Daily Bleed Radical Literary History for August 2nd

Our Daily Bleed...

It was an important night of my life ... Either I paid up or I got out: that was what the note said, the note the landlady had put under the door. A great problem, deserving acute attention. I solved it by turning out the lights & going to bed."

— John Fante, Ask the Dust

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AUGUST 2

JAMES BALDWIN
Suave, gay proponent of the fire this time.

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Jamaica: INDEPENDENCE DAY.

Guyana: FREEDOM DAY.

Australia: PICNIC DAY.

Macedonia: DAYS OF THE WATER NYMPHS. No clothes may be washed, & you may only swim or bathe if you are holding a piece of iron.

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320 -- Yat-Balam founds dynasty that rules Yaxchilan (Mayan Empire) throughout its 500-year recorded history.


1776 -- US: Declaration of Independence formally signed.


1819 -- US: First parachute jump in US. Arrested for possession of hemp upon landing.


1832 -- US: Sauk-Fox tribe, under a white flag of truce, massacred at Bad Axe River by Illinois militia.

Several hundred starving Sauk & Fox Indian warriors, together with wives & children, were massacred in Wisconsin by the Illinois militia, despite attempt to surrender.

Illinois militia catch up with retreating Sauk Indians. Forced off their land near Rockford, the Sauk offer a white flag of surrender at the Bad Axe River in Vernon County, Wisconsin. A militia commander records his impressions: (quote) "As we neared them they raised a white flag & endeavored to decoy us, but we were a little too old for them." The militia disregards the surrender attempt, & slaughter nearly the entire group, including women & children. A captured Chief Black Hawk offers a surrender speech (quote):

"The white men do not scalp the head; but they do worse — they poison the heart."

The State of Wisconsin refuses to apologize for the massacre until 1990.

1832 -- Theosophist leader Henry Steel Olcott lives.


1849 -- US: Reconvened session of the woman's rights convention is held at the Unitarian Church in Rochester, NY. Amelia Bush is chosen chair, & is the first woman to preside over a meeting attended by both men & women.



1855 -- US: Deadbeats? Black River band of Chippewa sign treaty to compensate Chippewa for destruction of their homes by construction of the 500 Locks (Great Lakes). The Chippewa have yet to be paid.


1861 -- US: National income tax, the first of its kind, passed to aid the Union war effort.



1862 -- Cuba: Fernando Tarrida del Marmol lives (1862-1915), Santiago. Militant & anarquista theoretician, Spanish free-thinker.

Son of Catalan emigrants, he moved to Spain for his education, becoming an anarchist after meeting Anselmo Lorenzo. Became Director of the Polytechnic Academy of Barcelona. Arrested during the terror of the Clerics & military, his family was able to pull strings to gain his release. Hounded & in fear for his life, he went to England where he lodged with Kropotkin & Louise Michel.

Contributed articles to the international anarchist press, the avant-garde literary journal "La Revue Blanche" translator of Tolstoï; author ofAnarquía, ateísmo y colectivismo (1885); Anselmo Lorenzo. Estudio crítico-biográfico; Les inquisiteurs d'Espagne (1897); Programa socialista libertario y la constitución del mundo (1908).

http://www.ephemanar.net/aout02.html#tarrida
See the Fernando Tarrida del Marmol Archive,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/tarrida/index.htm

1865 -- Irving Babbitt lives, Dayton, Ohio. Critic, teacher, leader of the movement in literary criticism known as "New Humanism." George Santayana (supporter of Franco's fascist takeover of Spain) & T.S. Eliot, are among its followers.


1867 -- US: 60 striking miners wounded by police in Scranton, Pennsylvania.


1869 -- George Eliot begins work on Middlemarch.


