At Home with Kamsah
These beautiful trays from Kamsah are great to have next to your bedside or in your living room, holding candles, mugs, or even a jade roller to help keep all of your self-care items in one place. From its founding in 2015 by two brothers from Tunisia, Kamsah’s interior design works have been inspired by the tried and tested traditions of local artisans across the globe. Their original interior design accents aim to offer peace, authenticity, and a mindfulness of global responsibility in the home or wherever the journey takes you.
The Kamsah symbol has become iconic throughout the Mediterranean and the world. They see it as a symbol of our commitment to match the handcrafted traditions of our artisans with your interior design needs. Everything is handmade by female artisans in Tunisia.
Steve Rizzo’s Book Conversations with Bob
Motivational speaker, Steve Rizzo-AKA-The Attitude Adjuster has seen it all - and now talks about it in his new book filled with laughs and wisdom! His life-changing lessons get you back into the race with an unstoppable attitude, humor, and grace. Conversations With Bob is the new book written by Steve Rizzo, a notable motivational speaker and former comedian, where the title character is portrayed as a higher being/God. He describes the book as a mission for all of us to adhere to and wants to spend the rest of his life spreading his entertaining, thought-provoking, timeless message. He devoted seven years to writing it. As a comedian, Steve had opening acts such as Drew Carey, Rosie O’Donnell, and Chris Rock. He shared the marquee with Ellen DeGeneres, Rodney Dangerfield, Eddie Murphy, and Jerry Seinfeld. Steve starred in his own Showtime comedy special, earning him honors as a Showtime Comedy All-Star. Steve is a member of the prestigious Speakers Hall of Fame—an honor bestowed on fewer than 200 speakers worldwide since 1977.
Available on Amazon
Katrina Walker
Watch out for this rising star as she continues to fascinate hearts and imaginations, leaving an indelible mark on the literary and entertainment landscape. Get ready to crack up, be inspired, and witness the magic of Katrina Walker—she's writing her own story, and it's a tale worth telling.
Which U.S. cities are like a second home to the avid golfer?
To mark National Golf Lover’s Day on Oct. 4, LawnStarter ranked 2023's Best Cities for Golfers.
We compared the 200 biggest U.S. cities based on 6 categories. More specifically, we factored in public and premium course access, course quality, golfer groups, and climate, among 25 metrics.
See the 10 birdies and 10 bogeys of golf cities below, followed by key stats from our report.
Best Cities for Golfers Rank City:
1.Scottsdale, AZ
2. Orlando, FL
3. Las Vegas, NV
4. Cincinnati, OH
5. Savannah, GA
6. Tucson, AZ
7. Los Angeles, CA
8. Birmingham, AL
9. San Francisco, CA
10. San Antonio, TX
Worst Cities for Golfers:
1.Pasadena, TX
2. Paterson, NJ
3. Bridgeport, CT
4. Warren, MI
5. Miramar, FL
6. Santa Clarita, CA
7. Anchorage, AK
8. Garden Grove, CA
9. Orange, CA
10. Lancaster, CA
Scottsdale Is King: For the second year in a row, the low round of the day goes to Scottsdale, Arizona, which ranked top 5 in 5 of 6 categories. Scottsdale blew away the competition, scoring a hole-in-one in Public Course Access, Premium Course Access, Training Access, and Course Quality. It also ranked No. 2 in Community.
The Perfect Storm: Florida-based golfers might feel they missed the fairway with only 2 Florida cities, Orlando and Tampa, appearing in our top 25. That’s a bit of an eyebrow raiser for those familiar with Florida’s reputation as the “golf capital of the world,” thanks to legend Arnold Palmer. Florida cities were dinged for their Climate scores.
The Home of Golf: At No. 2 overall, Orlando, Florida, was the only city apart from Scottsdale, Arizona, with a top-3 ranking in at least 2 categories (No. 2 in both Premium Course Access and Training Access). Orlando also ranked top 10 in Public Course Access (No. 6) and Course Quality (No. 8). Orlando really is one of the most magical places on Earth — for golfers.
