Last Word Blog: Daily Bleed for January 4th, A Radical Anarchist Literary Daybook

Our Daily Bleed...

love is a place
& through this place of
love
move
(with brightness of peace)
all places
yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skillfully curled)
all worlds

— e.e. cummings (1894-1962), "love is a place"
http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/Places.htm

JANUARY 4

C. L. R. JAMES

"Black Plato." Trinidadian philosopher & revolutionary.

16th to 19th century London: FROST FAIRS on the Thames, until the ice broke.

US: TRIVIA DAY.

FESTIVAL OF FUFLUNS, Etruscan God of Wine.

Great Dismal Swamp, North Carolina:

OLD CHRISTMAS FRIGHTS.

Old Nick (a great black goat/man) & hobby-horse seek out wayward children in a syncresis of English, Tuscarora & African tradition.

1653 -- Sir Isaac Newton, scientist ("Whatever goes up..."), lives.

Nature & Nature's laws

lay hid in night;

God said, Let Newton be!

& all was light

1758 -- Galib Dede, one of the last great classical poets of Ottoman literature, dies in Constantinople. His masterpiece is the allegorical romance, Hüsn ü Ask of two youths, "Beauty" & "Love."

1785 -- Philologist Jakob Grimm lives, Hanau, near Frankfurt-am-Main. With brother Wilhelm he collects Grimm's Fairy Tales (1812-22).

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

http://www.grimmfairytales.com/en/main

1793 -- Swedish dramatic & epic poet, Bengt Lidner, dies in Stockholm.

1821 -- Mother Elizabeth Seton, founder of Sisters of Charity, dies.

1849 -- Germany: During this month the anarchist Michael Bakuninsecretly arrives in Leipzig to prepare for an uprising in Bohemia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mkidlq4U6Os&NR=1

http://anarcho.tripod.com/

http://socialhistory.org/en/news/bakunin-collected

1855 -- US: Kalapuyan Ahant-Chuyuk signs treaty ceding lands & moving to Grande Ronde reservation, Oregon.

1856 --

Maurice Mac-Nab (1856-1889) lives, in Vierzon.

French poet, singer, interpreter, began at the cabaret "Hydropathes" & then the Chat Noir ("Black Cat"), but died suddenly at age 33.

Author of the famous The Métingue of the Subway, a parody which became a classic of dispute.

Peuple français, la Bastille est détruite,
Et y a z'encor des cachots pour tes fils!...
Souviens-toi des géants de quarante-huite
Qu'étaient plus grands qu' ceuss' d'au jour d'aujourd'hui
Car c'est toujours l' pauvre ouverrier qui trinque,
Mêm' qu'on le fourre au violon pour un rien,
C'était tout d' même un bien chouette métingue,
Que le métingu' du métropolitain!

Hyspa & Erik Satie each gained their first chances to perform at the Chat Noir. Hyspa filled in for the ailing Maurice Mac-Nab, a consumptive postal clerk who was one of the cabaret's best-loved satirists. Salis recognized the comic potential of Mac-Nab's repertory being presented in Hyspa's heavy southern accent, & he added to the joke by introducing him as 'le bon belge.

Satie, according to his first biographer Pierre-Daniel Templier, was hired as 'second pianist'...

MAC-NAB. Chansons du Chat Noir. Nouvelles chansons du Chat Noir. Paris, Au Ménestrel, (1885), Un Vol. In-4°, 114 pp + 126 pp. Ill. de H.Gerbault. Couverture de Ferdinand Bac. Musique dans le texte de Camille Baron pour le premier volume et de Roland Kohr pour le second. Rel. demi chagrin vert clair, dos lisse à faux nerfs.couv. ill. cons. Toutes les rengaines du Chat Noir avec de savoureux dessins. Rare.

MAC-NAB. Poèmes incongrus suite aux poèmes mobiles contenant ses nouveaux monologues et derniéres chansons. Paris, Léon vanier, 1891, Un Vol. In-12°, 72 pp. Cartonnage, dos toile. couv.cons.

