Monday, July 04, 2011

Daily Bleed for July 4th

JULY 4

TED JOANS
American Beat Poet.
"Don't let the minute spoil the hour."

"BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY":
Ron Kovic, Vietnam veteran, author, lives.

       Spat on by a Republican delegate at the 1972 Convention.

Hannibal Lector, Missouri: TOM SAWYER FENCE-PAINTING DAY.

______________________________




1627 -- New World: Virginia colony orders "scorched earth" policy against
Tanx Phwhatan, Weanocs, Appomattocx, Chicahominies,
Warrisquojacke, Nansemonds & Chesapeakes.

1776 - Philadelphia: Liberty Bell rings. Imported from the
state(less?) of Vermont, it is found defective. Not all it is
sometimes cracked up to be.

   Within 30 years, the US begins its 200-year legacy of
   opposing similar revolutions in other countries.

   Fearing a democratic rabble, it is, despite its high idealism,
   limited to adult, white, propertied males only.

   A section written by Jefferson denouncing slavery is deleted.

   New York (Guilianiism?) abstained from the Continental
   Congress vote on the Declaration.

1826 - Declaration of Mental Independence, New Harmony Colony.

1840 -- US: The anti-rent association of Berne in the Hudson
Valley issues its Declaration of Independence — the overt start
of the Anti-Rent War which lasts until August 1845.

   Known as the 'Calico Indians', they disguise themselves
   in outlandish festal garb & take the offensive. They destroy
   legal papers, physically prevent the serving of writs or
   warrants & the sale of cattle seized in lieu of debts (or kill
   cattle that are sold), & threaten farmers who do pay.

   By 1844, Delaware County is declared to be in a state of
   insurrection.

1845 -- US: Squatter Henry David Thoreau moves
into his shack on Walden Pond for a 26 month stay. Hank sez,

    "I went to the woods because I wished to . . .
    see if I could not learn what it [life] had to teach,
    & not, when I came to die, discover that
    I had not lived."

   On the opening day of McDonald's first restaurant
   in Kuwait in 1994, the drive-through line was 7 miles long.

http://blackeyepress.wordpress.com/2009/03/01/henry-david-thoreau-1817-1862/

1854 -- US: Pre-Newtus Gingrich (R-Ga.) introduction of
legislation banning constitutional burnings; William Lloyd Garrison
publicly burns a copy of the US Constitution with the cry,

             "So perish all compromises with tyranny!"

1855 -- US: Poet Walt Whitman, 36, publishes his Leaves of  Grass
at his own expense. The book does not sell.

    First advertised in "Liberty" I (July 22, 1882), the anarchist
    Benjamin Tucker appended a challenge to various officials
    responsible for the suppression of Leaves of Grass. He advised
    them of his intention to sell the work & offered to deliver a copy
    of it to them at their place of choice to be used in evidence
    against him.

    There were no takers.

1862 -- Lewis Carroll creates "Alice in Wonderland" for
10-year-old Alice Liddell. Tells the story of what happened
to a girl after she fell down the rabbit hole. Alice insisted he
that he write it down.

1880 - Italy: Leda Rafanelli, mystical anarchist, writer &
indefatigable publisher, lives (1880-1971).
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/07ref.htm#4/1880

1890 -- US: First issue of the Yiddish "Freie Arbeiter Stimme"
(Free Voice of Labor) appears, New York, publishing until 1977.
At the height of its popularity, it reaches 12,000 copies per issue.

1899 -- Benjamin Peret lives. Early Parisian Dadaist & a founder
of Surrealism. The most admired writer within the group & perhaps
the best poet . Wrote a novel, Death to the Pigs & to the Field
of Glory
 (1923), short fiction, & critical essays. A Communist
deported from Brazil for revolutionary activity.

    This wine which is only white to make the sun come up
    because the sun runs its hands through its hair.

1904 - Jazz great Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong lives.

1905 -- Radical geographer Élisée Reclus (1830-1905) dies.
Only anarchist geographer with vintage wine named after him.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/ReclusElisee.htm

1910 -- US: Unbeatable in the ring & ungovernable outside of it,
Jack Johnson beats the heavyweight champion of the world,
Jim Jeffries (the 'Great White Hope'), so laying waste white
Amerika's claim to race supremacy.

