YCLOAK

Basketball Hall of Famer Sam Jones, the Boston Celtics’ “Mr. Clutch” whose sharp shooting fueled the league’s longest dynasty and earned him 10 NBA titles — second only to teammate Bill Russell — has died, the team said. He was 88. 

Jones died Thursday night in Florida, where he had been hospitalized in failing health, Celtics spokesman Jeff Twiss said.

“Sam Jones was one of the most talented, versatile and clutch shooters for the most successful and dominant teams in NBA history,” the team said in a statement.

“His scoring ability was so prolific, and his form so pure, that he earned the simple nickname, ‘The Shooter,’ ” the Celtics said. “The Jones family is in our thoughts as we mourn his loss and fondly remember the life and career of one of the greatest champions in American sports.” 

The Celtics paused for a moment of silence before Friday afternoon’s game against the Phoenix Suns, showing a video tribute on the screen hanging among the championship banners above the parquet floor at the TD Garden. His No. 24, which was retired by the Celtics in 1969 while he was a still an active player, also was displayed on the monitor in the hushed arena before a still photo of him in a suit and the words “Sam Jones 1933-2021.” 

“Another one of my dear friends lost,” Celtics broadcaster Cedric Maxwell wrote on Twitter. “Well, the banks are open in heaven this #NYE.”

Reliable scorer 

Often providing the offense while Russell locked things down at the other end, Jones averaged 17.7 points per game over 12 seasons. The number went up in the postseason, when he averaged 18.9 points and was usually the No. 1 option for the game’s final shot for the teams that won 10 titles from 1959 to 1969. 

“We never flew first class in my 12 years of playing basketball,” Jones told The Associated Press this fall in an interview for the league’s 75th anniversary. “But we always won NBA championships.” 

In 1964, Jones was a member of the NBA’s first starting lineup to include five Black players, joining Russell, Tom “Satch” Sanders, K.C. Jones and Willie Naulls. Although coach Red Auerbach maintained he was thinking only of his best chance to win, the lineup broke with an unwritten rule that pressured teams to have at least one white player on the floor.

Jones, a North Carolina native who served two years in the Army before returning to college, told the AP that the NBA of the 1960s was little different than the segregated South where he grew up and went to school. 

“I’m fighting for the freedom of everybody here in the United States. And when I come back, I still got to fight for my freedom,” Jones said. “Something is wrong with that and has always been and is happening even today.”

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said Jones will be remembered as “one of the most prolific champions in all of professional sports.” 

“His selfless style, clutch performances and signature bank shot were hallmarks of an incredible career,” Silver said. “Sam was a beloved teammate and respected competitor who played the game with dignity and class. We mourn the passing of a basketball giant and send our deepest condolences to Sam’s family and the Celtics organization.” 

Born in Wilmington, Jones attended North Carolina Central, a Division II, historically Black university in Durham. Auerbach first heard of Jones when he went to North Carolina to scout the national champion Tar Heels and was told that the best player in the state was at Central playing for Hall of Fame coach John McLendon.

Selected sight unseen

Auerbach selected Jones in the first round of the 1957 draft, eighth overall, despite never seeing him play. 

“Russell and I are the most successful players in winning championships in the NBA. Yet he never saw us play a game because they had no scouts,” Jones told the AP. “The coaches called other coaches to see how other players were playing. They took their word for it.”

Jones led the Celtics in scoring five times — including the 1963 champions, when he was one of eight future Hall of Famers on the roster. When he retired in 1969 at age 36, Jones held 11 Celtics records and was the only player in franchise history to score more than 50 points in a game. 

“You look at the championships and what he did, it’s obviously a big loss for the community here,” Celtics coach Ime Udoka said before Friday’s game. 

Using a bank shot that was unconventional even then, Jones came to be known as “Mr. Clutch” after a series of game-winners, including a buzzer-beater to clinch the 1962 Eastern Conference finals. He hit an off-balance, wrong-footed jumper to win Game 4 of the ’69 finals; instead of heading to Los Angeles trailing 3-1, the Celtics tied the series against the Lakers at two games apiece and went on to win in seven. 

Jones retired after that title, having won his 10 championships in 12 seasons. A five-time All-Star, he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1984. 

Jones was named to the NBA’s 25th, 50th and 75th anniversary teams. His death comes a year after teammate Tommy Heinsohn died and 13 months after the death of K.C. Jones. 
…

Comedic actress Betty White, who capped a career of more than 80 years by becoming America’s geriatric sweetheart after Emmy-winning roles on television sitcoms The Golden Girls and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, has died, less than three weeks shy of her 100th birthday, People magazine reported Friday, quoting her agent. 

Her agent and close friend Jeff Witjas told the magazine, “Even though Betty was about to be 100, I thought she would live forever.” 

In a youth-driven entertainment industry where an actress over 40 is facing career twilight, White was an elderly anomaly who was a star in her 60s and a pop culture phenomenon in her 80s and 90s. 

Playing on her imminent likability, White was still starring in a TV sitcom, Hot in Cleveland, at age 92 until it was canceled in late 2014. 

White said her longevity was a result of good health, good fortune and loving her work. 

“It’s incredible that I’m still in this business and that you are still putting up with me,” White said in an appearance at the 2018 Emmy Awards ceremony, where she was honored for her long career. “It’s incredible that you can stay in a career this long and still have people put up with you. I wish they did that at home.” 

White was not afraid to mock herself and throw out a joke about her sex life or a snarky crack that one would not expect from a sweet-smiling white-haired woman. She was frequently asked if, after such a long career, there was anything she still wanted to do, and the standard response was “Robert Redford.” 

“Old age hasn’t diminished her,” The New York Times wrote in 2013. “It has given her a second wind.” 

Betty Marion White was born on January 17, 1922, in Oak Park, Illinois, and her family moved to Los Angeles during the Great Depression, where she attended Beverly Hills High School. 

Start of career 

White started her entertainment career in radio in the late 1930s and by 1939 had made her TV debut singing on an experimental channel in Los Angeles. After serving in the American Women’s Voluntary Service, which helped the U.S. effort during World War II, she was a regular on Hollywood on Television, a daily five-hour live variety show, in 1949. 

A few years later she became a pioneering woman in television by co-founding a production company and serving as a co-creator, producer and star of the 1950s sitcom Life With Elizabeth. 

Through the 1960s and early ’70s, White was seen regularly on television, hosting coverage of the annual Tournament of Rose Parade and appearing on game shows such as Match Game and Password. She married Password host Allen Ludden, her third and final husband, in 1963. 

White reached a new level of success on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, playing the host of a homemaking television show, the snide, lusty Sue Ann Nivens, whose credo was “a woman who does a good job in the kitchen is sure to reap her rewards in other parts of the house.” White won best supporting actress Emmys for the role in 1975 and 1976. 

She won another Emmy in 1986 for The Golden Girls, a sitcom about four older women living together in Miami that featured an age demographic rarely highlighted on American television. White also was nominated for an Emmy six other times for her portrayal of the widowed Rose Nylund, a sweet, naive and ditzy Midwesterner, on the show, which ran from 1985 to 1992 and was one of the top-rated series of its time. 

Guest appearances 

After a less successful sequel to The Golden Girls came a series of small movie parts, talk-show appearances and one-off television roles, including one on The John Larroquette Show that won her an Emmy for a guest appearance. 

By 2009 she was becoming ubiquitous with more frequent television appearances and a role in the Sandra Bullock film The Proposal. She starred in a popular Snickers candy commercial that aired during the Super Bowl, taking a brutal hit in a mud puddle in a football game. 

A young fan started a Facebook campaign to have White host Saturday Night Live, and she ended up appearing in every sketch on the show and winning still another Emmy for it. 

The Associated Press voted her entertainer of the year in 2010, and a 2011 Reuters/Ipsos poll found that White, then 89, was the most popular and trusted celebrity in America, with an 86% favorability rating. 

White’s witty and brassy demeanor came in handy as host of Betty White’s Off Their Rockers, a hidden-camera show in which elderly actors pulled pranks on younger people. 

“Who would ever dream that I would not only be this healthy, but still be invited to work?” White said in a 2015 interview with Oprah Winfrey. “That’s the privilege … to still have jobs to do is such a privilege.” 

White, who had no children, worked for animal causes. She once turned down a role in the movie As Good as It Gets because of a scene in which a dog was thrown in a garbage chute. 

 
…

Pope Francis ended the year by attending a vespers service Friday where he praised those who responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with responsibility and solidarity rather than an attitude of “every person for themselves.” 

The pope did not preside at the service as had been expected, leaving that to a senior Vatican cardinal. 

The Vatican did not explain why the change was made, seemingly at the last minute because the program for the ritual said Francis, 85, was to preside. 

