JULY 18
SIMON VINKENOOG
Dutch writer, poet, counter-cultural activist heavyweight.SV
US: RAILROAD DAY. The grand trunk line completed, 1853.
(Try not to get railroaded today, pullease!)
-552 -- [B.C.] Mahavina, apostle of Jainism, lives, India.
64 -- Great fire of Rome begins (Nero didn't fiddle).
Bleedster Scott L. notes:
My recollection of my ancient history reading is that he was performing in a poetry reading at the time.
1610 -- Master painter of street life, Caravaggio, dies. (see 27 September).
1666 -- Anne Bradstreet's home burns to the ground. The experience is recounted in her poem "Verses Upon the Burning of Our House, July 18th, 1666."
1811 -- William Makepeace Thackeray lives, Calcutta, India. English journalist, novelist, famous for his novelVanity Fair. Among the pseudonyms he uses are M. A. Titmarsh, C. H. Yellowplush, G. S. Fitzboodle, & Théophile Wagstaff.
1817 -- Jane Austen, 41, dies in Winchester, England, after a lingering illness.
1848 -- William Gilbert Grace Victorian England's greatest cricketer, lives. Inspires Buddy Holly & the Cirickets.
1870 -- No Mistake About It?: Vatican Council declares Papal Infallibility a doctrine of the Church.
1872 -- Britain introduces voting by secret ballot.
1881 -- Jules Sellenet, known as Francis Boudoux, lives (1881-1941), St Etienne. French militant, antimilitarist & anarcho-syndicalist.Boudoux was arrested numerous times for his antimilitary activities & also for "offenses related to industrial disputes."
In 1926, he served with Pierre Besnard, founder of the C.G.T- S.R. (revolutionary syndicalist), as secretary of the Federation of Builders.
Boudoux fought in Spain in 1936 with the Durruti Column.
1885 -- Marino Moretti, lives, Cesenatico. Italian poet/prose writer, a leader of the Crepuscolarismo movement in the early 20th century.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Marino+Moretti
1887 -- Argentina: In Buenos-Aires, at the initiative of anarchist Ettore Mattei, "La Sociedad Cosmopolita de Resistancia y Colocación de Obreros Panaderos," the first organized workers' resistance society, is founded.Errico Malatesta, in Argentina, at the time, wrote its statutes for them.
http://www.ephemanar.net/juillet18.html#boulangersargentins
http://www.google.com/webhp...Ettore+Mattei
1889 -- Horatio Alger, 65, who had a personal sex thing for young boys, dies in Natick, Massachusetts.
"As we shall see with Deadwood Dick & Horatio Alger's stories, the dime novels allow "magical transformations" in terms of gender relations, as well — women turn into men in the wild West, boys transform into erotically-charged proteges for captains of industry — as compensation for the "impossibility of imagining 'realistic' actions by powerful agents," which could just as easily be the assertion of homoerotic desire as proletariat unrest."
http://www.washburn.edu/sobu/broach/algerFAQ.html
1894 -- England: Leicester anarchist-communist hold a meeting, Dr. Fauset MacDonald, a member of the Freedom group & a widely respected anarchist, delivering an address on "The Anarchists' Plan of Campaign."
http://www.le.ac.uk/li/sources/subject1/specol/gorrie.html
http://www.takver.com/history/raa/raa29.htm
1898 -- Shanghai: Serious riots in the French settlement due to the closing of the Ningpo josshouse. Several Chinese were killed & some foreigners hurt by stones.
http://www.corkscrew-balloon.com/travel/9807france/
1900 -- Nathalie Sarraute lives (1900-1999). Russian born French novelist/critic. A pioneer & leading theorist of the nouveau roman, discarding conventional ideas about plot, chronology, characterization & narrative point of view.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/sarraute.htm
1902 -- Novelist Jessamyn West lives, near North Vernon, Indiana (1902). Best known for her stories of her Quaker ancestors, The Friendly Persuasion (1945).
http://www.corkscrew-balloon.com/travel/9807france/
1906 -- Playwright Clifford Odets, author of Awake & Sing; Waiting for Lefty lives, Philadelphia.
http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap8/odets.html
1910 -- Red Skelton starts clowning around.
