Today’s session of the Gabfest Club at the "Window on America" Dnipropetrovsk / Ukraine was dedicated to the National Flag day in the USA. The flag of the United States represents freedom and has been an enduring symbol of the country’s ideals since its early days. Many people in the United States honor this day by displaying the American flag at homes and public buildings.
This year the group focused on the history of the Flag and the background of Betsy Ross. We watched a slide show about the important facts from the US history. On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress replaced the British symbols of the flag with a new design featuring 13 white stars in a circle on a field of blue and 13 red and white stripes – one for each state. This flag may have been made by the Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross, who was an official flag maker for the Pennsylvania Navy. The number of stars increased as the new states entered the Union, but the number of stripes returned to 13. The American flag is nicknamed as “Old Glory”, “stars and stripes” or “star-spangled banner”.
The second part of the session was dedicated to topic of LGBT civil rights. President Obama has selected June to be LGBT Pride Month. The date commemorates the 1969 Stonewall Riots in which police raided the Stonewall Inn, a New York City gay club. On civil rights progress, “our journey is not complete until our lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law,” said President Obama in one of his announcement.
The group was introduced to the Rainbow flag (the symbol of the LGBT movement) and shared the ideas about LGBT community in Ukraine.
Number of participants – 21 persons.
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Today’s session of the Gabfest club (at Window on America center Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine) was dedicated to the celebration of the US Flag day.
In the United States, Flag Day is celebrated on June 14. It commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States in 1777. The longest-running Flag Day parade is held annually in Quincy, Massachusetts, (for 62 years in 2014).The largest Flag Day parade is held annually in Troy, New York; it typically draws 50,000 spectators. We have watched several videos that illustrate the topic and discussed the US Flag’s symbolism (colors, stars and stripes), the participants of a Flag Day parade. Several curious facts about the US Flag were picked up from the WOA’s books. A quiz about the US Flag day also introduced several interesting facts.
One of the challenging tacks for Club members was to describe 2 different makes of the US flag in the WOA Centre – one made in the USA and one made in China. Another controversial topic about flags was the symbolism of the inverted flags. This allowed us to talk about the symbolism of the Ukrainian flag and myths about it inversion.
The session was very educational.
Number of participants – 13 persons.