Golden Statement: California and Arizona each have 5 cities in the top 25, making them the most golf-friendly states on our list. California golfers will feel they won the match, however, with a total of 9 cities in our top 50 compared with Arizona’s 6.
Biggest Movers: St. Louis was the top-25 city that jumped highest since 2022. The Gateway to Golf shot 57 spots up the leaderboard from No. 68 to No. 11 thanks to a new metric, amateur golf contests (No. 9). Sacramento was the biggest overall mover, climbing 125 spots — from No. 157 to No. 32 — after scoring an ace in Community.
Putting Golf at a Premium: The best cities on our list make top-tier golf a priority. Every city in the top 10 ranks 34th or better in Premium Course Access, with 8 ranking 15th or better. They also score highly on Course Quality, with only 3 ranked lower than 26th and 5 ranked in the top 10.
For more Golfing insight. Contact media@lawnstarter.com
Lenzing To Increase Production Of Responsible Viscose In Asia-Pacific For LENZING™ ECOVERO™ and VEOCEL™
Lenzing Group, a world-leading producer of wood-based specialty fibers, has announced plans to increase production of its high-quality responsible viscose fibers for its textile LENZING™ ECOVERO™ and nonwoven VEOCEL™ brands in Asia-Pacific. The viscose fibers, which are EU Ecolabel certified and produced in Lenzing’s Purwakarta site (PT. South Pacific Viscose) in Indonesia, will help Lenzing meet the growing demand among environmentally conscious consumers for textile and nonwoven products with a lower environmental footprint. Furthermore, Lenzing has successfully transformed its Indonesian site with reduced sulfur emissions as well as annual CO2 footprint and is expected to contribute to wastewater reduction.
“We are working tirelessly to make the industries in which we operate even more sustainable and to drive the transformation of the textile business model from a linear to circular. I am therefore very pleased that we have now received the EU Ecolabel, which once again confirms our sustainability performance. Demand for specialty fibers with low environmental impacts continues to grow structurally. We see enormous growth potential in Asia in particular. Our investments in Indonesia, as well as in other Lenzing sites around the world, put us in an even better position to meet the growing demand for specialty fibers with low environmental impact,” said Stephan Sielaff, Chief Executive Officer of the Lenzing Group.
Airbnb and Vrbo?
Which cities are best for running a short-term rental property on sites like Airbnb and Vrbo?
LawnStarter ranked 2023’s Best Cities to Own a Vacation Rental, with major changes in this year’s ranking due to the widespread “Airbnbust.”
We compared over 180 of the biggest U.S. cities based on six categories. We considered legal restrictions on short-term rentals, occupancy rates, and revenue potential. We also looked at operating expenses like housekeeping services and utilities, among 18 total metrics.
See the 10 best (and 10 worst) cities to own a vacation rental below, followed by key stats from our report.
Best Cities to Own a Vacation RentalRankCity1Durham, NC2Birmingham, AL3Milwaukee, WI4Mobile, AL5Anchorage, AK6Winston-Salem, NC7Indianapolis, IN8Rochester, NY9Mesa, AZ10Charlotte, NC
Worst Cities to Own a Vacation RentalRankCity1Huntington Beach, CA2Sunnyvale, CA3Pasadena, CA4Des Moines, IA5San Francisco, CA6Springfield, MA7Long Beach, CA8Palmdale, CA9Santa Rosa, CA10Los Angeles, CA
Key Insights:
Top 10 Takedown: This year, we added a Legality category, penalizing cities with legal restrictions on rental period, number of guests, and property type. This caused several of 2022’s top 10 cities — such as Miami (No. 27), New York (No. 118), and Las Vegas (No. 67) — to tumble in this year’s ranking.
