Monday, July 04, 2011

Daily Bleed People's Radical Literary History for July 4th

JULY 4

Ted Joans poster for Recollection Used Books Reading

TED JOANS
American Beat Poet.

"Don't let the minute spoil the hour."



US: INDEPENDENCE DAY.

BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY: Ron Kovic, Vietnam veteran, author, lives. Spat on by a Republican delegate (a fine patriot, he) at the 1972 Convention.

FIRE CRACKER DAY.

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






 Chevy Nova
1054 -- Brightest known super-nova starts shining, for 23 days.


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


1761 -- Samuel Richardson, novelist, dies at 72 in London.


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.

Spurred by unfair taxation issues, the US Declaration of Independence from England, written mainly by Thomas Jefferson, begins first successful anti-imperialist revolution in world history.

Within 30 years, the US would begin 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.




1804 -- Novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne lives. Friends with the Transcendentals in Concord — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott. Had a warm friendship with Herman Melville, who dedicated Moby-Dick to him.

Hawthorne Timeline (if he or anyone he knew farted, it is probably here),
http://www.hawthorneinsalem.org/timeline/Introduction.html

Born in Salem, Massachusetts, to a prominent, decaying family, Hawthorne often wondered if his family's decline were punishment for the sins of his "sable-cloaked steeple-crowned progenitors."

One ancestor was a judge in the Salem witchcraft trials & is the model for the accursed founder of The House of the Seven Gables.

The Scarlett Letter concerns the mother of an illegitimate child, wearing a scarlet A (for adulteress) for years rather than reveal her lover as the saintly young village minister.

His son Julian wrote novellas & stories — weird tales of curses & apparitions (inspired by his Swedenborgian faith). His career was interrupted by a jail term. His daughter Hildegarde (1871-1952) wrote some fantasy (see Faded Garden (1985), edited by Seattle author & bookseller Jessica Amanda Salmonson.




Baldy, Eagle
1826 -- US: John Adams & political adversary Thomas Jefferson, second & third presidents, die — ironically on the only birthday either claimed to celebrate: the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.



1826 -- US: Declaration of Mental Independence, New Harmony Colony.



1828 -- US: The Baltimore & Ohio becomes the first American passenger railroad service.



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.

Source: [Calendar Riots]




1845 -- US: Squatter Henry David Thoreau, a bit of the anarchist, moves into his shack on Walden Pond for a 26 month stay. Hank said,

"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://www.heureka.clara.net/art/thoreau.htm

John Cage's "Song Books" allow us to explore the meeting of the American thinker & political anarchist Henry Thoreau & the French thinker & musical anarchist Erik Satie...
http://recollectionbooks.com/anow/ppl/wri/thoreau/
http://www.mcspotlight.org/media/press/forbes_1jan96.html



1845 -- Wildfire Lewis lives, Greenwich, N.Y. One of the outstanding sculptors of her day. African American who grew up with Chippewa relatives, changed her name to Mary Edmonia Lewis. Among her works is Forever Free, Hagar in Her Despair in the Wilderness & Death of Cleopatra.


1848 -- Writer/statesman Vicomte François-René de Chateaubriand, 79, dies in Paris.



Ooops...
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!"




Walt Whitman
1855 -- Walt Whitman, 36, publishes his Leaves of Grass at his own expense. A dud, the book does not sell.

First advertised in Liberty I (July 22, 1882), 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.

Tucker also later published the book in both paperback & hardcover editions of this 600-plus page poem, advertised in Liberty XIII (May, 1899).




Cheshire Cat
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 that he write it down.
http://lcsna.org/carroll/
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/lcarroll.htm




1865 -- US: Confederate General Joseph O. Shelby leads a force of 1,000 defeated Southerners, (including the governors of Texass, Kentucky, & Louisiana) into Mexico, to help Emperor Maximilian maintain his throne. Maximilian refused their aid, but gave the Americans land to start a colony, which fell when he was overthrown & executed in 1867.


1866 -- Marius Monfray (1866-1894) lives. French trade unionist. In November 1886, he was sentenced to eight days in prison for organizing an illegal lottery (providing support funds for Toussaint Bordat, a defendant in the "Trial of the 66"). His shout in response — "Vive l'anarchie!" — got him two years in prison for "contempt of court."
Further details/ context, click here[Details / context]


1868 -- Switzerland: The Russian anarchist Michael Bakunin moves to Geneva, & joins the Geneva section of the International Workingmen's Association.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/sources.htm#BakuninMikhail


1872 -- US: You Lose? Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Calvin Coolidge — "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy" — lives.


