So Powerful So Beautiful!!
#Repost @guardian with @make_repost
・・・
The inauguration of @JoeBiden featured a slew of high-profile performers, but for many it was @AmandascGorman, the youngest inaugural poet in US history, who truly wowed the crowd with this reading of her poem, The Hill We Climb.
Gorman, who was named the first-ever national youth poet laureate in 2017, gave a powerful, five-minute performance after Biden was sworn in. She recited a poem she had written, in part, on the day of the US Capitol riots on 6 January.
It was a tour-de-force from Gorman as she called for Americans to “leave behind a country better than the one we were left”.
“We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it,” Gorman read. “Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy. And this effort very nearly succeeded. But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated.”
The performance won instant plaudits, including from @MichelleObama, @Oprah Winfrey, @AyannaPressley, Martin Luther King Jr's daughter @berniceaking, and @StaceyAbrams, the former Democratic candidate for Georgia governor who has been credited with boosting voter turnout in the state, leading to a rare Democratic win.
“Amanda Gorman’s message serves as an inspiration to us all,” Abrams tweeted.
#inauguration #inauguration2021 #inaugurationday #amandagorman #amandagormanpoetry #amandagormanpoetlaureate #joebiden #biden #kamalaharris
同時也有2部Youtube影片,追蹤數超過15萬的網紅pennyccw,也在其Youtube影片中提到,For those who were there at McDonough Gymnasium on August 4, 1994, few will forget the arrival of a 6-0 freshman guard who needed no introduction. The...
first king of georgia 在 旅行熱炒店Podcast Facebook 的精選貼文
[Meeting Martin Luther King Jr. in Boston]
Having lived in Boston for several years, I'm very used to a conversation with questions like "where are you from", "what do you do", etc at social events or church. Now, let's imagine that I lived in the year of 1953, just a few years after world war II. On an ordinary weekday morning, when I was on the Green Line B branch (which then was numbered "route #62") along Commonwealth Avenue toward downtown, I started a conversation with an African American guy who got up at the BU central stop. I quickly got into the typical Bostonian conversation:
"Hi, what's your name?"
"Martin." He said.
"I'm Jerome. Nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you, too."
"Are you a student at BU?"
"Ya. I go to the divinity school."
"That's cool. What do you study there?"
"I'm a doctoral student in systematic theology."
"Wow, that sounds very hard-core. So did you come to Boston to attend this program?"
"Ya. I'm from Atlanta, Georgia. I moved here two years ago after getting my bachelor of divinity."
"So are you a pastor?"
"Yes, I am."
"Cool. So where are you heading right now?"
"I'm going to downtown to meet my finacee. She's a music student at New England Conservatory. We're going to get married in Alabama next month."
"Wow, congratulations!"
That's true. I met the civil right activist-to-be Martin Luther King Jr. in the city of Boston, where it's never a surprise to randomly run into a doctor or a professor on the street. In a few minutes, I heard more about his story. While living in the south most of his life, he did spent 4 years in Boston, where he attended Boston University and got his PhD in systematic theology. While racial segregation (which came to existence after the civil war) was still prevalent in the south, Boston was the first city where I felt he was free to do everything without discrimination. He really enjoyed this city. And instead of living in the dorm of BU, he rented an apartment at 397 Mass Ave, right next to today's Orange Line Mass Ave station.
Boston was also the city where he met his wife Coretta Scott. They got married in June 1953. And he was incredibly young as a doctoral student -- he skipped two grades in high school and completed college at the age of 19. By the time he started doctoral study in Boston (at the age of 22), he already obtained his first seminary degree. By the way, he was also the assistant pastor at Twelfth Baptist Church, an African-American congregation near Dudley Square.
--------
Now the conversation continued. Martin and I started talking about Christian church and theology.
"Which church do you go to?" He asked.
"The XXX church. It's an evangelical church."
"Ah, Christian evangelism." From his eyes, you could tell there was probably something in his head.
"What do you think about it?"
"Well, I'm a pastor, and I do build my ministry on the teaching of Jesus. But I hope your church is not like one of the typical American churches today. I think really miss the point of the gospel."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, they've been focusing too much on individuals being saved and ignoring the injustice in this society. They miss their mission to liberate the oppressed."
