The golden lemon is not made
but grows on a green tree:
A strong man & his crystal eyes
is a man born free.

— Herbert Read

JANUARY 28

ALICE NEEL American painter, feminist.

Alternate Patron Saint, JOSE MARTI
The Original Cuban revolutionary.

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U.S.: NATIONAL KAZOO DAY.

LOVE AMONG NATIONS DAY. Yup.

CHINESE NEW YEAR.

Drink Anniversary: ST. CHARLEMAGNE'S DAY, marked in France by drinking champagne at breakfast.

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"The seer of now pours his vision on sheets of paper, on banks of arid craters where armored bullies stand guard & demand the password, Positive Evidence. No vision can pass by their gates. The only song that passes is a song gone as dry & cadaverous as the fossils in the sands."

— Fredy Perlman,
Against His-story, Against Leviathan
http://www.primitivism.com/leviathan.htm
http://www.reocities.com/~johngray/indx1.htm
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/PerlmanFredy.htm

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1393 -- Aimery Poitiers, French nobleman, burned at royal ball.
Stuff happens; see Burning Man,
http://www.fray.com/bm/
http://abirato.free.fr/9autres/Derive.htm


1613 -- Galileo may have unknowingly viewed undiscovered planet Neptune, when interrupted by the knock of the boy from Pizza Express.


1787 -- US: The Free Africa Society organizes in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1814 -- Stendhal's first book published, containing partially plagiarized biographies of Mozart & Haydn.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/01ref.htm#23/1783


1832 -- US: William Lloyd Garrison's anti-slavery weekly The Liberator is published; includes Lydia Maria Child's first piece, "Stand From Under."



1841 -- Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904) lives, Denbigh in North Wales, the illegitimate son of John Rowlands & Elisabeth Parry. American journalist & adventurer, who took the New York Herald's mission "to go & find Livingstone."

"Then sing, O friends, sing the journey is ended;
Sing aloud, O friends, sing to the great sea."

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hstanley.htm


1846 -- Charlotte Brontë writes to a London publisher about the poems of her sister Emily & their worthiness for publication.


1852 -- US: Abolitionist Wendell Phillips says "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty", Mass.


1853 -- Cuba: Revolutionist José Martí (1853-1895) lives, Havana. Cuban poet, essayist & journalist, who became symbol of Cuba's struggle for independence. The popular song "Guantanamera" is based on a poem by Martí. Worked on underground papers & sent to jail & forced into exile (three columns & you're out?)

"No man has any special right because he belongs to any specific race; just by saying the word man, we have already said all the rights."

— José Martí

http://web.archive.org/...patriagrande.net/cuba/jose.marti/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Mart%C3%AD

1854 -- US: 30 miners attack a peaceful Indian village on the Coquille River near Randolph, Oregon, killing 16.

... show details

"The West did not provide what they needed. Make-believe fandangos, transvestite laundresses, hydrophobic wolves, ant-fights, crazed foreigners, pretty sunsets — this was not enough. The West was not dull, it was stupendously dull, & when it was not dull it was murderous. A man could get killed without realizing it. There were unbelievable flash floods, weird snakes, & God Himself did not know what else, along with Indians descending as swiftly as the funnel of a tornado."

— Evan S. Connell

1861 -- US: American Miners Association, first national coal miners' union, founded.


1861 -- US: State convention in Texass to consider secession from the Union convenes in Austin. Lots of Little Grey Men & the music scene prove too too distracting.



1873 -- French sexual liberationist writer (Sidonie-Gabrielle) Colette lives, Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye. Begins her writing career ghostwriting stories for her author-husband "Willy" who locks her into a room until she finishes each assignment. Wrote Cherie, Gigi (filmed), etc. Her novels are characterized by a representation of erotic instinct & sensuous experience & a sympathy with nature, especially flowers & animals.

