Daily Bleed for December 31st, the Final Day of 2012, A Radical Anarchist Daybook

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.

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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. 

http://www.azteccalendar.com/ 

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-46 --  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.

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. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_August_B%C3%BCrger

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.

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.

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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...

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/matisse/

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

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). 

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/akivi.htm 

1877 -- Gustave Courbet (1809-1877) dies. French painter, revolutionary socialist, man of independent character. Leader of the realist school.

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Daily Bleed for December 9th, A Radical Anarchist Daybook

Our Daily Bleed...

"Any person who has had the following dream. You are in a subway station of a major city. At the far end you see a coffee machine. You put in two coins. The Holy Grail drops down. Then blood pours into the chalice."

"The person who borrowed my Martin Beck thriller, read it in a sauna which melted the glue off the spine so the pages drifted to the floor, stapled them together & returned the book, thinking I wouldn't notice."

      — Michael Ondaatje, Elimination Dance

DECEMBER 9

PYOTR KROPOTKIN
"The Red Prince," Russian anarchist theorist.

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

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Patzcuaro, Mexico: FIESTA OF THE MOTHER OF HEALTH. Fishermens' Fiesta, with much dancing, clowning & fireworks.

& this reminder, lest things are going too well in your life, this is:
NATIONAL INDIGESTION SEASON.
INTERNATIONAL (GOVERNMENT) ANTI-CORRUPTION DAY. Yup.

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656 --  'Ali's forces win the Battle of the Camel
in the first Muslim civil war.

Float like a butterfly sting like a bee!

1292 -- Sa'di, great Persian poet (Orchard; Rose Garden) dies.


1460 -- Madcap medieval rhymester John Skelton lives.

Once, when being upbraided by Cardinal Wolsey he quipped, "I pray, your grace, to let me lie down & wallow, for I can kneel no longer."

Source: [Calendar Riots]


1531 -- México: Virgin of Guadalupe appears to an Indian boy.


1570 -- Geuzen under Herman de Ruyter occupies Loevestein.

1608 -- British "Paradise Lost": epic writer John Milton lives, Bread Street, Cheapside, London. The "Prince of Poets" also wrote First Defense of the English People, justifying the execution of Charles I.

On his birthday in 1631 he wrote: "How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,/ Stoltn on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!"

After completing his First Defense of the English People, he went blind at 43. Alfred, Lord Tennyson later apostrophizes the author of Paradise Lost: "O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies, /O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity,/God-gifted organ-voice of England, / Milton, a name to resound for ages."

http://www.literature.org/authors/milton-john/paradise-lost/
http://johnmilton.org/
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/jmilton.htm

1640 -- New Old World: Settler Hugh Bewitt is banished from colony of Massachusetts when he declares himself to be free of original sin. Much like the Old World.


1777 -- England: Reverend Benjamin Russen executed at Tyburn, for rape.


1801 -- German writer Johann Gottfried Seume starts his tour on foot from Saxony, crosses the Alps & walks through Italy to Sicily. His return trip takes him through Switzerland & even to Paris. The whole trip takes only eight months & results in Spaziergang nach Syrakus im Jahre (A Stroll to Syracuse).

1828 -- Joseph Dietzgen, socialist, lives, near Cologne, Germany. Important socialist theorist whose writings exerted considerable influence on the workers' movement. Wrote The Nature of Human Brain-Work (1869).

"While the anarchists may have mad & brainless individuals in their ranks, the socialists have an abundance of cowards. For this reason I care as much for one as the other."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/dietzgen/index.htm
http://www.pmpress.org/content/article.php?story=JosephDietzgen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Dietzgen

1842 -- Russia: Prince Peter Kropotkin, important geographer & anarchist communist, lives, Moscow. "The prince who became a revolutionist."

PYOTR KROPOTKIN
Russian revolutionist, anarchist, landmark geographer.
The Prince who shunned material wealth.

     

In the Encyclopedia Britannica (for which he wrote the "anarchy" definition in the famed 11th edition) Kropotkin describes himself:

"Although he achieved renown in a number of different fields, ranging from geography & zoology to sociology & history, he shunned material success for the life of a revolutionist."

1848 -- Folklorist Joel Chandler Harris lives, Putnam County, Georgia. Discovers Tar Baby syndrome. Creator of Uncle Remus & Brer Rabbit.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG97/remus/contents.html

1854 -- Alfred Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade published six weeks after the Battle of Balaclava.


1868 -- Italy: Paolo Lega lives (1868-??). In 1894 the young anarchist attempts to shoot Francesco Crispi, président du conseil Italien. The bullet lodged in Crispi's car rather than Crispi; Lega was arrested & did 20-years in prison for his poor aim.
Source: Ephéméride anarchiste


1869 -- US: Knights of Labor founded in Philadelphia, as a secret society open to all members of the producing classes except "parasites" including stockbrokers, gamblers, & lawyers. Founded by Uriah Stevens & five other garment workers. Stevens, a tailor who once studied for the Baptist ministry, leads the order.
http://www.history.umd.edu/Gompers/chron1.htm


1889 --  US: The Press expedition arrives in Port Angeles to begin exploring the Olympic Mountains (Washington State).

Daily Bleed for December 5th, a Radical Anarchist Daybook

Our Daily Bleed...

Things To Do Today: Make new friends — (go to a poetry recital & ask why each poem doesn't rhyme).

DECEMBER 5

GEORGE BRECHT

American Fluxus artist, chemist, vanguard composer.

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Ancient Rome: FESTIVAL OF FAUNUS. Feasting & merrymaking.

Belgium: ST. NICHOLAS' EVE. Black Peter, Nick's Moorish servant, drops down the chimney with gifts for the children.

A commodity has value ... A gift has worth.

— Lewis Hyde

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1349 -- Jews are massacred at Nuremberg in Black death riots.


1484 --  The pope establishes severe penalties against German witches & magicians; over the next 300 years perhaps 200,000 accused witches are executed. It's a mean nasty ugly job, but somebody has to do it...& who better but the Catholic Church?


1770 -- Six of the British troops involved in the Boston Massacre found innocent, largely due to defense attorney John Adams' intimation that Crispus Attucks, America's first black hero, may have caused "the dreadful carnage of that night" with his "mad behavior...at the head of...[a] rabble of Negroes..."


1784 -- Phillis Wheatley dies, aged about 31 years, Boston. First black woman poet &, after Anne Bradstreet, only the second woman poet of note in the US. The 39 poems inPoems on Various Subjects, Religious & Moral, published in 1773 in England under the sponsorship of the Countess of Huntingdon, help spread her reputation in Europe as well as in America.

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"

NOVEMBER 25

BA JIN

Leading Chinese novelist of 20th-century independence, lifelong revolutionist, anarchist.
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."

http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/bajin/bajinarchive.html

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BUY NOTHING DAY.

Suriname: INDEPENDENCE DAY (1975).

England: CATHERNING DAY: traditionally, young women make merry today.

FESTIVAL OF SHADOW ECONOMIES.

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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 --  Guy de Maupassant story "La Ficelle" (A Piece of String) is published.


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.
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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.

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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/

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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.

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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 

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

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.