Thanksgiving

The Thanksgiving Story - wilstar.com

"The Pilgrims set ground at Plymouth Rock on December 11, 1620. Their first winter was devastating. At the beginning of the following fall, they had lost 46 of the original 102 who sailed on the Mayflower. But the harvest of 1621 was a bountiful one. And the remaining colonists decided to celebrate with a feast -- including 91 Indians who had helped the Pilgrims survive their first year."

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The Pilgrims

The Mayflower - en.wikipedia.org
The Mayflower was the ship which transported the Pilgrim Fathers from Plymouth, England to "North Virginia" (in what was later to become the United States of America) in 1620, leaving Plymouth on September 6 and dropping anchor near Cape Cod on November 11.

Plimouth Plantation - plimoth.org
A reconstruction of the 1627 village occupied by the Pilgrims.

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The Native People


Blue Hill Ave.

Massachuset: Meaning ">at the range of hills," and meant the Blue Hills past Milton.

The Massachuset belonged to the Algonquian linguistic stock, their tongue being an n-dialect, and formed one group with the Narraganset, Niantic (East and West), and Wampanoag, and probably the Nauset.

In the region of Massachusetts Bay between Salem on the north and Marshfield and Brockton on the south. Later they claimed lands beyond Brockton as far as the Great Cedar Swamp, territories formerly under the control of the Wampanoag.

500 Nations - Massachusetts Tribes

Native Traditions in Massachusetts

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The Bering Strait Land Bridge and the Migration of Early Indians

Bering Strait Theory

"Most anthropologists today believe that the ancestors of all American Indians immigrated from northeastern Asia across the Bering land bridge during the Ice Age, between 12,000 and 60,000 years ago. Known as the Bering Strait theory, this idea is supported by archaeological, biological, and geological evidence."

Plane Ticket $350...

Plane Ticket: $350.
Game Ticket: $750.
The Yankees Watching the Sox in the World Series: PRICELESS.

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Mountain men: Sox are champs

Boston rides four-game sweep to second title in four seasons

Frontline: Showdown With Iran

Showdown With Iran
10/23/2007



As the United States and Iran are locked in a battle for power and influence across the Middle East -- with the fear of an Iranian nuclear weapon looming in the background -- FRONTLINE gains unprecedented access to Iranian hard-liners shaping government policy, including parliament leader Hamid Reza Hajibabaei, National Security Council member Mohammad Jafari and state newspaper editor Hossein Shariatmadari.

Frontline: Cheney's Law

Cheney's Law

10/16/2007

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

For three decades Vice President Dick Cheney conducted a secretive, behind-closed-doors campaign to give the president virtually unlimited wartime power. Finally, in the aftermath of 9/11, the Justice Department and the White House made a number of controversial legal decisions. Orchestrated by Cheney and his lawyer David Addington, the department interpreted executive power in an expansive and extraordinary way, granting President George W. Bush the power to detain, interrogate, torture, wiretap and spy -- without congressional approval or judicial review.

Come On People - Bill Cosby & Alvin F. Poussaint

Entertainer Bill Cosby and Harvard Medical School Psychiatry Professor Dr. Alvin Poussaint tackle the controversial and complicated issues facing black communities across the nation and discuss their new book, "Come On, People: On the Path from Victims to Victors.


Meet the Press’ transcript for Oct. 14, 2007

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Chapter 1

WHAT’ S GOING ON WITH BLACK PEOPLE?
For the last generation or two, as our communities dissolved and our parenting skills broke down, no one has suffered more than our young black people.

Your authors have been around long enough, and traveled widely enough, to think we understand something about the problem. And we’re hopeful enough—or desperate enough—to think that with all of us working together we might find our way to a solution. Let’s start with one very basic fact. Back in 1950, before Brown v. Board of Education, before the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, when Rosa Parks was still sitting in the back of her Montgomery bus, when the NBA was just about all white, back in those troubled times, black boys were born into a different world than they are today. Obviously, many civil rights leaders had hoped that with the demise in the 1960s of officially sanctioned forms of segregation and discrimination, black males would have greater access to the mainstream of American society. They had fully expected that these young men would be in a better position in every way—financially, psychologically, legally—to sustain viable marriages and families. Instead, the overall situation has continued to go downhill among the poor who are mostly shut out from the mainstream of success.

How is that possible?

There is one statistic that captures the bleakness. In 1950, five out of every six black children were born into a two-parent home. Today, that number is less than two out of six. In poor communities, that number is lower still. There are whole blocks with scarcely a married couple, whole blocks without responsible males to watch out for wayward boys, whole neighborhoods in which little girls and boys come of age without seeing up close a committed partnership and perhaps never having attended a wedding.