"Well, isn't a Christian church supposed to share the gospel and convert sinners to God?"
"Yup, but doesn't the gospel free us? How can you say you're sharing the gospel while so many people in this country are oppressed and suffering from inequality?"
"You're right, but this should be the outcome of salvation, instead of the salvation itself..."
"(Sigh.) I think the some churches really need to shift focus." He breathed before continuing. "Old faiths like the bodily resurrection, virgin birth and miracles that contradict the science may not be necessary for Christianity today. Churches are called to realize the Kingdom of God on earth by exercising justice and mercy..."
Now I could sense where on the "church spectrum" he was. He was vastly influenced by Walter Rauschenbusch's social gospel, a theological thought popular in the early 20th century that called for a return to the "Kingdom of God" doctrine. Church's primary calling, in social gospel's perspective, is to bring God's kingdom on earth by applying Jesus' teaching to solve social issues and rescue the oppressed. Along with Mohandas Gandhi's nonviolent approach, it shaped King's theology and fueled the later movements he led.
And It was also interesting to see theologically how liberal his was. He casted his doubt on some essential doctrines that most Christian denominations held true back then. If you are from an evangelical background, this may get on your nerves. (But keep in mind that he lived before the age of neo-orthodoxy, and people often abandoned traditional views when running into doctrines that contradict scientific knowledge.) And this is probably why while many pastors today would say King's accomplishment was fueled by the Christian faith, but avoid talking too much about his view on doctrines.
--------
Let's get back on the train scene. At the Park Street underground station in downtown Boston, I said bye to the newly met friend Martin and saw him disappearing in the crowd. I could tell he's a brilliant and eloquent person, but might not expect two years later he'd be the person would be a key leader in the Montgomery bus boycott, nor decades later he'd deliver his famous speech in Washington. I might not agree with everything he said, but I'd definitely remember this conversation with Martin, a person that was once like me, who lived to Boston short-term to pursue a degree and was shaped by the personality of this city.
--------
[Afterthought] As a member of an American evangelical church (and also a foreigner of a minority group), the story of Martin Luther King Jr. continues to puzzle me. His view on certain doctrines are likely to be condemned as unorthodox by evangelical churches, but meanwhile, as the "saved" people, do we eager to live out and advocate the biblical justice in daily life as he did? Or we're always being "gospel-centered" while ignoring the all-inclusive nature of the biblical gospel?
(In pictures: Martin Luther King Jr.'s school, apartment and church in Boston.)
first king of georgia 在 pennyccw Youtube 的最佳貼文
For those who were there at McDonough Gymnasium on August 4, 1994, few will forget the arrival of a 6-0 freshman guard who needed no introduction. The rumors of Allen Iverson's arrival to the Kenner Summer League were true, and by game's end, Iverson had scored 40 points. By the Sunday afternoon final, before an overflow crowd inside the gym and a crowd of those outside who could not get in, Iverson finished a combined 99 point effort in three days against some of the best collegiate talent in the city. This, of course, from a player that had not played organized basketball in over a year.
The Allen Iverson years had begun.
A brief profile can't do justice to tell the story of one of the greatest pure athletes ever to attend Georgetown, a man without peer in his talent over two years at the collegiate level. Just a year before his Kenner debut, few would have imagined Allen Iverson ever playing college basketball.
Iverson was not only a 31 point a game guard for Bethel HS, but a football player of tremendous skill. As a quarterback and defensive back his sophomore season, he produced nearly 1,600 yards offense and 13 INT's. By his junior year, he accounted for 2,204 yards, 21 touchdowns by rush or interception, and 14 touchdown passes. In a region which has produced NFL quarterbacks such as Michael Vick and Aaron Brooks, there are those who will still say "Bubbachuck" Iverson was better than both of them. Schools such as Arkansas, Kentucky, Duke, and three dozen other top programs across two sports were vying for perhaps the greatest two-sport star the Tidewater had ever produced.
