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Ancient Rome: HILARIA continues. At dawn the tomb of Attis is found to be empty, Attis risen, & carnival begins, with feasting & Saturnalian license.

NEW YEAR'S DAY: old Roman New Year. Give gifts of dates (& figs).
Start of week-long New Year festivities in England, from the 12th Century until 1752.

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ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, &      now you're really in the total animal soup of      time....

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31 -- First Easter, according to calendar-maker Dionysius Exiguus.


1306 -- Robert I, "the Bruce," crowned King of Scots at Scone.


1584 -- England: First American colonists set sail.


1655 -- New World: Civil war between Catholics & Puritans in Maryland ends.


1811 -- Refusing to admit writing The Necessity of Atheism, Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from Oxford.
http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poet296.html


1812 -- Russia: Anarchist sympathizer Alexander Herzen lives, Moscow. Journalist, political writer, novelist (Who Is to Blame?, a novel about free love). Influenced by revolution & the french socialism of Saint-Simon. Took an active part in the Revolutions of 1848 in Paris & Rome. Founded the influential newspaper The Bell (Kolokol) in London. As a Russian critic, second only to Byelinsky in his time. Strongly influenced by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon & other anarchists. He helped finance his close friend Mikhail Bakunin's escape from Tsarist Russia.

I am truly horrified by modern man. Such absence of feeling, such narrowness of outlook, such lack of passion & information, such feebleness of thought.

http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/anarchismEncyBrit.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herzen
http://www.cybernation.com/quotationcenter/quoteshow.php?type=author&id=4147

1820 -- Anne Brontë lives. English writer, sister of Charlotte Bronte & Emily Bronte. Best known The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/abronte.htm


1823 -- William Blake agrees to engrave the Inventions to the Book of Job. He is paid 5 pounds per plate. See Daily Bleed Saints Gallery page, http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/saints/StBlakeWilliam.htm



1825 -- Puerto Rico: The Pirate Cofresí is executed in "El Morro" castle.

In 1521, Concerned about potential threats from European enemies, Spain began constructing massive defenses around San Juan. El Morro Castle featured 18-foot-thick walls; San Cristóbal & San Geronimo Forts also garrisoned troops. Next the Spaniards constructed a wall, parts of which still survive, around the entire city. Government Center is moved to the isle of San Juan. The ever arriving Spaniards settlers, many of them gold-seekers, brought no women on their ships.

To populate the country, the Spaniard took Indian woman. With the arrival of African slaves, other elements were added. This historic intermingling has resulted in a contemporary Puerto Rico without racial problems.

http://www.spanamwar.com/SanJuan.htm
http://welcome.topuertorico.org/history.shtml

1843 -- France: Jules Montels lives. Militant in the Paris Commune of 1871, colonel of the Twelfth Federate Legion of the Commune. In 1877, he went to Russia where he became tutor of the children of Leo Tolstoï. Married to Lucie Gachet, Montels died on September 20, 1916 in Tunisia, where he was writer-in-chief of the Tunis Journal.
http://www.iisg.nl/archives/en/files/d/10748972full.php#N16231
http://www.library.northwestern.edu/spec/siege/docs/PAR01076.html

1871 -- France: Proclamation de la Commune à Toulouse.


1872 -- Canada: Toronto printers strike for the 9-hour day — the first major strike in the country.



1873 -- Rudolf Rocker lives. Daily Bleed Saint. American immigrant anarchist leader Rudolf Rocker was an anarcho-syndicalist theorist, organizer, & anti-fascist. A Gentile, he became deeply involved in the Jewish anarchist movement. Rudolf learned Yiddish, lived in the Jewish community, & was the lifelong companion of Milly Witkop, also a libertarian & labor activist. Author of the important Nationalism & Culture.



1877 -- France: Jean-Baptiste Knockaert lives (1857-1957), Tourcoing (northern). Anarcho-syndicalist, communist, then a free thinker. See the Anarchist Encyclopedia,
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/KnockaertJeanBaptiste.htm


1881 -- Radical musicologist Bela Bartok lives, Nagy-szentmiklos, Austria-Hungary.

Daily Bleed Saint, 2005-2007
Radical Hungarian musicologist, folk ethnologist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9la_Bart%C3%B3k


1881 -- Mary Webb lives (1881-1927); British novelist, nature essayist, poet. Her evocation of the Shropshire border countryside, timeless themes & insights, perception of people & of nature, attract & reward readers. Afflicted with Graves Disease, an incurable thyroid disorder, she was in ill-health most her short life. Gained popularity only after her death, & a revival of interest in her books in the 1970s.



1887 -- France: At four o’clock this afternoon, Clément Duval is deported from the military fortress of Toulon, bound for the prison vaults of French Guyana. He had a ghastly anticipation of what to expect from the very first day of his stay in the fortress.

