What's Black History Month About?

         February was designated Black History Month by President Gerald Ford in 1976, to coincide with the bicentennial (200th birthday) of the United States. February is particularly suitable for this observance because the birthdays of  both President Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass fall in February. It was Lincoln who signed the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) which effectively ended slavery in the United States. Douglass, a contemporary of Lincoln,  was a former slave who won his freedom through escape to the north in 1838. He became an important activist for the cause of human rights, supporting both abolition of slavery and equal rights for women.

There was a backlash against black citizens ("freedmen") after the U.S. Civil War.  Little by little, new means of keeping African Americans in the position of second class citizens were created. Segregation was enforced by both law and custom: blacks and whites could not use the same rest rooms, wait for public transportation in the same waiting rooms, or drink from the same water fountains. Black and white kids couldn't go to the same schools.

        This system began to break down in the 1950s. In 1951, a little girl named Linda Brown tried to enroll in an elementary school near her home in Kansas. Linda was in the third grade. The black school she was supposed to go to involved a 6 block walk, followed by another mile on a bus, while the white school was just 7 blocks away. She was denied, and her parents, with other parents, filed suit. In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that separate schools were inherently unequal, and that Linda and all others in her circumstances were entitled to relief and equal protection of the laws.  This was the beginning of school integration in the United States.

A single white passenger on a
Montgomery bus during the boycott

           The next big event in the Civil Rights Movement was the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1956. It arose from the refusal of Mrs. Rosa Parks, a seamstress, to give up her bus seat to a white man in early December 1955. City ordinance in Montgomery, Alabama required that blacks had to sit in the back of the bus, and if all white seats were full, blacks had to offer their seats to whites.

             Martin Luther King Jr. had become the pastor of a Montgomery Baptist Church in the fall of 1954. Now he was selected to head up organizing a bus boycott to protest unequal treatment of blacks and whites on the buses. Dr. King firmly believed in non-violence, and the patient, determined boycott of the bus service  helped end bus desegregation in December 1956.  There was resistance: between December 21, 1955 and January 10, 1957, there were attacks on black riders and four churches and two homes were bombed. But in the end, Montgomery accepted the inevitable.

Frederick Douglass, ex-slave,
writer, and activist in 1800s

               By 1976, the Civil Rights Movement had achieved a great deal. It had ended segregation and discrimination in voter registration with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. After mass demonstrations and strong southern resistance, voting rights for blacks were strengthened with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

           The contributions African Americans have made to U.S. history and culture were no longer ignored.  February was set aside as a time to remember the historical, scientific, literary and political legacy that black Americans have given to the country.  From Frederick Douglass to Muhammad Ali (Olympic gold medalist in boxing in 1960, heavyweight world champion boxer in 1964, 1974-1977, and political activist), from George Washington Carver (1864- 1943; agricultural researcher) to Thurgood Marshall (1908 - 1993; first black U.S. Supreme Court Justice), from Louis Armstrong (1901-1971; jazz innovator) to Alvin Alley  (1931- 1989; dancer and choreographer), and from Crispus Attucks (1723-1770; freedman killed leading sailors and dockworkers to protest British troops in Boston) to Alice Walker (1944 - present; novelist who won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1983 and poet)--African Americans in all fields are celebrated during February for what they have given to United States culture and history.

              It is worth noting that the U.S.  appreciation of black history motivated Canada to also observe a Black History Month in February. The United Kingdom, too, declared a Black History Month, but celebrates it in October as an educational tool to inspire children of color who are beginning the school term.

And the Winners Are….

      This year's Christmas card competition was judged on Wednesday, December 17.
      Picking the best cards was a hard decision. The judges, our English professors, considered each design. Sometimes they disagreed. Finally, they voted.
     After all the discussion, debate, and votes, we now know who the winners are!
      1A: Yolanda Girón Aguilar won first, and Cinta Toscano Pérez took second.
      1B: José Manuel Blanco won first, and Andrea Gómez Ruiz took second.
      1C: Nazaret Calado Toscano won first, and Lucia Torres Sánchez took second.
      1D: José Manuel Márquez Carillo won first, and Marta Cartes Camacho took second.
      The winning Christmas cards are shown here, but there were many others that were considered. In the entrance to the high school you can see them: they're posted in the display case next to the Nativity Scene.

1A

1C

1B

1D

      Congratulations to all the contestants, and of course, to the winners. Great job!

It's Christmas Time Again!