Rental Restrictions: Cities big and small are reining in short-term rentals (STRs). 11 cities — such as Boston (No. 125), New York (No. 118), and Sunnyvale, California (No. 181) — tied at the bottom of the Legality category.
Firm But Fruitful: Boston (No. 125) boasts the highest Revenue Potential, an average of $61,445. That’s nearly $13,000 ahead of Charleston, South Carolina (No. 48), in 2nd place, at $48,713. Both Boston and Charleston enforce red tape, but South Carolina is considering a bill to prohibit local governments from regulating STRs.
Order and Inflation: Despite strict regulations and low occupancy rates, hosts can rake in the dough in Los Angeles (No. 173). LA has busted thousands of illegally operating STRs, and active hosts are taking advantage by hiking up rates. The City of Angels had the 11th-highest average daily rate over the past year at $216.
New York Nightmare: Until early September 2023, New York (No. 118) was an Airbnb empire, claiming the 3rd-highest average annual revenue — $46,406 — and the most attractions. However, a recent clampdown caused the removal of nearly 15,000 local listings from Airbnb between August and September 2023.
Risky Results: Vacation rentals in Nashville, Tennessee (No. 68), lead with the highest average daily rate, $260, followed by Austin (No. 77) and Washington (No. 163). However, all three cities struggle with costly Initial Investments, legal limitations, and occupancy rates below 42%, the average across the cities we ranked.
Safer Stakes in the Suburbs: Hialeah, Florida (No. 84), and Roseville, California (No. 104), tied for the highest occupancy rate, 79%, over the past 12 months. However, hosts in these cities charged lower daily rates on average, likely due to lack of Entertainment Options. Corpus Christi, Texas (No. 169), had the lowest occupancy rate in our ranking at 10%.
Best-selling author Christal Jordan says the holiday dedicated to sisterly affection was the perfect release date for her highly anticipated new book Dear Alpha Female: It’s Not Him, It’s You!
The book is an interactive guide that takes 21st century single women on a journey to self-appreciation by coaching them through the roles they play in their love lives. Jordan describes the book as a “love letter wrapped in accountability” and shares much of her personal testimony as a career woman who identifies with the “alpha female” and struggled with finding and maintaining a romantic relationship despite achieving success in other areas of her life.
"Love can’t exist without accountability, and at some points in my life I needed to be held accountable in areas where I was struggling," she shares. A celebrity publicist by trade, Jordan says at the times her business was being touted as one of the premiere PR agencies in the southeast, she was secretly dealing with anxiety and high functioning depression. While her areas of weakness did not show up in her ability to serve clients and lead a staff of five, it did affect her dating life. After going through a painful divorce, Jordan was single for a little over a decade before a girlfriend told her she needed to get help.
That help included being a guest on "Iyanla: Fix My Life," where she was held accountable for her contribution to her singleness. “Ms. Vanzant immediately cut through my exterior and spoke to that little girl inside me that believed she needed to 'over-achieve’ to prove her worth. I’d never loved myself unconditionally; I told myself I had to perform at a certain level or else.”
After her encounter with Iyanla Vanzant, Jordan went back to therapy and ended up getting married a year and a half later.
Today, Jordan says she cringes hearing women boast and brag about their accomplishments, suggesting their financial and or career success make them a “perfect catch."
“So many of us have bought into the idea that money, accolades or materialistic things make us worthy of love and then are disappointed and ultimately bitter when those achievements don’t reward us with a loving relationship. The truth is, we have to love ourselves differently, finding value in just being our authentic selves. When we are unbalanced, we don’t leave an open space for real love.” Jordan hopes Dear Alpha Female will serve as a cautionary epiphany to ambitious women everywhere. In this thought-provoking devotional, readers will be confronted with questions (Will your life end if you never get married? Are you considered a failure if you don’t have children?) that encourage them to take inventory of their values and do away with toxic beliefs that may be holding them back from attracting the love they desire. "I wrote this book because I truly believe I am not my sister’s keeper, I am my sister,” says Jordan, who remarried last year after spending over a decade as a divorced, single working mom. “It’s time to allow those over-achieving little girls inside of us to relax. We have to let her know she’s carried us this far, but it’s time for her to exhale. It’s time for her to let go of her fear. It’s time for her to be loved unconditionally. It’s time for her to grow.”
