The Lord is my shepherd,

I shall not be in want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

He leads me beside quiet waters,

He restoreth my soul.

He guides me in paths of righteousness

For His name's sale.

Even though I walk through the valley

Of the shadow of death, I will dear no evil,

For You are with me;

Your rod and staff,

They comfort me.

Your prepare a table for me

In the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil;

My cup overflows.

Surely goodness and love will follow me

All the days of my life,

And I will dwell in the house

Of the Lord forever.

 

Psalm 23

 

 

 

At dawn let me hear of Your kindness, for in You I trust.

Show me the path I should walk, for to You I entrust my life.

Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God.

May Your kind spirit guide me on ground that is level.

For Your name's sake, Lord, give me life; in Your justice lead me out of distress.

Psalm 143:8,10-11

 

 

 

Let freedom ring across the land

Today and every day.

Oh, guard it with a passion,

Lest it quickly slip away.

For freedom is a precious thing

For which many fought and died,

And we must guide it feverishly.

 

Let freedom ring across this land,

Across this land of ours,

This glorious land, America,

Embraced with stripes and stars.

Oh, let it be a beacon bright,

A light to share with others;

Let freedom's ring inspire hope

That all might live as brothers.

 

By Loise Pinkerton Fritz

 

The Freedom Bell in Washington, DC

In 1981, the Freedom Bell was donated to the United States in celebration of the nation's Bicentennial. It was cast specifically for the 1975-76 American Freedom Train by Whitechapel Bell Foundry, the same foundry that cast the original Liberty Bell.

The American Freedom Train carried the bell to all 48 contiguous states during the nation's Bicentennial celebration. It was alternately called the Freedom Bell or the Children's Bell.
It is nearly twice as large as the real Liberty Bell. The replica is located at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and First Street in front of Washington DC's Union Station.

   

Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming

 

 

1. Alabama introduced the Mardi Gras to the western world. The celebration is held on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent begins.
2. Alabama workers built the first rocket to put humans on the moon.
3. The world's first Electric Trolley System was introduced in Montgomery in 1886.
4. Alabama is the only state with all major natural resources needed to make iron and steel. It is also the largest supplier of cast-iron and steel pipe products.
5. Montgomery is the capital and the birthplace of the Confederate States of America.
6. The Confederate flag was designed and first flown in Alabama in 1861.
7. Alabama became the 22nd state on December 14, 1819.
8. The town of Enterprise houses the Boll Weevil Monument to acknowledge the role this destructive insect played in encouraging farmers to grow crops other than cotton.
9. Baseball player Henry Louis (Hank) Aaron was born in Mobile in 1934.
10. Boxer Joe Louis was born in Lexington in 1914. He died in 1981.
11. "Alabama" is the official state song.
12. Baseball player Willie Howard Mays was born in Westfield in 1931.
13. A skeleton of a pre-historic man was found in Russell Cave.
14. At 2,405 feet Cheaha Mountain is Alabama's highest point above sea level.
15. Huntsville is known as the rocket capital of the World.
16. The Alabama Department of Archives is the oldest state-funded archival agency in the nation.
17. The musical singing group Alabama has a Fan Club and Museum in Fort Payne.
18. In 1902 Dr. Luther Leonidas Hill performed the first open heart surgery in the Western Hemisphere by suturing a stab wound in a young boy's heart. The surgery occurred in Montgomery.
19. To help fund education Alabama instituted its state sales tax in 1937.
20. Schools established in Mobile include Washington Academy (founded in 1811) and Huntsville Green Academy (founded in 1812).
21. Between 1817 and 1819 Old Saint Stephens was the first territorial capital of Alabama.
22. In 1956 the Army Ballistic Missile Agency was established at Huntsville's Redstone Arsenal.
23. Governor George C. Wallace served four terms in office.
24. In 1995 Heather Whitestone serves as first Miss America chosen with a disability.
25. Alabama's geographic center is located in Chilton a community located 12 miles southwest of Clanton.
26. The word Alabama means tribal town in the Creek Indian language.
27. The United States Army Chemical Corps Museum in Fort McClellan contains over 4000 chemical warfare artifacts.
28. Hitler's typewriter survived from his mountain retreat and is exhibited at the Hall of History in Bessemer.
29. Blount County was created on February 7, 1818 and is older than the state.
30. Winston County is often called the Free State of Winston. It gained the name during the Civil War.
31. Mobile is named after the Mauvilla Indians.
32. Peter Bryce is recognized as the state's first psychiatrist. He was born in 1834 and died in 1892.
33. The Alabama State Flag was authorized by the Alabama legislature on February 16, 1895.
34. Hematite is Alabama's official state mineral and is known as oxide of iron (Fe2O3).
35. The Monarch butterfly (Danaus pleipuss) is the state's official insect.
36. The star blue quartz is the state's official gemstone.
37. The Florence Renaissance Faire is the Alabama's official fair.
38. The pecan is the Alabama's official nut.
39. People from Alabama are called Alabamians.
40. On January 11, 1861 Alabama becomes the fourth state to secede from the Union.
41. On January 28, 1846 Montgomery was selected as capital of Alabama.
42. Tallulah Bankhead entertained as a star of stage, screen, and radio during the 1930s-1950s. She was born in Huntsville in 1902 and died in 1968.
43. Singer and entertainer Nathaniel Adams (Nat King) Cole was known as the man with the velvet voice. He was born in Montgomery in 1919 and died in 1965.
44. Alabama resident Sequoyah devised the phonetic, written alphabet of the Cherokee language.
45. The Birmingham Airport opened in 1931. At the time of the opening a Birmingham to Los Angeles flight took 19 hours.
46. Alabama's mean elevation is 500 feet at its lowest elevation point.
47. Audemus jura nostra defendere is the official state motto. Translated it means "we dare defend our rights."
48. Washington County is the oldest county in Alabama.
49. General Andrew Jackson defeated the Creek Indians in 1814. Following the event the Native Americans ceded nearly half the present state land to the United States.
50. At the Battle of Mobile Bay Admiral David Farragut issued his famous command, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead." The event occurred on August 5, 1864.

