Dear travel treatment: I recently booked a vacation rental through VRBO. I arrived near midnight and it smelled strange. I discovered broken tiles and mold. I immediately contacted the host who assured me that he would repair the form. He said he couldn't get the form out of the wallpaper because he needed to remove it, but he could spray it with bleach.

My husband woke up in the midst of the night with respiratory difficulties. I gave him Benadryl and an inhalator. I put my children near the home with a window that was cracked. We went the subsequent morning before breakfast.

I contacted VRBO and shared pictures of the property. VRBO said it was unsure to remain there and paid for a hotel. They said they’d work to reimburse our money, but they weren’t back involved with us. We called 4 times and still don't have the promised reimbursement.

ANSWER: I only checked out the images of the apartment and I agree – they shouldn't have even spent the night there. Gross!

Seriously, VRBO shouldn't have such places on its platform. But some slumlords – I mean, homeowners – are to generate income quickly, and plainly the one option to remove a property like that is to complain about what you probably did.

After showing VRBO the images, it agreed and paid a hotel room. VRBO has a “book with a guarantee of trust” that claims that it takes care of them when their rent is unsure. And mold is certainly unsure.

When it has read between the lines, it looks just like the host has not seen an issue with the rent. But the images were pretty convincing and their medical problems were also nothing to sneeze.

I even have seen many cases like this wherein it looks like VRBO is attempting to make an owner to offer a refund. VRBO would tell them that it is barely a platform, a mediator between you and the owner, but it surely actually has loads more electricity. It would have forced the matter or only refunded it themselves after which pursued the owner. Instead, it selected a middle ground, covered her hotel after which asked her to attend while he had negotiated with the owner.

As I see it, there’s nothing to barter. Your rent definitely had a mold problem, and the owner may not have been in a position to eliminate it in a number of hours. It would have needed a mold specialist to alleviate the sort of problem.

VRBO couldn't have it in each directions. It had to pick out a page and the appropriate side belonged to you. A brief, polite egg mail to one in every of the executives of VRBO -I list your names, numbers and e -mail addresses on my site for consumer interest representation. Elliott.org – must have done the trick.

Unfortunately there isn’t any magical rule that you would be able to call as much as get an organization like VRBO to do the appropriate thing. VRBO agreed in an unregistered phone call that they may help, but I don’t see any written evidence that it promised them a refund. Instead, VRBO told them that they’d not receive a refund, which is a disappointing answer after they went through every little thing for a number of months.

I contacted VRBO in her name to search out out if this was his final answer. The company took one other have a look at her case and decided that this was not the case. It reimbursed them the total 2,200 US dollars they spent on their rent.

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In the 2 days after Francesca Eastwood was reportedly arrested On Saturday evening, the actress and celebrity daughter of Clint Eastwood, who was suspected of domestic violence, didn’t behave like someone who has been in trouble with the law and is afraid of the possible repercussions on her profession or personal life.

The 31-year-old hung out on social media, Promoting her supporting role in an upcoming film, she shares a video that appears to point out her cooking a delicious-looking egg dish on a gas stove.

It's possible that Francesca Eastwood didn't think a well-sourced entertainment site like TMZ would discover about her arrest and write a story about it. So she appeared to be carrying on as usual when it got here to being each the kid of a Hollywood legend and an aspiring actress. This included her – or a chosen social media manager – using her Instagram account to advertise an upcoming project and share pictures from her personal life, including a video of the breakfast she seemed to be devouring on Tuesday morning, as she announced, “Time for news.” .”

Now the narrative surrounding the legendary actor/director's daughter is certain to get negative and possibly even stranger. with TMZ reporting on Tuesday that she was arrested Saturday after a verbal argument along with her boyfriend turned physical. TMZ said Francesca Eastwood and her boyfriend were driving around Beverly Hills once they began arguing. When things got serious, the friend called the police, who advised him to drive her to the Beverly Hills Police Department to satisfy with officers.

When Francesca Eastwood and her boyfriend showed up, they each spoke to police, who found physical injuries on the boyfriend, TMZ reported. She was charged with suspicion of domestic violence and has since been released on $50,000 bail.

