Thanksgiving Day, 2009
Hi all,
The Norman Rockwell image to the left seems fitting for this day. (Figures that there would be a bird in there, even if it was cooked.) "Freedom From Want" was one of Rockwell's famous "Four Freedoms" and was inspired by an FDR speech:
"In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called "new order" of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb."
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, excerpted from the Annual Message to the Congress, January 6, 1941
In retrospect, parts of that speech now seem so wildly naive, but at least the thought was there.
Anyway, happy Thanksgiving everyone, and please try to think of the men and women of our armed services. Without them, there would be no Thanksgiving.
See you by the feeders,
CapeCodAlan
Cornell Ornithology Laboratory: Inside Birding
Cornell Ornithology Laboratory: All About Birding
