Cartoon by Walt Handelsman for Aug. 20, 2023.
Orioles promote OF Ryan McKenna from Tides – Daily Press
PRO BASEBALL
The Baltimore Orioles promoted outfielder Ryan McKenna from the Triple-A Norfolk Tides on Saturday. He’ll take the place of outfielder Aaron Hicks, who was put on the 10-day injured list with a low back strain, retroactive to Wednesday.
Also, Baltimore placed right-hander Mychal Givens on unconditional release waivers. He was beset by injuries most of the year, compiling an 11.25 ERA in four innings over six appearances for Baltimore and a 7.27 ERA in 8 2/3 innings during eight games with the Tides.
COLLEGE WOMEN’S SOCCER
Hampton drops opener to Robert Morris
Hampton fell 1-0 Friday to Robert Morris in the Pirates’ season opener at Powhatan Field in Norfolk.
The Colonials (2-0), who beat VMI 3-0 Thursday, went ahead of the Pirates when Lidia Nduka converted a penalty kick in the 42nd minute. Robert Morris outshot HU 16-13 and had 10 corner kicks to Hampton’s six.
The Pirates’ Alexis Deveaux made 10 saves, and teammate Maya Martir put all three of her shots on goal.
HU will play again at Powhatan Field at 4 p.m. Sunday against USC Upstate.
The Pirates are under the interim coaching of Landstown High graduate Matheau Hall, who played internationally after competing in college for Grand Canyon. They have six athletes from Hampton Roads; Destiny Dixon, from Grafton High, played 36 minutes and Madisyn Strange, a fellow freshman from Menchville, played 44 against Robert Morris.
ODU awaits home opener
Coming off a 3-0 victory Thursday at George Mason, Old Dominion will play its home opener at 6 p.m. Sunday against Campbell.
ODU looked like a team that will challenge to repeat its Sun Belt Tournament championship, outshooting the Patriots 22-4 and collecting nine corner kicks to George Mason’s zero.
The Monarchs and Camels haven’t played each other since their 1-1 draw in September 2014.
Campbell, in its first year in the Coastal Athletic Association, opened Thursday with a 2-2 draw against High Point, which erased the Camels’ 2-0 second-half lead. But Campbell returns 15 starters from last season’s Big South regular-season champion, which went 11-3-4.
Tribe to play again in Philly
William & Mary, meanwhile, will try to complete a 2-0 trip to Philadelphia when the Tribe faces Saint Joseph’s at 6 p.m. Sunday. Ivey Crain scored twice in Thursday’s 4-0 victory at Temple.
Virginia’s colleges and universities should be bastions of academic freedom – Daily Press
College campuses should be bastions of intellectual and academic freedom, places where students and faculty develop theories, test new ideas and engage in rigorous debate that challenges young minds and furthers our understanding of the wider world.
That ideal is increasingly under assault by a variety of forces. Preserving it necessitates greater tolerance on campus and a willingness to confront, rather than suppress, controversial ideas. And it will require public officials to defend academic freedom rather than eroding it to achieve a partisan outcome.
While Labor Day traditionally marks the end of summer, the bustle of activity in college communities across Virginia this weekend tells another story. Students have returned to campus for the start of classes and all that awaits them during this fall semester.
At schools across the commonwealth this weekend, students were hauling belongings into dorms and setting up their rooms, meeting new people and catching up with old friends, and preparing for the first day of classes this week. It is an undeniably exciting time for these young adults as they pursue their education goals and forge friendships that will last a lifetime.
But college campuses have increasingly become battlegrounds in the culture wars. Students are increasingly hostile toward controversial viewpoints, and public officials are more willing to seek reforms with explicitly partisan goals.
Colleges should be safe, but they aren’t intended to be comfortable. They are meant to be challenging and innovative, ground-breaking and illuminating. That can only happen through the free exchange and robust debate for which campuses are ideally and uniquely suited.
