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The human behind the triumphal stream was Zach Seidel, 27, the director of multimedia communications and digital for the athletic department. For a couple of hours on Friday night, he was the voice of the ultimate underdogs, the about-to-be-vindicated sports fan who got to revel in something historic — with an audience of millions high-fiving his every remark.
There were even messages from former U.M.B.C. players whom Seidel had been invisible to when they were students. The account went from having about 5,400 followers to more than 41,000 by the time the sports world’s convulsions ended. Seidel’s posts were retweeted more than 48,000 times — many times with a check-this-out tone.
Seidel said he didn’t have a content plan going into the game. During most men’s basketball games, he is out in the broadcast truck doing replays or calling the game. His boss, Steve Levy, usually live tweets the men’s basketball games.
He brought that mentality to the game on Friday (he even had another “sup” tweet directed at ESPN).
Seidel arrived in North Carolina early Thursday morning and spent time with friends. He spent most of Friday in his hotel room and showed up to the pregame reception with five hours until the game, dressed in a collared shirt and pants. Everyone else was still in sweatpants.
Ten minutes before the game, he sat in his courtside seat behind the scorers’ table, and texted his parents a photo of his view.
“That was the moment I was like, we could have some fun tonight,” he said.
A tweet from Seth Davis of CBS Sports initially provoked him.
Later, there was ownership of Davis.
Friday’s game was just the second tournament appearance for U.M.B.C., which has a student body of about 14,000.
Four full-time staff members and a handful of student interns work on the athletic department’s social media presence. Seidel doesn’t specialize in men’s basketball, he helps out on all sports. There are times that he can’t make it to games so he tweets from wherever he is. On Friday night, Seidel was the only person working on social media for the men’s basketball game. He was asked to do it the day before.
He tried not to cross the line with his glee. At some points, he was using Twitter as an outlet to calm his inner fan’s nerves. He was raised locally in Pikesville and graduated in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in media communication studies from U.M.B.C. and a master’s degree in human-centered computing in 2015. His younger sister, Kara, is a senior at the school, and his parents both attended.
His father, Jeff, is a sports journalist, and his mother, Nadine, is a retired special education teacher.
Before he was a student, Seidel worked as an intern in the sports communications department at U.M.B.C. in his senior year of high school. While he was still getting his degree, he began working as the coordinator of video production. He has overseen multimedia communications since 2014.
Seidel said he knew that U.M.B.C. was going to win when the Retrievers were up by 17 with just over three minutes remaining. He sent the final tweet of the game — declaring victory — from his phone. He said he expected to run the account on Sunday, for the second-round game against Kansas State.
A group of barbers joined forces with Nashville's nonprofit world to help empower the city's homeless population via free haircuts.
On Monday evenings, a crowd builds on the plaza outside War Memorial Auditorium in Nashville, one that is not usually heading into a concert, or passing through on the way to try the newest restaurant on Fifth Avenue.
On Monday evenings, the homeless community gathers in Nashville.
A group of nonprofits and volunteers that serve the homeless population sets up on the plaza almost every week to make sure those in need know where and when they can get assistance.
Caroline Lindner, a barber in Nashville, started joining in about a year and a half ago. Since then, she's teamed up with several other skilled hair stylists to create Nashville Street Barbers, which is well on its way to becoming an institution in the community.
There are four core members of the Nashville Street Barber team: Lindner, Dareka "Pebblez" Carney, Abishai Collingsworth and Ryan Timmons, as well as a rotating set of volunteers, all of whom are trained stylists.
The barbers give free haircuts to anyone who needs them.
"People need each other. This isn't about hair, it's about reminding people they're human, and changing the perception of these people," Collingsworth said.
James Weaver, 54, has directly benefited from the work Nashville Street Barbers are doing.
"They have been so loving and empowering for me," Weaver said. He has been experiencing homelessness since he moved to Nashville earlier this year.
A trained barber himself, Weaver started getting haircuts from the Nashville Street Barbers a few months ago, and since then has been able to join them in their work.
"He used to tell us exactly what to do when he was in the chair," Timmons said with a laugh. "He knows what he's doing."
With money from donations and a recent All-Star award from Hardees, Nashville Street Barbers have been able to buy clippers specifically for use outside on Mondays, including one for Weaver to have all week.
