Historic Weekend Word Challenge

In case you hadn’t noticed the pattern, in addition to making the words for the Weekend Words Challenge thought provoking in terms of photography, I try to make them significant to the date in some way. This weekend there are no obvious holidays so I looked at the weekend in history. I found two

Friday, the second of June, is the anniversary of the effective end of the American Civil War. That war is the bloodiest in US history – costing over 600,000 American dead. On this day, Confederate General E. K. Smith accepted Union terms and surrendered the last Confederate army. So, with apologies to the sensibilities of my friends of the southern persuasion, I chose the word Triumph.


Sunday, the fourth of June, is the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. On this day the Chinese government sent troops and tanks to disperse over a million people demonstrating support for democracy. They did so with brutal effectiveness – killing hundreds, possibly thousands, of civilians and arresting over 10,000. I remember watching a lone student stand defiantly in the path of a tank brining it momentarily to a halt. Then the tank rolled forward and ground him into the cobbles where he stood. So I chose the word Tragedy.


And there you have it. WWC #4 is right out of the history books – Triumph and Tragedy. Your photos of course need not reflect anything so great as the end of a war or so tragic as a massacre – mine certainly will not. Mine will likely be from daily life. We certainly face enough of both in our lives for there to be no shortage of photographic fodder.

I can’t wait to see how you say the words!