il Prete Rosso

Just rediscovered this - my favorite since I was 18:

Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 3 No. 6 (RV 356)

Antonio Vivaldi

From L'Estro Armonico ('Harmonic Inspiration', a set of 12 concerti published by Vivaldi as his Opus 3.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SIqYp6Ehzo

Interesting thought - since this was first published in 1711, it may well have been first performed by an all-female ensemble!:

"Many of his compositions were written for the female music ensemble of the Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage for poor and illegitimate children where Vivaldi worked between 1703 and 1740."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Vivaldi
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Why BLACKS should ALWAYS VOTE:

By the end of Reconstruction in 1877, with fraud, intimidation and violence at the polls, white Democrats regained nearly total control of the state legislatures across the South. They passed laws to make voter registration more complicated, reducing black voters on the rolls. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, from 1890 to 1908, ten of eleven Southern legislatures ratified new constitutions and amendments to effectively disfranchise most African Americans and many poor whites through devices such as poll taxes, property and residency requirements, and literacy tests. Although required of all voters, some provisions were selectively applied against African Americans. In addition, many states passed grandfather clauses to exempt white illiterates from literacy tests for a limited period. The result was that black voters were stripped from registration rolls and without political recourse. Since they could not vote, they could not serve on juries. They were without official political voice.

The ideology behind lynching, directly connected with denial of political and social equality, was stated forthrightly by Benjamin Tillman, governor of South Carolina and later a United States Senator:

"We of the South have never recognized the right of the negro to govern white men, and we never will. We have never believed him to be the equal of the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives and daughters without lynching him."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching#United_States

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States

[Most of these are horrible. You are warned.]

http://www.google.com/images?q=lynching


I WISH some fool would tell me that they aren't voting.
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