Homebuyers See Record Discounts In October: Report

Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/26/2025 – 07:20

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/homebuyers-see-record-discounts-october-report 

This holiday season, will you shop at one of the 33.2 million small businesses that make up 99% of all businesses in the U.S?

Up and down rural main streets in rural America, shopkeepers are readying their stores for the season. Business owners are stocking special gifts and rolls of wrapping paper to provide added value when you spend your money with a local retailer.

Independently owned businesses are what keep our rural communities thriving. They rely on our patronage during the crucial holiday season as well as year-round.

This year, more than ever, small businesses need our support. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Small Business Index, 79% of independent business owners say this upcoming holiday season is important for their overall profit this year, up from 70% last year.

When you shop local, you support your community by paying sales tax. You are also helping out a small business owner who in turn might sponsor a school activity or host a community event, showing just how important main street businesses are as part of our life in rural America.

Shopping local is good for consumers as well. During this holiday season, more than half of small businesses, 56%, say they are planning to offer seasonal discounts and 48% say they will extend regular business hours (up from 39% last year).

On average, shoppers plan to do 41% of their holiday shopping at small businesses, increased 5% from last year. I am one of these shoppers. Are you?

Small Business Saturday is on Nov. 29—a nationally recognized day to show your appreciation for local retailers. During this holiday season, and year round, #ShopSmall. Support your community, your friends, and your way of life.

When local businesses succeed, we all win.

Established in 1973, the Center for Rural Affairs is a private, nonprofit organization working to strengthen small businesses, family farms and ranches, and rural communities through action oriented programs addressing social, economic, and environmental issues.

Rhea Landholm

Communications Manager, Center for Rural Affairs

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/26/letters-to-the-editor-shop-small-businesses-this-holiday-season/ 

Associated Press

DACA, Bangladesh (AP) — Un devastador incendio en una abarrotada barriada en el corazón de la capital de Bangladesh ha destruido 1.500 chozas, dejando a miles de personas sin hogar, informaron las autoridades el miércoles.

No se han reportado víctimas.

El incendio, que comenzó el martes por la noche en el enorme asentamiento irregular de Korail en Daca, fue sofocado el miércoles después de 16 horas, dijo Rashed Bin Khalid, un funcionario de guardia del Departamento de Servicio de Bomberos y Defensa Civil.

El director del servicio de bomberos, el teniente coronel Mohammad Tajul Islam Chowdhury, afirmó que alrededor de 1.500 viviendas precarias fueron quemadas o dañadas en el incendio y miles de personas quedaron sin hogar.

Según datos oficiales, alrededor de 60.000 familias, muchas de ellas refugiados climáticos, viven en una barriada que abarca más de 65 hectáreas (160 acres). El asentamiento se extiende por los exclusivos vecindarios de Gulshan y Banani en Daca, y está rodeado de grupos de edificios de apartamentos y oficinas de gran altura.

Una densa humareda cubrió el área mientras las llamas envolvían las viviendas durante la noche.

Residentes que perdieron sus hogares buscaban el miércoles entre los escombros, desesperados por recuperar sus pertenencias.

Los bomberos dijeron que los estrechos callejones les complicaron el acceso al fuego.

Daca, una ciudad de 10,2 millones de habitantes en 2024, tiene cientos de barrios irregulares a los que migran personas de las zonas rurales de Bangladesh debido a la pobreza y la explotación. Los desastres inducidos por el clima también los empujan a los barrios improvisados de la ciudad, donde viven de trabajos informales como conducir rickshaws y trabajar como empleadas domésticas y limpiadores.

___

Esta historia fue traducida del inglés por un editor de AP con la ayuda de una herramienta de inteligencia artificial generativa.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/26/un-incendio-devastador-destruye-una-barriada-y-deja-a-miles-sin-hogar-en-la-capital-de-bangladesh/ 

Kenny Beecham still remembers the exact day he fell in love with the Chicago Bulls.

April 15, 2003.

To set the scene: It’s the last game of the regular season. The Bulls are playing host to the Philadelphia 76ers, who are about to attempt another run to the NBA Finals. Allen Iverson is defending his title as, perhaps, the coolest hooper on the planet after winning MVP the year before. The Bulls, in comparison, dropped out of playoff contention weeks earlier.