Francis, who walked in unassisted and appeared to be in good condition, used a white chair to the side, sitting for most of the service. 

He later walked to a podium and read his homily, both without apparent difficulty. 

Last year, Francis had to skip the service because of a flare up of a sciatica condition that causes pain in his leg. 

Presiding would have required standing, kneeling and holding aloft a monstrance, a heavy gold vessel used to hold the communion host during vespers. 

The pandemic loomed large at the service, with a cap of several hundred on the number of people allowed into St. Peter’s Basilica for the traditional year-end thanksgiving service known as the “Te Deum.” 

COVID-19 also forced the pope to cancel his traditional visit to the nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square afterwards. 

The Vatican announced that change on Thursday, saying it was to avoid a causing a crowd to gather. 

In his homily, Francis said the pandemic had caused many to feel lost and that in some cases “a temptation of every person for themselves” had spread. 

“But we rose up again with a sense of responsibility,” he said. 

Italy reported a record 144,243 coronavirus related cases on Friday and has recently imposed new restrictions, including wearing masks outdoors. 

With Rome Mayor Roberto Gualteri behind him, Francis, who is also bishop of Rome, also used his homily to lament the decay of the Italian capital. 

For several years Romans have been living with a garbage collection crisis and with bins overflowing, particularly in residential areas. Herds of wild boars have invaded some neighborhoods to feast on the rubbish. 

“Rome is a wonderful city that never ceases to enchant. But for those who live here, unfortunately it is not always dignified,” Francis said. 

 
…

The new year signals the beginning of the Oscars race. Oscar nominees distinguish themselves in categories such as film direction, cinematography and acting. The message of these films is also significant, especially in relation to the times we live in. VOA’s Penelope Poulou looks at some of these promising contenders.
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Good riddance to 2021. Let 2022 bring fresh hope.

That was a common sentiment Friday as people around the world got ready to welcome in the new year.

In many places, plans for New Year’s Eve celebrations were muted or canceled for the second straight year due to a surge of coronavirus infections, this time driven by the highly contagious omicron variant.

Even before omicron hit, many people were happy to say goodbye to a second grinding year of the pandemic. 

But so far, at least, the omicron surge hasn’t resulted in the same levels of hospitalizations and deaths as previous outbreaks — especially among vaccinated people — offering a glimmer of hope for 2022. 

In Japan, writer Naoki Matsuzawa said he would spend the next few days cooking and delivering food to the elderly because some stores would be closed. He said vaccinations had made people less anxious about the pandemic, despite the new variant.

“A numbness has set in, and we are no longer overly afraid,” said Matsuzawa, who lives in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo. “Some of us are starting to take for granted that it won’t happen to me.”

Like many other people, Matsuzawa hopes that life will improve in 2022. 

“I hope the restrictions can disappear,” he said.

Across Japan, many people planned to take new year trips to spend time with their families. On New Year’s Eve, people thronged temples and shrines, most of them wearing masks.

Some appeared to be shrugging off virus fears, however, by dining and drinking raucously in downtown Tokyo and flocking to shops, celebrating not only the holidays but a sense of exhilaration over being freed from recent virus restrictions.

Because of where the international date line sits, countries in Asia and the Pacific region are among the first to usher in each new year.

 

Australia was planning to go ahead with its celebrations despite an explosion in virus cases. The centerpiece of festivities is the renowned fireworks display from the Sydney Harbor Bridge and Sydney Opera House.

Hours before the celebrations were due to begin, Australian health authorities reported a record 32,000 new virus cases, many of them in Sydney. Because of the surge, authorities were expecting far smaller crowds than in pre-pandemic years, when as many as 1 million revelers would crowd inner Sydney. 

In neighboring New Zealand, where there hasn’t been any community spread of omicron, authorities took a precautionary approach by canceling several fireworks displays, including a popular one from atop Auckland’s Sky Tower. Auckland instead will mark the new year with a light display projected onto the tower and other city landmarks.

In South Korea’s capital, Seoul, the annual New Year’s Eve bell-ringing ceremony was canceled for the second straight year due to a surge in cases.

Officials said a pre-recorded video of this year’s bell-ringing ceremony would instead be broadcast online and on television. The ceremony had previously drawn tens of thousands of people. Last year’s cancellation was the first since the ceremony began in 1953.

 

South Korean authorities also planned to close many beaches and other tourist attractions along the east coast, which usually swarm with people hoping to catch the year’s first sunrise. On Friday, South Korea said it will extend tough distancing rules for another two weeks.

In India, millions of people were planning to ring in the new year from their homes, with nighttime curfews and other restrictions taking the fizz out of celebrations in large cities including New Delhi and Mumbai. 

Authorities have imposed restrictions to keep revelers away from restaurants, hotels, beaches and bars amid a surge in cases fueled by omicron. 

But some places, including Goa, a tourist paradise, and Hyderabad, an information technology hub, have been spared from night curfews thanks to smaller numbers of infections, although other restrictions still apply.

Many Indonesians were also forgoing their usual festivities for a quieter evening at home, after the government banned many New Year’s Eve celebrations. In Jakarta, fireworks displays, parades and other large gatherings were prohibited, while restaurants and malls were allowed to remain open but with curfews imposed.

Vietnam also canceled fireworks shows and celebrations. In Hanoi, authorities closed off central streets, while in Ho Chi Minh City, audiences were banned from watching live countdown performances, which instead were to be shown on social media.

In Hong Kong, about 3,000 people planned to attend a New Year’s Eve concert featuring local celebrities including boy band Mirror. The concert will be the first big New Year’s Eve event held since 2018, after events were canceled in 2019 due to political strife and last year because of the pandemic.

In mainland China, the Shanghai government canceled events including an annual light show along the Huangpu River in the city center that usually draws hundreds of thousands of spectators.

There were no plans for public festivities in Beijing, where popular temples have been closed or had limited access since mid-December. The government has called on people to avoid leaving the Chinese capital if possible and requires tests for travelers arriving from areas where there are infections.

 

Popular temples in the eastern Chinese cities of Nanjing, Hangzhou and other major cities canceled traditional New Year’s Eve “lucky bell-ringing” ceremonies and asked the public to stay away.

But in Thailand, authorities were allowing New Year’s Eve parties and fireworks displays to continue, albeit with strict safety measures. They were hoping to slow the spread of the omicron variant while also softening the blow to the country’s battered tourism sector. New Year’s Eve prayers, which are usually held in Buddhist temples around Thailand, will be held online instead.

In the Philippines, a powerful typhoon two weeks ago wiped out basic necessities for tens of thousands of people ahead of New Year’s Eve. More than 400 were killed by Typhoon Rai and at least 82 remain missing. Half a million homes were damaged or destroyed.

Leahmer Singson, a 17-year-old mother, lost her home to a fire last month, and then the typhoon blew away her temporary wooden shack in Cebu city. She will welcome the new year with her husband, who works in a glass and aluminum factory, and her 1-year-old baby in a ramshackle tent in a coastal clearing where hundreds of other families erected small tents from debris, rice sacks and tarpaulins to shield themselves from the rain and sun. 

Asked what she wants for the new year, Singson had a simple wish: “I hope we won’t get sick.”
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New York City will ring in 2022 in Times Square as planned despite record numbers of COVID-19 infections in the city and around the nation, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday.

“We want to show that we’re moving forward, and we want to show the world that New York City is fighting our way through this,” de Blasio, whose last day in office is Friday, said on NBC’s “Today” show.

After banning revelers from Times Square a year ago due to the pandemic, city officials previously announced plans for a scaled-back New Year’s bash with smaller crowds and vaccinations required.

While cities such as Atlanta have canceled New Year’s Eve celebrations, de Blasio said New York City’s high COVID-19 vaccination rate makes it feasible to welcome masked, socially distanced crowds to watch the ball drop in Times Square. “We’ve got to send a message to the world. New York City is open,” he said.

Thanks to the highly contagious omicron variant that was first identified as a variant of concern last month, new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. have soared to their highest levels on record at over 265,000 per day on average. New York City reported a record number of new, confirmed cases — more than 39,590 — on Tuesday, according to New York state figures.

De Blasio said the answer is to “double down on vaccinations” and noted that 91% of New York City adults have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose.

The city’s next mayor, Eric Adams, will take the oath of office in Times Square early Saturday. Adams, a Democrat like de Blasio, planned a news conference later Thursday to outline his pandemic plan.
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Amanda Gorman is ending her extraordinary year on a hopeful note. 

The 23-year-old poet, whose reading of her own “The Hill We Climb” at President Joe Biden’s inauguration made her an international sensation, released a new work Wednesday to mark the end of 2021. “New Day’s Lyric” is a five-stanza, 48-line resolution with themes of struggle and healing known to admirers of “The Hill We Climb” and of her bestselling collection “Call Us What We Carry,” which came out in early December: 

“What was cursed, we will cure. 

