I'd gone,
it was still
where it had all begun. . .
— Robert Creeley, from "A Feeling"
Web version, in full, 81 entries:
http://www.recollectionbooks.
Text excerpts:
MAY 12
JAMELÃO
Great Brazilian samba crooner, official carnival puxador.
England: GARLAND DAY, Olde May Day
(Hey! Let's do it again).
______________________________
1812 - Nonsense rhymer, artist, Edward Lear lives, London.
"There once was a man named Nation,
Who worked for a radio station.
Although he was tall,
His hands were too small,
Wee paws for station identification."
1828 - Voice From the Grave?: Painter/poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti
lives 1828-1882). A founding member of Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood, wanting to bring back into art a pre-Renaissance
purity of style & aim. The movement was waning, but new disciples
Edward Burne-Jones & William Morris brought fresh enthusiasm.
When his wife died Rossetti buried the only complete manuscript
of his poems with her. The manuscript was later recovered &
published in 1870.
1856 -- Australia: Trade unions in Victoria demonstrate
for the 8-hour day.
1885 -- Canada: Col. Otter defeats Riel's main rebel force at Batoche
(Sask.); Gabriel Dumont & his Metis warriors run out of ammunition;
they fire stones & nails before giving up the fight.
1907 - Decadent Symbolist writer Joris-Karl Huysmans dies.
Wrote À rebours (Against the Grain), & Là-bas (Down There).
1913 -- Brazilian sambo singer, great carnivalist Jamelão
lives, Rio de Janeiro.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
1916 - Connolly Ain't Nothing But a Train Station in Dublin?:
Execution of James Connolly, IWW organizer & Irish freedom
fighter.
James Connolly is executed for his part in this spring's Easter
Rebellion, which challenged British rule in Dublin. Already
wounded from the uprising, Connolly is shot as he sits in a
chair. He is the 15th Easter Rebellion leader executed this last
week. An Irish woman describes the killing: "It was like
watching a stream of blood coming from under a closed door."
Then sing our rebel song as we
proudly sweep along
To end the age-old tyranny
that makes for human tears.
Our march is nearer done, with
each setting of the sun.
And the tyrants' might is passing
with the passing of the years.
— James Connolly, "A Rebel Song," from
"The Socialist," May 1903
1917 -- Frederick Henry is wounded (WWI) in Hemingway's
novel A Farewell to Arms.
1921 - German conceptual artist Joseph Beuys, lives.
1921 - Canada: Farley Mowat (Never Cry Wolf) lives.
1921 -- US: "Three Day's Battle" begins along both shores of the
Tug River, in West Virginia, with sniping by strikers at state police,
deputies & coal company officials.
God, if You had but the moon
Stuck in Your cap for a lamp,
Even You'd tire of it soon,
Down in the dark & the damp.
Nothing but blackness above
& nothing that moves but the cars. . . .
God, if You wish for our love,
Fling us a handful of stars.
— Louis Untermeyer
excerpt from "Caliban in the Coal Mines" from
Challenge, 1914 (based on the the historical
character of "Few Clothes" Johnson, the
character played by James Earle Jones in
John Sayles' film Matewan.)
1926 - Massachusetts Supreme Court upholds the death
sentences of Sacco & Vanzetti.
The prosecution left a trail of doctored eyewitness
accounts, altered testimony & false ballistics reports.
That trail appears to exonerate the victims while
convicting the executioners.
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1927 - Nicaragua: Sandino guerrillas decide to continue their
fight until they defeat the invading US Marines. A Sandino
manifesto asserts, "it is better to be killed as a rebel than to
live on as a slave".
1937 -- Scrabble From the Apple??: George Carlin, great Language
Arts Teacher, lives, White Harlem, New York City.
J. Edgar Hoover couldn't take a joke...
Documents show that in 1969, after Carlin
appeared on Gleason's TV variety show & did a
short spoof on the FBI & its director, the bureau
began collecting information on Carlin.
http://georgecarlin.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
1946 - Founding Congress of the Anarchist Federation of Japan
held in Tokyo.
1950 - Bowled Over?: The American Bowling Congress
abolishes its white males-only membership restriction after
34 years. The recalcitrant pins remain all-white though.
1958 - Cabbage Patch Doll?: Robert S. McNamara, future Defense
Secretary, suggests Americans eat cabbage & broccoli to withstand
radiation fallout.
1963 - Bob Dylan walks out of dress rehearsals for "The Ed
Sullivan Show."
CBS censors tell Dylan he cannot perform his
"Talking John Birch Society Blues." When told the
tune may be libelous, Dylan refuses
to appear on the show.
1968 - France: Paris, 1968. At least a thousand people have
joined the few dozen students who had seized the Fine Arts School
& turn it into a poster factory. Working in teams of 200, &
submitting each design to the Sorbonne General Assembly, during
the six-week occupation they were able to put out 350 different
posters in print runs of tens of thousands.
The imagination, impatience & forcefulness with which
they mocked authority incited astonishment & delight below —
& grim horror above.
1968 -- Vietnam: US bombs & napalms the "Vietcong" in Saigon slums.
In America we do not call this "terrorism".
1972 - Police clash with 3,000 anti-war protesters in Frisco.
1974 - "The New York Times" reports remarks by Beloved & Respected
Comrade Leader President Dick ("I am a pacifist") Nixon alluding
to SEC staff members as "Jewboys" & Judge John Sirica as a "Wop"
were deleted from the public transcript of a conversation
recorded in the Oval Office on 28 February 1973.
"Now here's the point, Bob. Please get me the names of the Jews.
You know, the big Jewish contributors to the Democrats.
Could we please investigate some of the cocksuckers?"
1984 - Animal Rights demonstration, London, England.
1984 - US: The number two man at the Housing Dept., Philip Abrams,
expresses doubt that Hispanics live in crowded homes because of
poverty. "I don't think so," he says.
"I'm told that they don't
mind & they prefer, some prefer, doubling up ...
It's a cultural preference, I'm told."
1998 -- Turkish human-rights leader Akin Birdal
survives assassination attempt.
2000 -- Cuba: Felix Bonne, dissident, is freed from jail.
2003 US: Bleedster Robert Braunwart adds 450,000th entry to his
(yet-to-be-published) chronology database. That's 7,500 printed
pages, by his way of reckoning it...On May 6, 2004 he reaches
480,000 entries (8,000 pages).
______________
Raymond, Retired Textile Worker, London, UK):
"I wore this cape when I took Johnny to visit his father in a
Budapest prison. The Nazis were going to ship him to a
concentration camp.
Johnny asked the Hungarian policeman 'When are you
going to let my father come home?'
He never did."
______________
— Anti-CopyRite 1997-2009
The Daily Bleed - Sinners & Saints galore
"Better to go hungry than to feast on lies.":
http://recollectionbooks.com/
"Free thought, necessarily involving freedom of speech &
press, I may tersely define thus: no opinion a law — no
opinion a crime."
— Alexander Berkman
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