Matador Network's Blog, page 796

Auschwitz condemns TikTok trend

In news that surprises nobody, a trend has emerged on TikTok that is incredibly offensive. The social media trend involves users role-playing as Holocaust victims, recounting how they perished and even occasionally showing off fake bruises or wearing armbands. The Auschwitz museum in particular has taken offense to the trend, calling it “hurtful & offensive” in a tweet and imploring people to not trivialize history.

The 'victims' trend on TikTok can be hurtful & offensive. Some videos are dangerously close or already beyond the border of trivialization of history.

But we should discuss this not to shame & attack young people whose motivation seem very diverse. It's an educational challenge. pic.twitter.com/CB4Ve2uRUK

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) August 26, 2020

The tweet includes an official statement, which says, “The stories of people who were imprisoned and murdered in Auschwitz are incredibly tragic, painful, and emotional. It is crucial to share the individual stories to commemorate and educate. It’s also important to place the stories within the context of accuracy and respect. We also need to remember about ethical challenges and psychological dangers of role playing while teaching about this history. While it is essential to use personal stories, we are not allowed to put people in a victim’s position.”

The statement goes on to say that “The trend visible on TikTok can be indeed hurtful and even considered offensive. Some of the examples online are dangerously close or are already beyond the border to trivialization of history and being disrespectful to the victims,” but cautions against shaming or attacking the young people responsible for the trend. Instead, the museum advocates educating them and promoting a culture of respect.

More like thisTravelVisiting a concentration camp is not just an excursion. It’s a lesson in humanity.

The post Auschwitz museum condemns TikTok Holocaust trend appeared first on Matador Network.

Students dig out triceratops skull

A group of undergraduate college students from Westminster College in Missouri were in the Badlands of South Dakota for a fossil collecting trip, and wound up digging up a 3,000-pound, seven-foot triceratops skull dating back 66-million-years-ago.

In 2019, during the students’ annual fossil collecting trip with their paleontology professor David Schmidt, park rangers asked the group if they could look at an object that was spotted several months earlier. The group immediately noticed that the find resembled the horn of a triceratops. But because they weren’t allowed to look into it any further without legal authorization, the group waited until the summer of 2020 to excavate the area.

Such was the excitement that three current students and four alumni joined Schmidt in June and July for the annual dig even though course credit could not be offered. They camped for two months and worked hard to unearth the dinosaur skull, which they named Shady after the town of Shadehill located nearby.

“As we continued to uncover more parts of the skull, I was in denial,” Schmitt, who was overseeing the group, told St. Louis Public Radio. “I was thinking, ‘This can’t be a skull. How lucky would I be? That probably only happens to a very tiny fraction of people on this planet. Like, I can’t be one of those.’”

The fossil was transported to Westminster’s campus, where it will be used for research by undergraduates.

More bones of the triceratops are still lying beneath the earth, but the professor and his students will head back next summer to excavate the rest.

More like thisArchaeologyArchaeological digs around the world you can actually partake in this year

The post Students discover 66-million-year-old dinosaur skull in South Dakota appeared first on Matador Network.

Wolverines spotted in Mt. Rainier

A wolverine family, consisting of a mother and her two kits, set up their den in Mount Rainier National Park and were spotted there for the first time in 100 years. The mother wolverine, named Joni, and her two little ones were filmed by wildlife cameras set up by the Cascades Carnivore Project, in collaboration with the National Park Service.

According to Mount Rainier National Park Superintendent Chip Jenkins, “It’s really, really exciting. It tells us something about the condition of the park — that when we have such large-ranging carnivores present on the landscape that we’re doing a good job of managing our wilderness.”

In a tweet, the park even shared a video of the wolverine’s return.

Wolverines Return to Mount Rainier National Park After More Than 100 Years, News Release: https://t.co/qmCkTDsFAU

Video of three wolverines at the end of a snowfield then running through a meadow into a forest. Credit: Travis Harris -kl pic.twitter.com/ALwJoAOmTG

— MountRainierNPS (@MountRainierNPS) August 20, 2020

Since only 300 to 1,000 wolverines are estimated to live in the lower 48 US states, seeing one is rare. The animals are also extremely shy and will usually run away if they see a person.

