At Bryn Mawr, a Monumental Plaza Traces the Steps of Black History
For an elite liberal arts college rooted in rigorous academics, Bryn Mawr is filled with superstitions. Don't kiss on certain benches or under certain arches or you'll break up. Walk through these poles with a friend and you're bound to have an argument. Beware the customs reserved exclusively for seniors and alums, who alone are entitled to begin the school's ancient Greek chant.
Lurking behind the rituals at the suburban Philadelphia women's college are some ghosts that Bryn Mawr would rather forget. Underneath the Cloisters — the courtyard next to the campus library, where students still leave offerings to a statue of Athena for luck — lie the ashes of M. Carey Thomas, the school's second president. An educator and suffragist for white women, Thomas led Bryn Mawr from 1894 to 1922. She also harbored eugenicist and antisemitic views, and she fought to keep Black students out of the university.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
21 hours ago
- Yahoo
Skydiver dies after hitting another jumper's parachute while trying to land
A skydiver has died after hitting another jumper's parachute while trying to land at a Georgia airport. Jasmine Black, 48, died on Saturday while doing something she's done dozens of times before. Black was an experienced skydiver with more than 160 jumps under her belt. Late Saturday afternoon, Black was approaching the landing zone at the Thomaston Upson County Airport, over an hour's drive south of Atlanta, when her parachute hit the parachute of another skydiver at low altitude, local Sheriff Dan Kilgore said in a Facebook post. Black 'cut away' her main parachute and tried to open her emergency parachute, according to the sheriff. But since she was at low altitude, the emergency parachute did not open. The Federal Aviation Administration also responded and is helping with an investigation into Black's death. The skydiving company, Skydive Atlanta, told The Independent, 'The entire skydiving community feels the weight of any loss within the sport, and this tragedy is no exception. Skydive Atlanta extends its deepest condolences to the family, friends, and loved ones of Jasmine Black. The team is grieving alongside all those affected.' Out of the 3.88 million reported skydives in the United States in 2024, only nine civilian deaths were reported, according to the United States Parachute Association. The association said the 'vast majority' of skydiving incidents can be linked to human error, rather than equipment failure. Out of all the skydivers in the association's 2024 member survey, only 12.3 percent reported using a backup parachute. Skydive Atlanta had another tragic incident in 2020 when 18-year-old Jeanna Triplicata and her skydiving instructor, Nick Esposito, 35, died on a tandem jump. Kilgore said at the time, according to CNN, that their main parachute did not open properly and they 'went into a spin.' While the emergency parachute began to open at a very low altitude, it never fully opened, the sheriff said. Triplicata's whole family was at the airfield and watched it unfold. 'We saw an orange-ish type of chute kind of far away, off in the distance, that was actually spinning, upside down,' her father, Joey, told 11Alive at the time. 'And my wife actually turned to me and said, 'I hope that's not Jeanna.''
