Shallow Nation » Holiday Commemoration

Juneteenth History: Juneteenth Celebration (Video)

Shallow Nation — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:16:27 +0000

Juneteenth celebration takes place every year on June 19. The Juneteenth history reveals the day is also referred to as Freedom Day and Emancipation Day. It celebrates the day of freedom for slaves in Texas in 1865. Their freedom came two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation which went into effect on January 1, 1863. But for Texas slaves it was not until June 19, 1865 when Union soldiers entered Galveston, Texas and announced the end of the Civil War, and read out loud the Emancipation Proclamation that had already, technically, freed the state’s 250,000 or so slaves. One can hardly imagine the initial shock and excitement of the slaves to know they had been freed.

Every year since, including Juneteeen 2009, there has been a celebration.

White House Easter Egg Roll Video, Photos

Shallow Nation — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:18:27 +0000

Here are the 2009 White House Easter egg roll video and photos. The traditional event took place on April 13, 2009 on the White House lawn and was open to the public, via ticket. The entire Obama family was present; President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia as well as Michelle Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson, and someone dressed up as the Easter bunny.

The annual tradition dates back 131 years and was started by President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1878. The 2009 White House Easter egg roll was the largest in history with more than 30,000 participants from 48 states. The theme was “Let’s Go Play” and featured a myriad of activities in addition to the actual Easter Egg Roll, including games and storytelling. The event also had musical performances from Black Eyed Peas frontwoman Fergie (who sang the National Anthem; see video below), Ziggy Marley and the D.C. Youth Orchestra, and others.

President Obama played basketball with some of the teens. He also read stories to some of the younger children, including Where the Wild Things Are,” by Maurice Sendak, which he said was one of his favorite books.

As he read about imaginary beasts and the adventures of the book’s main character, a little boy named Max wearing a wolf suit, the president howled and spoke in a monster voice. When he finished the story, almost all the children clapped, but one started crying. “These wild things can be a little scary,” Obama said with a smile as someone picked up the boy and held him.

Source: Obamas Host Easter Egg Roll on White House Lawn

In addition to being a fun, family focused event, the First Family also used the event to promote healthy eating and exercise.

“Our goal today is just to have fun,” [Michelle Obama] said. “We want to focus on activity, healthy eating. We’ve got yoga, we’ve got dancing, we’ve got storytelling, we’ve got Easter egg decorating. Oh, we’ve got basketball (applause) — a little soccer, as well. And we want everybody to think about moving their bodies, get out.”

Source: Michelle Obama promotes physical activity at White House Easter Egg Roll (Visit to see several more White House Easter egg roll photos.)

Photo credit: Chuck Kennedy and Pete Souza/White House

Watch White House Easter Egg Roll video below.

YouTube Link

Fergie sings the National Anthem

YouTube Video Link

Via Rap-Up.com

CBS video report on the White House Easter Egg Roll

YouTube Link

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White House Easter Egg Roll Video, Photos 2009 pics pictures

Danny Boy Lyrics: Paul Robeson Danny Boy (Video)

Shallow Nation — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 05:52:14 +0000

See the traditional Irish song Danny Boy lyrics and listen to the legendary Paul Robeson deliver a stirring rendition of the St. Patrick’s Day favorite.

The song has been sung and recorded by a remarkably diverse number of music artists from several musical genres. Among the song’s performers both past and present are Glenn Miller, Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, Johnny Cash, Sam Cooke, Cher, Tony Bennett, Charlotte Church, Tony Bennett, Sarah Vaughn and Sinéad O’Connor.

Paul Robeson in 1942, Photo credit: Gordon Parks (Photo source: Library of Congress)

Among them, Renaissance man Paul Robeson, the trailblazing African-American actor, singer, writer, orator and activist of the 1940s and 1950s, who was trained as a lawyer at Columbia University and was Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Rutgers University (where he also had an outstanding collegiate football career). In 1943, he became the first black actor ever to portray William Shakespeare’s Othello on Broadway. Robeson is noted for his concert performance of Negro spirituals as well as other traditional folk songs from around the world.