When he led Bethel to the state title, someone asked what it was like to win the title. "I'm going to get one in basketball now," which he did. In late February, 1993, en route to the state title he had promised, Iverson was one of a large group of Bethel teammates at a Hampton bowling alley when a fight broke out between students from rival schools trading racial insults. Three people were hurt in the aftermath. Despite conflicting testimony from eyewitnesses and no clear evidence linking him to the crime, Iverson was one of four black students arrested.
Racial tensions were heightened when the prosecutors passed on a misdemeanor assault charge and charged Iverson with three counts of felony "maiming by mob", which carried a 20 year prison sentence. Despite video evidence which did not place Iverson in the crowd at the time of the fight, he was convicted in a racially charged case.
The 20 year sentence was later reduced to five, and Iverson was granted clemency by Gov. Douglas Wilder three months later, sending Iverson to a detention program at an alternative high school. (The original charges were thrown out by the Virginia court of appeals in 1995.)
In the spring of 1994, with Iverson still in detention, his mother approached John Thompson with a plea to help her son get to college and start a new chapter of his life. Though Thompson had passed on a number of troubled players in the past, he offered Iverson a scholarship in April of that season, contingent upon his completion of high school and his legal release, which was granted 48 hours before his Kenner debut.
By his debut in a Georgetown uniform in November 1994, Iverson had been the subject of intense national media attention. In the Hoyas' annual exhibition with Fort Hood, Iverson scored 36 points, five assists, and three steals in 23 minutes. Local columnists were in awe.
"Hang his number up in the rafters," wrote Tom Knott of the Washington Times. "He's better than most of the point guards in the NBA right now."
"I saw Lew Alcindor, Austin Carr, Moses Malone, Alonzo Mourning, Albert King, Ralph Sampson and Patrick Ewing play in high school," said the Post's Thomas Boswell. "Now, I have two memories on my first impression top shelf. The man who became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Allen Iverson."
Iverson opened the 1994-95 season in Memphis, TN in a 97-79 loss to defending NCAA champion Arkansas, scoring 19 points. Six days later, he scored 31 in a nationally televised game with DePaul, followed by 30 four days later against Providence, leading the team in scoring 22 times that season. His only game under double figures for the season (and his career) was a game where he played only ten minutes in a loss at Villanova, a game Georgetown coach John Thompson threatened to forfeit when a group of Villanova students paraded through the Spectrum in black and white-striped prison garb, with a sign comparing Iverson to O.J. Simpson.
"You accept certain ribbing, but there is a line," Thompson said after the game. "I can condone any Christian university sitting and watching that happen...If that happens [again], I going to walk. It that simple." Such fan behavior was not seen thereafter.
Later in the season, with President Bill Clinton in attendance, Iverson scored 26 as the Hoyas routed Villanova, 77-52. He followed it up with 21 to beat Syracuse, 28 versus St. John's, 31 in a Big East tournament opener with Miami (a game that saw Iverson outscore the entire Hurricane team at the end of the first half), and 27 versus Connecticut in the semis. In the NCAA regional, he scored 24 in the loss, but held Jeff McInnis to 1 for 8 shooting. By season's end, Allen Iverson had been named Big East Player of the Week nine times, Rookie of the Year, a second team all-conference selection, and honorable mention All-America recipient. Having led the Hoyas in points and steals en route to the school's first NCAA regional appearance since 1989, Iverson was already a star. By 1996, he would become nothing less than a sensation.
The leaser of a talented team that featured four future NBA stars, Allen Iverson dominated the 1995-96 season as no Hoya has done before or since. Adept at the crossover dribble that became his NBA trademark, lightning quick to the basket, and able to score on opponents at will, Iverson was largely unstoppable. Even more impressive was an effort to improve his shooting touch, for despite averaging 20.4 points as a freshman in 1994-95 (2nd all time for a Georgetown rookie), Iverson only shot 39 percent from the field, 23 percent from three, and 19 percent from three in Big East play. For his sophomore season, his field shooting increased to 48 percent, his three point mark to 36 percent. The results were striking.
