August 2022 Edition

Culture & News

The Benefits of  Music

Music has a diverse set of tones, rhythms, and sounds that can invoke emotion or stimulate memories. Many societies have music as a key element in their cultural traditions. Physicians also recommend music for a variety of health benefits. According to Johns Hopkins Medicine: “Research has shown that listening to music can reduce anxiety, blood pressure, and pain as well as improve sleep quality, mood, mental alertness, and memory.”¹ 

Scientists have found music can be useful in learning a foreign language, evaluating memory function, and testing sound capability of a fetus in utero. So, there are several useful purposes for music. Enjoy the music videos posted at the end of this newsletter.

Reference:

(1. ) Johns Hopkins Medicine (Health). “Keep Your Brain Young with Music.” Retrieved on September 19, 2020.  https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/keep-your-brain-young-with-music

For Additional Reading

Babbel Magazine: How to use Music to Help You Learn a Language 

https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/how-singing-can-help-you-learn-a-language

Live Science: 4 Unusual Ways Music can Tune Up the Brain (2014)

https://www.livescience.com/46008-unusual-ways-music-affects-brain.html

NPR: The Power of Music to Affect the Brain (2011)

https://www.npr.org/2011/06/01/136859090/the-power-of-music-to-affect-the-brain

Johns Hopkins Medicine (Health): Keep Your Brain Young with Music

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/keep-your-brain-young-with-music

*Notice: The article “Benefits of Music” was originally published in the October 2020 Edition. To view the full edition click here

Art/Film/Literature News

Abducted: The Carlina White Story

During the summer of 1987, a female infant was abducted from Harlem Hospital in New York. She was nineteen-days old and her parents, Joy White and Carl Tyson, were devastated. For over twenty years they hoped for her return. Meanwhile, in Connecticut, a stroke of serendipity caused a young woman, Nejdra “Netty” Nance, to question her birth origins. She eventually received assistance from The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and was reunited with her birth parents, Joy and Carl, of New York. This true story was also made into a Lifetime movie: Abducted: The Carlina White Story.

New York Magazine: How Carlina White found out she was Kidnapped at Birth (2011)

https://nymag.com/news/features/carlina-white-2011-10/

Business/Non-Profit News

Junior Wallstreeters Inc.

Kevon Chisolm, Esquire and his son Kamari founded Junior Wallstreeters, Inc., a non-profit that teaches the youth about financial literacy. They offer an online summer camp that features: banking, investing, real estate, and community wealth building. This dynamic duo states: “These camps are not only for African Americans but all underserved communities.”

Black News.com: Black Father and Son Offer Online Summer Camp to Teach Financial Literacy and Investing For the Third Year

https://blacknews.com/news/kevon-kamari-chisolm-black-father-son-offer-online-summer-camp-teach-financial-literacy-investing-third-year/

Book Review

Queen Elizabeth: A Life From Beginning to End

Queen Elizabeth: A Life From Beginning to End (49 pages, 2017, kindle edition) is a brief to the point introduction of Queen Elizabeth I. She reigned over England for 45 years. As a toddler, her mother Anne Boleyn, was executed and she was deemed illegitimate. Thus no longer an heir to her father’s throne and out of the line of succession for King Henry VIII. This motherless child’s future was uncertain.

As times changed, Elizabeth was reinstated as an heir to the throne. In the year 1558 c.e., at the age of 25 years old, she became queen. She endured a variety of hardships both personal and professional: betrayals, assassination plots, political rivalry with her cousin Mary Queen of Scots, domestic religious disputes (Protestants vs. Catholics), and war. Often, she battled wits with King Philip of Spain, her primary geopolitical nemesis. Even her rumored first love, Robert Dudley, could not escape scandal at court.

This book has good concise writing and is easy to follow. Of note, Queen Elizabeth’s role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade of Africans is not included, but other works can be sought out on this important topic. Overall, it was a good read.

Book Quotes:

“I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any Prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm.” —Queen Elizabeth I of England
(kindle p. 37)

“She certainly is a great Queen, and were she only a Catholic, she would be our greatly beloved daughter. Just look how well she governs! She is only a woman. Only mistress of half an island, and yet she makes herself feared by Spain, by France, by the Empire, by all!” —Pope Sixtus V
(kindle p. 41).

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