The International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers is an occasion to pay tribute to people who served in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations.
Local names
Name
Language
International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers
English
Día Internacional del Personal de Paz de las Naciones Unidas
Spanish
היום הבינלאומי של כוחות שמירת שלום של האו”ם
Hebrew
اليوم الدولي لحفظة السلام التابعين للأمم المتحدة
Arabic
UN 평화 유지군의 날
Korean
Internationaler Tag der Friedenstruppen der Vereinten Nationen
International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers 2015
Friday, May 29, 2015
The International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers is a day to remember those who served in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations. They also honor the memory of people who died in the name of peace.
Many UN workers are remembered for their work in peacekeeping operations.
Many activities are organized on this day. Activities include:
Notes in official UN documents and schedules.
Presentations during UN meetings and events.
Memorial services and wreath laying events for those who died in peace keeping missions.
Presentation of the Dag Hammarskjöld Medal as a way to honor military, police and civilian personnel who lost their lives while working for UN peacekeeping operations.
Awarding peacekeeping medals to military and police officers who are peacekeepers.
The launch of photographic and multimedia exhibitions on the work of UN peacekeepers.
The events take place in places such as the UN headquarters in New York in the United States, as well as Vienna, Australia, and other locations worldwide.
Public life
The International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers is not a public holiday.
Background
The UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) was founded on May 29, 1948. UNTSO’s task was to assist peacekeepers to observe and maintain a cease-fire. This cease-fire marked the end of the hostilities between Israel and the Arab League forces. The hostilities started after the end of the British Mandate of Palestine on May 14, 1948. On December 11, 2002, the UN General assembly designated May 29 as the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers. The day was first observed on May 29, 2003.
The International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers is a tribute to people who serve or have served in UN peacekeeping operations. The peacekeepers are honored for their high level of professionalism, dedication and courage. People who died for peace are also remembered.
Symbols
UN Peacekeepers are usually clearly recognizable. They often display the UN flag and the letters “UN” on their clothing, equipment and vehicles. They also wear hats, helmets or other clothing with UN colors.
International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers Observances
While we are honoring the many brave women and men who put their lives on the line to protect us from enemies both foreign and domestic, we must also remember the ideals that this country should stand for, and what better way to do that in acknowledging a song that speaks to what America should strive to be.
“The House I Live In”, written by Lewis Allan and Earl Robinson.
According to the website Songfacts, here is the history of the song:
“This became a patriotic anthem in America during World War II. The lyrics describe the wonderful things about the country, with images of the era like the grocer, the butcher, and the churchyard. The “house” is a metaphor for the country.
The song was written in 1943 with lyrics by Abel Meeropol and music by Earl Robinson. Meeropol, who wrote it under the pen name Lewis Allan, had very liberal views and mixed feelings about America. He loved the constitutional rights and freedoms that America was based on, but hated the way people of other races, religions, and political views were often treated. His lyrics do not reflect the way he thought America was, but what it had the potential to be. With the country under attack, he wanted to express why it was worth fighting for.
Meeropol was dogged by the government for his liberal (some would say communist) views. He took a particular interest in the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were accused of passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union and executed in 1953. Meeropol felt they were wrongly accused, and he and his wife adopted their 2 sons when they were put to death. The sons, Michael and Robert, took Meeropol’s last name (it was easier to be a Meeropol than a Rosenberg at the time), and have spent their adult lives trying to clear their birth parents’ names.
Meeropol wrote a lot of songs, including “Strange Fruit,” which was about the horrors of lynchings and became Billie Holiday’s signature song. Many songs he wrote were parodies of America, with commentary on racism and political oppression. He wrote several versions of this, including one for children and one that expanded the “house” to mean the whole world, not just America. He also wrote a scathing version about things he felt were bad in the US. The idyllic images were replaced with lines like “The cruelty and murder that brings our country shame.”
Earl Robinson, who wrote the music, also had very liberal views. During the McCarthy era, he was hounded for being a communist and blacklisted from Hollywood, making it hard for him to find work. Before his death in 1991, he wrote presidential campaign songs for FDR (1944), Henry Wallace (1948), and Jesse Jackson (1984).
This has been recorded by a slew of artists, including Mahalia Jackson, Paul Robeson, Sonny Rollins, and Josh White. Sinatra’s version is the most famous, as it was used in a short film he starred in with the same in 1945. When Meeropol saw the film, he became enraged when he learned they deleted the second stanza of his song, which he felt was crucial to the meaning. He had to be removed from the theater. With it’s message of racial harmony, the second stanza was deemed too controversial for the film.
Sinatra loved this song and performed it many times, even as his political views moved from left to right as he got older. As an Italian-American, Sinatra experienced bigotry growing up, but also loved the United States. He once sang this in the Nixon White House and performed it for Ronald Reagan at the rededication of the Statue Of Liberty in 1986.
This regained popularity among Americans in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. A lot of people found it comforting at a difficult time.
In 2002, comedian Bill Cosby opened some of his shows with this playing while a light shined on an empty chair. The song had meaning for Cosby not only because of September 11, but also because of his son, who was murdered in 1997 at age 27 when he pulled over to fix a flat tire.”
