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Hub chess course has kids thinking two moves ahead
Jin-ah Kim
It’s a rainy Saturday afternoon, and 12-year-old South End resident Steven Tung is acting his age — horsing around with his friends, wrestling and having fun at the Wang YMCA in Chinatown.
Then, all of a sudden, he makes a beeline for a small classroom next to the center’s badminton court, enters and takes a seat. It is almost 2 p.m., and the moment Steven has been anxiously awaiting has finally come.
Chess class is about to start.
Steven has loved to play chess since his father first taught him the game at the age of four, and he’s always wanted to improve his skills.
“Good defense is good offense,” he says, relating the lessons he’s learned. “Learning chess at a young age is a great experience.” Full story
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‘Journal’ details rise, fall of first black paper in U.S.
Kam Williams
While the Constitution declares that all men are born free and equal, the wise corporation of the city of Washington … see proper to proscribe the rights of a certain portion of the community … Ought such laws to exist? Ought Congress to allow Washington, the spot which, alone of all others should be sacred to the rights of man … to be polluted by the footsteps of a slave? … Many who there plead for the equal rights of man, are the very men who … buy and sell their brethren like beasts of burden.”
— Excerpted from an 1827 editorial by John B. Russwurm (page 88)
Freedom’s Journal, the first African American newspaper ever published in the United States, debuted on March 16, 1827. The short-lived periodical was the brainchild of two black men, Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russwurm. The former was a Presbyterian minister born free in Delaware, while the latter was a mulatto, the college-educated son of a white Jamaican plantation owner and one of his servants. Full story
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BET’s ‘Hot Ghetto Mess’ fetches heat from critics
Lynn Elber
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — “Hot Ghetto Mess,” a BET series that has provoked criticism and sent advertisers fleeing before it has even aired, will prove detractors wrong, BET entertainment head Reginald Hudlin said.
“It’s unfortunate that people are making an erroneous presumption based on absolutely zero information,” Hudlin told a meeting Sunday of the Television Critics Association.
“Hot Ghetto Mess,” which debuts July 25, combines viewer-submitted home videos and BET-produced man-on-the-street interviews that the channel said are intended to challenge and inspire “viewers to improve themselves and their communities.”
The six-episode series is hosted by comedian Charlie Murphy (“Chappelle’s Show”). It is based on a Web site that features photos of men and women, mostly black, with extreme hairstyles and clothing typically linked to hip-hop fashion.
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Masterful ‘Marmalade’ anything but child’s play
Victoria Cheng
Any theatrical venture in which young children, sex, violence and drugs cross paths is bound to court its share of controversy. Company One’s production of “Mr. Marmalade,” a play premised on the relationship between a four-year-old girl and her physically abusive, drug- and pornography-addicted imaginary friend, welcomes the debate with open arms.
The play’s opening scene sets the pace for a raucous show, as Lucy, a preternaturally articulate preschooler (played with bright-eyed effervescence by Bard College grad and Company One newcomer Rachael Hunt) demands of Mr. Marmalade, “Why don’t you touch me anymore? Is there somebody else?”
Mr. Marmalade (a simultaneously charming and sleazy John Kuntz) presents a new twist on the age-old idea of an imaginary friend: a smooth-talking corporate shill who brings Lucy roses and chocolate, makes suggestive comments about Lucy’s young and single mother, and has a proclivity towards violence, intoxicants and pornography when stressed out.
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