Enter a young Jamal Crawford.

In his second year as a Bull, Crawford carried himself with an unburdened swagger that captivated a 7-year-old Beecham at home in his living room on the West Side. That carefree aggression was on full display midway through the second quarter, when Crawford swung the ball behind his back — first with the right hand, then with the left — to shake off his defender.

At the time, Beecham — and the rest of the NBA fans — had no idea this “shake-and-bake” move would come to define Crawford’s 20-year career. In April 2003, Beecham simply thought it was the coolest thing he had ever seen.

The Bulls won 115-106. They also won the lifelong fandom of Beecham, who learned through the course of the game how basketball can, at its best, transform into something akin to religion.

Two decades later, Beecham is a familiar face in the NBA. His podcasts “Numbers on the Board” and “Small Ball with Kenny Beecham” command the viewership of hundreds of thousands of NBA fans. At the start of the season, NBC announced a partnership with Beecham’s entertainment company, Enjoy Basketball, to platform three podcasts as part of the network’s return to NBA rights ownership.

Kenny Beecham poses for a portrait on the set of “Small Ball with Kenny Beecham” at Enjoy Basketball in Oak Brook on Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (Talia Sprague/for the Chicago Tribune)

And two decades after that game, Beecham found himself sitting across from Crawford during media day for NBC, waiting to ask the retired star everything about that game that he wanted to know as a 7-year-old. Crawford greeted the questions eagerly, letting Beecham in on a little-known anecdote — he took the ball home from the United Center that night, slept with it tucked to his chest.

Beecham represents a new type of success story in sports media — an independent content creator who built a platform through video content. But in that moment, he was just a kid from Chicago, reliving the first night of his life as a Bulls fan.

“A lot of people, when they get to the point where they’re covering the sport nationally, they lose their fandom,” Beecham told the Tribune. “But it’s important to me to do that. I buy completely into my fandom. It’s part of my identity as a creator to always follow the Bulls regardless of the talent that’s on the court.

“And it is one thing that I will make sure that I’ll never end up losing because, before I was a creator, I was a Bulls fan.”

Beecham made his first YouTube video when he was 13 after asking his dad for a Dazzle video recorder to capture game-play footage off his XBox 360. At the time, his only aspiration was to create YouTube videos for fun — but that quickly expanded as Beecham became comfortable with the medium and drew a larger viewership.

In 2017, the YouTube “Ad Apocalypse” shifted the landscape of streaming, forcing many creators away from the platform. At the time, Beecham decided to diversify by creating more sit-down analysis content and starting a podcast, “Numbers on the Board.”

Beecham didn’t want to start a podcast with other content creators. Instead, he pitched the concept to a group chat of friends from high school who already spent every day dissecting NBA games. Eight years later, “Numbers on the Board” draws 178,000 subscribers on YouTube and is a centerpiece property of the deal with NBC.

“We were all learning on the fly,” Beecham said. “I went from being on-camera talent to being the producer to being the guy that was creating the run of shows and buying all the equipment to at this point now being with NBC. I feel like I’ve lived through so many different setups since I was 13 to get to this point now, and I feel like every single one of them has been really important.”

Pierre Andresen and Darrick Miller, top, from left, and Kenny Beecham and Michael Heard, bottom, from left, pose for a portrait after filming an episode of “Numbers on the Board” at Enjoy Basketball in Oak Brook on Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (Talia Sprague/for the Chicago Tribune)

NBC’s offer to fold Enjoy Basketball into its larger portfolio of NBA content reflects a shift across the sports media landscape to diversify offerings of nongame content.

Leagues are attempting to lower the average age of their viewers, but younger generations don’t consume content through traditional platforms such as cable TV. Both the NFL and NBA have adjusted their approach in recent seasons to address this reality, hiring Twitch streamers and YouTube creators to bridge the gap in their content portfolio.

“It’s really, really huge to try to convince the younger demographic that watching basketball games is worth it,” Beecham said. “That is a message that I’ve preached for years. We could all watch highlights — and there’s value in highlights — but there’s nothing better than sitting down and watching a full game.”