1913 -- US: Book burning in Seattle, Washington, as sailors destroy the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) union hall, busting windows & burning the books they found there.These fine guardians of freedom, liberty & the American Way also ransack the Socialist Party headquarters.
http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/strike/...iwwhallwrecked
http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=pf_output.cfm&file_id=2016
1914 -- US: Seattle's Potlatch festival, including bombing the city with flour bags.
1917 -- Brazil: Beginning of citywide General Strike in Rio de Janeiro, for an 8-hour day & 20% wage increase. Includes furniture workers, tailors, shoemakers, bread carriers, textile workers, metal workers.[Details / context]
1917 -- US: Frank Little — a frail, small, one-eyed former miner nursing a recently broken leg– rides into Butte, Montana. Looks were deceiving, for Little was a fiery union organizer determined to infuse the faltering Butte strike with the passion of the Industrial Workers of the World."An injury to one is an injury to all! So all together, you diggers & muckers. Force the bosses off your back. Put them down to work in the hole with the producers. Hand them their muck sticks & make them earn a living for a change!" — Frank Little
The mining owners will soon have him brutally murdered.http://www.kued.org/productions/fire/photos_stories/gibraltar.html
1918 -- Nelson Mandela lives. Nobel Peace prize-winner [1993]; South African President; imprisoned for 28 years.Any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose. — Nelson Mandela
http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?include=docs/misc/2010/umzabalazo.html
1919 -- US: 35,000 stockyard workers strike in Chicago.
1922 -- Thomas Kuhn lives, Cincinnati, Ohio.
THOMAS KUHN
Philosopher of the deep structure of scientific discovery, DAILY BLEED SAINT 1998.
1923 -- Minneapolis: Magnus Johnson elected to the Senate. He is the candidate of a new radical party; a party saved from adopting the Moscow brand of communism only by a schism within the Moscow element.
1925 -- US: H.L. Mencken, in Dayton, Tennessee, to cover the Scopes Trial, narrowly avoids being ridden out of town on a rail."There's something I must tell you. It's worried me. I didn't violate the law ...I never taught that evolution lesson. I skipped it. I was doing something else the day I should have taught it, & I missed the whole lesson about Darwin & never did teach it. Those kids they put on the stand couldn't remember what I taught them three months ago. They were coached by the lawyers."
"Honest, I've been scared all through the trial that the kids might remember I missed the lesson. I was afraid they'd get on the stand & say I hadn't taught it & then the whole trial would go blooey. If that happened they would run me out of town on a rail."
— John Scopes http://www.gennet.org/facts/scopes.html
http://web.archive.org.../~gibbonsb/mencken.html
http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/sf/1964.htm#H.L.%20Mencken
1926 -- Canadian author Margaret Laurence lives.
1928 -- Simon Vinkenoog lives. Netherlands "Poet Laureate," writer, activist, lifelong hippy & cannabis pioneer/connoisseur par excellence. He was the editor of the anthology Atonaal(Atonal), which launched the Dutch "Fifties Movement".For over 50 years, Vinkenoog fought tirelessly against the Drug War and for the fundamental right to alter one’s consciousness. With George Andrews, he compiled the legendary anthology The Book of Grass (1967).
A PROVO activist, including Roal Van Duyn, Rob Stoik, Robert Jasper Grootveld, Bart Huges & the former situationist Constant, among his many friends are Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, Alexander Trocchi, Ken Kesey & Timothy Leary, who once referred to himself as ‘the American Simon Vinkenoog’.
Over 1,000 people gather for his funeral in 2009 where his open casket overflows with flowers, cannabis buds, joints & personal messages.
http://simonvinkenoog.nl/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Vinkenoog
http://jahsonic.wordpress.com/2009/07/12/rip-simon-vinkenoog-1928-2009/
http://www.iisg.nl/collections/vinkenoog.php
http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/ass/provo.htm
http://www.melissa.ens-cachan.fr/IMG/pdf/Drug_scenes_in_France_and_in_the_Netherlands_part_2-3.pdf
1933 -- Poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko lives, Zima Station, Irkutsk Oblast.Internationally famed Soviet poet of the post-Stalin generation. His early poems show influences by Mayakovsky & loyalty to communism, but with such works as The Third Snow (1955) he emerged as a spokesman for the youth rebellion.