TMZ has not identified the boyfriend, but Francesca Eastwood's Instagram account has shared pictures and comments from a private trainer and actor named Alexander Wraith, with whom she had a baby son in 2018. based on People magazine. However, it is just not clear whether Wraith is the alleged victim of Francesca Eastwood's arrest. said the Daily Beast.

Most recently, at the top of September, Wraith got here to Francesca Eastwood's defense when she posted a photograph of herself in a bikini wherein, to some observers, she looked very thin, even emaciated.

When several followers wrote, “This is worrying” or “scary thin,” Wraith jumped in and wrote, “Guys, I promise you, she doesn't have an eating disorder or (anorexia). We eat McDonald's, pizza, ice cream, bagels and pastries every day. She can't hold the weight. I posted videos of her destroying three burgers in a row as well as fries and a bag of chips. She simply has a very special and fast metabolism. She literally won't stop eating. Lol. I promise you.”

Francesca Eastwood is considered one of her 94-year-old father's eight known children. She can also be the daughter of actress Frances Fisher, whom the actor/director dated within the early to mid-Nineteen Nineties. Fisher had a job in Eastwood's 1992 Western film “Unforgiven,” which won Best Picture and Best Director.

Following family tradition, Francesca Eastwood was also solid in roles in her father's film projects. As a baby, she played a job in his 1999 film True Crime and he or she has a job in his upcoming legal drama Juror #2. Some in Hollywood are wondering whether Juror #2 could possibly be Eastwood's last film. The film is ready to hit theaters on November 1st and stars Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, JK Simmons and Kiefer Sutherland.

In 2013, Francesca Eastwood was named Miss Golden Globe after starring within the 2012 reality television series “Mrs. Eastwood and Company,” run by her former stepmother Dina Eastwood and her half-sister Morgan Eastwood. In 2017, she and her mother each starred in an acclaimed episode of Fargo, playing younger and older versions of the identical characters.

On Tuesday, across the time TMZ reported the news of her arrest, Francesca Eastwood also posted pictures of her along with her co-stars in one other upcoming film, Queen of the Ring. The biopic looks on the lifetime of Mildred Burke, a wrestler whose profession spanned from the Nineteen Thirties to the Fifties.

Originally published: October 15, 2024 at 4:14 p.m

65 years ago, on July 17, 1959, Billie Holiday died at New York's Metropolitan Hospital. The 44-year-old singer arrived after being turned away from a close-by charity hospital for drug abuse after which lay on a stretcher within the hallway for hours. undetected and unsupervisedHer assets amounted to 70 cents within the bank and a roll of banknotes hidden with them, their share of the payment for a tabloid interview she gave on her deathbed.

Today, Holiday is revered as one of the crucial influential musicians of all time. Time Magazine called their 1939 recording of “Strange Fruit” the song of the twentieth century. “In this sad, somber song about lynching in the South,” wrote Time in 1999, “the greatest jazz singer in history grapples with history itself.”

Abel Meeropola New York teacher and songwriter who used the pseudonym Lewis Allan, wrote “Strange Fruit” after seeing a photograph of a lynching that shocked and persecuted him: “Black body sways in the southern breeze / Strange fruits hang from the poplars.”

Holiday's interpretation of Meeropol's song is as stunning – and haunting – today because it was when it was first recorded. “It hits hard,” wrote columnist Samuel Grafton shortly after the record's release in 1939. “It's like a game of “Let's pretend” has come to an end.”

I’m a scholar of American religion, literatureAnd The artsand I'm involved in the way in which that even powerful secular works draw their energy from religious narratives of justice, injustice, truth-telling, and redemption. Strange Fruit is example for me.

Unflinching Translation of texts

Like so many composers whose songs Holiday has recorded – George and Ira Gershwin, Irving-Berlin, Jerome Kern – Meeropol got here from a family of Jewish immigrants in America who fled anti-Semitic violence in Europe.

Two major migrations shaped America within the early twentieth century: from the agricultural south to the economic northAnd From the Old World to the New. Both were drivenpartly by the will leave racial terror behind.

Together, these migrations enabled a few of the most enduring musical collaborations of the twentieth century. Thematically, the joint productions of black and Jewish musicians – Broadway productions of “Show boat” And “Porgy and Bess”, Holiday’s performances with Benny Goodman And Artie Shaw – tended to avoid the brutal reality of prejudice and as a substitute deal with the luxuries of unusual happiness and unhappiness.

