Thanks, as always, to Recollection Books, for compiling and mailing out the Daily Bleed for all this time!
Our Daily Bleed...
| People always ask what am i going to be when i grow up & i always just think i'd like to grow up
— Nikki Giovanni,
"Poem for Rodney," from Spin a Soft Black Song |
| DECEMBER 31
JOHN WYCLIFFE
Leader of the dangerous Lollards, 13th-century English spiritual revolutionaries. |
ANNUAL WORLD PEACE MEDITATION.NEW YEAR'S EVE. In Germany prowling demons & spirits of darkness must be routed this night by mummery & lots of noise. People used to dress in straw clothing with deerskin masks of animals & run through the streets, clanging & dragging chains (Birt?).Mobile, Alabama: COWBELLION HERD ESCAPADE & REVEL honors Michael Krafft, who founded mystic society, "Cowbellion de Rakin" in 1830, first of all the mystic societies & crewes which stage the Mardi gras extravaganza in Mobile & New Orleans.Japan: NAMAHAGE. Men dressed as devils go door-to-door screaming,"Any good-for-nothings here about?" (Birt?)Aztec Malinalli Day. A day for persevering against all odds & for creating alliances that will survive the test of time.It is a good day for those who are suppressed, a bad day for their suppressors.
-46 -- 
The last day of the Year of Confusion, a 445-day Roman year (OS).
The last day of the Year of Confusion, a 445-day Roman year (OS).
Ahhhhhh, the Good Ol' Days!
1320 -- John Wycliffe lives. Here...
1384 -- John Wycliffe dies. British radical clergyman, reformer, founder of "poor priest" movement, major influence on Lollards & later reformers. Dead & gone...
1646 -- Corneille's "Le Cid" becomes the first play performed in Quebec, Canada.
Corneille's "Le Cid" becomes the first play performed in Quebec, Canada.
1744 -- James Bradley announces discovery of Earth's nutation motion. The planet's a natural born "Wobbly."
1747 -- German poet, editor & translator Gottfried August Bürger lives. His ballads are among the finest in the German language. Bürger revived the sonnet form in German, & his experiments in it were praised as models by Schiller.
1775 -- Canada: American attack on the city of Quebec is launched during a blinding snowstorm. General Montgomery, one of the two American leaders, is killed, & the second, General Benedict Arnold, is wounded during the opening encounter. The attack fails, the Canadians having killed or wounded fully half the American troops.
1777 -- P.D.Q. Bach completes his "Gross Concerto," according to Schickele.
P.D.Q. Bach completes his "Gross Concerto," according to Schickele.
1817 -- James T. Fields lives, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. A partner in Ticknor & Fields, publishers, he will succeed James Russell Lowell as editor of the "Atlantic Monthly."
1830 -- Alexander Smith, Scottish poet/writer, lives, Kilmarnock.
1842 -- US: Yikes!? Alabama becomes first state to license dental surgeons. Creeping socialism!
1846 -- Holland: Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis lives (1846-1919), Amsterdam.
Pioneer of Dutch anarchism & the International Anti-Militarist Association. Born in Amsterdam, a preacher in Harlingen in 1870. Leader of a socialist union & first socialist senator (1891) in The Netherlands. He then abandoned politics for the anarchism of Mikhail Bakunin in 1897.
1860 --
| Strange: December Fortean Events | Second fall of reddish rain (see Dec. 28, 1860), exact same quarter of Siena (see also Jan. 1, 1860) [Year Book of Facts, 1861-273] http://www.resologist.net/damn03.htm |
1863 -- Alfredo Panzini lives. Italian novelist, short story writer, essayist, who, in his lifetime, ranked with Carducci & D'Annunzio as a 'modern classicist', but is no longer held in such esteem. His style had similarities with the French writer Anatole France.
1869 -- Henri Matisse lives — Jazz, nice odalisques, goldfish, a wealth of choices...
1871 -- Ellen Horup, anti-militarist feminist, lives, Denmark.
1872 -- Can't Wait?: Though some of his work isn't recognized for almost another century, the creator of Finland's modern literature, Aleksis Kivi dies in Tuusula. His most widely read novel is Seitsemän veljestä (Seven Brothers).
1877 -- Gustave Courbet (1809-1877) dies. French painter, revolutionary socialist, man of independent character. Leader of the realist school.
