Happy 4th of July, some history about the USA and the symbols that have come to represent our nation and the changes we have evolved through.
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| Plymouth Rock, Plymouth, MA. ©envisage photo |
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| The Monument that surrounds Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, MA©envisage photo |
How they shouted! What rejoicing!
How the old bell shook the air,
Till the clang of freedom ruffled,
The calmly gliding Delaware!
How the old bell shook the air,
Till the clang of freedom ruffled,
The calmly gliding Delaware!
–Author Unknown
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| located in Boston, I believe on the first Public School of our Nation ©envisage photo |
In our family we celebrated Canada Day, on July 1, for the part of our family who are Canadian, and today we celebrate July 4th, for our American family, our Independence Day from England. Below is some of the History. Please search further.
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| located in Boston near the Capital Building ©envisage photo |
Happy 4th!
America the Beautiful, was written by Katherine Lee Bates.
Katherine Lee Bates lived in Falmouth, Massachusetts when she was young, she is buried there and it is possible to go see her resting place. (if you are have done letterboxing, a worldwide community of scavenger hunting, stamps, and location finding activity, (google for locations), there is one located near her resting place under a group of Rhododendron trees in the cemetery where she lies, just off Palmer Ave, near the Hospital lights)
Her Father was a minister at the Falmouth Congregational Church on the Green.
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| This church has a Liberty Bell, Made by Paul Revere.©envisage photo |
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/road-trips/cape-cod-massachusetts-road-trip/
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| The house where Katherine Lee Bates lived near the Green in Falmouth. |
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| This is Nobska Light in Woods Hole, MA, one of the 8 villages of Falmouth, MA |
http://woodsholemuseum.org/oldpages/sprtsl/v23n1-1stCongCh.pdf
https://www.capenews.net/falmouth/news/history-of-nobska-sheds-light-on-more-than-navigation/article_285656a2-2c9d-11e5-b25e-9397380f78eb.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_the_Beautiful
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_the_Beautiful
In 1893, at the age of 33, Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College, had taken a train trip to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to teach a short summer school session at Colorado College.[5] Several of the sights on her trip inspired her, and they found their way into her poem, including the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the "White City" with its promise of the future contained within its gleaming white buildings;[6] the wheat fields of America's heartland Kansas, through which her train was riding on July 16; and the majestic view of the Great Plains from high atop Pikes Peak.[7][8]
On the pinnacle of that mountain, the words of the poem started to come to her, and she wrote them down upon returning to her hotel room at the original Antlers Hotel. The poem was initially published two years later in The Congregationalist to commemorate the Fourth of July. It quickly caught the public's fancy. An amended version was published in 1904.[citation needed][9]
The first known melody written for the song was sent in by Silas Pratt when the poem was published in The Congregationalist. By 1900, at least 75 different melodies had been written.[10] A hymn tune composed in 1882 by Samuel A. Ward, the organist and choir director at Grace Church, Newark, was generally considered the best music as early as 1910 and is still the popular tune today. Just as Bates had been inspired to write her poem, Ward, too, was inspired. The tune came to him while he was on a ferryboat trip from Coney Island back to his home in New York City after a leisurely summer day and he immediately wrote it down. He composed the tune for the old hymn "O Mother Dear, Jerusalem", retitling the work "Materna". Ward's music combined with Bates's poem were first published together in 1910 and titled "America the Beautiful".[11]
Ward died in 1903, not knowing the national stature his music would attain. Bates was more fortunate, since the song's popularity was well established by the time of her death in 1929.[10]
At various times in the more than one hundred years that have elapsed since the song was written, particularly during the John F. Kennedy administration, there have been efforts to give "America the Beautiful" legal status either as a national hymn or as a national anthem equal to, or in place of, "The Star-Spangled Banner", but so far this has not succeeded. Proponents prefer "America the Beautiful" for various reasons, saying it is easier to sing, more melodic, and more adaptable to new orchestrations while still remaining as easily recognizable as "The Star-Spangled Banner". Some prefer "America the Beautiful" over "The Star-Spangled Banner" due to the latter's war-oriented imagery; others prefer "The Star-Spangled Banner" for the same reason. While that national dichotomy has stymied any effort at changing the tradition of the national anthem, "America the Beautiful" continues to be held in high esteem by a large number of Americans, and was even being considered before 1931 as a candidate to become the national anthem of the United States.[12]
This song was used as the background music of the television broadcast of the Tiangong-1 launch.[13]
The song is often included in songbooks in a wide variety of religious congregations in the United States.[14]
America. A Poem for July 4.