Merry Christmas, Everyone! 
Soon we'll all be off enjoying the holidays. Last year, we published three Christmas items on the bilingual blog: an interactive book with lots of activities about Christmas; a story about Christmas traditions in the U.S.; and a story about U.S. history that tells how Christmas almost didn't come in the early days of the country. If you missed these blog posts, you can go to the archive and find them in December 2013.
For 2014, we have a new post about Christmas stockings (one of my personal favorite holiday traditions). You can find it below this post.
I'm providing some web sites here that might be enjoyable for you:
(1) Traditional Christmas music standards with a great video of winter in city and wilderness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-9uoxZoLH8
(2) A summary of the "top 10 Christmas movies" with clips is found at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clK-T5oI7Lg
(3) It's a Wonderful Life , the film considered by many to be the best Christmas movie ever, can be found at:
https://archive.org/details/ItsAWonderfulLife_201401
(4)  YouTube offers a list of films for free; some of the list look like trailers, but others are full length films.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmjfIHo2MAw&list=PLiVikJr64fQwcPL46MmG7-h-llTEP5zhG&index=58
Remember! Watching films in English is a great way to improve your listening and speaking skills. (And it's also fun.)

The time Santa got stuck in on an
Irish roof

Putting up the San Juan del
Puerto Christmas Tree (2013)

Christmas lights in a Las Palmas park,
Gran Canaria 

From Odin's Boot to Christmas Tradition

      Christmas Stockings are a popular tradition in the U.S. "Stocking" here means a sock, the covering you wear on your feet. You might ask: "What does THAT have to do with Christmas?"
       Before the stocking, there was a boot, and before Christ was born, there were other gods. In Northern Europe, children often filled boots with carrots and hay for the god Odin's flying horse, Sleipnir.  Odin left the children presents in return for their kindness.

        Later, Christian saints  took the place of the old gods.  Saint Nicholas lived in 4th C. Turkey, and was known for his generosity. Since the time when his legend came to Europe, Dutch children have put shoes beside their fireplaces for St. Nicholas' Day. This tradition began as a way to feed St. Nicholas' horse, but with time, the horse disappeared. Then St. Nicholas, or sinterclaus, put a present into the shoe of a child because the child was good. Dutch immigrants brought the shoes to America in the 17th Century.

         Gradually, the shoe was replaced by a stocking in America. The sock comes from a legend about St. Nicolas. There are many versions, but the basic story is this: There was a poor man with three daughters. He had no money, and so could not pay a dowry (the gift a girl's father had to give to the man who wanted to marry her). If he could not give a dowry, the daughters could not marry. He feared what would happen to them when he died. They would be unprotected, with neither a father nor a husband.
           St. Nicolas heard about this and wanted to help. He quietly went into the father's house in the night and left a gold ball (or a bag of gold) in some stockings that were hanging by the fireplace to dry. The young women and their father were overjoyed to find this gift in the stockings.
          Then again, it's also possible that the custom came from another belief: one Christmas Eve, Santa Clause dropped some gold coins as he came down the chimney. They fell into a stocking that was drying by the fire. After that, children regularly hung stockings by the fire in the hope that Santa would drop something when he traveled through the chimney.
           Fast forward to 1823. That year, Clement Clarke Moore made up a poem for his kids that talked about  Christmas stockings:
               'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

               Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

               The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,


               In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.
…"

                                             excerpt from "A Visit from Saint Nicholas"

                                             (1823: Clement Clarke Moore)

           The poem was an instant hit. It was republished in many newspapers. Christmas stockings became immensely popular--and remain so to this day.

            Typically, a Christmas stocking is filled with things like oranges (said to represent St. Nicholas' golden ball) and chocolates. Small toys may be put into it, as may decks of cards. Sometimes more important gifts are put into a stocking, small items like a piece of jewelry or a memory card or a pen drive. You can even slip an iPod or an iPhone case into a stocking.

            In our house, my parents had a rule about Christmas morning. It was one of the few days they could sleep late. My brother and I were not to disturb them before 8 a.m. But "Santa Clause" always came on Christmas Eve to leave us stockings: there would be fruit so we wouldn't be too hungry. There were often toys or small books to entertain us. Sometimes, we found tiny games that we could play with each other while we waited. Now, so many years later, on the rare occasions when we can spend Christmas together, my brother and I still make Christmas stockings for each other.

A Competing Claim for the First Thanksgiving

Everyone has heard about Thanksgiving, right? Last year we posted a video and some activities about Thanksgiving that you can find if you go to the menu for November 2013 at :http://bilinguismoiesdre.blogspot.com.es/2013_11_01_archive.html.

