http://www.recollectionbooks.
Excerpts,
DECEMBER 1 -- ERNST TOLLER
Leader of the Munich "soviet" of 1919. Playwright, poet, bohemian,
anarchist, hounded to death by the Nazis.
SAINT ELOI'S DAY. He tried to stop the ritual burning of cats. You've been warned.
& for Gosh Sakes, please keep uppermost in mind, this month is:
Hi Neighbor Month.
National Closed Caption TV Month.
National Stress-Free Family Holidays Month.
& most important of all, the 3rd week of the month is:
Tell Someone They're Doing a Good Job Week.
______________________________
1828 -- Brasil: Brazilian War veterans revolt against Argentina over peace
terms. Probably too much peace, not enough war.
1870 -- France: Victor Hugo obtains the release of Louise Michel.
http://www.victorhugo2002.
1893 -- Germany: Ernst Toller lives, Samotschin (now Szamocin, Poland).
Playwright, poet, pacifist, Expressionist, anarchist, Munich "Soviet" leader.
His 1920 play Masse-Mensch (Man & the Masses, 1920) brings widespread
fame.
A German Expressionist involved with other writers in forming an
insurrectionary Bavarian "government" when the workers revolt. Anarchists are
principal actors: Ehrich Mühsam, Gustav Landauer, Ernst Toller, Ret Marut (aka
B. Traven), & others, fought for the development of Workers' Councils & self-
managed co-operatives.
Forced to flee Nazi Germany.
Despite success as playwright & poet, Ernst hangs himself in his Manhattan
hotel room, convinced his plays are passé.
Ein Düngerhaufen faulender Menschenleiber;
Verglaste Augen, blutgeronnen,
Zerspellte Hirne, ausgespeiene Eingeweide,
Die Luft verpestet vom Kadavergestank,
Ein einzig grauenvoller Wahnsinnsschrei!
(A dunghill of decaying human corpses;
Eyes of glass, bloodshot
Cleaved brains, vomited bowels,
The air infected by cadavre stench,
A single horrifying bellow of insanity!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
1914 -- US: Famed labor song "Solidarity Forever" written by IWW songwriter
Ralph Chaplin for a hunger march to be lead by anarchist Lucy Parsons in
Chicago (on January 17, 1915).
When the union's inspiration through worker's blood shall run,
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,
For the union makes us strong.
[Chorus]: Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever,
For the union makes us strong
— Words by Ralph Chaplin
1919 -- US: Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman & 200+ labor militants &
radicals are forced to leave the "Land of the Free," deported to Russia on
the rust-bucket Buford. Shades of B. Traven's The Death Ship. In America it
is axiomatic that we have free speech only if no one practices it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
1955 -- US: Wilhelm Reich "Orgone Energy Contempt Trial" begins. Reich
refused to appear in court on the decree motion but did respond in a letter to
the Judge regarding the courts unclear jurisdiction of scientific discovery.
While the Orgone box is discredited, Book Burning remains alive & well,
today, as then.
1997 --
Swimming through the pages of her prose, crude drawings & the poetic
pimps, feminists, men, her dreams, slabs of the autobiographical, emotional
self-mutilation & self-loathing. She sometimes appeared like a lost child
teetering on the abyss & at others the winged avenging angel with a scythe
for a tongue.
http://recollectionbooks.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
2002 -- US: 500,000 attend the Hollywood Christmas parade, which is
interrupted by an evacuation while police check out a transient's backpack.
Damn Terrorists hide in the strangest places!
_______________
"Hard work is the novocaine of the soul."
— Barbara Hambly, The Armies of Daylight
"I had been . . . crossing & recrossing the line between sanity
& madness so many times that I had all but rubbed it out."
— Corwin, Prince of Amber, in The Guns of Avalon, by Roger Zelazny
_______________
— Auntie Novocaine, 1997, &tc...
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