After the offending bit is popped out
these tiny stitches on your neck
are exquisite. Lips of the slit
don't speak the way you think they should,
break into stupid song, blow kisses
at the doctor. . .
— Rachel Loden, "Lives of the Saints"
a few modest excerpts:
C
H
A
R
L
ES
B
A
"Be drunken always with wine, poetry ... even with virtue"
— our tipsy translation from The Flowers of Evil
NAME YOURSELF DAY.
ALL IS OURS DAY.
HOCKTIDE: celebrates a battle in 1002 when
Saxon women defeated the Danes.
______________________________
1553 -- Francois Rabelais dies, Paris France.
His last will states:
"I have nothing. I owe much. I leave the rest to the poor."
1821 -- Charles Baudelaire lives (1821-1867), Paris.
One of the great 19th century French poets, who formed
with Stéphane Mallarmé & Paul Verlaine the so-called
Decadents.
See Kenneth Rexroth articles in Classics Revisited or
More Classics Revisited.
1834 -- France: In Lyon, the insurrection of the Silk workers begins.
It is the beginning of the "Sanglante semaine" (Bloody Week).
1879 -- William Claude Dukenfield, a.k.a. W. C. Fields,
lives (or Jan 29?).
"Taint a fit night out for man nor
1898 -- US: American Renaissance man Paul Robeson lives,
Princeton, New Jersey. Football star, actor, singer, black
liberation fighter.
During the Cold War, Robeson was not allowed to leave
the Land of the Free & the Blacklist virtually destroyed his
career.
Exiled communist, with a voice so international that it
could be heard on the only juke box in the only public bar
in the only hotel in Ulan Bator, Mongolia during the bad
old days of Stalinism.
He renounced his US citizenship.
1908 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade President
Moose Roosevelt investigates legality of not only barring
anarchist propaganda that advocates political violence, but also
prosecuting those who produce the material.
"...When compared with the suppression
of anarchy every other question sinks into
insignificance. The anarchist is the enemy
of humanity, the enemy of all mankind, &
his is a deeper degree of criminality than
any other. No immigrant is allowed to
come to our shores if he is an anarchist; &
no paper published here or abroad should
be permitted circulation in this country if it
propagates anarchist opinions."
— Beloved & Respected Comrade
Moose President Teddy Roosevelt,
Message To the Senate Committee on
the Judiciary Regarding Transmission
Through the Mails of Anarchistic
Publications
April 9, 1908
1919 -- The 8th 'Dada-Soirée', at the
'Kaufleuten-Saal'. During a reading of Walter Serner
the audience begins with interjections & finally
some of them attack the stage. The whole
auditorium is in commotion & Dada-Zurich ends
in tumult & chaos — just as it began.
1927 -- US: Massachusetts: Death sentences for "those
anarchist bastards" (quote from the trial Judge Thayer
during the trial) Nicolas Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti
are upheld.
excerpt...AMERICA
...America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old
strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die . . .
— Allen Ginsberg
1928 -- The 20th century's greatest living American classical
composer, arranger, musician, singer: Folk singer, protester
Tom Lehrer lives.
I'd like to take you now, on wings of song
as it were, & try & help you forget for a
while your drab, wretched lives.
— Tom Lehrer, "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park"
1932 -- Yippie! The 20th century's greatest living American journalist,
"The Realist" editor Paul Krassner, lives! Accompanied Groucho Marx
on his first LSD trip, co-founder of the Youth International Party. Yippie!!
"A jealous Thai woman has been arrested for
cutting off her husband's penis. The Thailand
police say 42 similar crimes have been reported to
them in the past 15 years.
What marks this incident as different is that she
tied the severed penis to a helium-filled balloon &
watched it float away."
1948 -- Colombia: If they do not kill him, Jorge Eliécer
Gaitán will be president.
Buy him, they cannot. To what temptation will he
succumb who despises the pleasures, who is single,
who eats little, drinks nothing & refuses anesthesia
to remove a tooth?
— ¡Lo mataron! ¡Lo mataron! —
In the street, three shots. Time has run out, Gaitán is
left unemployed . . .
Jorge Eliécer Gaitán is assassinated. Listening,
earthquake noises, a human avalanche comes to him
above. From suburbs & hills, advances a whirlwind,
a hurricane of the pain & wrath comes sweeping the city,
breaking show windows, upsetting street cars, setting
afire buildings...
— Eduardo Galeano, Century of the Wind
1956 -- US: African American Singer Nat King Cole is beaten
up by a group of racial segregationists in Birmingham, Alabama.
1969 -- US: Deanie Babies?: Harvard students take over the
campus administration building, ousting the deans. 300 led by
SDS seize University Hall. More action to come over next few days.
1976 -- Folk singer Phil Ochs hangs himself at his sister's
house, Far Rockaway, NY.
"It is wrong to expect a reward for your struggles.
The reward is the act of struggle itself, not what you win.
Even though you can't expect to defeat the absurdity of the
world, you must make that attempt. That's morality, that's
religion. That's art. That's life."
1997 -- Mad Cow Disease — while much of the world shuns
British cows, a Cambodian newspaper suggested yesterday that
the animals be shipped to Cambodia & allowed to roam free &
detonate the millions of land mines littering the country.
"The plan is simple, practical, & will make mince-meat
of the problem overnight"
2005 -- US: Detroit Soccer Riot!!! "If revolution can't be fun,
then whats the point?" Rioting practice begins.
_________
HENRI LEFEBVRE, 1947
To understand this properly, we need to
think about what is happening around us, within
us, each & every day. We live on familiar terms
with the people in our own family, our own
milieu, our own class. This constant impression
of familiarity makes us think that we know them,
that their outlines are defined for us, & that
they see themselves as having those same
outlines [...] But the familiar is not
necessarily the known [...] Familiarity, what is
familiar, conceals human beings & makes
them difficult to know by giving them a mask
we can recognize, a mask that is merely the
lack of something. & yet familiarity . . . is by
no means an illusion. It is real, & is part of
reality. Masks cling to our faces, to our skin;
flesh & blood have become masks.
_________
— anti-CopyRite 1997-3000, more or less
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