Last night I went to a jazz benefit for the nonprofit Kids4Peace Boston, which sponsors a summer camp and other events for children of three faiths — Christian, Muslim, and Jewish. The children are from both the United States and Jerusalem and are 11 to 12. Read more about the program here.
The fundraising event was held in the Grand Circle Gallery in Boston, which features magnificent travel posters and travel photography from the 1930s and 1940s. The entertainment was provided by Indian vocalist Annette Philip and her jazz quartet. Very impressive.
A woman from the public works department placed flags of all nations in special sidewalk holes in Concord at 5:30 this morning and will take them down tomorrow. I told her I always liked seeing them, and she agreed they are “festive.”
According to the International Day of Peace website, Peace Day “provides an opportunity for individuals, organizations and nations to create practical acts of peace on a shared date. It was established by a United Nations resolution in 1981 to coincide with the opening of the General Assembly. The first Peace Day was celebrated in September 1982.”
There is also a United Nations Day, in October, and Concord’s collection of flags will come back for that.
During her years heading up a local group of U.N. supporters, Charmaine’s mother made sure that Concord had flags. But the town seems to have fully embraced the idea of displaying them, so up they go and down they come two times a year. I often wonder if they get updated, given that nations reinvent themselves so often these days.
Here’s a word from Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nations.
When you have a doctor’s appointment in the morning and go to work late, you see a whole different crowd riding the subway. In the summer after rush hour, there are a lot of families on outings. A woman and a boy of about 11 got on and sat near me. The boy began to tell his mother that he had been reading about a made-up language called Esperanto. She said she had heard of it and thought it had been popular a long time ago but hadn’t worked out. An older kid they didn’t know chimed in to confirm the woman’s view. Esperanto was intended to be used as an international language, but nobody spoke it anymore.
That was too much for me. “Well,” I said, “hundreds of thousands of people speak it. I speak it.” If I may say so, the boy and his mother were delighted. Could I speak a few words, they asked?
“Mi parolas Esperanto,” I said. The boy repeated the “I Speak Esperanto” phrase several times. He then wanted to know “hello.” “Saluton,” I said. I told him and his mother why Ludwig Zamenhoff had felt a need for such a language more than 100 years ago in a war-torn part of Eastern Europe.
When the woman and the boy were leaving the train, they asked how to say “good-bye” and told me good-bye in Esperanto.
Now get this. Here is William Shatner, long before “Star Trek,” in a spooky black and white movie called “Incubus” — filmed in Esperanto!
That is so bizarre, I thought at first it must be a hoax. Maybe some Esperantists dubbed it for a joke on YouTube, I thought. But Wikipedia is very careful about such things, and it confirms that William Shatner performed in a movie in Esperanto that was thought to be lost. The recently rediscovered print had subtitles in French, which have now been converted to English. Read Wikipedia here. (Read my previous post on invented languages here.)
And just in case you are now inspired to learn the language, this little clip offers a pretty good lesson.
I hope the boy on the subway finds it. A terrifically curious and open-minded young man.
