Happy belated birthday! Just finished reading A Wrinkle in Time outloud to my girls. I had never read it before, I'm embarrassed to say.
The author of A Wrinkle in Time was born on this day in 1918.
- Posted using BlogPress on my mobile book laboratory!
Friday, November 30, 2012
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. Mark Twain
The author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was born on this day in 1835.
I would beg to differ with this, but it's still hilarious and a Mark Twain quote I don't believe I'd ever come across before! Oh, and Happy Birthday Mr. Clemens, you are fondly and oft quoted by myself and my compatriots. Good day to, and because of, you, Sir!
Oh, and the quote on the picture here that's really hard to read says:
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."
Oh, and the quote on the picture here that's really hard to read says:
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."
Monday, November 26, 2012
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails. William Arthur Ward
Many of our quotes are harvested from the excellent service provided by Goodreads.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
"Difficult Conversations": notes for the reading-impaired
A "difficult conversation," according to Stone et al, is "anything you find it hard to talk about":
Sexuality, race, gender, politics, and religion come quickly to mind as difficult topics to discuss, and for many of us they are. But discomfort and awkwardness are not limited to topics on the editorial page. Anytime we feel vulnerable or our self-esteem is implicated, when issues at stake are important and the outcome uncertain, when we care deeply about what is being discussed or about the people with whom we are discussing it, there is potential for us to experience the conversation as difficult.
Per the authors, there are three dimensions to a difficult conversation: practical substance ("the What Happened conversation"), emotional (or inter-personal) subtext, and identity (or inner-personal) subtext. Pointing out something that's both obvious and easy to miss, Stone et al point out that difficult conversations are rarely about what's true so much as they're about what's important, and a lot of trouble can be saved when participants are careful to distinguish between factual claims and value claims.
The What Happened conversation consists of the concrete matter of dispute, such as a friend's drug abuse or a boss' bullying. Stone et al urge readers to keep in mind that facts fit into a story, and disagreements usually stem from different stories rather than conflicting facts. To get past this, it's important to be clear about "what happened" according to you, including the assumptions, values, and past experiences which inform your story; and of course it's just as important to clearly understand the other person's "what happened" story, and where they're coming from. For example, an undocumented migrant laborer and a member of the Romney clan will have very different life-experiences to inform their views on, say, the police. This doesn't mean both are equally right; it just means that if you want to communicate, you've gotta get clear about what you're saying and what the other person's saying.
Because at bottom, difficult conversations are about feelings. This sounds a little hippie-woo-woo, sure, but when you think about it, what could be more obvious than the fact that emotionally-difficult conversations are difficult because of the emotions at their core. If anger is what's getting in the way of a productive exchange, then you've gotta deal with anger (and the brew of other emotions which are almost always simmering underneath it).
And these strong emotions which can make conversations so difficult are connected not only to the other person, but to internal issues of self-image, confidence, and identity. Your correspondent can report that in his own emotional travails, the times when he's gotten pissy and brutal have been only weakly correlated to something shitty the other person did. (When I'm internally okay, it's hard for other people to hurt me.) Incidents of pissy brutality strongly correlate, on the other hand, to my own shame, inadequacy, etc. (When I'm hurting and desperate, I'll find something to be angry about.) Anger is an easier emotion to handle than self-loathing or incompetence; like a nation which goes to war rather than address domestic inequality, getting pissed off is a way to dodge your own spiritual self-improvement.
So those are the three conversations: the "What Happened" conversation, the emotions conversation, and the identity conversation. The three bleed into each other like pages of a damp sketchpad, with "What Happened" ("You tattled on me to the boss") serving as an unconscious metaphor for emotional ("I feel betrayed, hurt, angry, and confused") and identity ("I fear that other people don't value me or take me seriously") subtext. Again, this all sounds really whiny and touchy-feeling, like a new-age inner-child symposium complete with re-birthing ceremonies and 'Song of Myself' creative re-writes. But, again, here's the juice: people fundamentally act based on emotion and self-identity. We are not a species of Spocks; we are a species of McCoys. If you want to ignore emotions, you're free to emulate the hollow machismo of Sly Stallone and the GOP; but if you want to have productive conversations about blood-pressure-raising topics, you've gotta address identity and emotions. And if you want to behave rationally, you've gotta manage your emotions first. You cannot will yourself to emotional balance. This means doing stuff like learning to listen to your own emotions, and thinking hard about which emotions you've learned are appropriate and which are taboo, and thinking about how you've learned to express your emotions.