TLC’s Chilli, a close friend and client of Jordan’s provides the foreword for the book. Dear Alpha Female: It's Not, Him It's You! is now available on Amazon.com, at Walmart, Barnes & Noble booksellers and dearalphafemale.com.
Christal Jordan: Dear Alpha Female It’s not Him, It’s You
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Exquisite Ceramic Designs by Murjoni Merriweather
Sculptor Murjoni Merriweather intends on normalizing the beauty of Blackness. The Maryland native glorifies to richness and culture of natural African culture through her clay sculptures. Each creation eliminates stereotypes, yet embraces the dedicand and magnificent structures of features that are highly replicated by others but mocked by it’s origin. Take a look at her astonishing designs.
The world of Whitfield Lovell: Passages
New York-The first stop on the national tour of the landmark exhibition Whitfield Lovell: Passages is in South Florida at the Boca Raton Museum of Art (on view February 15 – May 21), and the tour will continue across six states throughout the American South and the Midwest.
This is the largest exhibition ever presented of Lovell’s work that focuses on lost African American history, and raises universal questions about America’s collective heritage.
Organized by the American Federation of Arts (AFA) in collaboration with the artist, the exhibition is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Terra Foundation for American Art, and encompasses the entire first floor galleries of the Boca Raton Museum of Art (more than 7,500 square feet).
This is the first time these multi-sensory installations by Lovell are presented together in a museum-wide show of this monumental size and scope.
“I see the so-called ‘anonymous’ people in these vintage photographs as being stand-ins for the ancestors I will never know,” says Whitfield Lovell.
“I see history as being very much alive. One day, 100 years from now, people will be talking about us as history. The way I think about time is very different – I don't think it really was very long ago that these things happened, it wasn’t that long ago that my grandmother’s grandmother was a slave,” adds Lovell. “The ancient Native American principles say it takes seven generations to overcome a tragedy, so in this context of generations we can begin to grasp why we are at this point we are living in now."
“These installations create a profound immersive experience that enables visitors to become participants in, not just observers of, the experience of these ancestors who were lost to time,” says Pauline Forlenza, the Director and CEO of American Federation of Arts.
“Together, these works convey passages between bondage, freedom, and socioeconomic independence, promoting a deeper connection with African American histories through art. An exhibition of this magnitude would not be possible without the support of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the six museums selected for this tour,” adds Forlenza.
“This is a milestone exhibition, and the Boca Raton Museum of Art is honored to be chosen as the first venue to premiere this national museum tour,” says Irvin Lippman, the Executive Director of the Boca Raton Museum of Art.
“In our modern-day world, so feverishly focused on ever-decreasing attention spans, the depth of presence we experience when walking through Lovell's immersive art reminds us that remembering the past is something that matters,” adds Irvin Lippman.
Lovell is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Genius Grant, and is recognized as one of the world’s leading artistic interpreters of lost African American history.
Major National Tour Kicks Off in South Florida at the Boca Raton Museum of Art February 15 through May 21
Deep River, 2013 - 56 wood discs, found objects, soil, video projections and sound. Size variable. 16 1/2 x 50 x 50 ft. (2,500 sq. ft.) © Whitfield Lovell. Courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York, and American Federation of Arts.
“Focuses on lost African American history, raising universal questions on America’s collective heritage" . . . "A landmark national tour by the American Federation of Arts" . . .
“Whitfield Lovell is a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Genius Grant honoree and one of the world’s leading artistic interpreters of lost African American history” . . .
“Reminding us that remembering the past is something that matters: it reverberates in our present” . . .