Daily Bleed Radical Literary History for November 8th

Our Daily Bleed...

Was it all true once? Just like It says? I cannot find the past. It is only anecdotes For the company & the parching Of a few more hidden nerves Each Year. — Kenneth Rexroth, exerpt from The Dragon & the Unicorn

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For friendship make a chain that holds, to be bound to others, two by two, a walk, a garland handed by hands that cannot move unless they hold. — Robert Creeley (b. 1926)

http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/creeley/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Creeley

NOVEMBER 8

MICHAEL SHENKER
New York City squatter activist, community organizer, musician.

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DUNCE DAY.

Tunisia: TREE FESTIVAL.

SHREWS & MICE go into winter quarters.

US: FEAST OF THE BALLOT BOX.

"Vote early, Vote often."   — League of Empty Gestures & Self-Abdication

"Nobody represents you. . . . . .Vote Nobody!" APATHY SUCKS - REGISTER & VOTE? .... This is a story about four people: EVERYBODY, SOMEBODY, ANYBODY, & NOBODY. There was an important job to be done & EVERYBODY was sure that SOMEBODY would do it. ANYBODY could have done it, but NOBODY did it. SOMEBODY got angry about that, because it was EVERYBODY's job. EVERYBODY thought ANYBODY could do it, but NOBODY realized that EVERYBODY wouldn't do it. It ended up that EVERYBODY blamed SOMEBODY when NOBODY did what ANYBODY could have done. .... "Of all the choices for President, who can possibly represent YOU!?" ....NOBODY.... "Who lowered the taxes?" ....NOBODY.... "Who lowered the gas prices?" ....NOBODY.... "Who brought peace to our times?" ....NOBODY.... "Who balanced the budget?" ....NOBODY.... "Who lives forever & works for nothing?" ....NOBODY.... "Who stopped censorship on the net?" ....NOBODY.... "Who loves you when you're down & out?" ....NOBODY.... "Who bakes apple pie better than Mom?" ....NOBODY!!!!! & NOBODY will continue to do these things until SOMEBODY takes the responsibility to get the job done! " ....Don't Call us, & do it yourself ....Vote for NOBODY...."

http://www.nobodyforpresident.org/
http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/anarchistQuotesVoting.htm 


DEBUNKING DAY.

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1308 -- Duns Scotus, who coined the word "dunce," dies.


1519 -- México: Fernando Cortez on a junket to Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan. The Spanish conquerors are received in the city.

http://web.archive.org/...eduardo.galeano/memoria.del.fuego/15191108.htm



1656 -- Sir Edmond Halley, famous cometator, lives, England.


1674 -- John Milton, 65, dies on a Sunday in London. Buried near his father in the chancel of St. Giles, Cripplegate. Poet, Paradise Lost.
http://johnmilton.org/

1740 -- Pamela by Samuel Richardson published.


1789 -- US: Bourbon Whiskey, first distilled from corn, by Elijah Craig, Bourbon, Kentucky.

Taken sanely & in moderation whiskey is beneficial, aids digestion, helps throw off colds, megrims & influenzas. Used improperly the effect is just as bad as stuffing on too many starchy foods, taking no exercise, or disliking our neighbor.

— Charles H. Baker, Jr., The Gentleman’s Companion, 1939

1800 -- US: Cooking the books?: "Federal Bonfire Number One," a mysterious fire swept the offices of the US Department of War, destroying books & papers, after Republicans demanded proof that money set aside for the Army had been properly expended by the Federalists. (see 21 January).

1806 -- Roger de Beauvoir (Eugène Auguste Roger de Bully) lives. Writer, poet, journalist, critic & a friend of Berlioz.


1830 -- England: Fire & riot ensues at Robertsbridge after poor law administrators (all of them millers) try to distribute bad flour. No one can be found to enlist as special constables to quell the mob.
Source: [Calendar Riots]


1868 -- US: Powder River country, including Black Hills, is given to Lakota "forever" by treaty. Within a decade white settlers, business interests, & Army seize the region.


1878 -- US: Marshall Walter Taylor "Major Taylor," African American & the world's fastest bicycle racer for 12 years, lives, Indianapolis, Indiana.



