Our Time PressThe Local Paper with the Global View

By Akosua Kathryn Albritton
The following story is a reprint from the April 2003 Wired For Success column.  It makes a second appearance because the winter season is here.  Given all the great options we have on the Internet and features on the latest personal computers, being aware of one’s time seated before the PC monitor is an important health consideration.  This column borrows from the beer commercials to warn, “Computer users, please surf responsibly.”

Healthy Computer Use
The Internet and such New Media as DVDs, CD-ROM, CD burners, videoconferencing, and web casts give people the means to be entertained, informed, and to communicate with one another.  It’s possible to spend hours searching the globe or chatting with friends.  This sedentary lifestyle will lead to avoidable health conditions.  Carpal Tunnel Syndrome made news a few years ago.  The uproar died down, but the problem still exists.  This syndrome and other conditions arise because people are sitting too long.  Lack of movement stiffens the joints, ligaments, and muscles.  Sitting for long periods also affects the internal organs.  Movement invigorates the heart, liver, stomach, kidney, etc.  In fact, the bones stay strong when we stand, walk, or run.  Sitting softens them over time.
Another interesting occurrence is the dynamic of reading something stimulating and its affect on the muscles.  Positive and negative stimulation of the brain will set in motion the secretion of different hormones.  One common hormone is adrenalin.  When one strives to obtain information or engages in a stimulating conversation, the brain’s neurons are working, the heart may beat faster, and different hormones are released.  Being sedentary doesn’t allow the body to efficiently process and eliminate the chemicals produced.  For example, adrenalin seeps into the muscles.
Observe yourself.  Do you notice that your heart may pound, your eyes feel tired, or any part of your body has pain? When this happens, you’ve been on the computer too long.  Comfort may be found by adjusting the height of the chair and computer monitor.  More importantly it’s time to get away from the computer.  Get up and stretch for a few minutes.  Take a walk.  Look around the room.
Computer radiation is another concern.  While it is a very small exposure, it has an impact on the body’s electromagnetic field.  Charmaine Johnson, Wholistic Health Counselor, explains that placing a comb on top of the monitor breaks the computer’s magnetic field.  Ensure the comb’s teeth face away from you.  This columnist tested the practice and experienced significant relief.
Online Communities
The Internet not only brings distant and exotic locations to your desktop but your neighborhood, too.  Do you want to know what’s on the minds of Central Brooklyn residents?  Visit your neighbors online.  The St. John’s Recreation Center sponsors Crown Heights Live (www.crownheightslive.org).  They hail it “Brooklyn’s Internet Youth Publication.”  This Website features the art and words of Crown Heights’ teens.  It’s bright and plays Hip Hop while you read the various articles.  Visit the site or, even better, contribute to it.  They currently seek a Webmaster.  Bed-Stuy Online (www.bedstuyonline.com) is another place to meet your neighbors.  This site features news about the ‘hood and forums to discuss various issues impacting Bedford-Stuyvesant community and culture.  Both of these sites were featured in earlier issues of this column.  It’s great that they are still live with activity.
Meeting Notices
Latinos in Information Science and Technology (LISTA) sponsors the 3 Kings Fiesta Navidena Networking event Thursday, January 6th, from 7 PM to 19 PM at Branch NY, 226 East 54th Street, NYC.  For more information and registration, log onto www.a-lista.org.
The New York City Council’s Committee on Technology in Government will hold a hearing at Polytechnic University’s Dibner Auditorium Monday, January 10th, from 2 PM to 5 PM.  The hearing’s topic is “Oversight: Is Brooklyn Business Suffering From A Broad Band Gap.”  For more information, visit the Committee’s Web page, www.nyccouncil.info/issues/committee.cfm?committee id=106&ltsbdkey+5121.
Black Data Processors Association of New York’s (BDPA-NY) January Program meeting will be held Thursday, January 20th, at 6:30 PM at Consolidated Edison, 4 Irving Place in Manhattan.  Log onto www.bdpa-ny.org to learn more about this association.
Have an Internet story?  Know of an interesting website?  Contact me at akosua@plans4success.com

Rashad is the Jewel in August Wilson’s Drama “Gem”