"Everybody loves their hair. This could be a sustaining lucrative situation for me, but it's more of a give-back, more of a ministry, more of a connection. To be able to plug in that gap and do for somebody something that will help them regain control of the steering wheel of their life, that's empowering," Weaver said.
He offers free or cheap haircuts to fellow members of the homeless community when he can and says the cuts are never just about the hair.
"I approach this from a holistic point of view. It's not just about the hair, it's whatever they want to talk about, if they need to know where to get resources, anything," he said. "You have to build relationships. Without them, you're not in position to help a person, you don’t know who you’re helping."
While the Nashville Street Barber team sets up barber chairs and lights, and gets to cutting hair, other groups like ShowerUp Nashville and People Loving Nashville help those who need a hand get a shower, a meal and even some fresh clothes.
"The shower, the haircut, they give people a whole new hope, confidence to conquer what they need to do. It's dignity and hope for them, honestly, which is not something you can just walk into a store and buy. You do that for one person, it changes their whole outlook," Rhonda Schmitz said.
Schmitz is the founder of ShowerUp, which she started when she moved to Nashville eight years ago from Kansas. Her organization has a truck and attached trailer, each with three showers. People experiencing homelessness can take as long as they want to bathe, shave and soak up the warmth of the water, she said.
All of the groups involved on Monday nights do other outreach during the week.
The Nashville Street Barbers are keeping their eyes open for ways to expand their work, from adding more volunteers, to offering paid haircuts as a fundraiser.
In the meantime, they are focused on using the skills they have to give back the best way they can. On a record night, with 16 volunteer barbers, the team was able to give 89 haircuts in two hours.
"This work is never done. Through sharing these stories with other people, it starts to change how they think this whole community is. It does a positive thing, to hear people's stories, but it's still really hard," Lindner said.
"It's blown my mind how fast it's grown. It's something I'm so passionate about," Carney said.
Things are heating up at the top of the Mid Florida Conference standings and the College of Central Florida baseball team is right in the middle of it.
The Patriots won their fourth conference game in a row and sixth overall with an 11-3 win in seven innings over Daytona State on Sunday afternoon at Goodlett Field.
With the win, CF improves to 36-6 overall and 13-5 in the MFC while going 8-2 over its last 10 games. Seminole State College of Florida sits in second place at 11-5 and has won its last five games. Santa Fe is in third place in the MFC at 9-7 and the Saints are winners of their last four. CF has six more conference games remaining.
The Patriots took a 4-1 lead on Sunday against the visiting Falcons after the first inning on an RBI single from Colton Vincent and an RBI double from Myles Colangelo. Carlos Salaverria had a sacrifice fly and Nolan Machibroda scored on a wild pitch for the inning's other two runs.
Brendan Bell started the game for CF and limited Daytona to two earned runs on four hits over 5 1/3 innings with five strikeouts. Brandon Knarr came on in relief and struck out five in the final two innings of the seven inning game.
“We played a little tired today offensively but Brendan and Brandon threw well and kept them in check and helped us until our offense got going,” CF head coach Marty Smith said.
Leadoff batter James Nix led the Patriots’ offense by going 4 for 5 with two doubles, two RBIs, two runs scored, and a stolen base. "It is good to have James Nix, our leading hitter, get hot again," Smith said.
Ricky Presno (1 for 3, 3 RBIs), Colton Vincent (1 for 2, RBI, run), Machibroda (2 for 4, double, 2 runs), Colangelo (1 for 3, double, 2 runs, RBI), Salaverria (1 for 2, double, RBI, run), Zach West (1 for 4, RBI, run), and Oliver Regalado (1 for 3, double, RBI, run) also were top contributors Sunday for CF which has a .445 team on base percentage and a .522 team slugging percentage.
Dunnellon graduate and 2018 Star-Banner pitcher of the year Christian Graham threw 4 2/3 innings of solid relief for Daytona with three strikeouts. Graham came on with one out in the second inning in relief of Falcons starter and Belleview graduate Gage Warren.
“Their middle reliever, Christian Graham from Dunnellon, did a real nice job for them in relief in the middle of the game,” Smith said.
Sunday’s win at Goodlett field gives the Patriots a 23-2 record at home this season.
The Patriots play at Pasco-Hernando State today at 3 p.m. and then travel to Tampa to play the University of Tampa JV team on Wednesday at 6 p.m.