1883 -- Charles Demuth (1883-1935), American painter, lives. Demuth was a gay man born into a region not very tolerant of his life style — central Pennsylvania — where the Koehnlines (Bleedsters James Koehnline [or here] & Wild Bill Koehnline) lived for three years, 1966-1969, leaving there a mere 30 years ago.

1884 -- US: Today's issue of the Chicago Alarm (edited by Albert Parsons):

"Workers of America, learn the manufacture & use of dynamite ... Then use it unstintingly, unsparingly. The battle for bread is the battle for life ...

Death & destruction to the system & its upholders, which plunders & enslaves the men, women, & children of toil."
Source: [Calendar Riots]

1887 -- England: Demos banned (8th & 18th Nov), by order of Charles Warren, commissioner of the Police of the Metropolis.

See the book by Rodney Mace, Trafalgar Square, Emblem of Empire, (Lawrence & Wishart, 1976).

— Bleedster Svejk, 12 Feb 2002
(who's often demonstrated in that square, which in reality is a glorified traffic roundabout)
http://www.met.police.uk/history/black_monday.htm

1888 -- Alex Matson lives. Finnish novelist, essayist, critic, artist & scholar. An advocate of New Criticism, book of literary theory, Romaanitaide (1947), an influential source for modernist writers. Translated Joyce, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Kivi.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/alexmatt.htm


1892 -- US: 20,000 black & white workers stage General Strike, New Orleans.




1892 -- France: In Paris, anarchist Emile Henry sets a delayed-action bomb to blow up the Carmaux Mining company. The bomb is discovered & taken to the police station at rue des Bons-Enfants where it explodes, killing five police officers.

Dans la rue des Bons-Enfants,
On vend tout au plus offrant,
Y avait un commissariat
Et maintenant il n'est plus là.
Une explosion fantastique
N'en a pas laissé une brique
On crut que c'était Fantomas
Mais c'était la lutte des classes.

— excerpt, Raymond Callemin, "La java des Bons-Enfants"
poet, member of the illegalist Bonnot Gang

See also Callemin's trial statement,
"Why I Took Part in a Burglary, Why I Committed Murder"

In French: http://durru.chez.com/bonnot/Raymond.htm
http://www.ephemanar.net/mars26.html
http://durru.chez.com/bonnot/bonnot.htm
http://www.ephemanar.net/novembre08.html 

1895 -- X-rays discovered. Inspires TV series, The X-Files.


1896 -- US: In Philadelphia(?), Emma Goldman delivers two lectures — before a mass meeting called by a Jewish group to honor the Haymarket Martyrs & to raise money for Alexander Berkman, the second on "Woman's Cause" to the Young Men's Liberal League.

[Details / context]

1897 -- US: Dorothy Day, pacifist anarchist, Catholic Worker founder, lives.

DOROTHY DAY
Catholic Worker founder, anarchist. Oddly, Roman Catholic church will never name her a saint. Daily Bleed's Saint for the Day, 1997. Repeat offender 1999, Nov. 29, 2009.

http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/ddbiography.cfm
http://www.youtube.com/user/4854derrida

Dorothy Day — Catholic Worker (USA)

• Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin & the Catholic Worker Movement: Who Will Inherit the Legacy of Dorothy Day?
• Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin & the Catholic Worker Movement: All Souls: The Day of the Dead
• Dorothy Day's Pilgrimage Continues at Casa Juan Diego
• The Houston Catholic Worker, a Publication of Casa Juan Diego
• Fight War & Conscription: Be like St. Francis of Assisi (Catholic Worker)

Further Exemplary People for Social Justice & Religion

• Ita Ford, murdered by US-backed Salvadoran death squads
• Ita Ford
• Die Nonne Thich Nu Tri Hai - Engagierter Buddhismus im heutigen Vietnam
• Food for Thought - Bangkok: Soup Kitchen for the Hungry in the Neighbourhood Temple

1900 -- Novelist Margaret Mitchell, creator of Scarlett O'Hara, lives, Atlanta, Georgia.

1926 to 1929 she wrote Gone With the Wind, dressing in boys' trousers while writing & combining stories of trials & tribulations of slave owners during the Civil War she heard in childhood with historical material.

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

1900 -- Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser's first novel, published by Doubleday, Page & Co. Worried about the tales immorality & bowing to public pressure, the book is recalled from stores after selling 456 copies. Dreiser's royalties: $68.40.