In the pre-season NIT versus Temple, Iverson shot 50 percent for 24 points and a career high 10 rebounds. After a 23 point effort against Georgia Tech, he scored a career high 40 against Arizona, one of two 40+ point games that season. In Big East play, Iverson could ring up points with ease, such as the game where he scored 21 points in only 20 minutes against Rutgers.
In the final three months of the season, Iverson led the team in 21 of the team's 25 games: 40 against Seton Hall, 39 against St. John's, 34 against Providence. He scored 30 in a wild win over Memphis, and followed it up two nights later with 26 in an upset of #3 Connecticut. For the game, Iverson totalled 26 points, 8 steals, and 6 assists, including a soaring dunk past Ray Allen and the Huskies. It was the highest ranked team any Georgetown team had defeated since 1988. His best performance of the season might have been a 37 point, 8 rebound, and three steal effort against #6 ranked Villanova, playing only 27 minutes. The 106-68 win represents the sixth largest margin of victory and the largest margin ever by a Georgetown team against a top 10 opponent.
Iverson was capable of an off game; unfortunately, two came at particularly inopportune times for the Hoyas' hopes for a national title. Entering the 1996 Big East Final with a #1 seed on the line, Iverson shot 4 for 15 and the Hoyas lost by one, 76-75. As a result of the loss, Georgetown was seeded #2 behind top ranked UMass, and in the regional final between the two teams Iverson struggled with a 6 for 21 effort in the loss. For the season, though, his statistics were astonishing: his 926 points broke the then-record by 124 points. He set new single season marks in field goals, field goal attempts, three pointers, three point attempts, steals, minutes, and scoring average (25.0), the latter of which ranked 7th in the nation that season. The Big East's defensive player of the year, he was named a consensus All-American amidst numerous other awards.
If he could somehow have stayed four years, Iverson undoubtedly would have shredded the Georgetown record books. But whatever hopes existed for Iverson to resist the lure of the NBA were short lived, particularly with the news that one of his sisters had fallen ill. Seeing the opportunity to take care of his family's medical needs, Iverson announced for the NBA draft soon after the end of his sophomore season, becoming the first Georgetown player in the Thompson era to do so. The compact that had bound so many great Hoya players to a four year commitment--from Ewing to Williams, Mourning to Mutombo--had now been broken.
The first pick in the 1996 NBA draft, Iverson signed a $3.9 million contract with the Philadelphia 76ers and a ten year, $50 million deal with Reebok. His effort on the court is well known and respected, but for all the media portrayals of Iverson as the anti-hero, an icon of a "Hip Hop Nation" that ran counter to the NBA's carefully constructed marketing image, or as a symbol of all that is allegedly wrong in professional basketball, he remains remarkably well-grounded.
Married for six years and the father of two, Iverson is fiercely loyal to his teammates and to his childhood friends. He considered it an honor to play for the U.S. Olympic team in 2004 when other NBA stars passed on the offer, and maintains a number of charity events to benefit his local community. In comparison to his NBA career, his years at Georgetown were largely free of the intense media and personal scrutiny, providing at least two years where he could grow as a person as well as a basketball player.
His arrival and exit at Georgetown is still a source of debate in some circles, but his performance on the court is not. Allen Iverson found a home, even briefly, at the Hilltop, and remains one of its brightest stars. "In my heart, I know I'm a basketball player," Iverson said following his 2006 NBA trade, "being that I know I can play with the best of them."
From that first Kenner League game on 1994, no one has doubted it since.
first king of georgia 在 pennyccw Youtube 的精選貼文
For those who were there at McDonough Gymnasium on August 4, 1994, few will forget the arrival of a 6-0 freshman guard who needed no introduction. The rumors of Allen Iverson's arrival to the Kenner Summer League were true, and by game's end, Iverson had scored 40 points. By the Sunday afternoon final, before an overflow crowd inside the gym and a crowd of those outside who could not get in, Iverson finished a combined 99 point effort in three days against some of the best collegiate talent in the city. This, of course, from a player that had not played organized basketball in over a year.
The Allen Iverson years had begun.
A brief profile can't do justice to tell the story of one of the greatest pure athletes ever to attend Georgetown, a man without peer in his talent over two years at the collegiate level. Just a year before his Kenner debut, few would have imagined Allen Iverson ever playing college basketball.
