The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
4 WAYS YOU CAN HELP KIDS REFRESH FRIENDSHIPS
Police believe driver was shot before he steered car onto interstate highway. By continuing as Lt. Uhura, actress impacted many lives in Atlanta, elsewhere.
For many kids, after being home from school for almost a full year, the combination of both learning and socializing online is causing fatigue.
Breshaun Joyner, an eighthgrade English teacher and the mom of a 16-year-old son, agrees. “At first, online school was novel, and therefore, in some ways, more tolerable. Then it got old, and now it’s reaching untenable,” she says. She has seen kids go from working at desks and tables to lying in bed and hiding in their cinched-up hoodies.
We all know that socializing in person would make kids a lot happier. For children who don’t have that option, Joyner says that “giving kids truly social time on screens can be a close second.”
Although these ideas may take a little organization and management on a caregiver’s part, getting a mostly happy child back, even if just for an hour or two while they’re with their friends, is well worth the effort.
1. Stream a movie together.
Watching a show or movie together is a wonderful shared experience that will give kids plenty to process and talk about well after it’s over. Your kids may already be watching movies with friends in different homes by video chatting and starting the same movie at the same time, then hitting mute on their phones.
But several streaming services have created their own watch-party features, making the experience way more fun — and more like an actual movie night. Teleparty, formerly Netflix Party, syncs the playback for shows or movies on Hulu, Netflix and HBO, as well as Disney+ (though it has Groupwatch, its own version of this feature), so everyone gets to watch at the same time. Then they can start a private chat room to gab about what’s playing or anything else they’d like to talk about, all while getting a break from their phones.
2. Create a daily podcast.
Kids are really missing all those small social moments, such as greeting one another in the hallway or hanging out in front of their lockers. You can help them re-create a bit of that with Cappuccino, an app that lets them create a group podcast that gets sent to all the contributors the following morning at 7 a.m. It’s like group chats, but without the 40,000 distracting notifications. Plus, they get to hear their friends’ voices.
3. Eat school lunch at a Zoom cafeteria.
Even though lunch at school doesn’t last very long, there’s a lot of socialization that happens during that time that isn’t happening at all right now. So for kids who are doing all-virtual or hybrid schooling, you could create an online lunch date for them using Zoom.
4. Host a virtual club.
Although a club definitely has a more formal ring to it than calling a friend to video chat, a scheduled meeting for kids who have lost out on many of their previous extracurriculars might not be such a bad idea, especially for high school students who might need activities on their college applications.
You could do something more formal, such as a foreign language or science club, or go the dance party or crafts route. This is also a chance to tap into the services of dancers, artists and other performers who may be looking for paid opportunities, given the bleakness of their industries right now.
Whatever you decide, try to make it a regular occurrence, so your kids have something to look forward to every week.
‘Preliminarily we don’t believe this happened on the highway.’
Atlanta police Capt. Jason Smith
The eastbound lanes of I-20 were closed for more than three hours Thursday morning after a man was found shot inside his vehicle in downtown Atlanta.
Police discovered the body of the 33-year-old man slumped in a wrecked orange Land Rover on the ramp to the Downtown Connector. They shut down I-20 East to investigate about 5:20 a.m., creating problems for early morning
The story goes like this:
It was 1967, and reviews for the first season of “Star Trek” were not great. Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt. Nyota Uhura, had bigger issues with the show. She found it demoralizing to see her lines cut and cut again. She had to deal with racist insults off set, as well as from executives who conspired to keep her from seeing her fan mail.
At the end of the first season, Nichols recounted in her autobiography, she told the show’s creator she was done.
But the next day, at an NAACP function, a fan greeted her: Martin Luther King Jr. He told her how important her role was and how he and his family watched “Star Trek” faithfully and adored her in particular — the only Black character.
Nichols thanked him but planned to leave.
“You cannot and you must not,” she recalls him saying. “Don’t you realize how important your presence, your character is? ... Don’t you see? This is not a Black role, and this is not a female role. You have the first nonstereotypical role on television, male or female. You have broken ground. said she commuters headed into the city.
It was the third time since the start of the year a deadly shooting investigation has blocked an Atlanta interstate. Atlanta police Capt. Jason Smith said the killings were not connected.