Wolverines pose no threat to humans, though human intrusion can disturb wolverine habitats. To prevent this, the park — along with Washington’s National Park Fund — has created a downloadable carnivore tracking guide to help hikers recognize their tracks. If visitors come upon wolverine tracks, they should report it to the Mount Rainier Wildlife Observations or the Cascades Wolverine Project to help scientists monitor the well-being of the beautiful species that is so elusive.

Photo: NPS/Cascades Carnivore Project

Despite their reputation as shy animals, and their slim numbers in the US, CNN reported that in May a wolverine was spotted eating carrion on a beach in Washington, as well as strolling around the town of Naselle, close to the first sighting.

More like thisWildlifeSaving wolverines in the rugged North Cascades of Washington State

The post Wolverines spotted in Mount Rainier National Park for the first time in 100 years appeared first on Matador Network.

Most beautiful alphabets

Since the birth of the Phoenician alphabet in the eighth century, countless writing systems from different languages and cultures have evolved, thrived, and perished. Egyptian hieroglyphics are a classic example. To this day, we have yet to fully decipher the beautiful ancient alphabet.

Over the last 2,500 years, the Latin alphabet has become so ubiquitous that it’s swept away many of the writing systems used before the Roman Empire reshaped the globe. Yet, while the exact number is difficult to calculate, hundreds of alphabets exist today. Some even double as works of art. Below are five of the most aesthetically pleasing scripts in the world — and the reasons why you’re probably never going to read them.

1. Burmese (Myanmar)

Photo: leonov.o/Shutterstock

The Burmese alphabet from Myanmar, formerly Burma, is composed of circular shapes that are always drawn clockwise. The reason for the mesmerizing script’s signature roundness is more practical than aesthetic: The palm leaves on which the letters were traditionally carved were easily torn by straight cuts. In total, there are 33 consonants and around eight vowels in the Burmese alphabet, and they’re generally referred to based on the shape they make rather than an arbitrary letter name. Though it’s less threatened than other alphabets on this list, it’s increasingly being relegated to liturgies and school studies, while in daily usage it’s being replaced by Hindi and even Latin writing systems.

2. Sinhalese (Sri Lanka)

Photo: yangshuo/Shutterstock

Considered one of the most expansive alphabets in the world, Sinhalese has more than 50 phonemes, the smallest unit of sound that distinguishes different words, though only 38 are frequently used in contemporary writing. The Sri Lankan script comprises the complete phonic systems of both Sanskrit and Pali, another classical language from India. Some Sanskrit words, and Pali to a lesser degree, are also naturalized in the Sinhalese language system. Still taught in Buddhist monasteries and schools, the language is the mother tongue for more than half of Sri Lanka’s 21 million inhabitants. The fact that Sinhalese is largely confined to the island of Sri Lanka is the alphabet’s greatest threat.

3. Georgian (Georgia)

Photo: Arsenie Krasnevsky/Shutterstock

Squeezed between Turkey and Russia, Georgia has its own language and alphabet, both of which have historically been threatened by Russian. In the last century, Russian imperialist policy resulted in the annexation of more than half of Georgia’s original area. Furthermore, continuing pressure for the small country to cede additional portions of its territory suggests that fewer and fewer locals will be speaking and writing Georgian as time goes on, as Russian and the Cyrillic alphabet supplant the native systems.

4. Tagalog (Philippines)

Photo: Kar Victoriano/Shutterstock

Originating from Indo-European scripts, Tagalog was the dominant writing system in the Philippines until the arrival of the Spanish. Colonization first only modified certain aspects of the alphabet. Whereas it once was written from the bottom up, it began to flow from left to right, and the characters were rotated 90 degrees. Later, Spanish was designated the official language of the Philippines, though it was de-listed as a co-official language (alongside Filipino and English) in 1987.

Filipino, a mixture of indigenous languages and Spanish, became the national language in 1973, yet Tagalog’s written component shifted to the Latin alphabet. Tagalog writing still survives, at least according to authorities. In practice, though, its fate will likely be similar to that of more than 120 local dialects that have gradually vanished from the country.

5. Hanacaraka (Indonesia)

Photo: rindfoto/Shutterstock

Originally developed on the Indonesian island of Java to communicate the Javanese language, Hanacaraka writing then began spreading to neighboring islands and incorporating regional variations. With the popularization of printing presses, authorities repeatedly tried to standardize the alphabet in the 19th and 20th centuries. However, these efforts were interrupted by the Japanese occupation during World War II when the usage of Hanacaraka was forbidden. Since then, the alphabet has been supplanted by the Latin system, even though the local government has preserved the script in traffic signs and proclaimed public schools must teach it.

