#inauguration 2009

[misterlemonztenth]

(via GIPHY) President Joe has kept every promise he made.  America is open!  He passed the largest green infrastructure investments in our history. 14 million jobs. 75% of our population vaccinated!   misterlemonztenth.tumblr.com/archive

[cyarsk52-20]

This night I watched with tears filling my eyes and joy in my heart at what I was witnessing. The election of our first Black president and his inauguration was the greatest moment I had ever witnessed in my life ! I know that we still have a long way to go but things like this give me hope for a better and brighter future

[mcforwhatiam]

Beastie Boys at inauguration concert for Obama in at the 9:30 club in Washington DC, January 2009.

Photos by Dakota Fine

[rabbitcruiser]

John F. Kennedy was inaugurated the 35th President of the United States of America on January 20, 1961, becoming the youngest man to be elected into that office, and the first Catholic.  

[officiallanxichen]

[Image description: a tweet by @whispersnow7 that reads, "randomly remembered that in 2012 I brought my 3DS to an Obama rally and attempted to take a photo of him by putting my 3DS up to a pair of binoculars." Attached to the tweet is the image in question, which is an extremely blurry picture of Obama at a podium taken from above. End image description.]

Some of you don't know how to appreciate a grainy low res image of some man

[foxmonkey]

Air and Simple Gifts, John Williams || Obama Inauguration, 2009

[neechees]

Historical Indigenous Women & Figures [6]:

Queen Nanny: the leader of the 18th century Maroon community in Jamaica, she led multiple battles in guerrilla war against the British, which included freeing slaves, and raiding plantations, and then later founding the community Nanny Town. There are multiple accounts of Queen Nanny's origins, one claiming that she was of the Akan people from Ghana and escaped slavery before starting rebellions, and others that she was a free person and moved to the Blue Mountains with a community of Taino. Regardless, Queen Nanny solidified her influence among the Indigenous People of Jamaica, and is featured on a Jamaican bank note. Karimeh Abboud: Born in Bethlehem, Palestine, Karimeh Abboud became interested in photography in 1913 after recieving a camera for her 17th birthday from her Father. Her prestige in professional photography rapidly grew and became high demand, being described as one of the "first female photographers of the Arab World", and in 1924 she described herself as "the only National Photographer". Georgia Harris: Born to a family of traditional Catawba potters, Harris took up pottery herself, and is credited with preserving traditional Catawba pottery methods due to refusing to use more tourist friendly forms in her work, despite the traditional method being much more labour intensive. Harris spent the rest of her life preserving and passing on the traditional ways of pottery, and was a recipient of a 1997 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the highest honor in the folk and traditional arts in the United States. Nozugum: known as a folk hero of the Uyghur people, Nozugum was a historical figure in 19th century Kashgar, who joined an uprising and killed her captor before running away. While she was eventually killed after escaping, her story remains a treasured one amongst the Uyghur. Pampenum: a Sachem of the Wangunk people in what is now called Pennsylvania, Pampenum gained ownership of her mother's land, who had previously intended to sell it to settlers. Not sharing the same plans as her mother, Pampenum attempted to keep these lands in Native control by using the colonial court system to her advantage, including forbidding her descendants from selling the land, and naming the wife of the Mohegan sachem Mahomet I as her heir. Despite that these lands were later sold, Pampenum's efforts did not go unnoticed. Christine Quintasket: also known as "Humishima", "Mourning Dove", Quintasket was a Sylix author who is credited as being one of the first female Native American authors to write a novel featuring a female protagonist. She used her Sylix name, Humishima, as a pen name, and was inspired to become an author after reading a racist portrayal of Native Americans, & wished to refute this derogatory portrayal. Later in life, she also became active in politics, and helped her tribe to gain money that was owed them. Rita Pitka Blumenstein: an Alaskan Yup'ik woman who's healing career started at four years old, as she was trained in traditional healing by her grandmother, and then later she became the first certified traditional doctor in Alaska and worked for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. She later passed on her knowledge to her own daughters. February 17th is known as Rita Pitka Blumenstein day in Alaska, and in 2009 she was one of 50 women inducted into the inaugural class of the Alaska Women's Hall of Fame Olivia Ward Bush-Banks: a mixed race woman of African American and Montaukett heritage, Banks was a well known author who was a regular contributor to the the first magazine that covered Black American culture, and wrote a column for a New York publication. She wrote of both Native American, and Black American topics and issues, and helped sculptor Richmond Barthé and writer Langston Hughes get their starts during the Harlem Renaissance. She is also credited with preserving Montaukett language and folklore due to her writing in her early career.

part [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] Transphobes & any other bigots need not reblog and are not welcome on my posts.