Beecham credits his loyal Bulls fandom for helping him better analyze the good and — too often for his taste — bad of the NBA. During down seasons, Beecham didn’t turn away from the Bulls. Instead, he spent his time trying to ask and answer big-picture questions: Is Kris Dunn a real NBA player? Will Lauri Markkanen be worth a No. 7 pick? Is Wendell Carter Jr. poised to be an NBA center when he’s undersized?

To find a foothold in the NBA space, Beecham learned there are levels to fandom — especially in a league in which teams play 82 games a season.

Some fans want to catch a game or two every week. Others spend their evenings with NBA League Pass in multiview mode, scrolling through sites such as Cleaning The Glass to devour analytics in real time. Many exist in the space in between. And Beecham believes no version of fandom is worth more than another.

“In order to be relatively successful in this space, you can’t shoo off either side,” he said. “You can’t be strictly analytical. You can’t just rely on, ‘Hey, that brother can ball.’ You have to find some middle ground.”

Beecham hopes the partnership with NBC is just the beginning of a new chapter in his career.

The NBA and its media rights partners continue to devote increased resources toward content creator affiliations. And Beecham is open to any opportunity to talk about basketball at the highest level — even if that means hopping on the desk one day.

“Look, if somebody were to call in sick, I’m one small flight away from Connecticut to get there,” he joked.

But for now, Beecham is savoring the current opportunity — using his heightened platform to show fans new and old how to love basketball a little more.

“It’s been a long time coming,” he said. “And it feels right.”

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/26/kenny-beecham-chicago-bulls-nba-podcasts/ 

For as long as the Chicago Bears have been piecing things together on the offensive line, this season’s transformation from one of the worst units in the NFL to one of the best has happened with remarkable quickness and little fanfare.

Directing the unit behind the scenes is 65-year-old Dan Roushar, who was about a month into retirement when the opportunity came along. He’s an old-school coach with a knack for reaching Gen Z, and while he’s not particularly interested in sharing his story, it’s quite a tale of commitment to the craft for a guy from Clinton, Iowa, who grew up a Bears fan and played quarterback at Northern Illinois.

How big of an issue did Roushar inherit when he was hired Feb. 3? The offensive line was the topic of the fifth question Bears coach Ben Johnson received at his introductory news conference. As the hot-shot coordinator of the high-flying Detroit Lions offense, how are you going to fix a mess that contributed to Caleb Williams being sacked a league-high 68 times?

Johnson expressed confidence in crafting a plan with general manager Ryan Poles. Less than two weeks later, that led to hiring Roushar — who had not worked with Johnson previously — to lead the way.

When Johnson called Roushar, he had recently retired after a two-year stint as Tulane’s offensive line coach. The pull back into the business was too much to resist for Roushar, who initially transitioned into a student assistant role at NIU under Bill Mallory in 1983 and continued in that role the next year under Lee Corso.

He had tried the retirement thing — briefly — after then-New Orleans Saints coach Dennis Allen fired him following the 2022 season.

“I was power washing my deck for the third time in two weeks, and my wife (Patti) looked at me and she said, ‘I don’t know what you’re going to do, but you’re going to do something else,’” Roushar said.

So he said yes to Green Wave coach Willie Fritz in 2023 and stuck around the next season when Jon Sumrall took over, with the understanding it would be a one-year deal and he could help groom a younger coach to take over the O-line.

When Tulane’s season ended with the Gasparilla Bowl last Dec. 20, Roushar figured it had been a heck of a 41-year run, one that included a decade with the Saints, two stints each at Illinois and NIU and five other college stops.

Five weeks later — out of the blue — Johnson called with a question: Is this something you are interested in?

“As I said to my wife, ‘We could be traveling and doing these wonderful things,’” Roushar said. “And she said, ‘We wouldn’t be doing any of that.’

“Coach (Johnson) reached out to me, and this story unraveled.”

It’s unusual, to say the least, that a former quarterback who also dabbled as a wide receiver would wind up as an offensive line coach. It’s a career path Roushar never would have imagined and just sort of fell into.