What is America to me
A name, a map, or a flag I see
A certain word, democracy
What is America to me
The house I live in
A plot of earth, a street
The grocer and the butcher
Or the people that I meet
The children in the playground
The faces that I see
All races and religions
That’s America to me
The place I work in
The worker by my side
The little town the city
Where my people lived and died
The howdy and the handshake
The air a feeling free
And the right to speak your mind out
That’s America to me
The things I see about me
The big things and the small
That little corner newsstand
Or the house a mile tall
The wedding and the churchyard
The laughter and the tears
And the dream that’s been a growing
For more than two hundred years
The town I live in
The street, the house, the room
The pavement of the city
Or the garden all in bloom
The church the school the clubhouse
The millions lights I see
But especially the people
Yes especially the people
That’s America to me
Writer/s: ALLAN, LEWIS / ROBINSON, EARL
Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
Lyrics Licensed and Provided By LyricFind
Personally, I think the late and great Mahalia Jackson’s version is the best, bar none.
The House I Live In, made in 1945, is a ten-minute short film written by Albert Maltz, produced by Frank Ross and Mervyn LeRoy, and starring Frank Sinatra.
Made to oppose anti-Semitism and racial prejudice at the end of World War II, it received an Honorary Academy Award and a special Golden Globe award in 1946.
The following video involves singer Frank Sinatra stopping a group of boys who are beating up on a Jewish boy. They fight him because of his religion and the difference it holds to them. Sinatra scolds their behavior and tells them that everyone in America contributes, people the children see on a daily basis, and people they may never meet.
The video is archaic by today’s standards, especially the politically incorrect usage of terms like “Jap” by Sinatra. Also, isn’t it funny that the word Nazi is used, but nothing is mentioned of the Ku Klux Klan. Yes, the film was made during the time of World War II, but, the KKK would have been more appropriate instead of the Nazis, since America had its own homegrown groups of domestic terrorists, haters, fascists, racists, and sexists. So easy to point the finger at Nazis, but not at the intolerance in its own backyard. So easy to forget the Detroit Race Riots which happened in the same year the song was written. This attack against the Black community was held up by the Nazis as a sign of racial turmoil in America as the German-controlled Vichy radio broadcasted that the riot revealed “the internal disorganization of a country torn by social injustice, race hatreds, regional disputes, the violence of an irritated proletariat, and the gangsterism of a capitalistic police.”
It is also worth pointing out that of the 25 Black Americans and 9 White Americans killed during the destruction, “no white individuals were killed by police,” according to the Detroit Historical Society, “whereas seventeen African American died at the hands of police violence.”
Gordon Coster—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Not published in LIFE. A soldier guards a group of African American men rounded up following wartime race riots in Detroit, 1943. SOURCE
In the video short, the boys in the group are seen ganging up on the little Jewish boy, but, nowhere are there any little Black boys in the video. No, much too much to address how this nation has denigrated its Black citizens.
And speaking of sexists, why not show the boys tormenting a little Black girl? The history of life for Black women and girls in this nation certainly has been no bed of roses.
No, play it safe and stick with Americans of European ancestry.
This song is very profound in its love of America. It speaks to what all Americans should work and strive for: uphold the laws of the U.S. Constitution and do right by those who are their neighbors; those who have contributed so much to America; those who have fought and died for America; those who are of various races, ethnicities, religions, and creeds.
The cause was metastatic cancer, his son Gordon Willis Jr. said.
Mr. Willis created some of the most indelible cinematic imagery of the ‘70s — or of any decade, for that matter — giving narrative propulsion to adventurous screenplays while expressing the moral ambiguities at the heart of so many of that decade’s films and of the society they mirrored.
Three films that he shot — Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather” (1972) and “The Godfather Part II” (1974) and Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” (1977) — won the Academy Award for best picture.
Yet Mr. Willis, a native New Yorker who chose to live on the East Coast, harbored an antipathy toward Hollywood that may have been mutual. From 1971 to 1977, seven films he photographed earned a total of 39 Oscar nominations, 19 of which won the award. He received not one of those nominations, to the astonishment of many of the peers he influenced.
Gordon Willis, center, and Woody Allen, right, during the filming of “Annie Hall” in 1977.Credit Brian Hamill/Getty Images
”If there were a Mount Rushmore for cinematographers, Gordon’s features would surely be chiseled into the rock face,” said Stephen Pizzello, the editor in chief and publisher of American Cinematographer magazine.
Ultimately, Mr. Willis got two Oscar nominations for his cinematography — for Mr. Coppola’s “The Godfather Part III” (1990) and Mr. Allen’s “Zelig” (1983), but won neither — and he received an honorary Oscar in 2009.
The cinematographer Conrad Hall called Mr. Willis “the prince of darkness” for his daring use of minimalist light and embrace of shadows. It was fully on display in “The Godfather,” in the haunted look of Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone and in the gothic composition of Don Corleone’s study, and in the lush, romanticized images of Mr. Allen’s beloved Manhattan in the bittersweet 1979 comedy of the same name.
Shot in convention-defying wide-screen, 35-millimeter black and white, “Manhattan,” as much as any Willis film, showed the emotional impact that a cinematographer can have.
Mr. Willis collaborated with the director Alan J. Pakula on six films, three of which — “Klute” (1971), “The Parallax View” (1974) and “All the President’s Men” (1976) — established the paranoid thriller as a subgenre of American cinema.
Mr. Willis made virtuoso use of darkness in those films, alternating it with a stark white light that implied more than it revealed. “The Parallax View,” one of his signature achievements, was a tale of political assassination starring Warren Beatty in which Mr. Willis used the made-for-TV brilliance of a political convention as counterpoint to the shadowy corporate realities that lay behind the scenes.