Original poem (1893)[15]
O beautiful for halcyon skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the enameled plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
Till souls wax fair as earth and air
And music-hearted sea!
O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
Till paths be wrought through wilds of thought
By pilgrim foot and knee!
O beautiful for glory-tale
Of liberating strife,
When once or twice, for man's avail,
Men lavished precious life!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain,
The banner of the free!
O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
Till nobler men keep once again
Thy whiter jubilee!
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1904 version[16]
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness.
America! America!
God mend thine ev'ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.
O beautiful for glory-tale
Of liberating strife,
When valiantly for man's avail
Men lavished precious life.
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine.
O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears.
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.
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1911 version[17]
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!
O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine!
O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
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In July of 1893, a witty feminist poet and Wellesley professor named Katharine Lee Bates scaled Pikes Peak, just outside Colorado Springs, Colo. She'd been teaching a summer session on Chaucer, and recovering from a suicidal depression earlier that spring. A brand-new railway up the 14,000-plus-foot mountain was broken, so Bates had to make it up the rocky path by horse-drawn wagon, and then by mule.
Even today, traveling by SUV, the road is intimidating: There are narrow switchbacks and astonishingly few guardrails. A park ranger warned me and my guide Leah Davis Witherow, historian and curator of the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, to use the lowest gear on our way back down. On top of the windswept peak, though, it's easy to see why Bates made the arduous journey.
Looking east, you can see almost all the way to Kansas. To the north, the Rocky Mountains stretch into the distance. And even on a bitterly cold and windy day, puffy clouds floated by, the sun hit the red rocks and the alpine evergreens were dusted with snow. "In the late afternoon, as the sun is shining and the shadows are coming over the mountains, the mountain looks purple," Witherow explained during our visit. "It kind of radiates this purple glow, and it is beautiful."
Fort McHenry
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| The Star Spangled Banner was written during the War of 1812 by Francis Scott Key. |
"Star-Spangled Banner" and "National anthem of the USA" redirect here. For the flag that flew over Fort McHenry, see Star-Spangled Banner (flag). For the present flag, see Flag of the United States.
"The Star-Spangled Banner"
The earliest surviving sheet music of "The Star-Spangled Banner", from 1814.
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National anthem of the United States
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Lyrics
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Francis Scott Key, 1814
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Music
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John Stafford Smith, c. 1773
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Adopted
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March 3, 1931[1]
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Audio sample
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"The Star-Spangled Banner" (instrumental, one stanza)
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"The Star-Spangled Banner" is the national anthem of the United States. The lyrics come from the Defence of Fort M'Henry,[2] a poem written on September 14, 1814, by 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet Francis Scott Key after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by British ships of the Royal Navy in Baltimore Harbor during the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812. Key was inspired by the large U.S. flag, with 15 stars and 15 stripes, known as the Star-Spangled Banner, flying triumphantly above the fort during the U.S. victory.
The poem was set to the tune of a popular British song written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a men's social club in London. "To Anacreon in Heaven" (or "The Anacreontic Song"), with various lyrics, was already popular in the United States. This setting, renamed "The Star-Spangled Banner", soon became a well-known U.S. patriotic song. With a range of 19 semitones, it is known for being very difficult to sing. Although the poem has four stanzas, only the first is commonly sung today.
"The Star-Spangled Banner" was recognized for official use by the United States Navy in 1889, and by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in 1916, and was made the national anthem by a congressional resolution on March 3, 1931 (46 Stat. 1508, codified at 36 U.S.C. § 301), which was signed by President Herbert Hoover.
Before 1931, other songs served as the hymns of U.S. officialdom. "Hail, Columbia" served this purpose at official functions for most of the 19th century. "My Country, 'Tis of Thee", whose melody is identical to "God Save the Queen", the United Kingdom's national anthem,[3] also served as a de facto national anthem.[4] Following the War of 1812 and subsequent U.S. wars, other songs emerged to compete for popularity at public events, among them "America the Beautiful", which itself was being considered before 1931, as a candidate to become the national anthem of the United States.[5]
In 1930, Veterans of Foreign Wars started a petition for the United States to officially recognize "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the national anthem.[24] Five million people signed the petition.[24] The petition was presented to the United
States House Committee on the Judiciary on January 31, 1930.[25] On the same day, Elsie Jorss-Reilley and Grace Evelyn Boudlin sang the song to the Committee to refute the perception that it was too high pitched for a typical person to sing.[26] The Committee voted in favor of sending the bill to the House floor for a vote.[27] The House of Representatives passed the bill later that year.[28] The Senate passed the bill on March 3, 1931.[28] President Herbert Hoover signed the bill on March 4, 1931, officially adopting "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the national anthem of the United States of America.[1] As currently codified, the United States Code states that "[t]he composition consisting of the words and music known as the Star-Spangled Banner is the national anthem."[29] Although the National Anthem officially comprises all four stanzas of the poem, only the first stanza is generally sung, and the other three are much lesser-known.