That doesn’t mean handing a microphone to extremists to spew hate for the sake of making a scene. But it does require greater tolerance for those with whom we disagree and a willingness to at least listen to controversial or challenging ideas.
After all, colleges should be places where concepts rise and fall based on their merits and value. There may be no point in trying to persuade a zealot, but there are plenty of people — especially on campuses — that are receptive to a superior argument when one is made.
Just as we need greater tolerance from students and administrators on campus, Virginia also needs its lawmakers to eschew the troubling path pursued by other state legislatures of recklessly intruding on academic freedom.
Consider Florida, for instance, where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state legislature have prohibited teaching certain subjects, packed university boards with partisans and limited the protections once assured by tenure status.
Neighboring North Carolina has charted a similar path. Lawmakers this year proposed, but did not pass, a measure that would have ended tenure across the University of North Carolina system, considered one of the best in the nation. Lawmakers and their political appointees believe the member schools are too liberal.
In June, two of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s appointees to the University of Virginia Board of Visitors — Douglas Wetmore and Bert Ellis — “questioned why the university’s Diversity Dashboard does not include an assessment of student or faculty ideologies,” according to Inside Higher Ed. Tracking the political persuasion of individual faculty or students would have a deeply chilling effect on academic freedom (in addition to likely being illegal).
Thankfully, Virginia lawmakers have avoided delving into things such as ending tenure or other areas that could harm academic research or programming. But it’s possible, if not probable, that some measures passed in North Carolina, Florida, Texas and elsewhere could well be up for debate soon in the commonwealth as well.
After all, it was a little more than a decade ago that then-Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli spent two years and half a million in public funds in an ultimately failed quest to subpoena a UVa. professor’s research, data and notes on climate change.
Virginia’s colleges and universities are educators of our commonwealth’s future leaders, developers of cutting-edge research and incubators for new ideas. They will continue to be, so long as our commitment to protecting academic freedom is unwavering.
How a Norfolk museum acquired Boston’s ‘Wounded Indian’ statue
On a recent Thursday afternoon, a Virginia Beach couple strolled into an upstairs gallery at the Chrysler Museum of Art. They’d come to see the anguished expression of the sculpture “The Wounded Indian.” The near-life-size marble statue dominated the room.
“This is my favorite piece of art,” said Gabriel Bashford, 30, as Mija Chenoweth, 24, placed her hand on his shoulder.
“My mom showed it to me for the first time when I was 5, ” he said. Chenoweth cooed. In elementary school, he even sneaked away from a class tour for a peek. “Every time I come here, I have to see it.”
If he wants to see it again, he will have to go to Boston.
The Chrysler is returning the statue, completed by Peter Stephenson in 1850, to the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association after decades of allegations that it had been acquired improperly. The Boston-area nonprofit has stated that it owned and exhibited the statue for over six decades and believed it was destroyed during a move in the 1950s. Until it learned in 1999 that it was on display at the Chrysler.
Since the 1990s, museums and other cultural institutions have more frequently been returning artworks and relics that were obtained through illegal or dubious means, such as theft from an archaeological site. The Norfolk case is “unusual,” according to Erin Thompson of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, who studies art crime.
“It’s not unusual for art to leave a museum,” she said during a phone interview. “What’s unusual is for a stolen piece to end up in a museum that had been on display elsewhere.”
Erik Neil, director of the Chrysler, declined an interview, but the museum issued a statement:
“The Chrysler is pleased with the amicable resolution, and we wish the best for the MCMA.”
Thompson, a member of the Advisory Committee for the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign, has worked to return cultural artifacts and artworks to Nepal that Western art collectors began taking from the country’s shrines and heritage sites since it opened its borders in the 1950s. But antiquities theft happens in more developed and Westernized countries as well.
