Daily Bleed: Paul Paillette, Malatesta, Felix Fénéon, Simon Radowitzky, Alfred Levitt, Kenneth Patchen, What Happened on this day, in recovered history February 29 ...

"What! all those children perched on my wall?"
With eight shots, Mr. Olive, a Toulon property-owner made them scramble down, covered with blood.

—Felix Fénéon's news item, translated by Edward Morris for Evergreen Review, vol.4, no.13, 1960

February 29
A Day Without a Saint!

(Think of it as a vacancy reserved just for you)
LEAP YEAR DAY — to remind us that all calendars, like maps, are particularist interpretations of subjective 'realities.'

FEAST OF THE BLUE MOON.

"Gimme a pigfoot & a bottle of beer..."

"Gimme a reefer & a gang of gin..."

-45 -- BC: Julius Caesar adjusts 46 B.C. — known as the Year of Confusion with its 445 days — by fixing 365 days & six hours as the length of a year, with one day intercalated every four years, a leap.
Rome had Caesar, a man of remarkable governing talents, although it must be said that a ruler who arouses opponents to resort to assassination is probably not as smart as he ought to be.

— Barbara W. Tuchman, 1912-1989

-12 -- The day before the last February 30th in the Roman (Julian) calendar. Hey, take the day off, it's on us!!

486 -- Pope Hilarius, calendar reformer, dies laughing.
http://www.gothic.net/

1288 -- Scotland: Establishes this day as one when a woman can propose marriage to a man! If he refuses, he is required to pay a fine. A fine kettle of fish...

1504 -- New Old World: Columbus uses a lunar eclipse to frighten hostile Jamaican Indians.

1692 -- New Old World: Sarah Good & Tituba, an Indian servant, are accused of witchcraft, Salem, Ma.

1700 -- This is the first February 29 dropped by the Gregorian calendar.

1704 -- US: Hells' Bells? The town of Deerfield, Ma. is raided by French Canadians & Indians who are trying to retrieve their church bell that had been shipped from France.
... show details

The bell was to hang in the Canadian Indian's village church. Neither the raiders nor the residents of Deerfield were aware the bell had been stolen from the ship. The Deerfield folks had purchased the bell from a privateer, unaware that it belonged to the Indian congregation. Although 47 people are killed in the incident, it could be said that the 120 captured were saved by the bell.

1736 -- England: Anna Lee (Ann the Word or Mother Ann) lives, Manchester, founder of the Shaker movement in America.
"Do your work as though you had a thousand years to live, & as if you were to die tomorrow."

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~quakers/shakers.htm

1784 -- Marquis de Sade is transferred from Vincennes fortress to the Bastille.

1788 -- Australia: Flower Power? James Freeman, Sydney, NSW, is pardoned for stealing flour, on condition he become public executioner.

1800 -- This is the second February 29 dropped by the Gregorian calendar.

1852 -- England: John Landseer, printer/engraver, dies in London, having been associated with the Royal Academy as an engraver for nearly 50 years.

1869 -- US: W.E.B. DuBois, famed African American radical, lives.

1900 -- This is the third February 29 dropped by the Gregorian calendar.

1904 -- US: Last Ditch Effort? Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Theodore Roosevelt, appoints a seven man committee to study Panama Canal.

"On they struggled, ever onward,
Blasting stone, & earth, & men;
Filling rivers with razed mountains;
Filling graves with parts of men.
Blood & bone are mixed with concrete,
Sweat of brow & grime of toil
Mark the rough-neck as he swelters,
Weary 'mid the grease & oil.
Weary flesh, nor fever's terrors
Halt them as they onward go.
Forward! Forward! Ever Forward!
Is the only cry they know."

— John Hall

http://www.czbrats.com/cz_brats.htm

1904 -- Gerhart Hauptmann play "Hannelle" is performed privately in England.
... show details

"Last night the most rigidly law-abiding people in the city of New York — we refer, of course, to the Anarchists — got together in Cooper Union to express their indignation over the action of the police in suppressing Emma Goldman every time she tried to talk...