1870 -- During this month [I don't have exact date & place —ed.] Mikhail Bakunin is expelled from the Geneva section of the International due to his support for the Jura faction. Karl Marx, after a long concerted smear campaign against Bakunin, succeeds in having him expelled along with James Guillaume in 1872. To maintain dictatorial control of the International, Marx also moved its General council to NY, away from the membership & effectively destroying the First International.
[Source]

March 5, 1872	The General Council approves a private circular, Fictitious Splits in the International, written by Marx & Engels, which "exposes" Bakuninist intrigues & disruptive activity in the International
September 17-23	The London Conference of the First International. Drawing on the lessons of the Paris Commune. Marx & Engels substantiate the need for political struggle by the working class & for independent proletarian parties in each country; these ideas are incorporated in a resolution of the Conference

1875 -- US: George Vanderveer lives. Attorney for the Centralia Wobs (IWW) & the Chicago 101.

One of the few lawyers in Seattle, Washington willing to represent members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) during WWI & after.

He represented the defendants in the Everett & Centralia massacres, as well as workers & labor unions during & after the Seattle General Strikeof 1919.

http://web.archive.org/...history/timberbeasts.htm
http://struggle.ws/hist_texts/seattle1919.html
http://digital.lib.msu.edu/collections/index.cfm?CollectionID=23
http://content.lib.washington.edu/iwwweb/

1876 -- US: Wild Bill Hickock is shot in the back & killed in a poker game, Deadwood, South Dakota.
http://www.historybuff.com/library/refhickok.html


1878 -- Aino Kallas, Finnish writer, lives, Vyborg, Russia. Wrote also as Aino Krohn & Aino Suonio. Wrote The Wolf's Bride; The White Ship: Eros the Slayer.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/akallas.htm


1878 -- Italy: During this month [I don't have exact date — ed.] Errico Malatesta, Stepniak, Ceccarelli, Cafiero, & others branded as the "Gang of Matese" (la “banda” del Matese), are brought to trial after languishing in prison for the past year. They had been captured by the army while liberating towns in the Benevento province.

All were acquited.
[Details / context]



1893 -- France: Régis Messac lives, (1893-1943?) Champagnac (Charente).

Teacher (his doctorate being a thesis on police procedurals, Le detective Novel et l'influence de la Pensée Scientifique), poet, & writer (in all some 30 books), pacifist, militant anarchiste, resistance member. Captured in 1943, Messac disappeared in the concentration camps.

"In one of the remarkable 'konvoluts' of his arcades project, Benjamin notes a 'remarkable association of flânerie & the detective novel at the beginning of Les Mohicans de Paris, by Alexandre Dumas, 1863'. Regis Messac, in Le detective novel et l'influence de la pensee scientifique, bodily transports the habits & even the inhabitants of the prairie into a Parisian setting: we have a marvelously endowed dog called Mohican, a duel of hunters, a l'Americaine in the suburbs of Paris, & a redskin named Towah who kills & scalps four of his enemies in a Hackney cab right in the heart of Paris with such dexterity that the driver never even notices. 'Nothing forbids us from supposing that the tribes we call savages are the debris of great civilizations.' (Baudelaire)." [Details / context]

1903 -- Macedonia: Insurrection breaks out in the area of Bitola, two other areas of Skplié & Salonique. In Thrace, revolutionists also intervene. But the Turkish troops react & crush the revolutionists.

1972 -- US: Bound Together Mural Color Postcard Remembering American Anarchism — a mural by Susan Greene.

... show details

1972 -- American anarchist cultural critic Paul Goodman absurdly dies. Wrote Growing Up Absurd.

"A free society cannot be the substitution of a new order for the old order; it is the extension of spheres of free action until they make up the most of social life."

"I move in a society so devoid of ordinary reality that I am continually stopping to teach good sense, to give support, to help out, as a young gangster might help an old lady across the street on his way to the stick-up."

1972 -- Brian Cole, an original member of the Association, dies of a heroin overdose. He played bass on the hits "Windy," "Cherish" & "Never My Love."


1976 -- Filmmaker Fritz Lang dies.