In 2008, the highly publicized case of the Euphronios krater concluded with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York returning the terra cotta vase to Italy after a court ruled that the 2,500-year-old piece had been seized from the country by tomb raiders. In 2017, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles returned the “Statue of Zeus Enthroned,” a marble statuette from the first century B.C., to Italy.
Earlier this year, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported that New York officials had gotten warrants to seize at least 18 allegedly stolen antiquities from the Met. Those pieces originated in Turkey and India.
Meticulously vetting the authenticity of an object or work of art and mapping its history is not only standard practice for museum curators, but also far from new.
Laura Barry, the Juli Grainger Curator of Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, said that all historical items or art that Colonial Williamsburg considers for acquisition undergo thorough examination by an accession committee. The items’ materials — fabric, wood, paint, canvas or framings — are securitized, sometimes under microscopes, to determine legitimacy.
When it comes to artifacts’ ownership and transaction histories, she said, “The impetus is really on us to go back through auction and sale records.”
“Then,” Thompson said, “there is the Nazi-looted art.”
Nazi Germany stole priceless artworks from individuals and from countries it occupied, and organizations like The Antiquities Coalition are still working to return the works to the owners. It’s often far more time consuming to trace a stolen artwork back to its proper origin when it came from a private collection. It’s normally easier to return pieces to museums, as public institutions have accessible records.
“So this is what is unusual about this case,” Thompson said, referring to “The Wounded Indian” having been stolen from what can be considered a public institution. The MCMA is a nonprofit founded in 1795 by Boston artisans, including a silversmith named Paul Revere.
It received “The Wounded Indian” as a donation in 1893 and exhibited the statue for 65 years until its building was sold in 1958. The organization relocated, and the MCMA was told the sculpture had been accidentally destroyed.
A press release by the MCMA’s lawyer, Greg Werkheiser, asserts the statue was stolen while being moved and ended up in the possession of James Ricau, an art collector with “questionable ethics,” before being acquired by the Chrysler in 1986.
Thompson said the case is intriguing because the group was told the piece had been lost, not stolen.
The MCMA hadn’t been aware that “The Wounded Indian” survived the move between buildings until 1999, when a researcher who’d seen the statue on a trip in Norfolk happened upon photos of it in the MCMA’s records.
After media attention and an FBI investigation, the Chrysler announced Aug. 9 that it would return the sculpture by the end of August.
Bashford and Chenoweth learned the news the day they visited the museum.
The “Wounded Indian” sat on a marble base, a floor of fallen flowers and oak and maple leaves. He gazed at an arrow pulled from his side, the wound oozing onto the stone.
“He looks peaceful, but you can tell that he is accepting inevitable death,” Chenoweth said.
“I can feel him,” Bashford said.
Colin Warren-Hicks, 919-818-8139, [email protected]
Chesapeake officer struck by vehicle during traffic stop; driver charged with DUI – Daily Press
A Chesapeake police officer was struck by a vehicle while conducting a traffic stop early Saturday morning.
The officer pulled over a vehicle on South Military Highway near Bainbridge Boulevard at about 2:30 a.m. and got out on foot to talk to the driver. A vehicle then crashed into the officer’s patrol car and hit the officer, causing serious injuries, according to police.
The officer is being treated at a hospital. The driver and a passenger in the vehicle that struck the officer were taken to a hospital with minor injuries.
The driver, 30-year-old Yacarely Diaz-Castro, was arrested and charged with one felony count of maiming another while driving under the influence. She is also charged with failing to move over for a stationary vehicle with warning lights and driving without a valid license, both misdemeanors.
Diaz-Castro’s felony charge is a Class 6 felony, meaning she could face between one and five years in prison or a fine. If convicted, her driver’s license would also be revoked.
Gavin Stone, 757-712-4806, [email protected]
Construction underway for stormwater project in Hampton’s Newmarket Creek area – Daily Press
Construction is underway on the first of three Hampton stormwater projects are meant to make the Newmarket Creek area more resilient to flooding by increasing water runoff storage capacity by more than 8 million gallons.