Corso was deliberate in assembling his NIU staff. Roushar was eager to do anything he could to fit in, so the Huskies had him head out on the road recruiting as they added assistants. When he returned, Dave Magazu — later a Bears offensive line coach under John Fox — and Lawrence Cooley had been hired to run the O-line. Corso didn’t have a tight ends coach, so he allowed Roushar to work with that position.

“At that moment, I was starting to be exposed to real offensive line play,” Roushar said. “I started to see the game differently.”

When NIU offensive coordinator Bill Lynch took the head coaching job at Butler in 1986, he brought Roushar with him as an assistant. He eventually became the offensive line coach and offensive coordinator.

At that point, Roushar immersed himself in learning the nuances of the position, traveling whenever possible to clinics and taking opportunities to visit staffs at higher levels, including a trip to see the Bears when Tony Wise was the line coach under Dave Wannstedt. During his second stint at NIU, he befriended Harry Hiestand at Illinois.

Bears offensive line coach Dan Roushar watches as players warm up for a game against the Vikings on Nov. 16, 2025, at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)

“People were so kind to share,” Roushar said. “Others had given me thoughts about how to do things, and at the end of the day, you watch your guys play and you’re like, ‘Maybe those words don’t exactly fit what we’re looking for.’ And then you kind of evolve.”

Along the way, he was a coordinator and coached linemen, quarterbacks, tight ends and running backs. Through time on task, he built an understanding of how all the pieces fit together.

“That can be beneficial,” said Hiestand, who worked with Roushar at Illinois under Ron Turner, “knowing what’s hard for the running backs or the quarterback or tight ends and trying to balance the decisions you make weekly: What are we going to run and who is going to put stress on and who can handle it?

“Dan’s approach has been simple his whole life. And I know from the day he took the job, he was on a mission to handle three things: help the Bears win, have the best possible unit and bring out the best in each guy. When you think of things in that order as a coach and the players know it, it’s inspiring.

“Everybody knows this isn’t about what’s best for their career or for how much money they’re going to make. When you actually care about doing everything you can in those three areas and in that order, you’re going to have success. That’s who Dan is.”

The line coach was a critical hire for Johnson, who couldn’t bring the Lions’ Hank Fraley with him. In addition to Roushar, the Bears brought in Penn State’s Phil Trautwein and Ohio State’s Justin Frye (who wound up being hired by the Arizona Cardinals) for interviews.

It was a pivotal decision for Johnson, too, with his offense rooted in a powerful running game. Coming from the Lions, who were blessed with an elite O-line, Johnson knew it was a hire he had to get right.

“When I listened to some of these other coaches — who I think are outstanding and they’re going to be really good coaches for a long time — I knew that there was going to be a learning curve,” Johnson said. “When Dan got up there, it was like we were speaking the same language, which for a first-time head coach not sure necessarily of all the issues that I was going to run into, I thought that was going to be a big deal.”

Offensive coordinator Declan Doyle, who was a young assistant in New Orleans with Roushar, supported the hire, as did Allen, whom Johnson had hired as his defensive coordinator. Lions coach Dan Campbell, who also had been with the Saints, added a stamp of approval.

“I’ve always thought he was an outstanding offensive line coach,” Allen said. “In New Orleans, there are a lot of other circumstances that went around (his firing). It had nothing to do with the coach, the person. I said I would hire him in a heartbeat.”

Bears right tackle Darnell Wright (58), right guard Jonah Jackson (73), center Drew Dalman (52) and left guard Joe Thuney (62) break from a huddle with quarterback Caleb Williams in the second quarter against the Bengals on Nov. 2, 2025, in Cincinnati. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)

Next, Poles revamped the interior, trading for guards Joe Thuney and Jonah Jackson and signing center Drew Dalman in free agency. The left tackle situation everyone wondered about wasn’t addressed, and on the outside, there was concern it would be the downfall of the offense.

Roushar stayed the course, expressing optimism as the Bears started training camp with a three-man competition for the job that expanded to four when Theo Benedet emerged in late August.