A version of this article was previously published on September 17, 2014, and was updated on August 27, 2020, with more information.

More like thisArchaeologyHow to interpret hieroglyphics on your next Egypt trip

The post The world’s 5 most beautiful alphabets you’ll never learn to read appeared first on Matador Network.

Netflix ‘Chef's Table: BBQ’

Chef’s Table has covered masters of pastry and street food beloved by locals and tourists alike. Now, the series, known for its artful, elegant portrayals of food and chefs, is tackling barbecue.

Barbecue is one of the most iconic offshoots of American cuisine. The battle for barbecue dominance rages on throughout Texas, up to Kansas City, Missouri, and over to Charleston, South Carolina. But Chef’s Table: BBQ widens its lense to focus on the many international styles of barbecue.

The four-part series will cover four key barbecue regions: Mexico, Texas, South Carolina, and Australia. Each episode will highlight a pitmaster who has perfected his or her craft and solidified the barbecue in their region as must-try-before-you-die culinary excellence. Some of the chefs are reviving ancient cooking techniques, while others are considered barbecue inventors who explore more modern methods. But each one uses smoke, fire, and meat.

Before the series premieres on September 2, here’s a brief primer on each region featured in the show and their barbecue specialites.

Texas

The main character of this episode, Tootsie Tomanetz, has been cooking barbecue for 50 years. Her barbecue outpost, the now-legendary Snow’s BBQ, opened in Lexington, Texas, in 2003. Snow’s BBQ specializes in pork steak, pork ribs, and jalapeno sausage, but Texas barbecue is as diverse as the state. In Central Texas the crucial ingredient is a dry rub not a sauce, while West Texas favors “cowboy style” — barbecue cooked over an open flame. Meanwhile in South Texas, you’ll find more Mexican-inspired flavors accompanying the barbecue.

Australia

Lennox Hastie, chef and owner of the Sydney restaurant Firedoor, is the epitome of a modern experimental chef. He barbecues lettuce, cod, and crab and has earned many accolades for his creative twists on this ancient cooking technique. Hastie is playing on an open fire cooking tradition that one study speculated has been used by indigenous Australians for at least 40,000 years. Soon after the country was officially established in 1788, colonists began holding “bullock roasts” — the term wouldn’t enter the mainstream lexicon until the early 1900s. Today, barbecue (affectionately nicknamed the “barbie”) is central to Australian cuisine.

South Carolina

James Beard-award winning chef Rodney Scott is famous for his whole-hog approach to barbecue, which he slow cooks for 12 hours at his restaurant Rodney Scott Barbecue. He’s probably the most famous South Carolina pitmaster today, but this region’s barbecue is legendary all on its own: First and foremost, it’s all about the pork — pulled, shredded, chopped, or whole hog. The sauce is also distinct: The golden, mustard- and vinegar-based sauce is nicknamed Carolina Gold.

Mexico

Rosalia Chay Chuc of Yaxunah, Mexico, is keeping Mayan cooking traditions alive through her mastery of cochinita pibil, a slow roasted pork dish that originated on the Yucatán Peninsula. Though the Taino people of the West Indies likely originated firepit barbecue cooking, the technique eventually made its way to Mexico. Pit barbecue is still the traditional way of roasting meat in Mexico. The process historically involves slow-roasting fish, beans, and turkey, and in more recent history lamb and pork, in a pit covered by leaves before it’s served with mole.

More like thisFood + DrinkEverything you need to know about Japanese barbecue

The post These famous barbecue regions are the focus of Netflix’s new ‘Chef’s Table: BBQ’ appeared first on Matador Network.

TSA's $1 million in unclaimed cash

Finding a lost $20 bill on the street feels like winning the lottery. Now, imagine how the TSA must be feeling after collecting almost $1 million in unclaimed funds during the last fiscal year.

The lotto-sized figure includes both domestic and foreign currency, in paper bills and change, that was left behind at airport security checkpoints across the United States. Granted, roughly $907 million was in US dollars. Of that, nearly $100,000 was collected at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. The San Francisco, Miami, Las Vegas, and Dallas-Fort Worth airports collected the next-highest amounts, all between $40,000 and $53,000.

