Daily Bleed Radical Literary History for October 18th

OCTOBER 18

DIGNA OCHOA
Mexican human rights activist, martyr.

---

Kent, England: CHARLETON HORN FAIR, Merrymakers wear horns on heads &, among other delights, men dress as women whipping genuine women with bunches of furze. By 1872, "the fair had degenerated into an all-out orgy & was suppressed."

ALASKA DAY.



FESTIVAL OF POETIC TERRORISM.

---

1016 -- Danes defeat Saxons at Battle of Assandun. 



1539 -- New World: The first printing press in North America arrives in México City, along with Italian printer Juan Pablos.
Source: [Robert Braunwart] Hereafter attributed with symbol: ]


1648 -- New World: Last is First?: First American labor organization forms: Boston Shoemakers.


1752 --  Jean-Jacques Rousseau comic opera "Le devin du village" premiers.


1776 -- Something to Crow About?: In NY bar decorated with bird tail, a customer orders "cock tail."


1785 -- Thomas Love Peacock, novelist/poet, lives. Later a close friend to Shelley, he satirizes Shelley, Byron & Coleridge in "Nightmare Abbey."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Byron
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poet/296.html
http://www.online-literature.com/shelley_percy/
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poet/253.html


1826 -- England: Until the 1990s, this day saw the last state lottery in England:

"The last of a long series of legalised swindles ... the most absurd chances were paraded as traps to catch the thoughtless, & all that ingenuity could suggest in the way of advertisement & puffing was resorted to by lottery-office keepers."

— Chambers Book of Days, 1869.

Source: [Calendar Riots]


1827 --  The "Jane Guy" arrives at Kerguelen Island in Edgar Allan Poe's novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.



1839 -- Rings Hollow?: Hollow earth theorist Cyrus Reed Teed (Prophet Koresh) lives.

1844 -- Italy: Amilcare Cipriani, Italian anarchico, lives (1844-1918), Rimini. Friend of Lissagaray (a socialist of no party, whose sympathies lay with Blanquistes anticlericals, to the anarchists, & Cipriani).
[Further details] 



1851 --  Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, is first published, in London.


1852 --  First Chinese play in the US is performed, Frisco, California.


1854 -- Belgium: Fidel-ity? US Ministers to Spain, France & Great Britain meet at Ostend, &, declaring Cuba indispensable to the security of the United States, recommend to Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Pierce that he purchase or seize the island from Spain. Sicily beats him to it.


1859 -- French philosopher, winner of Nobel for literature, Henri Bergson lives.
http://nobelprize.org/



1860 -- China: In the closing weeks of the Second Opium War — an effort by a British-led international coalition to crush Chinese resistance to European colonization — British troops in Beijing burn to the ground the Yuanmingyuan, an imperial summer palace built by the Manchu emperors.

A few weeks after the burning of the palace, the Chinese government surrenders, & is forced to sign a series of treaties that weaken its autonomy & remove foreigners in China from its jurisdiction.

In 1873, the Empress Dowager begins rebuilding the Yuanmingyaun for her retirement, & renames it Yiheyuan, meaning Garden of Peace & Harmony in Old Age. However, in 1900, it is burned to the ground again when British, Russian, & Italian troops set it to flames in retaliation for the Boxer Rebellion, another Chinese uprising against European rule.

Undiscouraged, the Empress Dowager rebuilds the palace again in 1902, & the third version of the palace manages to pass unscathed through the political & cultural upheavals in China during the 20th century.

1865 -- US: Hello, Central?: Kiowa & Comanche sign treaty agreeing to go onto reservation, ceding Central Texass to Dow Chemical.

"Maybe we should not have humored them when they asked to live on reservations. Maybe we should have said, No, come join us. Be citizens along with the rest of us."

— Acting President Ronald Reagan during a trip to Moscow, when a student asked about US treatment of Native Americans

1867 -- Going, Going, Gone?: Alaska is officially transferred from Russia to the US & Exxon.

Inuit & Native Americans living there are oblivious, not being privy to the transaction, involving two imperial governments over 5,000 miles away in opposite directions.

They needed "raw data" about as much as they needed Wiske. They made Wiske the butt of many of their jokes. Among the Potawatomi, the almighty Archon got no further than to be the subject of funny stories.

Part-human, part-beast, & possessing the Leviathanic virtue of existing forever, Wiske the gift-giver reappeared in the jokes as the long-eared, long-membered & long-tailed Trickster, forever setting traps for animals & people & forever trapping himself.

— Fredy Perlman, Against His-story, Against Leviathan!

1869 --  Henrik Ibsen play "The League of Youth" premiers, Christiana (Oslo).



