The Daily Bleed: A Calendar Better Than Boiled Coffee! History Mom & Pop forgot to tell you about!; A People's History: Social, Cultural, Labor, Arts & other events; Timeline, Chronology, Almanac, Daybook...

Our Daily Bleed...

— from "Ourselves or Nothing"

In the mass graves, a woman's hand
caged in the ribs of her child,
a single stone in Spain beneath olives,
in Germany the silent windy fields,
in the Soviet Union where the snow
is scarred with wire, in Salvador
where the blood will never soak
into the ground, everywhere & always
go after that which is lost.
There is a cyclone fence between
ourselves & the slaughter & behind it
we hover in a calm protected world like
netted fish, exactly like netted fish.
It is either the beginning or the end
of the world, & the choice is ourselves
or nothing.

— Carolyn Forche

"When Forché's, Gathering the Tribes was published in 1975, Stanley Kunitz's selection that year for the Yale Younger Poet's Prize, Kenneth Rexroth wrote with prescience:

'Carolyn Forché is beyond question the best woman poet to appear in the Yale Younger Poet series since Muriel Rukeyser, whom in a special way she somewhat resembles. She is far better educated than most poets, not just in school, but in life ... She is also something nobody ever seemed to be able to find in the 30's when they were in demand — a genuine proletarian poet.'"
— Allen Ginsberg

MARCH 31

JOHN FOWLES
Magus. Major British novelist, essayist, belles lettrist.

March comes in like a lion & goes out like a lamb.

— John Fletcher, A Wife for a Month

Ancient Babylonia: SACRED DRAMA DAY, in which the king, in the role of Marduk, re-enacts the conquest of Tiamat, the watery chaos.

"BleedMeister, I'm warning you NOW that Passover in 1999 begins on March 31 — that means the first night is March 30. Jewish holidays — indeed all Jewish days — begin at sundown the night before. Git it right or git out of Cyberspace."

— Bleedster Ruhama

BUNSEN BURNER DAY.

--
Flames

A bright burning flame
A smoking smell around
The bunsen burners on
The science has begun
All the flames are burning
And everyone is learning.

— Lia Wainwright-Powers

297 -- Diocletian's edict against the Manicheans.

1135 -- Moses Maimonides lives.

1492 -- Expulsion of Jews from Spain.

1596 -- René Descartes (1596-1650) lives, La Haye. French philosopher, scientist & mathematician, whose philosophical conclusion "Cogito ergo sum" — I think therefore I am — is the best known quotation in all philosophy & revolutionized the ways of thinking.
Although Catholic, Descartes opposed scholasticism & argued one can doubt all, but not one's own existence as a thinking being. He concluded God must exist & because God cannot be a deceiver, the significance on sensory data must be evaluated by reason.
Descartes's conceptions influenced European culture & thinking. Even his opponents, Blaise Pascal, or, later, those like Voltaire, largely followed him in his emphasis on analysis & in rejection of tradition.

1621 -- The great English Metaphysical poet, Andrew Marvellis, lives, Winestead, Yorkshire. Wrote "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland"; "To His Coy Mistress".

1631 -- All Done?: John Donne dies, London, England, after having his portrait painted in a funeral shroud (to provide the sculptor of his monument with a design from which to work.)
http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poet98.html

1809 -- Nikoloi Gogol lives (1809-1852), Ukraine. Great Russian novelist, dramatist, satirist & founder of the so-called critical realism in Russian literature, best known for his novel Dead Souls.
NIKOLAI GOGOL
Archetypal Mad Poet. Daily Bleed Saint March 20, 2004-5

"I am destined by the mysterious powers to walk hand in hand with my strange heroes, viewing life in all its immensity as it rushes past me, viewing it through laughter seen by the world & tears unseen & unknown by it."
http://flag.blackened.net/agony/nenw.html
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gogol.htm

1814 -- US: Fidel? Wartime economy is in such dire straits that Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President James Madison recommends repeal of the "Non-Importation & Embargo Acts," a measure permitting merchants to trade with the enemy. Congress saw no alternative (surprise), & within two weeks, both houses passed Madison's new bill by overwhelming majorities.

