Dad's hilarious review of daughter's pretend restaurant goes viral

People all across the country – and plenty of stuffed animals – are loving this toddler’s adorable eatery.

 

A father’s hilariously honest review about his daughter’s pretend restaurant has given thousands of people something to smile about over the past two weeks, while also promoting a meaningful message about black-owned businesses.

On May 21, Christopher Kyle, who lives in Detroit, posted a photo of himself seated at a tiny table while his daughter, 18-month-old Ava, was preparing for service at her play restaurant called Ava’s Kitchen.

Kyle decided to write a very detailed account of the experience and found a clever way to weave hilarity into an important reminder.

“So I tried to support another Black Owned Business for lunch today. It’s called Ava’s Kitchen, just opened end of April. It’s a very clean establishment, but whewww let me tell you about this owner,” Kyle’s post began.

“First off, I asked why there are balloons on my chair, and it’s not my birthday? She talm’bout, mind yah business; those are Mommy’s,” he said.

In addition to the random balloons, Kyle said there were also some issues with delayed service.

“I been waiting on my order to get done for 45 minutes, and I’m the only customer here. She was making good progress at first, then she stopped for 20 minutes to go watch Paw Patrol,” he said, referencing the wildly popular animated series.

Kyle finished up his post on a more serious note about the importance of supporting businesses owned by African Americans.

“Overall the customer service could be better, but the cook is a cutie; so I’ll give her another chance. Let’s not give up on Black businesses so fast after one mistake,” he said.

After the post went viral (in two weeks, it’s garnered over 30,000 likes and 1,500 comments), Kyle soon posted an update, reflecting on all of the attention Ava’s Kitchen had received.

“Just pulled back up to @myavachristine Kitchen after she went viral this past weekend and whewww, she got a line down the block y’all!,” he wrote in the post accompanying a picture with a line of stuffed animals waiting for a table while the tiny entrepreneur presided over the kitchen in her chef’s hat and apron.

This week, Kyle shared a message of gratitude due to the overwhelming response he’s received since first posting about his daughter’s play eatery.

“God has placed this unexplainable favor on my life, that draws people and attention to whatever I touch,” he said. “I can already see that favor has been passed onto Ava; but her blessings will be 10x what God is doing in my life! She’s already touched lives around the world, and she can’t even talk yet! Just wait until you see what we do next!”

June 4, 2020, 11:32 AM EDT / Source: TODAY

By Aly Walansky

Unemployment rate falls to 13.3% as economy posts surprise job gains

New York (CNN Business) The American economy just got a shocking piece of good news: The job market may be recovering well ahead of schedule.

The US unemployment rate surprisingly fell to 13.3% in May, as the economy gained 2.5 million jobs.

It was the largest monthly gain in new jobs since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started tracking the data series in 1939.

The labor market rebounded from April’s drastic losses, when a revised 20.7 million jobs vanished. The unemployment rate last month soared to 14.7% as businesses shut during the coronavirus lockdown.

The Labor Department noted that during the pandemic, millions of workers were misclassified as “employed but not at work,” when they should have been counted as “unemployed on temporary layoff.” If it weren’t for those misclassifications, the unemployment rate would have been higher — around 19.2% in April and 16.1% in May, not including seasonal adjustments.

Still, economists’ estimates for the May report were way off, with expectations around 20% and about 8 million jobs lost.

Forecasts were miles off

How could the experts be so wrong? Well, this downturn isn’t like any others.

The economic shutdown was engineered. This has never been done before and it made it hard for economists to predict how the real world would behave.

While flipping a switch to “turn the economy off” worked, it wasn’t clear how or when the reverse would happen. Even after the buoyant May jobs report, there are plenty of unknowns, and economic forecasts could continue to fumble, said Nela Richardson, investment strategist at Edward Jones.

“There is no underselling it, this was a huge surprise,” said Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor.

The jobs report is showing the first green shoots of the reopened economy — even though the unemployment rate is still higher than during the 2008 financial crisis, Zhao said.

The gradual reopening of the economy actually added new jobs rather than eliminating further positions.

Construction jobs, for example, increased by 464,000 in May, gaining back nearly half of what they lost in April. Construction activity is part of the first phase of reopening. Jobs also returned in retail, as well as education and health services which are counted together as one sector. Government jobs declined by 585,000.

Health care hires were boosted by dentists offices reopening, which added 244,800 jobs. Doctors and dentists offices were shut down for routine treatments during the height of the lockdown.