1909 -- Gérard Leretour lives, à Houlme (dép. de la Seine-Maritime). Militant anarchiste, et propagandiste pacifiste de l'objection de conscience.
http://www.ephemanar.net/novembre08.html



1921 -- US: In the Sacco & Vanzetti case, the Ripley motion for a new trial is made.

The defendants argued that it was reversible error for the the jury foreman, Ripley, to have had brought into the juryroom 38 caliber cartridges, presumably to show the other jurors what they looked like. The defense also produces an affidavit stating that Ripley had responded to a comment that the defendants might not be guilty by saying,

“They ought to hang anyway.”

See Heroes & Martyrs: Emma Goldman, Sacco & Vanzetti, & the Revolutionary Struggle, an audio CD by Howard Zinn.
Sacco & Vanzetti Timeline
http://www.torremaggiore.com/saccoevanzetti/storia.html
http://infoshop.org/page/Sacco-Vanzetti

1923 -- Hitler stages unsuccessful "Beer Hall Putsch" in Munich.


1924 -- Australian Dockers strike against overtime, until 13 December.


1926 -- Italy: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Dictator Mussolini issues the laws of exceptions. It sets up special tribunals for the "defense" of the state, allowing the arrests & imprisonment of many anarchicos without trials.


1929 -- US: Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) opens, New York City.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Modern_Art


1930 -- France: Alexander Berkman, denied renewal of his visa once again, is given 15 days to leave the country; by mid-month he receives another three-month extension.

Also during this month, Knopf publishing house postpones publication of Emma Goldman's autobiography until the fall of 1931. Eunice M. Schuster, writing a Master's thesis on anarchism, asks Emma Goldman for information & assistance; Goldman encourages comrades — W. S. Van Valkenburgh, Hippolyte Havel, Max Nettlau, & anarchist publisher Joseph Ishill — to assist Schuster; her thesis is published in 1932 as Native American Anarchism, one of the earliest studies of American anarchism.

1930 -- US: Duke Ellington records "Rockin' in Rhythm."



1931 -- Lithuania: Fluxus art group founder George Maciunas lives, Kaukas.

GEORGE MACIUNAS, Daily Bleed Saint 2008-2010
Lithuanian-born founder of the "Fluxis" radical arts group.

http://georgemaciunas.com/

1932 -- US: Socialist Norman Thomas wins almost 900,000 votes for President. Later becomes a CIA informant (during the '60s).

GRAPE - SHOT, n.

An argument which the future is preparing in answer to the demands of American socialism.

— Ambrose Bierce

1933 -- King Nadir Shah of Afghanistan, assassinated by Abdul Khallig.


1948 -- France: "Le Cause était entendue" (The Case is Closed), declaration signed by Karel Appel, Guillaume Corneille, Christian Dotremont, Asger Jorn, Constant Nieuwenhuys & Joseph Noiret in Paris, marks the foundation of the art movement Cobra.


1949 -- Italy: Group of anarchicos attack the Spanish consulate with grenades in Gènes. Eugenio de Luchhi, Gaetano Busico, & Gaspare Mancuso arrested.
http://struggle.ws/spain/pam_intro.html


1954 -- Author Kazuo Ishiguto lives.


1955 -- US: Squatter activist, musician Michael Shenker lives, Great Neck.
http://www.thevillager.com/villager_392/rebel.html


1958 -- Outer Space: Third US attempt to send a space probe around the moon fails when the Air Force rocket's third stage did not ignite.


1958 -- ¶ Beatster Jack Kerouac participates in a Brandeis University-sponsored forum called "Is There A Beat Generation?" 



1960 -- US: Washington state voters refuse to repeal "Alien Land Law" provision of the state constitution barring Asians from owning property.



1965 -- Composer Edgard Varèse dies, New York City.

Vanguard composer of electronic dissonance, Daily Bleed Saint 1998.

I didn't give up. I was so hot to get that record I couldn't even believe it. In those days I was a rhythm-&-blues fanatic. I saved any money I could get (some- times as much as $2 a week) so that every Friday & Saturday I could rummage through piles of old records at the juke Box Used Record Dump (or whatever they called it) in the Maryland Hotel or the dusty corners of little record stores where they'd keep the crappy records nobody wanted to buy.