... show details

I was by chance spared the sight of Renée dying, then dead. She carried off with her more than one secret, & beneath her purple veil, Renée Vivien, the poet, led away — her throat encircled with moonstones, beryls, aquamarines, & other anemic gems — the immodest child, the excited little girl who taught me, with unembarrassed competence: "There are fewer ways of making love than they say, & more than one believes."

       — Colette, as quoted by Dolores Klaich in "Woman Plus Woman"

Natalie,

my husband kisses your hands,

& I the rest.

       — Colette, in a note to Natalie Barney

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/colette.htm



1874 -- Innovative movement theorist Vsevolod Meyerhold lives.
(Jan 28 old style; Feb 9 new style), Penzq, Russia.

... show details

Visionary radical Soviet theatre director, choreographer. Founding member of the Moscow Art Theater. Symbolist, talented experimental director of the 1920s & 1930s whose work inspired revolutionary artists & filmmakers of his era..

A victim of Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Uncle Stalin’s terror, Meyerhold was arrested & imprisoned in 1939, then executed in 1940.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vsevolod_Meyerhold
http://web.archive.org/...freedlander/meyerhold.html

1883 -- France: The trial of The 66 (anarchists of the First International, including Kropotkin), concludes in Lyon; they get stiff sentences.



1883 -- Belgium: Edouard Carouy lives.

... show details Anarchiste illegalist, member of the Bonnot Gang. Arrested April 4, 1912, condemned on February 27, 1913 to penal servitude for life, Carouy commits suicide (by poisoning) in his cell on that same day. See Doug Imrie's article, "The Illegalists", & background material on the Bonnot Gang. http://www.ephemanar.net/fevrier28.html

1900 -- American artist Alice Neel lives.

http://www.aliceneel.com/
http://www.nmwa.org/explore/collection-highlights?LinkID=630

1912 -- American artist Jackson Pollock lives — in the abstract, of course.


1914 -- Canada: The Edmonton city council caves in to IWW, agrees to provide a large hall for the homeless, pass out three 25-cent meal tickets to each man daily, & employ 400 people on a public project.

"Are you eye wobble wobble?"

[Details / context]

1917 -- México: Failing to find the elusive Pancho Villa, invading American army forces give up.

... show details

Pershing "recommended that the date of the beginning of the movement from Dublan, México, be not later than January 28, 1917, the withdrawal to be entirely by marching, & the command to assemble at Palomas, Chihuahua, & march was approved, & the Punitive Expedition officially ended on the afternoon of February 5, 1917."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancho_Villa_Expedition

1918 -- Germany: General Strike in the large cities; in Berlin the strike lasts through February 3rd.

At a rally of 10,000 workers in Munich, the anarchist poet/playwright

Erich Mühsam

calls for the continuation of the strike movement.

He is seized afterwards by police & put under house arrest.

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/MuhsamErich.htm

1918 -- Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Leon Trotsky denounces the German Peace Terms as unacceptable & walks out of the peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. In March the Bolsheviks accept the dictated peace of Brest-Litovsk. The Left SRs denounce the peace & leave the government.
http://www.barnsdle.demon.co.uk/russ/rusrev.html

The Bolsheviks & Workers Control, 1917 - 1921:The State & Counter-Revolution:
http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/russia/sp001861/bolintro.html

1918 -- Finnish Bolsheviks overthrow the coalition government, in Helsinki; meanwhile the Ukraine is proclaimed a free republic (German puppet) & elsewhere Beloved & Respected Comrade Leon Trotsky denounces the German peace terms & walks out of negotiations at Brest-Litovsk.


1927 -- No Second Fiddle?: Aaron Copland's First Piano is first performed.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/copland/actime.html



1928 -- Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, author of Blood & Sand (1908) &The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1916), among many other works, dies.



1928 -- Norway: Millennium Bug?: Christopher Hornsrud chosen Prime Minister at age 101.


1932 -- US: First unemployment compensation law enacted, Wisconsin.