Every year, the TSA is required to report how much unclaimed money it collected, which can then be used toward TSA expenses. According to the Fiscal Year 2020 Report to Congress, the administration had over $3.5 million to spend as of September 2019, with plans to spend more than $2 million of those funds on training and development.

More like thisTechnology + GearWhen Global Entry and TSA PreCheck are worth it, and which to choose

The post US travelers left a whopping $1 million at airport security last year appeared first on Matador Network.

Norway opens bridge across waterfall

Visitors to Norway now have a new way to enjoy the barreling wonder of one the country’s top attractions, the Vøringsfossen Waterfall. From a state-of-the-art pedestrian bridge that spans across the canyon, you can gaze up to the Hardangervidda plateau and down to the Måbødalen valley from above the waterfall in a surreal experience that blends the beauty of nature with the exquisite wonder of modern architecture. The footbridge is hung 164 feet (50 meters) above the waterfall and spans about 154 feet in length from point to point. Its most unique feature, however, is that the bridge is set at an incline. If you cross it, you’ll ascend and descend a total of 99 stairs.

With a drop of nearly 600 feet, the iconic Vøringsfossen Waterfall stands as the premier attraction along one of the country’s official 18 Scenic Routes, Hardangervidda, and is the most visited waterfall in the entire country. It’s located near the small town of Eidfjord, about 4.5 hours northeast of Oslo.

Designer Carl-Viggo Hølmebakk developed the master plan for the bridge, which has taken 10 years to build. New viewpoints are to be added in 2021, but the bridge is open for your next visit to the fjords of Norway — should you dare to cross it, that is.

More like thisArt + ArchitectureThe stave churches of Norway are the most fascinating medieval churches in Europe

The post Take in Norway’s Vøringsfossen Waterfall from this freakish new bridge appeared first on Matador Network.

Animal migrations around the world

Recently, we witnessed the stunning spectacle of hundreds of dolphins stampeding along the waters in Southern California. While the behavior is not unusual for these dolphins, it’s also not predictable. Migrating animals, on the other hand, rush up creeks, across rivers, over islands, and even up and down the globe in a beautiful, annual rhythm that is no less breathtaking a sight, but certainly easier to plan for. From now until the end of the year, the skies, land, and sea will bustle with the movement of every type of creature — from zebra to snake, crimson crab to arctic tern. Here are the most glorious.

1. Monarch butterflies flutter across North America

Photo: JHVEPhoto/Shutterstock

Monarch butterflies’ astounding migration across North America is known to us in images of trees in the Mexican state of Michoacan absolutely covered in butterflies beginning in November. But you don’t have to get to Mexico to see the fluttering orange wings of some of the many millions of these butterflies who make the annual journey, the only one of its kind among butterflies. From September to November, with your best bet in mid-October, you can see them fly over Texas, spotting them at way stations in Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, and other locations. While the group is technically returning from Canada, no individual butterfly is doing so — since the whole cycle takes longer than an individual life. In fact, you could be seeing a butterfly’s great great grandchild returning home to Mexico.

2. The Caribou’s very long, and remote, march

Photo: Ian William Hromada/Shutterstock

Caribou are known to make a longer migration than any other land-based mammal. Researchers have found that two herds of caribou travel between Canada and northeastern Alaska, traveling more than 800 miles a year. They summer on the not-quite-balmy Coastal Plains of northeast Alaska. Come fall, herds numbering in the tens of thousands, or more, work their way southward to areas like Brooks Mountains of the Yukon territories. While the migration is predictable every year, the exact route they will take is not, and getting to this remote part of the world is by no means easy, or cheap.

3. The brilliant red crabs of Christmas Island

Photo: skyfall4/Shutterstock

Christmas Island is a tiny Australian territory that’s actually a lot closer to Indonesia than to Australia. It’s home to about 2,200 people and over a dozen species of land-based crabs, among them more than a 100 million tiny red crabs that measure only four and a half inches across. October is spring in the southern hemisphere and the start of the wet season on Christmas island, when these crabs head out from their homes in the trees up to three miles to the shore to spawn. Then the newly hatched baby crabs make their way back from the coast into the forest. From October to December, you will see millions of these crabs everywhere, and occasionally you’ll see road closure as the brilliant crimson crabs travel en masse to their destination.

