In their serious corner, the players move the gradual
pieces. The board detains them until dawn in its hard
compass: the hatred of two colors.
In the game, the forms give off a severe magic:
Homeric castle, gay knight, warlike queen, king
solitary, oblique bishop, & pawns at war.
Finally, when the players have gone in, & when time
has eventually consumed them, surely the rites then
will not be done.
In the east, this war has taken fire. Today, the
whole earth is its provenance. Like that other, this
game is for ever.
— Jorge Luis Borges, Chess (I)
(see 1859 below for II)
Daily Bleed Web version, updated,
83 entries in full: http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/0430.htm
excerpts:
APRIL 30
FELIX GUATTARI
Innovative theorist of Capitalism & Schizophrenia.
WALPURGISNACHT. Witches, warlocks & demons hold revels in
Harz Mountains. Whole towns rush into streets, making as much
noise as possible. Church bells ring, bonfires are lit. In British
Isles, a scapegoat is chosen by lots and burned, hobby horse parades
are held, chasing evil away until Mid-summer's Night.
VIKING FEAST OF SPRING.
HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY.
MAY EVE: Eve may.
Of Man's first disobedience, & the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, & all our woe.
— Milton, Paradise Lost
________________________________________________
1713 - Alexander Pope, writes a friend about the success of
Joseph Addison's play "Cato", for which Pope himself has
supplied the prologue: "The town is so fond of it that the
orange wenches & fruit women in the park offer the books
on the side of the coaches, & the prologue & epilogue
are cried about the streets by the common hawkers."
Why are the wenches orange?
1844 - Thoreau accidentally burns 300 acres of forest near
Concord, Massachusetts during a fishing trip, causing
$2,000 in damages.
1859 - Just a Pawn in the Game?: The brilliant Paul Morphy
returns from 10-month chess tour of Europe, retires. He has
inspired numerous stories, movies, novels, etc, as the mad
genius chess master — it is said he challenged God to a game
& even offered a pawn advantage. Morphy won!
Tenuous king, slant bishop, bitter queen,
straightforward castle & the crafty
pawn — over the checkered black & white
terrain they seek out & enjoin their
armed campaign.
They do not realize the dominant hand of
the player rules their destiny. They do
not know an adamantine fate
governs their choices & controls their
journey.
The player, too, is captive of caprice (the
sentence is Omar's) on another ground
crisscrossed with black nights & white
days.
God moves the player, he, in turn, the
piece. But what god beyond God begins
the round of dust & time & dream &
agonies?
— Jorge Luis Borges, Chess (II)
1865 - Austria: Max Nettlau lives (1865-1944), in Neuwaldegg, a
suburb of Vienna. Historian, bibliographer, philologist, anarchist.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/NettlauMax.htm
1871 - US: Gettin' Civilized, Ayn Rand Style? Mob massacres more
than 100 Apaches who had placed themselves under US protection
at Camp Grant, Arizona.
As to the Indians, "[t]hey didn't have any rights to the land & there
was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not
conceived & were not using . . .
What was it they were fighting for, if they opposed white men
on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence,
their "right" to keep part of the earth untouched, unused & not
even as property, just keep everybody out so that you will live
practically like an animal, or maybe a few caves above it.
Any white person [emphasis mine, — ed] who
brought the element of civilization had the right to take over
this continent."
— Ayn Rand, West Point, 1974
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/03ref.htm#6/1974
1877 - Get Anything You Want, Where?: Alice B. Toklas lives
(1877-1967), Frisco, California. American literary figure & close
associate of author Gertrude Stein.
1883 - Jaroslav Hašek lives (1883-1923), Prague. Czech
novelist, anarchist, humorist, Bolshevik, story writer,
journalist.
Early in his career an active anarchist. A drunk, a
dog-stealer, & a cook who calculatedly pretended to
commit suicide & invented animals which did not exist
while editing the serious magazine "The
Animal World". Wrote a four-volume novel,
The Good Soldier Schweik, acclaimed
as one of the greatest satires in world literature.
1899 - US: Coeur d'Alene, Idaho miner's strike, 1,200
workers arrested, put into specially erected bullpens until
the strikes are broken.
In 1892, area mine workers launched a generation of deadly
warfare against armed & deputized strikebreakers.
This year, with mine owners refusing to recognize
unions & wildcat strikers dynamiting mines, Governor
Frank Steunenberg declared parts of Idaho were "in a
state of insurrection & rebellion."
Under martial law, President McKinley sent federal troops.
Steunenberg was a man of modest means before election, but
he left office rich, thanks to — surprise! — the mining
companies.
1930 - Radical anti-psychiatrist, anti-capitalist Felix
Guattari lives, Paris.
1944 - Last day of April:
"Rainy days, I generally sat in a dry place & read a book,
often just an axe length away from a ping-pong table. The
training course lasted three weeks, ending on a Saturday,
a very rainy one...I remember standing at an end
window of our Quonset hut for a very long time, looking
out at the slanting, dreary rain, my trigger
finger itching imperceptibly, if at all...Then, after
synchronizing my wristwatch with the clock in the
latrine, I walked down the long, wet cobblestone hill into
town. I ignored the flashes of lightning all around me.
They either had your number on them or they didn't."
(It appears the last day of April 1944 is a Sunday, but
J.D. Salinger's short story, "For Esmé, With Love &
Squalor," gives it here & in the final letter from Esmé as
Saturday.)
1948 - US Rubber Stamp Day?: Organization of American
States founded.
1957 - Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Vice-President
Dick M Nixon receives an award from the Anti-Defamation
League of the B'nai Brith. Pretty funny for a guy who
hated & cursed Jews.
1966 - Two days after the publication of his book Been
Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, folksinger/novelist
Richard Fariña is killed in a motorcycle accident after a
promotional party, Carmel, California.
1975 - Miss Saigon?: Independence Day. Vietnam defeats the
US while Republicans are at the helm. North Vietnamese troops
enter Saigon. Vietnam is reunited after 30 years of resistance to
US domination & 100 years of French colonial misrule.
1977 - Argentina: The organization of the mothers of Plaza
de Mayo founded.
1983 - Bluesman Muddy Waters dies of a heart attack.
1986 - West Germany: First use of CS gas against
anti-nuclear demonstrators, Wackersdorf.
1986 - Ashrita Furman performs 8,341 somersaults over 12
miles before flipping out.
1991 - George Sperti Sperti inventor (Preparation H), dies
at 91. Obviously well-prepared to meet the maker...
Queried on his death bed as to his immortal last words, he
snorted: "You know where to stick that."
[A relative of Sperti has contacted the Daily Bleed,
none too happy with this revelation — Auntie]
1996 - US: About 120 activists arrested over the next eight
days in Washington, D.C., in support of a White House
fast by Sister Diana Ortiz.
Ortiz was kidnapped, tortured, & raped by US-trained
& supported Guatemalan Army officers in 1989; she
was fasting to demand that the US government release
information on her assailants.
1998 - Bleedster Linda Alband, bon vivant, hits the big 50.
2000 - Linda Alband, bon vivant, turns 45.
2002 - Linda Alband, bon vivant, turns 38.
2005 - Bleedster Linda Alband, bon vivant, turns 39-1/5.
2009 - Bleedster Linda Alband, bon vivant, turns 29-1/8.
— Anti-Turns 1997-2011
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