Hammour ( Albums) sur FB

L'appeau d'Ecouille

Thanksgiving 2011

Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is a holiday celebrated in the United States on the fourth Thursday in November. It has officially been an annual tradition since 1863, when during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving to be celebrated on Thursday, November 26.^] As a federal and popular holiday in the U.S., Thanksgiving is one of the major holidays of the year. Together with Christmas and the New Year, Thanksgiving is a part of the broader holiday season.

The event that Americans commonly call the "First Thanksgiving" was celebrated to give thanksto God for guiding them safely to the New World.^[ The first Thanksgiving feast lasted three days, providing enough food for 53 Pilgrims and 90 Native Americans.^] The feast consisted offish (cod, eels, and bass) and shellfish (clams, lobster, and mussels), wild fowl (ducks, geese,swans, and turkey), venison, berries and fruit, vegetables (peas, pumpkin, beetroot and possibly,wild or cultivated onion), harvest grains (barley and wheat), and the Three Sisters: beans, dried Indian maize or corn, and squash.( Wikipédia)

The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth
by Jennie A. Brownscombe. (1914)

 L'Action de grâce (avec ou sans « s ») ou Thanksgiving (en anglais) est une fête célébrée au Canada le deuxième lundi d’octobre et aux États-Unis le quatrième jeudi de novembre. Certains pays la célèbrent à d'autres dates. Historiquement un jour de fête chrétienne durant lequel on remerciait Dieu par des prières et des réjouissances pour les bonheurs que l’on avait pu recevoir pendant l’année, cette célébration est désormais laïque en Amérique du Nord, les administrations et la plupart des entreprises étant fermées ce jour-là^3,4.Pour certains peuples amérindiens, l'Action de grâce constitue une commémoration des guerres indiennes.

L’origine de cette fête est identique aux États-Unis et au Canada. Les toutes premières Actions de grâce furent des fêtes de la moisson. Pour cette raison, l’Action de grâce a toujours lieu à la fin de l’automne ( Wikipédia) 

La première Action de grâce, peinture de Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863-1930)

Nous aussi nous avons eu de la dinde et du potiron, de la purée et de la gelée de cranberry, des asperges et des brocolis et nous aussi nous avons remerçié la Terre de les avoir  portés et nourris et le Ciel de nous avoir mis là où nous sommes .

New -York à portée d'un escalator

Parce que j'y ai vécu à 21 ans, New York demeure ma ville, la ville au monde que je préfère. Ses rues sont encore emplies pour moi de la musique des Beatlles. Les ice-cream sodas y sont comme nulle part ailleurs et ainsi sont les hamburgers, les pizzas, les marchés de Noël, le métro, le vent au coin des blocks, les cafés du Village. Cruisin. The King. Thelonius Monk.

Comme nulle part ailleurs. 

Je vois toujours la ville comme lointaine, inatteignable, tout en haut d'un mât de cocagne.Et voilà que hier il a suffi que je grimpe sur un escalier roulant à Penn Station et que je sorte de la gare pour me retrouver sur la 7ème avenue face à l'hôtel  Pennsylvania, en plein Manhattan. Waouawhh ! Nice to be back home.

L'Hôtel Pennsylvania en face de Penn Station
Pennsylvania Hotel by the Penn Station , 34th and 7th 

Et la 7ème avenue  avec les taxis jaunes
On the 7th avenue we took  a yellow cab

Que nous descendons pour aller vers le  Village
To go and meet my friend Andrew in the Village 

Et le marché de Noël installé au métro Union Square.
And end up at the Xmas market already  installed  around Union Square 

22 Novembre à New -York

Dans quelques heures , après un super petit déjeuner , nous prendrons un autre train pour New York cette fois 

Où nous passerons la journée !
See you later Alligator ! 

At "Rangoon" again

Après nos tours de librairies , nous avions rendez-vous pour déjeuner avec un autre ami quaker et nous avons  pu longuement  échangé dans un restaurant birman , un autre " Rangoon" , à 2 rues  du quartier chinois .