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Ceres in Astrology: How to Nurture & Heal Your Emotional Hunger
Ceres in Astrology: How to Nurture & Heal Your Emotional Hunger originally appeared on Parade. Ceres, an often overlooked asteroid in our natal charts, represents our nurturing qualities. It is named after the Roman goddess of seasonal harvest and abundant agriculture, who is also known by her Greek counterpart, Demeter. One of the most famous myths surrounding Demeter involves her daughter, Persephone, and this story sheds light on the deeper aspects of the mother wound that this placement can reveal in a person's birth chart. At our core, we all have a fundamental desire to seek care, comfort, and unconditional acceptance from our loved ones. Your deepest emotional needs are revealed through your Ceres placement. This placement offers valuable insights, suggestions, and spiritual guidance that can aid you on your healing journey. Continue reading to discover the significance of Ceres, the mythology surrounding this asteroid, and how your Ceres sign influences you. RELATED: Located between Mars and Jupiter, this asteroid is often overlooked. In astrology, asteroid Ceres is associated with: Nourishment (physically and emotionally) Food Gardening Environment Agriculture Caregiving Fertility Motherhood The cycle of grief, loss, and return (based on the Persephone myth) Self-care In ancient Roman mythology, Ceres was significantly influenced by the story of her daughter, Proserpina, known as Persephone in Greek mythology. One day, while Proserpina was picking flowers in her mother's lush fields, a chasm opened in the earth. From this chasm, the god Pluto, Hades, to the Greeks, abducted her. In her grief, Ceres neglected her duties over agriculture as she searched for her daughter. As a result, the land became barren, and crops ceased to grow. Ultimately, agreements were made, and Proserpina was allowed to spend half the year with her mother, Ceres, and the other half in the underworld with Pluto. When Ceres grieves for her lost daughter, winter descends upon the earth, halting the harvests. Symbolically, this myth reflects the emotional themes associated with Ceres in one's natal chart. Nourishment is essential to life, representing the celebratory harvests of love, affection, and warmth shared with our loved ones. However, other natural aspects of life are loss, grief, and healing. When we embrace this cyclical pattern, we find that, after processing disappointment or pain, there is potential for reunion—whether with the same person or others who align with our current life path. Trusting in the return of good allows you to nurture your inner garden with love, even during the darkest moments of winter. You can use this free online calculator to find your Ceres sign. For an accurate result, you will need your date, year, time, and birth location. In your birth or natal chart, your Ceres sign represents your caregiving style and needs, what brings you emotional comfort and repair. Deeper, it pulls on your heartstrings, showcasing emotional hunger, a longing hope to heal, and how you can begin to restore spiritual peace. From a young age, you learned that strength, independence, and autonomy were key to your emotional survival. With more attention and praise coming your way when being praised for self-sufficiency and leadership, you may have repressed your deeper needs or emotional expression. To heal, allow yourself to long for support. Ask for help, letting others show you they care in your most vulnerable moments. Trust in interdependence brings peace. You seek safety in tangible, physical things you can control, such as routines, touch, food, consistency, or self-indulgence. If, while growing up, you felt that your security was threatened or that emotional comfort was unpredictable, you might struggle with self-worth and find it difficult to believe you deserve to have your needs met by others. To heal from a scarcity mindset or the tendency to cling to what is familiar, it's important to slow down, pay attention to your body's cues, and embrace soft, vulnerable moments. You shouldn't have to hustle for love or hoard the care you receive; instead, let it flow. Those born with a Gemini Ceres need to let out their thoughts, feelings, and emotions through self-expression. You may have felt unheard in your upbringing, or that it was inconsistent to have full attention from a caregiver. Therefore, you may bite your tongue about important matters. To heal, speak your truth. Share your interests. Find those who are willing to consistently meet your communication needs. Those with a Cancer Ceres are born to be healers, spreading nurturing hope. However, their desire to uplift likely comes from a time in their upbringing where they felt emotionally left behind, abandoned, or overlooked. To heal, you likely need to give yourself the love you give others. Stop overwhelming yourself with others' needs before your own, understanding your inner emotional tides. Finding home within allows you to seek and find what you need to feel safe. Individuals with Ceres in Leo may feel that they only received the love and attention they needed when they were performing or