In an attempt to take Baltimore, the British attacked Fort McHenry, which protected the harbor. Bombs were soon bursting in air, rockets were glaring, and all in all it was a moment of great historical interest. During the bombardment, a young lawyer named Francis Off Key [sic] wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner", and when, by the dawn's early light, the British heard it sung, they fled in terror.[30]
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| Origanal 13 colony Star Spangled Banner on Left, The 15 Star and Stripe, Star Spangled Banner, on Right. January 13, 1794, and immortalized by Francis Scott Key, During the bombardment of Ft. McHenry, September 13,1814 |
"There was nothing special about it," says Scott S. Sheads, historian at Baltimore's Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine, speaking of a time when a new nation was struggling for survival and groping toward a collective identity. That all changed in 1813, when one enormous flag, pieced together on the floor of a Baltimore brewery, was first hoisted over the federal garrison at Fort McHenry. In time the banner would take on larger meaning, set on a path to glory by a young lawyer named Francis Scott Key, passing into one family's private possession and emerging as a public treasure.
The American Flag's Design.
Betsy Ross
https://www.newsweek.com/betsy-ross-flag-meaning-history-racist-1447174
The story of the flag's design first became a topic of discussion several years after its creation, when Ross's grandson William J. Canby delivered a document to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in 1870 claiming his grandmother was responsible for the flag design, according to the 2008 Smithsonian history, The Star-Spangled Banner: The Making of an American Icon.
The story of the flag's design first became a topic of discussion several years after its creation, when Ross's grandson William J. Canby delivered a document to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in 1870 claiming his grandmother was responsible for the flag design, according to the 2008 Smithsonian history, The Star-Spangled Banner: The Making of an American Icon.
Ross, the daughter of a Quaker carpenter, ran an upholstery shop with her husband in a home they rented in Philadelphia. The couple was known for making cartridges and flags for the Continental Army, and it was rumored Ross even designed bed hangings for Washington in 1774, according to Pennsylvania's historical organization, Historic Pennsylvania.
Nonetheless, there are no official government records of the flag's creation until June 14, 1777, when the Continental Congress approved the flag "shall be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the Union be thirteen stars, while on a blue field, representing a new constellation," according to the Library of Congress. Ross' name isn't mentioned in the document, although this may simply be attributable to the biases of the era.
While the flag initially featured 13 stars to represent the 13 colonies, the flag has been updated 27 times over the years to include new states added into the union. The flag presently on display across America was introduced after Hawaii became the 50th state in August 1959.
For some, the Betsy Ross flag is just a reminder of the country's history. Still, its origin is steeped in a time period where America was a slavery-driven and openly racist country. The values of that era persist within American culture, with white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan using the Betsy Ross Flag in its propaganda in more recent times.
My Country 'Tis of Thee.
Samuel Francis Smith wrote the lyrics to "America" in 1831[4] while a student at the Andover Theological Seminary in Andover, Massachusetts. The church-music composer Lowell Mason, a friend, had asked him to translate the lyrics in some German school songbooks into English, or to write new lyrics for the same tunes. The "God Save the Queen" melody in Muzio Clementi's Symphony No. 3 (also called "The Great National", written as a tribute to Clementi's adopted country) caught Smith's attention at the time; rather than translating lyrics from the German, he wrote his own American patriotic hymn to the melody, completing the lyrics in thirty minutes.
Smith gave Mason the lyrics he had written, and the song was first performed in public on July 4, 1831,[4] at a children's Independence Day celebration at Park Street Church in Boston. The first publication of "America" was in 1832.[4]
My country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims' pride,
From ev'ry mountainside
Let freedom ring!
My native country, thee,
Land of the noble free,
Thy name I love;
I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills;
My heart with rapture thrills,
Like that above.
Let music swell the breeze,
And ring from all the trees
Sweet freedom's song;
Let mortal tongues awake;
Let all that breathe partake;
Let rocks their silence break,
The sound prolong.
Our fathers' God to Thee,
Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing.
Long may our land be bright,
With freedom's holy light,
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God our King!