1933 -- George Saintsbury, popular & authoritative author of many books of literary criticism & noted oenophile, dies in Bath, Somerset. During his 20-year post as the Regius chair of Rhetoric & English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, he produced no fewer than 10 volumes on the history of English prosody.


1934 -- First rope ski tow operation begins. Better now than in July.


1935 -- Iceland becomes the first country to legalize abortion.



1938 -- France: Émile Bidault (1869-1938) dies.

... show details

Anarchiste militant & organizer. With Joseph Tortelier & others, Bidault founded the "Ligue des antipatriotes" (League of Antipatriots) to combat militarism, the war it promotes, & its corollary, patriotism.

Editor of La Brochure mensuelle &, in 1934, manager of the Conquête du pain (Conquest of Bread), a review open to all the tendencies of anarchism (N° 1 appeared on October 13, 1934).

1939 -- William Butler Yeats dies, Roquebrune, France, age 73. His gravestone in Ireland bears the epitaph he composed: "Cast a cold eye / On life, on death. / Horseman, Pass by." Larry McMurtry took the title of his first novel from these lines (filmed as Hud.)
http://www.lit.kobe-u.ac.jp/~hishika/yeats.htm


1945 -- Italy: Beginning of the Naples Congress, first congress of the united trade union movement in liberated Italy.


1946 -- Chile: At Bulmes Square (Santiago) eight workers are murdered by police & many more seriously injured by the police dogs.
http://libcom.org/history/1872-1995-anarchism-in-chile


1946 -- Chile: During this month Lota mine-worker strike.

... show details

In 1947, Pisagua (an infamous concentration camp headed by Augusto Pinochet) was opened & a period of fullscale persecution of anarquistas & comunistas began. Organizations had to go underground & one such clandestine initiative was the Luisa Michel Cultural Center, which operated with the clear aim of giving a rational education to female workers.

In 1953 its name changed to "Luisa Michel Libertarian School." It was run by Flora Sanhueza & had over 70 students. With time, it began to accept children as well. It worked non-stop until 1957, the strength & determination of the libertarian women resisting the authorities for a period of 10 years.

Sanhueza was arrested & tortured in 1973 under the Pinochet dictatorship & died as a result in 1974.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisagua#Pisagua_as_a_camp_for_prisoners
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concentration_and_internment_camps#Chile
http://periodicoelamanecer.wordpress.com/2011/12/17/flora-sanhueza-1911-1974...
http://libcom.org/history/1872-1995-anarchism-in-chile
http://recollectionbooks.com/cs/index.htm#chile

In April 27th 1934, the FOCH headquarters in Santiago was assaulted by the police & the 'white guards'; seven workers died in the attack, a child was slain, & 200 workers were badly injured. In June the same year, 477 peasants were slain in Alto Bio-Bio, Ranquil & Lonquimay. In December 1936 the Confederacion General de Trabajadores - CGT was formed with the participation of the IWW & the FORCH. Some important objectives achieved by the IWW were: i) the 8 hour working day, ii) dominical (Sunday) rest, iii) Indemnity for accidents at work, iv) Monetary recognition of years of service, v) the right to retirement & vi) the right to an old age pension. By this time the FACH - Chilean Anarchist Federation- was active & sent some International Brigades to support the Spanish comrades in the Spanish Civil War (1936). On January 28th 1946 at Bulmes Square (Santiago) eight workers were murdered & many more were seriously injured by the police dogs. In 1947, Pisagua (an infamous concentration camp) was opened & a period of fullscale of persecution of anarchists began. Anarchist organisations had to go underground & one such clandestine initiative was the Luisa Michel cultural centre, which operated with the clear aim of giving a rational education to female workers. In 1953 its name changed to "Luisa Michel Libertarian School". It was run by comrade Flora Sanhueza R. & had over 70 students. With time, it began to accept children as well. It worked non stop until 1957, & we have to praise the strength of libertarian women who were able to resist the authorities for a period of ten years!

1951 -- XXX?: "La Vie Commence Demain," which depicts artificial insemination & is the first X-rated movie, opens in London.

