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reetings from Australia.
Welcome to this Red-Letter Day. Below you will find today's global celebrations, birthdays and events.
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I believe it was God's will that we should come back, so that men might know the things that are in the world, since, as we have said in the first chapter of this book, no other man, Christian or Saracen, Mongol or pagan, has explored so much of the world as Messer Marco, son of Messer Niccolo Polo, great and noble citizen of the city of Venice. |
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I did not tell half of what I saw.
Marco Polo; Travels
É, si muove!.
(Still, it moves.)
Galileo
Galilei, Italian scientist, who died on January 8, 1642
Make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, make 'em wait.
Wilkie Collins, English thriller novelist, born on January 8, 1824
I am not against hasty marriages, where a
mutual flame is fanned by an adequate income.
Wilkie Collins
At the pre-emptory request of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for the last nine years and ten months past of San Francisco, California, declare and proclaim myself the Emperor of These United States.
Emperor
Norton I, who passed away on January 8, 1880; proclamation of
September 16, 1864
WHEREAS, a body of men calling themselves the National Congress are now in session in Washington City, in violation of our Imperial edict of the 12th of October last, declaring the said Congress abolished;
WHEREAS, it is necessary for the repose of our Empire that the said decree should be strictly complied with;NOW, THEREFORE, we do hereby
Order and Direct Major-General Scott,
the Command-in-Chief of our Armies, immediately upon receipt of this, our
Decree, to proceed with a suitable force and clear the Halls of Congress.
Emperor
Norton I, decree of January, 1860
One night a gang of vigilantes gathered for a pogrom against San Francisco's Chinatown. All that stood in their way was the solitary figure of Norton. A sane man would not have been there in the first place. A rational man would have tried to reason with them. A moralist would have scolded them. A man as daft as Norton usually seemed would have loudly ordered them to cease and desist in the name of His Royal Imperial authority. All such tacks would probably have been futile, and Norton resorted to none of them.
He simply bowed His head in silent prayer.
The vigilantes dispersed.
Source
'Twas on the 8th of January 1881,
That a terrific gale along the English Channel ran,
And spread death and disaster in its train,
Whereby the 'Indian Chief' vessel was tossed on the raging main.
She was driven ashore on the Goodwin Sands,
And the good captain fearlessly issued his commands,
"Come, my men, try and save the vessel, work with all your might,"
Although the poor sailors on board were in a fearful plight.
Sir William Topaz McGonagall
(the 'worst poet in English language'; 1830 - 1902); 'The Wreck of the "Indian
Chief"'
The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.
Carl Rogers, American humanistic psychologist, born on January 8, 1902
More quotes by Carl Rogers
The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it.
I believe that the testing of the student's achievements in order to see if he meets some criterion held by the teacher, is directly contrary to the implications of therapy for significant learning.
What I am is good enough if I could only be it openly.
When I look at the world I'm pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic.
If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning.
In a person who is open to experience each stimulus is freely relayed through the nervous system, without being distorted by any process of defensiveness.
The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.
The substratum of all human motivation is the organismic tendency toward fulfilment.
Only if we individually were to walk through the awful human aftermath of our bombing raids would the experiential horror be joined to the intellectual label, and we would learn, in a total way, the incredible things we have done.
It was many years before I realized why my writings and my way of counseling and teaching were so controversial. Only in recent years have I recognized how threatening were my views. If accepted, they effectively reduced the political power of therapists or teachers; they no longer had "power over" other individuals.
… professional experience has forced upon me the realization that man, when you know him deeply, in his worst and most troubled states, is not evil or demonic.
… when man is less than fully man – when he denies to awareness various aspects of his experience – then indeed we have all too often reason to fear him and his behavior, as the present world situation testifies.
My name's got 'evils' and 'lives.' It's probably better not to wonder too much about it.
Elvis Presley, who was
born on January 8, 1935
January 8
is
the 8th
day of the year in the Gregorian
Calendar, with 357 days remaining (358
in leap years)
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locate the original.
Lesser (Rural) Dionysia, festival of Dionysus, ancient Greece
The Attic festivals of Dionysus
were four: The Rural or Lesser Dionysia, the Lenaea, the Anthesteria and
the City or Great (or Urban) Dionysia.
Dionysus (or Dionysos, pronounced dy-uh-ny'-suhs), later known to the ancient Romans as Bacchus, was the Greek god of wine, revelry and ecstasy. He was the son of Zeus, the supreme god, and Semele (in Eleusis, Zeus and Demeter).
Etymologically, his name is the
'Zeus of Nysa'. He seems to be the Vedic god Soma, by similarities of legend and function, and many scholars
believe his cult was born in Thrace. He seems to be a god who has two distinct
personas. He was the god of wine, agriculture and the fertility of Nature;
patron god of the Greek stage, of poetry, song, festivities and parties; promoter of civilisation; a
lawgiver and lover of peace. However, he also represented the primary features
of mystery religions, such as those
practised at Eleusis: ecstasy, transcendence from the mundane world
through physical or spiritual intoxication, as well as initiation into
secret rites.
He might
in fact be a conflation of a local Greek Nature god, and another more
potent god imported rather late in Greek pre-history from Phrygia
(the central area of modern day Turkey) or Thrace. However, it might be that the deity's
origin was in the Mediterranean, in
Minoan
Crete, as Dionysus was one of the names of gods discovered on
the Linear B tablets of
Mycenae. Dionysus, who was one of the
oldest gods in the Greek pantheon, a life-death-rebirth deity,
and was strongly associated with the satyrs,
centaurs and sileni
(half-man and half-horse).
The Rural or Lesser Dionysia
were celebrated in the month of
Poseideon. This the most ancient festival
of all, when even slaves enjoyed full freedom. There were dramatic
contests; Aristotle claimed (Poet. 1449a) that comedy
was born in the Rural Dionysia. As they rode by in wagons, the peasants
would assail the bystanders. According to Plutarch (3.527D), there was a
procession of the carriers of a jar of wine and a vine, with someone
leading a he-goat, followed by the Kanęphoros (Basket-bearer) who
carried a basket of raisins. Then came the carriers of an erect, wooden
phallus-pole, decorated with ivy and fillets, and finally the singer of
the Phallikon (Phallic Song), which was addressed to 'Phalęs'.
On Askôlia, the second day of the festival, they
engaged in the Askôliasmos, a contest to see who could balance the
longest on top of a greased, inflated wine-skin (askos). Askôliazô
might refer to standing on one leg, because there were many other such
'one-legged' contests at the festival.
Deities
of many cultures in the Book of Days
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