How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?

I can think of younger days when living for my life
Was everything a man could want to do
I could never see tomorrow,
but I was never told about the sorrow

And how can you mend a broken heart?
How can you stop the rain from falling down?
How can you stop the sun from shining?
What makes the world go round?
How can you mend this broken man?
How can a loser ever win?
Please help me mend my broken heart and let me live again

I can still feel the breeze that rustles through the trees
And misty memories of days gone by
We could never see tomorrow,
No one said a word about the sorrow

And how can you mend a broken heart?
How can you stop the rain from falling down?
How can you stop the sun from shining?
What makes the world go round?
How can you mend this broken man?
How can a loser ever win?
Please help me mend my broken heart and let me live again

Al Green
How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?

Soultracks
VH1
Wikipedia

Wind Blow '07 - Sagara Beach - Shizuoka Japan

Windblow '07

Sagara Beach in Shizuoka.
A 2-day music festival on the beach.

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Latyr Sy / Africa Sunu Xelcom

Latry Sy was born in Island of Goreacutee, the Republic of Senegal and began to play African drums at the age of 10 years old. 1998, He formed the Traditional Percussion Band called "Africa Djembe" and played an active part as a soloist, a lead singer, a leader of the band. He performed in Nelson Mandela Concert, Island of Gorée international percussion Festival, African soccer Cup, 2002 World Soccer Cup as an supporter of the national team also welcome ceremonies off welcome Prime Minister Thatcher, President Mitterrand and other world class leaders and VIP.

1995, He formed another own percussion group called "Africa Sunu Xelcom". 1998, He performed for" the 100th anniversary of Cuban-Japanese Immigrant Memorial Event" and "International Jazz Festival" in Korea. 2000, He traveled around France, Germany, Egypt, and Korea to gives a performance in each place. 2001, He performed jointly with Noh comedian Mannojo Nomura in Smithsonian museum of Washington D.C. 2001, 2002, 2003, He appeared and performed in African Festa as "Africa Sunu Xelcom" 2005.

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Inushiki (aka Dogggstyle)

"Inushiki" is the Rock Band born in the Kichijohji cultural area in 1998, with densed originality and its unique flavor. Never cared of the roots and color of easten or westen,and have carried "ANTITHESES" that shows the true presence of Rock Music to be so enegetic and omnivorous, which lays in the oposite side of Japanese Rock scene of now a days.

And the Spiritual resonance of "REBEL Music" such as Reggae and Punk has given them the devote to the bitter black Afro Rhythm. Have found the way to show the goal of flesh music that comes from thoughts and philosophy, and spits out the sensational MC which followed be the perfect balance of Lyric which alarts the awakening of one's self.And the undestoriable sound of band like a ROCK wraps the power of the wisdom, which never can be catagorise or give an example of what called "THE ORIGINAL SOUND" is only expressed as Progressive Rock or the Reggae Rock.

It's way to press their simple and honest Revolution and its primary impulse can't never gain or found in any other of its kind. From its speech and action, you can tell that they are the number ONE preacher of Japanese Music Scene.



Yohei Miyake, the frontman of "Inushiki" is also well known as the given birth organizer of event "nbsa＋×÷(since 2004)" and "Tettou Tetsubi(since 2002)". They have released the 5 works since their major debut of 2002.

Their 6th works. 2nd album "diego express" can be bought at their Web Page from April, 2007.

The reputation of their Lives which sets the audience free in their energy is proven in many Outdoor Festivals. This is the real "Japanese ROCK" of our generation.

Voyager

Voyager Spacecraft on Never-Ending Journey
Talk of the Nation, August 24, 2007



A mission that was supposed to last just five years is celebrating its 30th anniversary this fall. Scientists continue to receive data from the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft as they approach interstellar space.



The Voyager program consists of a pair of unmanned scientific probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable planetary alignment of the late 1970s. Although they were officially designated to study just Jupiter and Saturn, the two probes were able to continue their mission into the outer solar system. They have since continued out and exited the solar system. These probes were built at JPL and were funded by NASA.

Both missions have gathered large amounts of data about the gas giants of the solar system, of which little was previously known. In addition, the spacecraft trajectories have been used to place limits on the existence of a hypothetical post-Plutonian Planet X.



