Monday, October 10, 2011

Daily Bleed Radical Literary History for October 10th

An October day, with waves running in blue-white lines & a capful of wind.

— Amy Lowell, "Men, Women & Ghosts"




OCTOBER 10

CHARLES FOURIER
French utopian socialist, prophet of lemonade seas.



INDIGENOUS PEOPLE'S DAY.
Alternative to celebrating 500 years of genocide.
In the United States alone, government policies exterminated over 160 million Native Americans — Where is their holocaust center?

FIREANT FESTIVAL (Marshall, Texass) (Moveable holiday, 2nd weekend of the month).

FIRE PREVENTION WEEK, USA — you know what to do.


transmission belt
FEAST OF THE CHAINS OF TRANSMISSION.



--

"'There's another queer old customer,' said Waterloo, 'comes over, as punctual as the almanack ... at 11 o'clock on the 10th of October.'"

Charles Dickens, Reprinted Pieces

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens




Direct Action; source: alasbarricadas.org
1609 -- England: Dig This? Level-headed Gerrard Winstanley lives.

Started digging up the heath in the commons, & all hell broke loose. He reappears in the streets of San Francisco in the 1960s. All Diggers are now called "Emmett Grogan."




The English Diggers (1649-50), Lots More Stuff:
Further details/ context, click here[Context / details]





1738 -- American (& English) painter Benjamin West (1738-1820). He's in Artcyclopedia, with 20 links to his art.
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/west_benjamin.html


1758 -- England: Townsfolk invade the Justices meeting at Dunchurch & seize the lists from which locals were to be chosen for compulsory army service. Though three of the crowd are apprehended, two of them are liberated in Coventry, on their way to Warwick gaol.
Source: [Calendar Riots]


1780 -- "Great Hurricane of 1780," deadliest Atlantic hurricane in history, struck at Barbados, killing more than 4,000. In the following three days, the storm destroyed English, Spanish & French fleets, & directly struck a number of Caribbean islands. The final death toll was approximately 20-30,000.


1813 -- Opera composer Giuseppe Verdi, lives, Rancola, Italy. A musical prodigy, he became a church organist at the age of seven. Verdi became extremely popular, commanding higher fees than any other composers of his time. Verdi produced three masterpieces: Rigoletto (1851), Il Trovatore (1853), & La Traviata (1853).


1834 -- Aleksis Kivi lives, Nurmijärvi. Wrote Seitsemän veljestä (Seven Brothers, 1870). Though he struggled throughout his life against poverty & hostile criticism, his works are now regarded as classics & he the father of the Finnish novel, dramatist, & creator of Finland's modern literature.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/akivi.htm


1837 -- Charles Fourier, French utopian theorist, dies.
http://www.ephemanar.net/juin04.html#statue_fourier

"La concurrence prépare les crises, ruine le plus grand nombre, élève une aristocratie mercantile, frappe à la fois les chefs d'usines et les ouvriers. Elle perpétue l'esclavage sous la forme du salariat. Le travail rebutant, inorganisé, mal payé, ressemble à un châtiment. La misère grandit avec l'abondance. Nos populations sont aussi malheureuses que celle d'Asie."




Play Chess Master, $2
1857 -- US: American Chess Association formed, New York City.



1865 -- The billiard ball is patented by John Wesley Hyatt, winning $10,000 in a contest to come up with a substitute for the ivory ball (in use at the time).


1868 -- Cuba: Revolt against Spain. Carlos Manuel de Cepedes initiates the movement after freeing his slaves.


1886 -- The tuxedo jacket made its debut in the US. The tail-less dress coat, first introduced in England, was worn for the first time in America at the Tuxedo Club in New York. Most of the guests at the club were shocked by its informality, but the tuxedo jacket eventually became more popular than the tailcoat, & remains so today.


1888 -- US: Strait & Narrow? Teetotalers excursion train crushed, killing 64, Mud Run, Pennsylvania.