Marlon Brando, foreground, and Robert Duvall in “The Godfather,” from 1972.Credit Paramount Pictures, via Photofest
Like many of the films he made during the 1970s, “The Parallax View” reflected a national spiritual unease. So did “All the President’s Men.” The way Mr. Willis lighted and shot the Washington parking garages where the reporter Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) met clandestinely with the anonymous source known as Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook) — with an American presidency in the balance — suggested both the antiseptic angst of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” from 1968 and the German expressionist terror of F. W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu” from 1922.
Mr. Willis could be playful as well. In “Zelig” (1983) — one of eight films he made with Mr. Allen, his most frequent collaborator — he used hand-cranked cameras, an assortments of film stocks and his own sleight-of-hand to impose Mr. Allen’s nebbishy title character into the major moments of the 20th century. The comedy was largely visual, and Mr. Willis created the kind of plausible imagery that allowed the comedic ideas to work.
Mr. Willis was known for his mechanical innovations as well. For “All the President’s Men,” he placed a winch in the dome of the Library of Congress so that a remote-controlled camera could be sent aloft from a desktop, providing, in a single shot, a full view of the library.
But it was his celebrated use of light that he was most often asked about, particularly in “The Godfather.” He spoke about it in 1995, when he received a lifetime achievement award from the American Society of Cinematographers.
“People said, ‘You can’t see his eyes,’ “ he remarked, referring to Brando’s Don Corleone. “Well, you didn’t see his eyes in 10 percent of the movie, and there was a reason why. I remember asking: ‘Why do you have to see his eyes in that scene? Based on what?’ Do you know what the answer was? ‘That’s the way it was done in Hollywood.’ ”
“That’s not a good enough reason,” he continued. “There were times when we didn’t want the audience to see what was going on in there, and then, suddenly, you let them see into his soul for a while.”
Gordon Hugh Willis was born in Astoria, Queens, on May 28, 1931, the child of former Broadway dancers. Young Gordon grew up loving movies and wanting to be an actor, but after performing in some summer stock productions he gravitated toward stage design, theater lighting and ultimately photography.
Robert Redford, left, and Dustin Hoffman in “All the President’s Men,” from 1976.Credit Warner Bros., via Photofest
He began his photography career by shooting portfolio pictures for models he had met when his family lived in Greenwich Village and his father worked as a makeup man at the Warner Brothers studio in Brooklyn.
“I was going to be a fashion photographer!” he told an interviewer in 2009. “I was dumber than dirt, as they say. No money, no jobs, etc. Meanwhile my father had some friends that got me some jobs as a gofer on some movies that were passing through.”
The experience paid off. At the start of the Korean War, Mr. Willis joined the Air Force, which assigned him to a documentary motion picture unit. On his discharge he got into the cinematographers union in New York and began working as an assistant cameraman.
After working in television and doing television commercials, he got his first chance to shoot a feature film when the maverick director Aram Avakian asked him to direct photography for “End of the Road” (1970), a black comedy, with Stacy Keach, adapted from a John Barth novel and set on a “farm” for the mentally ill. The film found an art-house following in later years. Among his other early films was “The Landlord,” the feature debut of Hal Ashby.
Mr. Willis retired after shooting his final film for Mr. Pakula, “The Devil’s Own,” a crime thriller with Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt released in 1997. (Mr. Pakula died the next year in an automobile accident.)
In addition to his son Gordon, Mr. Willis is survived by his wife, the former Helen Stubsten; another son, Timothy; a daughter, Susan Willis; and five grandchildren.
A direct influence on cinematographers like Michael Chapman (“Raging Bull”) and John Bailey (“The Big Chill”), Mr. Willis would say that in preparing a film, a director of photography has to “fit the punishment to the crime” — that is, find a way into the material that feels artistically and aesthetically appropriate.
“The truth of the matter is, everybody tends to reduce or expand things to a level that they understand,” he said in a 2009 interview with John Lingan of Splice Today. “Two people can look at the same thing, they don’t necessarily see the same thing. Whatever happens on the screen really comes out of you. There’s no formula.”
JERRY VALE, WHO CROONED SMOOTHLY OF LOVE
Jerry Vale in 1976.
Jerry Vale, a pop crooner known for his velvety voice and the classic love songs he recorded in the 1950s and early ’60s, died on Sunday at his home in Palm Desert, Calif. He was 83.
His family confirmed his death.
Mr. Vale rose to stardom performing in supper clubs as a teenager, hitting the charts for the first time in 1953 with “You Can Never Give Me Back My Heart.” He was a fixture at Columbia Records, where he recorded more than 50 albums and had hits with songs like “Two Purple Shadows” and “Al Di La.” His biggest hit, “You Don’t Know Me,” peaked at No. 14 on Billboard’s Hot 100 in 1956.
Like so many of his fellow crooners — among them Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Perry Como — Mr. Vale was Italian-American, and he helped popularize romantic Italian songs for American listeners with renditions of “Innamorata (Sweetheart)” in 1956 and “I Have but One Heart” in 1962.
As a teenager, he worked as an oiler alongside his father, an engineer, on excavations for projects like a sewage plant in Oyster Bay, on Long Island. “But then I got a break singing,” he said in a radio interview in 1984. “So, thank God, I made the right decision.”
Mr. Vale got his big break in 1950 while working at the Enchanted Room in Yonkers. There he met the singer Guy Mitchell, who arranged an audition for him with Mitch Miller, head of artists and repertoire at Columbia. He was signed to a contract and changed his name — he was born Genaro Louis Vitaliano — and his career was launched.
