“All hair is good hair,” so said my bald-for-decades father. Sometimes he would say it with a self-admonishing chuckle, sometimes with such fierce emotion that he was boarding on anger. It depended on the circumstance. If someone were to compliment my long childhood ponytail by saying that I had “good hair,” he would state his correction gently. However, some of the worst of my parents’ arguments were after shampoo days, when my mother pulled out the hair straightening hot comb, heating the metal contraption on a stove burner. “You are teaching her to hate herself!” my father yelled. When a video of a young Meghan Markle with a long, kinky ponytail surfaced after her recent Oprah interview along with her husband Prince Harry, someone on Twitter said, “I hope we get to see THAT hair again.” Similar statements were made of Michelle Obama while she was serving as First Lady, but it wasn’t until after she left the White House did we see her natural curls.
Another year, another Black History Month coming to a close. For the past 28 days,
The Root has been celebrating Black Joy and how that looks whether it’s through art, family, food or music. Panama Jackson, senior editor of Very Smart Brothas, has brought us all the joy through the most iconic and Blackest album covers of our time. Granted, there are probably more than 28 out there, but it would be hard to top this series in all of its Blackness.
A slew of my personal favorites made this list Miles Davis in particular because Sundays were for jazz in my house and this particular album stayed on “heavy rotation.” On top of that, I’m sure many of them have played on repeat in Black households since they came out. Panama has done us the honor of making this list, to begin with, and I’m just here to put them together so we can look back and think, “ah yes, this is Black joy with some of the most iconic music moments to look back on.”
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Office novels explored the strange reality of our working lives. Now they make us nostalgic for our cubicles.
Stuart Miller, The Washington Post
Feb. 25, 2021
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Office novels have evolved alongside workplace culture.Little, Brown; Jonathan Cape; Simon and Schuster I miss boring meetings, John Kenney said. The author of two workplace novels - Truth in Advertising and Talk to Me - and Love Poems for the Office, Kenney doesn t miss being bored. I miss being in a room with other people.
Zoom meetings are functional, Kenney said, but lack spontaneity and stymie meandering conversations. What makes work interesting is the serendipitous spark that could come when you re chatting and the other person said something and then you get an idea, he said. Serendipity is hard to capture on Zoom.