What was plagued, we will prove pure. 

Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree, 

Those fortunes we forswore, now the future we foresee, 

Where we weren’t aware, we’re now awake; 

Those moments we missed 

Are now these moments we make, 

The moments we meet, 

And our hearts, once all together beaten, 

Now all together beat.” 

Poets rarely enjoy the kind of attention Gorman received in 2021, but in an email to The Associated Press she reflected less on her own success than on the state of the country. Gorman wrote that the “chaos and instability” of the past year had made her reject the idea of going “back to normal” and instead fight to “move beyond it.” She mentioned Maya Angelou’s poem “Human Family” and added, “To be a family, a country, doesn’t necessitate that we be the same or agree on everything, only that we continue to try to see the best in each other and move forward into a shared future. Whether we like it or not, we are in this together.” 

 

Gorman offered an alliterative response when asked what inspired “New Day’s Lyric,” telling the AP that she “wanted to write a lyric to honor the hardships, hurt, hope and healing of 2021 while also harkening the potential of 2022.” 

“This is such a unique New Year’s Day, because even as we toast our glasses to the future, we still have our heads bowed for what has been lost,” she wrote. “I think one of the most important things the new year reminds us is of that old adage: This too shall pass. You can’t relive the same day twice — meaning every dawn is a new one, and every year an opportunity to step into the light.” 
…

John Madden, the Hall of Fame coach turned broadcaster whose exuberant calls combined with simple explanations provided a weekly soundtrack to NFL games for three decades, died Tuesday morning, the NFL said. He was 85. 

The league said he had died unexpectedly, and it did not provide a cause. 

Madden gained fame in a decadelong stint as the coach of the renegade Oakland Raiders, making it to seven AFC title games and winning the Super Bowl following the 1976 season. He compiled a 103-32-7 regular-season record, and his .759 winning percentage is the best among NFL coaches with more than 100 games. 

But it was his work after prematurely retiring as coach at age 42 that made Madden truly a household name. He educated a football nation with his use of the Telestrator on broadcasts; entertained millions with his interjections of “Boom!” and “Doink!” throughout games; was an omnipresent pitchman selling restaurants, hardware stores and beer; became the face of “Madden NFL Football,” one of the most successful sports video games of all-time; and was a best-selling author. 

Most of all, he was the preeminent television sports analyst for most of his three decades calling games, winning an unprecedented 16 Emmy Awards for outstanding sports analyst/personality, and covering 11 Super Bowls for four networks from 1979 to 2009. 

“People always ask, are you a coach or a broadcaster or a video game guy?” he said when he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. “I’m a coach, always been a coach.” 

Unpretentious style 

He started his broadcasting career at CBS after leaving coaching in great part because of his fear of flying. He and Pat Summerall became the network’s top announcing duo. Madden then helped give Fox credibility as a major network when he moved there in 1994, and he went on to call prime-time games at ABC and NBC before retiring following Pittsburgh’s thrilling 27-23 win over Arizona in the 2009 Super Bowl. 

Burly and a little unkempt, Madden earned a place in America’s heart with a likable, unpretentious style that was refreshing in a sports world of spiraling salaries and prima donna stars. He rode from game to game in his own bus because he suffered from claustrophobia and had stopped flying. For a time, Madden gave out a “turducken” — a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey — to the outstanding player in the Thanksgiving game that he called. 

“Nobody loved football more than Coach. He was football,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement. “He was an incredible sounding board to me and so many others. There will never be another John Madden, and we will forever be indebted to him for all he did to make football and the NFL what it is today.” 

When he finally retired from the broadcast booth, leaving NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” colleagues universally praised Madden’s passion for the sport, his preparation, and his ability to explain an often-complicated game in down-to-earth terms. 

“No one has made the sport more interesting, more relevant and more enjoyable to watch and listen to than John,” play-by-play announcer Al Michaels said at the time. 

For anyone who heard Madden exclaim “Boom!” while breaking down a play, his love of the game was obvious. 

“For me, TV is really an extension of coaching,” Madden wrote in Hey, Wait a Minute! (I Wrote a Book!).”My knowledge of football has come from coaching. And on TV, all I’m trying to do is pass on some of that knowledge to viewers.” 

Rise to the top 

Madden was raised in Daly City, California. He played on both the offensive and defensive lines for Cal Poly in 1957-58 and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the school. 

Madden was chosen to the all-conference team and was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles, but a knee injury ended his hopes of a pro playing career. Instead, Madden got into coaching, first at Hancock Junior College and then as defensive coordinator at San Diego State. 

Al Davis brought him to the Raiders as a linebackers coach in 1967, and Oakland went to the Super Bowl in his first year in the pros. He replaced John Rauch as head coach after the 1968 season at age 32, beginning a remarkable 10-year run. 

With his demonstrative demeanor on the sideline and disheveled look, Madden was the ideal coach for the collection of castoffs and misfits that made up those Raiders teams. 

“Sometimes guys were disciplinarians in things that didn’t make any difference. I was a disciplinarian in jumping offsides; I hated that,” Madden once said. “Being in bad position and missing tackles, those things. I wasn’t, ‘Your hair has to be combed.'” 

The Raiders responded. 

“I always thought his strong suit was his style of coaching,” quarterback Ken Stabler once said. “John just had a great knack for letting us be what we wanted to be, on the field and off the field. … How do you repay him for being that way? You win for him.” 

And boy, did they ever. Many years, the only problem was the playoffs. 

Madden went 12-1-1 in his first season, losing the AFL title game 17-7 to Kansas City. That pattern repeated itself during his tenure; the Raiders won the division title in seven of his first eight seasons but went 1-6 in conference title games during that span. 

Memorable games 

Still, Madden’s Raiders played in some of the sport’s most memorable games of the 1970s, games that helped change rules in the NFL. There was the “Holy Roller” in 1978, when Stabler purposely fumbled forward before being sacked on the final play. The ball rolled and was batted to the end zone before Dave Casper recovered it for the winning touchdown against San Diego. 

The most famous of those games went against the Raiders in the 1972 playoffs at Pittsburgh. With the Raiders leading 7-6 and 22 seconds left, the Steelers had a fourth-and-10 from their 40. Terry Bradshaw’s desperation pass deflected off either Oakland’s Jack Tatum or Pittsburgh’s Frenchy Fuqua to Franco Harris, who caught it at his shoe tops and ran in for a TD. 

In those days, a pass that bounced off an offensive player directly to a teammate was illegal, and the debate continues to this day over which player it hit. The catch, of course, was dubbed the “Immaculate Reception.” 

Oakland finally broke through with a loaded team in 1976 that had Stabler at quarterback; Fred Biletnikoff and Cliff Branch at receiver; tight end Dave Casper; Hall of Fame offensive linemen Gene Upshaw and Art Shell; and a defense that included Willie Brown, Ted Hendricks, Tatum, John Matuszak, Otis Sistrunk and George Atkinson. 

The Raiders went 13-1, losing only a blowout at New England in Week 4. They paid the Patriots back with a 24-21 win in their first playoff game and got over the AFC title game hump with a 24-7 win over the hated Steelers, who were crippled by injuries. 

Oakland won it all with a 32-14 Super Bowl romp against Minnesota. 

“Players loved playing for him,” Shell said. “He made it fun for us in camp and fun for us in the regular season. All he asked is that we be on time and play like hell when it was time to play.” 

Madden battled an ulcer the following season, when the Raiders once again lost in the AFC title game. He retired from coaching at age 42 after a 9-7 season in 1978. 

 
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The Rev. Athanasius Chidi Abanulo — using skills honed in his African homeland to minister effectively in rural Alabama— determines just how long he can stretch out his Sunday homilies based on who is sitting in the pews.

Seven minutes is the sweet spot for the mostly white and retired parishioners who attend the English-language Mass at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in the small town of Wedowee. “If you go beyond that, you lose the attention of the people,” he said.

For the Spanish-language Mass an hour later, the Nigerian-born priest — one of numerous African clergy serving in the U.S. — knows he can quadruple his teaching time. “The more you preach, the better for them,” he said.

As he moves from one American post to the next, Abanulo has learned how to tailor his ministry to the culture of the communities he is serving while infusing some of the spirit of his homeland into the universal rhythms of the Mass.

“Nigerian people are relaxed when they come to church,” Abanulo said. “They love to sing, they love to dance. The liturgy can last for two hours. They don’t worry about that.” 

During his 18 years in the U.S., Abanulo has filled various chaplain and pastor roles across the country, epitomizing an ongoing trend in the American Catholic church. As fewer American-born men and women enter seminaries and convents, U.S. dioceses and Catholic institutions have turned to international recruitment to fill their vacancies.

