If the river was whiskey & I was a duck, I'd dive to the bottom & never come up. — Holy Modal Rounders http://members.efn.org/~dan_m/Weber.html

     

JANUARY 27      

ARNE NAESS
Norwegian theorist, founder of the Deep Ecology movement.

---

BIRTH OF UNCANNY CONJUNCTURES.

FESTIVAL OF ROOT VIBRATIONS.

---

1302 -- Dante Alighieri is expelled from Florence when a political group he opposes seizes control. For the next 20 years, until the end of his life, he remains an exile.


1513 -- Puerto Rico: African slaves are introduced into the island.


1593 -- The Vatican begins a seven year trial against scholar Giordano Bruno.

When in Rome do like a Roman,
Ave Maria,
Gee it's good to see ya,
Gettin' ecstatic an'
Sort of dramatic an'
Doin' the Vatican Rag!

1596 -- Sir Francis Drake, English navigator/pirate/slaver (Porto Bello, West Indies), dies at about 50, of dysentery, off the coast of Panama.




1606 -- Guy Fawkes & his fellow conspirators (Gunpowder Plotters), London.
[Details / context]




1652 -- England: Café Day — to celebrate the first broadside advertising the virtues of the 'coffee house.' We are certain the good King insisted on "Fair Trade" practices.
Java Jive: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP6IUqrFHjw
Source: [Calendar Riots]


1734 -- US: New York City maids organize to improve working conditions.


1736 -- Voltaire play "Les Americans" is produced, Paris.


1756 -- Masonic conspirator, composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart lives, Salzburg, Austria.


1828 -- US: North Americans evacuate Nacogdoches, Texas; thus ends the 6-week-old "Republic of Fredonia."




1832 -- Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) lives, England. Mathematician, pedophile, author of Alice in Wonderland, creator of the famed Cheshire cat.

http://lcsna.org/carroll/
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/lcarroll.htm

1842 -- François Dumartheray lives, in Collonges, the High Saone. Member of the First International & an anarchist communist.
[Details / context]

1850 -- US: Samuel Gompers, first president of American Federation of Labor (AFL), lives.
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Writings/Essays/gompers.html


1851 -- Nathaniel Hawthorne publishes his novel The House of the Seven Gables.


1853 -- France: DURING THIS MONTH Louise Michel, receives her teaching diploma & announces her intention to open a private school in Audeloncourt (Haute-Marne). This school appears to have opened in January 1853. She later wrote she opened her own school so as to avoid pledging allegiance to the Emperor.

I have seen criminals & whores

& spoken with them. Now I inquire

If you believe them made as now they are

To drag their rags in blood & mire

Preordained, an evil race?

 

You to whom all men are prey

Have made them what they are today.

[Source: Michel Chronologie]

1862 -- France: Anarchiste Louise Michel, spending years teaching, writing, & educating herself — including on the political level — becomes a member of the Union of the Poets.
http://libcom.org/history/michel-louise-1830-1905
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Michel


1870 -- US: While searching for Cochise, Col. Bernard's troops kill 13 Chiricahua Apache, Arizona Territory.


1880 -- Thomas Edison patents electric incandescent lamp.
[Details / context]



1888 -- US: National Geographic Society founded.



1891 -- US: Mine explosion in Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania leaves over 100 workers dead.




1891 -- Ilya Ehrenburg (1891-1967) lives. Russian writer/journalist, a link between Soviet & Westerns intellectuals before & after the Cold War. From the 1930s to the 1960s one of the most visible Soviet figures, who spent the second half of his life as a messenger of the Soviet state, despite not being a member of the Communist Party.

But then the automobile came to man’s rescue. It doesn’t wait for any notes, it doesn’t demand 14 points like Wilson. Meticulously & efficiently, it cleans the earth. All inoculations & all conferences are powerless against it. The body is quickly removed by truck, the car is carefully wiped, & the record is identified by a multi-digit number.

At first such things were known as "catastrophes." Now people speak of "accidents." Soon they’ll stop speaking altogether. Silently they’ll haul away the victim & silently write down the number.

      — Ilya Ehrenburg, 1929 (from The Life of the Automobile)

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/eburg.htm
http://www.joshuarubenstein.com/tangled/tangled.html
http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/1996/10/VIDAL/7280.html

1896 -- Russia: Lasker wins at St. Petersburg (chess); Steinitz is second.


1898 -- Henry James story "The Turn of the Screw" begins serial publication.


1900 -- US: Social Democrat Party of America (Debs's party) holds its first convention.



1903 -- US: Police arrest Emma Goldman & Max Baginski in New York City for being "suspicious persons"; released after questioning.

Why upstanding anarchists would be considered "suspicious" is beyond us....

What is to suspect!?

1904 -- England: Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland contained no reference to chocolate gramophone records, since they were unknown until this day 71 years later, when Gebruder Stollwerk obtained UK Patent No. 1,992.