[tiktaalic]

It’s crazy how long cas has been gay for. Considering they only let him say it in 2020 you’d think it’s a recent development surely something that was planted and grown in a rapid plot cycle that is so fast and unsustainable it rips all the nutrients from the soil rendering land unplantable for several years. But no. You can so easily watch an episode of supernatural filmed in 2009 the year Barack Obama was inaugurated in a DADT no federal gay marriage world . And cas is GAY. Cas is undeniably ideology shatteringly gay. DONT worry misha collins I saw you cut your eyes away from dean winchester lest you succumb to a charged look in front of your superiors leading you to get lobotomied into hating dean again

[fascinatingmale]

January 6 - pink

6, 16, 26 "in the PINK"

Tom Daley, born 1994 - OBE (Order of the British Empire)

Tom is a British diver and television personality. Specializing in multiple events, he is an Olympic gold medallist in the men’s synchronized ten-meter platform event at the 2020 Olympics and double world champion in the FINA ten-meter platform event, winning in 2009 at the age of fifteen, and again in 2017. He is an Olympic bronze medallist in the 2012 platform event, the 2016 synchronized event, and the 2020 platform event, making him the first British diver to win four Olympic medals. Daley also competes in team events, winning the inaugural mixed team World title in 2015. He is a 5-time European champion and a 4-time Commonwealth champion.

[mariacallous]

Cantor Jennifer Bern-Vogel was used to hearing her mother tell the story.

On the evening of Nov. 9, 1938, her mother, then Marianne Katzenstein, who was 16 at the time, was in her family’s synagogue in Bielefeld, Germany, practicing the organ. She finished up, used a key to lock the building and returned home. Later that night, the synagogue was burned to the ground by the Nazis in the Kristallnacht pogrom.

Only two items survived the fire: a Torah scroll and Katzenstein’s key.

“I just remember her talking about it, her voice would change and she was just kind of slower and softer and very nostalgic when she talked about the whole story,” Bern-Vogel, 67, said in an interview. “Whenever she told the story and then held up the key, people always — and I experienced it myself — there was always this kind of gasp.”

Bern-Vogel, who has been the cantor at Congregation Emanu El in Redlands, Calif., since 2009, said the story of the key was “legendary” in her family.

And on Saturday, 86 years after Kristallnacht, the key returned home.

Bern-Vogel spent the past week in Germany, where she had lived for more than a decade when she was younger, reconnecting with friends, family and the Jewish community of Bielefeld, where the synagogue was reestablished shortly after the Holocaust. It was her first trip to Bielefeld with her husband and daughter, and her brother and niece, as well as a cousin from Denmark, also flew in for the occasion.

On Friday night, Bern-Vogel and the cantor of the Bielefeld synagogue led Shabbat services together. Bern-Vogel sang a song that was adapted from a poem written by her grandfather, with music composed by a longtime friend from Germany.

And following Havdalah on Saturday, the town held a ceremony that began at the site of the destroyed synagogue before moving to City Hall, where the official hand-off was made. The key was added to the collection of the town’s history museum and will be on display at the current synagogue building.

According to Irith Michelsohn, the president of the town’s Jewish community and of Germany’s Progressive Jewish movement, Bielefeld’s Jewish community has 450 members. The synagogue the community uses now was renovated from an old Protestant church and was inaugurated in 2008.

Prior to the Holocaust, Bielefeld was home to almost 1,000 Jews, Michelsohn said. The community has been revitalized since Michelsohn took the helm on Jan. 1, 2000, at which point she said there were only 35 members.

Michelsohn said the key’s return is immensely meaningful to the community.

“I was so excited, because we only have one Torah scroll, and now the key, that’s all we have from our old synagogue,” Michelsohn said. “And now the key is back. That’s so great, you can’t imagine.”

Michelsohn said the key is especially important as a vehicle to educate the current community about its past. She explained that like many German Jewish communities, Bielefeld’s Jews are almost all originally from the former Soviet Union.

“You don’t have many people who are originally from Germany,” she said. “Some of them converted to Judaism, some immigrated from Israel or other countries or are working in Bielefeld with a university, but most of the members in all of our 120 Jewish communities in Germany are from the former Soviet Union.”

The key, Michelsohn said, represents an opportunity to “teach them something about history, about the past, what we lost.”

It also returns a physical reminder of the old synagogue building, which had been built in 1905 and was commissioned by the Katzenstein family. Bern-Vogel’s maternal grandfather had been the head of the Jewish community, and helped hundreds of families escape Germany.

“It symbolizes a connection to the old and very, very nice building which we had,” Michelsohn said, adding that the destroyed synagogue was “such a marvelous building.”

Like the key she kept, the remarkable story of Bern-Vogel’s mother did not end in 1938. The following year, she and her younger sister escaped to England on the Kindertransport. Years later, she was at a Shabbat dinner in Israel when she met Julian Bernstein (later shortened to Bern), Bern-Vogel’s father, who also survived the Holocaust.

