Bicentennial

“ There is a reason to be concerned that the terrorist elements in our society will find the Bicentennial irresistible as an attraction not only because the eyes of the world will be focused on our birthday party but because they regard the celebration itself with deep hos- tility since it stands for everything they oppose. ”

“ As we approach our national Bicentennial, it is important to take special notice of older Americans. They have made and are making significant contributions to our Nation. It is fitting that we not lose sight of the continuing contributions this generation can make nor of our commitment as a society to meet their needs. ”

“ I see America today crossing a threshold, not just because it is our Bicentennial but because we have been tested in adversity. We have taken a new look at what we want to be and what we want our Nation to become. ”

“ This Bicentennial Year is an appropriate time to emphasize that only by accepting our individual responsibility to be good neighbors can we survive as a strong, united Nation. By recognizing our dependence on each other, we preserve our independence as a people. ”

“ We can all take great pride, as we look forward to our Bicentennial celebrations, in honoring the memory of the epic accomplishments of Christopher Columbus which led to the development of the Americas and the founding of this great Nation. ”

“ I urge everyone to participate in the efforts to achieve the goal of proclaiming a new Declaration of Rights and Obligations for Older Persons, which can become a rallying point for our Nation during the Bicentennial year of 1976 and a guide to action during the years ahead. ”

“ Now let's take a look at the Bicentennial celebrations planned for "Washington and for Philadelphia. Any event which is going to enjoy major international media coverage is an ideal terrorist event because it provides opportunities for the terrorists to make their presence known through the media to the world and to spread terror and un- certainty among free men and nations. ”

“ THE OLD LEFT, THE NEW LEFT, AND TERRORISM Terrorist actions by revolutionai'v groups have taken place in the United States sporadically since 1968 but they increased dramatically during the past few years. In 1973. there were 24 bombings attribut- able to terrorists; this increased to 45 in 1974 and 89 in 1975. Violence- prone revolutionaries have boasted publicly that they intend to expand their violence during the 1976 Bicentennial celebration, beginning in 1976 and nmning through 1980. ”

“ Eight years from now America will celebrate its 200th anniversary as a nation. Within the lifetime of most people now living, mankind will celebrate that great new year which comes only once in a thousand years—the beginning of the third millennium. ”

“ THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.
HOW shall this nation behave itself when it comes to be a hundred years old? Something extraordinary must be done to signalize that event. For we are a great people, spread over a great continent, on which are great lakes and rivers, and prairies, and coal-fields, and copper-mines; and we have had a great war, and got a great debt and a great common-school system, and how shall we pose in a manner befitting all this greatness when the nation has come to be as old as a very old man? ”

“ Every ancient nation has thus its calendar filled with joyful days. The worshippers of Jesus delight in their Christmas and their Easter; the Mahometans, in the Hegira of the Prophet. The year-book of mankind is thus marked all the way through with the red-letter days of history. And most beautifully do those days illuminate the human year, commemorating the victories of the race, the days of triumph which have marked the course of man in his long and varied, but yet triumphant, march of many a thousand years. ”

“ Several recent circumstances have fixed attention on the great prominence of Old Age as a feature of our time:—Old Age, not coddled in cotton-wool, and kept warm by the fireside, but active, intelligent, efficient, and agreeable;—not only venerable through wealth of years, but admirable in its own character. Physiologists and statisticians tell us that the longevity of our own nation improves,—a marked increase in the length of life having been established within this century ”

“ I heard the New Year whisper, passing by,
"I am the Old Year, and did never die.
"As phenix bird, that from the sunset springs,
Next in the East replumes his wondrous wings,
"As dewdrop trembling in the morning flower,
Exhaled ere noon, returns at evening hour,
"So never lost was I, though steeple chime
Hurl out my knell—for I, behold, am Time!
"The Years but lend so many a quaint disguise
Wherein I masquerade to mortal eyes." ”

“ The theme for Older Americans Month this year, "Aging: Generations of Experience," recognizes the tremendous experiences and legacy of past generations that we enjoy today. And this year we proudly mark the 30th anniversary of the Older Americans Act. ”

“ Think of the ninety she has seen already; the four-score and ten cold, cheerless, nipping New Years!
If you were in her place, would you like to have a remembrance of better early days, when you were young and happy, and loving, perhaps; or would you prefer to have no past on which your mind could rest? About the year 1788, Goody, were your cheeks rosy, and your eyes bright, and did some young fellow in powder and a pigtail look in them? We may grow old, but to us some stories never are old. On a sudden they rise up, not dead, but living—not forgotten, but freshly remembered. ”

“ As we go on in life, anniversaries become rather melancholy affairs. The turn of the year—the annual return of the day—birthdays or death-days or set festal occasions like Christmas or the New Year, bring reminders of loss and change. ”

“ With song, wit and wassail, and true hearts anigh.
⁠Centuria, Centuria, vivat Centuria!
Then love as they loved when thine eldest was young,
⁠Centuria!
O the comrades that gossipped and painted and sung,
O the smoke-cloud that lingers their places among!
⁠Centuria, Centuria, vivat Centuria!
And sing as they'll sing in thy fair years untold,
⁠Centuria,
Strong hearts that shall follow, as tender and bold;
We may fade, we shall pass, but thou growest not old ”

“ This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. ”

“ We look back at the ‘good old times’—times present will be the good old times a quarter of a century hence—and that we may be able to think of them as such when we grow old and grey, let us all just now make a store of kindly acts, and warm sympathies with our poorer fellow-creatures. The Alderman in his providence ‘lays down’ port—let us all ‘lay down’ a few dozens of good deeds this Christmas, and we shall see how richly the thought will smack in our mouths twenty years hence, when the memory of them is somewhat crusted, and they are tawny in the flasks of Time. ”