Iverson was not only a 31 point a game guard for Bethel HS, but a football player of tremendous skill. As a quarterback and defensive back his sophomore season, he produced nearly 1,600 yards offense and 13 INT's. By his junior year, he accounted for 2,204 yards, 21 touchdowns by rush or interception, and 14 touchdown passes. In a region which has produced NFL quarterbacks such as Michael Vick and Aaron Brooks, there are those who will still say "Bubbachuck" Iverson was better than both of them. Schools such as Arkansas, Kentucky, Duke, and three dozen other top programs across two sports were vying for perhaps the greatest two-sport star the Tidewater had ever produced.
When he led Bethel to the state title, someone asked what it was like to win the title. "I'm going to get one in basketball now," which he did. In late February, 1993, en route to the state title he had promised, Iverson was one of a large group of Bethel teammates at a Hampton bowling alley when a fight broke out between students from rival schools trading racial insults. Three people were hurt in the aftermath. Despite conflicting testimony from eyewitnesses and no clear evidence linking him to the crime, Iverson was one of four black students arrested.
Racial tensions were heightened when the prosecutors passed on a misdemeanor assault charge and charged Iverson with three counts of felony "maiming by mob", which carried a 20 year prison sentence. Despite video evidence which did not place Iverson in the crowd at the time of the fight, he was convicted in a racially charged case.
The 20 year sentence was later reduced to five, and Iverson was granted clemency by Gov. Douglas Wilder three months later, sending Iverson to a detention program at an alternative high school. (The original charges were thrown out by the Virginia court of appeals in 1995.)
In the spring of 1994, with Iverson still in detention, his mother approached John Thompson with a plea to help her son get to college and start a new chapter of his life. Though Thompson had passed on a number of troubled players in the past, he offered Iverson a scholarship in April of that season, contingent upon his completion of high school and his legal release, which was granted 48 hours before his Kenner debut.
By his debut in a Georgetown uniform in November 1994, Iverson had been the subject of intense national media attention. In the Hoyas' annual exhibition with Fort Hood, Iverson scored 36 points, five assists, and three steals in 23 minutes. Local columnists were in awe.
"Hang his number up in the rafters," wrote Tom Knott of the Washington Times. "He's better than most of the point guards in the NBA right now."
"I saw Lew Alcindor, Austin Carr, Moses Malone, Alonzo Mourning, Albert King, Ralph Sampson and Patrick Ewing play in high school," said the Post's Thomas Boswell. "Now, I have two memories on my first impression top shelf. The man who became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Allen Iverson."
Iverson opened the 1994-95 season in Memphis, TN in a 97-79 loss to defending NCAA champion Arkansas, scoring 19 points. Six days later, he scored 31 in a nationally televised game with DePaul, followed by 30 four days later against Providence, leading the team in scoring 22 times that season. His only game under double figures for the season (and his career) was a game where he played only ten minutes in a loss at Villanova, a game Georgetown coach John Thompson threatened to forfeit when a group of Villanova students paraded through the Spectrum in black and white-striped prison garb, with a sign comparing Iverson to O.J. Simpson.
"You accept certain ribbing, but there is a line," Thompson said after the game. "I can condone any Christian university sitting and watching that happen...If that happens [again], I going to walk. It that simple." Such fan behavior was not seen thereafter.
Later in the season, with President Bill Clinton in attendance, Iverson scored 26 as the Hoyas routed Villanova, 77-52. He followed it up with 21 to beat Syracuse, 28 versus St. John's, 31 in a Big East tournament opener with Miami (a game that saw Iverson outscore the entire Hurricane team at the end of the first half), and 27 versus Connecticut in the semis. In the NCAA regional, he scored 24 in the loss, but held Jeff McInnis to 1 for 8 shooting. By season's end, Allen Iverson had been named Big East Player of the Week nine times, Rookie of the Year, a second team all-conference selection, and honorable mention All-America recipient. Having led the Hoyas in points and steals en route to the school's first NCAA regional appearance since 1989, Iverson was already a star. By 1996, he would become nothing less than a sensation.