1836 -- The first monthly part of Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, Charles Dickens' first novel, is published. By the 15th part the printing has ballooned from 400 copies to 40,000.

1840 -- US: He's No Welfare Bum?: 10-hour workday established for federal public works employees.

1855 -- Author Charlotte Bronte dies, age 38 & pregnant, Haworth, Yorkshire.

1871 -- France: Commune of Narbonne falls, as incarnated by Emile Digeon. Digeon (1822-1894) was a revolutionary journalist who headed the Commune, proclaimed in conjunction with Paris Commune.
In 1883 Digeon was "an anarchist candidate"(!) in the Narbonne elections & in 1885 published La Commune de Paris devant les anarchistes.
"Je regarde comme nuisible à l'Humanité tous les individus qui aspirent à gouverner les autres sous une forme quelconque et surtout ceux qui causent la misère des travailleurs en accaparant les richesses que ces derniers produisent."

See the article, "Emile Digeon & Socialism in the Narbonnais," by Christopher Guthrie, in the British journal "French History," Winter 1998 issue.
http://www.le.ac.uk/hi/bon/resources/FRENCH_HIST/Abstracts/Abs172.html
In French, see Ephéméride anarchiste

1873 -- Henry James writes, after meeting Matthew Arnold: "He is not as handsome as his photographs — or as his poetry."
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/authors/arnoldm.html

1883 -- Emily Dickinson is asked to submit a book of poems for publication two months before her death.
http://www.sappho.com/poetry/e_dickin.html

1889 -- France: Eiffel Tower completed.
SOME FACTS ABOUT THE EIFFEL TOWER
Built for the Paris Exhibition of 1884
Over 300 meters high
1671 steps to the top
15,000 structural members
2,500,00 rivet holes
8,000 tons
Only 250 workers to build
Can withstand winds of up to 148 miles per hour
at the top
http://www.spaceneedle.com/
http://www.tour-eiffel.fr/

1898 -- US: Emma Goldman lectures on "The Inquisition of Our Postal Service" to the Progressive Bohemian Labor Organization, addressing recent censorship cases, including the conviction of the "Firebrand" editors. The organization votes unanimously to adopt a resolution protesting postal censorship.

1898 -- US: Robert Reitzel dies, in Detroit.

1907 -- Germany: First German Anarchist Congress, in Offenbach, with representatives from the whole country. Participants included Friedrich Kniestedt.

1914 -- Octavio Paz, poet/critic/diplomat lives (1914-1998), Mexico City. Wrote The Other Mexico; The Bow & the Lyre. Received the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.
His father worked as a secretary for the anarchist Emilio Zapata.

In 1937 during the Spanish Revolution, Paz participated in the Second International Congress of Anti-Fascist Writers in Valencia & met, among others, André Malraux, André Gide & Ilya Ehrenburg (recorded in the collection Bajo Tu Clara Sombra Y Otros Poemas (1937)).

By the time the Cold War began, Octavio Paz rejected the Marxist left. His works show in turn influence by Marxism, surrealism (together with André Breton & Benjamin Peret) , existentialism, Buddhism, & Hinduism. Central themes were history, violence, lies & truth, corruption & revolution, as reflected in the reality of Latin American & its literature. Many of Paz's later poems are based on paintings by Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, Antoni Tapies, Robert Rauschenberg, & Roberto Matta.
http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1990/
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/opaz.htm

1914 -- Maria Lang (1914-1991) lives. Prolific Swedish mystery writer. Lang's best known characters are Puck Ekstedt & Christer Wijk, who are considered classical figures in Swedish mystery novels. Her own alter ego is the author Almi Graan, who started to appear in her stories from the 1960s. Lang also wrote children's books & short stories.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/marilang.htm

1915 -- Italy: A Milano viene repressa una dimostrazione contro la guerra guidata dal direttore dell'Avanti Giacinto Menotti Serrati che viene arrestato con altre 235 persone. Nello stesso giorno si svolge senza intervento repressivo della polizia una manifestazione a favore della guerra guidata da Benito Mussolini. Lo stato si è schierato, come sempre, dalla parte dei violenti e dei guerrafondai.
[Source: Crimini e Misfatti]

1918 -- US: Daylight Savings Time is instituted.