Strategies for hearing where the other person is coming from, and for difficultly conversing in general, include:
-Shut up and listen. Don't pretend to listen, don't interrupt, don't nod while thinking about how you're going to respond. Listen.
-If you're too keyed-up and can't listen, then say so: "What you're saying is important to me and I want to hear it. But I'm having a hard time concentrating on what you're saying, because I feel really angry and cornered right now. Having put that out there, I'd like to try again to hear what you've got to say."
-Ask questions--real questions, not statements cloaked as rhetorical questions or cross-examination questions designed to show the internal contradiction in what the other person is saying. Genuinely try to understand where the other person is coming from. Paraphrase what you're hearing from them, to make sure you've got it right.
-What's their story? What's at stake for them? What's the cost for them to accept your version of the story?
-Find common ground between your story and theirs by thinking of how a disinterested observer might describe things: "Jesse smokes a pack a day. He does this because cigarettes help him deal with stress and depression, and he's afraid of failing if he tries to quit. His sister Joan hates that he smokes because of smoking's health effects, plus she finds cigarettes gross." Stone et al call this the "Third Story." You can talk about What Happened and how it was perceived and felt by both parties in neutral terms (indeed, that's often what we mean when we refer to "reality": it's just consensus-perception). Doing this gets all the important pieces out in the open without triggering anyone.
-Acknowledge what you hear from them. Sometimes someone really just needs to be hears: "I hear that you were hurt by what I did." Sometimes that's all you need. And by the way, acknowledging ≠ agreeing or ceding your view. Beware either/or dichotomies...
-...Speaking of neither "either" nor "or," you should make it a habit to say "and" instead of "either/or" in difficult conversations: "I didn't finish the assignment by the deadline AND I thought I communicated clearly that I was behind schedule AND I hear you when you say that you didn't find that to be clearly communicated AND part of why I was behind was the other extra work you asked me to do AND I can see how it impacts you for me to miss the deadline AND...etc." As Whitman put it, "Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes." Don't oversimplify the issue, like politicians do (e.g. "Either you support the war, or you don't love America"). Recognize the smorgasbord of facts, observations, values, interpretations, etc. which inform both you and the other person.
-Disentangle intent from impact: what the other person meant to do ≠ what their effect was. You know what their impact was; you don't know what their intent was.
-At the same time, good intentions don't sanitize bad impact (think of drunk driving). Own your impact.
-Don't refrain from re-framing! Figure out how to frame the issue in a way that's accurate and rings true while also allowing you to work toward a solution. The difference between "I'm a useless scumhole junkie" and "I struggle with addiction" is nothing other than framing, but that difference is the basis of recovery.
-Name the Dynamic: if there's some sort of pattern which keeps the conversation from moving forward--the other person keeps cutting you off, or changing the subject--you can make that pattern itself a topic of the conversation. "I've noticed that several times when I've started to talk about the class schedule, you've interrupted me. Does that seem accurate to you? Can you think of what might be causing that?" The downside of this tactic is that it distracts the conversation (e.g. about the class schedule) into a meta-conversation.
-Work on a solution together, as a joint-exploration. Consider alternatives and compromises, and always try to work on the assumption that the other person is acting in good faith and on honest purposes (recall: their impact ≠ their intentions).
Blame vs. Contribution
Don't talk about blame; talk about contributions to the problem. This is philosophy 101 stuff, but the difference between having caused something vs. being responsible for something is massive. Cause is about the chain of events which lead to some outcome. Responsibility (or blame) is a complex, socially-constructed ethical claim. Think again of a drunk driver who runs over a pedestrian: it's obvious that the driver is responsible (or blameworthy) for the accident. But it's also obvious that the pedestrian contributed to the accident by walking across the street; similarly, the driver's friends contributed by not doing more to keep him from drinking and driving. Talking about blame is useful if the goal of the conversation is figuring out who to punish. But if your goal is to problem-solve, then talking about contribution instead of blame frees you from decreeing a judgment and lets you concentrate on the practical question of, "What can we change to fix this in the future?" Concentrating on blame also prevents the conversation from addressing systems of contribution, by focusing on individual actors: for example, it's much easier to blame Romney or Obama or whoever than it is to think about the complex web of contribution which causes the US government to behave in the way that it does. (That doesn't mean you shouldn't get angry, just that your anger should be directed toward finding solutions rather than scapegoats.)
