Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Pictured: Malcolm X

By refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus in 1955, black seamstress Rosa Parks (1913—2005) helped initiate the civil rights movement in the United States. The leaders of the local black community organized a bus boycott that began the day Parks was convicted of violating the segregation laws. Led by a young Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the boycott lasted more than a year—during which Parks not coincidentally lost her job—and ended only when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional. Over the next half-century, Parks became a nationally recognized symbol of dignity and strength in the struggle to end entrenched racial segregation.

This day in 1943: Roosevelt attends Tehran Conference

Pictured: FREE YOU

On this day in 1943, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt joins British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin at a conference in Iran to discuss strategies for winning World War II and potential terms for a peace settlement.

Tehran, Iran, was chosen as the site for the talks largely due to its strategic importance to the Allies. When first lady Eleanor and the couple’s daughter Anna expressed a desire to accompany Roosevelt to Iran, he flatly refused, saying there would be no women allowed at the preliminary conference between himself and Churchill in Cairo or at the Tehran meeting. Eleanor and Anna were incensed to find out later that Churchill’s wife and Madame Chiang Kai Shek from China had made the trip.

Roosevelt was in his third term as president in 1943. The “Big Three,” as the leaders were known, discussed ways to defeat Nazi Germany and agreed upon an invasion of Normandy, codenamed Operation Overlord, which was launched in June 1944. Churchill would have preferred an indirect assault on Germany to Overlord, and mistrusted the Soviet leader. For his part, Stalin wanted a territorial buffer between the Soviet Union and Germany, made up of the former Baltic nations, Poland and part of Germany, to be part of any post-war peace settlement.

In a joint declaration issued December 1, Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt recognized “the supreme responsibility resting upon us and all the United Nations to make a peace which will command the goodwill of the overwhelming mass of the peoples of the world and banish the scourge and terror of war for many generations.” After the Tehran meeting, Roosevelt and Churchill traveled back to Cairo, where they discussed who would lead Operation Overlord. After some discussion, they agreed upon General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who in 1953 would become the 34th president of the United States.

Family gatherings

Pictured: Montecristo 02

“In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.”

— Alex Haley

The Thanksgiving Greeting Card

Pictured: Native American. 

First advertised in the late 19th century, the Thanksgiving greeting card — like the Christmas card — was a prevalent holiday fixture in USA for decades.

"The newest thing in picture cards," noted the Nashville Tennessean on Oct. 31, 1880, "are the thanksgiving cards to be sent on the Puritan festival, which has become a national holiday."

A bookstore in Scranton, Pa., according to the local Truth on Nov. 18, 1910, sold linen Thanksgiving greeting cards with the message: "A sincere wish from the sender / That your Bird will be plump and tender." Card and envelope cost a dime.

Certain themes — such as huge turkeys pulling carriages, young children riding huge turkeys and the aforementioned patriotic turkey — came and went.

Sincerity was the mood a la mode. "The sentiments of the 1932 cards," the Daily Messenger in Canandaigua, N.Y., reported on Nov. 21, 1932, "hark back strongly to the courageous spirit of the Puritan Thanksgiving. Wise-cracking remarks or good wishes in the pert spirit of modern youth are rare."

Actual times,  have not only coined the terms doorbusters, as a slang for the current association to this festivity. What fo you think about it?

Thursday, you say? It´s Friday´s eve!

Pictured Beethoven

“Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.”

— Khaled Hosseini

Excerpt from Khaled Hosseini´s  A Thousand Splendid Suns

Easier to think about it as the Second Day Of The Week

“What about Monday? That could be our one day we look at things the same way, and wear funny shoes.”

— Kevin Dalton

Monday morning to remember: Coffee solves everything!

Pictured Work Propaganda

Sunday morning

“Sunday is the golden clasp that binds together the volume of the week.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Pictured Christianity All Saints