1919 -- US: Emma Goldman is interviewed by Winthrop Lane for an independent investigation of federal prisons slated for publication in the research magazine "Survey."

1919 -- Spain: Se aplica por primera vez la ley de fugas en la persona de Miguel Burgos, secretario del Ramo de Curtidos de la CNT.

Following the triumph of the CNT in the recent "Canadian strike," the Civil Governor, in collusion with the employer's association, determined to use any method to crush the union. Constitutional guarantees were suspended & again the cenetistas were persecuted and jailed. Thus, too, is Miguel Burgos murdered.
"Ley de fugas"

"Ley de fugas" (law of escape) was applied frequently in Spain to union militants, who are taken to jail under any pretext, then "set free" — only to be shot down moments later as "escapees." The beauty for the police was its simplicity & cover of legality.

[Details / context]

1924 -- India: Gandhi begins nonviolent campaign for temple entry, Vykom.

1926 -- John Fowles, author of The French Lieutenant's Woman, lives, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, England.

1927 -- US: Migrant farm workers organizer, nonviolent activist Cesar Chavez lives, near Yuma, Arizona.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesar_Chavez

1933 -- US: Civilian Conservation Corps established to help alleviate suffering of the depression.

1935 -- Herb 'tijuana brass' Alpert lives.
[Source: Calendar Riots]

1936 -- England: Emma Goldman lectures on her book, Living My Life, at Conway Hall, in London.

1936 -- Marge Piercy lives, Detroit, Michigan. American poet, novelist, & social activist. Author of 17 volumes of poems, numerous novels including Woman on the Edge of Time (explores a global utopian society organised on broadly anarchist lines), winner of the Arthur C. Clarke for her cyber-fiction novel She, He & It.
"The imagination is a very powerful liberating tool. If you cannot imagine something different you cannot work towards it."

Except for perhaps Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland, which was a bit hierarchical...& has no sex in it, most utopian novels women write are very different. They tend to much looser, more anarchical societies. They tend to be very concerned that the daily work of society should be as prestigious as the jobs that are now loaded with rewards.

In other words, helping to raise children, helping to heal the sick, helping to give birth, helping to die peacefully & gently, helping to socialize people, helping to negotiate between people, should be as prestigious as in our society taking money away from people is, or manipulating the stock market, or all the other things that our society seems to reward so highly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marge_Piercy

1937 -- England: Emma Goldman lectures on Spain at a meeting in East London.

1941 -- US: Attacks by Wisconsin state trooper fail to break the Allis-Chalmers strike in Milwaukee.
Union-hating company president Max Babb is fighting against a closed-shop demand from United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 248, a militant Communist-led union. But today, 76 days into the strike, the troopers fail to get scabs across the picket lines. The plant remains closed until the government negotiates a compromise.

1945 -- The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, opens at the playhouse Theatre in New York.

1949 -- Canada: Last great strike of the Canadian Seaman's Union.

1957 -- Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Obie Wheeler & Glen Douglas open a tour of the South in Little Rock, Arkansas.

1959 -- The Dalai Lama flees Tibet to India.

1959 -- England: Sir Winston Churchill's home burgled to the tune of £10,000.
[Source: Calendar Riots]

1960 -- Pope John XXIII makes the Bishop of Rutabo the Catholic Church's first black African cardinal.

1960 -- Italy: Viene ucciso il commissario della polizia di stato Cataldo Tandoy. Nel 1963 emergeranno le collusioni del commissario con la mafia locale e il carattere mafioso del delitto.
[Source: Crimini e Misfatti]

1962 -- UFO?: EMI of Great Britain withdrew its last 78 RPM records from its catalog. In the US 78s had been out of sight since 1957.

1963 -- US: Los Angeles ends streetcar service after nearly 90 years.

1964 -- Brazil: Right-wing coup topples the government of Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President João Goulart. Years of military repression follow.
http://www.patriagrande.net/uruguay/eduardo.galeano/memoria.del.fuego/19640331.htm
Brazil: It's Official:

April Fools!