Also, when you try to raise the issue of contributions during a difficult conversation, own your contributions to the problem first, then explain what you think they contributed. This may take the other person off the defensive and make them more open to hearing about their own contribution, because it signals that you're not trying to cast them as the sole villain. And always make your reasoning explicit: "Here's what I think you contributed, and here's why I think that..."
3 Facts About Yourself Which Are Helpful to Keep In Mind
1. "I will make mistakes."
2. "My intentions are complex."
3. "I have contributed to the problem."
4 Ways to Regain Balance When You Feel a Mel-Gibson-level Freakout Coming On
1. Let go of trying to control their reaction. That's outside your power.
2. Prepare (emotionally, ahead of time) for their response.
3. Imagine yourself in the distant future, to get some perspective on just how important this conversation really is.
4. Take a break if you need it.
4 Liberating Assumptions
1. "It's not my responsibility to make things better; it's my responsibility to try my best.
2. "They have limitations, too."
3. "This conflict is not about who I am."
4. "Letting go doesn't mean I no longer care."
Bonus: "I am the ultimate authority on me: how I feel, what I value, how I'm affected, etc."
3 Purposes In a Conversation (That Work)
1. Learning the other person's story.
2. Expressing your views and feelings.
3. Problem solving together.
Even If You Can't Work It Out
Keep in mind that all this hippie-dippy stuff about listening to the other person's story and exploring feelings and reframing blame into contribution doesn't mean you cave into whatever they want you to do. Contra John McCain, there is a difference between listening to someone you disagree with and consenting to their demands. You can make strong demands on someone without acting like a bully or a blowhard.
If you do end up without an amenable solution, be clear about what you're doing and why. Don't be passive-aggressive; be calm-assertive. "While I think I understand why you want me to stay, I'm still going to leave this company in two weeks. As I've said, the pay is better, and I don't feel confident enough about working conditions here for me to stay on. But I appreciate you taking the time to discuss this with me...etc."
My experience of life is that it is not divided up into genres; it’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky. Alan Moore
From Wikipedia & Happy Belated Birthday Alan Moore!
Alan Oswald Moore (born 18 November 1953) is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell.[5] Frequently described as the best graphic novel writer in history,[6](p10)[7](p7) he has also been described as "one of the most important British writers of the last fifty years".[8] He has occasionally used such pseudonyms as Curt Vile, Jill de Ray, and Translucia Baboon.
Moore started out writing for British underground and alternative fanzines in the late 1970s before achieving success publishing comic strips in such magazines as 2000 AD and Warrior. He was subsequently picked up by the AmericanDC Comics, and as "the first comics writer living in Britain to do prominent work in America",[7](p7) he worked on big name characters such as Batman (Batman: The Killing Joke) and Superman (Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?), substantially developed the character Swamp Thing, and penned original titles such as Watchmen. During that decade, Moore helped to bring about greater social respectability for the medium in the United States and United Kingdom,[7](p11) and has subsequently been credited with the development of the term "graphic novel" over "comic book".[9] In the late 1980s and early 1990s he left the comic industry mainstream and went independent for a while, working on experimental work such as the epic From Hell, pornographic Lost Girls, and the prose novel Voice of the Fire. He subsequently returned to the mainstream later in the 1990s, working for Image Comics, before developingAmerica's Best Comics, an imprint through which he published works such as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemenand the occult-based Promethea.
Moore is a Neopagan, occultist, ceremonial magician, wizard, vegetarian and anarchist and has featured such themes in works including Promethea, From Hell and V for Vendetta, as well as performing avant-garde spoken word occult "workings" with The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels, some of which have been released on CD.
Despite his own personal objection to them, his books have provided the basis for a number of Hollywood films, including From Hell (2001), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), V for Vendetta (2005) and Watchmen(2009). Moore has also been referenced in popular culture, and has been recognised as an influence on a variety of literary and television figures including Neil Gaiman,[10]Joss Whedon,[4] and Damon Lindelof.[4]
Daily Bleed Radical Anarchist Daybook for November 25th
Our Daily Bleed...
The river I have under my tongue,
Unimaginable water, my little boat,
And curtains lowered, let's speak.
— Paul Eluard 1895-1952, "The River"
 |  BA JIN |
Purged during the Cultural Revolution.
Nominated for the 1975 & 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature.