Duval spent 14 years in Guyana. In this time, he tried to escape more than 20 times, seizing every chance, every means: on rafts, on stolen or patiently built boats, hiding in ships that passed. Every time something went wrong. Until....

[Details / context]

1894 -- Coxey's Army of ragtag bums (Common-Wealth Army) heads for Washington DC, demanding economic reform.

Coxey, a well-to-do businessman who was a Populist & quite untypical of his class in other ways, proposed a plan of federal work relief on public roads to be financed by an issue of Treasury notes — thus ending the depression of 1893 by means of monetary inflation & work relief for the unemployed. When Congress refused to pass this bill, Coxey stated, "We will send a petition to Washington with boots on." Thus Coxey's Army marched peacefully from Ohio to Washington, D.C. where they were cheered by crowds, but Coxey & his lieutenants were arrested by police & about 50 people were beaten or trampled.

When they busted all the unions,
You can't make no living wage.
And this working poor arrangement,
Gonna turn to public rage.
And then get ready . . .
We're gonna bring back Coxey's Army
And take his message to the street.

— Eddie Starr, "The Return of Coxey's Army," from the CD War Zone, Union Jax.

More, see John M. Blum et al, The National Experience, Part Two: A History of the United States since 1865 (NY: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1981), p. 515.
http://www2.tacomapubliclibrary.org/.../Cantwell.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coxey's_Army
http://wbai-labor.igc.org/kensbook/zone.html

1900 -- Italy: Gabriele D'Annunzio spiega in una dichiarazione al "Mattino" di Napoli le ragioni del suo passaggio dai banchi dell'estrema destra a quelli dell'estrema sinistra.
[Source: Crimini e Misfatti]



1911 -- US: Triangle Shirt Waist Fire.

The Triangle Shirt Waist Company, occupying the top floors of a 10-story building in New York, is consumed by fire. 147 people, mostly women & young girls, age 13 to 23, working in sweatshop conditions, lost their lives.

Approximately 50 died as they leapt from windows to the street; the others were burned or trampled to death, desperately trying to escape via stairway exits illegally locked to prevent "the interruption of work."

Company owners are charged with seven counts of manslaughter — but are found not guilty.

... show details

A turning point in labor laws — especially concerning health & safety — occurred as a result of this disaster. For the past three days the company, along with other warehouse owners, had grouped together to fight the Fire Commissioner's order that fire sprinklers be installed.

Clara Lemlich, who was badly beaten up by thugs during the strike in the shop of Louis Leiserson, interrupted Jacob Panken just as he started to speak, saying: "I wanted to say a few words." Cries came from all parts of the hall, "Getup on the platform!" Willing hands lifted the frail little girl with flashing black eyes to the stage, & she said simply:

"I have listened to all the speakers. I would not have further patience for talk, as I am one of those who feels & suffers from the things pictured. I move that we go on a general strike!"

As the tremulous voice of the girl died away, the audience rose en masse & cheered her to the echo. A grim sea of faces, with high purpose & resolve, they shouted & cheered the declaration of war for living conditions hoarsely.

As the fire rages, amid screams in a dozen languages, the women crowd onto window ledges & throw themselves onto the streets below. Some jump with their clothes on fire. Witnesses near the pavement hear thud after thud. Although the law says factory doors must remain open, Triangle has locked its door to keep track of employees. After today's Triangle Shirt Waist Fire, a memorial parade will draw 100,000 people to Broadway.

http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_firehttp://www-personal.arts.usyd.edu.au/sterobrt/3079/Web%20Reviews/alisonindex.html

1914 -- French poet/philologist, Frédéric Mistral, dies in Maillane. 1904 Nobel Prize winner. His great poetic work rests on his first & last long poems (Mirèio; Lou Pouèmo dóu Rose), both full-scale epics in 12 cantos.
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1904/mistral-bio.html
alt., Frederic Mistral

1915 -- Australia: Sisterhood of International Peace founded.


1916 -- US: Ishi dies, last of his California-based former Native Indian tribe.


1918 -- French composer Claude Debussy dies.


1920 -- Paul Scott, British writer, best known for The Raj Quartet, lives. Received the Booker Prize for the novel Staying On.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/pscott.htm


1920 -- Howard Cosell lives. The most liked — & most despised — sports journalist across America. Cosell agreed when others described him as arrogant, pompous, obnoxious, vain, cruel, verbose, a show-off. Still others said he forgot to include “irritating, generous, funny, paranoid, charming, egomaniacal & insecure.”


1921 -- Argentina: Premier issue of the weekly anarchist paper "La Antorcha," in Buenos Aires. Numéro 300 of May 1930, includes an interview with Simón Radowitzky (just released from prison).

