Of the young year's disclosing days this one day—
The first of February & a Sunday—
I clasp in mind, & set down for a safe keeping...

— Sylvia Townsend Warner, "Of the young year's disclosing days"


--

FEBRUARY 1

LANGSTON HUGHES
Fine African American writer & political commentator.

Ordered home by the Russian government who want his ass bad. At the end of the year, in December 1844, he is stripped of his status as Russian nobility & sentenced in absentsia to hard labor in Siberia.

"Absentsia"? Just a cheap excuse to get out of work, right? If you are wondering where his life-career plan is leading, see next entry; sorry, we don't know who his career counselor was or what self-help books sent him careening so precipitously down this jagged road of life.

Bakunin remains in Paris for the next three years, in contact with representatives of French, Polish, & European democracy until expelled in December 1847. Bakunin also meets & talks with Proudhon often & Marx occasionally, & is on friendly terms with novelist George Sand. He returns to Paris when Louis-Phillippe is overthrown in favor of a Republic, & he publishes several letters in the press.
http://www.iisg.nl/news/bakunincd.php
http://www.knaw.nl/bakunin/

1846 -- Theophile Gautier publishes "The Hashish Club" about his initiation.



1851 -- Novelist & anarchist Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (nee Godwin) dies in Bournemouth.
http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/shelley.htm
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/frankenstein/frankhome.html


1860 -- US: Decree from Norton I, Emperor of the United States & Protector of Mexico, orders representatives of the different states to assemble at Platt’s Music Hall in Frisco to change laws to ameliorate the evils under which the country is laboring.
http://www.zpub.com/sf/history/nort.html
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/norton.html



1860 -- France: Michel Zevaco lives (1860-1918), Ajaccio (Corse). Novelist, professor, film director, anticleric, publisher, anarchist. Zevaco wrote many historical swashbuckling novels which are still being printed & made into films. The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called him a great writer who influenced him greatly.

Zevaco founded the anarchist weekly "Gueux." He also wrote for Sébastien Faure's "Libertaire,", & the anarchist paper "La Renaissance", & also edited "l'Anticlérical,".

In 1900 Zevaco's famous cloak & dagger novels Les Pardaillanof, began to be serialized in the daily newspapers to great popular success.

[Details / context]

1864 -- US: The Collar Laundry Union forms in Troy, New York. Led by Kate Mullaney, a National Labor Union activist, the union successfully increases earnings for laundresses from 2 dollars to 14 dollars a week.

In May 1869, the women strike for a wage increase with support of the whole city. Seven thousand attend a mass rally. As the strike drags on with no end in sight, Mullaney & the union organize a cooperative called the "Union Linen Collar & Cuff Manufactory." The co-op provides work for members & combat employer attempts to starve them out. But the strike ended in defeat when the companies eliminate their jobs by putting a new paper collar on the market. The union broke up & the cooperative closed.

In general, these days, women organizing on their own — although they put up a valiant fight — still lack the financial & political clout to combat their bosses.

1867 -- US: Gold-Bricking? Bricklayers start working 8-hour days.


1871 -- US: Jonathon Jasper Wright is elected to South Carolina Supreme Court, becoming the first African-American to hold a major judicial post.



1874 -- Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929), poet/dramatist/essayist, lives, Austria.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hugohof.htm



1876 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Secretary of Interior notifies Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Secretary of War that time given to "hostile" Sioux & Cheyenne Indians to abandon their villages & come into US agencies had expired; it was now a military matter.

Collage by Jim Koehline

1884 -- First Oxford New English Dictionary published (OED) is published (A-Ant) by James A.H. Murray.


1886 -- Manuel Pardinas lives. Anarchist gunman who assassinated Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Premier Jose Canalejas in 1912 for his role in suppressing a railroad strike, then turned the gun on himself.
http://ytak.club.fr/fevrier1.html#1


1890 -- Canada: British Columbia Miners & Labourers Protective Association founded.



1893 -- The first film studio is established — to provide sets for producing peep shows.
[Source: Calendar Riots]
http://www.geocities.co.jp/MusicStar/6282/pistols/discography/boot.html


1893 -- US: Establishes a "protectorate" over Hawaii with the landing of marines (This action is later disavowed by the US government).



1894 -- US: Stride pianist James P. Johnson lives (1894-1955). Although it had been around since 1913, the dance of the twenties, the Charleston, catches on nationally & internationally after appearing in the 1924 all-black musical revue, Runnin' Wild, with music composed by jazz pianist James P. Johnson.
http://www.jass.com/jamesp.html
http://stridepiano.com/

1898 -- US: Emma Goldman begins a 12-state lecture tour this month, through June. She addresses 66 meetings & participates in one debate. Several reporters note Goldman's improvement as a public speaker as she develops her command of the English language.

