Daily Holidays - January 29

[Sherman A1]

Curmudgeons Day a bad-tempered, difficult, cantankerous person.http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/curmudgeon

Freethinkers Day Thomas Paine Day Freethinkers Day, also known as Thomas Paine Day, is an opportunity to promote appreciation of freethought thought the life and works of Thomas Paine. Freethought supports reason over faith, and rejects arbitrary authority.

Thomas Paine was a courageous freethinker, whose life and work inspired great social and political advancement across world. Raised in England, Paine played a vital role in the American and French Revolutions. His books and pamphlets, including The Age of Reason, The Rights of Man, and Common Sense gained a mass audience for the liberating philosophy of the Enlightenment.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) arrived in America in 1774 at Benjamin Franklin's request. On January 10, 1776, he published Common Sense, a remarkable and powerful republican pamphlet which had an immediate success. He served in the Revolutionary War under General Greene and later in official positions appointed by congress and in the Pennsylvania legislature. In his later publication, Age of Reason, Paine expressed that "all religions are in their nature mild and benign" when not associated with political systems. Paine was the quintessential Deist of the 18th century.

Between March 1791 and February 1792 he published numerous editions of his Rights of Man, in which he defended the French Revolution. The words of Thomas Paine inspired many to strive for political, economic and social advancement. He was among the first to call for an end to slavery and the establishment of human rights around the world.

National Puzzle Day This National Puzzle Day, January 29th, break out that crossword puzzle or Sudoku book. This is the day to work your way through brain teasers and get your friends and family involved. While National Puzzle Day is hardly an official holiday, it stirs up excitement in puzzle addicts across the US. Here's how you can celebrate:
Get the most complicated jigsaw puzzle you can find, and invite friends over to solve it as a group.
Watch puzzle-crazy movies, like Wordplay, a documentary about the editor of the New York Times crossword, and Word Wars, about the world of competitive Scrabble. http://www.life123.com/holidays/more-holidays/january-holidays/national-puzzle-day.shtml


Seeing Eye Dog Day “Buddy delivered to me the divine gift of freedom,” said Morris Frank (1908-1980), the first American to benefit from a Seeing Eye dog.

Before there were guide dogs, people with any type of disability–including a visual disability–were simply marginalized. There were no provisions for them to be in public or hold jobs–they were totally dependent on others for whatever they needed.

Prior to having a guide dog, Morris Frank, who lost the use of one eye in a childhood accident and the other in a boxing match at the age of 16, hired a boy guide but the fellow “got bored easily” and occasionally left Frank alone to unexpectedly fend for himself.

In 1927 The Saturday Evening Post ran an article by Dorothy Harrison Eustis, an American dog breeder living in Switzerland who was training German shepherds to work as police dogs. Though Eustis had been asked to write about her own program, she instead wrote about a guide dog program in Potsdam, Germany where the dogs were being trained to be the eyes for German World War I veterans who had lost their sight because of mustard gas. http://americacomesalive.com/2011/07/19/buddy-the-first-seeing-eye-dog/#.VMnl_Vo-A2Y


http://www.famousbirthdays.com/january29.html

[betsuni]

1. Happy Birthday, Anton Chekhov!

"We are accustomed to live in hopes of good weather, a good harvest, a nice love-affair, hopes of becoming rich or getting the office of chief of police, but I've never noticed anyone hoping to get wiser. We say to ourselves: it'll be better under a new tsar, and in two hundred years it'll be still better, and nobody tries to make this good time come tomorrow. On the whole, life gets more and more complex every day and moves on at its own sweet will, and people get more and more stupid, and get isolated from life in ever-increasing numbers. ... Like crippled beggars in a religious procession."

[Sherman A1]

2. Excellent advice

from a brilliant writer!

Thanks for posting!

[bigwillq]

3. Seeing Eye Dogs

Dogs are such wonderful creatures.

[femmocrat]

4. Wow! Curmudgeoness gets her own day!

If you see her today, wish her a happy one!

[shenmue]

5. I like doggies!