AMERICAN SKIN (41 SHOTS), AMADOU DIALLO & NYPD

Today, The Grangers & The Grandma has been listening to Bruce Springsteen, who is preparing his new tour, that will start in Barcelona in a few days. Before this visit, The Grangers have been preparing their Cambridge Exam. They have studied Have to & Whose.

 More information: Have to

More information: Relative Pronouns

Bruce Springsteen published Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Live In New York City some years ago, an amazing work with old and new songs, one of them American Skin (41 Shots), a song inspired by the police shooting death of Amadou Diallo in New York.

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Live In New York City is the name of a concert film done by HBO, featuring the first ever major televised Bruce Springsteen concert.

It was later released on DVD with eleven extra songs not televised, and as a CD of the same name.

All of these forms document Springsteen and the E Street Band's highly successful 1999–2000 Reunion Tour, their first concert tour together in eleven years.

Running 90 minutes, the film was recorded at concerts on June 29 and July 1, 2000. These were the final two shows in the Band's ten-show tour-ending run at Madison Square Garden in New York City. HBO received six Emmy Award nominations and won two Awards for the film.

Springsteen debuted many new songs over the final leg of the tour, and two were included on this special:

-Land of Hope and Dreams, a lengthy American ode for which a studio version would not be released until 2012's Wrecking Ball.

-American Skin (41 Shots), a controversial ballad about the shooting of Amadou Diallo. A studio version was released as a rare promo single in 2001. Springsteen re-recorded the song in 2013 and released this version on his 2014 High Hopes album.

More information: Bruce Springsteen

American Skin (41 Shots) is a song written by Bruce Springsteen, inspired by the police shooting death of Amadou Diallo.

It premiered during the band's 1999-2000 Reunion Tour in concert in Atlanta on June 4, 2000, the final concert before the tour's final ten-show run at New York City's Madison Square Garden, where it was featured again. The performance led to some controversy in New York City, where the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association called for a boycott of Springsteen's shows.

The song was first released as a live version on the Live in New York City album. 

The same version appeared a few years later on The Essential Bruce Springsteen. In April 2001, a studio version of the song was released as a very rare U.S.-only one-track radio promotional single on CD-R.

A music video featuring the performance from the New York City show was released in 2001 and directed by Jonathan Demme. A studio version appears on Springsteen's 2014 album High Hopes.

American Skin (41 Shots) was played at several concerts in April 2012 on the Wrecking Ball Tour in response to the killing of Trayvon Martin.

Springsteen performed the song on July 16, 2013, a few days following George Zimmerman's controversial not guilty verdict. It was again dedicated to Martin at the Limerick, Ireland, concert with Springsteen saying before the song I want to send this one out as a letter back home. For justice for Trayvon Martin.

Springsteen was recognized by the NAACP with the Humanitarian Award on December 3, 2000.

Springsteen played American Skin (41 Shots) at selected shows during The River Tour in 2016.

More information: Spectrum News NY 1

Amadou Diallo was one of four children born to Saikou and Kadijatou Diallo, and part of a historic Fulbe trading family in Guinea. 

In September 1996, he followed other family members to New York City and started a business with a cousin.

In the early morning of February 4, 1999, Diallo was standing near his building after returning from a meal. At about 12:40 a.m., officers Edward McMellon, Sean Carroll, Kenneth Boss and Richard Murphy were looking for an alleged serial rapist in the Soundview section of the Bronx. 

While driving down Wheeler Avenue, the police officers stopped their unidentified car and interrogated Diallo, who was in front of his apartment. When they ordered Diallo to show his hands, he supposedly ran into the apartment and reached into his pocket to show his wallet.

Soon afterwards, assuming Diallo was drawing a firearm, the four officers fired 41 shots with semi-automatic pistols, hitting Diallo 19 times, fatally wounding him. Eyewitness Sherrie Elliott stated that the police continued to shoot even though Diallo was already down.

The investigation found no weapons on or near Diallo; what he had pulled out of his jacket was a wallet. The internal NYPD investigation ruled that the officers had acted within policy, based on what a reasonable police officer would have done in the same circumstances. Nonetheless, the Diallo shooting led to a review of police training policy and of the use of full metal jacket (FMJ) bullets.

A firestorm of controversy erupted after the event, as the circumstances of the shooting prompted outrage both inside and outside of New York City. Issues such as police brutality, racial profiling, and contagious shooting were central to the ensuing controversy.

On March 25, 1999, a Bronx grand jury indicted the four officers on charges of second-degree murder and reckless endangerment.

On December 16, a court ordered a change of venue to Albany, New York because of pretrial publicity. 

On February 25, 2000, after three days of deliberation, a jury composed of four black and eight white jurors acquitted the officers of all charges.

More information: The New York Times

No secret my friend.
You can get killed just for living in.
You can get killed just for living in your American skin.
41 shots.
41 shots (you can get killed just for living in).

Bruce Springsteen

THE JONES' MOTTO: 'ALL FOR ONE AND ONE FOR ALL'

The Three Musketeers: 'All for one and one for all'

This morning, The Jones have returned to their activity after celebrating MJ's birthday sailing across the Seine River. 