4. The Herculean journeys of spawning salmon

Photo: Sekar B/Shutterstock

As most people know, baby Pacific salmon hatch upriver in freshwater and then head out towards the ocean. A few years later they, now adult salmon, head back up those same rivers to their places of birth. After their exhausting journeys, they spawn, and then die, providing nourishment for the next generation of salmon. What many people don’t know is how easy it is to see this impressive exercise throughout the autumn months along the western coast of the United States, where you can gasp as salmon literally swim and jump up roaring rivers and streams. If you happen to be in Seattle, you can see these salmon runs at Pipers Creek or West Seattle’s Longfellow Creek from October to December. Even before that, you can see them beginning their runs up the Ballard Locks fish ladder to get to various creeks in the area.

5. Wildebeests’ annual, arduous cross-country journey

Photo: Dr Ajay Kumar Singh/Shutterstock

From July to October every year, one and a half million wildebeests travel 500 miles from Tanzania’s Serengeti Park, where new wildebeests have been born, in search of greener pastures in Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve area. Then in October or November, they travel south again to Tanzania. Many die while crossing the Grumeti and Mara rivers, where crocodiles wait expectantly for their lunch, which may sate them for days or weeks. Even those that reach the other side of the river may be attached by lions and hyenas. If you can get yourself to one of these national parks during the right time, you can view the arduous trek from viewing platforms.

6. Snakes and salamanders slithering to the swamps

Photo: Gerald A. DeBoer/Shutterstock

Admittedly, this is not a migration that will top every wildlife lover’s list. But anyone who is fascinated by reptiles and amphibians should get themselves to Illinois’ Shawnee National Forest, where every year all manner of cold-blooded creatures — from frogs and toads to turtles, snakes, and salamanders — move from the park’s bluffs down to the warmer swamps. If you can get yourself to the park’s “Snake Road” in the months of September or October, you are likely to see this parade of critters, including three dozen species of snakes, crossing the road on their way back to the bluffs. The road is for pedestrians only during those months to safeguard the creatures and allow you to survey the scene on foot. In case you miss it, you can also check out the reverse migration from mid-March to mid-May when the road is again closed to cars.

7. The renewed migration of zebras in Botswana

Photo: The Law of Adventures/Shutterstock

In the same way that zebras accompany wildebeest on their Kenya-Tanzania migration, they also migrate further south on the African continent. From late November to early December, zebras travel over 150 miles southwest from Okavango to the lush grasslands of Makgadikgadi, where they’ll stay for over two months during the wet season. This migration wasn’t possible for over four decades, as Botswana erected fences to protect its nascent cattle industry from hungry and potentially disease-carrying wildlife,. However, the barriers were removed in 2006. Even though zebra only live about 12 years, astoundingly, the descendants of the migrating zebras knew what to do and took up the trek again.

8. Arctic terns’ astounding double-globe flights

Photo: Frank Fichtmueller/Shutterstock

Arctic terns are a little harder to spot because they stay just offshore, along the eastern coast of South and North America and along the western coast of Africa and Europe, on their mind-boggling journey from the Arctic to Antarctica. They often cross the Atlantic Ocean on their way north or south, making their annual journey as long as 60,000 miles, which is like circling the planet twice. Needless to say, these tiny avians travel the farthest of any migrating animals in the world, following the long daylight hours from the Arctic winter to Antarctic summer. Since they feed on fish, daylight helps them see their prey. Moreover, they fly in zigzag patterns to follow wind currents and glide their light, 3.5-ounce bodies for most of the way. In fact, they can even sleep while gliding. Near the end of the year, you can find them off the coast of southern Argentina or western South Africa.

9. The graceful movement of humpback whales

Photo: wildestanimal/Shutterstock

While different pods of humpback whales have diverse migration patterns, some northern hemisphere whales travel from the Bering Sea southwards to breeding grounds in Mexico or Central America. You can catch these whales on their northward journey in the spring, but in North America’s fall months, you can see them on their way south. Viewing places in California, like Point Reyes or Big Sur, will give you a view of these graceful and endangered creatures. They are just some of the whale species you can admire from the West Coast this winter.

More like thisWildlife8 places to encounter wild animals up close in the US

The post The most amazing animal migrations happening right now appeared first on Matador Network.

TSA sends lost wedding dress

[image error]

Lost luggage is always a hassle, but it’s a downright catastrophe when the luggage contains your wedding dress. When a wedding party touched down in Columbus, Ohio, the mother of the bride discovered she had left her roller bag (containing the wedding dress) behind at the Newark Airport in New Jersey. Luckily, some benevolent TSA agents saved the day.