1870 -- Buddhist philosopher D.T. Suzuki lives.

D. T. SUZUKI
Scholar of Buddhist religious traditions & philosophy. Daily Bleed Saint, 1998.



1881 -- Italy: Amilcare Cipriani is arrested & imprisoned for the killing of an Italian in Alexandria in 1867.

This incident was previously ruled self-defence but was invoked by Italian authorities to put the anarchist Cipriani out of commission during his revolutionary campaigning in 1881. Cipriani's imprisonment became a celebrated case across the left.

[Further details]

1890 -- John Owen is first man to run 100 yard dash in under 10 seconds.


1893 -- US: Suffragist Lucy Stone dies, Boston.



1893 -- US: Emma Goldman gets a new home for the next year at Blackwell's Island Penitentiary — rent free! Today she is sentenced, following her September 28 trial, for "inciting to riot" during her Union Square speeches delivered in August. 

"Emma Goldman For Sale" (Fifth Estate)
Emma Goldman recalls the Red Scare
Women's Speeches From Around the World
Notable American Women
An Anarchist Reading List
History of fighting for women's freedom
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/emma_goldman/
http://struggle.ws/ws/gold49.html http://www.spunk.org/archives.html

1895 -- US: Brotherhood of the Cooperative Commonwealth founded Blanchard, Idaho.



1896 -- American poet/novelist H.L. Davis lives, Yoncalla, Oregon. Writes realistically about the West, rejecting the stereotype of the cowboy as hero, in such Pulitzer Prize-winning works asHoney in the Horn (1935).
http://bluebook.state.or.us/notable/notdavis.htm




1898 -- Puerto Rico: Colonized by the US. The Spanish withdrawal from Puerto Rico is completed as the final troops left San Juan for Spain. General John R. Brooke became military governor. Freedom is just another word for ... colonization?


1899 --  US: A 15-m totem pole is dedicated in Pioneer Square, Seattle, Washington. It was stolen from an Indian graveyard in Alaska.


1901 -- US: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Furor erupts when Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Ted Roosevelt invites Booker T. Washington for White House dinner.


1906 -- MIB?: Playwright Sidney Kingsley lives. "Men in White" wins 1934 Pulitzer.


1911 --  México: Zapatistas attack government troops in Huitzililla & Xalostoc.


1913 -- Imagist Poet Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) marries poet/novelist Richard Aldington. Introduced to him by her former lover, Ezra Pound. She remains lifelong lover of Bryher.



1913 -- US: Annual "Mother Earth" reunion concert & ball takes place in New York to help support Emma Goldman's anarchist publication. 



1914 -- US: To decrease the financial burden, anarchist Emma Goldman relocates her residence & the "Mother Earth" office from West 119th Street to smaller quarters located at 20 East 125th Street. This same month she encouragesAlexander Berkman to embark on an independent lecture tour; places Max Baginski & her nephew Saxe Commins in charge of editorial work of "Mother Earth."


1915 -- Brazil: South American Anarchist Congress (Congresso Anarquista Sul-Americano), Rio de Janeiro.

Held on the premises of the Federação Operária, October 18-20th, with delegates present from Brazil, Argentina & Uruguay. Convenes at the same location of the just concludedInternational Congress for Peace. Source: [Arquivo de História Social]

1926 -- Rocker Chuck Berry lives, San Jose, California.

Roll over Beethoven!

http://www.stlouiswalkoffame.org/inductees/chuck-berry.html
http://www.icorp.net/la/jfimg2.htm

1927 -- US: Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Colorado Mine strike; first time all the coal fields are out.
http://www.iww.org/



1929 -- English government declares Canadian women legally "persons."



1936 -- Spain: Emma Goldman addresses a mass meeting of 16,000 people organized by the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (Iberian Anarchist Federation [FAI]) youth in Barcelona.

Also during the month she visits the Aragon front for two days where she is honored to meetBuenaventura Durruti, a leading FAI activist & militia commander. From the 20th to the 26th, in Valencia, with German exiles Anita & Hanns-Erich Kaminski, Goldman tours collectivized villages & farms.

http://struggle.ws/spain/pam_intro.html 




1937 -- Pedro Herrera confirms Emma Goldman's new role as London representative of the SIA (International Antifascist Solidarity), formed in the summer to provide relief to Spanish refugees & to promote international solidarity for the Spanish anarchists.
[Further details] 



1939 -- US: Lee Harvey Oswald, JFK patsy, lives: "Don't believe all the so-called evidence."

The weapon does not coincide with the bullet, nor the bullet with the holes.