The three infrastructure projects — the Lake Hampton stormwater park, North Armistead Avenue roadway elevation and Big Bethel Blueway — cost a total of $34 million and are being paid for in part through environmental impact bonds.
“Residents of Hampton regularly express concern over the frequency and severity of flooding events,” said Hampton Community Development Director Bonnie Brown at a groundbreaking held Friday on the banks of Lake Hampton. “And these events might be simple nuisances most days, but can also become more severe events that threaten lives, property, and businesses. Longtime citizens have voiced that they’ve never experienced water-related events to the degree that they do now.”
She said the new projects will “significantly add to our stormwater capacity.”
The Lake Hampton project will transform a detention pond into a stormwater park featuring surrounding walkways and additional water storage capacity. It calls for raising the dam height and installing smaller detention basins with wetlands plants to slow and clean runoff from North Armistead before it flows into the lake.
The park will also become a thriving habitat for birds and other wildlife and pathways will connect to the existing Waterwalk Trail park.
Although city officials held a ceremonial groundbreaking on the Lake Hampton project Friday, resiliency specialist Olivia Askew said construction actually kicked off in June. The project is scheduled to be complete by April.
Construction on the other two projects has yet to begin. The North Armistead Avenue project will raise the roadway to eliminate chronic flooding on the major thoroughfare. The project also adds plants and green infrastructure at the road’s median and shoulders to help slow, store, and redirect stormwater.
The Big Bethel Blueway is a project intended to store and slow water through the redesign of existing waterways to reduce flooding upstream and downstream in Newmarket Creek. The project will expand the main drainage channel, install several weirs, add new vegetation on the channel bank that will filter and slow stormwater. This project also creates over a mile of new trails.
“These three projects are prototypes for us to learn from and replicate as we continue our journey toward adaptation and coastal resiliency,” Brown said.
Big Bethel Blueway is expected to go out for construction bids in September and to be completed in fall 2025. North Armistead project is expected to be bid for construction in late 2024 and completed in 2027, according to Brown.
Mayor Donnie Tuck said the three projects “aim for innovative ways to manage stormwater and flooding.”
“These projects reduce localized flooding and improve water quality,” Tuck said. “They increase access to green space and enhance native wildlife habitat. They eliminate transportation disruptions on a key corridor, and they invest and improve equity in vulnerable communities.”
Hampton is the first locality in Virginia to use an environmental impact bond to help fund an infrastructure project. Environmental impact bonds are a funding mechanism that allows municipalities to borrow from private investors seeking environmental as well as financial returns. The $12 million bond will be paid off using the revenues from the city’s stormwater impact fee.
“You’re not just a regional leader in innovative public finance — you’re a national leader,” said Jason Lee, a director at Qualified Ventures, which facilitated the bond sale.
The bonds have helped secure an additional $24 million in grants from state and federal agencies, so the city only expended about $6 million from the bond so far. Brown said the city plans to explore the feasibility of using remaining bond grant funds for other resiliency projects.
The city has other plans in the works to target flooding in the downtown, Buckroe and Phoebus areas. The City Council is expected to vote on that array of projects next month.
Josh Janney, [email protected]
Celebrate National Bacon Day in Chesapeake with these swine-o-mite dishes – Daily Press
About 10 years ago, a rebellion took place. A bacon rebellion.
Before that, indeed, hundreds of years before that, bacon was a much-loved food. But around the turn of the last decade, bacon mania took off, and shows no sign of slowing down.
According to Statista, a research service, 245.88 million Americans included bacon in their diet.
And bacon has moved on from simply a side at breakfast, a “b” in a BLT sandwich, or crumbled into bits and sprinkled on salads. There’s chicken-fried bacon. There’s chocolate-covered bacon. There’s even bacon-infused vodka.
Bacon itself is a complex thing. It comes thick cut. It comes smoked with applewood, hickory, mesquite and more. It’s flavored with such ingredients as brown sugar and molasses.
