The ceremony of innocence is drowned...
— W. B. Yeats
Web calisthenics,
http://www.recollectionbooks.
JUNE 7
IMRE NAGY
Hungarian Communist honcho, hung for support of the Hungarian Uprising.
FESTIVAL OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS.
______________________________
1494 -- Treaty of Tordesillas: the Pope divides the
New World between Spain & Portugal.
1801 -- American Company of Booksellers (trade association) is
organized, NYC.
1843 -- Mad German poet Friedrich Holderlin dies.
1862 -- US: Flush? Former gambler William Bruce Mumford,
who tore down a flag flying over the US Mint, becomes the first
US citizen hanged for treason.
As the noose slowly tightened around his neck,
the hangman whispered in his ear,
"That flag was in mint condition!"
1879 -- San Francisco Free Public Library opens on Bush St.,
with 5,656 books.
1907 -- US: State militia sent to Cripple Creek, Colorado to
suppress a Western Federation of Miners (WFM) strike.
Rockefeller owns the police & the state. He makes various
promises of peace, then breaks them.
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1909 -- US: Free-speech conference in New York City. Emma
Goldman has had a dickens of a time exercising her free speech
rights in the Land of the Free for years. She seems to have an
odd interpretation of the Bill of Rights.
"To the daring belongs the
future… when we run out of
dreams, we die…
Emma Goldman said that. &
it's the truth."
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1913 -- US: The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW):
Pageant of Paterson Silk Strike performed at Madison Square
Garden, New York City.
1914 -- Italy: At the end of a meeting, where Errico Malatesta
appears in Ancone, the police open fire, killing three people
& wounding about 20.
This sets off "The Red Week of Ancône", & the most significant
uprisings since the Paris Commune, broken by the treason of the
Socialists & their trade union.
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1916 -- Ravel opposes the French campaign against
performing German music.
1917 -- Belgium: In the biggest single military explosion with
conventional ordnance, the British detonate one million tons of
Ammonal in 24 tunnels 100' underneath the German lines on
Messines Ridge near Ypres.
No break-through was effected, & the total gain
was about 5 miles of territory, which made the
Ypres salient more inconvenient than ever & cost
the British about 400,000 men.
1929 -- US: Striking textile workers in Gastonia, North
Carolina, repel a vigilante attack on their union hall.
During today's battle, police chief O.F. Aderholt is
accidentally killed by one of his own officers.
But who gets blamed? Six strike leaders get convictions
of "conspiracy to murder" & prison sentences of
five-20 years.
Police used an array of violence, including a shooting
that killed six strikers fleeing from tear gas...
Prominent on the union picket lines is Ella May Wiggins,
a 29-year-old mother of nine children who had been
working the night shift at one of the mills.
With no money for medicine, four of her children died &
she became a militant in the strike movement. Her songs,
with the older melancholy of mountain ballads, help cheer
on fellow picketers.
She is killed by a deputy sheriff & vigilante thugs on
September 14 when they run her off the road.
1930 -- The Big 'N' Word?: "The NY Times" agrees to capitalize
the n in "Negro."
1945 -- The fourth draft of Under the Volcano is destroyed
when Malcolm Lowry's shack on a beach in British Columbia
burns to the ground. Bleedster Gus & BleedMeister Dave visit
the site about 1971.
1946 -- Author/actor Antonin Artaud released from Rodez
(mental institution).
1965 -- US: A Real Sex Act? Supreme Court holds "right of privacy"
covers use of contraceptives.
1967 -- Dotty? Dorothy Parker joins her friends.
On her 70th birthday (1963) she notes:
"If I had any decency, I'd be dead.
Most of my friends are."
1967 -- Israel captures Wailing Wall in East Jerusalem.
I pushed through crowds
Through seas of prayer
Through twisting hands and choking air
A vulture at the wailing wall
I circled
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1968 -- France
"This explosion was provoked by groups
in revolt against modern technical &
consumer society, whether it be the
communism of the East or the
capitalism of the West. They are
groups, moreover, which have no idea
at all what they would replace it with,
but who delight in negation,
destruction, violence, anarchy & who
brandish the black flag".
— Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Besieged
General De Gaulle, June 7th 1968
1968 -- US: American headlines report:
Yevtushenko: "You Shoot
at Yourself, America"
Poem, Printed in Pravda, Is
Response to Assassination
U.S. Is Depicted as Nation
Going 'Dangerously Insane'
The poem, titled "Freedom to Kill," was published today in
"Pravda," MOSCOW, June 7 ...
See Flowers & Bullets & Freedom to Kill,
City Lights Books, 1970
1969 -- Arts & Letters wins Belmont, ends
Majestic Prince's Triple Crown bid.
1971 -- FlackJacket? US Supreme Court rules 5-4 that wearing a jacket
that reads "Fuck the Draft" is protected by the 1st amendment.
1980 -- Free-living sex novelist Henry Miller dies,
Big Sur, California.
"WHATEVER THERE BE OF
PROGRESS IN LIFE COMES NOT
THROUGH ADAPTATION BUT
THROUGH DARING, THROUGH
OBEYING THE BLIND URGE."
— Henry Miller, from Reflections on Writing
1991 -- US estimates 100,000 Iraqis were killed in the Gulf War,
& 300,000 injured. How's that Layabouts song go?
Oh, yeah, "Governments Kill!"
2000 -- The Layabouts play at Concert of Colors, Chene Park,
on the Detroit River in East Detroit.
http://goodfelloweb.com/
2001 -- George W. Bush signs a $1.35-trillion tax cut,
mostly for the rich; supposed to stimulate the economy, economy
goes further into the tank; but not to worry, he'll do it again in 2003
...85% of the cut going to the filthiest of the filthy.
Razors pain you; Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give;
Gas smells awful; You might as well live.
— Dorothy Parker, Résumé
On Dorothy Parker (nee Rothschild, but not the... Irish
Catholic mother, American pop), I just read a biography
of her.
She would have fit right into the [Blue] Moon a few
years back. With wags like [Stan] Iverson et al, she
could have soared.
Of course, anyone making $5,000 per week as a writer
back in the thirties wasn't doing too bad.
"Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply
calisthenics with words." — "Paris Review," 1956.
When she died she left all her assets to the NAACP.
— anti-blood-dimmed 1997-3000, more or less
No comments:
Post a Comment