1908 -- US: Supreme Court rules a law banning discrimination against union labor is unconstitutional, upholds a railroad official who fired a worker for belonging to a union.

1912 --

Strange Stuff:

Sighting of "an intensely black object" on the moon, estimated to be 250 miles long & 50 miles wide, resembling "a crow poised, as near as anything" [Popular Astronomy, 20-398] http://www.resologist.net/damn03.htm

1912 -- Norway: Philosopher, Deep Ecology theorist Arne Naess lives. Avid mountaineer, direct action activist, fought for sacred relationship with Earth & all beings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arne_N%C3%A6ss
http://web.archive.org/.../deep.htm
http://liberationtheology.org/books-videos/bibliography-on-liberation-ecologies/
http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/article/view/157/190



1913 -- US: Patterson silk workers' strike.
[Details / context]


1915 -- Haiti: US Marines occupy the country to protect it from itself before turning it over to a dictatorial military elite in 1934. They will be back...to protect Haiti from democracy.
James Weldon Johnson on the occupation, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5018/


1916 -- Germany: Communist party "Spartacus" is formed in Berlin.


1920 -- First meeting of the International Labor Organization (ILO).


1920 -- US: Kansas mine workers strike against compulsory arbitration.

1921 -- Donna Reed, film star turned definitive Classic TV mom, lives, Denison, Iowa. In 1954, she played in MGM's version of the Scott Fitzgerald short story "Babylon Revisited", filmed as The Last Time I Saw Paris.



1922 -- American journalist, adventuress Nellie Bly dies, New York City.

NELLIE BLY, Patron Saint 2006-2011
Committed social journalist, adventuress, proto-feminist.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAWbly.htm


1927 -- Canada: Emma Goldman's first two lectures, January 27-30, in Winnipeg draw large audiences: a Yiddish lecture attracts 400 & 1,000 attend an English lecture on "The Labor Situation in Europe."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTCMcO4WTjE&list=PL75432B8F7990EA2C


1927 -- Edmund Wilson tells Ernest Hemingway that his novel The Sun Also Rises is "a knockout, the best piece of fiction this crop has done."



1931 -- Canadian novelist Mordecai Richler (The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Barney's Version) lives, Montreal. Controversial satirist, essayist & journalist, his incisive & penetrating works explore fundamental human dilemmas & values.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordecai_Richler


1932 --

Jazzster Louis Armstrong & his orchestra records "All of Me."

Armstrong's romantically bittersweet "All Of Me" scarcely suggests the desperation of many Americans as he recorded this then-new standard during the Depression's bleakest winter. National income had declined by 50 percent since 1929, & 14 million Americans were unemployed at the outset of 1932. Americans were giving their all that winter just to survive. Legions of homeless scavenged for scraps & huddled in shanty towns dubbed 'Hoovervilles' after the President who said, "What the country needs is a good, big laugh." Secretly, Hoover urged Congress not to cut Army & Navy pay, as well-fed troops might soon be needed to quell a revolution. http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/mirror/Depressionmusic2.html http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,301462,00.html

1934 -- Russia: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Uncle Joe Stalin announces his fear that the Great Depression will lead capitalists to war.



1935 -- D.M. (Donald Michael) Thomas lives, Redruth, Cornwall, England. Best known for his novel The White Hotel, mixing fantasy & psychological insight, exploring the sexual hysteria & premonitions of an early patient of Sigmund Freud.


1939 -- US: Julius Lester, reteller of legends & folklore of the American South, lives.


1941 -- Perúvian agent Rivera-Schreiber warns of an impending Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.


1944 -- USSR: Leningrad liberated from Germany in 880 days with 600,000 killed.

1945 -- Ukrainian division of Soviet Army frees surviving Auschwitz prisoners.
[Details / context]

1947 -- US: Two pre-teen boys pile boards, pipes, & a large roll of wire fencing on a train track, causing a passenger train derailment that kills four & injures 45, Walton, Indiana.


1950 -- US: A 3-cent Samuel Gompers postage stamp is issued. Labor gets its due.


1951 -- US: Crap Shoot? First nuclear weapons test conducted near Las Vegas, at what becomes the Nevada Test Site. A plane drops a 1-kiloton nuclear bomb, Frenchman Flats.

"The flame that first seared the Nevada desert 50 years ago has left a wound that may never heal." — Samuel H. Day Jr., Old Codger for Peace & Daily Bleed Saint for January 26th, "America's Nuclear Legacy" http://www.no-nukes.org/samday/ http://web.archive.org/....progressive.org/pmpdj23.html http://www.progressive.org/media_1805 http://zvis.com/nuclear/ndb/usnuks.shtml http://www.naav.com/html/links.htm http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/atomic/testpix/index.html

1952 -- France: International Movement for Fraternal Union Among Races & Peoples is formed, Paris.