But not all new jobs were full-time positions. Part-time workers accounted for some two-fifths of the employment growth in May. Nearly 10.5 million people are working part-time for economic reasons, compared with 4.2 million in February.

The employment-population ratio, which measures how much of the working age population is employed, rose 1.5 percentage points to 52.8%. That comes after an 8.7 percentage point collapse in April — when the ratio hit its lowest level since records started in 1948. Despite the increase in May, the ratio is still lower than ever before.

“These improvements in the labor market reflected a limited resumption of economic activity that had been curtailed in March and April due to the coronavirus pandemic and efforts to contain it,” said William W. Beach, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in a statement.

Following the shutdown of the economy in March, predicting what a reopening would look like and whether the labor market would bounce back proved difficult for economists.

Friday’s report provided an answer, but it doesn’t mean America is in the all clear yet.

“Just as much as we were hoping that job losses were temporary, we have to make sure that the job gains are permanent,” said Richardson.

The recovery is a good sign that the hoped-for rebound from the pandemic downturn is going to be faster than feared. Hopes for a V-shaped recovery, which had been all but abandoned following the April labor market numbers, might be revived.

“The labor market holds the keys to the economic trajectory,” Richardson said.

Government help still needed

President Donald Trump took credit for the better than expected report on Twitter, calling the numbers “incredible.”

“We’re going to be back and we’re opening our country,” said Trump during a press conference Friday morning. “And if you look at the lockdown governors … the ones that are most energetic about opening, they are doing tremendous business and that’s what these numbers are all about.”

The government responded to the crisis with a multi-trillion rescue package that expanded unemployment benefits to help the country through this recession.

Stimulus checks designed to get people spending and the economy back on its feet were just a one-off so far. Expanded unemployment benefits that added $600 per week in aid are set to end at the end of July. Washington supported businesses through the paycheck protection program, which required them to rehire a certain percentage of their workforces. But there’s a risk that some of those worker may be let go once the loan money runs out. Businesses are required to spend it within 24 weeks.

While the labor market rebounded in May, more help might be needed from Washington as economists wonder what will happen when the stimulus programs roll off.

Claims for unemployment benefits, which are reported by the Department of Labor, are still in unprecedented territory. Some 21.5 million Americans have filed for jobless benefits for at least two weeks in a row, Labor Department data showed Thursday. On top of that, 10.4 million people have filed for continued pandemic benefits, which are part of the government’s economic stimulus package.

Jobless claims don’t equal lost jobs, as the Labor Department and the BLS use different surveys to arrive at their data, but it shines a light on the continued pain for America’s workers even as the unemployment rate is coming down from its suspected April peak.

The US economy relies on consumer spending, which is why it’s so important to keep American wallets stuffed with cash. The current, second quarter of the year is still expected to be ugly, with forecasts as dire as a 40% annualized drop in GDP. But after Friday’s outperformance, experts might rethink their models.

We’re yet not out of the woods

Even with the surprising bit of good news, the job market remains in a deep hole, with nearly 20 million fewer jobs than in February.

Total US employment has still been set back by nearly a decade. And the total number of jobs is at its lowest point since December 2011.

A wider measure of unemployment, known as the U6, or underemployment rate, remained elevated at 21.2% in May, showing more than one in five American workers were either unemployed, working part-time “for economic reasons” or had dropped out of the labor force in recent weeks.

The declining headline unemployment rate also doesn’t tell the story of discrepancies between demographic groups. For example, overall unemployment went down, but white workers were the ones reaping the benefits.

The unemployment rate for white workers fell to 12.4%, while the rate for black workers crept up to 16.8%. More black workers joined the labor force last month, but because not all of them got jobs the unemployment rate ticked up. The rate ties the highest level it was at during the Great Recession.

This coronavirus recession is also much worse for women than it is for men. That is in part because sectors such as hospitality, which were hardest hit by the lockdown, employed more women than men before the pandemic. The unemployment rate for adult women was 13.9% in May, compared with a rate of 11.6% for adult males.

–Annalyn Kurtz, Tami Luhby and Katie Lobosco contributed to this article.

What if 2020 isn't canceled?

‘What if 2020 isn’t canceled?’ Inspiring poem with message of change goes viral

 

2020 is canceled.

This phrase and sentiment has taken over the social media feeds and minds of many who are overwhelmed with the challenging obstacles that have been forged in the first half of this year.

But one social media post is flipping that narrative, asking an important question instead: What if 2020 isn’t canceled?

