Born in 1953 – Cornel West, American philosopher, author, and academic.

“To be a Christian is to live dangerously, honestly, freely – to step in the name of love as if you may land on nothing, yet to keep on stepping because the something that sustains you no empire can give you and no empire can take away.”

Born in 1819 – Walt Whitman, American poet.

“I have no mockings or arguments; I witness and wait.”

-from Song of Myself

In 1948 a dike along the flooding Columbia River broke, obliterating Vanport, Oregon, a hastily constructed city of public housing. Fifteen people die and tens of thousands are left homeless.

Above: Children of Vanport.

Born in 1874 – G. K. Chesterton, English journalist, author, and playwright.

“A great curse has fallen upon modern life with the discovery of the vastness of the word Education.”

“Though the academic authorities are actually proud of conducting everything by means of Examinations, they seldom indulge in what religious people used to descibe as Self-Examination. The consequence is that the modern State has educated its citizens in a series of ephemeral fads.”

Born in 1944 – Jean-Pierre Léaud, French actor and director.

Above: Léaud in Jean-Luc Godard’s, Masculin Feminin.

Born in 1895 – Dorothea Lange, American photographer and journalist.

Above: Aug. 17, 1936. Blythe, California: “Drought refugees from Oklahoma camping by the roadside. They hope to work in the cotton fields. There are seven in family.”

Born in 1891 – Pär Lagerkvist, Swedish author and poet, Nobel Prize laureate.

Born in 1959 – Morrissey, English singer-songwriter.

Born in 1952 – Mr. T, American actor and wrestler.

Born in 1954 – Father Gregory Boyle, an American Jesuit priest and the founder and director of Homeboy Industries.

“The wrong idea has taken root in the world. And the idea is this: there just might be lives out there that matter less than other lives.”

“The strategy of Jesus is not centered in taking the right stand on issues, but rather in standing in the right place—with the outcast and those relegated to the margins.”