YouTube Symphony

Today not only marks Tax Day in the United States, but it also marks the day for the coming together of musicians the world over to play in the YouTube Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.

CNN.com ran a little special about the symphony, and it’s pretty neat, and a great idea by Google, YouTube, and the musician collaborators.

It really shows the power of the Internet to bring together people and ideas. A big fan of classical music, I love the idea, and, as mentioned in the CNN.com video, the project shows that classical music is not outdated. It’s alive and inspirational to millions of people.

You can find more videos from the symphony on the Orchestra’s YouTube Channel.

2009 Inauguration of Barack Obama

History was made today with the inauguration of the first African American President Barack Obama.

As an interesting side note, in the actual administering of the oath to Barack Obama, the Chief Justice accidently mixed up the order of the words.  Barack smiled and repeated them as they were given and in the correct order.

A few lesser known snippets about President Obama’s history courtesy of Wikipedia:

Barack Obama was born at the Kapi’olani Medical Center for Women & Children in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Ann Dunham, a white American from Wichita, Kansas of English and Irish descent. Obama’s father was Barack Obama, Sr., a Luo from Nyang’oma Kogelo, Nyanza Province, Kenya. His parents met in 1960 while attending the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, where his father was a foreign student.  The couple married on February 2, 1961; they separated when Obama was two years old and divorced in 1964. Obama’s father returned to Kenya and saw his son only once more before dying in an automobile accident in 1982.

After her divorce, Dunham married Indonesian student Lolo Soetoro, who was attending college in Hawaii. When Soeharto, a military leader in Soetoro’s home country, came to power in 1967, all students studying abroad were recalled and the family moved to Indonesia. There Obama attended local schools in Jakarta, such as Besuki Public School and St. Francis of Assisi School, until he was ten years old.

He then returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Armour Dunham, while attending Punahou School from the fifth grade in 1971 until his graduation from high school in 1979. Obama’s mother returned to Hawaii in 1972 for five years, and then in 1977 went back to Indonesia, where she worked as an anthropological field worker. She stayed there most of the rest of her life, returning to Hawaii in 1994. She died of ovarian cancer in 1995….

After four years in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago, where he was hired as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale) on Chicago’s far South Side. He worked there for three years from June 1985 to May 1988.  During his three years as the DCP’s director, its staff grew from one to thirteen and its annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000. His achievements included helping set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants’ rights organization in Altgeld Gardens.

Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute. In mid-1988, he traveled for the first time to Europe for three weeks and then for five weeks in Kenya, where he met many of his paternal relatives for the first time.

Obama entered Harvard Law School in late 1988. He was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year, and president of the journal in his second year. During his summers, he returned to Chicago where he worked as a summer associate at the law firms of Sidley & Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990. After graduating with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991, he returned to Chicago.

Obama served for twelve years as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, teaching constitutional law. He was first classified as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996, and then as a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004.  He also joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a twelve-attorney law firm specializing in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development, where he was an associate for three years from 1993 to 1996, then of counsel from 1996 to 2004, with his law license becoming inactive in 2002.

Barack Obama. (2009, January 20). In  Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 19:15, January 20, 2009, from  http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barack_Obama&oldid=265330808

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 2009 – Lesser-known Facts

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is an important day in the United States.  However, there are a number of things about Martin Luther that many of us probably do not know (or at least have forgotten since our U.S. History class in High School).

Much of what we are familiar with about Martin Luther from Wikipedia:

King’s efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. There, he raised public consciousness of the civil rights movement and established himself as one of the greatest orators in U.S. history.

In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other non-violent means. By the time of his death in 1968, he had refocused his efforts on ending poverty and opposing the Vietnam War, both from a religious perspective.

King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and Congressional Gold Medal in 2004; Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. national holiday in 1986.

There are many things that are less commonly known about Martin Luther King, Jr.  Answers from Wikipedia.

Why was he named after Martin Luther?

Martin Luther King, Jr., was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the son of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. King’s father was born “Michael King”, and Martin Luther King, Jr., was originally named “Michael King, Jr.”, until the family traveled to Europe in 1934 and visited Germany. His father soon changed both of their names to Martin in honor of the German Protestant Martin Luther. He had an older sister, Willie Christine King, and a younger brother Alfred Daniel Williams King. King sang with his church choir at the 1939 Atlanta premiere of the movie Gone with the Wind.

Did Martin Luther King, Jr. graduate from High School?

Growing up in Atlanta, King attended Booker T. Washington High School. He skipped ninth and twelfth grade, and entered Morehouse College at age fifteen without formally graduating from high school. In 1948, he graduated from Morehouse with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology, and enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1951. King then began doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University and received his Doctor of Philosophy on June 5, 1955.

Where did Martin Luther King, Jr. receive influence about non-violent activism?

Inspired by Gandhi’s success with non-violent activism, King visited the Gandhi family in India in 1959, with assistance from the Quaker group the American Friends Service Committee.  The trip to India affected King in a profound way, deepening his understanding of non-violent resistance and his commitment to America’s struggle for civil rights. In a radio address made during his final evening in India, King reflected, “Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. In a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation.”

When was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day made a Holiday?

At the White House Rose Garden on November 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a federal holiday to honor King. Observed for the first time on January 20, 1986, it is called Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Following President George H. W. Bush’s 1992 proclamation, the holiday is observed on the third Monday of January each year, near the time of King’s birthday.[182] On January 17, 2000, for the first time, Martin Luther King Day was officially observed in all fifty U.S. states.

Martin Luther King, Jr.. (2009, January 16). In  Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 05:51, January 19, 2009, from  http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.&oldid=264482181