I’ve enjoyed these salt-cured pork strips in many dishes in Chesapeake and beyond. Here are five of my picks for you to get piggy with it, just in time for National Bacon Lovers Day on Aug. 20.
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Oysters Rockefeller: Bad Habits Wing & Oyster Bar
At Bad Habits Wing & Oyster Bar at Mount Pleasant Marketplace, a varied menu has a number of seafood-centric dishes, including the classic Oysters Rockefeller.
Available as a half-dozen or full-dozen, a large platter is filled with the bivalves, which consist of large oysters stuffed with the good stuff: spinach, bacon, and parmesan cheese before being broiled golden, brown, and delicious.
It’s a wonderful, and addictive, way to enjoy my favorite bivalves.
Bad Habits Wing & Oyster Bar is at 1464 Mt. Pleasant Road, Chesapeake. Call 757-842-6565 or visit www.facebook.com/BadHabitsWingAndOysterBar.
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City Scramble: City Deli
The breakfast menu at City Deli offers traditional favorites, such as breakfast plates with eggs and meats, as well as a number of breakfast sandwiches. But the City Scramble caught my eye.
In a ceramic skillet, three golden yellow scrambled eggs and home fries, bound by melting cheese, filled the dish. Mixed in was bacon, my choice of meat, and a generous assortment of onions, peppers, spinach, and tomatoes.All the flavors married beautifully in the City Scramble. The eggs were fluffy and a wonderful base for the other ingredients. The bacon was nice and crisp, and the vegetables sautéed until fork-tender. The blanket of cheese brought all the elements together.
City Deli is at 450 S. Battlefield Blvd., Chesapeake. Call 757-482-5554 or visit www.CityDeliVa.com.
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All Star Hash: d’Cracked Egg
One of our favorite breakfast bowls is the All Star Hash from d’Cracked Egg. Here a generous offering of eggs, potatoes, sausage, bacon, onion, peppers, and cheese. The freshness shines through in this scratch-made dish.
Hot from the kitchen, I dug into the bowl, trying to reach down deep and get a perfect forkful of each ingredient. The eggs were perfectly prepared, and the potatoes were tender and flavorful. Accents of the sage-y sausage and smoky bacon shined against the milder items, while the onions and peppers rounded things out with subtle sweetness.
Enrobing the All Star Hash was a thick coat of melting cheese, which helped bring all the flavors together while adding a creamy, slightly nutty flavor.
d’Cracked Egg Restaurant is at 2044 Atlantic Ave., Chesapeake. Call 757-543-3447 or visit www.facebook.com/dCrackedEggRestaurant.
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Western burger: The Egg Bistro
There’s a number of burgers on the menu at The Egg Bistro, with the Western being a standout.
Nestled in a soft brioche bun is a half-pound beef patty topped with melting cheddar, two fried onion rings, and crisp bacon. A sassy barbecue sauce enrobes the dish. You have to ask for lettuce, tomato, onion and pickle for the burger, which I always do.
It’s beautiful, beefy, barbecue-y, and bacon-y. Chips, fries or potato salad come on the side, but I like to substitute for Buffalo Cauliflower for a nominal charge.
There are two The Egg Bistro locations in Virginia Beach.
The Egg Bistro is at 501 Kempsville Road, Chesapeake. Call 757-410-8515 or visit www.TheEggBistro.com.
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Club sandwich: Lockside Bar and Grill
I love a good club sandwich, a delicious offering that is essentially a classic BLT on steroids. At Lockside Bar and Grill, their club sandwich fits the bill, and is a wonderful platform for bacon.
Here bacon, ham, and turkey are stacked high along with both American and Swiss cheeses as well as lettuce and tomato. Mayo comes on the sandwich, but I left it off.
Handhelds come with fries or slaw, and I find the fries to be the perfect accompaniment.
