Poetry is so alive in the USA !

Poetry is a lively art in the US.
The black people used  after the emancipation this art to express their soul. Phillis Wheatley wrote her poems during slavery.

The writer Toni Morrisson said "The grace of black people is how they DO language".
Hear to Langston Hughes' poet when he is telling us "The Negro speaks of rivers" : http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15722#

I was delighted to hear Maya Angelou, 85 years old, recits some of her poems in the University of Delaware ; she was telling us again and again the hope that you see everytimes "a rainbow in the clouds".

Yesterday Rita Dove was talking about her last book Sonata mulattica, it's about the encounter between Mr Bridgetower, a Black violonist prodige with Beethoven at the end  of the 18th century ; she red a lot of poems that are inside.

Let the poem's magic spread !

They are crazy... but sometimes this craziness is so great !

Take for instance an elective course you could take in an Oregon High school this year : what are the diffrent pieces of a pig, a cow ? How to cut it? How to cook it? Students went in a farm to choose a pig, came with the pig into the slaughter house, bring the dead pig into the classroom, cut it and cooked it. Hum, tasty.
This skill is so important in a country where you can't find easily a butcher store and you don't see often farms as the agriculture is much more industrialized than in France.

So now in some part of the US, where farms are easy to find, with the Portland Meat Collective you can collectively, with neighbours and friends, buy a cow or a pig and do all the work on the animals to eat it at the end.

Antietam, in West Virginia, one of the battle of the Civil War

The battle of Antietam between the Confederate and the Yankees occured the 17th of september 1862. It was the bloodiest one-day battle of the Civil War. More soldiers were wounded ar killed in Gettysburg but it was a three-days battle. The Civil War remains America's deadliest conflict.
Delaware was a "mixed" state at this time with some parts with slavery plantations.

A basket ball NBA game in Phillie, impressive !

This sunday we had the opportunity to see a basket ball game : the 7sixers from Phillie against the Cavaliers from Cleveland. It was awesome.
The Well Fargo stadium hosts basketball and hockey games. Next to it you have the Citizen Bank stadium for baseball and the Lincoln Financial Field for american football. Names of this stadium are commercial names... you enter a commercial experiment, it's the States ! We were at the bottom top of the stadium, it's so huge ! At the beginning Eugenie wasn't feeling well, she wanted to vomit but after it was OK.
We saw the american flag's song, the flame to announce the beginning of the game, the pom pom girls with their very suggestive dance, the tee shirt shootings in the audience, the pop corn and candy cottons deliveries.

The Ku Kux Klan still presents

The Ku Klux Klan was create after the Civil War in 1865 by three Confederate Army veterans. It was at the beginning "the invisible empire of the South". With the free speech legislation, they continue to gather. Lately they have protested the renaming of three Confederate parks in Memphis.

Cold cases from the civil rights era

In 2006, the FBI reopened some unsolved cases from the Civil rights era. It was racial murders with white men murderers often unpunished because it was like that at this time especially in some south states. But it has been often disappointing for the families because it was such a long time ago, the FBI agents don't find a lot of proofs. And so they close the case a second time...

Supplement drugs to perform better....

Do you know GNC stores?
They sell products to help customers to loose weight, to perform better on a sport game, to gain muscles. It seems like magic. But sometimes it ends up quite badly... You hear about young people who died because the coktail of stumulants inside the drug raise blood pressure, raise the heart rate and so on

. And the FDA doesn't regulate this market that much. You can be tested positive by an anti-doping agency if you do some competition sports even though you purchased your drug very easily.

Someone very special...

Do you know Kilian Jornet? He is right now  the most dominating endurance athlete of his generation. He is running is mountain races and it's just unbelievable how he seems to handle it so easily. He is Spanish, he was born in the spanish pyrenees part.
Here is his website : http://www.kilianjornet.cat/