MAC-NAB. Poèmes Mobiles. Monologues de Mac-Nab avec illustrations de l'auteur et une préface de Coquelin Cadet. Paris, Albert Messein, 1927, Un Vol. In-12°, 140 pp. Br. Réimpression de l'édition de 1890.

http://www.satie-archives.com/web/article7.html

http://drapeaurouge.free.fr/grand_metingue.html

http://web.archive.org/...history_of_the_cabaret.htm

http://www.ville-vierzon.fr/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=170&Itemid=227

http://esvc001419.wic024u.server-web.com/satie.htm

http://www.ephemanar.net/janvier04.html

1865 --

Strange Event: England: Unknown airship, with lights, seen over Dover & over the Bristol Channel [London Times, London Standard].
http://www.resologist.net/lands223.htm
http://www.sacred-texts.com/fort/land/land35.htm

1875 -- Anni Swan lives. Finnish writer/translator, who wrote mainly for children. Her fairy tales were influenced by world literature & folk tales, combining the realistic with fantasy. In many, differences between social classes create conflict.

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

1878 -- Poet & short story writer A. E. Coppard lives, Folkestone, Kent.

1879 -- England: German language magazine Freiheit (Freedom) begin publishing, in London, today (some sources indicate the 3rd). Founded by Johann Most for illegal distribution in Germany, it evolves with him to anarchism.

[Details / context]

1883 -- US: One-time American lefty Max Eastman lives, Canandaigua, New York. Best known as the editor of the original Masses magazine.

1886 -- Spain: Armand Guerra (born José Estivalis Calvo) lives (1886-1939), Valence. Writer & Spanish anarchist scenario writer, filmmaker, member of the young C.N.T.

Fought fascism with a camera.

... show details

1891 -- Trinidadian philosopher C. L. R. James lives. Author of The Black Jacobins (1938),Breaking a Boundary (1963), & volumes of essays involving class & race antagonism, West Indian self-determination, cricket, Marxism, & aesthetics.

... show details

1891 -- Switzerland: The Congress of Capolago, founding of the Revolutionary Anarchist Socialist Party (PSAR), January 4-6th. Amilcare Cipriani, Malatesta, Francesco Saverio Merlino, Ettore Molinari, Luigi Galleani, &Pietro Gori are the chief backers & propagandists of this party.

[Details / context]

1898 -- First installment of William Dean Howell's Life & Letters appears in Harper's Weekly.

1904 -- US: Supreme Court rules Puerto Rican citizens cannot be refused admission to the US.

1908 -- US: During this month Emma Goldman lectures in German, English, & Yiddish on "Trade Unionism," "The Woman in the Future," & "The Child & its Enemies," among other topics, in cities throughout New York State. Large crowd turns out to hear Emma in Baltimore.

But in a melodrama, the cops prevent Goldman from delivering her lecture on "The Revolutionary Spirit in Modern Drama" in Washington, DC. Also lectures in Pittsburgh.

Claimed they didn't like her act?

1909 -- Ireland: A union lives. Some of the most active members, grouped around Jim Larkin, broke away & founded the Irish Transport Workers Union.

... show details

1912 -- Smallest earth-moon distance during this century, 356,375 km center-to-center.

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00434

1914 -- Physician/author S. Weir Mitchell dies, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Most of his work reflects his medical & war experience;Wear & Tear (1871), Roland Blake (1886),The Red City (1908).

1914 --

US: Asleep at the Wheel? Philadelphia police expel audience & lock the hall where Emma Goldman is scheduled to lecture on "The Awakening of Labor"; the event moves to another location where the lecture proceeds without interruption.

1917 -- France: Leo Voline lives, in Paris, third child of anarchist poet/historian & Russian refugee, Voline (Vsevolod Eichenbaum).