One day I was passing a hi-fi store in La Mesa. A little sign in the window announced a sale on 45's. After shuffling through their singles rack & finding a couple of Joe Houston records, I walked toward the cash register. On my way, I happened to glance into the LP bin. Sitting in the front, just a little bent at the corners, was a strange-looking black-&-white album cover. On it there was a picture of a man with gray frizzy hair. He looked like a mad scientist. I thought it was great that somebody had finally made a record of a mad scientist. I picked it up. I nearly (this is true, ladies & gentlemen) peed in my pants . . . THERE IT WAS! EMS 401, The Complete Works of Edgard Varese Volume I . . . Integrales, Density 21.5, Ionization, Octandre . . . Rene Le Roy, the N. Y. Wind Ensemble, the Juilliard Percussion Orchestra, Frederic Waidman Conducting . . . liner notes by Sidney Finkelstein! WOW!

— Frank Zappa
http://rchrd.com/mfom/zappa-varese.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgard_Var%C3%A8se

1965 -- US: Autobiography of Malcolm X published.


1966 -- US: Edward Brooke (Massachusetts) first black elected US Senator in 85 years.


1966 -- US: Where Bad Actors Go? Beloved & Respected Comrade LeaderRonald Reagan elected governor of California. B-movie & TV actor Reagan defeats incumbent Gov. Edmund G. Brown by almost one million votes.




1967 -- US: 500 University of Washington, in Seattle, students protest against campus visit by recruiters for Dow Chemical, makers of bathroom detergent, Napalm.
http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/mom/napalm/napalm.html
http://www.cnpprofessional.co.uk/
See our Seattle Radical Timeline,
http://recollectionbooks.com/SeattleRadicalTimeLine.htm


1967 --

IS #11 France: Internationale Situationniste #11. Editor: Guy Debord. Editorial committee: Mustapha Khayati, J.V. Martin, Donald Nicholson-Smith, Raoul Vaneigem. "They alone are underdeveloped who recognize a positive value in the power of their masters." IS #11, November 1967 [Exact day not given —ed.] http://www.manifestolibri.it/public/images/409.jpg http://liveweb.archive.org....projetoperiferia/capate.jpg http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

1968 -- US: Students at San Francisco State College go on strike. (see 6 November).


1972 -- US: 'Trail of Broken Treaties' march occupies Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), Washington, DC.



1974 -- US: (or '75?) In a federal court, charges are dropped against eight Ohio National Guardsmen for killing four antiwar protesters at Kent State University.

On May 4, 1970, brave National Guard troops, called in to suppress students rioting in protest of the Vietnam War, killed the Kent State students & injured nine when they fired over 60 rounds into a crowd of unarmed demonstrators.

One of the killed, Allison Krause, the day before her murder, was reported to have put a flower on a National Guardsman's rifle, saying that "Flowers are better than bullets."

"Even conceding all the mitigating or extenuating circumstances, the Guardsmen literally appear to have gotten away with murder."

Previously undisclosed FBI files reveal that:

1. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover felt the victims deserved to be shot;

2. Hoover eagerly followed Nixon's instructions to "knock down" (that is, discredit) essentially accurate news reports that the shootings were not necessary & that the Guardsmen could be prosecuted; &

3. After Hoover relayed that order, one of his top aides boasted of "scotching" those essentially accurate news reports.

See William Gordon's Four Dead in Ohio: Was There A Conspiracy At Kent State?

1974 -- Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Lt. William Calley is paroled after serving about three years in "prison" (under house arrest in his apartment) for overseeing the murder of Vietnamese civilians (possibly as high as 500 or more) at My Lai. (see 16 & 29 March).

Drop the candy in the courtyard,
Let the kiddies gather 'round.
Crank your twenty-millimeter,
Gun the little bastards down.

— excerpt, from the song, "Strafe the Town & Kill the People (1950s/'60s)
(Tune: "Wake the Town & Tell the People")

According to accounts that suddenly appeared on TV & in the world press last week, a cam-company of 60 or 70 US infantrymen had entered My Lai early one morning & destroyed its houses, its livestock & all the inhabitants that they could find in a brutal operation that took less than 20 minutes. When it was over, the Vietnamese dead totaled at least 100 men, women & children, & perhaps many more.