The 2001 nomination letter notes,
"Ba Jin has made great efforts in fighting for man's freedom, democracy, man's psychic liberation; his in-depth exploration about human nature & man's esteem has been recorded in the history of Chinese culture."
BUY NOTHING DAY.Suriname: INDEPENDENCE DAY (1975).England: CATHERNING DAY: traditionally, young women make merry today.FESTIVAL OF SHADOW ECONOMIES.
1500 -- Spain: Columbus returns after his third voyage to the New World, in chains. Too little, too late.
[Source: Robert Braunwart] [Hereafter noted with symbol:]
1562 -- Lope de Vega lives. Prolific playwright, pioneer of Spanish drama, author of as many as 1800 plays & several hundred shorter dramatic pieces, of which about 500 of his productions have been printed. Vega's own life was as dramatic as his plays: many love affairs brought him both notoriety & problems with the law, resulting in prison terms & exile.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/lopevega.htm
1715 -- First English patent granted to an American, for processing porn.
1783 -- US: Nearly three months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris ending the American War for Independence, the last British soldiers evacuate New York City, their last military position. Following the withdrawal of the last British soldier, American General George Washington enters the city in triumph.
1857 -- American adventurer William Walker launches a new invasion of a Central American country. The invasion failed. Deposed as dictator of Nicaragua, Walker was returned, a prisoner, to New York.
1867 -- Alfred Nobel invents dynamite. Later, feeling bad, he invents Nobles.
BleedsterScott notes:
Noble used to test the efficacy of various formulations of nitroglycerin by placing a drop on an anvil & hitting it with a sledgehammer. While testing a particularly virulent batch his brother was killed. Alfred went into seclusion for several years.
His grief over this incident & press depictions of him as a merchant of death led him to create the Nobel Prize.
1871 --Japanese socialist, writer & historian Toshihiko Sakai lives (d.1933). Best known for his translation work with Shusui Kotoku, with whom he co-founded Heimin Shimbun (Common Peoples' Newspaper). They were the first to translate The Communist Manifesto into Japanese before Kotoku became an anarchist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshihiko_Sakai
1880 -- Leonard Woolf lives, London. Political writer who marries Virginia Stephen in 1912, & together they start Hogarth Press in 1917.
http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/hogarth/
library.vicu.utoronto.ca/exhibitions/bloomsbury/index.htm
http://califia.us/women/lecture11.htm
1883 --
1884 --Jean Lébédeff lives (1884-1970). Illustrator, anarchiste. His book illustrations of Kropotkin, Ferrer, etc., are well-known. He was included in the 2003 Erich Mühsam exhibition in Germany, which included original art by Augusts Herbin, George Grosz, Klaus Böttger, Karl George Deer & Herweg Zens. See Jean Lébédeff, Les Paris,imaginaires(Plasma, 1979).
http://www.ephemanar.net/novembre25.html
1889 -- Resat Nuri Güntekin lives. A prolific Turkish novelist, short-story writer, journalist, & playwright. His best-known work is the novel Cahkusu (1922), a picaresque tale combining romance with realistic description of Anatolia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re%C5%9Fat_Nuri_G%C3%BCntekin
1897 -- Spain: The "Carta Autonómica" is approved, conceding political & administrative autonomy to Puerto Rico. Allows the island to retain its representation in the Spanish Cortes, & provides for a bicameral legislature. This legislature consisted of a Council of Administration with eight elected & seven appointed members, & a Chamber of Representatives with one member for every 25,000 inhabitants.
1904 -- France: Jehan Mayoux lives, Charente. Teacher, pacifist, antimilitarist, anarchiste, poet.
Mayoux refused mobilization in 1939, costing him his teaching papers & five years in prison. He escaped but was recaptured by the Germans & sent to a camp in the Ukraine. Reinstated as a teacher after the war, & he became a friend of Surrealist poet Benjamin Péret.
[Details / context]
Saturday, November 24, 2012
To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget. Arundhati Roy
The author of The God of Small Things was born on this day in 1961.
Friday, November 23, 2012
Daily Bleed for November 23rd, A Radical Anarchist Daybook
Our Daily Bleed...
In the very earliest time,
when both people & animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
& an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
& sometimes animals
& there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
& what people wanted to happen could happen —
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody could explain this:
That's the way it was.