That career took him to Carnegie Hall as well as the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, where he met and worked with the stars of his time, among them Jerry Lewis, Sammy Davis Jr. and Nat King Cole.
His autobiography, “Jerry Vale: A Singer’s Life,” written with Richard Grudens, was published in 2000. In it, he recalled meeting his longtime idol, Sinatra, in the early 1950s at Lindy’s Restaurant in New York City, a magnet for show business talent. When they were introduced, Sinatra stood up, an unusual gesture for big stars at the time. It stunned Mr. Vale.
“A few years ago I had heard so many negative stories about Frank that I was somewhat apprehensive to approach him,” he said. “To my absolute surprise, he wound up being quite amiable, and the most caring individual that I have ever known.”
The two became fast friends. Sinatra, who was a partner in the Sands Hotel, helped Mr. Vale get his first gig there, a two-week engagement that was extended to 22 weeks after an owner, Jack Entratter, heard Mr. Vale’s voice.
After Mr. Vale and his wife, Rita, moved to California, the two became a constant presence at Sinatra’s ranch in Rancho Mirage. He took part in the annual Frank Sinatra Celebrity Invitational Golf Tournament for several years and once performed at the event in 1996.
In 1963 he hired a 40-piece band and eight background singers to record the national anthem. The recording became a fixture at sporting events for years and was the first song inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Mr. Vale made cameo appearances as himself in the films “Goodfellas” (1990) and “Casino” (1995), both directed by Martin Scorsese, and in the television series “The Sopranos.”
She survives him, as do their son, a daughter and three grandchildren.
Correction: May 19, 2014 An earlier version of this obituary misidentified the person who signed Mr. Vale to a recording contract. He was signed by Mitch Miller, not by Guy Mitchell.
Correction: May 21, 2014 An obituary in some late editions on Monday about the singer Jerry Vale misspelled the surname of an owner of the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, where Mr. Vale performed early in his career. He was Jack Entratter, not Enratter. The obituary also misstated the maiden name of Mr. Vale’s wife. She was Rita Grapel, not Vale.
Find links to follow and view Saturday morning’s shower, and for the ambitious, we have finder charts for Comet LINEAR/209P, the source of Saturday’s meteors, at its closest approach. For the rest of us, the planets are in fine form both at dawn and dusk.
Dim, obscure periodic Comet 209P/LINEAR is about to pass close to Earth — and bring with it a trail of debris that could make for an exciting meteor shower in May, during the predawn hours of the 24th.
This weekend’s potential for a decent display of shooting stars might tempt you to try your hand at meteor photography. Here are some techniques to help you on your way.
A neighboring galaxy’s central black hole powers strong winds, allowing astronomers — for the first time — to spot those gales pushing out star-forming gas.
Christina’s World, (1948) by Andrew Wyeth. Tempera on gessoed panel, 81.9 cm × 121.3 cm (321⁄4 in × 473⁄4 in), Museum of Modern Art [MOMA], New York City, New York.
May 23 is the United Nations’ (UN) International Day to End Obstetric Fistula, which promotes action towards treating and preventing obstetric fistula, a condition that affects many girls and women in developing countries.
Pregnant women in developing countries need access to proper healthcare to avoid problems like obstetric fistula.
Celebrate the International Day to End Obstetric Fistula
Fundraisers, media announcements and mobile van campaigns driven by health professionals are a few of many events and activities that promote the International Day to End Obstetric Fistula.
Public life
The International Day to End Obstetric Fistula is a global observance and not a public holiday.
About the International Day to End Obstetric Fistula
Obstetric fistula is a hole in the birth canal caused by prolonged labor without prompt medical intervention, such as a Caesarean section. An estimated 2 to 3 million women and girls in developing countries are living with obstetric fistula.
In 2003 the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and its partners launched the global Campaign to End Fistula, a collaborative initiative to prevent fistula and restore the health of those affected by the condition. In 2012, the UN announced that it would observe International Day to End Obstetric Fistula on May 23 each year, starting on 2013.
International Day to End Obstetric Fistula Observances
Right Wing Watch: ALIPAC’s William Gheen suggests that undocumented immigrants are likely rapists, too.
ThinkProgress: Obama judicial nominee ran anti-LGBT political campaign touting his ‘conservative Christian values’.
DiversityInc: Study finds that many employers avoid hiring black people because they believe they all do drugs.
Greg Laden (Science Blogs): Pat Sajak tweets that ‘I now believe global warming alarmists are unpatriotic racists knowingly misleading for their own end,’
Shelby News (North Carolina): Flyers promoting Ku Klux Klan show up in people’s driveways in Shelby County.
The International Day for Biological Diversity is an occasion to increase the global understanding and awareness of issues and challenges around biodiversity.
Local names
Name
Language
International Day for Biological Diversity
English
Día Internacional de la Diversidad Biológica
Spanish
היום בינלאומי לשימור מגוון הביולוגי
Hebrew
اليوم العالمي للتنوع الأحيائي
Arabic
생물 다양성에 대한 국제 날
Korean
Internationaler Tag zur Erhaltung der Artenvielfalt
On May 22, 1992, the text of the Convention on Biological Diversity was adopted by the of the United Nations at a conference in Nairobi, Kenya. Since 2001, the International Day for Biological Diversity is celebrated each year on the anniversary of this date.
The International Day for Biological Diversity raises awareness about preserving endangered habitats.