The Diocese of Birmingham, where Abanulo leads two parishes, has widened its search for clergy to places with burgeoning religious vocations like Nigeria and Cameroon, said Birmingham Bishop Steven Raica. Priests from Africa were also vital in the Michigan diocese where Raica previously served. 

“They have been an enormous help to us to be able to provide the breadth and scope of ministry that we have available to us,” he said. 

Africa is the Catholic church’s fastest-growing region. There, the seminaries are “fairly full,” said the Rev. Thomas Gaunt, director of Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, which conducts research about the Catholic church. 

Falling numbers

It’s different in the U.S. where the Catholic church faces significant hurdles in recruiting home-grown clergy following decades of declining church attendance and the damaging effects of widespread clergy sex abuse scandals. 

Catholic women and married men remain barred from the priesthood; arguments that lifting those bans would ease the priest shortage have not gained traction with the faith’s top leadership. 

“What we have is a much smaller number beginning in the 1970s entering seminaries or to convents across the country,” Gaunt said. “Those who entered back in the ’50s and ’60s are now elderly, and so the numbers are determined much more by mortality.”

From 1970 to 2020, the number of priests in the U.S. dropped by 60%, according to data from the Georgetown center. This has left more than 3,500 parishes without a resident pastor. 

Abanulo oversees two parishes in rural Alabama. His typical Sunday starts with an English-language Mass at Holy Family Catholic Church in Lanett, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) from Birmingham along the Alabama-Georgia state line. After that, he is driven an hour north to Wedowee, where he celebrates one Mass in English, another in Spanish.

“He just breaks out in song and a lot of his lectures, he ties in his boyhood, and I just love hearing those stories,” said Amber Moosman, a first-grade teacher who has been a parishioner at Holy Family since 1988.

For Moosman, Abanulo’s preaching style is very different from the priests she’s witnessed previously. “There was no all of a sudden, the priest sings, nothing like that. … It was very quiet, very ceremonial, very strict,” she said. “It’s a lot different now.” 

Abanulo was ordained in Nigeria in 1990 and came to the U.S. in 2003 after a stint in Chad. His first U.S. role was as an associate pastor in the diocese of Oakland, California, where his ministry focused on the fast-growing Nigerian Catholic community. Since then, he has been a hospital chaplain and pastor in Nashville, Tennessee, and a chaplain at the University of Alabama. 

Amid the U.S. clergy shortage, religious sisters have experienced the sharpest declines, dropping 75% since 1970, according to the Georgetown center.

Culture shocks

When Maria Sheri Rukwishuro was told she was being sent from the Sisters of the Infant Jesus order in Zimbabwe to West Virginia to work as a missionary nun, she asked her mother superior, “Where is West Virginia?” 

She was scared, worrying about the unknowns.

“What kind of people am I going to? I’m just a Black nun coming to a white country,” Rukwishuro told The Associated Press from Clarksburg, West Virginia, where she has been teaching religious education to public and Catholic school students since arriving in 2004.

Rukwishuro vividly remembers that at her introduction, a little girl walked to her and “rubbed her finger on my fingers all the way, then she looked at her finger and she smiled but my heart sank. … She thought I was dirty.” Despite that, Rukwishuro says most people have been very welcoming. She’s now a U.S. citizen and says, “It feels like home.” 

One of her first culture shocks was an overnight snowfall. “I really screamed. I thought it was the end of the world,” she said. “Now I love it. I do my meditations to that.” 

During their integration into American life, it is commonplace for newly arrived clergy to face culture shocks.

For Sister Christiana Onyewuche of Nigeria, a hospital chaplain in Boston administering last rites for the dying, it was cremation. She recalled thinking, “Like really? … How can they burn somebody? I can’t even imagine.” 

She came to the U.S. 18 years ago and previously served as the president of African Conference of Catholic Clergy and Religious, a support group for African missionaries serving in the U.S.

‘Jesus necks’

Onyewuche said African clergy can face communication challenges with the Americans they serve. To address this, many dioceses have offered training to soften accents, she said. Abanulo, who went through the training in Oakland, says it helped him slow down his speech and improve his pronunciations.

Abanulo, who moved to Alabama in 2020, admits he was initially apprehensive about his latest posting, which meant exchanging a comfortable role as university chaplain for two rural parishes. 

“People were telling me ‘Father, don’t go there. The people there are rednecks,'” he said.

But after a year, and a warm reception, he says he now tells his friends, “There are no rednecks here. All I see are Jesus necks.” 

 
…

The hit new “Spider-Man” became the first billion-dollar-grossing film of the pandemic era over the Christmas weekend, reaching the milestone while holding firmly to the North American box office top spot, industry watcher Exhibitor Relations said Sunday.

“Spider-Man: No Way Home,” British star Tom Holland’s third solo outing in the wildly popular role, has grossed $467.3 million in North America and $587 million internationally, raking in more than $1 billion over 12 days and proving analysts’ predictions that it could reach the milestone sum. 

It rocketed to that benchmark at a speed only matched by 2015’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” according to industry outlet Variety, and comes even as the rapid spread of the omicron COVID-19 variant casts a pall over holiday outings worldwide.

Sony’s latest installment to the comic-inspired series took an estimated $81.5 million in North America for the three-day period over the Christmas weekend, holding its top spot after scoring the third-biggest domestic opening of all time with more than $260 million, smashing early estimates. 

Its debut box office sales trailed only 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame” ($357 million) and the previous year’s “Avengers: Infinity War” ($258 million), according to the BoxOfficeMojo website.

With an estimated $23.8 million, “Sing 2,” Universal’s star-studded animated jukebox musical follow-up to “Sing,” was this weekend’s runner-up.

It beat out two other new series installments: “The Matrix Resurrections” from Warner Bros, which sees Keanu Reeves reprise his iconic role as Neo, underperformed at $12 million.

In fourth place, also earning less than expected, was 20th Century’s spy prequel to the “Kingsman” films, “The King’s Man,” with $6.4 million. 

Lionsgate’s “American Underdog” — based on the true story of Kurt Warner, who went from stocking shelves at a grocery store to National Football League MVP — slid in at number five on its opening weekend with an estimated $6.2 million. 

Rounding out the top 10 were:

“West Side Story” ($2.8 million)

“Licorice Pizza” ($2.3 million)

“A Journal for Jordan” ($2.2 million)

“Encanto” ($2 million)

“83” ($1.8 million)
…

“There is nothing in the world like the food you can find in Louisiana,” Chef Isaac Toups, owner of popular New Orleans restaurant Toups Meatery, told VOA. “It’s such a unique mix of so many different cultures that converged here from around the globe. They brought their ideas about food with them and made a cuisine that is unparalleled.”

Immigrants’ culinary influences span centuries in New Orleans, a port city near the mouth of the Mississippi River. From French colonists who were the first Europeans to permanently settle in the area in 1699 to Vietnamese immigrants in the 1970s to recent arrivals from all over the world, newcomers have continually added to the DNA of local cuisine.

 

Liz Williams, founder of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum and author of New Orleans: A Food Biography, says there’s something unique about the way cultures – and cooking – have melded in this Southern city compared with other places in America.

“You can find every food in the world in New York City,” Williams said. “Go two blocks that way for this type of cuisine and six blocks the other way for that type of cuisine.”

New Orleans, by contrast, has spawned a gastronomical melting pot. Or, to use a local analogy, a gumbo.

“There’s no ‘New York City cuisine’ because all those immigrant groups didn’t meld together,” she said. “In New Orleans, though, all of these different immigrant cuisines have been influenced by New Orleans food and influenced New Orleans food. There’s a melding, merging and updating that seems to be constantly happening here that doesn’t happen in other places.”

Early settlers

Mention Louisiana cooking, and most people think of Creole cuisine, Cajun cuisine or some mixture of the two.

“When the two foods were first being established in Louisiana in the 18th century, they were two distinct cuisines from two distinct regions,” explained chef Donald Link, owner of several New Orleans restaurants all under the banner of the Link Restaurant Group. “Creole food was being created in New Orleans while Cajun food was in the more rural, southwestern part of the state.”

Creole culture in New Orleans arose from a mixture of the early French settlers, Spanish immigrants who followed shortly after, enslaved people taken from Africa and the Native Americans who were already here. Once the United States purchased Louisiana from France in 1803, waves of Anglo-Americans came to New Orleans as well as thousands who fled the Haitian Revolution taking place at the same time.

The confluence created a unique mix of cultures that is reflected in local cooking to this day.