The accused does not coincide with the accusation: Oswald is an exceptionally bad shot of mediocre physique, but according to the official version, his acts were those of a champion marksman & Olympic sprinter. He has fired an old rifle with impossible speed & his magic bullet, turning & twisting acrobatically to penetrate Kennedy & John Connally, the governor of Texass, remains miraculously intact.

— Eduardo Galeano, Memory of Fire: III Century of the Wind.

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/LHO.html
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/oswald.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKpawley.htm

1941 --  Humphrey Bogart movie "The Maltese Falcon" is released. Based on the novel of the same name, by Dashiell Hammett. Both were subject of the HUAC witch hunts.
http://www.noircon.info/2009/09/dashiell-hammett-expert-don-herron-is.html


1946 -- American author Barry Gifford lives. Former copublisher, with Auntie Dave's old pal Gary Wilkie, of Workingman's Press. Gifford was also responsible for resurrecting numerous pulp / noir authors, such as Jim Thompson & David Goodis, under the Black Lizard publishing imprint. Author of a biography of Kerouac & numerous novels.

"Gifford knows his noir. The essays are better than some of the films he writes about." — Elmore Leonard http://www.barrygifford.com/

1948 -- American author Ntozake Shange lives.


1950 --  US: Coast Guard is given the right to search any vessel in port for subversives.


1951 -- American author Terry McMillan lives.


1951 --  Audie Murphy movie "The Red Badge of Courage" opens, NY.


1955 -- US: Wilhelm Reich arraigned. Plea: "Not Guilty." He goes on trial December 1. 

The willingness of the US courts to incarcerate Wilhelm Riech, burn his books, & in general treat him like a criminal, demonstrated how far legal technicalities & procedural issues had replaced the original intent & spirit of the law. Certainly, all the various judges who reviewed Reich's case & ruled against him, from the local & district court judges to the US Supreme Court judges, knew they were agreeing to censorship of speech & to the burning of books.

— James DeMeo, Ph.D., Director of Research, Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory

While the Orgone box is thoroughly discredited, Book Burning is still alive & well today, as then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orgone_energy
http://www.orgone.org/articles/ax6bjmbt.htm
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/banned-books.html
http://www.indexoncensorship.org/

1961 -- US: Vigilante Justice? Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) hangs Matisse's Le Bateau upside down, until December. The gallery was visited by 116,000 people during the next 47 days before the error was noticed.

Dave,

I love the Matisse story, but ...

(It didn't happen.)

— Van, Twisted History

1961 -- Wynton Marsalis lives, New Orleans, La. Jazz trumpeter from the famous Marsalis family, which includes father Ellis & brothers Branford & Delfayo. At the ripe old age of 19 he became a member of Art Blakely's Jazz Messengers & in 1984 is the first musician to win Grammys for jazz & classical music recordings simultaneously.

1961 -- Author Rick Moody lives.


1965 -- Don Lorenzo Milani, parroco di Barbiana, scrive una lettera ai giudici rispondendo alle accuse di apologia di reato per aver difeso l'obiezione di coscienza al servizio militare. Morirà prima della fine dell'intero iter processuale.
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]


1967 --  US: 1,000 demonstrate against Dow Chemical recruiters, Univ. of Wisconsin.



1968 -- México: American track medallists John Carlos & Tommie Smith suspended & stripped of awards for their "black power" salute on the 16th at the México City Olympics.

1968 -- John Lennon & Yoko Ono busted for marijuana possession in Ringo's apartment; basis of US Immigration's attempts to deny Lennon citizenship.
http://www.isomedia.com/homes/harpo/gallery/9600/_prison.html
http://www.hempfest.org/


1969 -- US: Gun Control? Black Panther Party member Walter "Toure" Pope murdered by Los Angeles police.


1972 -- US: Buy Ya A Drink? Congress passes the Clean Water Act over Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader former Vice-President Dick M Nixon's veto.



1973 -- Cartoonist Walt Kelly, creator of "Pogo," dies.

"We have met the enemy, & he is us."

1973 -- Raisin, a musical adaptation of the Lorraine Hansberry play A Raisin in the Sun, opens on Broadway. Debut of Debbie Allen in the role of Beneatha Younger & catalyst for her success in TV & choreography.


1974 -- True Grits?: Mary Woodson, claiming to be Al Green's girlfriend, shoots herself to death in the singer's home. The shooting, ruled a suicide, comes after she threw a pot of boiling grits on Green as he was getting out of the bathtub. He went to the hospital with first & second degree burns on his back, neck & arms.


1976 -- US: 54 arrested in Pentagon at end of "Continental Walk for Disarmament & Social Justice" from California to Washington, D.C.