Lockside Bar and Grill is at 200 N. Battlefield Blvd., Chesapeake.
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Recipe: Miller and Rhoads Missouri Club Sandwich
It was a sad day in Virginia in 1990 when one of the South’s great department stores, Miller & Rhoads, closed after 105 years of serving customers.
In its tearoom, one of the signature items was the Missouri Club, eaten by white-gloved ladies wielding knives and forks while watching midday fashion shows.
Bacon is a wonderful, smoky addition to this decadent dish, a rich, substantial sandwich smothered in cheese sauce and broiled. My recipe is inspired by the original and appears in my book, “Dishing Up Virginia.”
Make the cheese sauce: Preheat the oven to broil. Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour until smooth, then stir in 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon white pepper, 1/8 teaspoon paprika, 1/8 teaspoon dry mustard and a dash of hot sauce
Whisk in 1 cup milk, about 1/4 cup at a time and stirring constantly, until the mixture reduces and thickens, about 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low and mix in 2 ounces shredded cheddar cheese, about 1⁄2 cup, and 2 ounces shredded Colby cheese, about 1⁄2 cup, adding the cheeses about 1/4 cup at a time and stirring constantly until the cheeses melt and incorporate into the mixture, about 3 minutes. Set aside.
Make the club sandwich: On 4 individual oven proof plates, place a slice of toast on each and evenly layer with 6 thinly sliced pieces of roasted turkey, 6 thinly sliced pieces of country ham, and two tomato slices. Top each with a slice of bread and spoon the cheese sauce over the top, dividing it equally among the 4 sandwiches. Top each with a slice of cheddar cheese.
Broil the sandwiches until the cheese is bubbly and the top is slightly browned, 2 to 3 minutes. Remove the sandwiches and crisscross two slices of cooked bacon on top of each. Garnish each sandwich with 2 large green green olives with pimento speared with toothpicks. Sprinkle on a dash of paprika, and serve immediately.
Makes 4 sandwiches.
Patrick Evans-Hylton, [email protected]
Meet these adoptable pets at the Virginia Beach SPCA – Daily Press
Up for adoption: Except where noted, these animals are available at the Virginia Beach Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 3040 Holland Road. Call 427-0070. Adoptions include spay/neuter, vaccines and microchipping. For adoption fees, visit vbspca.com/adopt/adoption-procedures.
Photos courtesy of the Virginia Beach SPCA
Biscuit (in the above photo) is looking for a home with room for two so that his best buddy, Martin, can remain by his side. Biscuit is 3 years old and loves head scratches. Both boys enjoy attention from adults and older children ages 6 and older. However, they are not a fan of rambunctious young ones.
Martin is the other half of a duo that must be adopted together. He and his friend Martin are nervous at first but warm up once they get to know you. Martin is 4 years old and isn’t picky about where you pet him. This pair would prefer to be the only animals in the home.
Slick Rick came to the Virginia Beach SPCA from rural Louisiana. The 6-year-old dachshund/chihuahua mix loves to play but can get rowdy. The VBSPCA will schedule introductions with any resident canines prior to adoption. Any children in his home should be 6 or older.
Maxine is a 5-year-old New Zealand rabbit who was left outside the VBSPCA shelter in a carrier, so the staff does not have any information about her past. She enjoys having lots of space where she can hop around as well as chew toys and fresh fruits and vegetables.
Nova is a 4-year-old bloodhound mix who loves hanging out with other dogs. A meet and greet with any resident canines will be set up before she goes home to make sure everyone gets along well. Since she is touch sensitive, all humans in her home must be at least 6 years old.
Hurricane center still eyeing 4 systems that could become tropical depression – Daily Press
The National Hurricane Center keeps tracking four weather systems with potential to form into the year’s next tropical depression or storm including one that will bring rain as it moves across South Florida this weekend.