A wide range of events are organized globally to increase the understanding of the important role of biodiversity in our future. Celebrations are organized by: the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which forms part of the United Nations Environmental Programme; many national governments; and a range of non-governmental organizations.
Activities include:
Translating booklets, leaflets and other educational resources into local languages.
Distributing information on biodiversity via schools, colleges, universities, newspapers, radio and television.
Exhibitions and seminars for students, professionals and the general public.
Showings of movies on environmental issues.
Presentations of programs to preserve endangered species or habitats.
Planting trees and other plants that help prevent erosion.
Politicians may also give speeches on local environmental issues and other events may include competitions for children and young people to take photographs or create artwork centered on the annual theme of the day.
Public life
The International Day for Biological Diversity is an observance and not a public holiday.
Background
In 1992 state and government leaders agreed on a strategy for sustainable development at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, also known as “The Earth Summit”, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Sustainable development is a way to meet the needs of people all over the world and ensuring that planet earth remains healthy and viable for future generations. One of the most important agreements reached during the Earth Summit was the Convention on Biological Diversity.
The Convention on Biological Diversity came into force on December 29, 1993, and each anniversary of this date was designated the International Day for Biological Diversity. From 2001 onwards the date of this celebration was moved to May 22 due to the number of holidays that fell in late December. On this date in 1992, the text of the Convention on Biological Diversity was adopted at a United Nations at a conference in Nairobi, Kenya.
Each year, the International Day for Biodiversity focuses on a particular theme. Recently, the themes have been: Biodiversity and Poverty Alleviation (2003); Biodiversity: Food, Water and Health for All (2004); Biodiversity: Life Insurance for our Changing World (2005); Protect Biodiversity in Drylands (2006); and Biodiversity and Climate Change (2007); and Biodiversity and Agriculture (2008).
Symbols
The International Day for Biological Diversity is part of a series of activities to focus attention on the Convention on Biological Diversity. The symbol of this convention is a stylized image of a twig or branch with three green leaves. Depending on the background, the leaves may be just outlines or green blocks. Each year a piece of artwork is commissioned to reflect the theme. Details of the artwork are used as symbols for different aspects of the International Day for Biological Diversity.
International Day for Biological Diversity Observances
The World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development, held on May 21, is an occasion for people to deepen their understanding of cultural diversity.
Local names
Name
Language
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
English
Día Mundial de la Diversidad Cultural para el Diálogo y el Desarrollo
Spanish
עולם יום לגיוון תרבותי לדיאלוג ופיתוח
Hebrew
اليوم العالمي للتنوع الثقافي من أجل الحوار والتنمية
Arabic
대화와 발전을위한 문화 다양성을위한 세계의 날
Korean
Welttag der kulturellen Vielfalt für Dialog und Entwicklung
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development 2015
Thursday, May 21, 2015
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development is annually held on May 21 to help people learn about the importance of cultural diversity and harmony.
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development is a chance for people to celebrate cultural diversity and harmony.
Various events are organized to increase the understanding of issues around cultural diversity and development among governments, non-governmental organizations and the public. Many of these include presentations on the progress of implementing the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity.
Events include:
Seminars for professionals.
Educational programs for children and young adolescents.
The launch of collaborations between official agencies and ethnic groups.
Exhibitions to help people understand the history of various cultural groups and the influence on their own identities.
Celebrations to create greater awareness of cultural values and the need to preserve them.
The World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development tends to be marked in countries that embraced their varied cultural history and acknowledged the importance of embracing it.
Public life
The World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development is an observance and not a public holiday.
Background
The General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) adopted the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity in Paris, France, on November 2, 2001. It was the 249th resolution adopted at the 57th session of the United Nations General Conference. Although the declaration was the culmination of years of work, it was adopted in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. This reaffirmed the need for intercultural dialogue to prevent segregation and fundamentalism.
The year 2002 was the United Nations Year for Cultural Heritage. At the end of that year, on December 20, 2002, the General Assembly of the United Nations declared May 21 to be the World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development. The General Assembly emphasized links between the protection of cultural diversity and the importance of dialogue between civilizations in the modern world. The World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development was first observed in 2003.
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development Observances
Weekday
Date
Year
Name
Holiday type
Where it is observed
Wed
May 21
2003
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
United Nations observance
Fri
May 21
2004
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
United Nations observance
Sat
May 21
2005
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
United Nations observance
Sun
May 21
2006
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
United Nations observance
Mon
May 21
2007
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
United Nations observance
Wed
May 21
2008
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
United Nations observance
Thu
May 21
2009
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
United Nations observance
Fri
May 21
2010
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
United Nations observance
Sat
May 21
2011
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
United Nations observance
Mon
May 21
2012
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
United Nations observance
Tue
May 21
2013
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
United Nations observance
Wed
May 21
2014
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
United Nations observance
Thu
May 21
2015
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
United Nations observance
Sat
May 21
2016
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
United Nations observance
Sun
May 21
2017
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
United Nations observance
Mon
May 21
2018
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
United Nations observance
Tue
May 21
2019
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
United Nations observance
Thu
May 21
2020
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
H. R. GIGER, AN ARTIST WHO GAVE LIFE TO ‘ALIEN’ CREATURE
H. R. Giger in Chur, Switzerland, in 2007 with his paintings, which, he said “crazy” people loved.Credit Arno Balzarini/KEYSTONE, via Associated Press
H. R. Giger, a Swiss painter, sculptor and set designer who mined his own nightmares in creating phantasmagorical works, including the title character — slimy, eyeless and oddly sexual — in the 1979 hit film “Alien,” died on Monday in Zurich. He was 74.