“Strange Fruit” was different. The song looks unflinchingly on the “strange fruit” of the title: hanged, burned and mutilated flesh rotting on a tree.

Until the twentieth century, there have been white vigilante groups Thousands of black Americans were murdered with impunity: Lynching after which displaying their bodies as a terrorist spectacle.

Seapol first wrote down the lyrics and music of the song on the back of a cabaret programme from 13 November 1938 – 4 days after Kristallnacht, the night of the murderous anti-Jewish rampages throughout Nazi Germany, which became the turning point for the Holocaust.

For Meeropol, a labor activist and secular Jew, Black and Jewish Americans marched shoulder to shoulder for freedom from injustice. In one other poem He linked violence against blacks with the persecution of Jews:

I’m Jewish.
How can I determine that?
The lynched Negro
Reminds me well
I’m Jewish.

Black Christ

Just as Meeropol linked prejudices against blacks and Jews, many black Christians also linked their very own suffering to that of the Hebrew slaves within the Bible – and to the suffering of Jesus.

Accordingly Theologian James Cone“Black ministers preached more about the death of Jesus than any other subject because they saw in Jesus’ suffering and persecution a parallel to their own experience of slavery, racial segregation, and the lynch tree.”

In the last decade wherein Holiday recorded “Strange Fruit,” WEB Du Bois, Count Cullen And Langston Hughes all works focus on the figure of crucified black Christ.

Most African-American Christians belong to Protestant churchesbut Holiday didn’t. As a baby she was baptized Catholic in a convent reform school, Baltimore's Good Shepherd House for Colored Girlswhere she was sent twice by the court. She remained an ambivalent Catholic throughout her life.

The filled cross

Protestant churches often display the “empty” cross, which shows Jesus' instrument of execution, but not his body. The message of the empty cross is resurrection and latest life. According to Christian history, Jesus was crucified, buried and rose from the dead to redeem humanity from sin.

In the Catholic world, one is more prone to find the “filled” cross: the body of Jesus nailed to the wood with outstretched arms, hands and feet. The crucifix emphasizes the agony of Jesus' death and his solidarity with all who are suffering.

The accomplished cross also conveys the message that the crucifixion of Christ – God in human form – just isn’t a one-time event.

“When [Meeropol] showed me this poem,” Holiday said of “Strange Fruit,” “I dug it out immediately” because it “seemed to explain everything that had killed Pop.” Her father, jazz guitarist Clarence Holiday, died on the age of 39 while on tour in Texas. She believed he was denied life-saving treatment due to his race.

Holiday's “Strange Fruit” evokes the finished cross and is a testament to the continued reality of lynching. “It still depresses me every time I sing it,” Holiday said. in her autobiography“But I have to keep singing it… the things that killed him are still happening in the South.”

Journalist Vernon Jarrett remembered seeing Holiday perform in 1947. She “sang this song as if it were reallike she'd just witnessed a lynching,” Jarrett said of “Strange Fruit.” “There was a sense of resignation, like, 'these people are going to be in power for a long time and there's nothing I can do about it except put it in a song.'”

Current will

Dealing with brokenness fairly than overcoming or overcoming it also describes Holiday's way of coping with others in precarious situations. Her apartment in Harlem, she saidwas a “combination of a YMCA, a boarding house for poor musicians, a soup kitchen for anyone with a bad story, a community center and an after-hours bar.”

A papal encyclical from 1943 described the Church itself similarly: a spot of shared pain, comfort and nourishment. Anyone who had no money “could go there and eat”, poets and jazz singers Babs Gonzales is recalled to Holiday's place“She fed everyone in New York for four years.”

Holiday ended her live shows with “Strange Fruit” from 1939 until the last months of her life. By making the song her signature, she offered solidarity and a faithful testimony to racial violence and injustice, not a cure. But her testament had extraordinary power.

Shortly after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Bruce Springsteen, a Fellow Catholic with “concerns,” made a playlist for America. At the top of his list was “Strange Fruit.”