The "Revolution" of the Brazilian Army happened on April 1, 1964.

Because this day is considered Liars Day here in Brazil, a day when people make practical jokes & tell unbelievable lies expecting others to believe, the Dictatorship made March the 31st the official aniversary of the Coup.

A bit interesting, maybe worth a place in the Daily Bleed.

— Bleedster Daniel M., April 2001

1966 -- US: Two-day boycott of Seattle, Washington schools begins, protesting de facto segregation.

1967 -- Guitarist Jimi Hendrix sets his guitar ablaze on stage for the first time. This happens at Finsbury Park, London.
http://www.jimi-hendrix.com/

1967 -- US: San Francisco Mime Troupe appears at Fluxfest at Longshoremen's Hall.
The Mime Troups is collectively owned & operated by its workers.
Wacky Ed Holmes argues Anarcho-Syndicalism in his stylish Tie-Dyed Tee, but Elliot Kavee's rhetorical fuming is accentuated by his neat Black Crinkle Tee. Who will win?
http://www.sfmt.org/

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/cruz/07.26.00/mimes-0030.html

1968 -- US: Under continuing attack by protesters & upheavals all over the nation, Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Hey Hey! LBJ! announces he will not seek reelection, orders a partial bombing halt in Vietnam & appoints Averell Harriman to seek negotiated peace talks with North Vietnam.
President Lyndon Johnson delivers his Address to the Nation Announcing Steps To Limit the War in Vietnam & Reporting His Decision Not To Seek Reelection. The speech announces the first in a series of limitations on US bombing, promising to halt these activities above the 20th parallel.

[Source: WholeWorld is Watching]

1970 -- US: Oakland (California) Induction Center is site of spring Vietnam War protests; 2500 Berkeley students turn in draft cards — typical, notes historian Todd Gitlin notes, of protests across the US (before Cambodian protests even start).

1976 -- Paul Strand, renowned American photographer, dies.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAPstrand.htm
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/strand_paul.html
http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/bio/a1899-1.html

1977 -- Philippines: Planning to rob all 38 passengers & crew, charter pilot Ernesto Abuloc leaves the cockpit & opens fire in the cabin, but can only kill seven before passengers overpower him, Zamboanga.

1985 -- Australia: 300,000 demonstrate in peace rallies countrywide.

1986 -- US: Following a 12-year campaign, a New York City Gay Rights ordinance is signed.

1986 -- O'Kelly Isley, 48, of the Isley Brothers dies of a cerebral hemorrhage.

1990 -- England: Trafalgar Square poll tax riot; simultaneously, Strangeways explodes with a riot that will become the longest rooftop protest in British history - until 25 April.
[Source: Calendar Riots]

1991 -- US: Five Plowshares activists hammer missile launching cones on nuclear Navy ship, Milwaukee.

1992 -- US: New York state cancels contract to buy power from controversial James Bay II hydroelectric project. The project, a massive series of dams that would have wiped out tens of thousands of square miles of Cree & Inuit land, is eventually cancelled as a result.

1995 -- Latino superstar Selena is shot & killed by her former personal assistant & former president of her fan club, who was fired for embezzlement.

1997 -- England: Four East Timorese arrested in Warton, at the British Aerospace factory where Indonesian Hawk fighter jets, used in the ongoing occupation & genocide of their homeland, are built.

1999 -- Second Blue Moon of the year. Celebrated by many as a sign of "The End Times" at the Blue Moon Tavern.
Sorry, We're open!

Near Seattle's fab Recollection Used Books, hang out for numerous Dead Beats, is Seattle's Blue Moon Tavern, whose simple "charm" owes a lot to historical panegyrics & little to the more conventional forms of tavern comfort. The anarchist Stan Iverson, poet Dylan Thomas, gay Allen Ginsberg, Beat Jack Kerouac, author Tom Robbins have all sucked suds at the Blue Moon — & all but Tom are dead.