Sandra Mivelaz, administrator of the H. R. Giger Museum in Gruyères, Switzerland, said he died of injuries suffered in a fall.
Mr. Giger (pronounced GHEE-ger) was part of the team that won an Academy Award for visual effects in “Alien.” He personally designed the title character through all stages of its life, from egg to eight-foot-tall monster.
A thread running through Mr. Giger’s work was the uneasy meshing of machines and biology, in a highly idiosyncratic blend of science fiction and surrealism. From books to movies to record albums to magazine illustrations to a back-scratcher inspired by “Alien,” his designs challenged norms. He kept a notepad next to his bed so he could sketch the terrors that rocked his uneasy sleep — nightmarish forms that could as easily have lumbered from prehistory as arrived from Mars.
Emma Pryke, a sculptor, in London in 1993, looking into the jaws of part of the monster Mr. Giger designed.Credit Johnny Eggitt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“Giger’s work disturbs us, spooks us, because of its enormous evolutionary time span,” Timothy Leary, the psychedelic drug guru and a friend of Mr. Giger’s, once said. “It shows us, all too clearly, where we come from and where we are going.”
Tattoo artists loved to copy his work, while detractors dismissed it as so much morbid kitsch. But the artist knew his audience.
“My paintings seem to make the strongest impression on people who are, well, who are crazy,” Mr. Giger said in a 1979 interview with Starlog magazine.
“Alien,” directed by Ridley Scott and starring Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt and John Hurt, established Mr. Giger’s reputation. In the movie the crew of a commercial spaceship finds alien eggs, one of which grows and metamorphoses into a hideous terror, at once reptilian and insectoid, and causes all manner of gruesome mayhem. It reproduces by implanting an egg in a human and bursting out of the host’s chest.
Mr. Giger also created a derelict spacecraft for the film.
The “Alien” creations were refinements of the surreal images that appeared in Mr. Giger’s first book, “Necronomicon” (1977). Mr. Scott hired Mr. Giger after seeing the book.
“I’d never been so certain about anything in all my life,” he later said.
Mr. Giger published around 20 books in all, and his works were exhibited in Paris, Prague and New York. He also created designs for “Alien 3” (1992), “Prometheus” (2012) and other movies. Two bars he designed in Switzerland have been compared to marooned alien spaceships.
Mr. Giger created many album covers as well, including one for the singer Debbie Harry’s 1981 album, “Koo Koo,” which pictures needles piercing her head and neck. In 1991 Rolling Stone magazine ranked it among the top 100 album covers. His vision of a human skull encased in a machine on the cover of Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s 1973 album, “Brain Salad Surgery,” is widely considered a classic.
In the mid-1980s, Mr. Giger created a poster titled “Penis Landscape” for inclusion in an album by the punk band Dead Kennedys. After a 14-year-old girl bought the album for her 11-year-old brother, their parents filed an obscenity suit. It ended in a mistrial.
Hans Ruedi Giger was born on Feb. 5, 1940, in the southeastern Swiss town of Chur. Fascinated with things dark and strange, he regularly visited an Egyptian mummy and sarcophagus in a local museum.
“The places I liked most were the dark ones,” Mr. Giger told the Swiss Public Broadcasting Corporation. “As soon as I could dress myself I wore black.”
His father urged Hans, who called himself a “horrible student,” to follow him into the pharmacy business. Instead he studied industrial design at the School of Applied Arts in Zurich.
After working as an interior designer, he switched to art full time, starting with small ink drawings. He moved on to large airbrushed work on surrealistic themes inspired by Salvador Dalí, who became a friend.
Mr. Giger’s early exhibitions were controversial for their depictions of death and sex. Galleries had to wipe the spit of disgusted neighbors from their windows.
Mr. Giger’s relationship with the Swiss actress Li Tobler ended with her suicide in 1975. His subsequent marriage, to Mia Bonzanigo, ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, Carmen Scheifele-Giger.
Mr. Giger opened the Gruyères museum in 1998 in a 400-year-old building. It includes works by Dalí and other Surrealists and an adults-only room bathed in red light.
Some but not all of his movie work is on display. In 2005 Gruyères ordered him to remove a model of the “Alien” monster from outside the museum, saying it was not good for the town’s image.
The merging of the physical, the sensual, the sexual, and the mechanical is seen in the fascinating images he created, which led to the now well-known mythos of the Alien saga.
I would not say that his admirers were crazy. Merely avant-garde and with minds of their own in how they see art.
Hans Ruedi Giger.
Surrealist.
Artiste extraordinaire.
Capable of plucking nightmares from the mind, but, also able to give flight to imagination of the biomechanics of the mind and body.
Giger — a man who took us all to the edge of fear, terror, revulsion, and admiration.
WILLIAM WORTHY, A REPORTER DRAWN TO FORBIDDEN DATELINES
William Worthy, a foreign correspondent who in the thick of the Cold War ventured where the United States did not want him to go — including the Soviet Union, China, Cuba — and became the subject of both a landmark federal case concerning travel rights and a ballad by the protest singer Phil Ochs, died on May 4 in Brewster, Mass. He was 92.
His death, from complications of Alzheimer’s disease, was announced on the website of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. Mr. Worthy was a Nieman Foundation fellow in the 1956-57 academic year.
