How heavy the heart is now, and every heart
Save only the word drunk, power drunk
Hard capsule of the doomed. How distraught
Those things of pride, the wills nourished in the fat
Years, fed in the kindly twilight of the books
In gold and brown, the voices that had little
To live for, crying for something to die for.
The philosophers of history,
Of dim wit and foolish memory,
The giggling concubines of catastrophe —
Who forget so much — Boethius' calm death,
More's sweet speech, Rosa's broken body —
Or you, tough, stubby recalcitrant
Of Fate.
— Kenneth Rexroth, excerpt, "Again at Waldheim"
http://bopsecrets.org/rexroth/poems/1940s.htm
Web version, 60 entries in 2002, 83 in 2006, 91 this:
http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/0516.htm
Excerpts:
MAY 16
DJANGO REINHARDT
Belgian-born Gypsy jazz musician, bon-vivant.
ST. BRENDAN'S DAY: Commemorating his sixth-century
voyage from Ireland to ... The Garden of Eden? America?
______________________________
1717 -- France: Voltaire, suspected of writing subversive
satire, is imprisoned for the first time in the Bastille.
1763 -- James Boswell & Samuel Johnson meet in the back of
Tom Davies' London bookshop.
Aware of Johnson's well-known prejudices, Boswell at
this long-waited meeting admits:
"I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it."
1770 -- Marie Antoinette marries future King Louis XVI of
France, after a "swept off her feet romance."
She later confesses: "I just lost my head."
(Over 800 people are killed by fireworks at the wedding.)
1871 -- Paris Commune, following the decree of April 12,
destroys the Vendôme Column ("monument de barbarie").
1887 -- Brazil: Maria Lacerda de Moura lives (1887-1945),
Barbacena, Minas Gerais.
Teacher, one of Brazil's first feminists, a journalist &
anarchist writer.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/05ref.htm#16/1887
1901 -- Gustave Lefrancais (1826-1901) dies. French
revolutionary, member of the First International, of the
Paris Commune, & a founder of the Jura Federation.
Lefrancais helped Elisée Reclus in producing his famed
Géographie Universelle. Eugene Pottier, who wrote
"The Internationale", dedicated the song to Gustave.
1904 -- US: US Supreme Court upholds the deportation of
British anarchist John Turner.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/04ref.htm#06/1904
1910 -- Henri-Edmond Cross (aka Delacroix) (1856-1910)
dies. French neo-impressionist/pointillist painter, illustrator.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/CrossHenri-Edmond.htm
1912 -- Author Studs Terkel lives, New York City.
1915 -- US: The Modern School retreats from New York City
to rural Stelton, New Jersey, while the Ferrer Center perilously
remains in the city until 1918 when the anti-radical hysteria
following America's entry into the war drove it out of existence.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/05ref.htm#16/1915
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/ModernSchool.htm
1918 -- US Congress passes Sedition Act against radicals.
Signed into law by Beloved & Respected Comrade Liberal
President Wilson on May 21.
1927 -- Booked To Die?: US Supreme Court rules booksellers
must file income tax returns.
1933 -- Swiss-German anarchist, gay writer John Henry Mackay dies.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/MackayJohnHenry.htm
1933 -- Germany: The first blacklist of 'unacceptable' books is
declared by National Socialists of the Berlin Librarian Commission.
Among the titles banned by the Nazi's are B. Traven's novels
The Carreta & Government:
"I wish to do my share so that authority
figures & authority worship vanish."
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/TravenB.htm
1934 -- US: General strike backs Teamsters union strike
for recognition in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Other Minneapolis workers enthusiastically support
the strike. 35,000 building-trade workers & all taxi
drivers walk out in sympathy.
Militant farmers' organizations, meanwhile, contribute
food to the strike kitchen, which feed 10,000 people
a day.
The strike culminates in a May 21st battle against
business goons.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/05ref.htm#16/1934
1943 -- The Warsaw ghetto resistance is crushed by the
Nazis. 56,000 die in the process.
1958 -- Eli Beeding experiences 83g deceleration on a
rocket sled, New Mexico. Changes his name to
"Bleeding" we suspect.
1968 -- France, May '68: The upheaval continues, universities,
factories, places of work shut down or occupied. Permanent
forums, going 24-hours a day, developed, open to all,
where float black flags & red flags.
Slogans flower the walls, & poetry takes again its place in the sun.
Certain notions abound, people — strangers — talk to each other,
engage in debate, in the streets, everywhere:
"All is possible "...
The worker's movement continues to spread, with wildcat
strikes & new occupations. Today the workers take over
the works at Renault de Billancourt.
"As soon as the relations of exploitation & the
violence that underlies them are no
longer concealed by the mystical veil, there
is a breakthrough, a moment of clarity, the
struggle against alienation is suddenly revealed as a
ruthless hand-to-hand fight against naked power, power
exposed in its brute force & its weakness, a vulnerable
giant . . . . sublime moment when the complexity of the
world becomes tangible, transparent, within everyone's
grasp."
— Raoul Vaneigem, "Basic Banalities"
(Situationist International Anthology, p. 93)
http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/7.basic1.htm
1969 -- A Stand-Up Guy?: Pope John Lennon, declared
"an inadmissible immigrant to the US," seeks a visa to
visit America. 10 days ago his "standing visa" was
revoked by the US Embassy.
1972 -- Another Blow for Freedom? Baseball's
Greg Luzinski's 500 foot home run hits the Liberty Bell
monument in Philadelphia.
1979 -- A. Philip Randolph dies. Black labor leader & peace
activist, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
1988 -- Undercover Trashman? US Supreme Court rules trash
may be searched without a warrant.
1989 -- China: 250,000 continue protests in Tiananmen Square.
Protests in Shanghai & five provincial capitals.
2007 -- US: Baristas at the Wealthy St.(!) Starbucks in East
Grand Rapids announce their membership in the IWW Starbucks
Workers Union. Starbucks, notorious for poor treatment of workers,
follows with numerous anti-labor violations & is forced by the
NLRB to settle Grand Rapids union worker complaints in October.
2010 -- Israel: Noam Chomsky, an 81-year-old professor emeritus
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology & critic of Israel, is
refused admittance to speak at Berzeit University. This follows a
pattern of refusing to allow United Nations investigator Richard Falk,
Ivan Prado, one of Spain’s most famous clowns, & critics such as
Norman Finkelstein & others into the country.
__________________
When evil is allowed to compete
with good, evil has an emotional
populist appeal that wins out
unless good men & women stand
as a vanguard against abuse.
— Hannah Arendt,
Origins of Totalitarianism
__________________
Note: Several dozen HTML standards
were abused & permanently harmed in the production
of the web page (per)version.
— anti-CopyRite 1997-76,000, more or less
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/BB/thief.jpg
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