Voyager 1 and 2 both carry with them a golden record that contains pictures and sounds of Earth, along with symbolic directions for playing the record and data detailing the location of Earth. The record is intended as a combination time capsule and interstellar message to any civilization, alien or far-future human, that recovers either of the Voyager craft. The contents of this record were selected by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan.

Lately

Lately, I have had the strangest feeling
With no vivid reason here to find
Yet the thought of losing you has been hanging
'round my mind

Far more frequently you're wearing perfume
With you say no special place to go
But when I ask will you be coming back soon
You don't know, never know

Well, I'm a man of many wishes
Hope my premonition misses
But what I really feel my eyes wont let me hide
'cause they always start to cry
'cause this time could mean goodbye

Lately I've been staring in the mirror
Very slowly picking me apart
Trying to tell myself I have no reason
With your heart

Just the other night while you were sleeping
I vaguely heard you whisper someones name
But when I ask you of the thoughts your keeping
You just say nothings changed

Well, I'm a man of many wishes
I hope my premonition misses
But what I really feel my eyes wont let me hide
cause they always start to cry
cause this time could mean goodbye, goodbye

Oh, I'm a man of many wishes
I hope my premonition misses
But what I really feel my eyes wont let me hide
cause they always start to cry
cause this time could mean goodbye

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Stevie Wonder
"Lately"

Its a Shame - The Spinners

"Its a Shame"
The Spinners

It's a shame, the way you mess around with your man
It's a shame the way you hurt me
It's a shame, the way you mess around with your man
I'm sitting all alone, by the telephone
Waiting for your call, when you don't call at all

It's a shame (shame) the way you mess around with your man
It's a shame (shame) the way you play with my emotions
It's a shame (shame) the way you mess around with your man
You're like a child at play, on a sunny day
But you play with love, and then you throw it away

Why do you use me, try to confuse me
How can you stand, to be so cruel
Why don't you free me, from this prison
Where I serve my time as your fool

It's a shame (shame) the way you mess around with your man
It's a shame (shame) the way you hurt me
It's a shame (shame) the way you mess around with your man
I try to stay with you, show you love so true
But you won't appreciate, the love we try to make

Oh, it's got to be a shame

Why do you use me, try to confuse me
How can you stand, to be so cruel
Why don't you free me, from this prison
Where I serve my time as your fool

Got to be a shame (shame) the way you mess around with your man
Ohhh, it's a shame (shame) the way you hurt me
It's a shame (shame) the way you mess around with your man
You've got my heart in chains, and I must complain
I just can't be content, oh look at (muttering)

Got to, got to, be a shame

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The Spinners

Frontline: Endgame

Frontline: Endgame
PBS.org, June 19, 2007



Endgame is the fifth film in a series of Iraq war stories from FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk, including Rumsfeld's War, The Torture Question, The Dark Side, and The Lost Year in Iraq.

Inogashira Park; Kichijoji, Tokyo

The whole area to the west of the pond in Inogahshira Park is called "Goten-yama" (palace hill). In this area, the ruins of Japan's Stone Age of 10,000 years ago, together with stone spears from the Non-Earthen period, have been found. The remains of pit dwellings from the mid-Jomon (4,000 years ago) to the latter Jomon period ("Jomon" means "rope-marking patterns") and ruins of paved stone dwellings have also been found. These findings, together with discoveries of various stoneware and Jomon earthenware, prove that people began to gather in the area to form a village in the Jomon period.



Benzaiten (a shrine dedicated to one of the Seven Gods of Fortune), which stands in the middle of the pond, is believed to have been built by Minamoto-no-Yoritomo (the found of the Kamakura Shogunate) to symbolize his intention to defeat the Heike clan. However, others believe that the shrine is a legacy from a much older era than Yoritomo.



"Inogashira-Ike" (Inogashira pond) is thought to have been named by the third general of the Edo Shogunate, Iemitsu. Traditionally, the name converys the meanings of "the source of water" and "the well that produces the world's best water." Thick water-retaining woods used to cover the banks around the pond, creating picturesque scenery. With time, the species of trees and the character of the wodds have changed, and the suburban image of the park is gradually beginning to face. However, it remains a most popular place to relax for the people of Tokyo.



The park is divied into four areas: Inogashira-Ike and the surrounding area; palace hill with its natural beauty of various species of small trees as well as cultural facilities; the western area with sporting facilities; and the second park to the southeast of the western area.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is one of the largest museums in the United States, and contains the second largest permanent museum collection in the Western Hemisphere, after the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The museum was founded in 1870 and its current location dates to 1909. In addition to its curatorial undertakings, the museum is affiliated with an art academy, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and a sister museum, the Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts, in Nagoya, Japan.

