Tag: african american

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Coffee and Contemplation: National Black Business Month

August is National Black Business Month. The purpose is to support and encourage African American-owned businesses in your community. There are many businesses in Tucson owned by people of color, but I want to focus on two of my favorites. The first is Café Desta. A small café that has served Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine since 2010. They are located South of downtown on Stone Avenue. I have always enjoyed the flavors and aromas of coffee beans from Ethiopia and Café Desta serves Ethiopian coffee along with many delicious dishes. They are accepting orders for Take-Out and Delivery during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The next business is The Downtown Clifton. It opened last year in 2019 with an additional 22 rooms and The Red Light Lounge. The hotel was first built in 1948 and was purchased by the current owners in 2014 and they began restoring the property. Also located a couple blocks North of Café Desta on Stone Avenue, you can enjoy a nice stay in downtown Tucson and partake in some delicious cuisine and coffee. I only care if you try the coffee. If you’re visiting Tucson, these are two great places to check out. 

If you live in Tucson and you haven’t visited these places, what are you doing with your life? You don’t have to stay in hotel, but you can enjoy the food and spirits in The Red Light Lounge. Now go support people of color in your community.

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Five Things from This Day in History

For today, I thought I would share some things throughout history that I found interesting that happened on July 25. Many things happened on this day in all those years passed, but these are the few that caught my interest. We begin in 1853. Joaquin Murrieta, the famous Californian bandit known as “Robin Hood of El Dorado”, is killed by California Rangers. In 1919 Johnston McCulley read “The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murrieta: The Celebrated California Bandit” by John Rollin Ridge and this inspired his fiction character Don Diego de la Vega, also known as Zorro.

In 1943, the 1st warship named after an African American launched, USS Leonard Roy Harmon, a Buckley class destroyer. Leonard Roy Harmon was an American Sailor who died during WWII and was awarded the Navy Cross for his valor. In 1972, US health officials concede African Americans were used as guinea pigs in a 40-year syphilis experiment. Given the current political climate of the United States, I felt both of these events were important as one celebrates African Americans and the other illustrates how they were still used by upper classes.

In 1984 Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space. She was also the second woman to fly to space. Her spacewalk mission was aboard the Soyuz T-12. In 2019 “City killer” Asteroid 2019 OK passed by almost undetected at 187 to 427 feet (57 to 130 meters) just 45,000 miles (72,000 km) away from Earth, closer than the Moon. It was discovered the day before, July 24, 2019, it passed by Earth. It is uncommon for asteroids this size to pass within 100,000 km (62,000 miles) of Earth.