Christopher Cepeda, the brother of the bride, said, “We get to Columbus, Ohio, we’re like ‘Mom, where’s your carry on? Oh man.’”

He looked up TSA’s Lost and Found office at Newark and submitted an online form but didn’t have much hope of success.

“I was like forget it, it’s not going to happen,” he said. “God heard our prayers.”

Loletta Nathan-Gordon, an administrative assistant for TSA, saw the email and called TSA, who tracked down the location of the roller bag. When the bag was brought to Nathan-Gordon’s desk, she arranged for it to be sent overnight to its rightful owner. It arrived before 9:00 AM the next day.

“They did everything they could to bring the dress to me,” said the bride, Narolin Cepeda. “That was my dream dress. I just wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

And of course, she had to thank her brother too.

“That made me realize how much my brother does love me,” she said.

So next time you find yourself suspecting TSA as an evil organization hellbent on inconveniencing you, remember that there’s a compassionate side to the agency too.

More like thisFinancial SavvyWhere to buy all the fancy items the TSA confiscated from other people for cheap

The post TSA saves woman’s big day by sending wedding dress left at airport appeared first on Matador Network.

How Weathered Souls Brewing started

Near the end of May, Marcus Baskerville, the head brewer and co-founder of Weathered Souls Brewing in San Antonio, Texas, was driving to Fort Worth to bring beer to a friend. He listened to Breonna Taylor’s mom speak about her murdered daughter on the radio on the way, and it brought him to tears. Then, on the way back to San Antonio, he drove through Austin just as protests for racial justice were starting in response to the murder of George Floyd.

“I needed to figure out something to do,” Baskerville tells me. “Something to give back to my community, something for my people to make them proud and say, ‘Hey, he went ahead and did something to give back to this cause, give back to the civil rights movement, give back to the justice movement.”

That something turned out to be a collaboration among breweries across the country and the world to brew a beer called Black is Beautiful. Each brewery participating in the collaboration agrees to brew a beer using the same base recipe and label design, and 100 percent of the profits from the beer go to local foundations that support police brutality reform, pay for the legal defenses for people who’ve been wronged, and that fight for equality and inclusion. More than 1,300 breweries in all 50 states and 21 countries are taking part as of the last week of August, and donations are being sent to organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and local and statewide racial justice alliances.

The collaboration also brings the ongoing conversation about racial injustice front and center in the mostly white craft beer industry.

“I didn’t think it was going to blow up this big,” Baskerville, who describes himself as an introvert, says. “So putting myself out there like that was a bit of a challenge at first, but then realizing how important it is and realizing how it has affected certain individuals with their support has grounded me in the fact that, hey, this is way bigger than me, this is way bigger than the brewery.”

Photo: Sly Fox Pittsburgh Taphouse/Facebook

Baskerville learned how to brew at home and professionally in Sacramento, CA. He moved to San Antonio for a job and worked as an assistant brewer as well. The latter is where he met Mike Holt, and the two would go on to co-found Weathered Souls in 2016.

Weathered Souls has a solid reputation in Texas but wasn’t a household name among beer drinkers around the world until the last couple of months. That all changed in June when Baskerville and his brewery became the leading beer industry voice for racial justice and equality at a time when Americans are fighting for systemic change to racist policies and police.

Baskerville’s initial plan for the Black is Beautiful beer was to make it a standalone beer served at the brewery. That shifted after a conversation with Jeffrey Stuffings, co-founder of Jester King Brewery in Austin. They spoke about race relations, social justice, and Donald Trump. They also spoke about the Black is Beautiful beer and its purpose. After he showed Stuffings the mock-up labels, the idea came up about making the project collaborative, which would expand the number of people the beer could reach as well as increase the number of donations to local charities.

A few months before, Other Half Brewing had started a global, donation-focused collaboration called All Together to help restaurant industry workers impacted by the pandemic. Baskerville drew inspiration from All Together to structure what would become an even larger international brewery collaboration.

How the Black is Beautiful beer collaboration started

Photo: Weathered Souls Brewing Co./Facebook

On May 31, Baskerville drew up a mission statement and ran it by friends, family, and people in the beer industry. He couldn’t sleep that night, so around 3:00 AM the next day, he says, he went to the brewery and wrote out the entire initiative. He received the logo from the designer at 11:25 AM, and five minutes later, he was in the meeting with the rest of the Weathered Souls team to discuss. Baskerville and his brewery got started on the beer a couple of hours later.