Principal collaborators include Rodolfo González Pacheco, Teodoro Antillí, Alberto S. Bianchi, Horacio Badaracco & its manager Antonio Rizzo.

“Haute Cuisine” ¡¿?!

The title "La Antorcha" revives the name of an Argentinian gastronomical federation publication of 1911-1912....with fewer dire intestinal implications.

http://ytak.club.fr/mars25.html

1923 -- Germany: Emma Goldman delivers a speech in Berlin, "Rudolf Rocker on the Occasion of his 50th Birthday."
[Exact day not given by source; presumably on or about today — ed.]


1925 -- Flannery O'Connor, author of Wise Blood & The Violent Bear It Away, lives, Savannah, Georgia.


1926 -- England: Emma Goldman returns to London for a series of six lectures ( March 25-April 29) on dramatists, including O'Neill, Ibsen, Susan Glaspell, & the German expressionists; Emma also delivers the same lectures in Yiddish as well as lecturing on Yiddish drama.
[Details / context]



1931 -- US: Black American activist Ida B. Wells dies, Chicago, Illinois. & if you ever have a chance to see Constant Star, see it.


1934 -- Italy: Secondo plebiscito. Quasi il 99% dei votanti si esprime a favore del fascismo. I no sono solo lo 0,15%. Il fascismo può a buon titolo vantarsi di essere la più democratica espressione delle masse italiane.

Il termine democratico non ha comunque nulla a che vedere nè con la giustizia nè con la libertà che sono aspetti attinenti la morale delle persone e non il risultato del voto delle masse.

Also during this month, Vengono arrestati esponenti del gruppo torinese di Giustizia e Libertà. Altri saranno incarcerati nel corso dell'anno tra cui Mario Ginzburg che sarà condannato a 4 anni.

[Source: Crimini e Misfatti]

1936 -- Wales: Emma Goldman delivers three lectures (March 25-27) to miners in South Wales — at Mountain Ash, Ystradgynlais, & Aberdare — sponsored by the National Council of Labour Colleges. Her lectures on "Mussolini & Hitler" & on "The Two Communisms" are surprisingly well received, as it is the first time that the Labour Colleges had provided a hearing for anarchism & a critique of Soviet Russia.


1939 -- Toni Cade Bambara lives, New York. African American writer, civil-rights activist, & teacher.


1942 -- Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin lives.



1944 -- US: On or about today, Roman Forum in honor of Rudolf Rocker's 70th birthday. 1944 — Testimonial to Rudolf Rocker 1873 - 1943. With contributions from F. W. Roman, A. E. Briggs, H. Yaffe. Los Angeles Rocker Publications Committee, 1944, 48 pages. A booklet comprised in large part of articles from the Roman Forum in honor of Rudolf Rocker's 70th birthday.



1954 -- RCA manufactures the first COLOR television set.

http://www.1000bit.net/database2.asp?id=23&grp=S_NOM

1955 -- Russia US: Customs confiscate 520 copies of Allen Ginsberg's Howl as they enter the US. It will then be published by City Lights publishers in San Francisco, leading to the arrest of anarchist/poet/publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Customs also seized & destroyed another shipment of Ginsberg's poetry sent from Canada in the 60s.

The day after the poet's 36th birthday—520 copies of a book his press had published were confiscated by US Customs, acting under the order of Chester McPhee, US Collector of Customs. McPhee called the book "obscene": "you wouldn't want your children to come across it," he groused. The book was "Howl & Other Poems."

who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on       the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the       East River to open to a room full of steamheat       & opium...

      http://www.litkicks.com/AllenGinsberg
      http://www.popsubculture.com/pop/bio_project/allen_ginsberg.html
      http://www.yourpain.com/shiva/poetry/howl2.html

1956 -- At the conclusion of Alan Freed's 3-day Rock 'n' Roll Show at the Stage Theater in Hartford, Connecticut, police arrest 11 teens & pull the theater's license to operate. Hartford Institute of Living psychiatrist Dr. Francis J. Braceland to testify at license hearings that rock & roll is:

"a communicable disease with music appealing to adolescent insecurity & driving teenagers to do outlandish things...It's cannibalistic & tribalistic."

1957 -- Land of Freedom US: Customs again seizes Allen Ginsberg's book of poetry, Howl, this time the second printing published by City Lights Books in Frisco; the US District Attorney decides not to pursue, & the printing is released. But in August, Officer Friendlies from the Frisco Juvenile Dept raid City Lights Bookstore & charge the owner, anarchist & poet Larry Ferlinghetti with obscenity for selling copies of Howl. http://www.alsopreview.com/columns/foley/jfnorthbeach.html

whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days       & nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the       Synagogue cast on the pavement...

