Cicely Tyson Kept It Together So We Didn’t Fall Apart

A wonder of poise and punch, the actress dared to declare herself a moral progenitor, taking on roles that reflected the dignity of Black women.

How odd to celebrate someone for not being who we’ve been programmed to expect. But American entertainment worked hard on the mold that Cicely Tyson refused to fit. So, really, what we’ve been saluting all these decades was historic defiance. She died on Thursday, at 96, just after the release of “Just as I Am,” a juicy, honest, passionately Cicely memoir. (“Well, child, I’ll tell you: my mouth fell open like a broken pocketbook.”) And on the opening pages resides the truth about why, as a performer, she was the way she was.


“My art had to both mirror the times and propel them forward,” she writes. “I was determined to do all I could to alter the narrative about Black people — to change the way Black women in particular were perceived, by reflecting our dignity.” Tyson made this vow in 1972, a few years after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., at the dawn of the so-called Blaxploitation filmmaking boom that didn’t fulfill her. No hookers, no servants, no big bad mamas. Which meant that, for a woman dependent on an industry that trained its patrons to overlook a beauty as singular and angular and walnut-brown as hers, she’d essentially declared a hunger strike.


Alas, she would not be playing the most daring, out-there characters. And let’s face it: the great parts were always headed to someone whiter anyway. The more audacious move was to declare herself a moral progenitor, to walk with her head high so that Denzel Washington might become a man on fire and Viola Davis could learn how to get away with murder.

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How Thailand’s ‘Egg Boy’ statue became a tourism phenomenon

Tens of thousands of people are flocking to a provincial southern temple, seeking hope in tough times.


Visitors to Wat Chedi, a temple in southern Thailand, have donated countless chicken figures to honor Ai Khai (or Egg Boy), a statue housing the spirit of a boy said to bring good luck.


When the coronavirus pandemic closed borders, Thailand’s massive tourism industry—more than 20 percent of its GDP, by some calculations—ground to a halt. Within months, word spread that the spirit of an 18th-century statue in southern Thailand, known as the Egg Boy, had provided someone with winning lottery numbers. Then an influential figure publicly attributed her wealth and success to Egg Boy. Soon Wat Chedi, the provincial temple housing the statue, was inundated with Thais seeking hope and good fortune.

For many Thais, spirits are part of everyday life, and are even seen as a gateway to prosperity or a source of protection.


“If you look at Thai popular religious ideas, [ghosts and spirits] live alongside you, they interact with you on a daily basis,” said Prakirati Satasut, a faculty lecturer of anthropology at Bangkok’s Thammasat University. “For example, when you go to a market, you see a territorial spirit shrine, or in a shop, a lucky lady shrine. You can use these objects to harvest wealth or obtain your goals in this world, which means there’s got to be some sort of a communication, some relationship.”As the coronavirus pandemic brings unprecedented social and financial pressures, this spiritual relationship has become a source of support for many Thais. Enter Egg Boy, who was once all but unknown outside his province—and who now welcomes thousands of devotees a day.


Egg Boy fever


About 250 years ago, a boy was accompanying a traveling Buddhist monk when the pair overnighted at Wat Chedi, in the southern Thai province of Nakhon Si Thammarat. Sensing that the temple would one day become an important place, the monk instructed the boy, who was called Ai Khai—a southern dialect term that literally means “egg boy” but that might be more accurately translated as “scamp” or “rascal”—to stay and serve the locals. Ai Khai vowed to do so.


In addition to helping out the resident monks and maintaining the temple, he engaged in the type of mischief familiar to a boy in Thailand during the late 18th century: terrorizing the village with a slingshot, setting off firecrackers, chasing roosters, and playing soldier. A few years later, he heard that the monk was on his way back to their village, and rather than join him and return home—which would have violated his oath to serve the temple—Egg Boy drowned himself in a pond.


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The Lasting Impact of Covid-19 on Homelessness in the US


The pandemic is hitting unhoused people especially hard. But the efforts that sprang up to address it could change their fates for the better.



DAVE "DOGDAVE" HIRSCHMAN, a 53-year-old man who has been experiencing homelessness since 1984, is starting to lose hope. Over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, he lost his shelter at a “city-sanctioned homeless camp” in Eugene, Oregon, and the vision in his left eye due to a stroke. He says the shelters near him are prioritizing Covid-19 patients, a reasonable measure that has nonetheless left him to sleep in a doorway. “I am sick now. I am finding blood in the Kleenex when I clear my sinuses,” he says. “There are quite a few folks out here who are in as dire straits as I am, that feel forgotten and abandoned. I can say for certain that without obtaining housing soon, I have no way of making it through the winter.
”Unhoused people all over the country are struggling profoundly during the pandemic, whether they’ve been experiencing homelessness for as long as Hirschman has or have only recently fallen on hard times. A college student studying computer science in Kentucky, who wished to remain anonymous, became homeless during the pandemic after having to choose between paying for classes and making rent. Social distancing left them without couches to sleep on. They consider themselves fortunate: They are mentally healthy, and have a phone and laptop. “Without technology, I don’t know where I’d be. I’m calling a day or two ahead to make sure I can reserve a bed at the homeless shelter,” they say. “It’s brutally cold. You can’t sleep outside. You will die.”


Experiencing homelessness has always been a dire health risk, and Covid-19 has only worsened that danger. Unhoused people are disproportionately affected by health conditions that can make coronavirus cases more severe, and are often forced to shelter, eat, and access hygiene in congregate settings where social distance is difficult to maintain. Experts knew this from the start, and they have launched heroic efforts to create safe places for unhoused people to shelter and quarantine during the pandemic. Many of those programs, especially those that placed homeless people in empty hotel rooms, have been successful. Now, under the Biden administration, advocates are hopeful that they’ll be able to expand and improve those programs, and treat homelessness as the solvable problem it is.


Experiencing homelessness has always been a dire health risk, and Covid-19 has only worsened that danger. Unhoused people are disproportionately affected by health conditions that can make coronavirus cases more severe, and are often forced to shelter, eat, and access hygiene in congregate settings where social distance is difficult to maintain. Experts knew this from the start, and they have launched heroic efforts to create safe places for unhoused people to shelter and quarantine during the pandemic. Many of those programs, especially those that placed homeless people in empty hotel rooms, have been successful. Now, under the Biden administration, advocates are hopeful that they’ll be able to expand and improve those programs, and treat homelessness as the solvable problem it is.


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