Malatesta
1889 -- Italy: Errico Malatesta, having returned from South America in September, begins issuing the anarchist publication "L'Associazione," of which Nos. 1-3 were published at Nice (October 10, etc.) & Nos. 4-7, until January 23, 1890, in London.
Further details/context, click here[Context / details]



1892 -- Ivo Andric lives, Dolac in Bosnia. Serbo-Croatian novelist & short story writer, snags the 1961 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Radical nationalist arrested when Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria in 1914. Andric did three years in prison. After WWII joined the Communist Party, was president of the Union of Yugoslav Writers & also elected to Yugoslavia's federal assembly as a representative for Bosnia.


http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/andric.htm



Umberto Marzocchi poster
1900 -- Italy: Umberto Marzocchi lives (1900-1986). Marzocchi fought Mussolini's fascists in Italy, Franco's in Spain & Hitler's in France.


A shipyard worker in La Spezia, he became an anarchist at a very early age & by 1917 was secretary of the metalworkers’ union affiliated to the USI (Italian Syndicalist Union), thanks to his youth which precluded his being mobilised for front-line service as a reprisal....

En 1975, il participe à Vendôme au 30e Congrès de la Fédération anarchiste française. participants include d'Umberto MARZOCCHI (En 1968, il est un des organisateurs du Congrès de "l'Internationale des Fédérations anarchistes" (I.F.A) qui a lieu à Carrare. Il assurera alors durant une douzaine d'années le secrétariat de l'I.F.A.).

A lifelong militant, in 1977, by then almost 80, he was arrested in Spain during an international anarchist gathering.

Sources: http://libcom.org/history/marzocchi-umberto-1900-1986
http://www.ephemanar.net/octobre10.html



1901 -- France: Laurent Tailhade is sent to jail for a year, following an article written in the "Libertarian" at the time of the visit of the Tsar, for "provoking murder."

Laurent Tailhade (1854-1919), a French poet & author, best known as an anarchist polemist, had previously written a provocative defense of Valiant's bomb attack in 1893.Tailhade was a chance victim of a bomb explosion at a restaurant on April 4, 1894, but far from disavowing his words, he became even more militant.

See also the Daily Bleed, Further details/context, click hereApril 16, 1854


Des âges évolus j’ai remonté le fleuve
Et, le cœur enivré de sublimes desseins,
Déserté le Hadès et les ombrages saints,
Où l’âme d’une paix ineffable s’abreuve.


— Laurent Tailhade, "Helene (Le laboratoire de Faust à Wittemberg)"




1903 -- England: Women's Social & Political Union founded, London.


1906 -- Novelist & short story writer R.K. (Rasipuram Krishnaswami) Narayan, lives, Madras, India. One of the first Indians writing in English to achieve international acclaim. Narayan wrote hundreds of short stories, & more than 30 novels, including The English Teacher (1945), Waiting for the Mahatma (1955),The Guide (1958), & The Vendor of Sweets (1967). He died at the age of 94 in May of 2001.


1908 -- Baseball Writers Association, formed.


1911 -- China: Sun Yat-sen's revolutionaries overthrow Manchus, (Taiwan National Day).


1912 -- Marion Bromley lives. Longtime war tax resister in Cincinnati.


1912 -- US: Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) strike in Little Falls, New York.
http://www.iww.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_World



1913 -- Gamboa Dam in Panama blown up; Atlantic & Pacific waters mix, marks the beginning of global warming.



Claude Simon
1913 -- Claude Simon lives, Tananarive, Madagascar. French writer, whose works are among the most authentic representatives of nouveau roman that emerged in the 1950s. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1985.

Simon's style is a mixture of narration & stream of consciousness. His prose frequently lacks punctuation & is densely constructed, with 1,000-word sentences. Influenced during his youth by the aesthetic theories of painter Raoul Dufy, & thus approaches writing with an emphasis on artistic composition of language.

In the 1930s Simon travelled in the Soviet Union. 1934-1935 he served with the French army's Thirty-first Dragoons. During the Spanish Civil War he was involved in gun-running to the Republicans.

Rejoined the Dragoons in WWII. Captured by the Germans, & sent to a prison camp, Simon escaped & joined the Resistance.


http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/csimon.htm



Thelonious Monk
1917 -- Jazz great Thelonious Monk lives, Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

THELONIOUS MONK
Great Black American jazz composer, performer.

"Jazz is my adventure. I'm after new chords, new ways of syncopating, new figures, new runs. How to use notes differently. That's it. Just using notes differently."

— Thelonious Monk


Innovative jazz pianist & composer of "Round Midnight." One of the fathers of jazz improvisation. In 1961 he is featured on the cover of "Time" magazine, only one of three jazz musicians to grace its covers.