— Edward Field, "Magic Words,"
translated from the Inuit (Eskimo)
http://archive.ala.org/booklist/v95/youth/oc2/60field.html
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/696
http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/Field.unwanted.html
NOVEMBER 23 DANIEL DELEON
American radical, helped found the Wobblies.
ST. CLEMENTS DAY. Procession of blacksmiths & (mad) hatters.
Japan: NIINAME SAI, harvest festival.
I'M JUST A PATSY DAY.
INTERNATIONAL DAY TO END IMPUNITY.
http://daytoendimpunity.org/
1170 BC -- [BC] Pyramid Scheme?: First recorded strike for better working conditions & pay, takes place in Egypt, by pyramid laborers who are tired of belaboring the point."They say the Pharaohs built the pyramids. Do you think one Pharaoh dropped one bead of sweat?
We built the pyramids for the Pharaohs & we're building for them yet."
— Anna Louise Strong
1760 -- French revolutionary Francois-Noel Babeuf lives, St. Quentin, France.
FRANCOIS-NOEL BABEUF 1997 PATRON SAINT
Communist leader in the French Revolution, member of the Conspiracy of Equals, until betrayed to the Directory, when he was captured & executed.
1828 -- US: William Silvus, American labor activist, lives (1828-1869).
1831 -- France: The Silk Workers' Revolt in Lyon continues. Workers occupy the Town Hall & an attempt at an insurrectionary government is made.
For lack of a clear politics, or by a trick of the authorities, the latter regain control of the city on December 2.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9volte_des_Canuts
http://metiers.free.fr/dcanuts/canutsi29.html
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9volte_des_Canuts
http://metiers.free.fr/dcanuts/canutsi29.html
1852 -- US: A Drop in the Bucket? Just past midnight, a sharp jolt causes Lake Merced to drop 30 feet (9m).
http://www.lmtf.org/FoLM/homepage.html
1859 -- US: Western outlaw, gunslinger, Billy the Kid (Bonney) lives.
while i've been going on
the blood from my wrist
has travelled to my heart
& my fingers touch
this soft blue paper notebook
control a pencil that shifts up & sideways
mapping my thinking going its own way
— Michael Ondaatje, Collected Works of Billy the Kid
http://www.tru.ca/faculty/tfriedman/ondaatje.htm
http://web.archive.org/...americanwest.com/pages/gunsoutl.htm
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Biblio-mat book-vending machine from The Monkey's Paw
Another one of my ideas stolen! Ahh well... I'll just have to one-up them soon.
Borrowed in its entirety from: http://www.quillandquire.com
Q&A: The Monkey’s Paw introduces the Biblio-mat book-vending machine
For nearly seven years, Stephen Fowler has owned The Monkey’s Paw, the curious antiquarian bookstore on Toronto’s Dundas Street West, offering bibliophiles a diverse selection of printed artifacts.
Self-dubbed “Toronto’s most idiosyncratic second-hand bookshop,” the store is more than a place to buy books: it is also an art stunt, with a collection of insect taxonomies on display and crafted window presentations aimed to startle unassuming pedestrians. For his latest venture, Fowler has revealed the Biblio-mat, a vending machine that dispenses random books for two dollars apiece.
Quillblog spoke with Fowler about his invention.
What is the story behind the Biblio-mat? I went fishing this past summer with Craig Small, co-founder of The Juggernaut, an animation studio in Toronto. I had this idea that I would love to have a vending machine that gave out random books. I pictured it as a painted refrigerator box with one of my assistants inside; people would put in a coin and he would drop a book out. But Craig is more pragmatic and visionary then I am. He said, “You need to have an actual mechanical vending machine.” That was beyond my wildest imaginings, but not Craig’s, so he just built it for me.
What did you envision for the machine’s appearance? We were very careful with the style of the thing. We are attentive to the whole presentation of the shop, its look and vibe, and we wanted something that would go with it. It is a new device but has a very intentionally vintage look. The cabinet is actually an old metal locker; the front of the locker is in the back.
What books are stocked in the Biblio-mat? The books in the machine are two dollars each – that’s not enough to make any profit, but the nature of the second-hand book business is that I end up with a lot of books that are interesting and worth keeping and disseminating, but have no practical retail value. Historically in the used books trade there has always been the dollar cart in front of the store. This is just a spin on that.
