Summer is a great time to refresh your playlists with tunes that set the mood for the hot days and sizzling nights. I listed some songs below that I am feeling right now. None of them are current chart toppers playing on the radio today, but rather, timeless hits. Plus, a lot of today’s music is garbage, but I digress… I’m in a 90s kind of world, and I am glad I got my… playlist. A good song, no matter when it was made, never goes out of style.
This list is in no particular; they are just random, cool summer songs.
Summertime – DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince
Who Knows – Jimi Hendrix
Live: P Funk Earth Tour – Parliament
Greatest Hits – Bob Marley
Reggae Anthology: The Channel One Story – Various Artists
Putumayo Presents: Asian Grooves – Various Artists
Putumayo Presents: Brazilian Grooves – Various Artists
Ella and Louis – Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
The Very Best of Prince – Prince
Hits, Rarities, and Remixes – A Tribe Called Quest
I recently got rid of nearly 100 books from my home book collection. That sounds like a lot, but I have over 500 books in total! While I was doing spring cleaning around my house, I thought it would also be a good idea to rid my collection of books I don’t need or want anymore. It is hard for me to part from any book, but sometimes you have to make space for other things and people in your life.
I created three boxes – Keep, Recycle and Toss.
Keep Box:
Classic rare or out of print books that I want to keep
Books signed by the author
Books I plan to read in the next three months
Important books related to history, post-colonial studies, media development, and journalism
Toss box:
Books I read already
Books I have multiple copies of in my collection ( I had five copies of The Wretched of the Earth!)
Books I am never going to read
Books I already have as an ebook
Recycle box:
Outdated books and magazines (travel books, encyclopedias)
Books with mold, missing pages, dirt etc.
I reorganized my keep books on the bookshelves and categorized them by subject matter. I also created an Excel sheets listing all my books. This way I don’t purchase multiple copies of books again. The books I promise myself to read in the next three months go on the top shelf.
Books from the toss box were donated to a variety of needy thrift stores and my local library’s Friends group. There are many nonprofits that also serve underserved communities that would love to take your books, like groups that send books to readers in developing countries and prison book programs. Make sure to call these organizations before donating to be sure they will take your books.
For recycling books, paperbacks that are torn or unusable can be placed in your curbside recycling bin.
I hope this helps if you are looking for a way to reorganize your book collection.
During a business trip last week in Washington, DC, I FINALLY got into the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC)! It took me a year to get a ticket to go, as getting tickets is almost as difficult as going to a Beyonce concert!
It was everything I thought it would be and more. I was there for five hours and still feel like I didn’t get to see everything. The museum is organized so well that even for a history buff like myself I learned some new stuff. It took me about an hour just to get through the first floor, which was dedicated to the Atlantic slave trade and slavery. NMAAHC has a rule that says to refer to Africans brought to America as enslaved people instead of slaves as to point out the injustice of the whole institution of slavery. The bottom three floors focus heavily on everything from the first slave landings in Jamestown in 1619 to President Obama’s inauguration in 2008. I learned so much that I will have to go through the notebook I brought with me and write future posts on other specific topics brought up in the museum. The top three floors also had shorter exhibits on the Double V campaign, the black press, South Carolina Gullah culture and even a hip-hop photography exhibit.
The food was great there too! The cafeteria has five stations of food, each representing different African-American foodways throughout history. I was looking at my pedometer during my time in the museum and walked closed to 5,000 steps. My legs were so tired, but my friends and I were determined to see everything because we didn’t know when we would come back, due to how hard it is to get time-entry tickets. I would definitely go again if someone got me tickets!!!
I was really in DC for business, but I found time to do other things like go to the National Portrait Gallery to see the new Obama portraits. I don’t understand what people are complaining about; President Obama’s portrait isn’t the only abstract painting in the Presidents’ Gallery. Portraits of Clinton, JFK and even FDR are not what we would consider “presidential” portraits either. I saw Mrs. Obama’s portrait, and while it didn’t look like her, it was nice to look at. I am just a little disappointed that LL Cool J’s portrait which is right across from the former first lady’s painting was bigger. There were also great portraits of Paul Robeson, Lena Horne, and Michael Jackson.