Malatesta; source: akpress.org
1920 -- Italy: Errico Malatesta meets his comrades of the General Council of the Unione Anarchica Italiana, 22 out of 30, at their first six-monthly meeting in Bologna, where he takes up the question of action on behalf of political prisoners; the Council also resolves to contact the Socialist-Anarchist Federation of Holland, which proposes to organize an International Anarchist Congress.
Source: Max Nettlau, Errico Malatesta: The Biography of an Anarchist


Luisa Capetillo quote
1922 -- Luisa Capetillo dies (1879– 1922). One of Puerto Rico's most famous labor organizers.

A writer & anarquista who fought for workers & women's rights. The first woman to wear pants in public in Puerto Rico, her struggles as a leader in the emerging labor movement & in a male dominated society made her a woman far ahead of her time. Author of A Nation Of Women: An Early Feminist Speaks Out / Mi opinión sobre las libertades, derechos y deberes de la muje; see also Amor y Anarquia: Los Escritos de Luisa Capetillo (Clasicos Huracan).


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luisa_Capetillo
http://www.lucyparsonsproject.org/anarchism/aldebol_luisa_capetillo.html
http://repeatingislands.com/2009/05/13/theater-%E2%80%9Cluisa-capetillo-the-active-muse%E2%80%9D/
http://www.cayey.upr.edu/node/365



1924 -- Novelist James Clavell lives.


1925 -- Janet Flanner's (Genet's) first "Letter from Paris" appears in "The New Yorker."

In Paris Was Yesterday she recalls: "All I really knew about what [Harold] Ross wished me to write was that it must be precisely accurate, highly personal, colorful, & ocularly descriptive; & that for sentence style, Gibbon was as good a model as I could bring to mind."




1930 -- Playwright Harold Pinter lives, London.

Achieved international success as one of the most complex post-World War II dramatists. His plays are noted for their use of breakdown of communication, understatement, cryptic small talk, & silence to describe the thoughts of characters.

Born in East London, son of a Jewish tailor. A conscientious objector (CO), Pinter was fined in 1949 for refusing to do military service.

By 2007 he is considered "a champagne socialist," whose explicitly political work is also his most artistically dreary.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/jul/07/comment.politics



1933 -- US: 18,000 cotton workers go on strike in Pixley, California. Four are killed before a pay-hike is finally won.
Source: [Labor Timeline]


universal anarchist symbol
1933 -- Victor Meric (1876-1933) dies. French journalist, libertarian author & antimilitarist.

Meric went from anarchism to revolutionary socialism, & wound up a Communist Party member, then devoted himself to pacifism. In 1928 he became a close friend of the anarchist journalist/lawyer Henri Jullien. Meric wrote many works, including Les bandits tragiques(1926), La der des der (1929), Les compagnons de l'escopette (1930), A travers la jungle politique et littéraire (1930/1931).




1933 -- US: Procter & Gamble introduced the first non-soap product for household clothes washing use, Dreft. First commercial application of P&G researchers' "miracle molecules" developed in the 1920s.

Soap & education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.

— Mark Twain

NORMAL is nothing more than a cycle on a washing machine.

— Whoopi Goldberg




1935 -- George Gershwin's Porgy & Bess premieres at the Alvin Theater in NY City. In 1926, George Gershwin read the book Porgy by DuBose Heyward, about the black inhabitants of Catfish Row, a slum neighborhood in Charleston, South Carolina.


1954 -- Source=Robert Braunwart Guatemala: CIA-sponsored Col. Carlos Castillo Armas becomes president. Democracy, American-style.


1955 -- US: "S.F. Labor’s First Fight For 10-Hour Day," an article by Dolores Waldorf, appears in the the Call-Bulletin today.
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist8/earlylabor.html





1956 -- Source=Robert Braunwart Hong Kong: Severe anti-Communist rioting & looting break out.


1957 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Eisenhower apologizes to the finance minister of Ghana, who was refused service in a Delaware restaurant. Our sources don't indicate African-Americans similarly treated are also recipients of Eisenhower's apology.