In his signature basso profondo voice, he sang the haunting Danny Boy with much emotional richness. The song is from his album ‘Ballad for Americans and Great Songs of Faith, Love and Patriotism.’

The song itself, which has become so inseparable from St. Patrick’s Day, has quite a history. The lyrics are set to the Irish song Londonderry Air which is believed to date back to 1855. The original song makes reference to Derry a city in Northern Ireland, which is said to be one of the longest continuously inhabited places in Ireland. The lyrics have been attributed to the English lawyer Frederick Weatherly, and said to have been written in 1913. Read more here: The Legend and History of the Song ‘Danny Boy’.

Source (and lyrics source): Who the heck is `Danny Boy’ and where in the heck is he going, anyway?

Here is the YouTube Video Link

Danny Boy Lyrics

Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side
The summer’s gone, and all the flowers are dying
‘Tis you, ’tis you must go and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow
Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow
‘Tis I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow
Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.

And if you come, when all the flowers are dying
And I am dead, as dead I well may be
You’ll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an “Ave” there for me.

And I shall hear, tho’ soft you tread above me
And all my dreams will warm and sweeter be
If you’ll not fail to tell me that you love me
I’ll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.

I’ll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.

Danny Boy Lyrics: Paul Robeson Danny Boy Video

Pi Day Rap (Video)

Shallow Nation — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 07:11:12 +0000

Pi Day is March 14 or 3-14. It is a holiday celebrating the mathematical constant called Pi, the digits of which begin with 3.14159; it is the ratio of a circle’s-circumference-to-diameter.

What began in 1988 at the San Francisco Exploratorium has become a worldwide phenomena, celebrated even in rap. This year, 2009, the U.S. Congress designated Pi Day as National Pi Day. While not an “official holiday” the measure is intended to urge schools to use the day to teach their students about Pi and to “engage them about the study of mathematics.” The measure was supported by a number of technology and engineering organizations which include the Association for Competitive Technology, the American Chemical Society, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, IEEE, TechAmerica, and TechNet.

They sent a letter after the vote to House Science Chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) thanking him for introducing the measure, which is also sponsored by Rep. Ralph Hall of Texas, the panel’s senior Republican. “Thank you for recognizing the importance of math and science education to a knowledge-based economy,” it says.

Source: CNET: National Pi Day? Congress makes it official

Learn more about Pi Day via the Exploratorium Pi Day Web site and the holiday’s official Web site PiDay.org. Pi Approximation Day is also celebrated with its holiday falling on July 22, due to Pi being roughly equal to 22/7.

Here are the the first 100,000 digits of Pi..

A quick search on YouTube reveals many, many more who rap for Pi Day. Here is the the link for the YouTube video at the top. More Pi Day rap videos below.

YouTube Link

YouTube Link

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Pi Day Rap (Video)

Hot for Words Video: O’Reilly Factor Valentine’s Day 2-13-09

Shallow Nation — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 21:54:03 +0000

Hot for Words philologist Marina Orlova made an appearance on The O’Reilly Factor on February 13, 2009. See the full video of the entertaining discussion the language specialist had with Bill O’Reilly on the origin and history of St. Valentine’s Day and the meanings of various words associated with the holiday; romance, passion, etc.

As always, the popular Internet celebrity makes the origin of words engaging in her own unique way; it’s a sort of music video vixen approach to the study of language. Her YouTube channel continues to be the most watched on YouTube ahead of even the most commercial of channels, in sports, music and entertainment. In an age of declining literacy it’s great to see Marina Orlova make the study of language relevant. No doubt, viewers who tune in for eye candy and leave knowing more about the English language.

YouTube Link Source and photo source HotforWords.com

Hot for Words Video: O’Reilly Factor Valentine’s Day 2-13-09

Martin Luther King Jr I Have a Dream Speech Video, Text, Photos

Shallow Nation — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 04:42:40 +0000

Here is the video of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream Speech” along with photos and transcript. King delivered the famous speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963 at the March on Washington which drew 250,000 people in support of Civil Rights legislation and an end to segregation, 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 brought about the end of slavery in the U.S.