With the process in motion at his own brewery, Baskerville reached out to eight or nine friends and breweries that were Black-owned or had Black brewers. Those were the first, and only, people Baskerville ended up asking to join the project before they asked him. An initial Facebook announcement caught attention, followed by a post about the initiative itself, which led to people tagging their favorite breweries to join.

“In the first week we had a CNN and Forbes article and that boosted it a lot,” Baskerville says. “In four or five days, we’d reached about 500 breweries.”

The first breweries to join were mostly from Texas and California, where Baskerville has worked and is known in the industry, and spread from there. International support came in that first week as well. A Canadian brewery said it would participate on the second day the Black is Beautiful initiative was made public. Breweries in Japan and Germany followed closely after.

“You look at what our country is currently dealing with inequality issues — stuff we’re seeing you’d think we’re back in the ‘60s,” Baskerville says. “I think these other countries are taking notice of what’s going on here and they want to show their support. Also, some other countries generally go through the same things.”

The following weeks were filled with calls and emails about requests to join the collaboration. A website where people could sign up and be added automatically drastically sped up the process.

“My original goal for this was like 200, 250 people,” Baskerville says, “and we ended up reaching that in the first 24 hours. So after that, I knew it was going to be a lot bigger than what I originally expected.”

Local and national press published stories about hometown breweries joining the initiative. With the popularity came some dissent. People associated, and in some cases negatively, the beer with the Black Lives Matter organization, which Baskerville has never publicly supported at the brewery.

“You have people who see it and say, ‘Well, dude, we don’t support that organization so we’re not going to support this initiative,” Baskerville says. “And it’s like, well, this doesn’t have anything to do with that.”

Baskerville insists that his aim isn’t to bring politics into his brewery but to support what views as a human rights issue, not a political issue.

“This isn’t a politics thing,” Baskerville says. “This is a humanity issue we’re dealing with, and in 2020 we shouldn’t even have to have this conversation.”

Overall, however, the response has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive. Breweries that were already hit hard by the pandemic are donating profits at a time when many businesses are facing economic uncertainty. The sheer scale shows how much the movement resonates in an industry not known for diversity.

“The brewing industry, which is labeled as not inclusive and 99.8 percent white, is helping lead the way in social justice in 2020,” Baskerville says.

Looking toward the future

Photo: Weathered Souls Brewing Co./Facebook

“I know inequality and injustice aren’t going anywhere anytime soon,” Baskerville says. “So I’m hoping this is something that continues throughout the years.”

Expect to see a wide variety of Black is Beautiful releases in the future. A few distilleries and whiskey companies have joined, and it takes longer for a whiskey release than a beer release. Some breweries are doing barrel-aged versions of the stout, which will take some time as well.

“In 2020 we still have to have that conversation,” Baskerville says, “but at least there’s a lot of support behind it.”

With that support, things can change, including in the beer industry itself. But there’s work to be done.

“I want to see more ownership in craft beer,” Baskerville says. “There are more than 8,000 breweries in the US, and less than one percent are Black-owned. You want to see change, it needs to happen at the ownership level, and it definitely needs to happen at the decision making level. Unless you see those aspects change, there’s never really going to be any real change.”

Black is Beautiful versions to try

The Black is Beautiful recipe is available online for both professional brewers and homebrewers. It’s hard to pick favorites when the number of options tops 1,000, but Baskerville has been collecting some of the iterations and hopes to have a party to taste as many as possible when the time is right. It’s also hard to find versions outside of the many local versions being made (though there is a Facebook group with more than 1,300 members dedicated to tracking down and trading local takes). That said, there are a few he considers standouts.

Weldworks from Greeley, CO: A 10.9 percent ABV imperial stout brewed with Madagascar vanilla.

The Alchemist from Stowe, VT: An imperial stout with profits going to the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance.

Side Project from St. Louis, MO: A mix of a barrel-aged imperial stout and the base with Mexican vanilla beans. Proceeds go to the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri.

Fremont from Seattle, WA: A nine percent ABV imperial stout with profits going to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

More like thisBeerBlack Beer Travelers is inspiring people to diversify their palate

The post How a Texas brewer started an international movement for racial justice appeared first on Matador Network.