Stale Urine Review:
http://www.blorf.com/su/reviews/connie-blue-moon.html

Blue Moon web page,
http://www.speakeasy.org/~priapus/bluemoon.htm

What would you change in Seattle?
by Dick Lilly, Anne Koch & Ferdinand M. de Leon, Seattle Times staff reporters
Here's your assignment, should you choose to accept it: You've just been named czar of the Emerald City, & you can make one change to the Seattle area in 1997. What will it be?

That's the question posed yesterday to students, commuters, police chiefs, lawyers & city officials.

We got all kinds of answers.

"I would pass an amendment to the Constitution making all tax deductions, deferrals & exemptions illegal. One person's tax exemption is another person's tax increase."

— Bleedster Gus Hellthaler, part owner (once one of the Three Fools, Inc., in 2004 becoming the Fool Three Times Over!) of the Blue Moon Tavern, Jan. 1, 1997.

http://www.blorf.com/su/reviews/connie-blue-moon.html

1999 --

Not retiring: The historic Blue Moon Tavern, in Seattle's University District turns 65 this week, old enough to retire but still going strong. A five-day birthday celebration kicks off today. Fittingly, the festivities begin on the second blue moon of the year.
Gus Hellthaler of Three Fools, owners of the Blue Moon, is promising discounts on draft beer & a weekend of live music. At 3 p.m. tomorrow, the Blue Moon has the April Fools' Day unveiling of the famed 8-foot-tall art object: "Hammered Man" which later inspires the "Hammering Man" now fronting the Seattle Art Museum.

(Hammered Man resembles a work of public art with a similar name. There's one major difference: The Blue Moon's plywood ripoff of "Hammering Man" features the all-important requisite beer belly.)

Stale Urine Review: "People do more at the Blue Moon than just drink beer & talk, but they are usually drinking beer & talking while they are doing them!"
Sorry, We're Open!

I'm here for the mushrooms that broadcast on transcendental frequencies ... [for] Monday Night Football at the Blue Moon Tavern, opera night at the Blue Moon Tavern (which incidentally, is scheduled so that it coincides with Monday Night Football — a somewhat challenging overlap that the casual patron might fail to fully appreciate); & I'm here for the flying saucers that made their first public appearance near Mount Rain-ier.
— Tom Robbins, "I'm Here for the Weather," Pacific Magazine, August 28, 1994.

2002 -- US: 2002 Bay Area Anarchist Conference convenes, following yesterday's Annual Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair.

2003 -- Iraq: The Bush Regime's war against the Hussein Regime continues.
The "Bush Doctrine" of preemptive war, formulated by a small clique of White House staff "neo-conservatives" who have long been advocating killing Saddam & urging an aggressive effort by the US to dominate the world politically & economically, is the most radical revision of American foreign policy in over 200 years.

Bush has flouted the Geneva Convention...

Also during this past week, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, has warned that America will lose the Iraq war & the American military, "will leave Iraq with its tail between its legs"...

Also in the news, Morocco offers US monkeys to detonate mines.
[Details, click here]
Few American voters know that of the 535 members of Congress, only one has a son or daughter in the armed forces...

Meanwhile an email circulating on Native American & Hawaiian sites is worth considering is: BUREAU OF IRAQI AFFAIRS (BIA)
Dear People of Iraq, Now that you have been liberated from your tyrannical oppressors, we at the BIA look forward to our relationship with you. Below you will find a list of what to expect from the services of our good offices....
[Details, in full, click here]

[More Details, click here]

2003 -- US: NBC fires journalist Peter Arnett, saying it was wrong for him to give an interview with state-run Iraqi TV in which he he said the American-led coalition's initial plan for the war had failed because of Iraq's resistance. Arnett called the interview a "misjudgment" & apologized, but added "I said over the weekend what we all know about the war."
[Details, click here]

3000 --

"The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body. Always an orchestra, & just as music traverses walls, so sensuality traverses the body & reaches up to ecstasy."
— Anais Nin
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Bistro/2187/

4500 --

anti-CopyRite 1997-3000, more or less
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anarchist, labor, &radical books
See also: Anarchist Encyclopedia
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/gallery/galleryindex.htm
Stan Iverson Memorial Library
http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/
Anarchist Time Line / Chronology
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/indexTimeline.htm