Class 51 – “Tea for a Saint”
September 5th is Saint Teresa of Kolkata (Calcutta) day. Before her ‘calling’, Saint Teresa lived in a convent and worked in the tea plantations of Darjeeling. When she got her calling she moved permanently to live in Kolkata where she lived amongst the poor and got to know them by taking tea with them. Kolkata is the home of the world renowned Mullik Ghat Flower Market where some of the most exotic and colourful flowers can be found. Hopefully this will give some inspiration for this class.
Class 52 – “Man on the Moon”
2019 marks 50 years since the historic day when man landed on the moon. Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first two people on the moon. Commander Neil Amstrong was the first person to step onto the surface of the moon on the 21st July at 02.56 GMT. Buzz Aldrin joined him 19 minutes later. Amstrong famously said “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. The event was watched by an estimated 600 million people around the world and has lead to the development of everything from CAT Scanners (first used to detect imperfections in space components) to Smoke Detectors (first to use adjustable sensitivity levels to avoid false alarms) and microchips (it was the necessity for an onboard computer – the Apollo Guidance Computer – that led to the invention of microchips).
Class 53 – “Unity”
This year it is 30 years since the falling of the Berlin Wall. The wall divided East and West Berlin with the eastern half of Berlin taken and under the control of the Soviets under a communist regime and the western half being a conspicuously capitalist German city. After the wall was constructed it was impossible to get from East Berlin to West Berlin without passing through a ‘Checkpoint’, the most famous being “Checkpoint Charlie”. Except under “Very special circumstances” people from East and West Berlin were not allowed to pass to ‘the other side’. On the East German side there was a ‘death strip’ – a strip of land consisting of sand (to show footprints), floodlights, vicious dogs, trip wire machine guns and patrolling soldiers with orders to shoot escapees on sight. At least 171 people were killed trying to get over, round or under the Berlin Wall. After the collapse of the Berlin Wall more than 2 million people crossed from one side to the other on the first weekend and celebrated “The greatest street party in the history of the world”.
Class 54 – “Ladies pleases!”
Lady Nancy Astor was an American born British Politician who move to England at the age of 26 and married Waldorft Astor. Nancy Astor won her seat in Plymouth in 1919 and became the first woman to sit as an MP in the House of Commons. She served in Parliament as MP for Plymouth Sutton until 1945 when she was persuaded to step down. Nancy Astor rather famously was noted for her exchanges with Winston Churchill. She was reported to have once said, when Churchill claimed that having a woman in Parliament was like have one intrude on him in the bathroom, “You’re not handsome enough to have such fears”! In another exchange she reportedly said “If you were my husband, I’d poison your tea”, to which he responded “Madam, if you were my wife, I’d drink it!”.
Class 55 – “Peace”
The 21st of September is the International Day of Peace. “Peace Day” is celebrated around the world every year on the 21st September, the celebration was introduced in 1981 by a unanimous United Nations resolution and is decided to be a date where everyone around the world shares a date for humanity to commit to Peace “above all differences” and to contribute to the building of a Culture of Peace. This year’s “Peace Day” is of particular significance because it is the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – the right to Peace. For this class we are looking for foliage only … no flowers … in the celebration of such an important date in the diary.