After our tour of bookstores we had a birmese lung at an other " Rangoon Restaurant" with a Quaker friend , a meeting we fully enjoy ,  very near the Chinese quarter 

A Market tour

A Matt Malloy to enjoy 

Un président qui rapporte
Unusual 3$ bill 

Un Bouddha qui dévore des livres
A Buddha  fasting on books 

Les plus gros sandwichs  qui soient
Biggest sandwitches ever seen  

Des bonbons à profusion
Tons of candies 

De jolies enseignes avec des Amishs au comptoir des boulangeries surtout
Some amish  bakeries as well  

Toutes sortes de poissons et fruits de mer avec les homards très peu chers
Lots of different fishs , sea food including beautiful  inexpensive lobsters 

Et du bon sens aussi pour une ville fondée par un  quaker  du nom de William Penn
And some solid reminder 

 Le nom de la ville fut  choisi par ce  William Penn et  signifie « la ville de l’amour fraternel », car elle allait être un îlot de tolérance religieuse. (en anglais Philadelphia, prononcé [ˌfɪləˈdɛlfiə], du grec philèin, aimer et adelphos, frère).

William Penn

Avant l'arrivée des Européens, environ 20 000 Amérindiens Lenapes, appartenant à la nation algonquine habitaient dans la vallée du Delaware

L’exploration de la vallée du Delaware commença au début du xvii^e siècle. Les premiers colons suédois, néerlandais et anglais revendiquèrent tour à tour les rives du fleuve : la Nouvelle-Suède, fondée en 1638, fut annexée à la Nouvelle-Néerlande en 1655. Puis la région passa définitivement dans le giron britannique en 1674.

En 1681, le roi d’Angleterre Charles II octroya une charte à William Penn en échange de l’annulation d’une dette que le gouvernement devait à son père. Par ce document, la colonie de Pennsylvanie était officiellement fondée⁷. William Penn (1644–1718) était un quaker anglais : il appartenait à ce groupe religieux dissident, persécuté en Angleterre, qui rejetait la hiérarchie ecclésiastique et prônait l’égalité, la tolérance, la non-violence. La Pennsylvanie devint rapidement un refuge pour tous ceux qui étaient opprimés pour leur foi. William Penn partit ainsi en Amérique en 1682 et fonda la ville de Philadelphie. Il souhaitait que cette cité servît de port et de centre politique. Même si Charles II lui en avait donné la propriété, William Penn acheta la terre aux Amérindiens afin d’établir avec eux des relations pacifiques. Il signa un traité d’amitié avec le chef Lenape Tamanend à Shackamaxon en 1682.

Before Europeans arrived, the Philadelphia area was home to the Lenape (Delaware) Indians in the village of Shackamaxon. Europeans came to the Delaware Valley in the early 17th century, with the first settlements founded by the Dutch. The English conquered the New Netherland colony in 1664, but the situation did not really change until 1682, when the area was included in William Penn's charter for Pennsylvania.

In 1681, in partial repayment of a debt, Charles II of England granted William Penn a charter for what would become the Pennsylvania colony. Despite the royal charter, Penn bought the land from the local Lenape to be on good terms with the Native Americans and ensure peace for his colony....Penn named the city Philadelphia, which is Greek for brotherly love (from philos, "love" or "friendship", and adelphos, "brother"). As a Quaker, Penn had experienced religious persecution and wanted his colony to be a place where anyone could worship freely. 

A day in Philadelphia

Rien de plus simple . On prend un train à Trenton  qui s'arrête à chaque petite ville  ce qui fait que le trajet prend 45 minutes . Les stations ressemblent d'ailleurs plus à des arrêts de bus qu'à des gares
Easy ! From Trenton a train stopping in each little station bring us in les than an hour 

Mais quand on arrive en ville , à la station du Marché , on débarque dans un splendide hall
To the lovely market station 

Avec de belles décorations murales
With beautiful murals 

Ne reste qu'à prendre l'escalier roulant et Lynn, Léa et Moi sommes
Just an escalator to take and Lynn , Lea and Anne 

Au centre de Philadelphie en Pennsylvanie !
Are in Central Philadelphia . Pennsylvania . 

