Then came days of regret upholstered in grey silk. I twisted my ring frantically around my finger. I drank too much coffee. I was a bag of nerves & Mother, driven by the craziest illusions, prowled around me like a crow in the festooned vines. She was hoping I'd leave. I didn't care to leave her alone. With my head on her knees, I'd listen to time falling, drop by drop, into the sink.

      — Joyce Mansour, "Infinitely . . . on the Grass"

http://www.franceweb.fr/poesie/mansour1.htm

1546 -- Reformation leader Martin Luther dies.

1847 -- Jean Baguet lives (aka Jean Bayet). French anarchist exiled to Switzerland to avoid arrest following demonstrations at Montceau-the-Mines in August 1882. Sentenced in absentia to five years prison at the "Trial of the 66," January 1883.
http://ytak.club.fr/fevrier3.html#18



1849 -- Alexander Kielland (1849 - 1906) lives. Norwegian novelist, considered one of "the four great ones" of the 19th century along with Henrik Ibsen, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, & Jonas Lie.
Emma Goldman on Ibsen, http://recollectionbooks.com/links.html#Henrik Ibsen
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/kiella.htm


1851 -- US: A crowd of Boston Negroes break into the federal prison, rescue Frederick Jenkins, a southern slave jailed under the terms of the Fugitive Slave Act, & spirit him away to freedom in Canada.
[Source: Calendar Riots]


1856 -- US: American (Know-Nothing) Party abolishes secrecy, then denies it.


1859 -- US: Dan Sickles is first man in the US to use the `Temporary Insanity' plea.


1859 -- Yiddish novelist Sholem Aleichem lives.


1861 -- US: Arapaho & Cheyenne cede most of eastern Colorado — land guaranteed to them "forever" in an 1851 treaty.


1867 -- Hungary: Nonviolent resistance to Austrian oppression results in separate constitution.


1873 -- US: The American Way: House of Representatives reports on Credit Mobilers scandal. Reveals government allotted far more money (welfare) than needed to subsidize the building of the Union Pacific Railroad. Credit Mobiler Corporation was then set up to build the railroad, & stock in it was gratefully sold, at a fraction of its true value, to the congressmen & government officials responsible for providing the excess grants.


1883 -- Cretan poet/novelist/thinker Nikos Kazantzakis lives, Heraklion, Crete. Jubilator of raki, song & dance. Best known for Zorba the Greek. See also 2 December 1885, also given as his date of birth by some sources.




1884 -- Moscow police seize all copies of anarchist Leo Tolstoy's What I Believe In at the printers.
http://photocollect.com/under400/tolstoi.html



1884 --

Strange Stuff:

England: The indications ...are that perhaps an explosion occurred in the sky, near Colchester, upon Feb.18, 1884 (Was not the loud report heard...probably an explosion in the sky, inasmuch as the sound was great & the quake was little? Were not succeeding phenomena sounds & concussions & the fall of debris from explosions in the sky...) http://mywebpages.comcast.net/jholmes20/grandma.htm http://www.sacred-texts.com/fort/damned/damn03.htm

1885 -- Mark Twain novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published.



1887 -- Spain: Juan Peiro Belis (1887-1942) lives. Anarcho-syndicalist theorist & militant in the CNT. An assiduous contributor to the libertarian press with his many reviews & newspapers.

During the Spanish Revolution Peiro became Minister of Industry (three other pajaros carpinteros — 'woodpeckers' — also took major government posts). His brief participation was heresy to libertarian principles...

[Details / context]

1893 -- Bulgarian anarchist Alexander Sapoundjiev lives (1893-1975).
http://ytak.club.fr/juillet1.html#sapoundjiev



1894 -- Andres Segovia, guitar guy, lives in the Andalusian city of Linares, Spain & is reared in Granada.



1895 -- England: Lord Queensberry leaves a card for Oscar Wilde at the Albemarle Club calling him a "somdomite" (the basis of Wilde's libel suit).

1896 -- André Breton (1896-1966) lives, Tinchebray, Orne, France. Poet, essayist, critic, editor, communist, surrealist, promoter. One of the founders of Surrealist movement with Paul Eluard, Josef Agnon, Luis Bunuel, Dali, Aragon, Jean Cocteau, et al. In 1916 he met Jacques Vaché, a legendary predecessor of dadaism. His first publications were influenced by Rimbaud. When Tristan Tzara came to Paris from Zürich in 1916, Breton joined the Paris DaDa movement together with his friends Paul Eluard & Phillipe Soupalt.