When most people think of an amazing, award winning African American playwright, whether it’s for the Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award or New York Drama Critics Award, they have to think of August Wilson. Wilson is on a mission to set down the history of Blacks in this country and he is accomplishing that mission. He is determined to write ten plays, each addressing a time in history, his latest, “Gem Of The Ocean”, looks at the racism that Blacks faced in 1904. It has a rich storyline that includes slavery, escaped slaves, a Black man who betrays his people, an elderly Black who looks to the ancestors for guidance, a lost soul trying to find his way back and the trouble a person can find when they look for love.
Not many people have the ability to create the intriguing scripts that Wilson puts together. He makes sure that the audience experiences several emotions-pride, anger, indignity, levity, sadness and delight. To see an August Wilson play is to witness a powerful, dramatic piece of theater. One of the things that I appreciate when I go to see an August Wilson play is how many Blacks are in the audience. Wilson has a way of attracting our people to the theater and we all sit in awe as we experience the brilliance of his creation. His plays also tends to star stellar casts and this one is no different. This cast includes Tony award winner, Phylicia Rashad as Aunt Ester, the lead character in the play and a 285 year old woman, who has spiritual powers. There is also Anthony Chisholm who plays Solly Two Kings, a strong character-an escaped slave and a fighter for Black rights. LisaGay Hamilton is phenomenal as Black Mary, the young woman who lives with Aunt Ester and will someday have the secrets Ester knows passed on to her. John Earl Jelks is Citizen Barlow, a troubled young man who needs his soul cleansed and seeks out Aunt Ester. Eugene Lee is Eli, he also lives with Aunt Ester and takes care of her. Tony award winner Ruben Santiago-Hudson is dynamic in the role of Caesar, the Black man who will sacrifice the lives of his people to ensure his own success. A man who struggles with a lack of relationship with his sister, Black Mary, who is turned off by his betrayal of his own people. Raynor Scheine plays the one White character in the play, a traveling merchant named Selig. He sells to Blacks and sympathizes with them.
The play is directed by Kenny Leon and is a credit to his abilities. “Gem Of The Ocean” is playing at the Walter Kerr Theatre at W 48th Street. Go and experience Wilson’s creativity.

WHOOPI OFFERS PLATINUM PERFORMANCE
IN LATEST ONE-WOMAN STUNNER!

By William Loren Katz
 New York’s first murder took place on January 6, 1641 in the Dutch Colony of New Amsterdam and the man slain was one of dozens of African laborers who had had begun to arrive before 1624 when the Dutch purchased the island from the Algonquins for $24. To this day the murder remains an unsolved mystery. The victim, Jan de Primero, worked alongside nine other Black laborers. Primero was found dead and the Dutch investigators chose as prime suspects his nine Black fellow workers. Perhaps racial prejudice led them to zero in on the Africans since none of the arrested had been caught red-handed, admitted the crime or pointed to a culprit, and evidence was inconclusive.  
It was a chilling time for the nine suspects. Each maintained innocence. But knowing that the Dutch planned to torture them until some one admitted or pointed to a murderer, the nine concocted a united answer. They announced that they were all guilty of the crime. Was this courageous African solidarity, a inventive plan, or a desperate act? Their intentions are not known, but their unity led to momentous and long lasting changes in the colony.
    The Africans created a crisis. Their decision to accept joint responsibility forced the Dutch – represented by their New Amsterdam Council sitting as a court – to confront the Africans’ vital economic importance. Were white colonists  – to satisfy a desire to punish the murder of a Black man – willing to execute their most reliable labor force? After two weeks the Council decided not to execute the “admitted” murderers. Instead it ordered the nine workers to draw lots – so only one man would face execution.
    Manuel de Gerritt, nicknamed “the Giant,” picked the unlucky straw. On January 24, less than three weeks after Primero’s death, he was marched to the Black hangman at City Hall. White and Black men and women, including Governor Willem Kieft, crowded around as the hangman prepared for the colony’s first public execution.
    The rope was placed around Gerritt’s neck, the trap was sprung, but then fate intervened. The rope snapped, people gasped, and Gerritt tumbled to the ground shaken but alive. The crowd, according to an eyewitness, “called out for mercy with great earnestness.”
    At this point the unpopular Governor Kieft seized the chance to win citizen support. He pardoned Gerritt and the eight others. The murder mystery deepened years later when Primero’s widow married Jan of Fort Orange, one of the nine who confessed.
    Kieft’s refusal to execute the colony’s best workmen proved that Africans were of crucial importance to the Dutch. Of his many decisions, most of them wrong, this one would later turn out to be vital in the survival of the colony. In 1638 Kieft, a rigid, bigoted, dictator with a penchant for theft and violence, had been installed as Governor of New Amsterdam. His governing style was inept and disasterous. He initiated get-rich-quick schemes, and as they failed, he imposed higher taxes.
    Kieft considered the Algonquins on whose land the Dutch settled as a “primitive and inferior people.”  He decided to tax the Algonquins, and if that did not work, to destroy them. Algonquin leaders took a dim view of the incompetent and hostile foreigners, and called the Dutch “Materiotty” which meant “men of bad blood.” They added, perhaps with a touch of humor, that while these Europeans might be “tolerable at sea” on land they were “good for nothing.”
White residents of New Amsterdam also charged the Algonquins welcomed the colony’s escaping slaves tp their villages north of the island, in today’s Harlem.  Algonquins could muster about 1500 fighters and the Dutch garrison had about a hundred able-bodied men, so Kieft’s hotheaded belligerence threatened the colony’s future.
But in 1643, two years after Primero was slain, Kieft launched a full-scale war on the Algonquins. Terrified Dutch farmers north of Wall Street fled to Fort Amsterdam for safety, and morale among those crowded at the fort began to sink. It looked hopeless. 
    As Kieft’s war took more lives, Africans – including families of those accused in the Primero case – petitioned the Governor for freedom and land. The Governor, seeing an opportunity to rescue his colony from disaster, began to grant these families liberty and to hand them landed estates north of Canal street. He clearly hoped these farmers would form a buffer zone that would keep the Algonquins from overrunning his colony. Black land grants stretched from Canal Street to today’s 34th Street.
In a short time, the war ended. The record does not show that any Africans died fighting the Algonquins. Some historians claim that Kieft ordered several massacres of Algonquins that convinced the foe to quit. It is more likely that free African farmers, harboring no grudges against the Algonquins, saved New Amsterdam by bringing peace and friendship to the warring parties. Kieft was sent home to Holland in disgrace, and the Africans remained a crucial and fixed part of New York life from that time forward.