   In response, the US Congress enact a Federal statute
   making it illegal to transport prize fight film from state
   to state, to limit the number of those who would witness
   that a black man had beat the crap out of a white.

1910 -- US: The newspaper "Solidarity", voice of the I.W.W.,
presents the topic of "sabotage", ala Émile Pouget, in connection
with a strike of 600 tailors who win the majority of their demands
thanks to solidarity & the use of sabotage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Pouget

1928 -- African American Beat poet Ted Joans (1928-2003)
lives, on a riverboat in Cairo, Illinois.
http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/JoansTed/joans.htm

1931 -- James Joyce & Nora Barnacle legalize their 26-year
common-law marriage. The event makes the front pages.

1938 -- US: Know the Real Score? The American Federation
of Musician's Board of Delegates meets in Florida for its 43rd
annual convention during the summer (exact date unknown) &
adopts a resolution to fight the "communist menace" within the
US Labor movement. Quote:

   "Resolved, As loyal American citizens & loyal
   members of the American Federation of Labor we
   energetically use all means at our command to
   purge our membership of proven Red termites who
   are endeavoring to destroy our government & the
   American Federation of Labor..."

1969 -- Australia: Thousands demonstrate against
the Vietnam War in five major cities.

1976 - Antoni Slonimski, Polish poet, translator, & newspaper
columnist best known for his devotion to pacifism & social
justice, dies in Warsaw.

1981 - England: Unprecedented inter-racial rioting in Liverpool, which
spreads to London & 10 other cities.

   Three days of rioting began in the Toxteth section of Liverpool,
   with youths fighting off police, forcing them to retreat. Stores
   are looted & burned. Mostly West Indians are involved, but also
   some white kids joined in. Some, armed with axe handles, attack a
   BBC film crew & abscond with equipment valued at $23,000.

1982 -- 200 Israeli army reservists march against the Israeli
invasion of Lebanon.

1983 -- American poet Ted Berrigan (1934-1983) dies.

   A central figure in the second generation of the New
   York School of Poets which included Ron Padgett,
   Anne Waldman, Jim Carroll, & Anselm Hollo.

1986 - Dylan & Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers perform at the
second Farm Aid benefit concert at Rich Stadium in Buffalo, N.Y.

1993 -- US: Pizza Hut blimp deflates, lands
safely (think way big condom) on W 56th street in NYC. Taxi!!??

2002 -- US: Captain America, still President Bush's
golden boy, makes a spectacular entrance for the
Independence Day celebration in Washington, D.C.,
shortly before dusk.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/BB/glider.jpg

2008 -- Thomas Disch (1940-2008) dies, an apparent suicide.

     American "new wave" science fiction writer along
     with P.K. Dick, Samuel Delany, Roger Zelazny,
     Ursula K. Le Guin & Harlan Ellison. Author of
     Camp Concentration, On Wings of Song & The Genocides.

     Wrote poetry under the name Tom Disch.

     "He was a unique talent, witty & intelligent, one of
     the sharpest minds I knew. He was frequently a generous
     friend to me & without him New Worlds would have been
     infinitely poorer."

                     — Michael Moorcock

     "Nature is prodigal. Of a hundred
     seedlings only one or two would survive;
     of a hundred species, only one or two.

     Not, however, man."

              — The Genocides, 1965

     http://ellen-datlow.livejournal.com/93886.html
     http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010413.html

                         ___________________

   "The Declaration of Independence "was a denial, & the first
   denial of a nation, of the infamous dogma that God confers the
   right upon one man to govern others."

            — Robert G. Ingersoll, "Individuality"

   "At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument,
   is needed...what, to the American slave, is your Fourth of
   July?...

   There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices,
   more shocking & bloody, than are the people of these United
   States, at this very hour."

              — Frederick Douglass

   "With regard to intellectual creation the revolution must from
   the very beginning establish & assure an anarchist regime of
   individual liberty."

               — Leon Trotsky & Andre Breton

— Anti-copyRite 2011

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