Source: Emma Goldman Papers

1900 -- England: Emma Goldman spends this month in London before traveling to Paris. On Feb. 20, Emma speaks out against the Anglo-Boer War at a meeting of the Freedom Discussion Group; lectures on "The Effect of War on the Workers." Her activities are credited for providing impetus to the London anarchist movement. http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Guide/chronology6900.html


1900 -- Artist Pablo Picasso's first exhibition opens, at El Quatre Gats, Barcelona.



1902 -- Poet/author Langston Hughes ("I, Too, Sing America") lives (1902-1967), Joplin, Missouri. Part of the Harlem Renaissance, known as "the poet laureate of Harlem."

   What happens to a dream deferred?

   Does it dry up
   like a raisin in the sun?

   Or fester like a sore--
   and then run?

   Does it stink like rotten meat?
   Or crust & sugar over—
   like a syrupy sweet?

   Maybe it just sags
   like a heavy load

   Or does it just explode?

      — Langston Hughes, "Dream Deferred"
http://www.myhero.com/myhero/hero.asp?hero=langstonHughes

http://www.brunswick.k12.me.us/bjh/depart/curric/poets.html#hughes

1904 -- American Humorist/satirist S. J. Perelman, lives, Brooklyn, New York. http://www.ralphmag.org/perelman.html


1908 -- Portugal: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader King Carlos I & son are killed by a mob.


1908 -- Antarctica: Take Me To Hawwaaii? Shackleton unloads the first automobile in Antarctica. What, no gas stations!?


1911 -- France: Etienne Faure dies. Member of the Commune de Saint-Etienne, militant anarchist & propagandist.
http://ytak.club.fr/aout4.html#faureetienne


1912 -- US: IWW San Diego, California free-speech fight begins.
http://www.iww.org/
http://sandiegohistory.org/journal/73winter/speech.htm
http://infoshop.org/texts/iww.html

1912 -- US: During this month Emma Goldman debates socialist Sol Fieldman twice in New York on "Direct versus Political Action." Bill Haywood & Elizabeth Gurley Flynn take collections for the striking textile workers. Also her publication Mother Earth alerts its readers to a major free-speech fight in San Diego.



1915 -- US: During this month (exact date unknown) Emma Goldman lectures on "Limitation of Offspring" to 600 people, one of the liberal New York Sunrise Club's largest audiences.

Although she details explicit information about birth control methods, for once Red Emma is not arrested (!).

Emma Goldman Papers

1918 -- Muriel Spark, novelist, lives, Edinburgh, where she sets The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
http://www2.ebs.hw.ac.uk/edweb/edc/edinburghers/muriel-spark.html


1920 -- The first armored car is introduced.


1920 -- Russia: During this month Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman settle in Petrograd where they renew their friendships with William Shatoff, now working as Commissar of Railroads, & John Reed.

They also meet with Grigory Zinoviev, director of the Soviet Executive Committee, & briefly with Maxim Gorki at his home in Petrograd.

They attend a conference of anarchists, including Baltic factory workers & Kronstadt sailors, who echo criticisms of the Bolsheviks voiced by Left Social Revolutionaries & others who have paid visits to Berkman & Goldman in this period.

Emma Goldman Papers

1921 -- Poet Galway Kinnell (Body Rags; Book of Nightmares) lives, Providence, Rhode Island.


1921 -- US: Carmen Fasanella of Princeton, NJ obtains his cab driver's license at age 17; he goes on to drive his taxi for the next 68 years, 243 days. Work, work work.


1922 -- In A Bookman's Daybook, Burton Rascoe writes:

Djuna Barnes said that James Joyce is frightfully superstitious. Just before Ulysses came out she was walking with him & his wife in the Bois de Bologne [sic], when a man brushed by & mumbled something she did not understand. Joyce blanched & trembled.

Djuna asked what was the matter.

"That man, whom I have never seen before," he said, "said to me as he passed, in Latin,

'You are an abominable writer!' That is a dreadful omen the day before the publication of my novel."

1923 -- Japan: 70% of Tokyo & 100% of Yokohama destroyed by fire following an earthquake, taking as many as 140,000 lives.


1923 -- American anthropologist Eric Wolf lives, Vienna, Austria.


1926 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Colonel Billy Mitchell convicted by court-martial of criticizing his superiors for not seeing the merit in expanding the combat use of air power. Mitchell resigned his commission &, after warning of the danger of a Japanese attack on Hawaii, died in New York February, 1936.


1929 -- Italy: Ai maestri delle scuole elementari è imposto il giuramento di fedeltà al fascismo. Tale obbligo verrà esteso anche ai docenti delle scuole medie.
[Source: Crimini e Misfatti]


1929 -- Australia: Timber workers strike over an increase in the work week from 44 hours to 48 (-October).