What has been the response from customers? The machine is still in the beta stage, so it doesn’t always work perfectly. The response is sometimes based on that. Of the people who have used the thing so far, almost every person has been pleasantly surprised and completely amused. I can think of two people who were dissatisfied with the book they got, but I can only assume they were people lacking in imagination and enthusiasm. In fact, this is something I’ve observed in the used-book trade: people are always looking for meaning. They’ll get a book and feel as though it was psychically selected for them.
How do you acquire your books? I buy estates, or from people who are moving or downsizing. I buy books over the counter, at library sales, and from charities. I travel all around and buy books every kind of way you can imagine. Except I don’t buy books online, nor do I sell books online.
This really isn’t a store for readers. The traditional purpose of a bookstore is as a place to buy a piece of printed culture. We sell printed artifacts that contain text – not that you can’t read these books – but people don’t come here to buy books to read, they come here to buy books to own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Having a Book Moment with Jon Longhi - Fresh Titles from Last Gasp
We have access to Last Gasp's full catalog, so if you spot anything on their site you'd like for Christmas, wander on in and we'll order a copy for ya.
From Wikipedia:
From Wikipedia:
Founded in 1970 by Ron Turner[3][4][5] to publish the ecologically-themed comics magazine Slow Death Funnies, followed by the all-female anthology It Ain't Me Babe, Last Gasp soon became a major part of the underground comics/comix movement. Notable artists published by Last Gasp include Tim Biskup, Robert Crumb, Richard Corben,Ron English, Camille Rose Garcia, Justin Green, Bill Griffith, Spain Rodriguez, Mark Ryden, Dori Seda, Larry Welz,Robert Williams, and S. Clay Wilson. In the early 1980s Last Gasp published some of the first books about the West Coast punk rock scene.
Current publishing
Today Last Gasp publishes few comic books, though they have published English-language versions of some mangatitles, including Barefoot Gen, Pure Trance and Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms. The company publishes art and photography books, graphic novels, fiction, and poetry. Last Gasp operates as a publisher, distributor, and wholesaler for books of all types, often with a lowbrow art and counterculture focus.[6]
How I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Don DeLillo
The National Book Award winner and author of White Noise was born on November 20th in 1936. Happy belated birthday Don!
After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations. Oscar Wilde
- Posted using BlogPress on my mobile book laboratory!
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Daily Bleed Radical Anarchist Daybook for November 21st
Our Daily Bleed...
& death is not yet my robe,
for drums still throb the many
centers of my tribes, & a young
child smiles me of tomorrow,
"& grandparent,"
another child whispers, "please
tell me again my clan's beginning."— Peter Blue Cloud (Aroniawenrate),
excerpt, "Turtle"
NOVEMBER 21 ALEXANDER BERKMAN
Lover of Emma Goldman, failed anarchist assassin, US deportee,
suicide following sorry Soviet heartbreaks.
NOSTALGIA FOR THE FUTURE DAY.
FALSE CONFESSIONS DAY.
479 BC -- Chinese philosopher Confucious dies.
1694 -- Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet) lives, Paris. At 65 he spends all of three days writing Candide.
FRANCOIS VOLTAIRE
Daily Bleed Patron Saint 1998. "All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.""The best is the enemy of the good."
http://www.reocities.com/Athens/7308/
1748 --
1783 -- France: Jean Francois Pilatre de Rozier & the Marquis Francois Laurant d'Arlandes made the first flight in a balloon, becoming the first men to fly — period. They flew nearly six miles around Paris in 25 minutes reaching an altitude of about 300 feet. Benny Franklin was a spectator at the gaseous event.
1784 -- James Armistead is cited by French General Lafayette for his valuable service to the American forces in the Revolutionary War. Born into slavery 24 years earlier, he worked as a double agent for the Americans while supposedly employed as a servant of British General Cornwallis.
1794 --Honolulu Harbor discovered. The natives lament, "If only we'd seen it first!"
1801 -- US: "Federal Bonfire Number Two": a mysterious fire sweeps the offices of the Department of Treasury, destroying books & papers, after Republicans demanded proof that the expenditures of Timothy Pickering, the recently replaced Federalist Secretary of War, could be properly accounted for. (see November 8).
1817 -- US: Infuriated by Seminole resistance, Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader General Edmund Gaines orders 250 soldiers to attack & destroy the Seminole village of Fowltown.
1820 -- Thirteen-year-old Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's first poem, "The Battle of Lovell's Pond" is published in the Portland, Maine, Gazette.
http://www.auburn.edu/~vestmon/gif/long2.jpg
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