“New Orleans is often called the most northern city in the Caribbean, and there was a lot of influence coming from Spanish-controlled Latin countries,” explained Link. “They brought their rice, beans, guisados and stews. And then the French brought their boudin and fricassees and all these celebrated techniques, and Africans had gumbo, which comes from the West African word for okra. It all came together to make what we call Creole food.”

Creole food is considered a cosmopolitan cuisine. It often features rich sauces, local herbs, ripe tomatoes and local seafood.

“You use what you have available to you,” said Brad Hollingsworth, owner of longtime New Orleans favorite Clancy’s. “Here, that means all these great, fresh fish from the Gulf of Mexico: speckled trout, pompano, red snapper, redfish, flounder and all the way down the line.”

Hollingsworth said cuisine from Creole culture is more focused on sauces than its Cajun counterpart. That, he said, is in large part because of the city’s ability to attract settlers from more cosmopolitan, cultured areas of France.

“They brought with them the French mother sauces that we really lean into at Clancy’s,” Hollingsworth said. “Bechamel, velouté, espagnole, hollandaise and tomato. We use them to complement our local fish or meat. It’s a combination of using what is geographically available and the techniques of the immigrant groups who came here.”

Cajun food, on the other hand, is known for being more rustic. It features meat-heavy, all-in-one-pot dishes like jambalaya and the rice-filled, spicy pork blood sausage known as boudin.

The Cajuns were also largely originally of French descent, but these French-influenced immigrants came from backcountry parts of Acadia in Canada rather than the major cities of France. They were forced out of Canada by the British in 1755, and about 3,000 arrived in rural Louisiana, where they interacted with German immigrants, Native Americans and enslaved people – all of whom added their own culinary influences.

“Cajun cuisine was more of a country food, while Creole cuisine was more of a city food,” said Toups, who grew up in the part of Louisiana known as Cajun Country, about two-and-a-half hours west of New Orleans. “That’s because the Cajuns were French fur trappers, not French-trained chefs like you might find in the city. As a poorer immigrant group, we had to add things to make our meals last. Fortunately, the region had tons of rice, which is why you find rice in our classics like boudin, jambalaya and gumbo.”

Continuing the evolution of a food

During the 19th and 20th centuries, thanks to improved methods of communication and better transportation, the two cuisines began to merge and inspire each other. They also continued to be influenced by other groups

German immigrants, for example, brought their passion for sausages to Cajun food, which helped create Louisiana’s famed spicy andouille. But the next big addition to the local food scene came when nearly 300,000 Italian immigrants – most of them Sicilian – moved to the city between 1884 and 1924.

“If you look at stuffed peppers in other places, they’re usually prepared with rice,” said Liz Williams, who will be releasing the book, Nana’s Creole Italian Table in March 2022, “but in New Orleans, our veggies are stuffed with breadcrumbs. That’s an effect of the Sicilians who arrived here.”

Red gravy, the Creole adaptation of tomato sauce – similar to how Creoles use a roux in gumbo as a thickener – and the introduction of sno-balls, made from shaved ice, to New Orleans are further examples of how New Orleanian and Sicilian cuisines merged.

“In Sicily and lots of Europe, it was common during hotter months to walk up a mountain to collect snow that you could flavor with syrup for a summertime treat,” Williams said. “In America, most places use crushed ice for more of a frozen sherbet. In New Orleans, however, shaved ice is used because it emulates more of what our Sicilians knew back home.”

In more recent decades, Mexican immigrants came to New Orleans to help rebuild after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. They, too, left an impact on their new home – not just on the cuisine, but also the way it’s served.

New Orleans is now dotted with dozens of taco trucks it didn’t have before the storm.

“Because the local ingredients are different here,” Williams explained, “so are the items sold. You’re not going to find fried oyster tacos in many places in the world, but you can find them in New Orleans.”

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Pots and pans in kitchens across one of the world’s most unique food cities clatter with creations that can’t be found anywhere else. At two-time James Beard award-winning chef Alon Shaya’s restaurant, Saba, Louisiana blue crab is a local addition to a traditionally Mediterranean hummus. Popular Indian restaurant Saffron NOLA adds curried seafood and basmati rice to gumbo, Louisiana’s state dish.

And Dong Phuong Bakery, an institution formed in 1982 after thousands of Vietnamese refugees arrived in New Orleans after the Vietnam War, has forever changed how many residents think of two of their most prized foods. Dong Phuong and their unique king cake – topped with cream cheese icing because bakery owner Huong Tran didn’t want her cake to be as sweet as the ones with traditional sugar icing – is one of the most popular in the city. Also, the bakery’s bread is sold by the thousands to restaurants across the city. The beloved Louisiana po’boy sandwich is now often made with Vietnamese-style banh mi bread instead of the more Louisiana-standard French bread.

“We came here as refugees with nothing, so of course it makes us so proud to have our new home appreciate what we can add to the food here,” explained Linh Tran Garza, president of Dong Phuong Bakery. “But we’re also continuously influenced by our home, as well.”

Garza points to the emergence of Viet-Cajun cuisine as proof that the two cultures are evolving with each other.

“It’s a great thing, I think. We should always be paying attention to the community and seeing how we can get better, give customers what they want, or create some new amazing food.”

Liz Williams said that is something New Orleans is especially able to do, perhaps more so than any other American city, because of its past.

“I think it has to do with us being originally colonized by the French while much of the rest of America was colonized by the British,” she said. “The British have a way of doing things and, historically, exercise less flexibility. The French, however, are more curious and more eager to make great food. They see it as an art, and they welcome new inspiration. The Creoles sought and welcomed that inspiration centuries ago, and I think our culture continues to do it today.”
…

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden brought some Christmas Eve cheer to hospitalized children who aren’t well enough to go home for holidays.

It’s longstanding tradition for first ladies to visit Children’s National Hospital at Christmastime, but Joe Biden’s visit on Friday was a surprise. It marked the first time that a sitting president had joined the fun, the White House said.

The Bidens are set to help a group of children making lanterns as part of a winter craft project. Jill Biden will also sit by the Christmas tree and read “Olaf’s Night Before Christmas” to the kids. Video of her reading will also be shown in patient rooms throughout the hospital.

The Walt Disney Co. provided copies of the book for each patient so they can follow along with the first lady, the White House said. Each book includes a White House bookmark designed by her office.

The annual tradition of a hospital visit by the first lady dates to Bess Truman, who served in the role from 1945-1953.
…

For over four decades, novelist Dan Hurley has been writing 60-second-long stories about New Yorkers he met on the street. But apart from amusing passers-by with his literary talent, Hurley also happens to be an award-winning science writer. Anna Nelson met with Hurley on the streets of the Big Apple. Anna Rice narrates her story. Camera: Natalia Latukhina, Vladimir Badikov, Dmitry Vershinin, Alexander Barash
…

Deep in the desert of the United Arab Emirates, the moment that camel breeders had been waiting for arrived.

Families hauled their camels through wind-carved sands. Servers poured tiny cups of Arabic coffee. Judges descended on desert lots.

A single question loomed over the grandstand: Which camels were most beautiful?

Even as the omicron variant rips through the world, legions of breeders from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Qatar traveled to the UAE’s southwestern desert this week with 40,000 of their most beautiful camels for the Al Dhafra Festival.

The five-man jury at the annual pageant insists beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. Camel aesthetics are evaluated according to precise categories determined generations ago. Only female camels participate because males fight too much, authorities said.

As hundreds of woolly black camels trotted through the dusty pastures, necks and humps bobbing, one of the organizers, Mohammed al-Muhari, outlined the platonic ideal.

Necks must be long and slim, cheeks broad and hooves large, he told The Associated Press on Wednesday. Lips must droop. They must walk tall with graceful posture.

“It’s not so different from humans,” al-Muhari said, his robe sparkling white amid clouds of dust.

The high standards have prompted many breeders to seek an advantage, using banned Botox injections to inflate the camel’s lips, muscle relaxants to soften the face and silicone wax injections to expand the hump.

Festival spokesman Abdel Hadi Saleh declined to say how many participants had been disqualified over plastic surgery this week. All camels undergo rigorous medical exams to detect artificial touch-ups and hormones before entering Al Dhafra Festival.

Since Emirati investigators began employing X-rays and sonar systems a few years ago, Saleh said the number of cheaters has plummeted.

“We easily catch them, and they realize getting caught, it’s not worth the cost to their reputation,” he said.

A great deal is at stake. Al Dhafra Festival offers the top 10 winners in each category prizes ranging from $1,300 to $13,600. At the main Saudi contest, the most beautiful fetch $66 million. Camels change hands in deals worth millions of dirhams.

But breeders insist it’s not only about the money.

“It is a kind of our heritage and custom that the (Emirati rulers) revived,” said 27-year-old camel owner Saleh al-Minhali from Abu Dhabi. He sported designer sunglasses over his traditional headdress and Balenciaga sneakers under his kandura, or Emirati tunic.