1957 -- US: For the second time in a year, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s home is bombed.


1958 -- Little Richard enters Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama. It's a school for blacks run by the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Little Richard explains while flying over the Philippines on tour, the wing on his plane caught fire & his prayers that the flames go out were answered. As a result, he says he's giving up rock & roll so he can serve God.


1959 -- In Portland, Oregon, Mel Lyman notes from a diner:

...a film of grease, paint spots & reflection

— Diary of a Young Artist

http://www.trussel.com/lyman/mirror.htm

1967 -- US: Three astronauts die at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Flash fire engulfs their Apollo I space capsule during a simulated launch. An investigatory panel found that "many deficiencies in design & engineering" plagued the $21 billion Apollo program.


1967 -- Trust US? Outer Space Treaty signed by US, USSR & Britain. 72 nations in all sign this treaty, banning the use of nuclear weapons in space. Yep, by Little Green Men in UFOs, no doubt.



1967 -- Australia: Melbourne residents riot to protest the execution of Ronald Ryan, sentenced to death for killing a prison warder.
Source: [Calendar Riots]



1969 -- A group of Detroit African-American auto workers known as the Eldon Avenue Axle Plant Revolutionary Union Movement leads a wildcat strike against racism & bad working conditions.
[Details / context]


1972 -- US: In the Hen House?: Gordon Liddy's first plan for disrupting the 1972 Democratic Convention, calling for "mugging squads, kidnapping teams, prostitutes to compromise the opposition, & electronic surveillance" is presented to Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Attorney General Mitchell, the highest law enforcement official in the American government.


1972 -- One killed, nine injured when a bomb detonates at the offices of an agent booking Soviet artists. A caller claiming to represent Soviet Jews claims responsibility.


1973 -- Vietnam Peace Treaty signed in Paris. All American troops are to leave Vietnam within 90 days. Ends American military's combat role in this imperialist war. US military draft ends. Most American liberal & conservative idealogues will seek global domination through other, more sophistcated political & economic methods (WTO, IMF, NAFTA, etc.)
[Details / context]


1977 -- US: In one of his first acts as President, Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Jim Carter pardons some 10,000 Vietnam draft resisters.


1977 -- Happy Hour?: Vatican bars women from priesthood. Millions around the globe break into song, bellowing,

First you get down on your knees Fiddle with your rosaries Bow your head with great respect & genuflect, genuflect ... — Tom Lehrer, The Vatican Rag http://recollectionbooks.com/links.html#TomLehrer

1983 -- West Germany: Nationwide strike by some 10,000 conscientious objectors.



1984 -- Michael Jackson's hair bursts into flames while filming a Pepsi commercial. Doused it with Coca Cola...


1986 -- US: Hormel workers locked out for honoring Ottumwa, Iowa picket line.


1987 -- USSR: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader General Secretary Gorbachev signals new era of "Glasnost" (openness), proposing economic & social reforms.



1987 -- France: Clara Thalmann-Ensner dies, in Nice. Swiss revolutionary & anarchiste, fought in the Spanish Revolution, founded Serena Commune in Nice in 1953 with her husband Pavel.

“I am going to make the revolution in the sky." — Clara Thalmann, 1953. Expelled from the Kommunistische Partei der Schweiz in 1929 along with her husband, Pavel; active in the Kommunistische Partei Opposition & Trotskyist groups in Basel & Zurich; went to Spain in 1936; joined the anarchosyndicalist Durruti Column; imprisoned by the communists in Barcelona & Valencia in 1937; during WWII they lived in Paris helping German refugees; after 1945 involved in agitation against the Soviet Union & for the liberation of Algeria; started the Serena guesthouse in Nice in 1953; in touch with new generations of student activists during the 60s & 70s; published their memoirs in the 1970s; in the documentary ‘Die lange Hoffnung' of 1983 Clara Thalmann & Augustin Souchy revisit sites of the Spanish Revolution.

1988 -- Center for Constitutional Rights reveals the FBI had under surveillance a number of organizations critical of Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Reagan administration policies in Central America.
[Details / context]


1990 -- Serbia: Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo begin demonstrations, five die.


1991 -- Iraq: Gulf Peace Team evicted from peace camp by US troops, Judayyidat Ar'ar.

"Two Local Wars" (Situationist article on the Vietnam & Arab-Israel wars),
http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/11.wars.htm
"The War & the Spectacle" (on the Gulf war & the media),
http://www.bopsecrets.org/PS/gulfwar.htm

1995 -- US & Vietnam sign agreements settling old property claims & establishing liaison offices in each other's capitals.
http://www.oakton.edu/~wittman/chronol.htm


3500 --

---

  

"There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete & staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic."

       — Anais Nin

4000 --

Link to Anarchy Now pages