Since the 1970s he has been active in many fields of culture, writing novels, engaging in acting, film directing, & photography. Politically outspoken, supported Solzhenitsyn in 1974 when the Nobel Prize Winner was arrested & exiled. In 1989 he became a member of the Congress of People's Deputies.
During a reading, Alexander Brener stood up & repeated the phrase:
"Silence, my mother wants to sleep."His provocation angered Jevtusenko, who called upon his bodyguards to help.
1934 -- US: The American Mercury accepts Emma Goldman's article, "Communism: Bolshevist & Anarchist, A Comparison," which it publishes — to Emma's disgust — in a truncated form as "There is No Communism in Russia" in April 1935, violating the spirit of the original article.Harper's magazine rejects her article "The Individual, Society, & the State"; unwilling to revise it, she submits instead the article about her US visit that Redbook rejected. She finishes writing "The Tragedy of the Political Exiles," which the Nationaccepts.
Emma hosts a gathering of young people with the aim of starting an anarchist group in Toronto & meets with them weekly throughout the summer. Among her visitors are Jeanne & Jay Levey from Chicago & her brother Herman & his son Allan.
Alexander Berkman's health & mental state decline while translating a manuscript by Rudolf Rocker.
1936 -- Spain: Fascist Generals Orgaz & Franco seize the Canary Islands, declare martial law; the phalange & the civil guard are raised & they begin shooting trade unionist workers; but still the Republican government refuses to distribute weapons to the people.Insurgents successful in taking Seville. The newspaper "Solidaridad Obrera" features the headline:
"In Seville, the fascists shoot at our brothers! In Cordoue, the soldiers uprise! In Morocco, one fights in the streets! Who does not fill their revolutionary duty is a traitor to the cause of the people! Long Live Libertarian Communism!"
Aurora MOLINA:
It was a very moving experience for me to think that the social revolution had been made, & not just in Spain. I thought that we had carried the day right around the world.Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Prime Minister Barrio offers compromise settlement to General Mola, which is rejected. Barrio is succeeded by B&RCL José Giral, who dissolves the regular Army & orders arms to be distributed to the popular militias.
http://recollectionbooks.com/anow/history/spain/
http://www.reocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/8195/blasts/pointblank/spanishrevolution.htm
http://libraries.ucsd.edu/speccoll/visfront/chron.html
1939 -- Hunter S. Thompson, Gonzo Doktor of Journalism, freak power sheriff, lives.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
H
American gonzo journalist, druggie, counter-culture hero. Patron Saint 2006-2010"Nobody seems to know what my crimes are.
The charges are vague but ... I am actually on trial for Sex, Drugs, & Rock & Roll...
This is a Political Trial, & I am nothing if not a politician. I understand vengeance."http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r31hV_BPFf0
http://web.archive.org/...SoHo/Lofts/5752/
1939 -- Spain: The anarquista guerrilla leader Juan Nieto Martínez («El Cuco») escapes from the prison at Gérgal (Almeria, Andalousie), along with «Carahermosa» & several others.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/07ref.htm#18/1939
1940 -- First successful helicopter flight, Stratford, Connecticut.
1949 -- Ai-Ling Louie, illustrator of Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story from China, lives, New York City.
1955 -- American poet, painter, critic, novelist, short story & song writer Weldon Kees disappears. He infrequently linked up with members of the San Francisco Renaissance (he read at Kenneth Rexroth's place).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weldon_Kees
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/kees/kees.htm
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/07/04/050704crat_atlarge
1964 -- Riots break out in Harlem, New York, after a police officer shoots an unarmed 15-year-old black youth, in the first of a series of summer racial riots in Brooklyn (on the 20th), Rochester, Paterson, Elizabeth, Newark, Philadelphia & suburban Chicago.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Harlem+race+riots
1966 -- Bobby Fuller, the leader of the Bobby Fuller Four, found dead in his car in Los Angeles. No conclusive cause of his death ever established. Rumored he lived a fuller life than most.
http://www.rockabillyhall.com/BobbyFuller.html
1966 --Carl Sagan turns 1 billion seconds old.
1966 -- US: Negro uprising Jacksonville, Florida; July 18-23 Negro uprising Cleveland.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Negro+Uprising
1967 -- India: Tune In, Drop Out? Plan was approved to present a transistor radio to all men undergoing sterilization.