The results, entering Friday’s game in Philadelphia, are impressive. The Bears are second in the league in rushing with 142.3 yards per game. They ranked 25th last season.

Williams has been sacked 17 times, and the 4.64% sack percentage is sixth-best. The Bears were 32nd — by a wide margin — at 12.01% in 2024. Last week the Pittsburgh Steelers, who entered third in the NFL in sacks, registered one quarterback hit.

Accountability was a big buzzword around the Bears during the offseason, and Roushar embodies that by being a plain talker. Ask him a direct question and you’ll get an equally direct reply.

In training camp, he noted that right tackle Darnell Wright was inconsistent and had “just not been able to stack it play after play after play.” That’s something the previous coaching staff encountered.

Suffice to say, Roushar has gotten through to the former first-round pick, unlocking a level of play the Bears imagined when they bypassed defensive tackle Jalen Carter in the 2023 draft, traded down one spot with the Eagles and selected Wright. He has been a consistent and dominant force while playing with a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow.

As one team source noted, Wright recently bounced out of the players lounge with his tablet in hand. He was excited to get to a review of a walk-through.

Assessing Benedet earlier this month, Roushar said: “It’s not consistent enough. It’s not effective enough for us to do the things we want to do at a high level. But he’s working at it.”

That’s the kind of real talk you don’t often hear from position coaches. Many prefer to tiptoe around hard questions. Roushar takes them head on and answers with no spin or agenda.

“He’s straight,” Jackson said. “And I think it’s great. Guys know where they stand and you know how you’ve got to go about certain things. This is a business. This is a performance-based thing, and he’s going to let you know how it’s going.”

Bears offensive line coach Dan Roushar stands among players during the national anthem before a game against the Vikings on Nov. 16, 2025, at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)

Roushar is intensely detailed in the meeting room. If a lineman’s head isn’t aligned properly on a play, it will be pointed out even if the running back went through the hole for 10 yards.

“Dan is one of the rare coaches where the result of the play does not trump what happened, meaning if you did it the right way,” said Hiestand, who sat in on meetings during a training camp practice. “The standard is the standard on every play for every player.”

There’s another person in the building who appreciates Roushar’s candid nature.

“He’s been such a good fit for me personally, too, because I am naturally pretty critical,” Johnson said. “I like to say what we can do better on a regular basis. Well, he might be to another degree. And so when we’re watching the tape together and he beats me to the punch on a lot of this stuff, I’m not as negative. I’m like, ‘Man, it makes me feel good.’

“So I’m trying to, like, lift the room up. It makes me a better coach. I can’t say enough about the work he has done with those guys.”

In light moments with the group, players will tease Roushar about getting his Medicare enrollment straight. A new group that has come together quickly has become a family.

“He cares so much,” Thuney said. “And you feel it every day. He just cares about the O-line, the team and pours his heart and soul into it.”

Maybe Roushar can find time during the offseason to make sure the deck is spotless. Who knows, perhaps there will be an opportunity for one of those trips he mentioned to his wife. For him, the chance to work for the Bears was better than retirement.

That’s how a former NIU quarterback, over the decades, turned into a regarded coach in the trenches of the NFL.

“Through, I guess, trial and error, you end up doing it,” Roushar said.

Scouting report

Eagles linebacker Nakobe Dean reacts to tackling Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott on Nov. 23, 2025, in Arlington, Texas. (Stacy Revere/Getty Images)

Nakobe Dean, Eagles inside linebacker

Information for this report was obtained from NFL scouts.

Nakobe Dean, 5-foot-11, 231 pounds, is in his fourth season with the Eagles after they drafted him in the third round in 2022 out of Georgia. Dean has a sack in three consecutive games, only the fourth Philadelphia linebacker to do so since it became an official statistic in 1982.

Dean got a late start to the season after tearing the patellar tendon in his left knee in the playoffs in January. But he has been a playmaker in Vic Fangio’s defense and had 128 tackles last season.

“For him to come back as quickly as he did and be playing a prominent role in that defense, with the depth they have at the position, says a lot about him as an athlete and his commitment to the recovery,” the scout said. “His play speed looks good. That’s the first thing you look at with a player coming back from that kind of injury, and he looks good to me. He is a guy that can get tackle to tackle as a run defender and he’s got great pursuit speed. Very instinctual player who can key and diagnose quickly.