1976 -- France: Laureano Cerrada, veteran of the plot to kill Franco & Hitler together, murdered in Paris by a Spanish Nazi who is given asylum in Canada.
http://www.spunk.org/texts/writers/meltzer/sp001591/app1.html
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/09ref.htm#03/1962

1977 --  Germany: Baader-Meinhof Gang members "commit suicide" in a German prison.
http://www.baader-meinhof.com/


1978 -- US: Internet? Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader James Carter orders production of neutron bomb components.


1981 -- Greece: Panhellenic Socialist Movement of Greece (PASOK) wins sweeping victory in parliamentary elections.


1981 -- Diego Abad de Santillán, a prominent anarquista in the region of Catalonia during the Spanish Revolution, dies.

http://blackeyepress.wordpress.com/2009/02/28/diego-abad-de-santillan-1897-1983/
http://www.ephemanar.net/octobre18.html



1983 -- Grenada: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Maurice Bishop arrested in a political coup. Charismatic leader executed tomorrow, along with countless others, by his one-time comrades, for refusing to share leadership of the New Jewel Movement with his deputy, Bernard Coard. This event sets the stage for the US invasion liberation of Grenada on October 25, assuring Americans at home that they can beat the crap out of the hapless & provide television with a twist in the action on Gilligan's Island. 1,200 Marines couldn't take the island, but a beefed up force of 7,000 & Ronald Reagan TV appearances finally won the island over to democracy.

MAURICE BISHOP
Charismatic Grenadan leader, killed by one-time comrades.

Daily Bleed Saint 2005-2009
Charismatic Grenadan leader, killed by one-time comrades.

http://www.elender.hu/~andrasse/n-030201-bishop.jpg
http://www.historyguy.com/Grenada.html

1990 -- US: City of Los Angeles declares today "Rocky Horror Picture Show Day," marking the 15th Anniversary of the movie. There is a big party with most of the film's cast two days later.

1990 -- Filmmaker Charles Burnett's 1977 movie Killer of Sheep is among 25 films added to the Library of Congress' National Film Registry. Burnett's film joins other significant films such as All About Eve, The Godfather, & Top Hat.


1991 -- Massive public opposition known as the "Nevada Movement" — after the grass roots protests at the Nevada Test Site which inspired it — forces permanent closure of the primary Soviet nuclear test site, Semipalatinsk, in Central Asia.



1994 -- Berkeley Gala Riot Festival.
http://www.EvolveFISH.com/



1996 -- "Satu's Day." International competition for children aged 7 to 13 has been held since 1993, with rules translated into five languages. Today the first collection of award-winning tales appears in book form.Satu, a female first name in Finnish meaning "fairy tale."



1998 -- Bowl Me Over?: Nummer One Son goes to his first All-Regional Bowling meet — as a bowler. Unfortunately, a friend introduced him to some kids bowling instructional sessions four weeks ago. Nummer One is a natural. Yesterday he bowled three games, scoring 165, 145, 94. Second misfortune, they announced his scores on the PA system, so buncha clowns rushed over & signed him up to All-Regional & All-City team. Tournaments, tours, etc.

I rank Bowling up there with football, goldfish swallowing, hog-tying & foosball; but, I admit, I've long wanted to form an anarchist bowling team, call'em the Black Balls. Dress them in black leather. Buncha Goof Balls anyhow. One of the times I was kicked out of High School they forgot to tell my mother, so everyday for about a month I'd get up, pretending to go to school, off to the bowling alley instead. Don't think I ever bowled over 120. Now the youngun wants to take me bowling so he can laff.

— Anti-Dave

2000 --  US: Earth Liberation Front sabotages logging equipment in Martin County State Forest, Indiana.


2002 --  Canada: Ontario passes a law banning farm workers from unionizing or striking.



2004 -- England: Artist, book illustrator & anarchist Fermin Rocker (1907-2004) dies, London. Wrote East End: A London Childhood (1992).

Fermin Rocker's paintings convey the memory of his father & mother, the famed anarchists Rudolf Rocker & Milly Witkop Rocker.

Fermin's powerful characters convey a sense of the conflicts & sufferings of the age, carrying their grief with dignity.
[Details / Context / links to artwork]

2010 -- MarkMyWords?: The United Arab Emirates' highest court rules in a domestic violence case that a man can beat his wife & children as long as he leaves no physical marks.


3500 --

---

"Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States.

Ask any Indian."

— Robert Orben

---

anti-CopyRite 1997-3000, more or less
Subscribe to daily email excerpts/updates (include 'subscribe bleed' in subject field),
or send questions, suggestions, additions, corrections to:
BleedMeister David Brown

Visit the complete Daily Bleed Calendar

The Daily Bleed is freely produced by Recollection Used Books

Over 1.97 million a'mopers & a'gawkers since May 2005