“What if 2020 isn’t cancelled?⁣

What if 2020 is the year we’ve been waiting for?⁣

A year so uncomfortable, so painful, so scary, so raw — that it finally forces us to grow.⁣

A year that screams so loud, finally awakening us from our ignorant slumber.⁣

A year we finally accept the need for change.⁣

Declare change. Work for change. Become the change. A year we finally band together, instead of pushing each other further apart.⁣

2020 isn’t cancelled, but rather the most important year of them all.”

by lesliedwight

June 4, 2020, 6:54 PM EDT / Source: TODAY

By Alexander Kacala

Fla. Moves a Step Closer to ‘Normal’ Under Phase 2 Reopening

Gov. DeSantis announced that Phase 2 of the state’s 3-step reopening plan will go into effect on Friday morning. It doesn’t change real estate services that were already deemed essential, but it could give hope to some buyers and sellers who pulled back during the pandemic.

 

ORLANDO, Fla. – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that Phase 2 of the state’s 3-step reopening plan will go into effect on Friday morning through Executive Order 20-139.

It doesn’t change real estate services that were already deemed essential, but it should give hope to some buyers and sellers who pulled back during the pandemic. The changes don’t apply to the South Florida counties of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach, but the order allows some businesses in the counties to reopen “after each county seeks approval with a written request from the County Mayor or if no mayor the County Administrator.”

Under the executive order, bars, movie theaters, bowling alleys and concert halls are allowed to reopen. Most have some type of maximum occupancy requirements, along with general instructions to “maintain social distancing and sanitation protocols.”

In announcing the onset of Phase 2, DeSantis also warned that COVID-19 still remains a threat, and that “the virus isn’t gone.”

© 2020 Florida Realtors®

FLORIDA EXTENDS EVICTIONS BAN TO JULY 1

Just hours before the moratorium on evictions and foreclosures was set to expire, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a new executive order that extends the current ban to July 1.

 

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Hours before a ban on Florida evictions and foreclosures was to go into effect, Gov. Ron DeSantis extended the current moratorium a second time. On Monday night around 8 p.m., the governor issued a new order that extends the ban until 12:01 a.m. on July 1.

DeSantis announced the extension without comment via an email, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

“I hereby extend Executive Order 20-94, as extended by Executive Order 20-121, until 12:01 a.m. on July 1, 2020,’’ the executive order reads (Executive Order 20-137).

The extension puts Florida’s foreclosure moratorium on track with a federal moratorium for loans held by entities such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced earlier that the eviction moratorium on single-family home foreclosures was extended to June 30.

While the order impacts evictions and foreclosures until July 1, it does not change Florida law, nor does it relieve tenants or parties to a transaction from their obligations under existing contracts.

The original order itself makes that clear, saying, “Nothing in this Executive Order shall be construed as relieving an individual from their obligation to make mortgage payments or rent payments.”

© 2020 Florida Realtors®

Nurse Creates Replacement N95 Mask

This Nurse Didn’t Just Create a Replacement N95 Mask – Hers Filters More

 

As Tommye Austin made her way around the COVID-19 unit in early April, she worried about how long her nurses were going to have the supplies they needed to protect them from the virus.

Her San Antonio, Texas, hospital was well stocked, but with a surge of cases expected in May, the senior vice president and chief nurse executive, worried whether there would be enough N95 masks—especially with every hospital in the world seeking them.

Then she remembered what her late husband always said: “If you can’t find something, and you can’t buy something, you make it.”

So that’s what Tommye did—the nurse-scientist whose resume is crammed with credentials, like R.N., Ph.D., MBA and NEA-BC (Nurse Executive Advanced-Board Certified), began building a better mousetrap.

In her rare free time, she enjoys embroidery and quilting at her sewing machine, but even with all her skills and credentials, it was a challenge to design an N95 equivalent.

Even after long days at her University Health System job, she worked through the night to perfect her mask.

She remembered her husband teaching her about the best air conditioning filters for their home being electrostatic: they were worth the higher price because they carry a charge that zaps more gunk from the air. So, when Tommye went shopping for materials for this project, she remembered the word ‘electrostatic’.

At about $25 each, Tommye bought three different filter models, cut through their paper and wire frames, and got to work.

“The efficiency of each model was around the same, but one was more pliable,” she said. “It gave your mask a nice shape and was very breathable.”

Her biggest challenge was getting the mask to fit snug over the nose and mouth – but not so tight that it would damage the skin. And it still had to leave room for carbon dioxide to escape.

