Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

Where have all the .......... gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the .......... gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the .......... gone?
Girls have picked them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the ................... gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the ................... gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the ................... gone?
Taken husbands every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the ................... gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the ................... gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the ................... gone?
Gone for soldiers every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the .............. gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the .............. gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the .............. gone?
Gone to graveyards every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the .................... gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the .................... gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the .................... gone?
Covered with flowers every one
When will we ever learn?
When will we ever learn?

FALSE FRIENDS

A few Spanish/English False Friends

library - n - librería

a place where you borrow books / a place where you buy books

to divert - v - divertir

to change the direction of something / to have a good time

sympathetic - adj - simpático

understanding / nice, friendly

argument - n - argumento

a verbal fight / the plot of a book, film or play

to prove - v - probar

to make certain that something is true / to try something new, to try some clothes on

topic - n - tópico

a subject/theme / cliché

eventually -adv - eventualmente

in the end/finally / possibly

informal - adj - informal

casual, not formal / irresponsible

crime - n - crimen

something illegal / a murder, serious crime

to realise - v - realizar

to be fully conscious of something / to carry something out

sensible - adj - sensible

to have good sense / sensitive

actually - adv - actualmente

in fact / nowadays

educated - adj - educado

a person who has received a good education / polite

conductor - n - conductor

a person who leads an orchestra / the driver of a vehicle

particular - adj - particular

special / private

content - adj - contento

satisfied / happy

success - n - suceso

someone/thing that turns out well / an event

parent - n - pariente

mother or father / family member

direction - n - dirección

move to something/where / address

Note: sometimes the two words do correspond more or less. 

The false friend concerns a different meaning of the same word.

Little Boxes

1. Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky-tacky, Little boxes, little boxes, Little boxes, all the same. There's a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one And they're all made out of ticky-tacky And they all look just the same. 2. And the people in the houses All go to the university, And they all get put in boxes, Little boxes, all the same. And there's doctors and there's lawyers And business executives, And they're all made out of ticky-tacky And they all look just the same.

3. And they all play on the golf-course, And drink their Martini dry, And they all have pretty children, And the children go to school. And the children go to summer camp And then to the university, And they all get put in boxes And they come out all the same. 4. And the boys go into business, And marry, and raise a family, And they all get put in boxes, Little boxes, all the same. There's a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one And they're all made out of ticky-tacky And they all look just the same. ticky-tacky:......? The song is a political satire about the development of suburbia and associated conformist middle-class attitudes. It refers to suburban tract housing as "little boxes" of different colors "all made out of ticky-tacky", and which "all look just the same." "Ticky-tacky" is a reference to the shoddy material used in the construction of housing of that time.

WOMEN

International Women's Day

International Women's Day (8 March) is an occasion marked by women's groups around the world. This date is also commemorated at the United Nations and is designated in many countries as a national holiday. When women on all continents, often divided by national boundaries and by ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic and political differences, come together to celebrate their Day, they can look back to a tradition that represents at least nine decades of struggle for equality, justice, peace and development.
International Women's Day is the story of ordinary women as makers of history; it is rooted in the centuries-old struggle of women to participate in society on an equal footing with men. In ancient Greece, Lysistrata initiated a sexual strike against men in order to end war; during the French Revolution, Parisian women calling for "liberty, equality, fraternity" marched on Versailles to demand women's suffrage.
The idea of an International Women's Day first arose at the turn of the century, which in the industrialized world was a period of expansion and turbulence, booming population growth and radical ideologies. Following is a brief chronology of the most important events:
1909
In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the first National Woman's Day was observed across the United States on 28 February. Women continued to celebrate it on the last Sunday of that month through 1913.
1910
The Socialist International, meeting in Copenhagen, established a Women's Day, international in character, to honour the movement for women's rights and to assist in achieving universal suffrage for women. The proposal was greeted with unanimous approval by the conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, which included the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament. No fixed date was selected for the observance.
1911
As a result of the decision taken at Copenhagen the previous year, International Women's Day was marked for the first time (19 March) in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, where more than one million women and men attended rallies. In addition to the right to vote and to hold public office, they demanded the right to work, to vocational training and to an end to discrimination on the job.
Less than a week later, on 25 March, the tragic Triangle Fire in New York City took the lives of more than 140 working girls, most of them Italian and Jewish immigrants. This event had a significant impact on labour legislation in the United States, and the working conditions leading up to the disaster were invoked during subsequent observances of International Women's Day.
1913-1914
As part of the peace movement brewing on the eve of World War I, Russian women observed their first International Women's Day on the last Sunday in February 1913. Elsewhere in Europe, on or around 8 March of the following year, women held rallies either to protest the war or to express solidarity with their sisters.
1917
With 2 million Russian soldiers dead in the war, Russian women again chose the last Sunday in February to strike for "bread and peace". Political leaders opposed the timing of the strike, but the women went on anyway. The rest is history: Four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote. That historic Sunday fell on 23 February on the Julian calendar then in use in Russia, but on 8 March on the Gregorian calendar in use elsewhere.
Since those early years, International Women's Day has assumed a new global dimension for women in developed and developing countries alike. The growing international women's movement, which has been strengthened by four global United Nations women's conferences, has helped make the commemoration a rallying point for coordinated efforts to demand women's rights and participation in the political and economic process. Increasingly, International Women's Day is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of women's rights.