?
1957 -- Got Milk?: Fire at an English nuclear facility causes radiation leakage & contaminates milk in a 200 mile radius with Iodine-131. The contaminated milk was dumped into the Irish Sea. (A plot to make Irish kids grow up into good British subjects!)

http://www.whymilk.com/
http://pediatrics.aappublications...abstract/111/4/745


SI dingbat
1958 -- France: Opening of La Méthode, a cabaret operated by Michèle Bernstein & Guy Debord on the Rue Descartes, Paris.
[Situationist Resources]



Brendan Behan
1960 -- Brendan Behan appears on Jack Paar Show, sings a song, smokes a cigar, & denies he's entered a buttermilk-drinking contest with Jackie Gleason.

"I've never seen a situation so dismal that a policeman couldn't make it worse."



Brendan Behan:

On Religion: "When I'm in health I'm not at all religious. But when I'm sick I'm very religious."
"I'm a daylight atheist, when I'm on an airplane no one loves God more."

On Canada: "A lot of people say I hate Canada. I don't hate any place... well, I make certain exceptions. Canada's the only place where I've been accused of being a Dogan. That's an Irish Catholic. I asked them for it in writing so I could show it at home."

"Vancouver? A terrible hole."

"Canada is barbaric without being picturesque."
"Toronto will be a fine town when it's finished."

Alcohol: "When I was growing up, drunkenness was not regarded as a social disgrace. To get enough to eat was regarded as an achievement; to get drunk was a victory."


http://recollectionbooks.com/links.html#BrendanBehan




1961 -- Source=Robert Braunwart Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22 is published.


Monster, animated
1962 -- The BBC bans Bobby "Boris" Pickett's "Monster Mash." Neither obscene nor controversial (it's about a horror-movie-star record hop), "Monster Mash," like many other songs, is banned under a catch-all regulation prohibiting the broadcast of anything deemed "offensive."


1963 -- La tragedia del bacino del Vajont provoca la morte di 1989 persone. Lo stato è il massimo responsabile del disastro, nella persona dei componenti del Consiglio superiore dei lavori pubblici che facevano parte sia della commissione di approvazione del progetto che di quella preposta alla verifica dei lavori. Un progetto che non avrebbe mai dovuto trovare attuazione data la natura franosa dei terreni.
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]


1965 -- US: Yale University announces publication of "The Vinland Map & the Tartar Relation," the Vinland Map purportedly drawn about 1440 based on 13th-century recordings of the early 11th-century Norse expedition to North America. The Leif Ericsson expedition is not in dispute, but this map certainly is — from both chemical & linguistic analysis, style & orientation of the map, & details that appear to be copied form a Portuguese map of 1503. Yale stands by the authenticity of the map.

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at.

— Oscar Wilde

http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/anarchQuotes.htm




1966 -- Source=Robert Braunwart US: Diggers start distributing free food, Golden Gate Park (approx. date).


1967 -- Treaty demilitarizing outer space comes into force.


1967 -- Japan: 2,000 riot police unsuccessfully attempt a "survey" in Sanrizuki.


1970 -- US: The running race between Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader US Vice Vice President Spiro Agnew & FCC Commissioner Johnson continues: Johnson, in response to Agnew's charge that rock music drives young people to drugs, plays rock music during a speech, saying that Agnew would do well to listen to song lyrics to understand what's happening around the US.


1970 -- US: Spare Change? Secretary of State Paul Powell of Illinois, whose salary never exceeded $30,000, dies, leaving an estate of over $3 million — much of it in $100 bills found stuffed in shoe boxes, envelopes, & a bowling bag.


1970 -- Canada: Quebec separatists kidnap provincial Labor Minister Pierre Laporte from in front of his home; he is found strangled eight days later after the government refuses to pay a $500,000 ransom, St. Lambert.


1973 -- Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader US Vice Vice President Spiro Agnew resigns in scandal & disgrace. Under investigation for taking kickbacks & bribes, pleaded nolo contendere to a charge of income tax evasion.

When John Erlichman asked him why he kept Agnew on the ticket in the 1972 election, Dick M Good Nixon replied that “No assassin in his right mind would kill me. They know that if they did that they would wind up with Agnew.”

music line
They say the President's dead, but they can't find his head,
It's been missing now for weeks.
But no one noticed it, he had seemed so fit,
& I'm sick of it.