CF plays a road conference game on Friday at Seminole State College of Florida and returns home on Saturday to host MFC foe Florida State College at Jacksonville at 1 p.m. at Goodlett Field in Ocala.
The mother of a severely epileptic child has said she is “overjoyed” to have her confiscated medical cannabis returned after negotiating “bureaucratic trauma”.
Emma Appleby received the supply of cannabis oils for nine-year-old daughter Teagan, who suffers up to 300 seizures a day, from the Government on Friday.
Border Force seized the items, which cost £4,600, as campaigner Mrs Appleby and her partner Lee landed at Southend Airport in Essex on Saturday after visiting the Netherlands.
The family, from Aylesham near Dover, had flown out on Thursday and had the medicine prescribed by a paediatric neurologist in Rotterdam.
But, after it was seized, they had to obtain a prescription from a specialist UK consultant.
Mrs Appleby said: “This has been one of the most stressful weeks of my life, and life caring for a child with intractable epilepsy is plenty stressful enough.
“We only went to Holland out of sheer desperation.
“We’d fought for months to get access to medical cannabis in this country but were blocked at every turn even though it’s now legal here.
“But overjoyed as I am, my heart goes out to those other families with severely epileptic children who are in the depths of despair.
Teagan suffers from rare chromosomal disorder Isodicentric 15 as well as Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, a severe case of epilepsy.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock tweeted on Friday: “Happy to say that Teagan Appleby’s cannabis-based medicine has arrived and is ready to be collected.
The law in the UK was changed last November to make access to medical cannabis legal but parents have been struggling to secure prescriptions, in part due to reluctance within the medical community.
NHS England guidance says it expects that cannabis-based products for medicinal use should “only be prescribed for indications where there is clear published evidence of benefit” and in “patients where there is a clinical need which cannot be met by a licensed medicine and where established treatment options have been exhausted”.
Mr Hancock said in the Commons last month that his “heart goes out” to parents experiencing anguish over difficulties in obtaining medicinal cannabis.
He said he is working to “unblock” some of the challenges in the system but, ultimately, “these things need to be clinician-led”.
Mrs Appleby added she wanted Mr Hancock to “follow through on his recent supportive words and unblock the system”.
Christopher Nolan's Interstellar takes the characters of Mathew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway to space, but the entire cast firmly believes that its really a film about the most important human emotions and bonds.
"I thought it was going to be a space adventure film, but it's beyond that," Jessica Chastain told The Hollywood Reporter at the film's Hollywood premiere, which featured a black carpet. "At the heart of it, it's about love; it's about a father and daughter."
"Chris and Matthew are both fathers, and I think for Chris, being a father, this story was very close to him," adds the actress, who plays a scientist back on Earth trying to find a way to save humankind.
The story follows McConaughey's and Hathaway's characters as they head into space trying to find a new home for the human race. McConaughey's character leaves behind a young daughter and son.
The Dallas Buyers Club Oscar winner told THR that the shoot, which took his character to space, new planets and on life-threatening adventures, was very challenging. After he'd finished working on it, he said he "took a long, long, long nap."
"I rested my body, and I rested my mind. I rested for about 10 days, because it was a long journey we went on," he said. "It was hard. It was supposed to be hard."
At the premiere at the TCL Chinese Theatre on Sunday, McConaughey, Nolan, Chastain and Hathaway were joined by Wes Bentley, David Gyasi, Mackenzie Foy, Hans Zimmer, Paramount's Brad Grey and Warner Bros.' Kevin Tsujihara. After the screening, the cast and guests enjoyed an afterparty at the Dolby Theatre, which even featured a slowly rotating central bar.
Nolan's brother, Jonathan Nolan, had originally been commissioned to write the screenplay for Steven Spielberg. When his brother signed on to direct, Jonathan knew "he would bring a unique spin to it and would execute it on the biggest possible scale."
"He and Steven have that in common — a commitment to make films the old-fashioned way, which is to say on the biggest possible level," he told THR.
By the time the Paramount and Warner Bros. film was finally finished, Jonathan Nolan, who had been working on it for eight years, had another thing in common with his brother and star McConaughey: he was a father.
"The film is about parents and their children," he said. "When I started writing it, I didn't have any kids. Now I have a little girl who is a year old, so watching the film is a completely different emotional experience for me."
Interstellar hits U.S. theaters on Nov. 7.
Harvey Reid and Joyce Andersen stopped by with a preview of their 2018 holiday shows.