1980 -- US: American humorist, actor, playwright, Academy Award-winning screenwriter, (Blacklisted during McCarthy / HUAC witchhunt), Donald Stewart, dies at 85, in London, England.

BLACKLISTED WRITERS RECEIVE CREDIT FOR SCREENPLAYS WGA Announces Correction of Screen Credits for 23 Films The Board of Directors of the Writers Guild of America, west, has unanimously voted to officially correct the writing credits of 23 films written or co- written by writers who were "blacklisted" starting in 1947 & into the 1960s. http://www.wga.org/content/subpage_writersresources.aspx?id=1958 http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/blacklist.html See Howard Zinn's Peoples History of the US, http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/zinn-chap16.html & Navasky's Naming Names, http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/navasky-chap10.html   http://www.moderntimes.com/blacklist/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec97/blacklist_10-24.html

1986 -- South Africa: Fire in nuclear power plant kills two workers, Johannesburg.
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/history.html


1988 -- Raymond Carver poet/short story writer, dies at 50.

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"It's strange. You never start out life with the intention of becoming a bankrupt or an alcoholic or a cheat & a thief. Or a liar."

— Raymond Carver

http://recollectionbooks.com/links.html#RaymondCarver

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1990 -- Iraq invades Kuwait, following grievance over oil, loans & land, after discussing plans with US Ambassador April Glaspie. The Gulf War: Secret History
http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/gulf-secret.htm
Bush Lies: Who Died for Gulf War Lies?
http://www.whodies.com/lies_gulf_war.html
Right Road Lost:
http://www.independentexposure.com/title/452/Right_Road_Lost.html
U.S. Bishops' Statement on Iraq:
http://www.christusrex.org/www1/icons/bishops.html
Saddam-Glaspie meeting:
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/ARTICLE5/april.html
Operation Desert Storm:
http://www.desert-storm.com/War/chronology.html
Gulf War, 12 Years Later...:
http://www.counterpunch.org/cohen03142003.html


1991 -- In A Funk?: Funk singer Rick James, arrested on sexual torture charges.

1997 -- Here to Go?:





1997 -- William S. Burroughs, here for a short visit, departs.

The cut-up method brings to writers the collage, which has been used by painters for 50 years. & used by the moving & still camera. In fact all street shots from movie or still cameras are by the unpredictable factors of passersby & juxtaposition cut-ups. & photographers will tell you that often their best shots are accidents . . . writers will tell you the same.

— William S. Burroughs, THE CUT-UP METHOD OF BRION GYSIN, from The Third Mind

http://recollectionbooks.com/links.html
http://www.cosmicbaseball.com/09dbkm617game.html
http://web.archive.org/...bigtable.com/
http://www.notbored.org/bulletin.html
http://web.archive.org/...arengario.it/mostre/beats/0bindex.htm

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1997 -- Fela Anikulapo-Kuti (1938-1997) dies.
Daily Bleed Saint December 6, 2007.
Nigerian rock star, pot & AIDS activist, culture hero
Multi-instrumentalist musician & composer, pioneer of Afrobeat music, human rights activist, & political maverick.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fela_Kuti

1999 -- Alberto Gironella, a leading Mexican surrealist painter & promoter of literature & arts, dies, age 70.

2009 -- England: Food packages to Vestas factory occupiers cut off by management.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Food_packages_to_Vestas_occupiers_cut_off

3000 --

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"It is by losing ourselves in inquiry, creation & craft that we become something. Civilization is a continual gift of spirit: inventions, discoveries, insight, art. We are citizens, as Socrates would have said, & we have it available as our own."

— Paul Goodman

“I regard the President as my public servant whom I pay, & berate him as a lousy employee. I come on as an old fashioned patriot, neither supine nor more revolutionary than is necessary for my modest goals.” Goodman's goals were forthright rather than modest. He wanted a society in which children have bright eyes, nobody is pushed around, rivers are clean, & in which there is useful work, tasty food, & “occasionally satisfying nookie.”

— Marty Jezer

Quotes from Anarchists

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