All posts by Sebastian Reimann

It’s Campaign Season – So “Keep the Ball Rolling”!

By Sibylle Machat

Have you ever heard the expres­sion “keep the ball rolling” and won­dered about its origins?

An antecedent of the phrase stems from the British “keep the ball up,” but the phrase itself is only 180 years old and orig­i­nat­ed dur­ing the 1840 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion between Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date Mar­tin van Buren and Wig can­di­date William Hen­ry Har­ri­son. In this elec­tion, Harrison’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign intro­duced so-called vic­to­ry balls – globes made from tin and leather, about ten feet in diam­e­ter, that were pushed from one cam­paign ral­ly and from one town to the next. Pho­tog­ra­phy was not around in the 1840s, of course, but accord­ing to illus­tra­tions from the time, these vic­to­ry balls looked some­thing like this:

Cred­it: “1840 Vic­to­ry Ball illus­tra­tion” in Carr, T. Turn out! To the res­cue!. G. E. Blake, Philadel­phia, mono­graph­ic, 1840. Notat­ed Music. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

 

But this is only the begin­ning of the story:

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German American Day – Celebrate 336 Years of German American History

By Sabrina Völz

Pho­to cred­it: “Herr und Frau” by Phil Davis NY

Although the Unit­ed States has great­ly impact­ed pol­i­tics and pop­u­lar cul­ture around the world, it should not be for­got­ten that Ger­man immi­grants have also influ­enced Amer­i­can cul­ture since the found­ing of Ger­man­town, now part of Philadel­phia, 336 years ago. Octo­ber 6, 1683, marks the first Ger­man set­tle­ment in North Amer­i­ca. Instead of cel­e­brat­ing the pop­u­lar hol­i­days famil­iar to most stu­dents, such as Hal­loween or Christ­mas, per­haps it is now more than ever impor­tant to remem­ber the close ties between our two nations. I have put togeth­er a few ideas for a les­son on Ger­man Amer­i­can Day.

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Some Things Never Fade

By Rebecca Lüps

o here I am in famous Mont­martre next to 50 oth­er unknown artists who all do the same thing – draw famous peo­ple. Iron­ic, isn’t it? It’s Octo­ber, and the leaves are fad­ing. I call it fade, not fall because when you stand on this moun­tain all year long, you see how every­thing fades away. The view is fad­ing, the heat is fad­ing, the cus­tomers are fad­ing. What can I say, you get used to it.

The first years, I still shaved and kept my hair short, but you let go of those van­i­ties after a few cold win­ters out here. And you real­ize: Nobody cares. The only thing your cus­tomers care about is that you’re wear­ing a beret. I guess they think it’s art­sy and French. Hypocrites.

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Yay! People love her!

By Bobbie Kirkhart

pho­to cred­it: Jamie Smed @ flickr

Soc­cer star Megan Rapi­noe has a twin sis­ter, but every­one rec­og­nizes that they are fra­ter­nal twins because Megan cer­tain­ly is one of a kind. She’s unique from her bright pink hair to her red hot feet. It’s her feet that made her famous, start­ing in 2005 with her role in the NCAA cham­pi­onship win for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Port­land; she made the U.S. nation­al team the next year.

In the 2011 World Cup, she played in all U.S. games. After one goal, she grabbed a micro­phone and sang Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” At the 2012 Lon­don Games, she scored direct­ly from a cor­ner kick, mak­ing her the only play­er to have done that in Olympic com­pe­ti­tions. In this year’s World Cup, she scored six goals, one of only four play­ers in the tour­na­ment to achieve that. She was the only play­er in this year’s tour­na­ment to score two goals each in con­sec­u­tive games.

Off the field, her mouth and her heart are as active as her feet.
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The American Dream Reconsidered: The Outsiders (1967)

By Kai-Arne Zimny

Image cred­it: https://www.flickr.com/photos/theeerin/3319626950

14-year-old orphan Pony­boy Cur­tis lives with his old­er broth­ers Dar­ry and Sodapop in a city some­where in Amer­i­ca. They are part of a greas­er gang which means they smoke, they fight, they swear. The author was only 16 when her nov­el The Out­siders hit the book­shelves and dis­turbed America’s sense of decen­cy. After­wards, Susan Eloise Hinton’s life was nev­er the same, and the atten­tive read­er might won­der if the oppo­nents of The Out­siders feared some­thing more than improp­er manners.

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