The Museum was founded in 1870 and opened in 1876, with a large portion of its collection taken from the Boston Athenaeum Art Gallery. Originally located in a red Gothic Revival building on Copley Square in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, it moved to its current location on Huntington Avenue, Boston's "Avenue of the Arts," in 1909. The museum's present building was commenced in 1907, when museum trustees hired architect Guy Lowell to create a master plan for a museum that could be built in stages as funding was obtained for each phase. The first section of Lowell’s neoclassical design was completed in 1909, and featured a 500-foot facade of cut granite along Huntington Avenue, the grand rotunda, and the associated exhibition galleries.

Boston Public Library, Copley (Main) Branch

The Boston Public Library is the largest municipal public library in the United States and was established in 1848. It was the first publicly supported municipal library in the United States and the first public library to allow people to borrow books and other materials. The Boston Public Library is also the library of last recourse of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; all adult residents of the state are entitled to borrowing and research privileges, and the library receives state funding.

With 14.9 million volumes, the Boston Public Library is the third largest library in the United States. In addition to its extensive circulating library, which includes works in many languages, the Boston Public Library's collection has special strengths in art and art history (available on the third floor of the McKim building) and American history (including significant research material), and maintains a depository of governmental documents. There are large collections of prints, works on paper, photographs, and maps, rare books, incunabula, and medieval manuscripts.

In 1888, Charles Follen McKim, of the architectural firm McKim, Mead, and White, was engaged to design the new building, opened in 1895. This building included a children's room, the first in the nation, and a sculpture garden in its central courtyard surrounded by an arcaded gallery in the manner of a Renaissance cloister. To Copley Square the library presents a facade reminiscent of a sixteenth century Italian palazzo (illustration, top). The arcaded windows of its facade owe a debt to the side elevations of Alberti's Tempio Malatestiana, Rimini, the first fully Renaissance building. McKim also drew on the Bibliotheque Ste. Genevieve in Paris (1845 to 1851). McKim did not simply imitate his models, however; the three central bays are subtly emphasized without breaking the rhythm. The library also represents one of the first major applications in the United States of thin tile vaults by the Catalan master builder Rafael Guastavino. Seven different types of Guastavino vaulting can be seen in the Boston Public Library.

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Architect Charles Follen McKim chose to have inscribed monumental inscriptions, similar to those found on basilicas and monuments in ancient Rome, in the entablature on each of the main building's three facades.

On the south is inscribed: "MDCCCLII * FOUNDED THROUGH THE MUNIFICENCE AND PUBLIC SPIRIT OF CITIZENS;"

On the east: "THE PUBLIC LIBRARY OF THE CITY OF BOSTON * BUILT BY THE PEOPLE AND DEDICATED TO THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING * A.D. MDCCCLXXXVIII"

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

U.S. National Register of Historic Places

Isabella Stewart Gardner first welcomed visitors to her museum on New Year's Day, 1903. On that evening guests listened to the music of Bach, Mozart, and Schumann, gazed in wonder at the courtyard full of flowers, and viewed one of the nation's finest collections of art. Today, visitors experience much the same thing.

In 1898, Mrs. Gardner began work on her museum. Completed in 1903, the museum was named "Fenway Court" and constructed in the reclaimed swamplands of Boston's Fenway area. Modeled on the Renaissance palaces of Venice, Italy, it was designed by Willard T. Sears, with much direct involvement from Mrs. Gardner, to accommodate the art and architectural artifacts Mrs. Gardner had collected with her husband over many years. The building completely surrounds a glass-covered garden courtyard. The first through third floors were designed to be galleries. The fourth floor of the building was used as living quarters by Isabella Gardner until 1924, and is now used for offices. Mrs. Gardner insisted that the galleries be designed as a palatial home, not a museum, and in the early years after the building was completed she used those floors as such, opening them to the public just 20 days a year.

Half-Life 2, Episode Two: Team Fortress 2

Half-Life 2: Episode Two

Valve, developer of the blockbuster series Half-Life and Counter-StrikeTM, unveiled Team Fortress 2 to be included in its next release, Half-Life 2: Episode Two. In addition, the studio announced its plans to deliver it for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2, an all-new version of the title that spawned team based multiplayer action games, features the most advanced graphics of any Source-based game released to date. Players choose from a range of unique character classes such as medic, spy, sniper, or engineer and must work together to complete a variety of tactical objectives.