Hamilton

Et maintenant je suis plus que bien installée pour quelques jours chez la maman de Lynn à Hamilton , New Jersey .
Now I am in Hamilton , New Jersey , staying at Lynn's mother , installed as a queen in a lovely big room.

Liadhin va venir pour 9 jours. Elle est pensionnaire dans l'Ohio mais en vacances pour  la Thanksgiving.
Lia will arrive to-day  from Ohio where she is in a boarding school  to spend her 9 days Thansgiving 's  holyday .

We still love you , The Band

Inductees: Rick Danko (bass, vocals; born December 29, 1943, died December 10, 1999), Levon Helm (drums, mandolin, vocals; born May 26, 1942), Garth Hudson (organ, horns; born August 2, 1937), Richard Manuel (piano, drums, vocals; born April 3, 1943, died March 4, 1986), Robbie Robertson (guitar; born July 5, 1943)

Bob Dylan recruited them as his backup group for a 1965-66 world tour. As the Hawks (minus Helm, who stayed behind), they helped effect Dylan’s transformation from an acoustic folkie to an electric rock and roller.

Dylan’s collaboration with the Band continued throughout 1966 in upstate New York, where he recuperated from a motorcycle accident. Working in casual sessions with the group (including Helm) at a rented house in Woodstock, Dylan put together a heavily bootlegged body of material that would eventually see release as The Basement Tapes. All the while, the Hawks - now calling themselves the Band - recorded a large number of original songs. The material they wrote and arranged at the pink house, using what drummer Levon Helm described as a “workshop approach,” surfaced on Music from Big Pink and on side four of Dylan’s Basement Tapes.

Woodstock : the town

Lors du festival, j'étais déjà maman. Emmanuelle avait 21 mois et Marine  juste 10.
Woodstock me semblait loin géographiquement mais j'en comprenais l'esprit aussi je me suis sentie  rajeunir en me promenant dans la ville au point d'acheter un t-shirt prune avec les mots magiques du festival  :
 "Peace-Flowers - Love"

C'est une jolie petite ville assez touristique bien sûr avec ici et là  quelques souvenirs précieux
comme à la  boulangerie des photos de Dylan et du Band , qui vivaient à côté. Il y a toujours beaucoup de musiciens dans le coin et un petit côté décontracté archi-plaisant 

Amusant de me dire que peut-être Emma considérera de venir un jour à ce festival 

L'église catholique et...

L'église luthérienne 

Woodstock : The festival

The Woodstock Festival also called Woostock Music Festival , An Aquarain Exposition, Three days of Peace and Music , was a three-day concert (which rolled into a fourth day) that involved lots of sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll - plus a lot of mud. The Woodstock Music Festival of 1969 has become an icon of the 1960s hippie counterculture

Dates: August 15-18, 1969

The organizers of the Woodstock Festival were four young men: John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfeld, and Mike Lang. The oldest of the four was only 27 years old at the time of the Woodstock Festival.

Roberts, an heir to a pharmaceutical fortune, and his friend Rosenman were looking for a way to use Roberts' money to invest in an idea that would make them even more money. After placing an ad in The New York Times that stated: "Young men with unlimited capital looking for interesting, legitimate investment opportunities and business propositions," they met Kornfeld and Lang.

The Plan for the Woodstock Festival

Kornfeld and Lang's original proposal was to build a recording studio and a retreat for rock musicians up in Woodstock, New York (where Bob Dylan and other musicians already lived). The idea morphed into creating a two-day rock concert for 50,000 people with the hope that the concert would raise enough money to pay for the studio.

The four young men then got to work on organizing a large music festival. They found a location for the event up in an industrial park in nearby Wallkill, New York.

They printed tickets ($7 for one day, $13 for two days, and $18 for three days), which could be purchased in select stores or via mail order. The men also worked on organizing food, signing musicians, and hiring security.