Haymarket anarchists poster
1876 -- US: Albert Parsons joins the Knights of Labor. Later president of the Trades Assembly of Chicago, ran for County Clerk, & the first workingman nominated by workingmen to run for the office of President of the United States, Parsons became an anarchist & was one of the Haymarket Martyrs wrongly hanged.
Further details/ context, click here; anarchiste,  anarchismo, anarchici, anarchico, Anarþist, Anarþist, anarquista, anarchisten, anarkismo, anarchisme, anarho, kalendario, anarchica, Libertaria[Details / context]



1880 -- Believe it or not: George Ripley lives.


Leda Rafanelli
1880 -- Italy: Leda Rafanelli, mystical anarchist, writer & indefatigable publisher, lives (1880-1971), Pistoia.

Leda was heavily involved in publishing, first with Luigi Polli, then Giuseppe Monanni, her lifelong companion. With Ettore Molinari & Nella Giacomelli they formed "Protesta umana".

A brief meeting & exchange of letters between Leda & Benito Mussolini (some 40 letters, March 1913 - October 1914, during his pre-fascist days) has led to some speculation on the nature of her relationship with him.

Further details/ context, click here; anarchici, anarchico, anarchica, Libertaria[Details / context]




1881 -- US: Booker T. Washington founds The Tuskegee Normal & Industrial Institute. Became a nationally recognized leader in African-American education.


The Beast Has Had the time of His Live — Rube Goldberg illustration, Recollection Books logo
1883 -- Rube Goldberg lives to make the easy outrageously difficult.
(No, he was neither politico nor bureaucrat).



Eat your children?
1884 -- France: Statue of Liberty presented to US in Paris.

When Lady Liberty was uncrated, in New York harbor, workmen were rumored to have found old Trojans inside.





Freie Arbeiter Stimme logo; source ytak.club.fr/images
1890 -- US: First issue of the Yiddish "Freie Arbeiter Stimme" (Free Voice of Labor) appears, New York.

Among its many contributors is the poet David Edelstadt. It has an exceptional life span for a small radical newspaper, publishing until 1977. At the height of its popularity, it reaches 12,000 copies per issue.

Further details/ context, click here[Details / context]





1894 -- Short & Sweet?: Republic of Hawaii established. But, not for long. Soon invaded by peace-loving US.



1896 -- Mao Dun (1896-1981) lives. Chinese editor/author, commie ideologue, modern novelist.

Helped publish western literature (Tolstoy, Chekhov, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Byron, Keats, Shaw, etc.) & popularize new theories of literature. Mao Tun also helped found the League of Left-wing Writers, was Mao Zedong's secretary & Culture Minister, founded the monthly "Chinese Literature."

Dismissed in 1964; survived the Cultural Revolution & later rehabilitated.

Autonomedia Jubilee Saint
Famed Chinese writer, journalist, cultural critic
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/maotun.htm




Benjamin Peret
1899 -- Benjamin Péret lives. Early Parisian Dadaist & a founder of Surrealism. The most admired writer within the group & perhaps its 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, Péret was a Trotskyist who served in an anarchist militia during the Spanish Revolution, & was active around Parisian anarchist circles in the late 1940s.

This wine which is only white to make the sun come up

because the sun runs its hands through its hair.




1901 -- Jazz great Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong lives (1904-1971) [Again!].

Louis Armstrong"Man, if you gotta' ask, you'll never know."

David,

The story of Louis Armstrong's birthday being on the Fourth of July is apocryphal. The actual DOB is August 4, 1901, not July 4, 1904 (per Louis Armstrong's official website.)

— Bleedster Michael C, July 4, 2005

http://www.satchmo.com/louisarmstrong/links.html




Elisee Reclus
1905 -- Radical geographer Élisée Reclus (1830-1905) dies. Daily Bleed Saint, March 15.
The Legacy of Elisée Reclus, Conference, October 27-30, 2006 Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Only anarchist geographer known to have a wine dedicated in his honor, Cuvée Elisée(two vintages, 1991 [no longer available] & 1999)...

Cuvée Elisée wine label




1906 -- Portugal: Emídio Santana lives (1906-1988), Lisbon. Militant with the CGT.




Emídio SantanaSantana, on his birthday in 1937 (see below), attempts to assassinate Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Dictator Salazar, which lands him in prison for 14 years.

With the overthrow of the dictatorship in 1974 he began publishing the newspaper "A Batalha".

Author of Historia de un atentado & Memorias de un militante anarco-sindicalista.