The fuss was over the fact that some time ago, when Emma Goldman went to Harlem & tried to tell an audience that Ibsen had Hauptmann beaten as a dramatist & that Eugene Walter was the hope of the American stage, a lot of policemen chased her off the stage on the theory that Hauptmann was probably an Anarchist because he was Dutch.

This outrage had rankled in the minds of the Anarchists, & they had hired Cooper Union for $75 to show that they didn't like it."
— Excerpt from The New York Times article, "Goldman Champions Win the East Side," July 1, 1909
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Curricula/FreeExpression/fight.html
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Writings/Drama/

1910 -- Australia: During the period 1910-1916 the Industrial Workers of the World helps get IWW materials translated into Chinese & distributed into China. These were published by Liu Szu-fu ("Shih-fu") & IWW ideals became influential in Canton & Shanghai.

1920 -- France: Le Libertaire annonce la mort du chansonnier anarchiste Paul Paillette.
... show details

Paillette was one of the main anarchiste song-writers of the period. An engraving worker, he produced 10,000 verses, among them "Heureux Temps" (Happy Times) which treats lyrically of the future anarchist communist society & is still popular in anarchist circles today. He was a poet of harmony, of love & nature & often dealt with the anarchist communist society of abundance where need had been eradicated. He became a full-time singer in the Montmartre cabarets, remaining faithful to the movement.

Il naît le 16 avril 1844. D'abord ouvrier ciseleur, il devient par la suite un chansonnier des cabarets de Montmartre où il exprime ses idées libertaires, appelant de ses voeux une société plus juste comme dans "Heureux Temps" chantée sur l'air du "Temps des Cerises":

"Quand nous en serons au temps d'anarchie,
Le travail sera récréation / au lieu d'être peine
Le corps sera libre et l'âme sereine
En paix fera son évolution." etc

Auteur de nombreux vers qu'il publie lui-même sous forme de brochures, il participe ensuite aux journaux d'E Armand durant la guerre de 1914, "Pendant la Mêlée" puis "Par-delà la Mêlée." Agé d'environ 80 ans, il meurt en ce début de 1920.

http://www.lelibertaire.net/article132.html
1789-1989: Revolutionary Song in France
Chants révolutionnaires
http://www.ephemanar.net/avril16.html#paillette

1920 -- Italy: à Milan, à la sortie d'un grand meeting de protestation auquel se sont joints divers orateurs dont Errico Malatesta. La police intervient pour empêcher toute manifestation de se former. Les carabiniers ouvrent le feu sur la foule, tuant deux personnes et en blessant cinq autres. Aussitôt, éclate une grève générale de protestation.
http://www.ephemanar.net/fevrier29.html

1924 -- US: Charles R. Forbes, former head of the US Veterans Bureau, is indicted for defrauding the government of $250 million.

1936 -- Russia: Two days after Ivan Pavlov's death, the USSR commemorates him by ordering a monument to be erected in Leningrad, renaming the First Leningrad Medical Institute the "Pavlov Institute," maintaining his lab as a museum, preserving his brain, granting a pension to his widow & publishing his collected works in four languages.

1940 -- Frederic — the "poor wandering one" of Gilbert & Sullivan's operetta The Pirates of Penzance (1879) — celebrates his 21st birthday & release from the pirates' indenture.

