Apartment Choice

How it would feel meeting relations of the people who inspired the creation of characters in an epic novel? Evelyn Osagie met those linked with the globally acclaimed Things Fall Apart at Ogidi, Anambra State. As guests made their way into Ogidi Town Hall that afternoon to pay their last respects to the man who was known as the Ikenga and the Ugonabo of Ogidi, the statue of the legendary warrior Ezechuamagha welcomed them with his staff in hand. Little did they know that it was no ordinary statue. He is the town’s progenitor from whom sprang the four quarters of Ogidi-Uru, Akanano, Ikenga and Ezinkwo and nine villages: Uru, Ogidiani, Ezi-Ogidi, Adazi-Ogidi, Nkwelle-Ogidi, Ikenga, Abo-Ogidi, Ire-Ogidi and Umuru in Idemili North Local Government Area of Anambra State. The town, which has since become a reference point for the literary-minded, continues to inspire those willing to draw inspiration from the ancestral home of the iconic novelist, the late Prof. Chinua Achebe, the Ugo...

August 13, 2017 Cat and dog owners alike adore their pets. And though it’s not always obvious from their behavior and body language, dogs and cats do love their owners back. Sometimes, our pets show extreme bravery to save us from danger or avert tragedy. Want to meet a cat who helped stop a man from committing suicide? How about a dog who fought off coyotes to save his owner? Or a cat who alerted his family to a deadly house fire ? Read on to meet some of the most heroic pets who have made the news for saving people’s lives. ")}; 20. The ‘Hero Cat’ who rescued a child from an attacking dog A brave cat stopped a dog from attacking a child. | iStock.com/Steevy84 Sometimes, an animal attacks a child. And every once in a while, another animal comes to the rescue. That’s exactly what happened when a heroic cat saved a child from a dog attack in Bakersfield, California. The dog, which belonged to a neighbor, dragged the boy off his bicycle with his teeth. But the attack was cut sh...

Imagine being away from home for the first time, just a teenager in a new state, surrounded by a bunch of people you don’t know. Now picture a few months into your time in your new state, a state where you are slow to trust those around you, not one, but two of your best friends are murdered less than a month apart. That’s the real world nightmare Antonio Brown faced when he arrived in Durham in the winter of 2014. A native of Jacksonville, Florida, Brown grew up in an area where, as he put it, people were trying to make a name for themselves by any means. Those means weren’t always positive. Sometimes a way out, or a way to become well known was sports. Other times, more times than not, it was through violence, earning a reputation on the streets one way or another. “It’s not a lot of stuff for us to do, period,” Brown said. “Especially not positive. Most of the kids down there see ball or rapping as their only way of getting out. At my high school not even football is a way out, so...

How I told my mom I was a stripper, and her surprising reaction. More From Lenny Letter No. 100 4 articles Aug 22, 2017 Sally Nixon Advertisement - Continue Reading Below When I first decided to strip in the grubby clubs in the Tenderloin, I lived in a tiny square room in a dilapidated Victorian apartment with three other roommates I'd met on Craigslist. My room had a legal-pad-sized window with a view of a drippy gutter. I slept on a borrowed mattress on a dusty hardwood floor . It was the 1995, pre-tech, perma-fog, home-of–Queer Nation, Food Not Bombs, underground-gay-sex-clubs, needle- exchange San Francisco . I was always moments from getting evicted. Each month, I begged the landlord for one more week, until finally I came home to a note on my door from my roommates asking me to please move out. More From Lenny Letter No. 100 4 articles I was 25 and scary-broke. I worked minimum wage at a clothing store where I sold my used T-shirts on my lunch break to buy a burrito...

One moment you’re sitting on a couch somewhere in Jakarta, listening to the soft hum of the air conditioner. The next, you’re in Saigon, making your way through a street in war- torn 1960s Vietnam . Or perhaps, watching the sun rise and fall through a small window from a prison somewhere in the French-colonized Algeria. Stories have the ability to take us to places that we have never been, to see sights that we have never seen; an access to the foreign and strange and familiar, however brief and fleeting. Ultimately, literature tells us about how people lived. It tells us about what people have cried about, what they have lost. How people wake up in the morning and make their coffee, and how the moon looks before they fall asleep. It tells us about how things fall apart, and how people fall in love. It may even remind us of emotions that we too have felt; whether it be something that we vaguely remember feeling at some time and some place, or something that comes to us with such an i...

Mountain View's rent- control program has already survived political and legal trials -- but what about the business test? An increasing number of apartment owners appear to be cashing out rather than working under the new restrictions. If the trend continues, some say it will lead to a cascade of redevelopment spearheaded by large corporate buyers . This scenario would result in older apartments being phased out and replaced with new housing that is exempt from rent control. Those looking at the data with a more critical eye point out that sales of apartment buildings are up throughout the South Bay, and that the number of buyers indicates a healthy interest in investing in Mountain View housing , regardless of rent control. To take one example, Fremont residents Ann and Paul Lethers decided in June to sell their 18-unit complex on Del Medio Avenue in Mountain View, which they created from separate purchases of two adjacent nine-unit buildings. They say they h...