But, according to some, the 1621 celebration in Plymouth, Massachusetts  wasn't the first American Thanksgiving. There are other claims to the first Thanksgiving in what is today the United States. The strongest is a claim by the descendants of Spanish settlers.

It's based on an expedition led by Don Juan de Oñate that left Santa Barbara, in Nueva Vizcaya, in January 1598. There were 400 men (of whom 130 brought families), eighty-three wagons and carts to carry the baggage and provisions, and more than 7,000 head of stock--cattle, horses, pigs, sheep--assembled. The settlers hoped to find the riches of the Seven Cities of Cibola. Besides mineral wealth, they also hoped to find land for ranching and native labor.

The Medanos of the Chihuahua Desert,
south of Cd. Juarez, Chih.

Oñate took a new route north: he turned away from the Conchos River that those before him had followed, and struck out across the Chihuahua Desert.  A scouting party was aided by natives in finding the Rio Grande. But it was quite another thing for the heavily burdened caravan to follow the trail the scouts made across the desert to the river.

Scrub desert turned to shifting sand dunes. Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá, one of the officers, wrote that the group had to eat roots, cactus, berries and weeds as they crossed the desert for they exhausted their food supply. Their clothes and shoes wore out, the hot sand burned their feet, and their tongues swelled up and their throats dried up from thirst. His account relates that "the horses suffered most…they were almost frantic with thirst and their eyes nearly bulged from their sockets."

For four days, there was no water.  Then they reached the Rio Grande del Norte. They stayed for over a week, resting and celebrating their survival. A great feast is said to have taken place there on the banks of the river, with meat supplied by the Spaniards and fish contributed by local natives: the first Thanksgiving, near what is now El Paso, Texas, on April 30, 1598.

The route that Oñate's expedition carved from the desert with such effort became the preferred route for later settlers. Today's highway between Chihuahua City and El Paso follows the same route. Dunes still confront the traveler, from Samalayuca north. They shift constantly, as if trying to bury the highway with their quarts grains, for around 30 kilometers. It is hard to imagine what it must have been like to cross them on horseback or on foot. No wonder the expedition rested when they finally reached the river, and gave thanks for its waters and their survival!

Gratitude: The Purpose of Thanksgiving

Do you see a glass of water that is half-empty? Or is it half-full?
People who see a half-empty glass are likely to see their lives in the same way: problems with their classes or jobs, difficulties with money, worries about family, and so on. People who see the glass as half-full are more likely to think about the good parts of their classes or jobs, be happy they have money at all, and view family problems as only one element of being a member of a family.
The half-full glass people, in other words, are grateful for their blessings. Studies show that people who are grateful are generally more positive and better able to deal with trouble than people who don't appreciate the goodness in their lives.
Gratitude can be developed through practice. One exercise that helps develop gratitude is to write down something you are thankful for every day. Another way to practice gratitude is to thank people when they do something kind for you or something that affects you.

         Dr. Michael Craig Miller M.D. of the Harvard Medical School offers a series of strategies for improving gratitude in his article "The Mental Health Benefits of Gratitude." One such strategy is to write thank-you notes. "You can make yourself happier and nurture your relationship with another person by writing thank-you notes.... Also write one any time a person has had a positive influence on your life," says Dr. Miller.

Bernardo Romero creates his
fabulous seafood paella

Not long ago, faculty at the Instituto got together for a meal. Prof. Bernardo Romero cooked a delicious seafood paella at the gathering. I can't eat Spain's famous hams, so I really appreciated a seafood dish. I think I should tell him, so I'm going to write him an open [published] thank you note right here!

Dear Bernardo,

Thank you so much for making the wonderful seafood paella for all of    us on November 12.  You know I have to avoid ham, and I appreciate you considering me when you decided on seafood for the dish. The mussels and shrimp were so good, and I'd never eaten razor clams before. The wild asparagus was a special treat!

Thank you for your effort. It was really memorable.

Many regards, Susan                                                               

Maybe you know someone you'd like to thank for something special?

 

Halloween is coming soon! It is on October 31, a Friday.

You can find out more about Halloween at these web sites:

http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/holidays/halloweenhistory.htm
This site gives a short history and links to  sites about "trick or treat" and "costumes."

http://chagall-col.spip.ac-rouen.fr/IMG/didapages/halloween2/index.html
This site is an interactive book with information and games about Halloween.

If you want to fool (engañar) evil spirits, you might want to put on a disguise.  Will you be a rock star? A goblin? A super hero? A ghost?  Maybe you want to be a late medieval nobleman?

Nobleman, Palos Discoverer Fair Parade
March 2013

There are many possibilities!