In a recent book, King’s Dream UCLA professor Eric J. Sundquist, has examined the King speech in depth, and as Michael Kenney notes in a review….

Toward the end of the afternoon came King, already hailed as the soul of the civil rights movement, and a year later to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. King had a fine speech in hand, a masterpiece of oratory that called on themes from the Old Testament prophets to Abraham Lincoln. But just a paragraph from his prepared ending, King stopped in midsentence and paused.

As Eric J. Sundquist speculates in “King’s Dream,” it was as if King realized that something was missing, that, despite the continued shouts of approval, “he had not yet truly connected with his audience.” When King resumed, it was to utter, spontaneously, the memorable words: “I have a dream. . .” [...]

1963 March on Washington

As for that powerful “dream” imagery itself, Sundquist writes, “Dreams of freedom were omnipresent” for civil rights activists. King himself had used it earlier that summer at a Walk for Freedom in Detroit, and it could be found in the music of the Everly Brothers and Roy Orbison, in the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois, the civil rights pioneer who had died just the day before. [...]

In the book’s concluding chapter, “Not by the Color of Their Skin,” Sundquist explores the political interpretation of a key passage: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” “Those thirty-five spontaneous words,” Sundquist writes, have been crucial in “[framing] public discussion of affirmative action over the past four decades.” They have been used as such by Ronald Reagan, by supporters of California’s Proposition 209, which barred “preferential treatment,” and, perhaps most remarkably, by Clarence Thomas, before his appointment to the US Supreme Court, in arguing for an “equality of rights.”

Source: Exploring origins of ‘King’s Dream’ See also: King’s Dream – First chapter

Here is the full 17 minute I Have a Dream speech video.

YouTube Video Link

Here is the I Have a Dream speech text.

For more texts of King’s speeches, see: A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.

For more Martin Luther King Jr. pictures, see the Life Magazine archive on Google which contains 200 photos (including rare color photos from the 1963 March on Washington)

King’s birthday is January 15, 1929. Had he lived he would have turned 80 this year. The Martin Luther King holiday is celebrated on the third Monday of January, which this year falls on January 19, just one day before the historic Inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the U.S., the nation’s first black president. Obama delivered his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention on August 28, 2008, exactly 40 years to the day after King’s 1963 speech.

In 1994, Congress charged the Corporation for National and Community Service with transforming the King Holiday into a national day of service. This year, President-elect Obama is asking all Americans to serve on King Day and make an ongoing commitment throughout the year.(Source: MLKDay.gov)

Photo source: United States Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Martin Luther King, Jr. with President Lyndon B. Johnson

Martin Luther King Jr I Have a Dream Speech Video, Text, Photos

Times Square New Year’s Eve 2009 Ball Drop Video

Shallow Nation — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:07:58 +0000

Here is video of the 2009 ball drop in Times Square New Year’s Eve. The AP raw footage video begins with the minute countdown to midnight.

Former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton were the special guests officiating at the Times Square ball drop along with New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg on a cold night, with the temperature dropping to 18 degrees Fahrenheit at midnight.

John Lennon’s “Imagine,” the traditional “Auld Lang Syne” and Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York,” were the songs played in the moments leading up to and following midnight.

At 12 feet long and nearly 12,000 pounds, this year’s ball was twice as long and four times as heavy as the previous model. There were 26,000 Waterford crystals on the ball, along with 32,000 bulbs.

Source: Cold Crowd Welcomes 2009 In Times Square

Ball Drop Video: YouTube Link

You can watch video of these live performances from Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin Eve with Ryan Seacrest at Mr World Premiere

Ne-Yo – Mad
Robin Thicke – Dreamworld
Pussycat Dolls – Bottle Pop
Solange – Sandcastle Disco
Jesse McCartney – My Baby

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Times Square New Year’s Eve 2009 Ball Drop Video