Only 25 or so escaped, because they lay hidden under the fallen bodies of relatives & neighbors.

— "Time" magazine, November 28, 1969.

("Time" fails to tell us that they — like all major US media — had refused to carry the story for over a year. WE in America call this "Freedom of the Press." The story had been in the European press a year earlier, & one US journalist spent a year trying to get US media to publish it, well before Hersh's story appeared in the "NY Times"(which had previously refused the story; Hersh now claims he was the "first" to expose the murders). )

http://www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/parton/2/mylai1.html

1975 -- Poland: Absenteeism is widespread, accounting for 8-1/2% of all working time.

There are frequent descriptions of workers lining up at 7a.m. to buy bottles of vodka instead of going to work.

A survey in Wroclaw concluded that absenteeism this year is up 33% & that 2/3 of the absent workers are between 23 & 29 years old. [I.C.O., Poland: 1970-71, Capitalism & Class Struggle, (Detroit: Black & Red, 1977), p117]

1976 -- Nicaragua: Carlos Fonseca Amador dies in combat in the forest of Zinica. Leader & principal theoretician of the FSLN.

A colonel brings the news to the cell where Tomás Borge lies after being tortured.

Together they had walked the long road, Carlos & Tomás, from the times in which Carlos sold newspapers & caramels in Matagalpa; & together they had founded, in Tegucigalpa, the Sandinista Front (FSLN).

"It is not our job to discover the universal laws that lead to the transformation of a capitalist society into a society of free men & women; our modest role is to apply these laws, which have already been discovered, to the conditions of our own country."

— Carlos Fonseca, 1975

http://web.archive.org/...eduardo.galeano/memoria.del.fuego/19761108.htm



1978 -- Norman Rockwell dies in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, at 84.


1984 -- England: Stainforth police station is attacked by striking miners.
Source: [Calendar Riots]


1987 -- Ireland: Eleven die as a bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army explodes at Ulster Remembrance Day Service.



1988 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader George Large Bush doubles American troop commitment to Persian Gulf two days after being elected.
http://www.isreview.org/issues/07/1991GulfWar.shtml


1993 -- US: The California Department of Corrections embarks on a massive construction project by installing an electric fence at the maximum-security prison at Calipatria. Nine Lives?:

Eventually all major prisons in the state are equipped with such fences, which can instantly kill an inmate trying to escape. The Calipatria fence carries 650 milliamperes, more than nine times the lethal current.

Prisoner advocates say this constitutes an automatic death sentence, but prison-system chief Warden K.W. Prunty says it's no different from a shoot-to-stop policy — only better. California's use of electric prison fences follows the example of several other states, including Massachusetts, Indiana & Tennessee.

1994 -- US: Eye of a Newt?: Republicans gain control of US Congress using witchcraft. Update 98: No newts is good newts. Update 1999: Ditto 98. Update 2000: Ditto 98. Update 2001: Ditto, witchcraft, but worse. Little Bush's JuJuJuice done gone bad. Unless you're an airline or Bill Gates. 




1999 -- US: Exhibition by artist Carlos Cortez. "Carlos Cortez: Last Stand of the Millennium: An Exhibition of Paintings & Woodcut Prints" today through January 16, 2000, Heartland Cafe, Chicago.

Self-taught artist, finding the time to take night classes at Layton Art School in Milwaukee. After some 40 years of construction labor, record salesman, bookseller, factory worker & janitor, he no longer has to punch a clock & has entered the most productive phase of his life.

http://mati.eas.asu.edu/ChicanArte/html_pages/CortezIssOutl.html#artmaker
http://www.art-teez.org/pr/harvest_fest_05_flyer-background_sheet.htm 



2000 -- US: In election day aftermath Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Bartlett (cleverly disguised as Martin Sheen), in the West Wing, seems to be the only president the country has ... as the electoral college, state of Florida & the Supreme Court poise themselves to prove nobody's vote counts.

“One thing you can’t hide, Is when you’re crippled inside.” — John Lennon

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

2003 -- Netherlands: 5th Annual Dutch Anarchist Bookfair, Cultural Centre Parnassos, Utrecht (near Stadsschouwburg), entrance free.