“Dean always takes clean angles to the football and he’s a violent wrap-up tackler. The best thing about him right now in Vic’s defense is they’re using him as a blitzer, and I’d expect that against Caleb Williams. He can get small to sneak through creases of daylight or he’ll put his head down and drop the hammer on running backs in protection. Physical, violent player that fits the profile of a Kirby Smart player from Georgia. That’s what you expect. He fell to Round 3 because of measurables. Short arms. But he’s a ballplayer.”

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/26/chicago-bears-dan-roushar-offensive-line/ 

Everson Pereira and Yoendrys Gómez were teammates while working their way through the New York Yankees farm system.

Pereira reached the majors in August 2023 and was in left field when Gómez made his big-league debut as a reliever on Sept. 28, 2023, against the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre.

The two were linked again Nov. 18 when the Chicago White Sox sent Gómez and reliever Steven Wilson to the Tampa Bay Rays to acquire Pereira and infielder Tanner Murray.

Pereira admitted it was “a little bit” weird being traded for someone he knows, learning about the deal between games of a doubleheader in the Venezuelan Winter League.

“Everything happens for a reason, and I think this is a good opportunity for me,” Pereira said last week through an interpreter.

Pereira and Murray joined the organization the same day the Sox acquired reliever Chris Murphy in a separate trade from the Boston Red Sox and added right-handed pitchers Tanner McDougal and Duncan Davitt to the 40-man roster.

McDougal, the No. 7 prospect in the Sox system according to MLB.com, had a combined 28 starts for High-A Winston-Salem and Double-A Birmingham in 2025. But his mindset is on any role ahead.

“At this point I’m just trying to do anything I can to help the big-league team out,” McDougal said last week. “Whether that’s out of the bullpen, whether that’s as a starter, whatever they need, I’m willing to do.”

Here are three more takeaways from recent video conferences with Pereira and McDougal.

1. Pereira aims to ‘slow down the game.’

The Yankees traded Pereira to the Rays on July 31. The outfielder doubled in his first at-bat for Tampa Bay on Aug. 11 against the Athletics. He had two hits in the game, matching a career high.

In 23 games for the Rays, Pereira went 9-for-65 (.138) with two home runs and eight RBIs. He’s 23-for-158 (.146) with five doubles, two homers and 18 RBIs in 50 career major-league games with the Yankees (2023) and Rays (2025).

His goal going ahead is to “slow down the game.”

“The opportunities that I’ve had in the majors, I haven’t been able to really take full advantage of those because I’ve been trying to do too much, just because I really want to show the kind of player I can be, who I am,” Pereira said. “Those cases, I think, that has been playing against my performance. Now I know I just need to really control what I can do.”

Pereira — who has 87 homers and 289 RBIs in 409 games over seven minor-league seasons — is one of five outfielders on the Sox 40-man roster, joining Luis Robert Jr., Andrew Benintendi, Brooks Baldwin and Derek Hill. The club nontendered right fielder Mike Tauchman on Friday.

2. McDougal embraces a challenge.

McDougal has stepped up in some major minor-league moments.

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The right-hander went 1-0 with a 3.00 ERA in two postseason starts for Low-A Kannapolis in 2024. And in the 2025 postseason, he allowed one hit in seven scoreless innings during two starts for Birmingham.

McDougal struck out 11 and did not surrender a walk while helping the Barons to the Southern League title.

“I’ve always been an adrenaline guy,” he said. “Since I was little, I love roller coasters and stuff like that. It’s weird just because you don’t realize how much the adrenaline really does play into those types of games and those situations.

“But when things are heightened and everybody’s putting it on the line, I just feel like it brings the best out of me for whatever reason. I really enjoy pitching in the playoffs, high-leverage situations.”

McDougal finished strong, going a combined 3-5 with a 3.26 ERA and 136 strikeouts for the Dash and Barons in 2025.

“Everything that I set out to do I accomplished,” he said.