1930 -- First crossword puzzle in the "Times" of London appears.


1931 -- Severino Di Giovanni dies in a shoot-out with the police.

Typographer. He fled to Argentina in 1923 to escape Italian Fascism, where he joined the Anarchist Circle (Renzo Novatore) in Buenos Aires & printed & published the review "Culmine".

He organizes a demonstration for the release of Sacco & Vanzetti, but when they are executed on August 23, 1927, Di Giovanni turns to violent actions with the Scarfo brothers (Alejandro & Paulino); many bombs are set off, especially aimed at North American interests. For example, on December 25, 1927, the National City Bank was bombed, & on May 3, 1928, the Italian consulate.

This spiral of violence is condemned by the anarchists of (FORA & "La Protesta." See Osvaldo Bayer, Severino Di Giovanni, the idealist of violencia (1970).

http://perspectives.anarchist-studies.org/10bayer.htm

1935 -- James T. Farrell finishes his Studs Lonigan trilogy with the final volume, Judgment Day.


1935 -- Canada: Emma Goldman's four lectures in Yiddish this month continue to be her most successful in Montreal, drawing an audience of 200 when Emma speaks on "the element of sex in unmarried people" today, & raising money for the first time in Montreal when she speaks again to the women's branch of the Arbeiter Ring on Feb. 17.

During the month Emma decides to return to France in the spring after receiving further discouraging reports from friends who have met with Labor Department officials in Washington, D.C., about chances for readmission into the Land of Freedom.

As other possibilities close, she looks increasingly to her proposed book venture as a means of support; she also pursues the idea of a sustaining fund as she inquires about receiving an advance from a publisher.

Source: Emma Goldman Papers

1936 -- Mexico: Workers strike the Vidreria Monterrey.



1944 -- Netherlands: Germans arrest M.C. Escher's teacher, S. Jessurun de Mesquita. He is never seen again.



1945 -- Theoretician of play, Johann Huisinga plays out his last hand, dies, De Steeg, Holland.


1949 -- First 45 rpm record issued (by RCA).



1951 -- First telecast of atomic explosion.
http://www.csi.ad.jp/ABOMB/index.html
http://www.snopes.com/critters/disposal/whale.htm



1951 -- Alfred Krupp & 28 other German war criminals freed.



1952 -- During this month author Jack Kerouac has his first psychedelic experience when the anarchist/surrealist Philip Lamantia gives him peyote (Lamantia, a surrealist blood poet, was a member of the San Francisco Anarchist Circle with Kenneth Rexroth, et al.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/gallery/galleryindex.htm#s
http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/kerouac.htm

1952 -- Tunisia: A general strike against French colonial management begins. http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ts.html


1956 -- US: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Montgomery Improvement Association files suit in federal court against Alabama for segregation of buses.

Four freshmen from North Carolina A & T (Joseph McNeil, 18; Ezell Blair, Jr; Franklin McCain; & David Richmond). This event follows 16 similar demonstrations in the past 3 years; teachers involved: Douglas Moore, George Thomas; arrests include: Diane Nash, John Lewis, James Bevel; by February 16 sit-in's spread to 15 cities in North & South Carolina, Florida, Virginia, & Tennessee. By February's end, 31 Southern cities in 8 states are embroiled.

It is also during this month that the media discovers Tennessee Negro sharecroppers — who have been evicted from their farms for registering to vote — are forming "Freedom Village" tent cities.

http://www.greensboro.com/sitins/media_headlines.htm


1961 -- US: First anniversary of the Greensboro sit-in: demos all across the south, including a Nashville movie theater desegregation campaign (which sparks similar demos in 10 other cities); nine students arrested at lunch counter in Rock Hill, South Carolina, choose to take 30 days hard labor on a road gang; next week, four other students repeat the sit-in, also choose jail.


1962 -- US: Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over Cuckoo's Nest is published. The book was a vehicle for Kesey’s anarchist rant against the oppressive conformism imposed by society’s institutions, particularly the dehumanising social conformity of the 1950s.
http://wild-bohemian.com/kesey.htm


1964 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Indiana Governor Welsh declares the song "Louie Louie" by the Kingsmen pornographic, wants it banned. Stations say it's impossible to figure out the lyrics from "the unintelligible rendition as performed," but Welsh claims his "ears tingle" when he hears the song.


1964 -- US: CIA intelligence & terrorism plan Oplan 34A against N. Vietnam begins.


1965 -- Israel: Uri Davies jailed for 3 months for entering military territory.

1966 -- Film comedian Buster Keaton dies, Hollywood, California.

As a Worker
Buster arouses the Compassion of the Nation
in whose light the Corporations
sell themselves to their Workers ...

