by Gary Dauphin

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Photo courtesy the Museum of Television and Radio and the CBC.

Periodically, News & Views will be providing updates and addendums tying stories that have appeared on-air to real-life, "on the street" events. Editor Anthea Raymond writes in with one such update, following-up on a recently-aired segment about left-field Canadian TV hit Little Mosque on the Prairie:

Not everything we do here on News & Notes is directly about African Americans, but we're always curious about cross-cultural encounters and the often instructive mis-understandings they produce. Take Canadian TV sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie. The series is set in a small town in rural Canada and its comedy comes from how a small group of Muslims bumps up against their Christian neighbors. Those of you in the New York City area will have a chance to meet the stars and creators of the show at a Museum of Television and Radio event, A First Look at 'Little Mosque on the Prairie' on May 13, 2007.

Thanks, Anthea! What interests us about a show like Mosque is that it's a novel twist on the "ethnic first" story, this fish-out-of-water story (or, in this case, Muslim-in-the-plains-of-Canada story) the comedy kissing-cousin to more serious and historic firsts like the headline News & Notes aired today about the first black woman to trek to the North Pole. To be the first anything, whether it's at the North Pole or the Great Plains, is to step a door behind which literally anything can be waiting, from pride, to tragedy, to, of course, occasional comedy.

Do you pay attention to black firsts? Do you think the era of black firsts has passed, or that milestones like the first satellite launched by an HBCU still have meaning? Have you come across any black firsts you think we should know about? Let us know!