Julian was one of six children from a Lithuanian family, but only he and one brother survived the Holocaust. That brother, Leon Bernstein, and Bern-Vogel’s mother were both working for the World Jewish Congress; Leon hosted the Shabbat dinner where Julian and Marianne met.

The two were engaged within a week, and eventually settled in Iowa, where Bern-Vogel and her brother were raised.

In the later years of her mother’s life, Bern-Vogel said there had been efforts to bring the key to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. But a contact her mother had at the museum passed away, and in 2017, so did she, at 94 years old.

“It just held a very deep connection,” Bern-Vogel said, referring to the key, a copy of which she still has. “I don’t think I thought about, when we were growing up, that the key would be anywhere else but with us. It kind of belonged to us.”

But as her mother aged, Bern-Vogel said her family wanted to determine where the key should go to be best taken care of and hold the most meaning. After a couple recent trips to Germany, Bern-Vogel said the answer crystallized.

“It just became clearer over the last couple of years, and especially after I went there last summer to meet with them at the synagogue and the museum, that it would really mean the most for everyone and future generations for it to be there,” she said.

Bern-Vogel said that even though her mother had a fraught relationship with Germany because of how her family’s time there ended, Bielefeld will always be their home. And she knows her mother would appreciate knowing that the key has made it back.

“I think that she would be incredibly moved by the reception that the key is going to have, and the people that are involved in the city,” Bern-Vogel said. “I think she would be very honored and happy, and I think grateful.”

[sons-from-adam]

Tom Daley, born 1994 - OBE (Order of the British Empire)

Tom is a British diver and television personality. Specializing in multiple events, he is an Olympic gold medallist in the men’s synchronized ten-meter platform event at the 2020 Olympics and double world champion in the FINA ten-meter platform event, winning in 2009 at the age of fifteen, and again in 2017. He is an Olympic bronze medallist in the 2012 platform event, the 2016 synchronized event, and the 2020 platform event, making him the first British diver to win four Olympic medals. Daley also competes in team events, winning the inaugural mixed team World title in 2015. He is a 5-time European champion and a 4-time Commonwealth champion.

On 2 December 2013, Daley released a YouTube video announcing that he had been in a relationship with a man since early that year. Daley said it had been a tough decision to speak out about his private life. Still, he had never felt that feeling of love, which happened very quickly when he met his husband, American film screenwriter, director and producer Dustin Lance Black.

[deadpresidents]

do you believe that Richard Nixon would be a big fan of Trump if he was alive today?

Not a chance in hell. And the GOP's supposed ideological Saint -- Ronald Reagan -- would be fucking horrified by Trump. Reagan was the guy who talked about The Eleventh Commandment being "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican."

What I really wish is that George W. Bush would speak out more openly about how he feels about Trump. From what I've read and the few things that have been publicly stated over the years about Bush's feelings, he is genuinely opposed to Trump and Trumpism. But before leaving office, President Bush said that he would not publicly criticize his successors -- partially because he was pissed over the years about some of the criticisms that Jimmy Carter shared about Bush. I also just think Bush was finished with Washington and didn't want to jump in the fray anymore (in the final months of his term he was clearly desperate to get out of the White House and return to Texas. Bush has kept his word and stays out of current Presidential politics and I think it's unfortunate because I do think it matters. Of course, the Republican Party is no longer the same organization that twice nominated George W. Bush (and his father) for the Presidency, so anything he did say would be ignored or ridiculed by most of the Trump cult that has infected the party. But there are some people who would see it as a powerful message, especially since he hasn't really dipped his toe into electoral politics since January 2009.

Bush has made a few comments and statements about protecting democracy and changing the tone of politics that Trump has poisoned since 2015, but he has not directly criticized him and I think it's a missed opportunity to use whatever political capital he still has. I thought President Bush would have been more direct with his statement condemning the insurrection on January 6th, but he wasn't. Instead of straight up saying Trump's name, he criticized "the reckless behavior of some political leaders since the election." By no means did I ever expect George W. Bush to be the conscience of the nation, but I was disappointed that he didn't do more. I think his father would have had he still been alive on January 6th (and I KNOW his mother would have!). Like I said, it's disappointing. Especially since one of the more insightful (albeit simple) comments a former President has made about Trump was when Bush apparently told people around him at the Capitol "that was some weird shit" immediately after Trump delivered his ominous Inaugural Address in 2017.

[mcforwhatiam]

Beastie Boys at 9:30 Club in Washington DC, January 2009

📸 Dakota Fine

[rabbitcruiser]

John F. Kennedy was inaugurated the 35th President of the United States of America on January 20, 1961, becoming the youngest man to be elected into that office, and the first Catholic.  

[yearningforunity]

A woman watches on television the inauguration of U.S. President Barack Obama in Puerto Tejada, Colombia, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009.

AP Photo/Christian Escobar Mora