A correspondent for The Afro-American of Baltimore, a weekly newspaper, from 1953 to 1980, Mr. Worthy also contributed freelance reports to CBS News, The New York Post and other publications. He became an international cause célèbre in the early 1960s when, returning from Cuba, he was found guilty of violating United States immigration law.
The son of a distinguished obstetrician, William Worthy Jr. was born in Boston on July 7, 1921.
William Worthy, who worked for The Afro-American of Baltimore for 27 years, with Premier Zhou Enlai in Beijing in 1957.Credit Boston Globe Staff
“Despite the respect and certain privileges derived from membership in a professional ‘black bourgeoisie’ family, my sisters and I were clearly aware, as children, of our ‘inferior’ minority group status,” Mr. Worthy wrote in a 1968 article for The Boston Globe. “ ‘The problem’ was discussed at the dinner table. More importantly, it was all around us.”
After graduating from the Boston Latin School, Mr. Worthy earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Bates College in Lewiston, Me., in 1942. In World War II, though an ulcer would have let him be classified 4-F, he chose to become a conscientious objector.
Mr. Worthy began his career as a press aide for the civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph. During his years at The Afro-American, he kept one foot in the realm of direct advocacy, joining Freedom Riders on their pilgrimages through the South and later becoming a close ally of Malcolm X.
As a journalist, Mr. Worthy quickly earned a reputation for venturing into forbidden places to report on the effects of war, revolution and colonialism. In 1955, he spent six weeks in Moscow, interviewing ordinary citizens and the future Soviet premier Nikita S. Khrushchev, who at the time was first secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.
Toward the end of 1956, during his Nieman fellowship, Mr. Worthy, who had spent years petitioning the Chinese government for a visa, learned he had been granted one.
Defying a United States travel ban, he crossed into mainland China from Hong Kong. He was one of the first American journalists admitted there after the United States broke off relations after the 1949 Communist takeover.
He spent 41 days traveling the country, interviewing the premier, Zhou Enlai, as well as people in schools, factories and hospitals.
He also visited the Shanghai prison, where he interviewed American P.O.W.s captured during the Korean War. The United States knew the men were being held somewhere in China, but in several cases Mr. Worthy’s reports were the first to pinpoint their location.
After returning to the United States in 1957, Mr. Worthy tried to renew his passport. The State Department refused.
In a statement, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles said, “It is evident from Mr. Worthy’s testimony that should his passport be renewed he would not feel obligated, under present world conditions, to restrict his travel abroad in any way.”
Indeed, Mr. Worthy felt no such obligation. In 1961, without a passport, he went to Cuba, debarking in Havana from a ship bound from the United States for Mexico. He interviewed Fidel Castro and filed articles about the country under Communism, with particular attention to race relations, which he judged far better than those in the United States.
Returning, he was arrested in Florida and indicted on a charge of entering the country illegally — that is, without a passport. (He had shown immigration officers his birth certificate as proof of citizenship.)
In 1962, in a nonjury trial in federal court in Miami — Mr. Worthy’s lawyers included William M. Kunstler — he was found guilty and sentenced to three months’ imprisonment plus nine months’ probation.
The case became a sensation. Rallies on Mr. Worthy’s behalf were held in cities around the world. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell petitioned the United States attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy, in support of him.
But somehow it is strange to hear the State Department say,
You are living in the free world, in the free world you must stay.
In 1964, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned Mr. Worthy’s conviction, ruling that the lack of a passport was insufficient ground to bar a citizen from re-entering the country. Concurring in the opinion was Judge Griffin B. Bell, a future United States attorney general under President Jimmy Carter.
Mr. Worthy was not granted a new passport until 1968. Over the years, his other travels — with a passport or without — took him to North Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia and Algeria.
In 1981, Mr. Worthy and two colleagues traveled to Iran to examine the effects of the Islamic revolution there. He bought a multivolume set of books said to be reprints of intelligence documents taken from the United States Embassy in Tehran after revolutionary militants seized it in 1979.
Though the books were readily available in Iran and were already circulating in Europe, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, deeming them classified, seized them on the journalists’ return to the United States.
Mr. Worthy was able to furnish a duplicate set to The Washington Post. In 1982, after authenticating them, The Post published a series, based partly on their contents, about United States intelligence operations in Iran.
The federal government agreed that year to pay $16,000 to settle a suit by Mr. Worthy and his colleagues over the seizure.
In later years, Mr. Worthy taught journalism at Boston University; the University of Massachusetts, Boston; Howard University; and elsewhere. In 2008, he received the Nieman Foundation’s Louis Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism.
His survivors include a sister, Ruth Worthy.
Mr. Worthy was the author of a book, “The Rape of Our Neighborhoods,” published in 1976.
In 1982, The Associated Press asked Mr. Worthy why he had brought the Iranian volumes into the United States. His response could well describe what propelled his entire career.
“Americans,” Mr. Worthy said, “have a right to know what’s going on in the world in their name.”
Correction: May 18, 2014 An earlier version of this obituary misstated the position held by Nikita S. Khrushchev when Mr. Worthy interviewed him in Moscow in 1955. He was the first secretary of the Soviet Communist Party; he had not yet become premier.SOURCE********************************************************
DAVID BALDING, A PRODUCER WHO ADOPTED AN ELEPHANT
David Balding with Flora, the African elephant he bought and more or less adopted in 1984.Credit Raffe Photography Inc.