3. Both players are working on the next step.

McDougal, 22, wanted to “get back to throwing strikes and getting outs” in 2025.

His ERA went from 6.04 in 22 starts between Winston-Salem and Kannapolis in 2024 to 3.26 for Winston-Salem and Birmingham in 2025. His strikeout total increased from 116 to 136 while his walks decreased from 58 to 49 in 21 more innings (92 1/3 to 113 1/3).

McDougal’s offseason includes working with Cressey Sports Performance in Florida.

“We have a great plan in place to hopefully push the limits here again this year and hopefully make a difference on the big-league side at some point this year,” McDougal said.

Pereira, 24, has been active in winter ball. Through 18 games for Cardenales de Lara, he had a .269 average with two home runs and nine RBIs. Pereira is concentrating on consistently making contact.

“I need to really make that (offensive) adjustment I need in order to produce at the level that I know I can do it in the major leagues,” he said.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/26/chicago-white-sox-takeaways-everson-pereira-tanner-mcdougal/ 

Trump’s Approval Rating Has Not Changed Among Republicans

Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/26/2025 – 06:55

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trumps-approval-rating-has-not-changed-among-republicans 

There are only a handful of people alive today who participated in the formation of modern gospel music in Chicago during the 1930s and 1940s. Fewer still worked directly with the genre’s founding mothers and fathers in those early days. Perhaps only one of them can claim to have also taught Aretha Franklin a hymn that became her first commercial single as a soloist.

Floriene Watson Willis is the one.

Turning 99 on Dec. 6, she never became a major star, but she nevertheless held a prominent position in the sanctuary as gospel music formed and flourished in Chicago some 90 years ago. “I wasn’t too worried about being popular,” she said during a recent video interview from her current home in Lakewood, Washington. “I just sang to the glory of God because it was down in me to sing God’s praises, and that’s what I did.”

Floriene O. Watson was born in 1926 in Chicago, the eighth of 10 children to Amos and Laura Watson, migrants from South Carolina. The family lived at 430 East 42nd Street. Floriene attended Wendell Phillips High School, where she played tuba in the school band. “A medium-sized tuba, not the big tuba,” she laughed.

It wasn’t surprising that she was in the band. The Watson Family had a particular passion for music. Amos, the patriarch, sang. Floriene’s sister Loretta played drums. Another sister, Sylvia Hoston, parlayed her piano proclivities into an accompanist position at Rev. Elijah Thurston’s Forty-Fourth Street Baptist Church (now New Covenant Missionary Baptist Church). “Sylvia could really play the piano,” Floriene said. “She had a style all of her own.”

There was even a family singing group. The Watson Family Singers consisted of Floriene, Loretta, Alice, Vivian, Romance, Irvin, and Sylvia, who accompanied on piano. According to Floriene, the family cut a record, “Jesus Gave Me Water,” sometime in the 1950s, “for a small-class label.”

The Watsons were steadfast members of All Nations Pentecostal Church, founded on the South Side on New Year’s Day 1918 by Elder Lucy Smith, one of the city’s first Black female pastors. Smith was also among the first Black ministers to harness the power of radio to spread their ministries to people who might never enter their churches. Floriene played an integral part in the weekly broadcast, called “The Glorious Church of the Air.” “When we would broadcast over the radio,” she said, “I would sing ‘Just Tell Jesus, Tell Him All,’ before the prayer.”

Radio exposure not only gained fans for Floriene, it also led to a marriage proposal. Upon hearing her sing over the All Nations broadcast, Emeal Willis, a World War II veteran who arrived in Chicago from Louisiana, couldn’t wait to meet the woman with the beautiful voice. The two married and had 11 children.

Floriene Watson Willis also sang with the Smith Trio, a gospel singing group organized by Elder Smith’s granddaughter, vocalist and pianist “Little Lucy” Smith. Besides Smith and Watson, the group included alto Gladys Beamon Gregory. The three sang on the All Nations radio broadcasts and on multi-artist gospel programs sponsored by area churches like Antioch Baptist, Tabernacle Baptist, and Metropolitan Community Church. “The Smith Trio was pretty popular,” Floriene remarked. “We were good!”