MIT Summer Program
for High School-age
Young Women
The Women’s Technology Program at MIT is a 4-week summer residence program to introduce high school girls to electrical engineering and computer science. If you know a girl who is currently a high school junior with demonstrated math and science ability and an interest in finding out about EECS, please encourage her to visit our website for more information and for an application form (applications are due
February 1, 2005):  http://wtp.mit.edu/
Our classes are taught in a supportive environment by a staff of women MIT PhD candidates and undergraduates. The full-time academic program includes hands-on experiments and team-based projects in computer science, electrical engineering, and mathematics.
Our goals are to  increase girls’ interest and confidence in pursuing computer science and engineering and make them aware of their potential for success in these fields.
Participants are selected from a nationwide applicant pool of girls
who attend the program in the summer between their junior and senior year in high school. No prior experience in computer programming, physics, or electrical engineering is expected, but applicants typically have strong academic records, especially in math and science.

2005 Gates Millennium
Scholars Program
The Bill & Melinda Gates  Foundation seeks nominations for the Gates Millennium Scholars Program  for low-income students of color.
Eligibility: Students are  eligible for GMS scholarship consideration if they are:
-African American, American  Indian/Alaska Native, Asian Pacific Islander American or  Hispanic American
 -A citizen/legal permanent  resident or national of the United States
-Have attained a cumulative  GPA of 3.3 on a 4.00 scale (unweighted) at the time of  nomination
-Will be entering a U.S.  accredited college or university as full-time, degree seeking freshmen in  the Fall of 2005
-Have demonstrated  leadership abilities through participation in community service,  extracurricular or other activities
-Meet the Federal Pell  Grant eligibility criteria.
The deadline for submission  of nomination materials is January 14, 2005, 12:00 midnight  (EST).  For more info:   877-690-4677 (toll free) or _http://www.gmsp.org_ (http://www.gmsp.org)

Slavery, Abolition
and Resistance Fellowships     
Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition-                                             
The Fellowship Program is designed to support established and younger scholars in researching projects that can be linked to the aims of the sponsor. Three-month Postdoctoral Associate fellowships with a stipend of $10,000 each, and a one-month fellowship with a stipend of $3,000 are available per academic year. Scholars currently holding the Ph.D. are invited to apply for either term of fellowship. Deadline(s): 04/01/2005 for the Fall 2005 and Spring 2006 semesters.    E-mail: gilder.lehrman.center@yale.edu  http://www.yale.edu/glc/info/fellowship.html Sponsor: Yale University

It only takes a visit to the current crowded facility, to understand the elation at the  groundbreaking ceremony for the Bedford-Stuyvesant Family Health Clinic’s new building at the Fulton Street side.
The Bedford-Stuyvesant Family Health Center’s Executive Director, Ulysses Kilgore, said that the building, which will extend through the block, facing Fulton Street and Brooklyn Avenue on the north, and Herkimer Street and St. Andrews Place on the south, has been long overdue necessary and was made possible by cited his “guiding light” the event turned into a celebration of the long-time community work of the BSFHC’s Board Chairman Charles Palms and reflections on the steadfastedness needed for building institutions.
Speaking on that, Mr. Kilgore remembered Boardmember Preston Lambert.  “Preston would always say ‘All I want to see is a shovel in the ground,’ and now a shovel is in the ground,” for the new state of the art multi-story medical facility.
The Bedford-Stuyvesant Family Health Center is a Primary Care Health facility that offers a broad range of integrative health care services, and an emphasis on disease prevention, health education and health management. It is an Article 28 facility that has grown continuously and dramatically since its incorporation in 1976.