Gone are the days when camels were integral to daily life in the federation of seven sheikhdoms, a chapter lost as oil wealth and global business transformed Dubai and Abu Dhabi into skyscraper-studded hubs with marbled malls, luxury hotels and throbbing nightclubs. Foreigners outnumber locals nearly nine to one in the country.

However, experts say Emiratis are increasingly searching for meaning in echoes of the past — Bedouin traditions that prevailed before the UAE became a nation 50 years ago.

“Younger Emiratis who have identity issues are going back to their heritage to find a sense of belonging,” said Rima Sabban, a sociologist at Zayed University in Dubai. “The society developed and modernized so fast it creates a crisis inside.”

Camels race at old-world racetracks in the Emirates, and still offer milk, meat and a historic touchstone to citizens. Festivals across the country celebrate the camel’s significance. Al Dhafra also features falcon racing, dromedary dancing and a camel milking contest.

“People in Dubai may not even think about them, but young people here care deeply about camels,” said Mahmoud Suboh, a festival coordinator from Liwa Oasis at the northern edge of the desert’s Empty Quarter. Since 2008, he has watched the fairgrounds transform from a remote desert outpost into an extravaganza that draws camel lovers from around the world.

In a sign of the contest’s exploding popularity, about a dozen young Emirati men who call themselves “camel influencers” filmed and posed with the camels on Wednesday, broadcasting live to thousands of Instagram followers.

The digital likes have proven important this year, as the coronavirus pandemic curtailed tourism to the festival and dampened the mood. Police checked that visitors had received both vaccine doses and tested negative for the virus. Authorities nagged attendees to adjust their face masks, threatening fines. There were few foreigners or other spectators strolling the site Wednesday.

Each category in the 10-day pageant is divided into two types of camels: Mahaliyat, the tan breed that originates from the UAE and Oman, and Majaheen, the darker breed from Saudi Arabia. Wednesday’s showcase focused on 5-year-old black Majaheen camels.

For hours, judges scrutinized each camel, scribbling lists of the animal’s body parts for scoring purposes. Breeders shouted to startle camels so they’d look up and show off elongated necks.

As the sun set over the sands, the winning breeders were called to accept their gleaming trophies. Down below in the dirt rings, camels were crowned with gold and silver-lined shawls.

“Until now we are the first in the category … We’ve received over 40 prizes (in various camel contests) this year alone,” beamed Mohammed Saleh bin Migrin al-Amri as he juggled four trophies from the day, including two golds.

Then he jumped into his Toyota Land Cruiser. The victory parade of honking SUVs and grunting camels faded behind the desert dunes.
…

Author Joan Didion, whose essays, memoirs, novels and screenplays chronicled contemporary American society, as well as her grief over the deaths of her husband and daughter, has died at the age of 87. 

 

The cause of death was Parkinson’s disease, her publisher Knopf said Thursday in a statement. Didion first emerged as a writer of substance in the late 1960s as an early practitioner of “new journalism,” which allowed writers to take a narrative, more personalized perspective. 

 

Her 1968 essay collection “Slouching Toward Bethlehem,” a title borrowed from poet William Butler Yeats, looked at the culture of her native California. The title essay offered an unsympathetic view of the emerging hippie culture in San Francisco and a New York Times review called the book “some of the finest magazine pieces published by anyone in this country in recent years.” 

 

Didion had an air of casual glamour and writerly cool and in her heyday frequently was typically photographed in oversized sunglasses or lounging nonchalantly with a cigarette dangling from her hand. She was 80 in 2015 when the French fashion house Celine used her as a model in an ad campaign for its sunglasses. 

Tragedy inadvertently led to a career resurgence in the 2000s as Didion wrote of the deaths of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, in “The Year of Magical Thinking” and daughter Quintana Roo Dunne in “Blue Nights.” 

 

Didion’s works were insightful, confessional and tinged with ennui and skepticism. The Los Angeles Times praised her as an “unparalleled stylist” with “piercing insights and exquisite command of language.” 

 

British writer Martin Amis referred to Didion as the “poet of the Great Californian Emptiness” and she was especially incisive in writing about the state. Her 1970 novel “Play It as It Lays” showed Los Angeles, through the eyes of a troubled actor, to be glamorous and vapid while the 2003 essay collection “Where I Was From” was about the culture of the state, as well as herself and her family’s long history there. 

 

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means,” Didion said in a speech at her alma mater, the University of California in Berkeley, in 1975. 

 

From California to New York

 

Her life and career were captured in the 2017 documentary “Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold” by her nephew, actor-filmmaker Griffin Dunne. The New Yorker magazine called the film, which borrowed its title from another Yeats work, “an intimate, affectionate, and partial portrait.” 

 

Didion ended up in New York by winning a college essay contest that provided an internship at Vogue magazine in the late 1950s. She met Dunne there two years later. 

 

Didion and Dunne, who were married nearly 40 years, split their lives between Southern California and New York and managed to be leading figures in both literary circles and Hollywood.

 

The parties at their Malibu beach house, where Harrison Ford worked as a carpenter before “Star Wars” fame, drew crowds that included singer Janis Joplin, moviemakers Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese and actor Warren Beatty, who was reportedly infatuated with Didion. 

 

Dunne was demonstrative and garrulous while Didion could come off as introverted. Their marriage was rocky at times and Dunne moved to Las Vegas for a while. In an essay in “The White Album,” Didion wrote that they once took a vacation in Hawaii “in lieu of filing for divorce.” 

 

Through it all they edited each other’s work and collaborated on screenplays for the 1976 remake of “A Star Is Born,” “The Panic in Needle Park,” the 1971 film that gave Al Pacino his first starring role, as well as the movie adaptations of “Play It as It Lays” and Dunne’s novel “True Confessions.” 

 

The couple moved to New York in 1988 and after Dunne suffered a heart attack at the dinner table in 2003, Didion wrote of the ensuing heartache in “The Year of Magical Thinking,” which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. “Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it,” she wrote. 

 

Twenty months after Dunne’s death, Didion returned to the place of grief when Quintana Roo died from acute pancreatitis after a series of health problems, which she chronicled in “Blue Nights.” 

 

The diminutive Didion dwindled to 75 pounds (34 kg) after the deaths but began to come out of it by working on a one-woman stage version of “Magical Thinking” that opened on Broadway in 2007 with Vanessa Redgrave starring and David Hare directing. 

 

Didion, whose other books included the novel “A Book of Common Prayer” and non-fiction works “Miami” and “Salvador” was presented the National Medal of Arts in 2013 by President Barack Obama. 

 

 

 
…

A neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn is stunning visitors with its spectacular Christmas lights. The Dyker Heights neighborhood boasts some of the most over-the-top holiday displays. Elena Wolf takes us there in this story narrated by Anna Rice.
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Pope Francis urged Vatican cardinals, bishops and bureaucrats Thursday to embrace humility this Christmas season, saying their pride, self-interest and the “glitter of our armor” was perverting their spiritual lives and corrupting the church’s mission.

As he has in the past, Francis used his annual Christmas address to take Vatican administrators to task for their perceived moral and personal failings, denouncing in particular those pride-filled clerics who “rigidly” hide behind Catholic Church traditions rather than seek out the neediest with humility.

As they have in the past, cardinals and bishops sat stone-faced as they listened to Francis lecture them in the Hall of Blessings, which was otherwise decked out in jolly twinkling Christmas trees and poinsettias.

“The humble are those who are concerned not simply with the past but also with the future, since they know how to look ahead, to spread their branches, remembering the past with gratitude,” Francis told them. “The proud, on the other hand, simply repeat, grow rigid and enclose themselves in that repetition, feeling certain about what they know and fearful of anything new because they cannot control it.”

The proud who are so inward-looking are consumed with their own interests, the pontiff said.

“As a consequence, they neither learn from their sins nor are they genuinely open to forgiveness. This is a tremendous corruption disguised as a good. We need to avoid it,” he added.

Since becoming pope in 2013, Francis has used his Christmas address to rail against the Curia, as the Holy See’s bureaucracy is known, denouncing the “spiritual Alzheimer’s” that some members suffer and the resistance he had encountered to his efforts to reform and revitalize the institution and the broader Catholic Church.

Those reforms kicked into high gear this year, and some of the top Catholic hierarchy bore the brunt as Francis ordered a 10% pay cut for cardinals, imposed a 40-euro ($45) gift cap for Holy See personnel and passed a law allowing cardinals and bishops to be criminally prosecuted by the Vatican’s own tribunal.

On top of that, Francis added his Christmas greetings in the form of another public brow-beating of Vatican clerics, who normally are treated with the utmost deference by their underling and the faithful at large.