going the extra mile to entertain others. Praise from important people in their lives may have often outweighed their actual presence. To heal, it's essential to seek validation from within rather than relying on external sources. Your inner child deserves the freedom to create, play, and explore simply for enjoyment, rather than to earn affection. Individuals with Ceres in Virgo show their nurturing nature through acts of service. However, they often need to engage in healing work to reconcile their inner critic, understanding that some things can be imperfectly perfect. You may have felt that your emotions were overlooked in favor of practicality, leading you to internalize care as something you give rather than something you deserve to receive. Remember, you deserve rest. It's important to let go of unrealistic expectations and recognize your worth beyond your productivity, work, or what you provide to others. Those born with Ceres in Libra have learned that maintaining peace is essential for their emotional safety and sense of acceptance. From a young age, you may have discovered the importance of prioritizing others' feelings over your own to preserve harmony, even at a high cost. To heal, it's crucial to prioritize yourself and acknowledge what you truly want from life. Remember to set boundaries when necessary, understanding that authentic love will accept your wholeness, even during moments of tension. A Scorpio Ceres craves deep, soulful connections that are unbreakable and forged through the darkest moments. Earlier in life, you may have internalized wounds of mistrust, vulnerability, or betrayal from others. To heal, it's important to acknowledge your fears, allow someone to truly get close to you, and stop testing how much others care. Building intimacy based on emotional courage instead of secrecy leads to lasting nurturance. Individuals with Ceres in Sagittarius are encouraged to slow down and ground themselves spiritually. You may have found comfort in freedom, especially when your emotional needs were overlooked or minimized. As a result, you might tend to run from your feelings, often distracting yourself by intellectualizing your emotions or constantly seeking external excitement. To truly heal, it's important to seek meaning in the long term, find stillness, and embrace vulnerability in your connections with others. Individuals with Ceres in Capricorn often feel pressured to take on excessive responsibility from a young age. As an old soul recognized for your maturity, you likely found yourself needing to maintain composure, often suppressing your emotions to focus on your sense of duty. To find healing, it's important to let go of the pressure to constantly perform. Remember, resting can be just as productive as working hard, and embracing vulnerability is a sign of strength. Individuals with Ceres in Aquarius often experience emotional unpredictability, distance, or barriers in their early relationships, which can make them more observant than feeling. They express love through practical gestures, ideas, and intellectual connections, but may struggle with the emotional complexities that come with deeper connections. To find healing, it's important to allow yourself to feel your emotions and be present in your body. By practicing self-compassion, you can discover deeper meaning in love beyond mere rational understanding. Ceres in Pisces denotes one who was born with intuitive, spiritual gifts. Their ability to heal, empathize, and provide an escape from life's aches and pains is commendable. However, your boundaries growing up may not have been encouraged or protected, leaving you overexposed to circumstances that were not your responsibility to fix. To heal, call your energy back to you. You deserve energetic limits, rituals that restore your spirit and soothe your personal pains. Ceres in Astrology: How to Nurture & Heal Your Emotional Hunger first appeared on Parade on Jun 23, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 23, 2025, where it first appeared.
Eater
2 days ago
- Eater
At Houston's First LGBTQ+ Senior Center, Lunchtime Is for Building Community
As noon — lunchtime — rapidly approaches, it is somehow both hot and muggy and pouring rain on a Wednesday in late May in Houston, but the vibes inside the Law Harrington Senior Living Center are totally sunny. In the Annise Parker Multipurpose Room, named for the city's first openly gay mayor, elderly residents are sidling up to their tables as workers prepare to distribute lunch trays while they chat with regulars and newcomers alike. On the menu today: King Ranch casserole, a Texas staple that's sort of like cheesy layered enchiladas, plus steamed broccoli and carrots. For the folks who aren't feeling the day's chosen casserole, there's cold sandwiches and tons of snacks scattered around the room. Everyone, though, is excited for dessert — an iconic Little Debbie Nutty Buddy bar. Most were really looking forward to that upcoming Friday, when a local funeral home was scheduled to drop off donated cupcakes for a monthly party celebrating all the Center's June birthdays. 'That's kind of ironic, the funeral home sponsoring the birthday party cupcakes,' I said as I chatted with one particularly gregarious resident. Her response? 