If any of the systems grow to named strength status, they could become Tropical Storm Emily with Tropical Storm Franklin, Tropical Storm Gert and Tropical Storm Harold next in line.
In its 8 a.m. tropical update, the NHC said the system closest to the state is now just an area of disturbed weather near the northwest and central Bahamas, but its path will drag across the peninsula and into the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico where it’s expected to form into a broad area of low pressure by early next week.
Its local effects won’t be too harsh with gusts of only about 25 mph expected by Sunday but intermittent rounds of showers and thunderstorms, according to the National Weather Service in Miami.
“Some slow development of this system is possible thereafter, and a tropical depression could form as it moves westward and approaches the western Gulf of Mexico coastline by the middle of next week,” NHC forecasters said.
The NHC gives it a 50% chance to develop into a tropical system within seven days.
Odds increased since Friday for the next closest system, a tropical wave just east of the Windward Islands of the Caribbean that is producing disorganized showers and thunderstorms.
“Some gradual development of this system is possible and a tropical depression could form during the early and middle parts of next week while it moves westward to west-northwestward at 10 to 15 mph, across the Lesser Antilles and over the eastern and central Caribbean Sea,” forecasters said.
The NHC gives it a 20% chance to form in the next two days, and 40% in the next seven.
In the central tropical Atlantic, chances have died down for a system the NHC has been tracking all week.
The area of low pressure located about halfway between the Cape Verde Islands and the Lesser Antilles still has disorganized showers and thunderstorms to the east of its center.
“Environmental conditions are forecast to become increasingly unfavorable for further development of this system during the next day or two while it moves west-northwestward at 10 to 15 mph across the central tropical Atlantic,” forecasters said,
The NHC gives it a 30% chance to for in the next two days, and 30% in the next seven.
The most likely storm to form, though, is the farthest away in the eastern tropical Atlantic.
The broad area of low pressure with shower and thunderstorm activity is several hundred miles west of the Cape Verde Islands.
“Environmental conditions appear generally favorable for further development of this system, and a short-lived tropical depression is likely to form this weekend while it moves west-northwestward or northwestward at about 10 mph across the eastern tropical Atlantic,” forecasters said. “By early next week, upper-level winds over the system are forecast to increase, and further development is not expected.”
The NHC gives it a 70% chance to form in the next two days and 70% chance within the next seven.
Hilary is still a powerful category 4 hurricane.
Strong convection can be seen around the eye in this view from this afternoon. pic.twitter.com/AHcZalkX7m
— CIRA (@CIRA_CSU) August 18, 2023
Meanwhile, in the tropical eastern Pacific, Hurricane Hilary continues to barrel toward Baja Mexico and is expected to bring heavy rains potentially still as a tropical storm by Monday to the southwestern United States.
In its 8 a.m. advisory, the NHC puts the center of the Category 4 hurricane about 240 miles west-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California with 130 mph sustained winds moving north-northwest at 13 mph.
A tropical storm warning is now in place in the U.S. for the California-Mexico border to Point Mugu north of Los Angeles as well as Catalina Island while hurricane and tropical storm warnings and watches remain in place for Baja Mexico and parts of mainland Mexico.
“Heavy rainfall in association with Hilary is expected across the Southwestern United States, peaking on Sunday, and possibly lasting through Monday,” the NHC said. “Rainfall amounts of 3 to 6 inches, with isolated amounts of 10 inches, are expected across portions of southern California and southern Nevada.”
The rainfall is expected to create dangerous to locally catastrophic flooding.
The Pacific has been busier so far this season with eight named storms, but the Atlantic could catch up soon as systems have warmer waters that could spur development.
The still face competition with increased Saharan dust that has continued to blow off the coast of Africa and spread out westward along the storms’ paths within the last week. That has contributed to a lull in recent storm formation. The NHC has not tracked a named storm in the Atlantic basin since July 24 when Hurricane Don dissipated.