Francis told them to stop hiding behind the “armor” of their titles and to recognize that they, like the Biblical figure of Naaman, a wealthy and decorated general, were lepers in need of healing.

“The story of Naaman reminds us that Christmas is the time when each of us needs to find the courage to take off our armor, discard the trappings of our roles, our social recognition and the glitter of this world and adopt the humility of Naaman,” he said.

Francis also repeated his call for tradition-minded clerics to stop living in the past, saying their obsession with old doctrine and liturgy concealed a “spiritual worldliness” that was corrupting.

“Seeking those kinds of reassurance is the most perverse fruit of spiritual worldliness, for it reveals a lack of faith, hope and love; it leads to an inability to discern the truth of things,” he said.

Francis this year took his biggest step yet to rein in the traditionalist wing of the church, reimposing restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Mass that Pope Benedict XVI had relaxed in 2007.

He intensified those restrictions last weekend with a new set of rules that forbids even the publication of Tridentine Mass times in parish bulletins.

Francis said the proud who remain stuck in the past, “enclosed in their little world, have neither past nor future, roots or branches, and live with the bitter taste of a melancholy that weighs on their hearts as the most precious of the devil’s potions.”

“All of us are called to humility, because all of us are called to remember and to give life. We are called to find a right relationship with our roots and our branches. Without those two things, we become sick, destined to disappear,” he warned.
…

In India, the government has proposed legislation to raise the minimum age of marriage for women from 18 to 21 years old, bringing it on par with men and saying it will empower women. But many women activists say the planned law would do little to address deep-seated societal problems that result in millions of young girls being married at an age even younger than 18.

“We are doing this so that they can have time to study and progress. The country is taking this decision for its daughters,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said after The Prohibition of Child Marriage [Amendment] Bill was introduced in parliament Tuesday. The action comes more than a year after he said, during an Independence Day speech, that the government is considering raising the legal age of marriage for women.

The government says the aim is to provide equal opportunity to women by giving them more time to complete their education, access employment opportunities, attain psychological maturity before marriage and ensure gender parity.

“In a democracy, we are 75 years late in providing equal rights to men and women to enter into matrimony,” Smriti Irani, minister of women and child development, said in parliament Tuesday.

The proposed law would mark a major change for women in a country where, according to several estimates, about 50 percent marry before turning 21.

Some women’s groups have supported the bill. “Completing her education and employability ensures a better life for a girl than being dependent on her husband all her life,” Ranjana Kumari, director of the New Delhi-based Center for Social Research, told VOA.

She wants the marriage age for both genders to be the same. “Why should the boy be elder to the girl? Who has made that decision?” she questioned.

The government says the proposed change is also prompted by concerns for the health of women who become mothers at a young age. Early marriages are linked to higher infant mortality and low life expectancy, especially among rural women.

According to Irani, raising the age of marriage for women would help bring down the incidence of teenage pregnancies.

Some experts, however, cautioned that the proposal might backfire because it does not address the underlying causes of early marriage such as poverty, patriarchal attitudes and lack of access to education, and fear that if these root causes are not solved, an age change could do more harm than good.

They point out that although marriages for girls under 18 are currently illegal, child marriages still pose a major challenge in the country — as many as one quarter of women ages 20 to 24 were married before they turned 18, according to the National Family Health Survey, 2019-21.

“The bill is well-intentioned but thoughtless,” says Mary John, professor at the Center for Women’s Development Studies, a research and advocacy organization. According to her, many of the indicators that the government is trying to address, like maternal mortality, will not be solved by simply raising the age of marriage.

“An anemic woman will remain anemic, whether she gets married at 18 or 21. She stops being anemic only if she gets better health and nutrition,” John told VOA.

Pointing out that the proposed law will lead to criminalizing many women whose families marry them off at an early age, she said, “It betrays a carelessness and disinterest in women’s empowerment and will leave a large number of women without protection.”

Some women activists call the bill a token gesture that will not empower women. They say that the government should focus on improving access to educational facilities, which remain deficient, especially in the country’s vast rural areas, better nutrition and health care, and ensure safety and security for women.

“There cannot be any gain through a law either educationally or economically or on health indicators. Unless you earmark enough funds to tackle these basic problems, how can you change these issues?” Annie Raja, general secretary of The National Federation of Indian Women, told VOA.

She says if the aim is to implement gender parity, then the government should reduce the marriage age for men to 18.

Others argue that if a girl at 18 is old enough to vote or be treated as an adult if she commits a crime, there is no reason why she cannot marry at that age.  

 

Responding to such criticism, supporters of the bill say that this move should not be seen as a problem but an opportunity. “There are a lot of other recommendations made by the government to facilitate education for girls up to graduation and also to have reproductive health rights made available to all girls,” according to Kumari.

However, she agrees that every arm of society, such as government, political parties or civil society, will have to work to make a higher age for marrying girls acceptable to communities. “Just by changing the law you do not change society or the institution of marriage, which is a social institution accompanied by cultural practices.”

The proposal has also been welcomed by hundreds of young girls, who have been campaigning in the northern Indian state of Haryana to raise the marriage age for women.

“It’s a huge step forward,” said 17-year-old Prachi Chauhan, one of the campaigners. “Such a law will help take away societal and parental pressure to get married soon after turning 18 that many girls face.”

Suhasini Sood contributed to this story.

 
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National Hockey League players will not compete in February’s Beijing Winter Olympics in the wake of 50 NHL games being postponed over COVID-19 issues, according to multiple reports Tuesday. 

ESPN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today and other newspapers cited unnamed sources in saying the league and the NHL Players Association had reached agreement not to send talent to China. 

Without the NHL’s elite millionaire stars, national teams at the Olympics will likely resemble those at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games, when minor-league and recently retired players filled out rosters, with the Olympic Athletes from Russia capturing the gold medal. 

The NHL and players union had agreed to send players to the 2022 and 2026 Winter Olympics unless league seasons were impacted by COVID-19 postponements. 

With Tuesday’s Washington at Philadelphia game being postponed by an outbreak from the visitors, the NHL has been forced to postpone 50 games this season.

Staying home during the period of the Beijing Olympics would open two weeks to reschedule contests and still provide something of a rest for most of the players. 

The NHL plans to pause the season after Tuesday’s lone contest, which finds Tampa Bay at Vegas. 

Games planned for Wednesday and Thursday were called off ahead of a scheduled three-day Christmas weekend break, which was tweaked to have players return to work on Sunday. 

Teams would be off Wednesday through Saturday and return Sunday for testing, with negative tests required to enter team facilities. 

On Sunday, the NHL announced that all games involving cross-border travel for US and Canadian clubs would not be played. Nine teams had already shut down operations to the break by Monday. 

That’s when concerns rose about the NHL skipping Beijing. 

“The NHL and NHLPA are actively discussing the matter of NHL Player participation in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China, and expect to be in a position to announce a final determination in the coming days,” a league spokesman said Sunday. 

 
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An advertising-technology billionaire has formally resigned his membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and rebuked the faith over social issues and LGBTQ rights in an unusual public move. 

Jeff T. Green has pledged to donate 90% of his estimated $5 billion advertising-technology wealth, starting with a donation to a LGBTQ-rights group in the state, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

In an unusual public step, Green said in a Monday resignation letter to church President Russell M. Nelson that he hasn’t been active in the faith widely known as Mormon for more than a decade but wanted to make his departure official and remove his name from membership records. 

“I believe the Mormon church has hindered global progress in women’s rights, civil rights and racial equality, and LGBTQ+ rights,” he wrote. Eleven family members and a friend formally resigned along with him. He will donate $600,000 to the group Equality Utah.

The church didn’t immediately return a message from The Associated Press seeking comment Tuesday, but in recent years has shown a willingness to engage on LGBTQ rights that is unusual for a conservative faith. While it maintains its opposition to same-sex marriage, the faith didn’t block a 2019 ban on so-called conversion therapy in Utah and in November high-ranking leader Dallin Oaks said in a speech that religious rights and LGBTQ rights can coexist. 

Green, for his part, said most church members “are good people trying to do right,” but he also worries about the faith’s transparency around its history and finances.

Green, 44, now lives in Southern California. He is the CEO and chairman of The Trade Desk, an advertising technology firm he founded in 2009.

He also mentioned concerns about a $100 billion investment portfolio held by the faith. It was the subject of an Internal Revenue Service whistleblower complaint in 2019, from a former employee who charged the church had improperly built it up using member donations that are supposed to go to charitable causes.

Leaders have defended how the church uses and invests member donations, saying most is used for operational and humanitarian needs, but a portion is safeguarded to build a reserve for the future. The faith annually spends about $1 billion on humanitarian and welfare aid, leaders have said. 