For more than a week, Tommye came home from work and tinkered practically all night. Her initial $300 purchase was supplemented by another $2,000 worth of gear.

As she closed in on a prototype, she struggled with the final piece of the comfort-safety puzzle. Then she extended the fabric on the nose and pleated that extension. Voila—more air pocket, no added bulk.

It only took her ten days to design the TM 2020 (‘Tommye Mask’). And, it only took 24 hours and a local TV news story for it to become an internet sensation. By the next day, her masks had been showcased by Fox News and the New York Post.

The hospital was so inundated with requests for details that it posted step-by-step instructions later that week. At that point, Tommye only had the instructions in her head.

A Better Mousetrap

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    • The name N95 comes from the fact the masks filter 95% of airborne particles, such as viruses. Lab results show Tommye’s masks block 96.5%.
    
    
    • N95s weren’t intended for all-day use, so they tend to carve painful, unsightly marks into noses, cheeks and chins. Hers don’t.
    
    
    • With nowhere for exhaled carbon dioxide to escape, N95 wearers sometimes suffer dizziness or headaches. Hers have an air pocket so the C02 floats more easily away.
    
    
  
  

 

Although the TM 2020 is meant for non-commercial purposes, Tommye received over 1,500 offers from people willing to buy them. Messages have come from as far as Indonesia and South Africa.

After speaking with an old friend, Tommye heard that her daughter was a nurse in Houston, and had been using the same N95 mask for nearly two months. Brittany got a TM 2020 in the mail the next day.

Thousands of her mask have been created, so far, but only Tommye and a few others are wearing them at her hospital. Everyone else on the staff has access to barrier/surgical masks, N95 respirator masks, face shields, and hospital-issued scrubs.

Thanks to Tommye’s concern for nurses needing a backup in San Antonio, the TM 2020s are helping people to feel safer around the world, according to American Heart Association News.

SHARE This Nurse’s Mask Design With Friends on Social Media…

Need more positive stories and updates coming out of the COVID-19 challenge? For more uplifting coverage, click here.

 

School bus drivers find creative way to honor Class of 2020

With schools across the country canceling graduations, the bus drivers for Loveland City School District found a way to celebrate the Class of 2020.

 

The bus drivers for Ohio’s Loveland City School District are wishing their 392 graduating seniors good luck in the best way they know how.

A viral video from last week captured a bird’s-eye view of their special tribute: a fleet of 22 buses arranged to spell out “2020.” With schools across the country canceling commencement ceremonies due to the coronavirus crisis, administrators and parents alike have tried to find creative ways to make students still feel special, from drive-thru diploma handouts to wave parades.

Lisa Moorhead, who’s been a bus driver for 23 years and organized the event, told TODAY that it took about 3 1/2 hours to put together. She added that the seven drivers involved only knew they’d done it correctly when an art teacher in the district flew a drone to look at the busses from above.

“To us down on the ground, it looked like a maze,” she explained. “When Jim Barrett … took (the drone) up, there were tears and screams. We were so excited we’d done it.”

The response from parents in particular was “over the top” enthusiastic, Moorhead said. But the seniors, many of whom have known their bus drivers for years, were the inspiration.

“We didn’t have our last days with any of the kids in district,” she said. “We thought (school closing) was going to be three weeks, but it turned out to be the rest of the year. As bus drivers, we bond with our kids. We’re the first ones they see in the morning and the last ones before they go home.”

The clip on the school district’s Facebook page has been viewed almost 4,000 times.

“This is so awesome and really touching!! Thank you for your dedication!!” commented one user on the video.

“Thank you to the drivers. They have the hardest job of all, and I am a retired teacher,” wrote another.

“Loveland really comes out for their students,” added a third.

In a release published on the school district’s website, other Loveland bus drivers shared why they participated.

“Some of us have been around long enough to transport these kids since kindergarten, and some of us have only been working with the district for a few years, but the one thing we all have in common is the love for our students,” said Jennifer Bloom Bowman. “This is a huge accomplishment and anyway we can show them some love, we will do it. So here’s to the Class of 2020. Your bus drivers are proud of all of you.”

Fellow driver Michele Winter added that each student “will always hold a special place” in their hearts.

“Every story, every hug, every laugh and every tear with them are memories and sometimes even lessons. To the kids of the past, the present and the future, this is for you!”

May 26, 2020, 11:08 AM EDT / Source: TODAY

By Maura Hohman