“ If we could affix to each century as characteristic a presentment as those portraits do of the steel-clad hero of Towton, or the be-wigged, be-buckled courtier of George the Second, our object would be gained. We should see a whole history in a glance at a century’s face. If it were peculiarly marked by nature or accident, so much the more easy would it be to recognise the likeness. If the century was a warlike, quarrelsome century, and had scars across its brow ”

“ Good morning, and happy New Year—or, we should say, happy new millennium. Last night Hillary and I joined thousands of Americans on the National Mall to bid farewell to the remarkable century just past and to welcome the new millennium. The feelings of good will and hope that overcame us all will be among our most treasured moments, and we're deeply grateful that the celebrations were both jubilant and peaceful here and all around the world. ”

“ Can it be possible that half a century should have passed—fleeted by like a dream—as a tale that is told and that I should again stand here, looking at the work of my hands in that old time, whereof the memory is so fresh? ”

“ Let us talk of our college days, of our travels, of war, of soldiers, and of Italy!
XII.
We old classmates will many of us doubtless live to see the twentieth century. Strange thought! I know, of course, that the transition from nineteen hundred to nineteen hundred and one will seem as natural as that from ninety-nine to a hundred, or from this year to next. And yet it seems to me that to see the first dawn of the new century will be like reaching the summit of some high mountain, and looking out over new countries and new horizons. ”

“ An attempt to epitomize the events of two hundred years in an hour’s time is no easy task in any circumstances. It becomes doubly difficult when those years are filled with the stirring events that have marked the history of this community. I do not hesitate to say that no town of an equal number of inhabitants in this or any other country has played so conspicuous a part in the affairs of a state or nation as has the town whose two hundredth birthday we celebrate. ”

“ The new century has come upon us with a rush of energy that no century has shown before. Let us stand aside for a moment that we may see what kind of a century it is to be, what is the work it has to do, and what manner of men it will demand to do it.
In most regards one century is like another. Just as men are men, so times are times. In the Twentieth Century there will be the same joys, the same sorrows, the same marrying and giving in marriage, the same round of work and play, of wisdom and duty, of folly and distress which other centuries have seen. ”

“ They see in it an entity of time with which the counting of years has little to do. Their somewhat mystical view is set forth in the following, which we quote from a communication that appeared in the "New York Times": "The centurial figures are the symbol, and the only symbol, of the centuries. Once every hundred years there is a change in the symbol, and this great secular event is of startling prominence. What more natural than to bring the century into harmony with its only visible mark? ”

“ Its centenary draws nigh; and how fruitful in good to mankind has been that century which is now drawing to a close! It is unnecessary to repeat the hackneyed phrases which tell of the progress of the world during the last hundred years. Every newspaper speaks of it. Everybody with open eyes observes it. ”

“ God help the poor, when December’s snows are upon the earth!
On such a night as this, the Old and New Year met—both struggling for supremacy—each unwilling to accord to the other unlimited sway.
“I have been, and I am yet a monarch,” said the Old Year; “one, too, whose subjects are almost countless. You may not number the tongues which have sung of my exploits; and the length of days which has been mine has given me a knowledge and wisdom, of which thou knowest nothing. What? resign my throne to thee, thou stripling! never!!” ”

“ To me ’tis but the Old Year’s dying knell.
O, dear old friend, the hour has come at last
When I must say farewell for aye to thee.
New Years may come and Old Years pass away,
But you will never be forgot by me. ”

“ And what's one year of good or bad to all the years to be?
Old years and new years, we need them one and all
To reach the dome of character and build its sheltering wall;
Past failures tried the souls of us, but if their tests we stood.
The sum of what we are to be may yet be counted good.
Old years and new years, with all their pain and strife,
Are but the bricks and steel and stone with which we fashion life ”

“ We have no doubt gained in many ways by changed habits of life and modes of thought, but it must not be forgotten that at the same time life has lost much of its old picturesqueness and variety. These simple, hearty festivals of old, in which our ancestors so much delighted, served to light up the dull round of the recurring seasons, and to mark with a red letter the day in the calendar appropriate to their celebration. ”

“ The word “centennial” (from Lat. centennis, from centum, and annus, a year) , though usually an adjective as in “the Centennial State,” the name given to Colorado on its admission to statehood in 1876, is also used as a synonym of centenary. ”

“ Measuring epochs, or eras, by spaces of a hundred years each, that which embraces the nineteenth century stands out in sublime and encouraging contrast with any that has preceded it. As the legatee of all prior centuries, it has enlarged and ennobled its bequest to an extent unparalleled in history; while it has at the same time, through a genius and energy peculiar to itself, created an original endowment for its own enjoyment and for the future richer by far than any heretofore recorded. ”

“ The closing years of the nineties had been years of preparation and development—years of broadening minds and new ideas, until quite suddenly, it seemed, the century turned the corner, and yesterday became old-fashioned in a day, and all eyes were fixed on the glorious sunrise of the twentieth century—the wonderful century. ”

“ TRUTH.
“A century is a formula; an epoch is an expressed thought. One such thought-expressed civilization passes to another. The centuries are the phrases of civilization; what she says here she does not repeat there. But these mysterious phrases are linked together: logic—the logos—is within them, and their series constitutes progress. In all these, phrase expressions of a single thought, the divine thought, we are slowly deciphering the word fraternity.
“All light is at some point condensed into a flame; likewise every epoch is condensed in a man. ”

“ At seventy or eighty, our lives are spent in recollections half a century old, but at ninety the privilege may be relaxed, and the unfortunate loiterer on the stage may claim to select a far more recent decade as his Golden Age, even if by weakening memory he confuses his second childhood with his first. ”