Leo shares with his father the libertarian ideal. At age 20 (in 1937) Leo went to Spain to fight in one of the military columns of the C.N.T. [Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo]. In February 1938, his unit was encircled & decimated by the fascists.

http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/8gtjf5

1932 -- India: Gandhi arrested for restarting satyagraha campaign.

http://www.gandhiinstitute.org/

1933 -- US: Angered by increasing farm foreclosures, hardscrabble members of Iowa's Farmers Holiday Association threaten to lynch banking representatives & law officials who institute foreclosure proceedings for the duration of the Depression.

... show details

1935 -- Canada: During this month Emma Goldman is absorbed

writing lectures with the hope that a new lecture series & published articles will provide a meager livelihood, as well as spread anarchist ideas. She considers writing a book of portraits of famous people she has known, an idea first suggested by Frank Heiner. She suggests that the sustaining fund Jeanne Levey is helping to raise might be designated to support its writing.

1938 -- Spain: During this month the pamphlet Towards a Fresh Revolution is drafted by Jaime Balius & published by the anarquista militant group Friends of Durruti.

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/DurrutiColumnEarly.htm

http://www.ateneuenciclopedicpopular.org/antiga/texto/Articles/Articles8.html

1939 -- George Orwell signs Breton/Rivera manifesto, "Towards a Free Revolutionary Art."

Orwell, a novelist best known for his book 1984was a political activist who wrote, for example,Homage to Catalonia, a book of his experiences during the Spanish Revolution, which was very sympathetic to the anarchists.

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

http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/

http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/

1945 -- Italy: In Raguse, Sicily, Maria Occhipinti, lies down in front of army trucks which come to find new young conscripts to incorporate into the new Italian army. Within minutes, a crowd surrounds the soldiers, forcing them to release their recruits, but kill a demonstrator & set off a major revolt.

[Details / context]

1945 -- Netherlands: German soldiers execute resistance fighters in Amsterdam.

1951 -- Bob Black, anarchist critic, lives. World's best loved anarchist, often in hiding from his enraged fan club.

"A Critic is like the house-niggers of yore who looked down on the field hands because, as household servants, they got to dress up & bask in the presence of quality folks. The Critic is Culture's liveried footman. But just beneath the surface (there isn't much room down there) he seethes with impotent envy like a eunuch in a seraglio....

The Critic is nothing in particular...is only an nth-generation photocopy...who in turn might best be characterized as what Jean Baudrillard calls a "simulacrum": a copy without an original."

— Bob Black

http://www.t0.or.at/bobblack/bobblack.htm

1952 -- US: 1,600 subscribers reportedly belong to KPFA in Berkeley, California. first aired April 15, 1949, founded by Lewis Hill, poet, pacifist & journalist. Recently the scene of management attempts to destroy the power of the community & its workers in controlling the station & mainstream it. Not unlike KRAB-FM in Seattle, where a management coup resulted in selling its prime airwave position, 107.7, for measly 11 million bucks.

... show details

1952 -- The use of the term ‘Ms’ as a courtesy title for a woman where ‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs’ are deemed inappropriate, dates from The Simplified Letter, published by the Philadelphia-based National Office of the Management Association today.

1955 -- US: America agrees to pay Japan two million bucks for damages resulting from atomic tests in Marshall Islands.

1958 -- Sputnik I, the first satellite, burns up on reentry into earth's atmosphere.

1960 -- France: Albert Camus (The Plague) killed at age 46, in an automobile accident near Sens. French-Algerian author who wrote for many years for the anarchiste & left wing press in France.

"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life."

— Albert Camus

http://www.camus-society.com/

Albert Camus und der Anarchismus

Select Bibliography for Albert Camus

Colin Ward, Albert Camus & the Algerian Legacy

http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/anarchQuotes.htm#CamusQuote1

1960 -- US: United Steel workers end longest strike in US, begun on July 15, 1959.

1960 -- Spain: Spanish guérilla Francisco Sabaté is wounded as his group is trapped in a shoot-out with the Guardia Civil.