The leaser of a talented team that featured four future NBA stars, Allen Iverson dominated the 1995-96 season as no Hoya has done before or since. Adept at the crossover dribble that became his NBA trademark, lightning quick to the basket, and able to score on opponents at will, Iverson was largely unstoppable. Even more impressive was an effort to improve his shooting touch, for despite averaging 20.4 points as a freshman in 1994-95 (2nd all time for a Georgetown rookie), Iverson only shot 39 percent from the field, 23 percent from three, and 19 percent from three in Big East play. For his sophomore season, his field shooting increased to 48 percent, his three point mark to 36 percent. The results were striking.
In the pre-season NIT versus Temple, Iverson shot 50 percent for 24 points and a career high 10 rebounds. After a 23 point effort against Georgia Tech, he scored a career high 40 against Arizona, one of two 40+ point games that season. In Big East play, Iverson could ring up points with ease, such as the game where he scored 21 points in only 20 minutes against Rutgers.
In the final three months of the season, Iverson led the team in 21 of the team's 25 games: 40 against Seton Hall, 39 against St. John's, 34 against Providence. He scored 30 in a wild win over Memphis, and followed it up two nights later with 26 in an upset of #3 Connecticut. For the game, Iverson totalled 26 points, 8 steals, and 6 assists, including a soaring dunk past Ray Allen and the Huskies. It was the highest ranked team any Georgetown team had defeated since 1988. His best performance of the season might have been a 37 point, 8 rebound, and three steal effort against #6 ranked Villanova, playing only 27 minutes. The 106-68 win represents the sixth largest margin of victory and the largest margin ever by a Georgetown team against a top 10 opponent.
Iverson was capable of an off game; unfortunately, two came at particularly inopportune times for the Hoyas' hopes for a national title. Entering the 1996 Big East Final with a #1 seed on the line, Iverson shot 4 for 15 and the Hoyas lost by one, 76-75. As a result of the loss, Georgetown was seeded #2 behind top ranked UMass, and in the regional final between the two teams Iverson struggled with a 6 for 21 effort in the loss. For the season, though, his statistics were astonishing: his 926 points broke the then-record by 124 points. He set new single season marks in field goals, field goal attempts, three pointers, three point attempts, steals, minutes, and scoring average (25.0), the latter of which ranked 7th in the nation that season. The Big East's defensive player of the year, he was named a consensus All-American amidst numerous other awards.
If he could somehow have stayed four years, Iverson undoubtedly would have shredded the Georgetown record books. But whatever hopes existed for Iverson to resist the lure of the NBA were short lived, particularly with the news that one of his sisters had fallen ill. Seeing the opportunity to take care of his family's medical needs, Iverson announced for the NBA draft soon after the end of his sophomore season, becoming the first Georgetown player in the Thompson era to do so. The compact that had bound so many great Hoya players to a four year commitment--from Ewing to Williams, Mourning to Mutombo--had now been broken.
The first pick in the 1996 NBA draft, Iverson signed a $3.9 million contract with the Philadelphia 76ers and a ten year, $50 million deal with Reebok. His effort on the court is well known and respected, but for all the media portrayals of Iverson as the anti-hero, an icon of a "Hip Hop Nation" that ran counter to the NBA's carefully constructed marketing image, or as a symbol of all that is allegedly wrong in professional basketball, he remains remarkably well-grounded.
Married for six years and the father of two, Iverson is fiercely loyal to his teammates and to his childhood friends. He considered it an honor to play for the U.S. Olympic team in 2004 when other NBA stars passed on the offer, and maintains a number of charity events to benefit his local community. In comparison to his NBA career, his years at Georgetown were largely free of the intense media and personal scrutiny, providing at least two years where he could grow as a person as well as a basketball player.
His arrival and exit at Georgetown is still a source of debate in some circles, but his performance on the court is not. Allen Iverson found a home, even briefly, at the Hilltop, and remains one of its brightest stars. "In my heart, I know I'm a basketball player," Iverson said following his 2006 NBA trade, "being that I know I can play with the best of them."
From that first Kenner League game on 1994, no one has doubted it since.