'I think they're out here trying to recruit new customers.' Law Harrington's well-appointed building on Cleburne Street in Houston's historic Third Ward looks much like the many luxury midrise apartment complexes that dot the city's landscape — it boasts a sleek modern design, a dog park, a gym. But as the city's only senior living facility specifically focused on supporting the city's aging LGBTQ+ population, this building isn't your average old folks home. Inside these walls is a vibrant hub for building queer community among LGBTQ+ elders, all while enjoying a hot meal with friends and neighbors. In Houston and across the country, LGBTQ+ seniors are uniquely vulnerable to housing instability and poverty in their golden years. They're more than twice as likely than non-LGBTQ people to live alone without family, which means that many lack the support network that becomes increasingly important as a person gets older and needs help cooking meals, getting to medical appointments, or doing chores around the house. 'Our seniors have been on the front lines of our movement, and they didn't really have the high-powered oil and gas jobs that many people in Houston had,' says Dan Cato, director of marketing and communications for the Montrose Center, which operates the Law Harrington Senior Living Center. 'They were our bartenders, our entertainers, our drag queens, and so they are on very limited incomes. We wanted to support them in a way that meant that they could stay in the neighborhoods that they helped create.' Law Harrington's location was chosen specifically because of its proximity to both the Montrose, historically the nucleus of queer culture in Houston, and the Third Ward, a historically Black neighborhood. Both the Third Ward and the Montrose have been impacted heavily by gentrification in recent years, displacing Black and LGBTQ+ seniors from their respective homes as wealthier, less diverse residents move in. Since opening its doors in 2021, Law Harrington serves as a place of connection for two communities, both of which are more likely to experience financial instability, housing discrimination, and other inequities as they age. About a third of LGBTQ+ seniors are low-income, and those rates increase dramatically for transgender seniors, people of color, and persons over the age of 80. Even though Black seniors only make up about 9 percent of the total American elderly population, they make up 21 percent of all elders living below the federal poverty level. They also experience food insecurity at a rate that's nearly four times higher than their white counterparts. Open to all people over the age of 62 who are income-qualified to live there, the Law Harrington is not exclusively home to LGBTQ+ people. It can't be, because of the way that federal housing law works — it must be equally open to all regardless of their sexuality or gender identity. But the Center is unapologetically and unabashedly queer-centric. It's named for Charles Law and Gene Harrington, both legendary queer activists with roots in Houston. The space is decked out with trans pride flags and rainbows are abundant. Still, there's a large contingent of non-LGBTQ+ residents, and the Center's staff members aren't afraid to have confrontations with anyone who might not be respectful of their queer neighbors. 'There's a pretty large contingent of residents who are not LGBTQ+, and every LGBTQ+ senior center has kind of struggled to find the balance,' Christian Capo, the Center's social services program director, says. 'But we're very insistent on being clear that this is a LGBTQ+ affirming space, and if you're not comfortable with seeing 17 rainbow flags every day, that's not going to work.' Lunch is delivered daily by Baker Ripley, a 100-plus-year-old Houston nonprofit that operates a sprawling range of social programs across the city. Meeting the nutritional needs of seniors, many of whom have dietary restrictions or specific dietary requirements, is a highly specific task. Most of their diets are low-sodium and low-calorie, to help with conditions like hypertension or diabetes. Each meal is developed in conjunction with a registered dietician to ensure that the meals can actually meet the needs of those who eat them. Judging by the May menu posted outside the lunchroom, there's an emphasis on lots of veggies, grains, and pulses like lentils, and milk is offered with most meals to help combat issues like osteoporosis and vitamin D deficiency. You don't have to live at Law Harrington to score a lunch plate free of charge. Seniors over the age of 60 who live elsewhere are asked to sign up a day in advance for their hot meal, so that Law Harrington employees can ensure that they've ordered enough meals for everyone who needs to eat. Diners who don't live at Law Harrington are encouraged to show up early and enjoy free coffee, play board games or dominoes, and of course, socialize with the folks in their community. Today, there are about 45 people signed up to eat, including both first-time visitors and longtime residents. Carmen, a resident who lives at Law Harrington with his cat, Princess, says that lunch is his favorite part of living at Law Harrington. Born in North Carolina, he was living in Atlanta when he came to Houston for the first time, and fell in love with the Montrose's vibrant queer culture. He moved here in 1981, but eventually, as its real estate became more desirable among real estate developers, Carmen got priced out of the Montrose. At Law Harrington, he can both live affordably in the neighborhood he loves while getting the support he needs. He can obtain medical care, get a ride to a nearby grocery store, hang out in one of the cozy chairs in the building's library, or simply relax at home with Princess before coming to lunch to socialize. It's this sense of community that the Center's congregate meal program hopes to foster. 