 

For more information, please visit official site:

http://www.alabama.gov/portal/index.jsp

...Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles, From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

 

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I life my lamp beside the golden door!"

 

(By Emma Lazarus)

History

The words are by Katharine Lee Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College. In 1893, Bates had taken a train trip to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to teach a short summer school session at Colorado College, and several of the sights on her trip found their way into her poem:

• The World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the "White City" with its promise of the future contained within its alabaster buildings.
• The wheat fields of Kansas, through which her train was riding on July 4.
• The majestic view of the Great Plains from atop Pikes Peak.

On that mountain, the words of the poem started to come to her, and she wrote them down upon returning to her hotel room at the original Antlers Hotel. The poem was initially published two years later in The Congregationalist, to commemorate the Fourth of July. It quickly caught the public's fancy. Amended versions were published in 1904 and 1913.

Several existing pieces of music were adapted to the poem. The Hymn tune composed in 1882 by Samuel A. Ward, was generally considered the best music as early as 1910 and is still the popular tune today. Ward had been similarly inspired. The tune came to him while he was on a ferryboat trip from Coney Island back to his home in New York City after a leisurely summer day, and he immediately wrote it down. Ward died in 1903, not knowing the national stature his music would attain. Miss Bates was more fortunate, as the song's popularity was well-established by her death in 1929.

At various times in the more than 100 years that have elapsed since the song as we know it was born, particularly during the John F. Kennedy administration, there have been efforts to give "America the Beautiful" legal status either as a national hymn, or as a national anthem equal to, or in place of, "The Star-Spangled Banner", but so far this has not succeeded. Proponents prefer "America the Beautiful" for various reasons, saying it is easier to sing, more melodic, and more adaptable to new orchestrations while still remaining as easily recognizable as "The Star-Spangled Banner." Some prefer "America the Beautiful" over "The Star-Spangled Banner" due to the latter's war-oriented imagery. (Others prefer "The Star-Spangled Banner" for the same reason.) While that national dichotomy has stymied any effort at changing the tradition of the national anthem, "America the Beautiful" continues to be held in high esteem by a large number of Americans.