Artaud: Does Surrealism still hold the same importance in the organization & disorganization of our lives?

Breton: It is all mud, almost entirely composed of flowers.

http://alangullette.com/lit/surreal/
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/abreton.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andre_Breton
http://www.surrealisme.nl/tekst/linksn.htm

1903 -- The Dutch government of Abraham Kuyper launches anti-strike laws.


1905 -- Frank Wedekind play "Hidada" premiers, Munchen.


1908 -- US: America bars Japanese immigration.


1909 -- Wallace Stegner lives. Pulitzer-winning novelist, critic (Angle of Repose).



1916 -- US: The brothers Enrique & Ricardo Flores Magón arrested at their Community Farm near Los Angeles, California. Enrique is beaten by the Officer Friendlies & hospitalized. Both are charged with mailing articles inciting "murder, arson & treason," & sent to prison.
Ricardo y Enrique Flores Magón son nuevamente arrestados. Dificultades para la circulación de "Regeneración," que es puesto fuera del registro postal Se establece el Congreso Constituyente.

[Details / context]


1918 -- Russia: Germans invade the country, which is all but defenseless, as virtually the entire army has deserted.
http://www.barnsdle.demon.co.uk/russ/datesr.html
http://struggle.ws/russia/mett.html
http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/russia/sp001861/bolintro.html


1928 -- Canada: Emma Goldman leaves Montreal for Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she embarks for France on Feb. 20.



1928 -- Kurt Weill opera "Der Zar lasst sich Photographieren" premiers, Germany.


1929 -- Len Deighton lives, London. Spy novelist (Ipcress File; Funeral in Berlin).



1930 -- Outer Space: Pluto is discovered.




1930 -- The Milkman Cometh?: There is no stopping progress! Cow flown & milked, milk sealed in paper containers & parachuted. Think we already done did this yesterday....curdles the imagination.
http://www.cowswithguns.com/homepage.html
http://www.peta.org/


1930 -- Gahan Wilson lives. Macabre cartoonist, author.


1930 -- Poet Joel Oppenheimer lives, Yonkers, NY. (The Dancer; The Great American Desert). Attended Black Mountain College where he studied with Charles Olson & Paul Goodman. He lived among the poets & artists of Greenwich Village, & was a columnist for The Village Voice from 1969-1978.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/11584
http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/The_New_American_Poetry_1945-1960 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Oppenheimer

1931 -- African American editor/novelist Toni Morrison lives, Lorain, Ohio. Noble prize winner, best known for Song of Solomon.
http://www.accd.edu/sac/english/bailey/morrison.htm
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/tmorris.htm

1932 -- Milos Forman, lives, Czechoslovakia. US film director (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest).


1933 -- Yoko Ono, author (Grapefruit)/performance artist/composer, lives.


1933 -- Italy: During this month Gian Carlo Pajetta, esponente del partito comunista, è arrestato a Reggio Emilia. Sarà condannato dal tribunale speciale a 21 anni di carcere.

Today: In un discorso alla Lega antisocialista britannica, Winston Churchill esalta Mussolini come il "più grande legislatore vivente".

It is the careerist Churchill who also declared, "Your movement (fascism) has abroad rendered a service to the whole world...Italy has shown that there is a way to combat subversive forces."

[Source: Crimini e Misfatti]

1934 -- Audre Lorde lives, New York City. African-American poet/essayist/autobiographer, passionate writer on lesbian feminism & racial issues. Author of the highly praised poetry in The Black Unicorn (1978).

In her book, Black Women Writers, Lorde says, (quote) "The question of social protest & art is inseparable. . . . Art for art's sake doesn't exist for me."
Her poetry speaks powerfully against racial & sexual oppression, as well as her erotic poems breaking the silence on lesbian love (quote):
"Within a woman's capacity for feeling, our ability to love, to touch the erotic, lies so much of our power, our ability to posit, to vision."

http://www.lambda.net/~maximum/lorde.html

1936 -- Marin Sorescu lives (1936 - 1996). Rumanian poet, dramatist.
http://romania-on-line.net/halloffame/SorescuMarin.htm


1936 -- Jean Auel lives. Novelist novelist (Clan of the Cave Bear).


