March 12 - Anniversary of a Park's Commissioner Appointment

 Posted on March 12, 2021

This is an update of my post published March 12, 2010:

Memorial Park, San Anselmo, CA

On this day in 1974, Atha Mathieu became a park commissioner for San Anselmo, California.

So what, right?

So this: Atha was only 12 years old!

She was arguably the youngest parks commissioner in the country, and she got a lot of attention, even worldwide attention.

Atha sought to be part of the Parks and Recreation Commission because she felt that, given the fact that kids use parks even more than the average adult, kids should be represented on the commission. She argued that “[g]rownups don't understand children. Children understand children.”

Those who opposed her appointment argued that the budget meetings went on past her bedtime. And that she would get bored.

Some newspaper articles on Atha's position on the commission mentioned that she yawned a few times during long budget meetings, but that she didn't get bored.

Should more children be involved in government?
Should children have the right to vote?

Did you know that many people, over the years, have argued that the voting age should be lowered?! Some people say that teens 16 and up should be able to vote. Some say the voting age should be 14, or even 12. And some say that there should be a test, similar to the citizenship test, which children have to pass if they want to vote before age 18.

What do you think? What would be some good arguments for...or against...children being allowed to vote?

Read a whole bunch of opinions here.

Kids Voting USA is not a website agitating for kids' right to vote, while they are still kids. Instead, it is a website urging education in voting so that kids will grow to be adults who vote and otherwise participate in running their country. You may have guessed from the name that it is specific to the United States.

This organization was formed by adults who were impressed to find out that there is huge voter turnout in Costa Rica. Apparently, 90% of all eligible voters vote each election in that country! Costa Ricans think one reason they have such high voter turnout is because their kids grow up going to the polls with their parents and therefore learn all their lives about how important it is to vote.

Design a park.

If you were a park commissioner for your town, what improvements would you like to see at your parks? How about designing an all-new park just the way you want it?

Don't be content to make general suggestions. If you want sculptures in the park, say sculptures of WHAT. (Alice in Wonderland graces New York City's Central Park.)

If you want a playground, describe the playground. What kinds of apparatus should the playground have? What would it be made of?

Some cities really do consult kids when designing new parks. For example, new skate parks in California and Minnesota were planned with input from teens who skateboard. This article discusses ways to get kids involved in park planning.

PBS Kids and National Geographic both have park-planning activities.

Also on this date:

Renovation Day in Gabon   

Birthday of Girl Scouts of the USA

Independence Day in Mauritius

Crown Princess Victoria's Name Day

Birthday of Charles Boycott (the bad guy in the story of how the word boycott was coined)

Arbor Day in China

Anniversary of the naming of Australia's capital city

Anniversary of Moscow becoming Russia's capital...again!

Anniversary of the first winter ascent of Eigerwund

Birthday of paleontologist William Buckland

Anniversary of the christening of Canberra, Australia

Middle Name Pride Day

(Friday of the first full week of March)

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

• March holidays
• March birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in March
  
  

And here are my Pinterest boards for: 

• April holidays
• April birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in April
  
  
  
  
  

July 6 – Hop a Park Day

Posted on July 6, 2013

Some city and town parks in the U.S. put on special events on this day—check out yours to see if your community does.

Even if your local parks aren't hosting events, you can still go enjoy a lovely Saturday at the park! We are encouraged to use and support our local parks—which means of course leaving it as nice (or nicer) than we found it.

This would be a perfect day to do a park clean-up.

I think it would be fun to travel to every single one of your local parks (hop, hop, hop) today. Take at least one photo per park, and write notes to yourself so your remember which one has that great climbing structure you didn't know about, say, and which has tennis courts.

One thing my family realized recently is that several of our city parks are connected by “wilderness” trails. We discovered this feature by accident when we saw a small sign at the back side of one of our parks. Now I am a lot more alert to try to read every sign at a park, in case we have been missing other “gems” like these pretty get-away-from-the-city trails!

Celebrate your parks by mixing it up...

If you normally use a park just to play baseball, see what you've been missing in other corners of the park.

Have you ever tried a “par course” or fitness trail at a park? It can be a lot of fun to try each exercise station!

Check geocaching websites to see if there are any caches to discover in your parks. If not...consider making one! 

Here are more ideas.

http://www.natureme.net/most-out-of-urban-park-visit/

Also on this date:

Republic Day in Malawi 

International Cherry Pit-Spitting Day

Anniversary of Althea Gibson's win at Wimbledon








Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest pages on July holidays, historical anniversaries in July, and July birthdays.

And here are my Pinterest pages on August holidays, historical anniversaries in August, and August birthdays.

February 4, 2013 - Happy Birthday, Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks is famous for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white rider.

This action sparked a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, and therefore played an important role in the Civil Rights Movement that resulted in many changes to local, state, and national laws.

If you don't know much about this incident, check out this earlier post. It's not just important, it's also interesting! 