1969 -- US: No Drinking & Diving?: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Senator Ted Kennedy offers Mary Jo Kopechne a lift home, Chappaquidick, Massachusetts.Kennedy drives off Dike Bridge killing his unmarried 28-year-old passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne. Not seriously injured himself, Kennedy left the scene of the accident, & reported nothing to the police until the following day. (See also 25 July; 1 August.)
1969 -- US: Hospital workers end 113-day strike that saw united action by strikers, students, & civil rights groups, Charleston, South Carolina.
1969 -- US: Life magazine reports on The Youth Communes.
1974 -- US: Justice Department orders John Lennon out of the country by September 10. Immigration & Unaturalacts Service denies him an extension of his non-immigrant visa because of his guilty plea in England to a 1968 marijuana possession charge.Graphic by SaintMeister Jim Koehnline
http://hempfest.org/
http://www.isomedia.com/homes/harpo/gallery/9600/anti-prohibition_1of1.html
1975 -- US: Jury can't decide on trial of Dave Forbes of Boston Bruins (first athlete indicted for excessive violence during play).
1981 -- US: Norman Mailer's literary protege Jack Henry Abbott, a convicted bank robber who has been living in Manhattan on a work-release program, gets into an early-morning argument at an East Village restaurant & stabs a young man to death.The next day, The NY Times calls his collected letters from jail, In the Belly of the Beast, "the most fiercely visionary book of it's kind in the American repertoire of prison literature ... awesome, brilliant." Columnist Murray Kempton suggests Abbott could be the first fugitive to surrender to The NY Review of Books.
1984 -- US: In San Diego, James Oliver Huberty straps an arsenal to his body, tells his wife, "I'm going to hunt humans," & strolls down the block to the local McDonald's where he kills 21 & wounds 19 (a record body count for one man in one day) before being slain by police.
1987 -- Brazilian writer Gilberto de Mello Freyre dies. Organizer of the first northeastern regionalist congress in Recife. Casa-grande e senzala (The Masters & the Slaves, 1933), the story of Brazil's Portuguese colonizers & their African slaves, is his best-known work.
http://www.fgf.org.br/
1988 -- California appeals court upholds lower court decision to dismiss a case against Ozzy Osbourne & CBS Records. In 1984 a teenager allegedly killed himself after listening to Ozzy's "Suicide Solution."
1997 -- India: In Bombay, at least 8,000 low-caste Indians riot after a funeral for 10 children killed by police.
1997 -- US: Seattle songster Jim Page plays benefit for the anarchist paper, "Eat the State!".
For over 20 years, Jim's blend of music, humor, & political commentary has enchanted audiences. So we were hanging out plotting Seattle's future the other night when legendary folk singer Jim Page walks in & sez, "I wanna do a benefit for you, & I got a friend named Chris Chandler coming to town, & we can do it on July 18."
Whose World is This
Stranger In Me
http://web.archive.org/...eatthestate.org/01-43/SingDanceGive.htm
2001 -- American songster Mimi Fariña gets her one-way ticket on a gray day. A folk musician who started a little organization called Bread & Roses. This organization found musical acts to perform, free of charge for the infirm, the downtrodden, & the imprisoned. Mimi also happened to be the sister of Joan Baez & partner of Richard Fariña.
"Been down so
long, it looks
like up to me."
Political activism earned folk music artist/beat novelist Richard Fariña a subpoena to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. The government wanted to make him a criminal after a playfully defiant trip to Cuba & his outspoken performances in college campus communities. But the crimes that were taking place in the United States of America were not of the sort that were perpetrated by Fariña. They were violations of Civil Rights & personal freedom provided for by the U.S. Constitution. Though killed in a 1966 motorcycle accident, his lyrics set to the Celtic strains of acoustic guitar & Appalachian dulcimer, & his 12-bar blues tunes with electric guitar & bass accompaniment, remain as an indictment of those crimes.
http://www.richardandmimi.com/
2007 -- Black American griot poet, playwright, performer Sekou Sundiata dies, Harlem, New York City.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H18mBu9LI2Y
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sekou_Sundiata
3000 --"Bill Clinton does not have the moral fiber to be a mass murderer."
— Henry Kissinger (moral insider & one who would know), quoted in the (truly excellent) newsletter"CounterPunch", Vol 4, No. 11, June 1-15, 1997
http://www.counterpunch.org/anti-CopyRite 1997-3000, more or less
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