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims' pride,
From ev'ry mountainside
Let freedom ring!
My native country, thee,
Land of the noble free,
Thy name I love;
I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills;
My heart with rapture thrills,
Like that above.
Let music swell the breeze,
And ring from all the trees
Sweet freedom's song;
Let mortal tongues awake;
Let all that breathe partake;
Let rocks their silence break,
The sound prolong.
Our fathers' God to Thee,
Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing.
Long may our land be bright,
With freedom's holy light,
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God our King!
Additional verse to celebrate Washington's Centennial:[5]
Our joyful hearts today,
Their grateful tribute pay,
Happy and free,
After our toils and fears,
After our blood and tears,
Strong with our hundred years,
O God, to Thee!
Their grateful tribute pay,
Happy and free,
After our toils and fears,
After our blood and tears,
Strong with our hundred years,
O God, to Thee!
Abolitionist version[edit]
An Abolitionist version was written, by A. G. Duncan, 1843.[6]
My country, 'tis of thee,
Stronghold of slavery, of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Where men man's rights deride,
From every mountainside thy deeds shall ring.
My native country, thee,
Where all men are born free, if white's their skin;
I love thy hills and dales,
Thy mounts and pleasant vales;
But hate thy negro sales, as foulest sin.
Let wailing swell the breeze,
And ring from all the trees the black man's wrong;
Let every tongue awake;
Let bond and free partake;
Let rocks their silence break, the sound prolong.
Our father's God! to thee,
Author of Liberty, to thee we sing;
Soon may our land be bright,
With holy freedom's right,
Protect us by thy might, Great God, our King.
It comes, the joyful day,
When tyranny's proud sway, stern as the grave,
Shall to the ground be hurl'd,
And freedom's flag, unfurl'd,
Shall wave throughout the world, O'er every slave.
Trump of glad jubilee!
Echo o'er land and sea freedom for all.
Let the glad tidings fly,
And every tribe reply,
"Glory to God on high", at Slavery's fall!
Stronghold of slavery, of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Where men man's rights deride,
From every mountainside thy deeds shall ring.
My native country, thee,
Where all men are born free, if white's their skin;
I love thy hills and dales,
Thy mounts and pleasant vales;
But hate thy negro sales, as foulest sin.
Let wailing swell the breeze,
And ring from all the trees the black man's wrong;
Let every tongue awake;
Let bond and free partake;
Let rocks their silence break, the sound prolong.
Our father's God! to thee,
Author of Liberty, to thee we sing;
Soon may our land be bright,
With holy freedom's right,
Protect us by thy might, Great God, our King.
It comes, the joyful day,
When tyranny's proud sway, stern as the grave,
Shall to the ground be hurl'd,
And freedom's flag, unfurl'd,
Shall wave throughout the world, O'er every slave.
Trump of glad jubilee!
Echo o'er land and sea freedom for all.
Let the glad tidings fly,
And every tribe reply,
"Glory to God on high", at Slavery's fall!
Sustainable Waste - Products
From afar editor in chief
In his book How to Be an Anti-Racist, Ibram X. Kendi writes, “One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist. There is no in-between safe space of ‘not racist.’”
Julia Cosgrove
Editor in chief
@jules_afar
Editor in chief
@jules_afar
George Marion McClellan
1860–
George Marion McClellan was born on September 29, 1860, in Belfast, Tennessee. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and his bachelor of divinity from Hartford Theological Seminary in Connecticut. He was a teacher of Latin and English in Central High School in Louisville, Kentucky, from 1899 to 1911, before becoming the principal of Dunbar Public School.
A Congregational minister, teacher, and fiction writer, as well as a poet, McClellan published two poetry collections: Poems (A. M. E. Church Sunday School Union, 1895), which was later retitled Songs of a Southerner (Rockwell and Churchill, 1896), and his noted collection The Path of Dreams (John P. Morton, 1916). He also published the fiction collection Old Greenbottom Inn and Other Stories in 1906, a tragedy about racial mixture and interracial romance. McClellan, though more obscure—as little is known about his life—is frequently compared to his contemporary Paul Laurence Dunbar, another distinguished African American poet of the time. McClellan died in 1934.
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| ©envisage photo |
Adage
ad·age
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Those who chose to ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
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| The circular Mural at Gettysburg National Memorial Building |
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| Gettysburg Memorial and Lincoln who wrote the Gettysburg Address on the train on the way to speak there.©envisage photo |
Happy 4th of JULY! Happy Independence Day!
Thanks for stopping by,
Eliza
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