Fish bones walked the waves off Hatteras.
& there were other signs
That Death wooed us, by water, wooed us
By land: among the pines
An uncurled cottonmouth that rolled on moss
Reared in the polluted air.
Birth, not death, is the hard loss.
I know. I also left a skin there.
— Louise Glück
Web version, 67 entries, in full,
http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/0422.htm
Excerpts:
APRIL 22 -- GUILLERMO CABRERA INFANTE
Biting, innovative Cuban novelist, social critic.
EARTH DAY. Yup. Belly full, belly-up.
FESTIVAL OF FABULOUS ANDROGYNES. Yup. Yup.
_____________________________________________
1870 -- Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Russian
Soviet Marxist Vladimir Lenin, Patron Saint of the
Fremont district in Seattle, Washington, lives.
This statue — rescued from Eastern Europe, after
"falling" over — now stands just a few blocks from
BleedMeister Auntie Dave's house, in Bleedster Gus
Hellthaler's backyard:
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/BB/leninFremont.jpg
1893 -- Nicolo Sacco lives. Italian-American anarchist
accused of robbery & murder. His friend & associate,
Bartolomeo Vanzetti, strapped into the electric chair, said,
"I wish to tell you that I am an innocent man. I never
committed any crime but sometimes some sin.
I wish to forgive some people for what they are
now doing to me."
They both spoke nobly at the end, left a great heritage of
love, devotion, faith, & courage, believing the time
would come that no human being should be humiliated
or be made abject.
Vanzetti further noted that for him, as for both, if it had
not been for "these thing" he might have lived out his
life talking at street corners to scorning men, died
unmarked, unknown, a failure:
"Now, we are not a failure.
This is our career & our triumph.
Never in our full life could we hope to do such work
for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of
man as now we do by accident. Our words — our
lives — our pains — nothing! The taking of our lives
—lives of a good shoemaker & a poor fish
peddler — all!
That last moment belongs to us — that agony is our triumph."
1898 -- France: Adrien Perrissaguet (1898-1972) lives.
An activist in the Sacco & Vanzetti Committee, he also fought
in the Spanish Revolution of 1936 & was a member of the
French Resistance during WWII.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/PerrissaguetAdrien.htm
1922 -- Ah, Um: Pork Pie Hat Chef great Charles Mingus
lives, Beneath the Underdog, Nogales, Arizona.
1922 -- Novelist, social critic Guillermo Cabrera Infante lives.
Not favored by the Batista regime or the Castro regime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillermo_Cabrera_Infante
1930 -- Jeppe Aakjaer dies in Jenle. Wrote of harsh
conditions endured by farm laborers but is best known
for poetry, especially the collection Fri felt (Free
Fields, 1905) & Rugens sange (Songs of the Rye, 1906).
1955 -- Pennies From Heaven?: Congress orders
all US coins bear the motto "In God We Trust".
No one else
left to trust...
& even then we suspect...
1963 -- (F)Redism: Secretary of State Rusk states that
South Vietnam, under Diem, was "steadily moving
toward a constitutional system resting upon popular
consent."
Six months later, South Vietnamese generals,
charging Diem had "trampled on the people's rights,"
seize power in a coup "encouraged" by the U.S.
1970 -- First Earth Day observed. Millions of US citizens
participate in anti-pollution demonstrations & events.
Corporate sponsorships to hide their real practices
are notably absent.
1972 -- US: 50,000 in New York City & 30,000 in
San Francisco march against the war in Vietnam/Southeast Asia.
1978 -- Bob Marley & the Wailers perform at the One
Love Peace Concert in Jamaica. It was Marley's first
public appearance in Jamaica since being wounded in an
assassination attempt a year & a half earlier.
1990 -- Day the Earth Stood Still?: The people of
Guilford County, North Carolina get their priorities in order:
They postpone the celebration of Earth Day 1990
from this date to April 28th so as not to interfere
with the Kmart Greater Greensboro Open Golf
Tournament.
1992 -- Yugoslavia: 60,000 attend anti-war rock concert,
Belgrade, Serbia.
1995 -- US: Gray Panther Maggie Kuhn dies.
1995 -- Hey, NATO?: San Francisco police, in an
equitable swap, trade computers for handguns.
Cops armed with computers instead of guns
look pretty funny on horses & bikes....
"Stop or I'll Email you!"
2000 -- US: Seattle songster Baby Gramps plays
San Francisco's Atlas Cafe.
"He's entertained everywhere from the streets &
medicine shows to Bob Dylan's dressing room. In this
day & age, seeing the Seattle based
singer-songwriter-guitarist who calls himself Baby
Gramps is the closest you'll ever get to experiencing
Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music in
person. ...
— Time Out
Notorious for word play songs such as
"Palindromes," "Anagrams," & "Aptonyms".
2000 -- Brazil: Smashing the Clocks of Domination?
Globo network, Brazil's largest entertainment
corporation, for years put on events
promoting a celebration of today's 500 year
anniversary of Brazil's "discovery" by Europeans
come to dominate & exploit the resources
& people of the land, & has built big clocks
in all the state capitals of Brazil.
In the largest mobilization of indigenous people
ever known in Brazil, people went through Brasilia,
where they shot their arrows at the Globo clock
until they stopped it.
_________________
The trial of Jesus of Nazareth, the trial &
rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, any one of the
witchcraft trials in Salem during 1691, the
Moscow trials of 1937 during which Stalin
destroyed all of the founders of the 1924 Soviet
Revolution, the Sacco-Vanzetti trial of 1920
through 1927 — there are many trials such as
these in which the victim was already
condemned to death before the trial took place,
& it took place only to cover up the real
meaning: the accused was to
be put to death.
These are trials in which the judge, the counsel,
the jury, & the witnesses are the criminals, not
the accused. For any believer in capital
punishment, the fear of an honest mistake on
the part of all concerned is cited as the main
argument against the final terrible decision to
carry out the death sentence.
There is the frightful possibility in all such
trials as these that the judgment has already
been pronounced & the trial is just a mask
for murder.
— Katherine Anne Porter,
The Never-Ending Wrong
— anti-CopyRite 1997-3000, (I should live so long...) more or less...
"Better than Boiled Coffee!"
Use'em or lose'em....
No comments:
Post a Comment