When asked if he was optimistic concerning the future, Springsteen responded within the spirit of Holiday: to witness, to not triumph. “I don't think anyone really knows where we're going from here,” He told author David BrooksBut everyone “can already see that the status quo is not right. And that is progress.”

Some white people still appear to be tormented by an odd wish: “I wish I knew what it was like to be black.”

This desire is different from the will to embody the coolness of being black – to emulate style, imitate music, and parrot slang.

This is a supposedly racist, imaginative desire that desires not only the rhythm of black life, but in addition its blues.

Although he doesn't need to admit itThe Canadian-American journalist Sam Forster is certainly one of these white people.

Three years after the allegations against George Floyd scream “Mommy” so desperate that it brought a rustic out of quarantine, Forster donned an artificial afro wig and brown contact lenses, dyed his eyebrows and smeared his face with Maybelline liquid foundation within the shade “Mocha” purchased at CVS. Although Forster doesn’t have a “Cinema quality” Transformation, he was, in his words, “Believably black.”

He dared to undertake a racial experiment that nobody had asked for. In his recently published memoirs he wrote about it: “Seven Shoulders: Taxonomizing Racism in Modern America.”

For two weeks in September 2023, Forster pretended to hitchhike on the shoulder of a freeway in seven different U.S. cities: Nashville, Tennessee; Atlanta; Birmingham, Alabama; Los Angeles; Las Vegas; Chicago, and Detroit. On the primary day in the town, he stood on the side of the road as his white self, waiting for somebody to stop and provides him a ride. On the second day, he stuck his thumb on the identical shoulder, but this time with what I’d describe as a “mocha face.”

Since September is hot, he set a two-hour limit for his experiments. During his seven white days, he was offered seven rides, but he didn’t take them. On seven subsequent black days, he was offered one ride, but he didn’t take it. He speculated that this present day was a coincidence.

Forster will not be the primary white man to take center stage within the discussion about American racism by pretending to be black.

His desire reflects that of the white people described in my 2017 book:Black for a day: White fantasies about race and empathy.” The book tells the story of what I call “empathetic racial imitation,” by which whites indulge their fantasies of being black under the guise of empathy with the black situation.

In my view, these efforts are futile. They ultimately reinforce stereotypes, fail to deal with systemic racism, and convey a false sense of racist authority.

Undercover within the South

The genealogy begins within the late Nineteen Forties with Pulitzer Prize winner and journalist Ray Sprigle.

Sprigle, a white reporter on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, decided to experience postwar racism by “becoming” black. After trying in vain to make his skin darker than simply brown, Sprigle shaved his head, donned enormous glasses, and traded his trademark 10-gallon hat for a plain cap. For 4 weeks starting in May 1948, Sprigle navigated the Jim Crow South as a light-skinned black man named James Rayel Crawford.

Sprigle documented dilapidated sharecroppers' shacks, racially segregated schools, and ladies widowed by lynching. What he saw – but didn’t experience – was incorporated into his 21-part series of articles for the front page of the Post-Gazette. He followed the series in 1949 with a widely panned autobiography: “In the land of Jim Crow.”

Sprigle never won this second Pulitzer Prize.

Cosplay as a black man

Sprigle’s more famous successor, John Howard Griffin, published his memoirs: “Black like me”, in 1961.

Like Sprigle, Griffin explored the South as a short lived black man, darkening his skin with pills that Vitiligoa skin condition that causes patchy lack of pigment. He also used dyes to even out his skin tone and hung out under a tanning lamp.

During his weeks as “Joseph Franklin,” Griffin encountered racism on several occasions: White thugs chased him, bus drivers refused to let him get off to pee, branch managers refused to let him work, white men who didn’t come out aggressively approached him, and otherwise nice-looking white people bombarded him with what Griffin called the “Hate-Look.” When Griffin became white again and news of his racial experiment got here to light, his white neighbors from his hometown of Mansfield, Texas, left him hanging in effigy.

Griffin was praised for his work as an icon of empathy. Unlike Sprigle, he had experienced racist incidents himself, and Griffin showed skeptical white readers what they didn’t need to consider: racism was real. The book became a bestseller and a movieand remains to be a part of the varsity curriculum – albeit on the expense of African-American literature, I’d add.

Griffin’s significance for this genealogy extends beyond the center school students reading “Black Like Me” to his successor and mentee, Grace Halsell.