The church has also come under criticism for conservative social positions. Women do not hold the priesthood in the faith, and Black men could not until the 1970s.

In recent years, though, the faith has worked with the NAACP and donated nearly $10 million for initiatives to help Black Americans. It has also worked with Equality Utah to pass a state LGBTQ nondiscrimination law, with religious exemptions.

Another prominent onetime Latter-day Saint sued the faith this year, accusing it of fraud and seeking to recover millions of dollars in contributions. James Huntsman is a member of one of Utah’s most prominent families and brother of a former governor. The suit was later tossed out. 

 
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New Orleans is shortening parade routes for the upcoming Mardi Gras season because there are fewer police officers, medics and other first responders to handle the crowds, officials said Tuesday. 

The city canceled Mardi Gras parades this past February because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and 2020 parade crowds are considered a big reason that New Orleans was an early pandemic hot spot.

“The big news and the best news is that Mardi Gras is returning to the city of New Orleans and to the world in 2022,” Mayor LaToya Cantrell said. 

As city officials announced their Carnival plans, Governor John Bel Edwards said Tuesday that he’s again extended Louisiana’s public health emergency, which was first enacted by the Democratic governor in March 2020.

He’s modified it several times since then, and the latest version contains few restrictions for businesses and no statewide mask mandate. 

But Edwards announced that agencies led by his Cabinet secretaries will again start requiring employees and visitors to wear masks inside their offices, including at Office of Motor Vehicle locations around the state. 

“While vaccines and booster doses are the strongest tools we have in the fight against COVID, public health experts also agree that masks are an important way to slow the spread of the omicron variant now. This means you should be masking indoors around people who aren’t in your household,” Edwards said in a statement. 

The face covering recommendation comes as infectious disease experts say Louisiana appears to be entering its fifth surge of the coronavirus outbreak, driven by the fast-spreading omicron variant of the virus. The number of new cases of COVID-19 has doubled over the past week, and hospitalizations of patients with the coronavirus illness are starting to grow again. 

That hasn’t derailed Mardi Gras plans in New Orleans, however. 

Weeks of Carnival season parades lead up to Fat Tuesday, which will be on March 1. Members of each parade krewe pay for that group’s parade.

Some krewes have not decided whether to roll, but none has given pandemic guidelines, mandates or restrictions as the reason for their uncertainty, Cantrell said. 

“Clearly it’s about the bottom line and the impacts COVID has had on our community and on our economy and particularly on their krewe members. … They pay the price for us to enjoy our Mardi Gras,” the mayor said. 

She said krewes will have to follow city pandemic restrictions.

Cantrell noted that “if things go wrong in our city” she might have to change its plans for Carnival and Mardi Gras. 

But she said she is confident the city can make it through the omicron variant, flu season and the holiday season.

With 80% of its residents fully vaccinated, New Orleans is a national leader, she said. 

 
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The Africa Football Cup of Nations tournament is scheduled to begin January 9 at Olembe Stadium in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde.

On Monday, Confederation of African Football President Patrice Motsepe visited the 60,000-seat stadium, which is still under construction less than three weeks before the opening match.

Motsepe says construction workers are improving on the stadium and he is optimistic Cameroon will be ready for the opener.  

“There is a huge commitment and a focus to make sure that some of those issues that are being put in place in the next few days, good progress will be made,” he said. “My message is to Africa and to the world that the people of Cameroon are ready to show the world the best of African Football and also the best of African hospitality. It is going to be a successful AFCON, so come January 9, there must be a kickoff.” 

Motsepe’s visit came amid persistent local media reports that Olembe Stadium would not be ready. 

 

Bulldozers dug and arranged roads at the stadium entrance on Tuesday, a day after Motsepe’s visit. Several dozen young people transported and planted trees, flowers and grass that officials say will beautify the facility. 

Among the workers is 35-year-old building construction engineer Luc Eloundou. Eloundou says he is not sure the entire parking lot of the stadium will be complete within a week as requested by the government of Cameroon. 

“Last month we were about 1,000 people here, but now I am seeing up to 300. Workers are not coming. Why? They work without money. Some borrow money to come and work but they don’t have their salaries. The work is much, even in more than a year we will not be able to finish the work,” he said.

Jean Fradique, technical director of the stadium, says 2,000 workers have been recruited to make sure that before a joint CAF/FIFA control mission visits, the stadium is ready for the opening match. 

Fradique says workers are arranging parking spaces for cars that will bring football fans, players and match officials to the stadium. He says the huge mobilization of over 2,000 workers and several hundred compactors and construction equipment within the past two months is indicative that Cameroon is bent on finalizing construction work within one week.

Stadium construction began in March 2017. The government said the facility would be ready for the 2020 AFCON. But in January 2020, the CAF postponed the tournament for a year, saying Cameroon was not ready. 

The CAF moved the tournament again in January 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Local media in Cameroon say between COVID-19 and construction delays, the tournament may be postponed yet again. For now, the CAF says the tournament is on.
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Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai is denying that she wrote a social media post last month accusing a now-retired Communist Party official of sexually assaulting her. 

In a video posted Sunday on the website of the Singapore-based Chinese-language newspaper Lianhe Zaobao, Peng told the interviewer she has “never said or written anything accusing anyone of sexually assaulting me,” a point she said she needed “to emphasize…very clearly.”   

Peng said in the interview that her initial post on the social media site Weibo was “a private matter” and told the interviewer she was able to move about freely.   

The newspaper said the video was taken Sunday in Shanghai, where the 35-year-old Peng was attending a skiing competition. The video showed her standing alongside former National Basketball Association star Yao Ming and other Chinese sports figures. 

Peng, a former Olympian who won titles at Wimbledon and the French Open, said on November 2 that former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli coerced her into sex before it evolved into an on-off consensual relationship. Her post was quickly deleted and she vanished from public view for several days.  She eventually appeared at a tennis event and spoke by video with Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee president, during which she said she was safe.   

Her disappearance sparked concern among some of the world’s top tennis players, including Naomi Osaka, Serena Williams, Billie Jean King and Novak Djokovic, and    

The Women’s Tennis Association suspended all of its sponsored tournaments in mainland China and Hong Kong.   

A Chinese state-run media outlet then released a statement it said was an email Peng had sent to WTA Chairman and CEO Steve Simon in which she denied the allegations and insisted she was not missing or unsafe, but just “resting at home, but Simon questioned the email’s legitimacy and called for an open investigation into Peng’s initial accusations.   

“We remain steadfast in our call for a full, fair and transparent investigation, without censorship, into her allegation of sexual assault,” the WTA said in a statement issued after Peng’s video was posted. 
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Ken Kragen, a top entertainment producer, manager and philanthropist who turned to such clients as Lionel Richie and Kenny Rogers in helping to organize the 1985 all-star charity single We Are the World, has died. He was 85.

Kragen died Tuesday of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles, according to a statement released by his family.

“Ken worked tirelessly on behalf of the artists he represented, but what I loved most about him, other than the essence of his spirit, was that he had a 360-degree understanding that the combination of art & commerce could be used to make the world a better place,” Quincy Jones, who produced We Are the World, tweeted this week.

“As one of the original organizing partners on We Are the World, w/o Ken’s expertise & specific skill set, we may never have made the enormous global impact that we did,” Jones tweeted.

Kragen was a Harvard Business School graduate whose other credits included producing The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and The Gambler television movies that starred Rogers. His most famous project began late in 1984 with a phone call from Harry Belafonte, who was anxious to raise money for starving people in Africa, notably in Ethiopia, where a famine had killed millions. The British recording Do They Know It’s Christmas? that featured George Michael, Bono and many others, had been a major success, and Belafonte wanted to organize a U.S. effort.

He first contacted Kragen, whom he didn’t even know.

“I needed a younger generation of artists, the ones at the top of the charts right now: Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Kenny Rogers, and Cyndi Lauper. When I looked at the management of most of these artists, I kept seeing the same name: Ken Kragen,” Belafonte wrote in his memoir My Song, published in 2011.

Kragen was hesitant at first, Belafonte wrote, but called Richie, who said yes. Rogers said the same, as did Jones and dozens of others, including Jackson, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder. We Are the World, co-written by Jackson and Richie, went on to sell tens of millions of copies and win Grammys for record and song of the year. Kragen later received a United Nations Peace Medal.

Kragen also managed Trisha Yearwood, the Bee Gees and Olivia Newton-John among others. His other charitable works included the Hands Across America fundraiser from 1985, when a cross-country human chain featured everyone from President Ronald Reagan to Yoko Ono to Robin Williams.

Kragen’s survivors include his wife, actor Cathy Worthington; their daughter, cinematographer Emma Kragen; and her husband, director/producer Zach Marion. 
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