Oprah and Tyler Perry are so excited about Tyler's shows coming to OWN, they just had to get their alter-egos together to celebrate. Oprah dressed up as Sofia from "The Color Purple" and Tyler put on the familiar face of Madea to film a promotional parody for the upcoming shows Love Thy Neighbor and The Haves and Have Nots.Get more behind-the-scenes photos, exclusive sneak peeks and information about upcoming Tyler Perry projects on OWN.

Whether it's a cold and gloomy March 21 in your hometown or just another balmy day, spring has truly arrived. 

They're having a dance party!
Evidently, fitting in a little boogie time is a perfect way to celebrate "Super Soul Sunday."

Our America host Lisa Ling and her husband Dr. Paul Song welcomed their first child into the world today, a little girl named Jett Ling Song. Jett, who was born around 1:30 this afternoon in Santa Monica California, weighs in at 6 lbs. and 6oz. 

Photo: Vito Palmisano & Tasha Simon

Alisa Crawford's 9 to 5 involves wheat, windmills—and a passion for the past.

As the only Dutch-certified journeyman miller in America, the only woman member of the Netherlands' professional corn millers guild, and the sole miller of a 251-year-old Dutch windmill in Holland, Michigan, Alisa Crawford is a singular presence in her field. Crawford uses the mill to grind flour, which involves scrambling up the windmill's staircase with 50-pound bags of wheat, which is fed into the mill to be processed.

"I don't need a gym membership," she says. "This work uses all my strength." It also dovetails with her love of historic craft, which was first ignited during a trip  to Colonial Williamsburg at  age 13. Enchanted by the visit, Crawford landed a job in her native Michigan at a historical reenactment village, which used a water-powered mill to produce flour. At 17 she apprenticed with the miller; by 19 she was running the mill herself.

In 2006 Crawford began more in-depth study: Enlisting a local Dutch professor to teach her the language, she made five trips to the Netherlands to learn the art of Dutch milling—and in the years since, Crawford's connection to that specialized corner of the past has only deepened. As she says, "History is so much more interesting when you live it."

Photo: Thinkstock

It's a hard and terrible thing, to remember that in so many ways, and in so many places, women and girls still struggle to be treated as well as their male counterparts, or have diminished accesses to resources like education, medical care, and food. Like the schoolgirls of Uganda. Acccording to allAfrica.com, Ugandan girls are dropping out of school for many reasons: their families can't afford their uniforms, books, and supplies; their academic development isn't valued by their communities; awfully, they face sexual harassment or abuse at school (or on the way there). As a result the literacy rate for girls is much lower than for boys.

Depressing, I know. But the article also shares the story of Namakula, a young woman who was denied schooling but took a catering class. She has since started a catering company called Allied Female Youth Initiative and said that "the training showed her that she had other options besides being dependent on a boyfriend or husband." Namakula now says that people treat her with respect; she is now a woman with a future—all because she's taken the trajectory of her life into her own hands.

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Oprah's School for Girls in Africa

I once read that a house cat will go completely feral within a few days of living outside, a figure I think about every long weekend. It's a common symptom of a little extra time off that we get a bit, possibly overly, relaxed -- those back-to-work emails can be unintentionally snarky, or worse, sound angry when we mean to be jokey. (Or, even worse worse, when we're actually angry.)

We've all done it: written a friend or coworker an email in the heat of the moment, typed out in the garbled language of anger. Or else, sent the boss a note pounded into a smart phone while crossing the street, which you only later realize is characterized by a completely unintentional brusqueness. Thankfully, some smartypantses (smarties pants?) last year invented ToneCheck, a program that makes sure your emails don't sound angry. (That we're only figuring out this now? we're adding to the list of things we wish we were on top of.)

Still: One free download later, your emails will feature this handy key along the bottom:


As your note veers into the spittle-flecked screed territory, the "tone alert" bar increases in concerned red lines. Key phrases are called out, and  helpfully labelled with corresponding emotions (over 200 of them, according to the ToneCheck site): "upsetting," "concerning," all the way up to "aggressive." The idea being you'll never accidentally start a digital feud with your sister because she thought you were mad and you thought she was mad and... well, you get the idea.

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Increase Your Workplace Well-Being
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The Email Typo That Led to Love

Photo: Thinkstock

In the weeks since it landed on Mars, the Curiosity Rover has acted like, well, most people act while visiting a new place—strolling around and taking snapshots. Recently, it started talking, too. Sort of.

The voice of NASA administrator Charles Bolden was radioed to the rover, to the surface of Mars, and back to Earth again, which is the first instance of the recorded human voice traveling to space and back again. Somehow he resisted the urge to just recite the opening lines of "Star Trek," and instead congratulated all those who had a part of making Curiosity a reality. Hear the message (and see the maybe-bored, maybe-subtly-inspired faces of listening NASA employees!) here.

Dave Lavery, NASA Curiosity program executive explained on CNN that, "We hope these words will be an inspiration to someone alive today who will become the first to stand upon the surface of Mars. And like the great Neil Armstrong, they will speak aloud of that next giant leap in human exploration."

While considering the deeply strange idea that a human voice is proclaiming the greatness of the United States to an uninhabited (probably) crater on Mars, let's also celebrate the fact that the human voice selected didn't belong to a reality-show star or Hollywood actress or even a political powerhouse, but a hard-working, intelligent employee. Go Charles!

Read More:
Dare Mighty Things: Celebrating Curiosity
Real Life Visitors from Outer Space

Photo: Thinkstock

What do German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Melinda Gates, and Lady Gaga have in common? These high-profile women are all on Forbes List of the 100 Most Powerful Women (along with someone named Oprah Winfrey): influential in the world due to their positions and how they wield them, their various resources and media reach, their wide spheres of influence. It's a fascinating and thought-provoking list to browse through, and one that seems to present the possibilities for women.

Even the, hm, less-globally-powerful among us can learn from these eminent figures, from Hilary Clinton to Beyonce. Forbes has helpfully culled some highlights:

• Your own personal efforts trump external conditions.
• There is no prescribed timetable for success.
• You have to put yourself out there. 

It occurs to me that these are actually all part of the same thing, basically three ways of saying: Don't put up mental blocks in your way. It holds true in so many ways, in so many different corners of our lives. Even if we don't actually want to be the most powerful women in the world. Even if our wildest aspirations are actually to be the most powerful woman within a significantly smaller sphere of influence, even if -- maybe especially if -- the people we wish to lead and inspire are just the kids snoozing in the bedrooms down the hall.

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Raising Chickens, Reclaiming a Career
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