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.

Source: [Calendar Riots]




IWW black sabotage cat
1910 -- US: The newspaper "Solidarity," voice of the I.W.W. (Industrial Workers of the World), 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 ofsabotage.



1914 -- US: Accidental bomb explosion at Lexington Avenue in New York City kills four people, including Arthur Caron, Carl Hansen, & Charles Berg, anarchists who knew Alexander Berkman from the protests at John D. Rockefeller's estate in Tarrytown, N.Y.


1918 -- Ann Landers lives. So too Abigail Van Buren. Why, you ask?


1927 -- Playwright Neil Simon lives, New York City.


1928 -- Ted Joans lives (1928-2003), on a riverboat in Cairo, Illinois.
This bent metal serpent/
holy horn with lids like beer
mug/ with phallic tail why did they invent you
before Coleman Hawkins was born ?
This curved shiney tune gut/ hanging lynched like/ J
shaped initial of jazz/ wordless without a reed when
Coleman Hawkins first fondled it/kissed it with Black
sound did COngo blood sucking Belges frown ?
This tenor/alto/bass/baritone/soprano/moan/cry &
shout-a-phone ! sex-oh-phone/tell-it-like-damn-
sho-isa-phone !What tremors ran through Adolphe
Saxe the day Bean grabbed his ax ?
This golden mine of a million marvelous sounds/black
notes with myriad shadows/or empty crooked tube of
technical white poor-formance/calculated keys that
never unlock soul doors/white man made machine saved
from zero by Coleman Hawkins !
This saxophone salvation/modern gri gri hanging from
jazzmen's necks placed there by Coleman Hawkins
a full body & soul sorcerer whose spirit dwells eternally
in every saxophone NOW & all those sound-a-phones
to be

'The Sax Bit' by Ted Joans

http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/JoansTed/joans.htm



James & Nora
1931 -- James Joyce & Nora Barnacle legalize their 26-year common-law marriage at the Kensington Registry Office in London on his father's birthday. The event makes the front pages.



1935 -- Thomas Wolfe, having fled to Europe in March to avoid the publicity surrounding publication of his novelOf Time & the River arrives back in New York, met at the dock by Maxwell Perkins.


1936 -- League of Nations discontinues sanctions against Italy over its invasion & annexation of Abyssinia.

La Societá delle Nazioni cancella le sanzioni contro l'Italia con decorrenza dal 15 luglio; sono state in vigore solo 9 mesi. L'atto sancisce ancora una volta l'inutilitá totale di questo organismo internazionale asservito alla politica imperialista degli stati nazionali.




1937 -- Portugal: The anarcho-syndicalist Emídio Santana (see 1906 above) attempts to kill Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Dictator Salazar. Emídio is sent to prison for 14 years.
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Em%C3%ADdio_Santana


1938 -- US: Know the Real Score? The American Federation of Musician's Board of Delegates met in Florida for its forty-third annual convention during the summer of 1938 (exact date unknown), & adopted a resolution to fight the "communist menace" within the US Labor movement. The national delegates' report noted:

"Certain communistic influences within [San Francisco's] Local Six have been, for the past year, sending out a communistic sheet known as 'The Score,' & certain communistic members of our Union have been carrying the program of the Communistic Party into the affairs of our Union."

It also claimed Union Locals in "New York, Philadelphia, Detroit & Los Angeles have these same communistic influences anonymously working or boring from within their unions."


Fighting the Communist Menace
in San Francisco Unions




A portion of the resolution adopted by the delegates read:

"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..."


San Francisco Musicians' Union Local Six had been concerned since the early 1930s about Communist influence in the Labor movement, & made note of Communist activity in its report to the membership about the 1934 General Strike.

A study of the minutes of Local Six board meetings from August 1938 to November 1941, shows no San Francisco members explicitly expelled for Communist Party, or "communistic" activities.

http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/bund2.html


1951 -- US: In Madison, Wisconsin The Capital Times reporter John Patrick Hunter takes to the streets with a "petition," (actually the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, six amendments from the Bill of Rights & the 15th amendment of the Constitution) & tries to get people to sign it. Only one in 112 does. Twenty accuse Hunter of being a communist. Some fear signing a document that might be used by McCarthy. The rest find it too subversive. America has changed so much since then that some 50 years later, Harper's editor Lewis Lapham can write that America is "blessed with a bourgeoisie that will welcome fascism as gladly as it welcomes the rain in April & the sun in June."


1963 -- US: Baltimore police arrest 283 civil rights demonstrators.



