There used to be a line of jeans called “No Excuses,” they need to be available today. These 1980’s jeans were modeled by some infamous women who “inferred” through the name of these jeans that they made “no excuses” for their conduct.

Did you hear the one about the bride who was upset with the way her dress was altered? She called in her fiancé and some of his peeps and they tore the bridal salon to shreds. Who are these people and what is their excuse for such bad behavior? Each time I saw the news clip I fell out and said to myself, “Thank God they aren’t Black.”

At an age when most kids are contemplating what they’ll do during recess, Alysa Stanton was contemplating which religion was right for her. She was nine when she called a priest out of the blue to discuss Catholicism; just a year later, she was flipping through a Hebrew grammar book.

Her search for a faith to call her own landed squarely on Judaism, and the born-Pentacostal Christian embraced it in a big way: she went on to become a rabbi. After being ordained last summer, she is the first Black female rabbi ever. On March 3, Stanton spoke to students at the William Pitt Union Ballroom, sponsored by the Hillel JUC, about her journey to Judaism, with a monologue called “Layers of Healing, Layers of Hope.”

BACK TO THE BEGINNING— Rabbi Alysa Stanton dressed as a slave complete with lynch rope, begins the narrative of her life by going back to the beginning, recalling the plight of her African ancestors during slavery.

On an unexpected night in an unexpected place, guests perused a unique collection of quilts by fiber artist Tina Williams Brewer. In the lobby of the Alcoa Corporate Center on Feb. 22, 10 quilts were on display. Each piece of fiber art represented a decade of Pittsburgh history beginning in 1910 and ending in the era of President Obama.

INSPIRED BY THE QUILTS—Julie Caponi (Alcoa location manager) and Velma Montiero-Tribble.

The quilts, representing 100 years of African-American history, carry names like Unity, Creativity, Collective Economics, Collective Work and Responsibility, Purpose, Self-Determination, Faith, Destiny, Achievement and Hope and Healing. The quilts tell a story with pictures from the Pittsburgh Courier archives on beautiful fabric. Tina and her husband, John Brewer, an oral historian, explained the concept of each quilt to the spellbound audience.

Gospel music pioneers Mary Mary want young girls to celebrate the unique person that God created them to be.

That’s why they penned the book “Be U: Be Honest, Be Beautiful, Be Intentional, Be Strong, Be You!”

MARY MARY

“We have a lot of sisters and female friends and we came across people who didn’t want to be themselves so we wrote a book to celebrate the good in young people,” said Erica Campbell, 37, from her California home. Her younger sister, Tina, couldn’t participate in the interview because she had laryngitis. The two are internationally known as Mary Mary, one of the hottest groups in gospel music history.