Team Fortress 2 and Portal will be included with all retail and Steam versions of Episode Two for the PC. In addition, these products plus Half-Life 2 and Episode One will be available in one tremendous offering for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. New videos from Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2 will be released next week.

Team Fortress 2 Trailer: (xboxyde.com)

http://www.xboxyde.com/stream_2943_en.html

Wikipedia - Team Fortress 2:

Just like its predecessor, Team Fortress 2 players will be able to choose to play as one of several archetypal classes at the start of a match, each with its own unique strengths and weaknesses. While it is unknown if the abilities of each class will be similar to the original Team Fortress, all indications so far are that the basic elements will remain the same: Heavy Weapons characters will have huge guns with incredible firepower but will have a slow walking speed, scouts will be able to move very quickly, but are lightly armoured, and so on. While it is unclear at this time what sort of game types will be included upon release, capture the flag and control point matches are likely to return.

Team Fortress 2 will not opt for the realistic graphical approaches taken by the official Valve games Day of Defeat and Counter-Strike. Rather, it will use a more stylized, cartoon-like approach. The effect seems to have been achieved using a special Valve in-house rendering and lighting technique making extensive use of Phong shading [3]. The game will debut the Source engine's new dynamic lighting, shadowing and soft particle technologies, among many other unannounced features, alongside Half-Life 2: Episode Two. It should be noted however, that the depth of field and motion blur effects seen in the game's trailers cannot feasibly be rendered during gameplay[4] unless inferior approximations, such as vector motion blur or image -space depth of field, were to be used.

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A collage of the Team Fortress 2 player classes in action. Top row: (left to right) Demoman, Engineer, Heavy; Middle row: (left to right) Medic, Pyro, Scout; Bottom row: (left to right) Sniper, Soldier, Spy.

The Message

The Message

It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under

Broken glass everywhere
People pissin' on the stairs, you know they just don't care
I can't take the smell, can't take the noise
Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice
Rats in the front room, roaches in the back
Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat
I tried to get away but I couldn't get far
'cuz a man with a tow truck repossessed my car

Don't push me 'cuz I'm close to the edge
I'm trying not to lose my head
Uh huh ha ha ha
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under

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Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Year: 2007

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five fomented the musical revolution known as hip-hop. Theirs was a pioneering union between one DJ and five rapping MCs. Grandmaster Flash (born Joseph Saddler) not only devised various techniques but also designed turntable and mixing equipment. Formed in the South Bronx, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were one of the first rap posses, responsible for such masterpieces as “The Message,” “Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel” and “White Lines.” The combination of Grandmaster Flash’s turntable mastery and the Furious Five’s raps, which ranged from socially conscious to frivolously fun, made for a series of 12-inch records that forever altered the musical landscape.

Flash, along with DJ Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa, pioneered the art of break-beat deejaying—the process of remixing and thereby creating a new piece of music by playing vinyl records and turntables as if they were musical instruments. Disco-era deejays like Pete “DJ” Jones, an early influence on Grandmaster Flash, spun records so that people could dance. Turntablists took it a step further by scratching and cutting records, focusing on “breaks”—what Flash described as “the short, climactic parts of the records that really grabbed me”—as a way of heightening musical excitement and creating something new.

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Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees:

A permanent Museum exhibit that celebrates the lives and work of Hall of Fame inductees.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame honors the legendary performers, producers, songwriters, disc jockeys and others who have made rock and roll the force that it is in our culture.

American Experience: Citizen King

Citizen King
American Experience, PBS.org

About the film

President Johnson Meeting With Civil Rights Leaders The story begins on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963, when a 34-year-old preacher galvanized millions with his dream for an America free of racism. It comes to a bloody end almost five years later, on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee.

In the years since those events unfolded, the man at their center, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., has become a mythic figure, a minister whose oratory is etched into the minds of millions of Americans, a civil rights activist whose words and image are more hotly contested, negotiated and sold than almost anyone else's in American history.

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Video: Three Perspectives: Dr. King, Malcolm X and James Baldwin talk about race relations

Boston public television producer Henry Morgenthau III's "The Negro and the American Promise," featuring interviews with Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin, made headlines in spring 1963. The program aired in a climate of racial conflict, just months after Alabama governor George Wallace's defiant support of "segregation forever," and before the March on Washington.

The New York Times described the James Baldwin segment as "a television experience that seared the conscience." A viewer wrote of the Malcolm X segment that he was shocked "that such a blatant display of racial prejudice could be aired."

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"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"

Mahatma Gandhi