Things Go Very Wrong

The first of many things to go wrong with the Woodstock Festival was the location. No matter how the young men and their lawyers spun it, the citizens of Wallkill did not want a bunch of drugged-out hippies descending on their town. After much wrangling, the town of Wallkill passed a law on July 2, 1969 that effectively banned the concert from their vicinity.

Everyone involved with the Woodstock Festival panicked. Stores refused to sell any more tickets and the negotiations with the musicians got shaky. Only a month-and-a half before the Woodstock Festival was to begin, a new location had to be found.

Luckily, in mid-July, before too many people began demanding refunds for their pre-purchased tickets, Max Yasgur offered up his 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York to be the location for the Woodstock Festival.

As lucky as they were to have found a new location, the last minute change of venue seriously set back the Festival timeline. New contracts to rent the dairy farm and surrounding areas had to be drawn up and permits to allow the Woodstock Festival in the town had to be acquired. Construction of the stage, a performers' pavilion, parking lots, concession stands, and a children's playground all got a late start and barely got finished in time for the event. Some things, like ticket booths and gates, did not get finished in time.

As the date got closer, more problems sprung up. It soon appeared that their 50,000 people estimate was way too low and the new estimate jumped to upwards of 200,000 people. The young men then tried to bring in more toilets, more water, and more food. However, the food concessionaires kept threatening to cancel at the last minute (the organizers had accidentally hired people who had no experience in concessions) so they had to worry about whether or not they could airlift in rice as a backup food supply. Also troublesome was the last minute ban on off-duty police officers from working at the Woodstock Festival.

Hundreds of Thousands Arrive at the Woodstock Festival

On Wednesday, August 13 (two days before the Festival was to begin), there were already approximately 50,000 people camping near the stage. These early arrivals had walked right through the huge gaps in the fence where the gates had not yet been placed. Since there was no way to get the 50,000 people to leave the area in order to pay for tickets and there was no time to erect the numerous gates to prevent even more people from just walking in, the organizers were forced to make the event a free concert.

This declaration of a free concert had two dire effects. The first of which was that the organizers were going to lose massive amounts of money by putting on this event. The second effect was that as news spread that it was now a free concert, an estimated one million people headed to Bethel, New York. Police had to turn away thousands of cars. It is estimated that about 500,000 people actually made it to the Woodstock Festival.

No one had planned for half a million people. The highways in the area literally became parking lots as people abandoned their cars in the middle of the street and just walked the final distance to the Woodstock Festival. Traffic was so bad that the organizers had to hire helicopters to shuttle the performers from their hotels to the stage.

The Music Starts

Despite all the organizers' troubles, the Woodstock Festival got started nearly on time. On Friday evening, August 15, Richie Havens got up on stage and officially started the Festival. Sweetwater, Joan Baez, and other folk artists also played Friday night.

The music started up again shortly after noon on Saturday with Quill and continued non-stop until Sunday morning around 9 am. The day of psychedelic bands continued with such musicians as Santana, Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead, and The Who, to name just a few.

It was obvious to everyone that on Sunday, the Woodstock Festival was winding down. Most of the crowd left throughout the day, leaving about 150,000 people on Sunday night. When Jimi Hendrix, the last musician to play at Woodstock, finished his set early on Monday morning, the crowd was down to only 25,000.

Despite the 30-minute lines for water and at least hour-long wait to use a toilet, the Woodstock Festival was a huge success. There were a lot of drugs, a lot of sex and nudity, and a lot of mud (created by the rain).

After the Woodstock Festival

The organizers of Woodstock were dazed at the end of the Festival. They didn't have time to focus on the fact that they had created the most popular music event in history, for they first had to deal with their incredible debt (over $1 million) and the 70 lawsuits that had been filed against them.

To their great relief, the film of the Woodstock Festival turned into a hit movie and the profits from the movie covered a large chunk of the debt from the Festival. By the time that everything was paid off, they were still $100,000 in debt.

By Jennifer Rosenberg from :  About.com 20th Century History