Halsell, a contract journalist and former editor for the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson, decided to “become” a black woman – first in Harlem in New York City after which in Mississippi.

Without consulting a black woman before frying herself to caramel within the tropical sun and getting medication for vitiligo from Griffin's doctors, Halsell initially planned to “be black” for a yr. But after she claimed someone tried to sexually assault her while she was working as a black domestic helper, Halsell ended her time as a black woman early.

Although her experiment only lasted six months, she still claimed to be someone who could authentically represent her.darker sistersIn her 1969 memoirs she states: “Soul sister.”

“Racial change” on the turn of the century

Forster writes that his 2024 memoir is the “fourth act” – after Sprigle, Griffin and Halsell – of what he calls “journalistic blackface.”

However, as he himself claims, he will not be “the first person in over half a century to seriously overcome racial segregation.”

In a 174-page book, which he himself describes as “Gonzo“With only 17 citations, Forster has not done his homework.

In 1994, Joshua Solomon, a white college student, medically dyed his skin to change into a black man after reading Black Like Me. His originally planned month-long experiment in Georgia lasted only just a few days. Nevertheless, he described his experience in an article for The Washington Post and got a gig at “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

Then, in 2006, FX released: “Black-and-white.”, a six-part reality TV series promoted because the “ultimate racial experiment”.

Two families – one white, one black – “swapped” their races to present versions of one another while living together in Los Angeles. While the makeup team won a Primetime Emmy AwardThe families said goodbye with seething resentment as a substitute of understanding.

A master class of white arrogance

Believing it might distract from the outcomes of his experiment, Forster refuses to indicate readers his mocha face.

Even after being confronted with evidence that forced him to query the appropriateness of his project, similar to the many articles condemning “the wearing of makeup to imitate the appearance of a black person,” he insists his insights into American racism justify his methods and distinguish them from the damaging legacies of blackface. As he stands on the side of the road, sun and sweat eroding the care he put into painting his face, Forster concludes that racism might be divided into two broad taxonomies: institutional and interpersonal.

The former, in his opinion, is “actually dead,” and the latter is normally perceived as a “shoulder,” similar to the subtle refusal to select up a hitchhiker with a mocha-colored face.

Forster's Amazon book description praises “Seven Shoulders” as “the most important book on race relations in America ever written.”

It is indeed a master class – but one in regards to the arrogance of white assumptions about blackness.

To think that one can understand the variety of black identity through a short lived costume trivializes the lifelong trauma of racism. It turns the complexity of black life right into a trick.

Whether it's Forster's premise that black individuals are incapable of testifying about their very own experiences, his questionable quotes, the hubris of his caricature, or the vitriol with which he speaks in regards to the Black Lives Matter movement, Forster is a crucial reminder that liberation can’t be bought at a pharmacy.

By DEE-ANN DURBIN (AP Business Writer)

Van Leeuwen Ice Cream typically attracts customers with gourmet takes on classics like vanilla and pistachio. But occasionally the New York-based artisan ice cream maker adds what it calls a “shock flavor,” like Hidden Valley Ranch or pizza.

Hershey recently released pink lemonade-flavored Kit Kats, while IHOP and Lay's Rooty released Tooty Fresh n' Fruity potato chips which might be said to taste like pancakes with strawberries and a touch of bacon. In the UK, Little Moons made fish and chips mochi ice cream in 2021, while potato chip brand Walkers famously celebrated Christmas with a Brussels sprouts flavored edition.

Typically, these are limited-time flavors, although occasionally they turn into so popular that they find yourself on store shelves permanently, as was the case with Lay's Flamin' Hot Dill Pickle Chips in 2019.

While it's tempting to pass them off as social media stunts, experts say there's more to the story. Food firms are responding to consumers' changing and growing tastes while attempting to keep brands relevant and distinctive to achieve space on crowded store shelves.

“We're in a really exciting time of taste evolution, where consumers aren't just one thing. You are not just a sour or sweet lover. “You want a little bit of this and a little bit of that,” said Kristen Braun, senior brand manager for Oreo innovation at a Chicago-based food and beverage company Mondelez International. “Companies are finding the freedom to explore a little more and be more creative.”