Today is Rosa Parks's birthday – she was born on this date in 1913 – so I will ask the question, what was Parks's life before she became a civil rights icon?

Rosa Parks was born Rosa McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her dad was a carpenter, and her mom was a teacher, and she had a mixed heritage that included African, Cherokee-Creek, and Scots-Irish ancestors. Because her parents separated, Parks grew up on a farm with her grandparents, her mom, and her younger brother.

Parks experienced a lot of kindness from white people, but also a lot of racism and hatred. The very structure of her life was filled with discrimination and bigotry; this structural racism showed Parks, even when she was a small child, that the government and the powerful were against “her kind.” Here are a few examples:

• Jim Crow laws had taken away the vote from most black people in Alabama and other southern states (even though the U.S. Constitution guaranteed their right to vote!).
  
  
• Segregation was established by law in public facilities, stores, and transportation.

• School buses carried white children to school, but black children had to walk.

• Police didn't catch and punish Ku Klux Klan members, even when they hurt or killed black people or destroyed their property. (Actually, many police officers were also members of the Ku Klux Klan.)

Rosa Parks struggled to get an education but had to quit school to take care of her mother and grandmother. She didn't get her high school diploma until she was a married adult—but at that point only 7% of all black people in Alabama got their high school diploma!

She also struggled to get around those Jim Crow laws and overcome the resistance of the registrars. On her third try, she was finally able to register to vote.

Rosa Parks took many jobs, ranging from maid to hospital aide, and she became a valued member of the Civil Rights movement. She became the secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP (one of the earliest civil rights organizations).

But it was not as secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP that she refused to get out of that bus seat that fateful day in 1943. It was as just a citizen of Montgomery and Alabama and the United States of America, just Rosa McCauley Parks, that she acted for herself, and her people, and all people.

By the way, February is Black History Month.

Also on this date:

Sri Lanka's Independence Day

Astronomer Clyde Tombaugh's birthday

December 1, 2009

Rosa Parks Day

On this date in 1955, Rosa Parks was riding home from work on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, as usual—and bus driver James Blake asked her to give up her seat to a white male passenger. Sadly, that was usual, too, for the Montgomery bus system.

According to Wikipedia, the bus segregation rules were capricious as well as deeply unfair:

In Montgomery, the first four rows of bus seats were reserved for white people. Buses had "colored" sections for black people—who made up more than 75% of the bus system's riders—generally in the rear of the bus. These sections were not fixed in size but were determined by the placement of a movable sign. Black people also could sit in the middle rows, until the white section was full. Then they had to move to seats in the rear, stand, or, if there was no room, leave the bus. Black people were not allowed to sit across the aisle from white people. The driver also could move the "colored" section sign, or remove it altogether.

Rosa Parks was not sitting in the “white section” of the bus. Instead, she and three other black passengers happened to be in the first row of the "colored section" when the white section filled up. The bus driver directed the four to get up and move back. The other three complied, but Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. She was arrested, fingerprinted, and jailed by the police, and fined $14.

Rosa Parks was not the first black passenger to refuse to give up her seat. As a matter of fact, this was not the first time she herself had made such a refusal—twelve years earlier, she had refused to give up her seat to a white passenger and was forcibly ejected from the bus.* Several other women and girls had refused to give up their seats, including a 15 year old right there in Montgomery.

However, it was Parks' refusal and arrest in 1955 that led to the Montgomery bus boycott and brought national attention to the civil rights movement. That is why Congress called Rosa Parks “the Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement.”

Why her? Why this particular act?

Rosa Parks was the spark the lit the successful bus boycott and furthered the civil rights movement because she was the perfect person to become a symbol of the movement. Unlike that 15-year-old girl mentioned above, she was married, employed, and politically knowledgeable. She was quiet and dignified. She was the secretary of the Montgomery NAACP and was already involved with the civil rights movement, although she had acted that day just as an individual, with no plan in mind.
She was courageous.

Rosa Parks became a powerful symbol, in the U.S. and even internationally, for righteous resistance against racism and discrimination.
She said...

“People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

Read and watch an interview with Rosa Parks here.

Draw faces inside the bus on this coloring page.

Listen to Rosa Parks at the History Channel website.

NOTE:
* Rosa Parks had also had a previous run-in with this particular driver, James Blake. One time when she entered the front of the bus and paid, he didn't want the white people sitting in the front to have to tolerate a black woman walking by them, so he told her to get off the bus and walk to the back entrance before she could sit down. Again, this was a pretty normal as well as completely unreasonable request. She started to obey but dropped her purse, and as she picked up her purse, she sat for a moment in one of the “white only” seats. Blake was furious and, after Parks got out of the bus, he didn't wait for her to get back on through the back entrance—he just sped off. That meant that Rosa Parks had to walk home—more than five miles, in the rain—even though she had paid the bus fare!