone you don’t. Smile at the stranger on the sidewalk and remember that everyone has their own Everest to climb each morning. For many, more than 48 million for some perspective, that Everest could be a daily battle with depression, anxiety, PTSD, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, OCD, anorexia, or one of the countless debilitating illnesses that our society makes it difficult to find someone who is willing to support and understand. These 48 million enter the ring every morning not knowing how tough their opponent is going to be and a lot of mornings that makes getting out of bed unfeasible. It’s hard to face an opponent feeling like you’ve already lost. It’s hard to face an opponent who provokes fear and pain that aren’t always easy to understand. It’s hard to face an opponent that a lot of people can’t see or understand, either. A very good friend of mine once said that some of our most difficult experiences are a lot like morse code – although people know what it is, they don’t necessarily understand it. If you wake up and feel brave enough to enter the ring today, remember that you have someone in your corner who wants to try and understand. Someone who believes in your ability to succeed. You don’t have to enter that match alone. Allow yourself to let someone help bandage your wounds or hold you when you experience a punch with thunderous reverberation.

You are worthy of the help you are offered.

You are not unworthy because someone hurt you.

You are not less of a person because someone might have made you believe you are.

You are whole and you did not let them win.

You are worthy of love and hope and inspiration and more time.

You are so, so, so worthy of more time.

David Levithan once stated, “There are all these moments you think you won’t survive. And then you survive.”

When you forget what it feels like to survive, why it is worth waking up tomorrow, or why it is worth it to lace up your gloves and enter that ring again, try to remind yourself of all you have done and continue to do. Remind yourself that you opened your eyes and you took a breath and if that is all you do today that is okay. Stick around to take a few more.

If mental illness is the Goliath to your David remember who came out victorious in that battle.

And when you are walking down the street or through the grocery store or through the office or your classroom just remember that sometimes the way you think you know or understand someone is not the way they actually are. Try to remember that sometimes somebody feels like they are entering the fight all alone.

Be in their corner when they turn around. Remind yourself that it is okay to have someone in your corner, too. Even the most experienced fighters need someone to believe in them and root for them when they can’t do either for themselves.

If you needed a sign to continue to fight, let this be it.

If anything at all, let this serve as a reminder that every time you thought you could not go on, you did.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Screenshot: Building website

Have you ever built a website? For anyone born after 1985 or who has ever been part of a startup or fan group, the answer is likely yes. Indeed, for many millennials, web design was a youthful hobby and learning to code HTML was a fascination–and these skills ultimately turned out to be highly marketable. Since the first website ever created in 1991, the total number of websites in existence has skyrocketed to over 1 billion.

With so many websites being posted to the web, every company needs one to stay competitive. After all, a website truly is a powerful asset for acquiring new customers, establishing your brand, and informing people about your business.

Shockingly though, about half of all small businesses still don’t have a website. Most realize they need one, but the biggest issue they face, is getting one.

Deciding to Build a Website

Hiring a professional web design agency or even a freelance web designer is expensive. Thus, a growing number of businesses are taking the do-it-yourself route and are using templates and other design tools in an attempt to cut costs. Plus, they know their brand better than anyone else, so who better to build their site?

Building a website yourself is doable, although as it turns out, almost all of these websites end up failing. According to a recent study by Webydo, 98% of amateurs fail when trying to build their own websites. That’s a lot!

Reasons for Failure

The average small business owner typically doesn’t know much about HTML, CSS, JavaScript or any of the other technologies a website is made up of. In general, they know very little about web design and development.

However, this doesn’t mean that they can’t build a website themselves. There is good news. You can succeed in building a website yourself if you avoid these 3 missteps:

Misstep #1: Cutting Corners & Not Spending Enough Money on Your Website

Most small business owners are already on tight budgets and want to cut corners where they can. After all, a website is just one aspect of their business and there are many different things an SMB needs to focus on. This turns out especially true when it comes to making a website.

Most SMBs decide to build websites themselves because hiring a professional web designer is simply too expensive. However, a website is an investment in your business and even if you build one yourself, it’s going to cost you.

Furthermore, many think that they can build their own website for free. There are plenty of website builders available for SMBs looking to build their own websites that offer free plans. Although these free plans seem very tempting, you’re setting yourself up for failure almost immediately by thinking you can use these free plans. Free plans limit your options and its impossible to build a successful website using a free plan.

Misstep #2: Not Taking Time to Learn the Basics

Another reason for failure, is not learning enough about the basics. Again, many small business owners cut corners and try to build a website immediately without understanding basic website principles.

They’ll see a TV commercial or internet ad about a website builder claiming how “easy” it is and then they’ll gain this false understanding of simply signing up with a website builder and slapping together a website.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with using website builders, but it’s important to note that you’ll still need a basic understanding of web technologies.

For example, because of things like Wix’s #ItsThatEasy campaign, many viewers are led to believe you don’t need to learn any of those time consuming coding skills or other website best practices to find success online.

Unfortunately, a successful website takes more than just slapping together a simple template and filling in the blanks. You’ll need to spend time learning about search engine optimization, creating appealing graphic design, and technical factors that will optimize your site’s performance. The field is huge and there’s a lot to learn.

Fortunately, there are plenty of great resources online that businesses can utilize to learn how to make a website properly. But you need to take the time to learn.

Professional web designers have spent years honing their craft, so you can’t expect to master these skills in a few short hours. Many design companies even break down the process, leaving the graphic design aspects to one team and the coding to another, simply because the sheer amount of expertise that goes into site design is unmanageable for a single individual.

Thinking you can do it all yourself in a few short hours is a key misstep to avoid.

Misstep #3: Failure to Manage & Maintain Your Website

Finally, it’s important to note that websites don’t live in a permanent, static state – they’re more like developing, digital organisms that need to adapt and evolve. Many businesses make their website and leave them as is. A website is not a set and forget kind of thing. Failure to realize this is another critical misstep to failure.

You’ll need to maintain the code and content of your site, keeping them up-to-date. Most site builders should maintain the code aspect, but you’ll still need to adhere current web design best practices and to any new SEO rules if you want your site to remain successful.

Conclusion

Building a website yourself is doable, but it takes money, time, and continual work. If you want to avoid being another statistic for failed websites, you’ll need to avoid the above missteps and steer towards success by taking the time to learn a little about web design before you set out.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) wants Hillary Clinton to be the next president, but he’s worried that her campaign is spending too much money on TV advertising, which may not reach a crucial demographic: young people. Fortunately, he has an idea for how to make sure they turn out ― and turn up. 

“What’s wrong with us people?” Hastings said during a meeting with Florida Democratic activists Thursday, according to The Palm Beach Post. “We got that big old beach over there. And all you have to do is get some liquor and some punk rockers and some rappers and you’ll have all the kids you ever needed. But our old fogy behinds, we continue to not do the things that are necessary.”

Hastings, 79, also promoted the music service Pandora as the way to reach young voters.

“Most of you in here don’t even know what Pandora is. That’s where kids can be found,” he said. “They hunker down on weekends on social media. They don’t look at MSNBC and Fox and ABC. They don’t get their news that way. What does it take to get that across to all of these candidates and campaigns?”

Clinton is benefiting significantly from Donald Trump’s unpopularity with young voters. In a recent USA Today/Rock the Vote poll, she had 56 percent of the support of voters under age 35, compared to Trump’s 20 percent ― although she’s still not where Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was with that demographic. 

Sanders, however, did have a rapper who regularly campaigned for him.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.