They have revised the Object Pronouns and Whose. They have also written some composition using connectors about the next visits in Paris.

More info: Whose I & II

After the grammar session, they have read a new chapter of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and they have practised different verb tenses.

The Grandma has explained her impressions about two great French writers: Jules Verne and Alexandre Dumas and their influence in the universal literature. They have been talking about different topics like the importance of sleeping to have a health life and about the scientific experiments about sleeplessness. 

The Jones in The Bibliothèque nationale de France

They have also discussed about Narcís Monturiol and his famous invent, the Ictineo, a submarine which was tested on the shores of the Delta de Llobregat, a beautiful special place if you want to see a great variety of  birds and wild animals or you want to help to return them to the sea.

This afternoon, the family has visited The Bibliothèque nationale de France which is the national library of France. It is the national repository of all that is published in France and also holds extensive historical collections. The family has searching more information about some authors.

More information: Object Pronouns

On the one hand, The Jones have talked about Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), who was a French writer. His works have been translated into nearly 100 languages, and he is one of the most widely read French authors. 

Many of his historical novels of high adventure were originally published as serials, including The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte de Bragelonne: Ten Years Later.

Prolific in several genres, Dumas began his career by writing plays, which were successfully produced from the first. 

He also wrote numerous magazine articles and travel books; his published works totalled 100,000 pages. In the 1840s, Dumas founded the Théâtre Historique in Paris.

More information: The Count of Monte-Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Dumas' father's aristocratic rank helped young Alexandre acquire work with Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans. He later began working as a writer, finding early success. Decades later, in the election of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte in 1851, Dumas fell from favour and left France for Belgium, where he stayed for several years. 

Upon leaving Belgium, Dumas moved to Russia for a few years before going to Italy. In 1861, he founded and published the newspaper L'Indipendente, which supported the Italian unification effort. In 1864, he returned to Paris.

Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it. 

Alexandre Dumas

On the other hand, the family has remembered Jules Gabriel Verne (1828-1905) a French novelist, poet, and playwright who was born in the seaport of Nantes, where he was trained to follow in his father's footsteps as a lawyer, but quit the profession early in life to write for magazines and the stage. 

Jules Verne

His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages extraordinaires, a widely popular series of scrupulously researched adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873).

Verne is generally considered a major literary author in France and most of Europe, where he has had a wide influence on the literary avant-garde and on surrealism. His reputation is markedly different in Anglophone regions, where he has often been labeled a writer of genre fiction or children's books, largely because of the highly abridged and altered translations in which his novels are often reprinted.

Download Around the world in eighty days by Jules Verne

Verne has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979, ranking between Agatha Christie and William Shakespeare. He has sometimes been called the Father of Science Fiction, a title that has also been given to H. G. Wells and Hugo Gernsback.

In consequence of inventing machines, men will be devoured by them. 

Jules Verne

Moreover, the family has remembered Narcís Monturiol (1819-1885), who was a Catalan artist and engineer and the inventor of the first air-independent and combustion-engine-driven submarine. Monturiol was born in Figueres, Girona. 

Narcís Monturiol i Estarriol

He was the son of a cooper. Monturiol went to high school in Cervera and got a law degree in Modtoles in 1845. He solved the fundamental problems of underwater navigation. In effect, Monturiol invented the first fully functional engine-driven submarine.

Monturiol never practiced law, instead turning his talents to writing and publishing, setting up a publishing company in 1846, the same year he married his wife Emilia. 

He produced a series of journals and pamphlets espousing his radical beliefs in feminism, pacifism, and utopian communism. He also founded the newspaper La Madre de Familia, in which he promised to defend women from the tyranny of men and La Fraternidad, Spain's first communist newspaper.

Monturiol's friendship with Abdó Terrades led him to join the Republican Party and his circle of friends included such names as musician Josep Anselm Clavé, and engineer and reformist Ildefons Cerdà.

More information: Semantic Scholar

Monturiol also became an enthusiastic follower of the utopian thinker and socialist Étienne Cabet; he popularised Cabet's ideas through La Fraternidad and produced a Spanish translation of his novel Voyage en Icarie. A circle formed round La Fraternidad raised enough money for one of them to travel to Cabet's utopian community, Icaria.

Marta Jones's memories of the Ictineos I and II

Following the revolutions of 1848, one of his publications was suppressed by the government and he was forced into a brief exile in France. When he returned to Barcelona in 1849, the government curtailed his publishing activities, and he turned his attention to science and engineering instead.

A stay in Cadaqués allowed him to observe the dangerous job of coral harvesters where he even witnessed the death of a man who drowned while performing this job. 

This prompted him to think of submarine navigation and in September 1857 he went back to Barcelona and organized the first commercial society in Catalonia and Spain dedicated to the exploration of submarine navigation with the name of Monturiol, Font, Altadill y Cia. and a capital of 10,000 pesetas.

In 1858, Monturiol presented his project in a scientific thesis, titled The Ictineo or fish-ship. The first dive of his first submarine, Ictineo I, took place in September 1859 in the coast of the Llobregat River, in Barcelona.

 A book is kind of like a river; I simply jump in and start swimming. 

Melody Carlson