Happy New Year, Everyone!
The Year of the Goat (or Sheep, or Wooden Green Sheep, depending which Chinese horoscope site you prefer) doesn’t officially begin until February 19, but let’s get ready for it anyway. The Goat/Sheep is a symbol of Peace - which should make a nice change from 2014 and the pesky Horse.
The Wooden Goat is also the symbol of the Arts so that’s another reason why this ought to be a good year: with artists in the lead things can only get better. Wooden Goats are amicable, gentle and compassionate, so if you apply that to the year, it sounds better and better.
2015 will be a great year to be doing things in groups - such as audiences, for instance! - and it will also favour creativity and perseverance.
And according to one horoscope, “2015 is a year to use mental abilities over brute force. For those who wish to be aggressive, expect to be out-manouvered by strategy and common sense.” Not the year of the Abbott, then.
But you’re probably dying to read a list of Prominent Goats. Here it is, in no particular order: Michelangelo, Frida Kahlo, Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, Rudolph Valentino, Heath Ledger, Rachel Carson, Pierre Trudeau, Barbara Walters, Orville Wright, Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts, Bruce Willis, Benicio Del Toro, Claire Danes, Zhang Ziyi, Kurt Cobain, Li Shimin (Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty 618-907), Barbara Walters, Cao Cao (King of Wei in China’s Three Kingdoms Period 220-280), Charles Dickens, Yue Fei (a patriotic general in China’s South Song Dynasty 1127-1279), Empress Dowager Cixi, Julio Iglesias, Kate Hudson, Kevin Costner, Leonard Nimoy, Matt Leblanc, Mel Gibson, Mick Jagger, Mikhail Gorbachov, Orville Wright, Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Whoopi Goldberg, and Yun-Fat Chow.
Baaaaaaaaa.