1940 -- US: Hattie McDaniel is the first black person to win an Oscar. She wins the Best Supporting Actress award for her role as Mammy in "Gone with the Wind." A 2008 survey finds it the second most popular book in the country — “In truth, the film Gone with the Wind is Birth of a Nation without the bed sheets & hoods of the Klan.”
http://www.racismreview.com/blog/2008/04/10/racial-illiteracy-and-gone-with-the-wind/

1944 -- Félix Fénéon (1861-1944) dies. Fénéon, the art critic, novelist, anarchiste & friend of Seurat, Paul Signac, Théo van Rysselberghe, Henri-Edmond Cross, André Gide, et al. The remarkable Fénéon was the first French publisher of James Joyce & the "discoverer" of the artist Seurat.
A kind of cultural "terrorist" who may have been involved in terrorist acts of a less literary nature (one biographer claims he actually bombed a restaurant).

... show details

Standing from left to right: Felix Fénéon, Henri Gheon.
Seated, left to right: Feliz Le Dantec, Émile Verhaeren, Francis Viele-Griffen, Henri-Edmond Cross, André Gide, Maurice Maeterlinck.

Thadee Natanson sat in the audience during the Process de Trente of August 1894 & took notes on the proceedings. He was so impressed by Fénéon's performance at this trial of anarchiste intellectuals & militants, as well as by his earlier art criticism, that he hired him for the Revue Blanche staff after the trial. Fénéon soon became its editor in chief, a position he retained until the journal ceased publication in 1903.

*To Fénéon, charged with illegally carrying a firearm, the judge said:
"You know you had on you everything you need to commit a murder?"

Fénéon replied:
"Yes, but I also had on me everything I needed to commit a rape."

1952 -- US: Run For Your Life?!
New York City pedestrians are told when to walk & when not to as four signs are installed at 44th Street & Broadway in Times Square.

All four signs simultaneously flashes "Walk" for 22 seconds,

then "Don't Walk" for ten seconds

before the "Don't Walk"
turns red for 58 seconds more.
Inspires "Jay Walking."

http://www.tagsrwc.com/interactive/crossword/printable/EmmasJawalking.html

1956 -- México: Simón Radowitzky (Szymon Radowicki) dies. Legendary Polish anarchist who killed police chief Ramon Falcon & his secretary with a bomb in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on November 14, 1909.

"With Radowitzky's passing one of the last social revolutionaries of the Russian Revolution of 1905, one of the finest idealists of the international labor movement was gone."

— Augustin Souchy
[Further details + links]
[Details / context of his assassination of Falcon]

1960 -- US: Beloved & Respected John F. Kennedy, candidate for president (& a future airport, JFK) makes "missile gap" the presidential campaign issue.
... show details

Pledging he would close the missile gap Kennedy sought to portray himself as a president who would be firm with the Soviets.

Shortly after his election, evidence of a missile gap did surface — with the US greatly outpacing the Soviets. Nevertheless, Kennedy went ahead with an accelerated deployment of nuclear missiles, forcing the Soviets to do the same.

In short order, an arms race was off at full tilt. Ultimately, the US built more than 70,000 nuclear weapons (WMD).

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/missileers/missiles.html
http://rmpjc.org/rocky-flats/
http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/timeline/timeline_decade.php?decade=1960

1960 -- Morocco: The town of Agadir is hit by massive earthquakes & tidal waves.
... show details

Thousands of people, including almost three-quarters of the sizable Jewish population, are wiped out within 15 seconds. A survivor was quoted in the press as saying, "This was a prosperous city, & we had a future. We worked & behaved ourselves. What in God's name do you suppose we did wrong?"
Hearing this cry & this existential question from Agadir, the anarchist painter Alfred Levitt returned to his youthful aim of using painting to respond explicitly to the human dilemmas of the day.

http://web.archive.org...levitt.html
http://raforum.info/article.php3?id_article=2191

1960 -- US: First Playboy Club, featuring fast-breeding bunnies, opens in Chicago.
http://www.bunnies.de/bunnies/killpix.htm
http://www.inkyfingers.com/kdb.html
http://killerbunnies.com/

1964 -- Frank Rugani sets badminton shuttlecock distance record, 79-feet, 8-1/2 inches.