... show details

A general bon vivant, ladies man, & all around fun guy at parties, Picasso lived life to its fullest. Anyone who has been called "That Nietzschean monster from Malaga" & "The Walking Scrotum" must have been living it up, don't you think?

I have this opening in London on Jan. 9, 1951. I think my source was Patrick Robertson's The Book of Firsts, generally a reliable work for British dates, but I'm not sure... I also couldn't find anything conclusive on the Internet... You might also want to mention that the cast of this movie included Sartre, Picasso, Gide, Le Corbusier & Rostand (the real people).
See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0140679/

— Bleedster Bobby B.

1954 -- US: Dick's Drive-in begins serving hamburgers, Seattle.


1958 -- US: 17-yr. old Charles Starkweather, accompanied by his 14-yr. old girlfriend Caril Fugate, shoots a wealthy elderly couple & their maid in their Lincoln, Nebraska home, his 8th, 9th, & 10th of 11 victims.


1960 -- Black American folklorist, writer Zora Neale Hurston dies, Ft. Pierce, Florida. Important influence on writers as diverse as Toni Morrison & Ralph Ellison.
http://zoranealehurston.wordpress.com/zora-neale-hurston/
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/ellison-main.html



1960 -- England: Goon Show's final episode on BBC.
http://www.goon.org/


1961 -- US: Committee for Nonviolent Action demonstrates against nuclear-armed ships, New London, Connecticut.


1963 -- Italy: Il procuratore della repubblica di Milano Carmelo Spagnuolo ordina il sequestro del film "Viridiana" di Luis Buñuel.
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]


1967 -- Michael Nesmith of The Monkees tells the Saturday Evening Post: "Tell the world we're synthetic, because, damn it, we are... The music had nothing to do with us. It was totally dishonest."



1967 -- First sacred plant conference.
Image, "Caduceus" by Bleedster James Koehnline
http://hempfest.org/


1968 -- Samuel R. Delany's "The Star Pit" is dramatized on WBAI-FM's "The Mind's Eye Theater" in New York.


1969 -- Josephine Herbst (1892-1969) dies. Radical author of Rope of Gold (1939), The Executioner Waits (1934), & Behind the Swastika (1936).

JOSEPHINE HERBST, Daily Bleed Patron Saint 12/20/98

"The real events that influence our lives
don't announce themselves with brass trumpets
but come softly, on the feet of doves."

— Josephine Herbst

Radical muckraking American journalist
of revolution, insurrection & upheaval.

... show details

"Herbst's merciless examination of the middle class is almost too much for the average reader. Courageous, even remorselessly patient in her descriptions, Herbst created a literary monument that is almost forbidding."

— Paul Buhle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_Herbst
Background on "Bottom Dog" authors, see Walter B. Rideout's The Radical Novel in the United States, 1900-1954

See also Paul Garon's review, "Radical Novel, 1900-1954" (Firsts 4:3; March, 1994) at,
http://hq.abaa.org/books/antiquarian/news_fly?code=50
Article by Herbst, http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/herbst/fascism.html
See also Larry Smith's bibliography of "Working-Class Literature"
http://smithdocs.net/CHWCBIB.htm

1970 -- France: Bomb attack on offices of the Spanish Cultural attache in Paris. One of many attacks in England & France during this year, some of which are believed attributable to the anarchist 'Angry Brigade' or similar groups.


1976 -- England: Inside Linda Lovelace, the ‘Deep Throat’ star’s ‘autobiography’ is cleared of obscenity by an Old Bailey jury today. Them judges are still haarumpin' & trying to clear their throats.


1978 -- Rocker Ted Nugent autographs a man's arm with a bowie knife. Will David Bowie become a Teddy Boy?
http://www.notbored.org/bowie.html


1986 -- US: Moments after liftoff, the space shuttle Challenger explodes, killing six astronauts & Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire teacher. Investigations found NASA abandoned "good judgement & common sense" regarding safety problems causing the explosion.