David Balding, a producer of Broadway and Off Broadway plays who may have been best known as a circus showman who acted as a parent to an elephant, died on May 9 in Weldon Spring, Mo. He was 75.
His wife, Laura, said that he had severe arthritis and other ailments and that he died of a head injury after falling in their home.
Mr. Balding was the central human character — though he was not the star — of the 2011 documentary film “One Lucky Elephant,” about his relationship with Flora, the orphaned baby African elephant he bought and more or less adopted in 1984.
Mr. Balding, a natural impresario who had started his own theater company in his 20s and put on plays directed by Mike Nichols and Harold Pinter, had long wanted to build his own circus, and he placed Flora at the center of that dream, training her to perform and to collaborate with acrobats.
He and a handful of partners created Circus Flora, a family-friendly one-ring affair whose acts — one was a big-little equine comedy team featuring a Clydesdale and a miniature horse — were loosely stitched into a narrative and combined circus and theater techniques. Mr. Balding was the ringmaster.
Circus Flora made its debut at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, S.C., in 1986 and toured the United States until making a permanent home in 1988 in St. Louis.
Flora was part of the circus until 2000, when Mr. Balding, who had looked after her as if she were a member of his family, recognized that, as an adult elephant, she needed to live among her kind. The documentary, directed by Lisa Leeman, tells of his search for an appropriate home for her and their subsequent lives apart. In 2004, Flora moved to the Elephant Sanctuary, a natural-habitat refuge in Hohenwald, Tenn.
“There’s no denying the ‘aww’ appeal of a man and an elephant walking down a street, hand in trunk,” Manohla Dargis wrote in reviewing the film for The New York Times. She described it as the story of “a circus man and the wild animal he foolishly bought, helped to train, loved like a (captive) daughter and finally, tearfully, tried to do right by, mostly by letting her go.”
Ivor David Balding came from an animal-loving family. He was born on March 3, 1939, in Manhattan, a son of Ivor G. Balding and the former Frances Godwin. His father was one of three English brothers who had come to fame playing polo in the United States, mostly on Long Island. The elder Balding later became the stable, farm and racing manager for C. V. Whitney, a scion of the Whitney and Vanderbilt families and a breeder of thoroughbreds.
Young David grew up in the Whitney orbit, in Old Westbury, on Long Island, and in Lexington, Ky., where he helped care for the Whitney horses and Angus cattle. He attended the Green Vale School in Old Brookville on Long Island and the Brooks School in North Andover, Mass. Before attending Harvard, he was a summer assistant to the actress Eva Le Gallienne at the Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut and briefly worked for a circus in Paris.
Mr. Balding never graduated from Harvard, embarking instead on a career in theater. By 1963, he was in New York, having founded the Establishment Theater Company — his partners included Joseph E. Levine and Peter Cook — which produced, among other shows, “The Ginger Man,” an adaptation of J. P. Donleavy’s novel starring Patrick O’Neal, and “Scuba Duba,” Bruce Jay Friedman’s comedy about a cuckolded American in the South of France.
On Broadway, Mr. Balding was a producer of “The Man in the Glass Booth,” Robert Shaw’s drama, directed by Harold Pinter, about a man who may or may not be a concentration camp survivor. It ran for more than 250 performances in 1968 and 1969.
Among his first shows was “The Knack,” an Off Broadway comedy by Ann Jellicoe about young men on the make, directed by a fresh new face, Mike Nichols, who had just had his first Broadway hit, “Barefoot in the Park.”
Mr. Nichols would later have occasion, when Flora was in New York to perform at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in a show conceived by Martha Clarke, to house her on the grounds of his Connecticut home.
“She was a lovely elephant; we all loved her,” Mr. Nichols recalled in an interview on Tuesday. “I liked to show her to visitors and to feed her peanuts, of course — all the things you do when you have an elephant.”
In the 1970s, Mr. Balding returned to Europe, where, working for CBS, he created and was a co-producer of the Circus World Championships, an Olympic-style competition for circus performers. He later worked as a producer for the Big Apple Circus in New York and eventually moved to a farm in South Carolina that his father had bought. There he hatched plans for his circus, which he started with three partners.
In the meantime, Flora, who was born in Zimbabwe in 1982 and whose parents were killed in a culling, was sold to an elephant trainer and broker in California. Mr. Balding bought her and added her to a menagerie that included Jack, the Clydesdale. After a South Carolina neighbor who was on the board of the Spoleto festival introduced Mr. Balding to the festival’s director, the composer Gian Carlo Menotti, Circus Flora had its first booking. Nigel Redden, the current general director of the festival and then the general manager, recalled in an interview that during the festival’s opening ceremony, the mayor of Charleston rode through the city’s downtown area on Flora’s back.
In addition to his wife, the former Laura Carpenter, whom he married in 1994, Mr. Balding is survived by three sisters, Bettina Blackford, Pamela Jencks and Linda Shearer — and, of course, by Flora, who is still in Tennessee.
At the start of the documentary, Mr. Balding offers a simple explanation for the acquisition that ended up defining him.
“I wanted an elephant,” he says. “I wanted an elephant all my life.”
Correction: May 16, 2014 An earlier version of this obituary misstated the given name of one of Mr. Balding’s partners in the Establishment Theater Company. He was Joseph E. Levine, not David. The earlier version also misstated his mother’s maiden name. She was Frances Goodwin, not Godwin.
Ann
BEAUTIFUL, ALSO, ARE THE SOULS OF MY BLACK SISTERS 