1968 -- Jocelyn Bell (now Jocelyn Bell Burnell), one of Britain's leading astronomers, announces her discovery of the 'pulsar' (on the 24th).
"One of the ideas we facetiously entertained was that it might be little green men — a civilization outside in space some-where trying to communicate with us."

1968 -- US: The summary report of the Kerner Commission on Civil Disorders faults excessive police force in ghettos.
... show details

The report warns the nation is "moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate & unequal." It recommends sweeping reforms in federal & local law enforcement, welfare, employment, housing, & education. Book goes on sale tomorrow.

Follow-up to the '68 Kerner Commission report says if present trends continue in inner-city racial problems, "most cities by 1980 will be preponderantly black & brown, & totally bankrupt."
http://www.pbs.org/chicano/

1968 -- US: Morning Star Ranch busts; Wheeler Ranch opened to settlers over the winter when Bill Wheeler (28) opens nearby Sheep Ridge Ranch (his 320 acre Ranch) for people to live on the land.

1972 -- US: Columnist Jack Anderson reveals a memo from lobbyist Dita Beard stating that an ITT pledge of $400,000 to support the Republican National Convention was made in exchange for a recent favorable antitrust settlement (see 17 March; 26 March).

1980 -- Buddy Holly's glasses & the Big Bopper's wristwatch — the ones each were wearing when their plane crashed on February 3, 1959 — are found in old police files by the Mason City Sheriff.

1988 -- US: In A Fix? Beloved & Respected Comrade Hizzoner NYC Mayor Koch calls Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Ronnie Reagan a "WIMP" in the war on drugs. Apparently the CIA drug warlords aren't pumping enough drugs into the US.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z6nY3ySWrk
http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm
http://stopthedrugwar.org/index.shtml
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/

1996 -- "Author" Joan Collins wins a $1-million lawsuit against Random House, which judged her contracted novel "unreadable" & refused to pay for it.
[I should send them some of my "unreadable" novels. — ed.]

2000 -- Lebanon: The General Union of Workers goes on strike. The call for a strike & demonstration led the government & army to impose a curfew for the 28th & today, preventing the demonstration. There was no demonstration but the strike occurs nationwide.
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/ws/cedar48.html

2000 -- Israel: Government releases 1,300 pages of memoirs by Adolf Eichmann.

2000 -- American media critic Herb Schiller dies, La Jolla, California. Media-ownership critic, activist.

2004 -- Haiti: The former Catholic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide ousted as president & delivered to the Central African Republic. "Titide" spoke out against the US-imposed military governments that oppressed the Haitian people for most of the 20th century. US officials deny accusations they had forcibly removed or kidnapped Aristide. Haiti, born condemned to solitude. "& yet again the Marines came back, as they always seem to, like the flu."
"In order for peace to reign, one must speak the truth."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Haiti/White_Curse.html
http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/A-Ca/Aristide-Jean-Bertrand.html

2008 -- US: A White House official resigns after admitting to plagiarism in columns published by the Fort Wayne, Indiana News-Sentinel.

2012 -- Some computer software may not recognize this date.
( Especially those of you trying to read your Daily Bleed without a monitor.
Computer experts further suggest it helps if you refuseniks plug your computer into an electrical socket. )

2100 -- This is the 4th February 29 dropped by the Gregorian calendar. Hey, take the day off, it's on us!

2200 -- This is the 5th February 29 dropped by the Gregorian calendar. Hey, take the day off, it's on us!
We'll see you on the 30th!

3000 --

— Away from this kingdom, from this last undefiled
place, I would keep our governments, our civilization,
& all other spirit-forsaken & corrupt institutions.
— Kenneth Patchen, excerpt from
"There Are Not Many Kingdoms Left,"
The Love Poems of Kenneth Patchen

anti-CopyRite 1997-3000, more or less
Subscribe to daily email excerpts/updates (include 'subscribe bleed' in subject field),
or send questions, suggestions, additions, corrections to:
BleedMeister David Brown