NEWS & BLOG

Lucille Clifton was a poet and author from Baltimore. She inspired people of all ages with her writing. Clifton often visited and conjured her writing in notable places around the city, making her mark on the community.

Angel’s Tavern was a small bar in a historic neighborhood in Baltimore where Clifton read her poems to a reoccurring audience. From 1974-1985 she served as a trustee of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, yet another place where she connected and inspired young writers. Her passion for educating young adults through literature naturally led her to work at Coppin State University and St. Mary’s College.

Sidney Clifton described her childhood century-old home, The Clifton House, as the setting for her mother’s famous poems. In 2018, Sidney began working on regaining possession of the house after it had been lost due to foreclosure in the 80s.

Sidney was able to buy back the house and in 2020 the house received an African-American Cultural Heritage Action Fund project planning grant. The project’s plan was to begin the transformation of the house into a new cultural arts space.

Original post by Orilonise D. Yarborough/National Trust for Historic Preservation-Saving Places

Read more here:

https://savingplaces.org/stories/a-place-to-grow-lucille-cliftons-life-in-baltimore#.YYRMdNbMLPY

Wahpepah’s Kitchen in Oakland, California is the first woman-owned restaurant specializing in native cuisine in the area.

The owner of the restaurant, Crystal Wahpepah, is an enrolled citizen of the Kickapoo Nation of Oklahoma. She became very familiar with cooking for tribal events with her family at the International Friendship House.

Wahpepah’s Kitchen is looking to reclaim, transform, and sustain changes to the food system through utilizing an Indigenous food sovereignty model in Oakland, California, and beyond. It is surrounded in color and the history of the Kickapoo Nation.

Original post by Nanette Deetz/Native News Online

Read more here: https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/first-native-american-restaurant-in-northern-california-opens-wahpepah-s-kitchen-in-oakland-ca

Near the Arizona-Nevada border, more than 700 petroglyphs can be found at Grapevine Canyon. The petroglyphs are from 1100-1900 AD.

The Fort Mojave Indian Tribe occupies the land from Mojave City to Topock and straddles the Nevada, California, and Arizona borders.

Fort Mojave was established as a U.S. military outpost in 1859. There are ruins of Fort Mojave still existing near the Colorado River. The Fort Mojave tribe holds the river sacred to its traditions.

Nora McDowell is the manager of the Topock Remediation Project. This project will consist of cleaning chromium contamination in the groundwater near Topock Maze.

Topock Maze is an over 600-year-old geoglyph that is spiritually important to the Mojave.

Original Post by: Fred Mayson/Associated Press

Read more here: https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/project-aims-to-preserve-tribes-cultural-history

Early next year, Mary McLeod Bethune will make history as the first Black person to have a state-commissioned statue in the U.S. Capitol. Her statue will replace the Confederate general statue at the Capitol’s Statuary Hall.

Bethune was an influential educator and civil rights activist. She founded the National Council of Negro Women, advised multiple U.S presidents, and created a boarding school for Black children which later became Bethune-Cookman University.

The statue of Bethune has already been created and was recently unveiled in her home state of Florida. It will be moved from Florida to the Capitol in early 2022.

The statue was created by artist Nilda Comas, the first Hispanic master sculptor to create a statue for the National Statuary Hall State Collection.

Original post by Rachel Treisman/NPR

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/14/1045964525/mary-mcleod-bethune-statue-us-capitol-florida-unveiling

21st-century technology has enabled researchers to see the faces of people who lived more than 2,000 years ago. The scientist used the DNA taken from three ancient Egyptian mummies to create digital images of what they might have looked like in their 20s.

The animations created are based on DNA phenotyping which predicts an individual’s skin, hair, and eye color.

Parabon NanoLabs presented the reconstructed images of the Egyptians. Parabon NanoLabs, a Virginia-based company usually helps solve cold cases. NanoLabs is the first company to work with DNA phenotyping on human DNA from several years ago.

Original Post by David Kingly/Smithsonian Magazine

Read More Here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/3d-reconstruction-ancient-egyptian-mummies-180978786/