ClosetDweller
1966 -- US: LBJ signs Freedom of Information Act. The ceremony was brief; after signing the President burst into uncontrollable laughter & had to be led away. Results in burst appendices.


About this time a few years back a certain Bleedster wrote:

@#!* Is this for real? Do you know what made him laugh? Is the burst appendix reference for real or a Bleed joke? @#!*

Please note: A close reading reveals ... we do not claim his "appendix" burst.

PS: Remember, we at the "Daily Bleed" NEVER joke!






1966 -- US: NAACP, meeting 4th-9th of July, rejects Black Power concepts.


1967 -- England: House of Lords votes to decriminalize homosexual acts between consenting adults. Such acts are, today, still illegal in a majority of US states.


1968 -- Bill Graham stages first concert at Fillmore West (Van Ness & Market), Frisco, California.


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


1969 -- US: National antiwar conference in Cleveland, Ohio, mapping activities against the Vietnam War, results in the founding of New Mobe.


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


Joan Baez
1978 -- Russia: Joan Baez concert in Leningrad with Santana & The Beach Boys is abruptly cancelled without explanation by Soviet officials. Baez heads to Moscow, meets dissidents, including Andrei Sakharov & Yelena Bonner, bringing messages & gifts from friends & relatives in the U.S.



1980 -- Anthropologist, cultural theorist Gregory Bateson dies, San Francisco.


1981 -- Willie Nelson hosts his annual 4th of July picnic. However, the usual site (since 1973) at Dripping Springs, Texass is vacant because Nelson is at Caesar's Palace in Vegas. Loyal fans haven't the vaguest idea why.

Rome had Caesar, a man of remarkable governing talents, although it must be said that a ruler who arouses opponents to resort to assassination is probably not as smart as he ought to be.

— Barbara W. Tuchman, 1912-1989




1981 -- 89-ed?: On the 155th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's death, Dumas Malone, 89 & nearly blind, publishes The Sage of Monticello, the sixth & last volume of his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Jefferson.


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 -- Israel: 200 army reservists march against Israeli invasion of Lebanon.


1983 -- US: Women's Encampment For a Future of Peace & Justice begins in Romulus, New York, near Seneca Army Depot.


Butch from Little Rascals
1983 -- US: Rev. Jerry Falwell says that AIDS — which he calls a "gay plague" — is God's way of "spanking" us.

One member of the audience screamed, "Yes! Yes, God Yes! Punish Me! Spank Me!!!


Somebody's always making laws.

Why don't they make a law to make a man happy, instead of making laws to bust a guy all up?

— Farina in "Little Daddy"





Ted Berrigan
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. Wrote over 20 books includingThe Sonnets (1964), Bean Spasms (with Ron Padgett & Joe Brainard) (1967), Poems, In Brief (1971), Red Wagon (1976), & A Certain Slant of Sunlight (1988).





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


1993 -- US: Taxi!!?? Pizza Hut blimp deflates, lands safely on W 56th street in NYC.


Captain America
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.

Thomas Disch (1940-2008) dies, an apparent suicide.
American dystopianist, "new wave" science fiction writer along
with P.K. Dick, Samuel Delany, Roger Zelazny,
Ursula K. LeGuin & 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, sci-fi author & anarchist activist

"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/.../010413.html


Mallarmé drowning
Chatterton coughing up his lungs
Auden frozen in a cottage
Byron expiring at Missolonghi
& Hart Crane visiting Missolonghi & dying there too

The little boot of Sylvia Plath wedged in its fatal stirrup
Tasso poisoned
Crabbe poisoned
T.S. Eliot raving for months in a Genoa hospital before he died
Pope disappearing like a barge in a twilight of drugs

The execution of Marianne Moore
Pablo Neruda spattered against the Mississippi
Hofmannsthal’s electrocution
The quiet painless death of Robert Lowell
Alvarez bashing his bicycle into an oak

The Brownings lost at sea
The premature burial of Thomas Gray
The baffling murder of Stephen Vincent Benét
Stevenson dying of dysentery
& Catullus of a broken heart

— Tom Disch




3000 --


Daily Bleed Saint 2003, EMMELINE PANKHURST
Militant, bomb-planting English suffragette, rights activist.





Comic anarchist with bomb & match, grinning
3001 --

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 & André Breton




6000 --
Golden Beak by Sue Coe
Graphic from Sue Coe's The Tragedy of War Series
http://asuartmuseum.asu.edu/2003/coe/
Anarchist History pages pointer

anti-CopyRite 1997-3000, more or less
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