1960 -- Julia Bertrand (1877-1960) dies. French teacher, militant anarchist, feminist & free thinker. Participant in the feminist periodical "La femme affranchie". See the Anarchist Encyclopedia page,
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/BertrandJulia.htm

Julia Bertrand (1877- 1960) Participa en el periódico feminista: "La femme affranchie"

1960 -- US: Circuit Court of Appeals in NY rules the unexpurgated version of D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover is not obscene. (or July 21, 1959?)



1965 -- US: KKK murders Viola Liuzzo, age 39, a civil rights activist — a housewife with five kids who grew up in the South, moved to Detroit & married a Teamsters business agent — in Montgomery, Alabama.

Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader J. Edgar Hoover's FBI tried to discredit her, to smear her. Three Klansmen were arrested & eventually did time for "violating Viola Liuzzo's civil rights" by blowing her brains out.

http://www.metrotimes.com/news/columns/18/jl/25.html

1965 -- US: Martin Luther King Jr., leads 25,000 into Montgomery, completing civil rights march begun in Selma. After a weeks-long struggle against local police, the civil rights march ends triumphantly with a 50,000 person demonstration in Montgomery.

"The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be...The nation & the world are in dire need of creative extremists."

       — Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

1965 -- One-time radical Max Eastman dies, Barbados.


1966 -- US: Demonstrations & Vietnam War protests today through the 27th. 25,000 march down Fifth Ave, NYC. Others occur in seven US cities & seven foreign cities.


1966 -- Paul Butterfield Blues Band & Quicksilver Messenger Service opens at Fillmore Auditorium in Frisco.



1967 -- US: Martin Luther King, Jr., accompanies 2,000 anti-Vietnam War marchers through Chicago.


1970 -- US: First postal strike ends...mail delivery does not seem to gotten any faster with them on the job as off the job?


1971 -- Pakistani army invades East Bengal.


1972 -- US: 30,000 in Children's March for Survival, Washington, D.C., protesting welfare cuts.


1972 -- England: March of Shame protests British Army's gunning down of Northern Ireland civilians, London.


1980 -- Poet/translator James Wright dies in New York. Wrote free verse, simple diction, & a casual mix of objective & subjective images. Translated Georg Trakl, César Vallejo, Hermann Hesse, Pablo Neruda, several in collaboration with Robert Bly.

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/73
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Trakl
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/neruda.htm
http://www.levity.com/corduroy/hesse.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesar_Vallejo

1990 -- Sign of the Times? The mythical semiologist, French literary critic, Roland Barthes dies, Paris, France.
http://philippe.gournay.free.fr/figures/barthes.html
http://recollectionbooks.com/links.html#RolandBarthes

1990 -- El Salvador: New city, Segundo Montes, is started by campesinos who lived for nine years as exiles in Honduras.


1994 -- Somalia: Last US soldiers leave as civil war intensifies.




1995 -- After nearly three decades of acrimony, Paul McCartney & Yoko Ono join in a recording session, along with McCartney's wife Linda & Ono's son Sean Lennon. They recorded Ono's "Hiroshima Sky is Always Blue", a memorial to the victims of the atomic bomb on Japan 50 years before.
http://www.instantkarma.com/yotampa98.html




1995 -- New Zealand: Seattle's Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder is rescued after a riptide carries him 250 feet offshore.

3500 -- Civil Wars: From LA to Bosnia (The New Press, 1994), from which the following is adapted.

Munich - We look at a map of the world. We pinpoint wars in distant lands, preferably in the Third World. We talk of underdevelopment, differences in cultural maturity, fundamentalism. We tell ourselves that this unintelligible struggle is happening far away. But we are deluding ourselves when we reason that we are at peace simply because we can still collect our bread from the bakers without being blown away by sniper fire. The reality is that civil war has long since moved into the metropolis. Its mutations are part of everyday life in our cities, not just in Lima & in Johannesburg, in Bombay & in Rio, but in Paris & Berlin, in Detroit & Birmingham, in Milan & Hamburg. The combatants are no longer just terrorists & secret police, Mafiosi & skinheads, drug dealers & death squads, neo-Nazis & cowboy security guards. Even ordinary members of the public are transformed overnight into hooligans, arsonists, rioters & serial killers. & as in the African wars, the combatants are becoming younger by the day.

 
H a n s   M a g n u s
E n z e n s b e r g e r

3501 --


3502 --

"They too were storming heaven — do you think they fought in vain; that because they lost a battle they would never rise again; that the man with the leaflets, the woman with a gun, did not have a daughter, did not have a son?"

      — Hugo Dewar

9003 -- anarchist poetry



9004 --