... show details

The Ford Motor Company announces the cancellation of it's advertising campaign linking its Aerostar minivan to the space shuttle.

News that the explosion was caused by an o-ring failure was followed by revelation that virtually every safety system in US nuclear power plants uses such o-rings to prevent leaks. In 1981, the government found that viton, a material in the o-rings, slowly disintegrates when exposed to large amounts of radiation. By 1986, over 60 reports document o-ring failure in nuclear plants.

"On the truck, in the garbage cans, were the bodies of three astronauts from the space shuttle Challenger...

1987 --

"On the surface, selling arms to a country that sponsors terrorism, of course, clearly, you'd have to argue it's wrong, but it's the exception sometimes that proves the rule."

— Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader George DubyaBush
speaking on someone's TV

http://www.stickergiant.com/george-w-bush_gwbush_store_pg1

1989 -- US: Arthur Weinberg, lawyer, Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) member & author of Attorney for the Damned, dies.

http://web.archive.org/...books/bios/darrow.html

Bob Black on the IWW, http://www.inspiracy.com/black/beautifullosers.html

http://www.iww.org/

1994 -- William Levitt, urban planner & father of suburbia, creates a sprawling mess, then dies, Manhasset, NY.



1995 -- Canada: George Woodcock, Canadian literary critic, anarchist & historian, dies, age 82.

... show details

One-time editor, in England, of the anarchist paper Freedom, & during WWII, the anti-war paper, War Commentary.

George Woodcock's anarchist literary journal Now began to appear in 1940, with poems by Alex Comfort, Roy Fuller, Kenneth Rexroth & Julian Symons...

Woodcock published a significant number of books, articles, & poetry, as well as biographies of William Godwin, Proudhon & Kropotkin.

He also wrote Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas & Movements, where he pronounced the movement dead, then lived to see its resurgence in the 1960s.

1995 -- Russia: Over 100 Solders' Mothers Committee members go to a training camp to reclaim their sons from the Army.



1996 -- Jerry Siegel, comic book writer (Superman), dies at 81.
http://www.supermanbook.com/index.php3?gg_id=0128656769


1996 -- Russian Joseph Brodsky dies. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987 for his lyric & elegiac poems. Though Russian, he is exiled in 1972, living thereafter in the US, & becoming poet laureate in 1991.
http://recollectionbooks.com/links.html#JosephBrodsky



1998 -- France: 200 members of the Farmers Confederation, opposing the government decision to authorize the use of bioengineered corn, break into the Novartis Seed Company warehouse in southwest France, & "ripped open the sacks & drenched the corn with a fire hose, in order to call attention to the dangers posed to humanity by the agricultural use of bioengineering."

According to the Confederation, the bioengineered corn "risks transmitting to man a resistance to the effect of certain antibiotics."

2002 -- US: Curtains!? The Justice Department says it has covered two statues in its headquarters with drapes because one of them has a breast exposed. No word on the status of the boobs who work there.


2003 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Bush tells Congress Iraq tried to import uranium from Africa (one of many lies used to justify the rightist NeoCon invasion & recolonization of Iraqi oil).
http://www.salon.com/2003/09/10/bush_speech_9/
http://www.salon.com/2005/05/19/lies_4/



3000 --

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"I feel envious, when I think back, of the privileged little urchin I was in those days. As an accompaniment to my modest, fill-in meals — a chop, a leg of cold chicken, or one of those hard cheeses, "baked" in the embers of a wood fire & so brittle that one blow of the fist would shatter them into pieces like a pane of glass — I drank Chateau Lafites, Chambertins, & Cortons which had escaped capture by the "Prussians" in 1870. Certain of these wines were already fading, pale & scented still like a dead rose; they lay on a sediment of tannin that darkened their bottles, but most of them retained their aristocratic ardor & their invigorating powers. The good old days!"

      — Colette

4000 --

Collage by SaintMeister James Koehnline