Still, the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season, which has so far seen four named storms including a lone Category 1 hurricane, is predicted to be an above-normal season, according to updated forecasts last week from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The hurricane season runs from June 1-Nov. 30, but the height of the season runs from mid-August to mid-October when waters are the warmest providing fuel for tropical formation.
The NHC’s latest forecast for the year shifted upward so it now predicts 14-21 named storms, of which 6-11 would grow to hurricane strength, and two to five of those becoming major hurricanes of Category 3 strength or higher.
‘The Blind Side’ controversy should give Hollywood pause – Daily Press
Too bad. I really wanted to believe “The Blind Side,” even though I knew it was sort of a fairy tale for grown-ups — or for kids who want to sound like grown-ups.
I’m old-fashioned enough to believe that a heartwarming story with the “BOATS” label — “based on a true story” — is Hollywood’s way of reassuring me that all is not rotten with the world.
“The Blind Side” is a 2009 Sandra Bullock movie that is based on a book by Michael Lewis, who explores changes in offensive football strategy since the early 1980s that gave new importance to the left tackle in protecting the quarterback’s vulnerable “blind side.”
The movie centers on a white family, the Tuohys, who take in Michael Oher (played by Quinton Aaron), a homeless and traumatized Black teen who later becomes an All-American football player for Ole Miss and later the Baltimore Ravens as a first-round pick.
Bullock won an Oscar for her role as Leigh Anne Tuohy in the Oscar-nominated movie, which follows the family through Oher’s years at a private Christian school, his purported adoption by the Touhys and his rise to become one of the most highly coveted prospects in college football.
But, in real life, it turns out, Oher and the Tuohys were not to live happily ever after with each other.
In a Tennessee court Monday, Oher, 37, claimed that this entire narrative was built on a lie. He was never fully adopted by the family that took him in, he said, and he charged that he was swindled into signing away his decision-making powers at age 18. He seeks termination of the conservatorship and the money he should have earned from the movie, which generated more than $300 million at the worldwide box office.
Sean Tuohy told the Daily Memphian on Monday that he was devastated to hear about the lawsuit and called “upsetting” any thought that he or his wife would “make money off any of our children.” He also expressed willingness to end the conservatorship and claimed that everyone in the family, including Oher, got an equal share from the movie, around $14,000.
Now we have Oher’s fight, which many will see as a revival of a criticism the movie has received as a classic example of the “white savior” narrative, a cinematic trope in which a whiter central character rescues nonwhite characters from some calamitous predicament that the characters of color could not quite overcome on their own.
Ever since “Mississippi Burning,” as one prominent example, we have seen the charge raised that Black people are being elbowed out of their own story. “Mississippi Burning” takes place during the height of the 1960s civil rights revolution but focuses on two white FBI agents who are searching for the three missing civil rights worker who we know have been murdered for trying to register Black voters.
The Hollywood establishment promised to do better in various ways, but, as we saw with the “#OscarsSoWhite campaign to diversify Academy Award nominations, that struggle for recognition and representation continues.
Even “Avatar,” another of my favorites, disappointed. The white main character in this sci-fi movie helps a fictional race of beings, but, alas, in the end, the nonhuman Na’vi, like so many other nonwhite movie characters, can’t save themselves without white support.
Of course, I’m not opposed to white actors or characters. I’d just like to see the sort of diversity that roughly reflects our cultural diversity and fully developed characters who reflect what we humans increasingly can see is real life — here and around the globe.
Nevertheless, I appreciated “The Blind Side” as a good family drama by some fine actors who I believe meant well. At least, I was reassured to find that, with all the social and political division we see in the news every day, movies about decent people trying to help a young person succeed, regardless of their color, still warm my heart.
I’m glad somebody still cares about love, sacrifice and decency in the world. Even when we seem to find it only on the silver screen, that’s better than nothing.
Still, we can do better.
Clarence Page is a member of the Chicago Tribune editorial board. Email him at [email protected].