The Role of the United Nations

Few causes promoted by the United Nations have generated more intense and widespread support than the campaign to promote and protect the equal rights of women. The Charter of the United Nations, signed in San Francisco in 1945, was the first international agreement to proclaim gender equality as a fundamental human right. Since then, the Organization has helped create a historic legacy of internationally agreed strategies, standards, programmes and goals to advance the status of women worldwide.
Over the years, United Nations action for the advancement of women has taken four clear directions: promotion of legal measures; mobilization of public opinion and international action; training and research, including the compilation of gender desegregated statistics; and direct assistance to disadvantaged groups. Today a central organizing principle of the work of the United Nations is that no enduring solution to society's most threatening social, economic and political problems can be found without the full participation, and the full empowerment, of the world's women.

On Martin Luther King's birthday!

Slavery

What was the slave trade?

It seems hard to imagine now but since about 1500 there was a lot of money to be made buying and selling people as slaves.Companies would go to Africa and capture men, women and children to be taken in horrific conditions on ships and destined for a cruel life in slavery.
Cities such as Bristol, London and Liverpool grew rich off the trade.
It’s thought about 24 million Africans were sold to slave traders.
Plantations
The slaves were usually sent to work in the sugar cane fields on plantations – giant farms – in the Caribbean, North America and South America where the work was really hard and dangerous. Many were left disabled by work accidents.
Other slaves were used as personal servants in polite society in cities such as London and Edinburgh.

How were slaves treated?

It was a very hard life as a slave and very difficult to imagine now.
Whole families would be taken from their homes in Africa against their will and moved in dreadful cramped, diseased conditions on ships. Many died during the voyage.
The people would then be sold as slaves – separated from their family – and become the property of someone, just like you would own a bicycle or a car. They had no rights at all.
This would mean they might have to change their name to that of their owner, and work really hard for up to 18 hours a day in terrible conditions.
They had a poor diet and no care for their health, often walking for miles in the hot sun and living in rough huts and sleeping on a dirt floor.
Hard life
Masters would control their slaves by whipping them.
Once a slave started work on a plantation they usually only lived for about seven years because they were worked so hard. If the plantation was run by a church they usually died after three years.
Being a slave was a hard, miserable life.

How was it abolished?

 

In the late 18th century, an anti-slavery movement began to get a lot of backing in Britain, firstly by some religious groups, such as the Quakers.People began to stop using sugar as they didn’t want to be seen to be supporting the use of slaves on the big sugar plantations.
Thomas Clarkson spent seven years riding 35,000 miles on horseback across Britain, getting support for the anti-slavery campaign and in 1787 persuaded the MP William Wilberforce to take the fight into Parliament.
At the same time, slaves were protesting about how they were being abused. One of these was Olaudah Equiano, a former slave who bought his own freedom and published a best-selling book.
Legal end
The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed by the British Parliament on 25 March 1807.
This law included a fine of £100 for every slave found aboard a British ship – at that time the fine was so high it probably would have put the ship owner out of business.
Slavery was then wiped out slowly – with slaves first being freed but signed up to work in “an apprenticeship” for their masters for five years.By 1838 all slaves in the British Empire were formally set free.
Slaves didn’t get any money for all the work they had done, but slave owners were given money for the loss of the slaves! One example was the Bishop of Exeter who gave up 665 slaves so got £12,700 (around £750,000 today).

Is there still slavery today?

Modern slavery is different from historical slavery because although today people may live in awful conditions and be forced to do things, they still have human rights.
So for example if a young girl was kidnapped today and made to work as a servant, but then managed to escape, then the police would protect her.
In the old days, if she was a slave and escaped she would be returned to her master by the police and probably whipped for being a disobedient slave.
Human trafficking
One in six people who are forced to work are victims of what’s called human trafficking, a business that makes huge amounts of money for those who run it.
It’s thought there are about 5 or 6 million children who are forced to work. Some of them are born into slavery, others are sold by their parents or stolen – they work in farming, factories and for richer people.