... show details

http://www.nodo50.org/age/quicosabate/quicosabate2.htm

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/SabateFrancisco.htm

http://geocities.ws/paisajes_guerrilla/catalonia.html

1961 -- Denmark: Shaggy Dog Story?: Longest recorded strike ends — 33 years!! Danish barbers' assistants began their strike in 1938 in Copenhagen.

1965 -- US: Sam Rayburn House Office Building, costing "more than the pyramids at Giza, the hanging gardens of Babylon, & the Colossus of Rhodes," according to the NY Times, opens in Washington, D.C.

The congressional bill authorizing its construction appropriated $2 million plus "such additional sums as may be necessary.""Such additional sums" eventually totaled $88 million, making the Rayburn Building the most expensive public structure in the world.

1965 -- Right-wing modernist poet T.S. Eliot, expatriate American dies in England, his adopted country.

How can they write or paint

In a country where it

Would be nicer to be

Fed intravenously?

— Kenneth Rexroth

1965 -- US: Free Speech Movement (FSM) holds first legal rally on Sproul Plaza, University of California at Berkeley.

1971 -- Vietnam: An angry American soldier in Vietnam, George Mellendorf, sends a letter to Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Dick M Nixon complaining about slow delivery of mail to soldiers;

"It seems as if nobody cares if we get our mail."

Nixon may have responded quickly with his letter of denial, but Mellendorf didn't get it until 1978 — seven years after it was sent.

1975 -- Carlo Levi dies. Italian writer, journalist, artist, doctor, whose first documentary novel, Christ Stopped at Eboli, became an international sensation & enhanced the trend toward social realism in postwar Italian literature. Along with Carlo & Nello Rosselli he founded an anti-fascist movement called Giustizia e Libertà.

CARLO LEVI 1997, 2005 SAINT, 16 MAY

Italian anti-fascist activist, author, humanitarian.

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

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

1976 -- Mal Evans, former roadie & bodyguard of the Beatles, is shot to death by police at his Los Angeles apartment.

His girlfriend, Fran Hughes, found him upset & despondent & when friends couldn't get Evans to release the unloaded rifle he was holding, they called police. At one point, Evans supposedly pointed the gun at police officers; they opened fire. He was 40 years old.

1976 -- Spain: Major wildcat strike wave starts; at its height over 500,00 workers are involved.

1979 -- US: In an out-of-court settlement of $675,000 awarded to the victims of the Kent State University shootings of 1970, the legal battle over the controversial killings is put to rest.

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

"Flowers are better than bullets."

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

1980 -- US: Citing "an extremely serious threat to peace," Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Carter announces a series of punitive measures against the USSR, most notably an embargo of grain & high technology, in retaliation for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

1983 -- US: Colorado farmers protest foreclosures.

1986 -- British gay writer Christopher Isherwood dies. His novels Mr. Norris Changes Trains & Goodbye to Berlin were based on his experience of post-slump, pre-Hitler Berlin. These became the basis, first of the play (1952) & film (1955) I Am a Camera, & then of the musical (1966) & film (1972) Cabaret.

http://www.buddybuddy.com/famous.html

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

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

1987 -- Thomas Stevens becomes first man to bicycle around the world. Wet but wiser.

1987 -- US: Reverend Oral Roberts tells viewers, "God will call me home" if they don't help him raise $4.5 million in three months. "I need some very quick money," says the preacher. "I mean, I need it now."

1990 -- US: Chuck It All? Chuck Stewart commits suicide by jumping into the Mystic River 10 weeks after he killed his pregnant wife, injured himself, & blamed an imaginary black assailant, in Boston. Inspires "mystical" experiences in the '90s New Age movement.

1997 -- Nigeria: 80,000 rally in Ogoni portions of the populace against military dictatorship & Shell Oil's plans to destroy Ogoni land. The Army opens fire on peaceful demonstration, wounding four.

... show details

2007 --

France: Henri Portier (b.1941) dies. Anarcho-syndicaliste, pacifiste, antimilitariste, & historien du mouvement Freinet.

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/gallery/galleryindex.htm#HenriPortier

4000 --