Sour Patch Kids Oreos – cookies crammed with vanilla cream and flecked with colourful sour candy pieces – are considered one of a few dozen limited-edition offerings Oreo flavors that Mondelez plans to release this 12 months. Braun said the corporate takes one to 2 years to develop such products, which stay on shelves for about nine weeks. She's already fascinated about future flavors that blur the lines between sweet, salty and spicy.

Unusual pairings aren't entirely recent within the food and beverage industry. For example, Hubba Bubba released a bubblegum-flavored soda within the late Eighties. But manufacturers and their suppliers have turn into more sophisticated and efficient, making it easier to experiment and release limited editions more often, said Mark Lang, a food marketing expert and associate professor of promoting on the University of Tampa.

Kyle Shadix, who as PepsiCo's chief research officer worked on drinks similar to Pepsi maple syrup and a Strawberry Cake Pepsi sold in Japan, said members of Generation Z are also driving innovation. They are diverse, adventurous and quick to select up on food trends through social media, he said.

“Every chef dreams of designing them,” says Shadix, who’s currently experimenting rather a lot with Mexican, Korean and Japanese flavors. “Gen Z will push us forward faster. We’re going to see more exploration even faster than we have in the past because they’re just so open to it.”

Playing with flavors can strengthen brands in a lot of ways. Sometimes they carry recent customers to a brand. They could also encourage shoppers to decide on the unique flavor, said Russell Zwanka, director of the food marketing program at Western Michigan University.

“Sour Patch Oreos sound interesting, but no one wants to risk buying Oreos that don't taste good, so people buy both,” Zwanka said.

When firms mix brands, they struggle to construct an association in consumers' minds. Peeps flavored “Pepsi,” which got here out last 12 months, sends the message that Pepsi is current and fun, Lang said. Mustard flavored Bowlingwhich got here out last summer, made the 104-year-old brand French's seem playful.

Enter Kraft Heinz, which approached Van Leeuwen Ice Cream a couple of years ago for macaroni and cheese ice cream. Ben Van Leeuwen, the corporate's co-founder and CEO, was initially skeptical, but found that Kraft's powder mixed well with the Brooklyn-based company's ice cream.

Van Leeuwen's Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Ice Cream received rave reviews in 2021 and was re-released for a short while last fall.

“We will only do a shock taste if we can make it good and clear. We’re not going to do a shock flavor where it’s shock in name only but tastes like vanilla,” Van Leeuwen said.

But novel flavor combos don't at all times work. Van Leeuwen couldn't eat greater than a couple of bites of his company's Hidden Valley Ranch ice cream, which contained onion and garlic powder. And shock flavors don't typically find yourself on the everlasting menu due to their lower “edibility,” he said.

“I think you would try our macaroni and cheese and say, 'Oh, that's good,' but would you like to grab a pint of that macaroni and cheese from your freezer when you're watching a Netflix series and eat something?” the entire? Probably not,” said Van Leeuwen.

Candy brand Brach's encountered this problem with its Turkey Dinner Candy Corn, a limited-edition 2021 version of the autumn staple that tasted like turkey, stuffing, green beans, cranberry sauce, apple pie, and low. Katie Duffy, vp and general manager of seasonal items at Ferrara Candy Co., which owns Brach's, acknowledged there was one “glaring” factor.

“We've learned from consumers that we don't want a product where they eat a bunch of candy and then throw it away because they don't want to do certain things again,” Duffy said. “We want it to be a delicious journey of taste.”

Brach's recently introduced gummy bears for “Easter Brunch,” and so they hit the mark, she said. The candy beans mimicked the taste of blueberry maple pancakes, chocolate donuts, caramel cold brew, cinnamon rolls, berry smoothies and mimosa cocktails.

Shannon Weiner, senior director of insights and analytics at Ferrara, said the corporate closely monitors social media to see what flavors are trending. People are increasingly in search of dessert and milk-flavored candies, she said. They're also in search of more international flavors; Tajin, the chili-lime condiment from Mexico, recently did a collaboration with Pop-Tarts.

Lang believes the more time people spend in restaurants or trying recent foods, the more they search out unusual flavors.

“We are diverse animals. We are constantly looking for something new and different; It’s in our wiring,” he said. “We like to experiment.”