1942 -- Dog-Eared?: Payson Terhune dies. Author of numerous novels in which dogs are central to the books.


1943 -- US: Japanese-American internment camps initiated during WWII. Some pigs, not wanting to be less equal than other pigs, were not about to let the German & the Japanese governments get one up on them.


1944 -- Italy: La repubblica sociale italiana introduce la pena di morte per i renitenti alla leva. Combattere e morire o morire senza combattere; con lo stato tutte le alternative sono mortifere.
[Source: Crimini e Misfatti]


1949 -- Richard Rosen lives, Chicago, mystery novelist (Strike Three, You're Dead; Saturday Night Dead, Dead Ball), featuring Harvey Blissberg, ex-major league baseball player turned private eye.

"The poem is the point
at which our strength
gave
out."

1951 -- Alberto Blanco lives. Mexican poet, translator (Dhammapada).
http://www.tameme.org/issue_1/blanco.html
http://www.uchile.cl/cultura/chilepoesia/blanco.html

1953 -- US: "Bwana Devil," the movie that heralded the 3D fad of the 1950s, opens in New York City.


1959 -- Jacques Doubinsky (Iakov Dubinsky; 1889-1959) dies. As a young labor radical he joined the Ukrainian peasant uprising in 1918, fighting with the insurrectionary Makhnovist army.

Doubinsky went to Bulgaria, but was arrested & tortured before escaping & permanently settling in France. A director of the Jewish anarchist library "L'autodidacte", involved with "La libre Pensée" & in assisting Bulgarian refugees. His grandson is the anarchist & writer, Sebastien Doubinsky.

[Details / context]

1959 -- ¶ During this month Beatster Jack Kerouac records narration for the film Pull My Daisy. Later this month Kerouac's affair with Dody Müller ends.

"Don't you hear the H-bomb's thunder / Echo like the crack of doom?" — John Brunner, science fiction author who wrote the CND's marching song From 1940 to 1996, expenditures for nuclear weapons exceeded the combined total federal spending on education, training, employment, & social services; agriculture; natural resources & the environment; general science & space research; community & regional development (including disaster relief); law enforcement; & energy production & regulation. "You ask for decent houses & they give you bombs instead, A six-foot hole to house you in & a medal when you're dead." — Ewan McColl, "Join in the line" http://www.wcml.org.uk/people/em/timeline.htm http://www.webbjeff.free-online.co.uk/hkcnd/cndbot.htm

1965 -- US: Civil rights worker Jimmie Lee Jackson is beaten & shot by state police in Marion, Alabama. He dies eight days later.


1968 -- US: Police Riot on Haight Street. Police sweep Haight Street after a spontaneous gathering blocks traffic in the afternoon. The police action lasts several hours.
http://www.diggers.org/chronology.htm


1969 -- US: Feb 18-19 Howard University building is seized & boycott starts. This follows on the heels of a law school protest on the 12th. Things are beginning to heat up on campuses all over the US.

1970 -- US: Federal jury finds the "Chicago 7" innocent of conspiring to incite riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. However, five were convicted of crossing state lines with intent to incite riots. See also 24 September 1969.

"When I appear in the Chicago courtroom... I want to be tried for having a good time & not for being serious. I'm not angry over Vietnam & racism & imperialism. Naturally, I'm against all that shit but I'm really pissed cause my friends are in prison for dope & cops stop me on the street cause I have long hair.

I'm guilty of a conspiracy, all right. Guilty of creating liberated land in which we can do whatever the fuck we decide. Guilty of helping to bring the WOODSTOCK NATION to the whole earth. Guilty of trying to overthrow the motherfuckin senile government of the U.S. of A."

       — Abbie Hoffman

All defendants are acquitted on conspiracy charges. Froines & Weiner are acquitted on all charges. Davis, Dellinger, Hayden, Hoffman, & Rubin are each convicted of individually crossing state lines to incite violence; each is sentenced to five years in prison & a $5,000 fine. All the defendants, plus their lawyers William Kunstler & Leonard Weinglass, are given contempt citations ranging from 2-1/2 months to four years. Defendants are freed on bail pending an appeal.

http://www.stewalbert.com/chicago.htm
http://theaction.com/Abbie/