We also had time to go to the Library of Congress and the National Archives to see the Gutenberg Bible and Declaration of Independence, respectively. I also say the memorials for Lincoln, Jefferson, MLK, and FDR.
Besides going to NMAAHC, I also had a great time going to the National Museum of the American Indian. They had a great exhibit called the Americans, which looks at how Native Americans have been viewed in popular culture. And the food there was great too! I had a chili topped with Frito chips, making myself a Frito Pie!
Last weekend I went to my high school reunion. I was really excited to go as I haven’t been inside my old school since I graduated. I had the opportunity to meet with one current senior at the school who was going to Boston University in the fall. She asked me what advice I would give her as she moves into the next stage in her life.
“It is not where you go to school, but how you use your education,” I said. “Please put some thought into what you major in and the skills you gain that could be useful getting a job after BU.”
I say this not because of my own college experience, but also as a business owner seeking employees and who goes to job fairs and networking events to meet recent college grads. I am quite concerned about the future of America’s economy.
A few months ago, I went to this networking event where I met this young lady who was telling me how she was having a hard time getting a “real” job since she graduated from one of the “Seven Sisters” colleges two years ago. I asked her what she majored in and she told me she studied intersectional queer theory.
There lies the problem. She seriously didn’t understand why she couldn’t get a “real” job and is living with her parents while working at a local cafe, despite graduating from a prestigious school. Sure, she went a school that looks great on the resume, but the major says something else. Not that there is anything wrong with intersectional queer theory, but it is a useless liberal arts major that doesn’t present in-demand technical skills needed in the current and future job market.
I’m not totally against all liberal arts degrees, but if I were going back to college today, I would be majoring in a degree that would give me in-demand, recession-proof skills that I know will get me a job upon graduation.
I majored in journalism when I was in college 20 years ago, and some people may think that is a useless degree. Although journalism is considered a trade (at least when I was in college), back in the late 1990s, people weren’t sure if pursuing a career in the field made sense because the internet was beginning to disrupt the industry. I realized at that time that I had to make sure I had the right skills necessary to stay employable in journalism. I took a bunch of classes in digital media and video production and worked at local newspapers to build up my clip portfolio. For the duration of my career, I made sure I kept my skills up to date by going to seminars and conventions. I went back to school five years ago to get another degree in web development. Because of this, I have not only been able to stay employable in journalism, but I was also able to start up and run my own digital media company for the last 15 years.
Having the right technical skills matter more than ever. I don’t really understand why parents and schools are not encouraging students to pursue in-demand careers in STEM or healthcare. The economy has changed significantly since the recession ten years ago. Furthermore, the cost of a college education is just too expensive today to waste time studying something there isn’t a job for or trains in a specific skill.
And then people get mad that foreign workers are taking away American jobs. Foreign workers are not taking away American jobs; they usually have the right skill sets that not enough American workers have. I get asked by my colleagues at other design firms to recommend other people for their entry-level web development jobs, especially women and people of color. Most of the time I can’t recommend anyone because there just aren’t enough people that I know of pursuing these careers. Entry-level web development jobs generally have starting salaries of 60-70K a year. These are great jobs to have right out of college.
Again, I don’t want to total diss liberal arts majors, but if you are going to major in something that doesn’t have a distinct career path, find other ways to gain skills like through an internship or joining a campus professional organization that can help you get a job. Honestly, I have had better working relationships with folks who graduate from community colleges or vocational tech schools not only because they have the right skills and ready to hit the ground running at the job, but also because they don’t come to the job with some type of entitlement, like some college kids who think they should get a job simply because of the school they graduated from.
So my advice to future graduates; put time into building your skills.
Summer is a great time to refresh your playlists with tunes that set the mood for the hot days and sizzling nights. I listed some songs below that I am feeling right now. None of them are current chart toppers playing on the radio today, but rather, timeless hits. Plus, a lot of today’s music is garbage, but I digress… I’m in a 90s kind of world, and I am glad I got my… playlist. A good song, no matter when it was made, never goes out of style.