— Lou Reed, 1989


http://www.panix.com/~scmiller/goodbye/sep/agnew.htm
http://www.loureed.org/

You’re totally unqualified but you’ve just been elected Vice-President of the United States of America. What now – a trip to Disneyland? No! Dig up a phrase-monger like William Safire & attack the “vicars of vacillation,” the “pusillanimous pussyfooters,” “nattering nabobs of negativism,” the “ideological eunuchs,” the “rad-libs,” the “decadent few,” the “effete corps of of impudent snobs,” & “the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.”



1974 -- US: General George Brown's speech deplores Jewish influence in US.


1976 -- Greece's 98 year-old Dimitrion Yordanidis, is oldest man to compete in a marathon; he finishes in 7:33.


1977 -- US: William Cole kills his foreman.

Work is not the continuation of divine creation,
rather a contest of life & death whereby work
triumphs over wisdom, & (vice versa).




Orson Welles
1985 -- One-time film great Orson Welles dies.



1987 -- West Germany: 30,000 demonstrate against nuclear power plant, Wackersdorf.
http://www.thebulletin.org/
http://www.nirs.org/



Photo by Dorothea Lange
1990 -- US: Reparations payments begin, to survivors & families of Japanese-Americans taken from their homes & put into concentration camps during World War II. In the entire course of the war, 10 people were convicted of spying for Japan — all of whom were Caucasian.

Photo by Dorothea Lange, June 1942





1991 -- Last Laff?: Redd Foxx comedian (Sanford & Sons), dies at 68, of the "big one."

When Foxx was rehearsing on the set of his latter-day series, "The Royal Family," Foxx suffered a fatal heart attack. When he collapsed & complained of chest pains, everyone at the scene laughed.




1994 -- Greenpeace ship begins trip down Amazon River to protest illegal logging by transnational corporations, South America.
http://activism.greenpeace.org/amazon/index.php


1994 -- US: For the second year in a row, Denver, Colorado cancels its traditional Columbus Day parade due to fears of confrontations with "radical elements" among the Native American community.


1994 -- Source=Robert Braunwart Beginning date of Jean-Claude Van Damme movie "Timecop."


1995 -- Transcript released of an actual radio conversation of a US naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland. Released by the Chief of Naval Operations.

Americans: "Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision."

Canadians: "Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision."

Just another Urban Legend? Oh, it's true all right. James Mountain Bookseller & Sprinkler Specialist extraordinaire, was "the fucking lighthouse keeper," according to Michael John Thompson, yet another Canadian who found a true calling in cooking de books. (Real names changed to protect the guilty.)
http://www.mjtbooks.com/




1997 -- Source=Robert Braunwart Jody Williams & International Campaign to Ban Landmines win Nobel Peace Prize.

1998
THOMAS SPENCE
Father of Proletarian Jubilee Movement. Our Patron Saint, 1998.
Citizen of land justice.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRspence.htm


2000 -- Japan: Memorial plaque dedicated to Chiune Sugihara hailed as 'Japan's Schindler', celebrating the 100th anniversary of his birth.

On Sept. 1, 1939, the day World War II began in Europe, Sugihara was named Japanese consul in Lithuania. There he was deluged by Jews seeking help in fleeing Nazi atrocities, & he responded by issuing visas to thousands of Polish Jews in 1940 against the express orders of his government.




2000 -- Australia: "The decrepit old bastard," Vince Englart (1923-2000) dies.

Even after death he can still cause a stir. When his family attempted to place a death notice with theBrisbane Courier Mail newspaper (part of the Rupert Murdoch News Limited empire), it was rejected. Even the Funeral director was shocked that a family term of endearment, "the decrepit old bastard," was rejected for publication. Censorship of his Death notice comes at the end of a long life of blacklisting & discrimination. For Englart was a model communist & social activist for over 60 years.


http://www.takver.com/history/englart/vince_englart.htm


2000 -- Source=Robert Braunwart 44 years after it was thrown from a ship in the Indian Ocean, a message in a bottle is found in New Zealand near the home of the author, Hans Schwarz.



@ book
2003 -- US: Mid-Atlantic Anarchist Bookfair.



2009 -- Sandy Paton Memorial & Music Tribute. Sandy (1929-2009) cofounder of Folk-Legacy records, Bleedster & a great fan of theDaily Bleed from the early beginnings.
http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=122722&messages=67



Abbey's Road
3500 --




Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, & county commissioners."

Edward Abbey




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