Over time, Floriene penned two gospel songs, “Hold on and Say Yes to the Lord” and “It’s Been a Long Tedious Journey.”

In a 2009 interview, Floriene’s brother Romance Watson (who died in 2022) recalled that in their youth, he and his sisters, including Willis, had the chance to sing with Sallie Martin and Thomas A. Dorsey, the celebrated Mother and Father of Gospel Music. “(Martin) would be teaching us various songs,” Romance recalled, “and before you know it, (Dorsey would) sneak up behind us with his accordion and scare the devil out of us! But (Elder Smith) put a stop to it. She told my parents that these children don’t need to be out there singing with these other folk, they need to be in their own church, and up here in the choir.” The Watsons dutifully complied.

As a member of the Smith Trio, Floriene began to rub shoulders with other leading lights of early gospel. She and the ladies appeared regularly on mid-1940s gospel programs featuring nationally-recognized artists like Mahalia Jackson and another Chicago-based female group, the Gay Sisters. The Smith Trio shared programs with the Roberta Martin Singers, a mixed-voice gospel ensemble formed in Chicago by singer, songwriter, and music publisher Roberta Martin. From time to time, the Smith Trio would travel as far as New York with the Martin Singers.

By 1948, Floriene departed the Smith Trio. “When I started having children, I couldn’t travel like I wanted to,” she said. Taking Floriene’s place was Catherine Campbell, another All Nations member. With the later addition of Sarah McKissick, the four women rebranded themselves as the “Little” Lucy Smith Singers and made a series of recordings in the mid-1950s for the local States Records.

Although she left the Smith Trio, Floriene remained active in the All Nations music ministry. At some point, probably in the early 1950s, All Nations invited the Rev. C. L. Franklin and his daughter Aretha to participate in their worship service. In her memoir, Aretha recalled learning the hymn “Never Grow Old” from the singing of Billy Kyles, a member of the Maceo Woods Singers, who recorded the song. Willis recalled it differently. She said she taught the young Aretha to sing the hymn, written by James C. Moore in 1914, as “Where We’ll Never Grow Old.” Regardless of how Aretha learned it, “Never Grow Old” became one of her signature gospel songs and the A-side of her first single, a 1956 release on Detroit’s J-V-B label. The Queen of Soul reprised the song on her highly successful 1972 gospel double album, “Amazing Grace.”

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Romance Watson pursued his own gospel music career. The silky-voiced baritone auditioned successfully for a spot in the Roberta Martin Singers and cut his first recorded sides with them in January 1957. In 1959, he followed Sam Cooke’s lead and tried his hand at an R&B singing career. After recording some love songs for Coral Records, Romance returned to gospel.

Meanwhile, Floriene, inspired by Little Lucy’s keyboard talent, taught herself to play piano. She became sufficiently skilled that the Rev. Clay Evans of Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church invited her to join his music ministry. Despite the potential to be part of a much-admired music program, Floriene declined. “You know how they were back in that day,” she said, “by me being Holiness and him being Baptist, I didn’t play for him.” She added, “I sure regret it.”

Perhaps it was for the best. In 1962, Emeal Willis found more promising employment on the West Coast and moved the family to Redwood City, California. Floriene maintained her musical chops by playing piano at Elder O’Neal’s Little Flock Church of God in Christ until Emeal joined the ministry and became assistant pastor of Grace Temple Church of God in Christ. She and her musical talents followed Emeal when he founded his own church, Pioneer Pentecostal Church of God in Christ.

After Emeal died in 1996, Floriene remained in Redwood City until four years ago, when she relocated to Lakewood, Washington, to be closer to family. She attends New Jerusalem Church of God in Christ in nearby Tacoma. “My life has been beautiful,” she said. “I’ve been saved all of my life. Never smoke, never drank. I live for the Lord. I love serving the Lord.”

Robert Marovich is a freelance writer and is the founder and editor of the Journal of Gospel Music.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/26/gospel-music-pioneer-chicago/ 

Retirement Deadlines You Can’t Miss By December 31

Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/26/2025 – 06:30

https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/retirement-deadlines-you-cant-miss-december-31