“It’s kind of an anomaly as to what has happened recently, as far as on the highway itself, but we do not believe they are related,” he told The Atlanta Journal-constitution from the scene of Thursday’s shooting.
Investigators believe the latest victim, who was not identified, drove for some time after being shot before crashing into a median wall. A passerby called 911 to report the wreck, according to Smith.
“We know he was driving and ended up hitting a median wall, and then rode
“... For the first time,” he continued, “the world sees us as we should be seen, as equals, as intelligent people — as we should be.” Nichols stayed.
She stayed for the next two seasons of the series, lent her voice to an animated version and appeared in a halfdozen “Star Trek” movies. She had the first interracial kiss in American television. She recruited for NASA. Through her work, she influenced Mae Jemison — the first Black female astronaut. the wall for a little while and came into the area of rest,” Smith said.
While the shooting is still under investigation, Smith said evidence suggests no shots were fired on the interstate. Investigators found no evidence to suggest suicide or road rage.
“Preliminarily we don’t believe this happened on the highway. I can’t comment specifically on what we believe
By continuing on “Star Trek,” she had an impact on the lives of many others, including a number of metro Atlanta Black residents. Some credit Nichols’ presence on TV with giving them confidence to pursue their own interests.
Marilyn Teague, 72, said she watched “Amos ’n’ Andy” as a child but didn’t know that she “wasn’t supposed to like it.” Seeing Nichols on TV was a revelation. Her character, a communications officer, spoke several languages. She was on the bridge of the starship Enterprise. People listened to her.
“Her position there helped me get confidence in who I am,” said Teague, who lives in Doraville and became a sign language interpreter partly to emulate Lt. Uhura. “She was there at a time when we needed to see her.”
Tony Cade, 56, is the owner of Challenges Games and Comics and the director of the Atlanta Sci-fi and Fantasy Expo. He first saw Nichols on screen in “Star Trek”
reruns. It was refreshing to see a character who was not a criminal, a nanny or a maid. He said her presence reinforced to him that he could be a leader — she might not have had a lot of lines at first, but she still commanded respect.
“She inspired a lot of people.
She inspired me to do a lot of the things I do,” he said. “Nichelle opened the eyes of many people who opened the eyes of many more people.”
Eddie Hines, 47, said Nichols’ role was a steppingstone for the “Star Trek” franchise, too. Now, a Black woman — Sonequa Martin-green — plays Michael Burnham, the lead of the current series, “Star Trek: Discovery.”
As important as it was for Black people to see themselves represented on screen, Hines said, it was just as important for white people to see Lt. Uhura as a fully developed character.
“To be on the bridge and not be the cleaning lady — Black people already wanted it,” the Smyrna resident said. “To get people who did not want it to accept it is a huge leap . ... She did it through grace. She made people enjoy her performances.”
Joseph Campbell, an East Point graphic artist, doesn’t think the show would have resonated the same way had Nichols exited, as she planned.
“I’m so glad she stuck it through,” he said. “Just seeing her was like, wow, that’s me.”
Without Nichols, Campbell said, it would have taken longer for Black people — and Black women in particular — to be normalized on screen.
“She showed young kids of color that you can do it,” Campbell said.
“Nichelle Nichols was our Wonder Woman, our Captain Marvel.”
Dedren Snead was one of those kids. Snead, 45, distinctly recalls seeing Lt. Uhura on Nickelodeon — it was the first time he saw a Black woman animated.
It stuck with him.
Snead is writing a graphic novel, “Sorghum and Spear,” that’s due out in April. One character — Eshe the All-mother — is based on Nichols and uses her likeness. The Snellville resident described Nichols as an icon and credits her with sparking his interest in science fiction and fantasy, merely by being on the show. Through the graphic novel, he’s had a chance to interact with her and thank her for her work.
“If I didn’t see her, I wouldn’t have been interested in that stuff. A lot of us didn’t see ourselves invited to that conversation,” Snead said of science fiction. “The idea of seeing yourself in the future, that’s what I got from her. You’re making a direct statement: There’s a super smart Black woman in the future. We are there. We didn’t get wiped out. We didn’t get oppressed.”