'Congregate meal program' is a jargony term popular in the elder care world that simply means healthy, nutritious meals that are served in a group setting, according to the Nutrition and Aging Resource Center. Research shows that congregate meal programs are incredibly beneficial for seniors for a number of reasons, not least of which is that they can combat the serious loneliness that many elderly people experience. For many seniors these meals are literally a lifeline — getting out for lunch and staying social can help them stay healthy and maintain their independence for longer. 'It really is all about the interaction. Maybe you can't come every day because you've got doctor's appointments or you're going to your grandkid's soccer game, but knowing that you have the option to come and have a meal five days a week makes it a lot easier to keep interacting,' Capo says. 'We want everyone to have some consistency and some social interaction in their lives, on their terms. The loneliness is really the number one thing we're trying to address.' According to the residents, not all the dishes served here are winners, but they agree that the quality of the food is generally excellent. Even Jeremy, a resident who had a few gripes about some of the Center's policy choices and expressed an interest in more pork-free options for religious reasons, couldn't help but brag. 'The food really has gotten much better over the last two years,' Jeremy said as he enjoyed his lunch. 'And the service is impeccable. Everybody is so accommodating, for the most part.' Beyond lunch, the team at Law Harrington also works to keep seniors fed the other two meals of the day. The apartments are equipped with kitchens, and many residents cook meals for themselves and their neighbors. An emergency pantry stocked with staples provided by the Houston Food Bank is open a few times a week, and the nonprofit Common Market drops off boxes of fresh produce every two weeks that residents can use to cook at home. Second Servings, a nonprofit that rescues unused food from restaurants and grocery stores, frequently drops off meals and regularly hosts a pop-up grocery store at the Center where seniors can 'shop' for produce and pantry staples. Richard, a resident who's been at Law Harrington practically since it opened, especially loves the produce deliveries, which he uses to make a big batch of veggie soup that he slow-cooks all night long. 'I'll spend an hour cleaning up the vegetables and cutting them, then you just throw it all in there with chicken broth,' Richard says. 'It doesn't matter what you put in there, it always tastes wonderful.' His lunch companion Peter, on the other hand, is more of a baker, who just finished off the last of a homemade red velvet cake. The residents of Law Harrington have lived a thousand lives before landing here. Before retirement, Richard worked as a teacher, a fashion consultant, and a hospice chaplain. One woman, whose family had been heavily involved in the Nation of Islam organization in her youth, showed me a photo of herself as a smiling 20-something standing next to the legendary boxer Muhammad Ali, taken shortly before he famously refused to make himself eligible for the draft during the Vietnam War. All of these experiences make for excellent conversation over lunch, and the atmosphere in the dining room is heady with stories, cheeky jokes, even a little light political chatter. Now nearly five years old, Law Harrington's staff is continually looking to build even more bridges between the people it serves and the broader community, especially young queer people. There's discussions of bringing in participants from Hatch, the Montrose Center's group for LGBTQ+ teens, and a few summers ago, a group of Boy Scouts built community gardens for the residents to complete their Eagle Scout projects. The Houston Gaymers, a group for LGBTQ+ video game enthusiasts in the city, stop by yearly to spend a day playing board games and chatting with the residents. 'The coolest thing about this space is the way that it brings so many different people together, and you can really see the impact of that,' Capo says. 'The conversations that we've had here, and the tolerance and community building that comes out of people just talking to each other is incredible. There was a time in the beginning when people were a little more shy, but now you see people from very disparate backgrounds and life experiences all intermingling and hanging out together. It's incredible to see.'