Harvey Reid, Joyce Andersen and Kate McNally at the Folk Show at NHPR.
Harvey Reid brought his mandocello to The Folk Show.
A close up of the inlay on Harvey Reid's mandocello.
At least two of the seven suspects accused of gunning down four St. John Parish sheriff's deputies Thursday reportedly have ties to the growing anti-government "sovereign citizens" movement. It is an extremist group, described by the FBI as a "domestic terrorist movement" that has proven itself so deadly to law enforcement that at least 80,000 officers and agencies have ordered training videos on how to defend themselves against its members.
Terry Lyn Smith, 44, left a stack of papers in a trailer in Tennessee that led police to suspect him as a member of the sovereign group. Smith, his wife, two sons and a girlfriend of one of his sons were all booked in connection with the St. John shootout. Smith's longtime associate, Kyle David Joekel, 28, who was also booked in the attack, has also been linked by authorities to extremist groups, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
The sovereign movement is a descendant of the now-defunct, violent Posse Comitatus group, a white-supremacist, anti-Semitic group born in the 1980s, according to Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which studies hate groups. The Posse Comitatus was dismantled and its members shifted to fringe groups, loosely connected via seminars and thousands of dedicated websites and online forums.
"Sovereign citizens" believe that there is no legitimate government authority higher than parish or county government. Individuals, they believe, rather than courts or government, decide what laws a person must follow -- thus they often decline to pay taxes, renew driver's licenses or obey speed limits. They often create fake license plates and print counterfeit money, according to the FBI.
The philosophy is rooted in belief in a conspiracy that the American government, once it stopped backing its money with gold, instead enslaves its citizens to be used as collateral. Sovereign citizens are known to file cryptic lawsuits against the government -- always refusing to use an uppercase "U" in "United States of America" or otherwise acknowledge the country as a formal entity. They often sign their names using strange punctuation, like colons, and follow their signatures with such disclaimers as "under duress" or "sovereign living soul," according to the FBI.
The sovereign citizens originally believed that white people were the only true "sovereign citizens" because God gave America directly to the white man, Potok said. Black citizens, on the other hand, were handed citizenship not from God, but from the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. They also adopted a conspiracy theory that Jews were conspiring to control the government and the country's financial institutions.
In the past decade, though, the group's racism has abated and, with "rich irony," as Potok described it, they've added many African-Americans to their ranks. One of the seven suspects booked in the St. John attacks, Teniecha Bright, 21, is black; it is not clear whether she is a member of the sovereign group, though she lived with Joekel.
Sovereigns recruit in prison and target those burdened with financial hardships -- promising quick cash through tax-related lawsuits and liens. Their numbers, steadily growing over the past several years, are estimated by the Southern Poverty Law Center at around 300,000 -- 100,000 deeply devoted to the cause, and another 200,000 who dabble.
Members of the group are vehemently anti-police. In the past decade, before the LaPlace deputy slayings, sovereign citizens had killed six police officers, according to the FBI. In May 2010, Jerry Kane and his 16-year-old son shot and killed two police officers and wounded two others in a shootout in West Memphis, Ark. Both the father and the son were subsequently killed by police.
Then last year, sovereign citizen James Michael Tesi shot a police officer in Texas after a series of traffic violations. The officer survived, and Tesi was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
The Southern Poverty Law Center since created a 12-minute video to train police officers on the threat. Potok said the demand from law enforcement agencies has been stunning, with 80,000 copies already ordered.
L. Bernard Jakes, the pastor at West Point Baptist Church in Chicago, supports gay marriage.
Chicago, Illinois (CNN) - L. Bernard Jakes, the pastor at West Point Baptist Church, has come out in support of a gay marriage bill in the Illinois legislature. He has the support of a majority of his congregation, but not of his fellow pastors.
The Illinois senate approved a gay marriage bill in February, but it has gotten stalled in the house, where it is short of having enough votes to pass. Legislators are expected to take up the measure again in the fall, and the traditionally liberal black caucus in the state house has emerged as an important voting block.
Caucus members are facing pressure from black pastors both in favor and opposed to gay marriage, even though only two of the caucus’ legislators have so far come out in support of gay marriage.
Moore, Oklahoma (CNN) - Residents have started to return to some of the worst-hit areas by Monday’s tornado. They’re assessing the damage, collect belongings that are left and begin to rebuild their lives.