Popularity of the song increased greatly following the September 11, 2001 attacks; at some sporting events it was sung in addition to the traditional singing of the national anthem. During the first taping of the Late Show with David Letterman following the attacks, CBS newsman Dan Rather cried briefly as he quoted the fourth verse. [1]

Ray Charles is credited with the song's most well known rendition in current times (although Elvis Presley had a good success with it in the 1970s). His recording is very commonly played at major sporting events, such as the Super Bowl; Charles gave a live performance of the song prior to Super Bowl XXXV, the last Super Bowl played before the September 11 terrorist attacks. His unique take on it places the third verse first, after which he sings the usual first verse. In the third verse (see below), the author scolds the materialistic and self-serving robber barons of her day, and urges America to live up to its noble ideals and to honor, with both word and deed, the memory of those who died for their country. Symbolically, Marian Anderson (a noted opera singer of her day) sang a rendition of America on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 after being refused use of Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution because of her skin color.

It is often included in songbooks in a wide variety of religious congregations in the United States.

It has also become a tradition for the song to be performed at the start of the WWE event WrestleMania. Such artists to perform the song at the event include Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, Reba McEntire, Little Richard, Boyz II Men, Ashanti, The Boys Choir of Harlem, Mariah Carey, Lilian Garcia and Michelle Williams.

When Richard Nixon visited the People's Republic of China in 1972, this song was played by Chinese as the welcome music. Interestingly, the Chinese characters for United States literally mean "Beautiful Country."[2]

[edit] Idioms

"From sea to shining sea" is an American idiom meaning from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean (or vice versa). Many songs have used this term, including the American patriotic songs "America, The Beautiful" and "God Bless the USA". In addition to these, it is also featured in Schoolhouse Rock's "Elbow Room". Although the United States has borders with the Arctic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, the phrase refers only to the West and East coasts of the Continental U.S. A term similar to this is the Canadian motto A Mari Usque Ad Mare ("From sea to sea.") See also Manifest Destiny.

[edit] Takeoffs

A song as popular and familiar as "America the Beautiful" inevitably gets used out of its proper context or time frame, for humorous effect. Some examples:

• In 1971, the song inspired the cross-country Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash race from New York to Los Angeles that later was the topic of several movies with Burt Reynolds

• A Far Side cartoon from 1982 (reprinted in Sherr's book) shows Columbus nearing land, with his crew of conquistador types, and saying, "Look, gentlemen! Purple mountains! Spacious skies! Fruited plains! ... Is someone writing this down?"

• In one of his comedy club routines in the early 1960s, Flip Wilson did a Columbus story with an African-American twist... ironically, the catchphrase repeated by Queen Isabel (an early "Geraldine") is "Chris gon' find Ray Charles!" When his Columbus sees land, he comments, "It's America, all right... just look at those spacious skies... those amber waves of grain... dig that purple mountain's majesty... I'll bet there's fruit out there on the plain!"

• In his satirical, musical record album, The United States of America, Volume 1, Stan Freberg plays Columbus, Jesse White plays a skeptical King Ferdinand, and Colleen Collins does Queen Isabella (mimicking Tallulah Bankhead), resulting in this bit of dialogue: [3]

Ferdinand: Look at him in that hat! Is that a crazy sailor?

Isabella: Crazy? I'll tell you how crazy! He's a man with a dream, a vision, a vision of a new world, whose alabaster cities gleam undimmed by human tears, with purple mountain majesties above the Two Cents Plain . . .

Ferdinand and Columbus: Fruited!

Isabella: Fruited.

• Mel Brooks, on a talk show, once did an impression of how Frank Sinatra might sing the song, complete with tuxedo, black hat and coat, and cigarette, leaning up against a bar, and rendering the song in "lounge style".

• George Carlin performed a satirical version around 1970, when environmental issues were becoming a hot political topic: [4]

Oh beautiful, for smoggy skies, insecticided grain

For strip-mined mountain's majesty above the asphalt plain.

America, America, man sheds his waste on thee

And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea!

• Westboro Baptist Church created an animated video that parodies "America the Beautiful." [5]

• The Chicago-based death metal band Master recorded a parody of "America the Beautiful" on their 1991 album On the Seventh Day God Created...Master but instead called it "America the Pitiful".

• Neil Young recorded a (presumably non-ironic) version for his 2006 folk-rock protest album "Living with War" which criticizes the Bush Administration.

(from Wikipe

dia)