Spirit of Buster Keaton
if you survive as yourself
receive Please our honor & praise
you conscientious Workman

Hard-working Buster Keaton
when you arouse the laughter of children
as you live in Projector Light
Your Karmic Residue dissolves in Joyous Shouts

— Jackson Mac Low, excerpts, "36TH LIGHT POEM: IN MEMORIAM BUSTER KEATON — 4:50-6:18 A.M. SAT 1 JAN. 1972"

http://www.ida.liu.se/~juhta/buster/index.html

1966 -- Nicholas Piantanida sets balloon flight record & dies in descent.


1967 -- The 1,000th gang murder in Chicago (since 1919) occurs. Who's counting?


1968 -- Jimi Hendrix Experience, with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, at the Fillmore Auditorium in Frisco, California.


1968 -- Vietnam: Famous photo Saigon police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes a Viet Cong officer with a pistol shot to the head.

During police actions following the first day of the Tet offensive General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, a south Vietnamese security official is captured on film executing a Viet Cong prisoner by American photographer Eddie Adams. The Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph becomes yet another rallying point for anti-war protesters. Despite later claims that the prisoner had been accused of murdering a Saigon police officer & his family, the image seems to call into question everything claimed & assumed about the American allies, the South Vietnamese.

1970 -- Germany: West German news magazine "Stern" reveals that US has targeted 1,000 civilian locations in the Middle East in the event of a nuclear war.


1974 -- US: Lynda Ann Healy, first of serial killer Ted Bundy's murder victims, abducted in Seattle, Washington.



1974 -- German novelist, dramatist, & good pal of Bertolt Brecht, Marieluise Fleisser dies.

A few people have a bed for the night For a night the wind is kept from them The snow meant for them falls on the roadway But it won't change the world It won't improve relations among men It will not shorten the age of exploitation. — Bertolt Brecht A Bed for the Night

1975 -- US: Otis Francis Tabler is first open homosexual to get security clearance.
http://www.milk.com/wall-o-shame/gorilla_suits.html


1976 -- German physics theorist, philosopher Werner Heisenberg, in a principled state of uncertainty, certainly dies.


1977 -- Pointless?: Hillsdale High School defeats Person High School 2-0 in basketball. Said "Person" prefers to remain nameless.


1977 -- U.S. Federal Power Commission Report recommends approval of proposed Mackenzie Valley Pipeline in British Columbia, suggesting legal land claims of sovereign First Nation peoples are not a major concern.


1979 -- Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns to Iran after 15 years in exile.




1980 -- In honor of the first anniversary of the death of ex-Sex Pistol Sid Vicious, 1,000 punks march from London's Chelsea section to Hyde Park. Sid's mom, Ann Beverly, was to head the march; however, the night before she was sent to the hospital for a drug overdose.
http://www.5z.com/pistols/


1980 -- US: 7,000 march to protest KKK in Greensboro, North Carolina.



1981 -- France: Government agrees to send 60 Mirage fighter jets to Iraq.


1982 -- France: Socialist government decreases the work week to 39 hours & increases annual vacation to 5 weeks.


1986 -- France: Opening of "T.L.P" Théâtre Libertaire de Paris (ancien théâtre Déjazet), with Léo Ferré headlining. The theatre lasts until 1992, when the landlord's greed causes him to cancel the lease.
http://ytak.club.fr/aout4.html#faureetienne



1988 -- The Cars break up.


1988 -- US: Two Native American activists, Eddie Hatcher & Tim Jacobs, occupy a newspaper office in Lumberton, North Carolina, to highlight racism issues.




1989 -- Monty? Magical Python Snake, named Omiuri, dies in Kenya.


1989 -- Iran: Government frees 423 political prisoners, of an estimated 6,000.


1991 -- Morocco: 380 workers involved in a general strike are sentenced to up to 15 years.


1992 -- Serbia: Two-month campaign of Citizens Against War begins, Belgrade.



1992 -- US: Government begins shipping 10,000 refugees back to Haiti from Guantanamo Bay. (Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...)



1995 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Senator Exon introduces his overreaching Nazi-like internet censorship bill.


1995 -- Liliam Rosa Morad, Miami radio personality, is murdered at 25 by Cuban exile terrorists.


1996 -- Russia: 1 million Russian & Ukrainian coal miners strike for back wages.


1997 -- Mitchell Goodman, anti-war activist, writer, dies at 71.
http://www.nybooks.com/authors/6461
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19680822.htm

2003 -- Ivory Coast: 100,000 government supporters protest the French-brokered peace deal with rebels, Abidjan.

3000 --

***********************************************

"The truth is rarely pure & never simple.
Modern life would be very tedious if it were
either, & modern literature a complete impossibility."

       — Oscar Wilde

***********************************************

4000 --

http://www.drooker.com/

---

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