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The Song of the Storm-Finch

letter The storm-wind is howling, the thunder is roaring; with flame blue & lambent the cloud-masses glow o'er the fathomless ocean; it catches the lightnings, & quenches them deep in its whirlpool below.

Like serpents of fire in the dark ocean writhing, the lightnings reflected there quiver & shake as into the blackness they vanish forever. The tempest! Now quickly the tempest will break!

The storm-finch soars fearless & proud 'mid the lightnings, above the wild waves that the roaring winds fret; & what is the prophet of victory saying? "Oh, let the storm burst! Fiercer yet-fiercer yet!"

— Maxim Gorky, from "Songs of Russia," rendered into English by Alice Stone Blackwell (Appeared in Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March, 1906)

Poem in full, in the Stan Iverson Archives, http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/GorkyStormFinch.htm




Ben Shahn
-- MARCH 14 — BEN SHAHN
Lithuanian-born graphic artist, social conscience. See our Saints Page,
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/saints/StBenShahn.htm


FEAST OF HYPERBOREA

Rangoon, Burma: PILGRIMAGE TO THE DRAGON PAGODA, to wash the dust from the thousand Buddhas within.






1471 -- Sir Thomas Malory — who may have completed compiling/translating Le Morte d'Arthur while in prison — dies in London's Newgate Prison.


1794 -- US: Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin, a device for automatically removing seeds from cotton bolls.


1826 -- Klutz?: Sir Walter Scott compares his novels with Jane Austen's: "the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things & characters interesting . . . is denied to me."


1829 -- England: Charles Charlesworth lives. Dies at seven of old age.


Mikhail Bakunin, line drawing by Levine
1838 -- Michael Bakunin, anarchistDuring this month Mikhail Bakunin's "Preface to Hegel's Gymnasium Lectures" is published.



1850 -- Honore de Balzac, 51, marries Polish Countess Evelina Hanska, after 18 years of romantic correspondence.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/balzac.htm


Mikhail Bakunin, anarchist
1851 -- Czechoslovakia: The Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, after first being jailed in Prague, is sent today to the Olmütz fortress in Austria, where he is sentenced in May to hang.

Although the death sentence is commuted, Bakunin is chained hand & foot to the prison wall & suffers acutely. Shortly thereafter, he is handed over to the Russians & imprisoned in the dreaded dungeons of the Fortress of Peter & Paul.




Einstein quote
1879 -- Germany: Relativity theorist, peace activist Albert Einstein probably lives, more or less, Ulm. Charter union member of the American Federation of Teachers Local 552 at Princeton University in 1938.

"The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects."

http://www.westegg.com/einstein/



Groucho Marx
1883 -- England: Karl Marx dies, in genteel poverty, worked to death, London, age 64.
http://members.aye.net/~mainman/groucho/
http://www.marxists.org/


James Joyce at Shakespeare & Company
1887 -- The founder of the bookstore Shakespeare & Company, Sylvia Beach, lives, in her father's parsonage in Baltimore.

http://libweb2.princeton.edu/rbsc2/portfolio/sb/




1891 -- US: The American Way? Louisiana mob storms a jail & lynches 11 Italian immigrants recently acquitted of murdering the Sheriff of New Orleans.


Emile Cottin, French anarchiste
1896 -- France: Louis Emile Cottin lives. Received a death sentence (later commuted) for trying to assassinate Clémenceau in 1919 (see below). Cottin was killed on the Saragossa front during the Spanish Revolution in 1936, where he fought in the famed Durruti Column.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/8195/blasts/pointblank/spanishrevolution.htm



Errico Malatesta, anarchist
1897 -- Italy: Errico Malatesta clandestinely re-enters the country, at Ancône, & begins publishing the newspaper "L'agitazione".



1901 -- Argentina: Horacio Badaraco lives (1901-1946), Buenos Aires, y vivía en el barrio de Congreso dentro del seno de una familia que, de constructores de barcos, pasaron a formar parte del status de banqueros.

Interested in anarchist culture from an early age: at 11-years old his parents find him in the Perlado bookstore, leafing through anarchist literature.

... show details



1904 -- Armas Äikiä (1904 - 1965) lives. Finnish writer, poet, Communist & journalist.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/aikia.htm


1907 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Theodore Roosevelt excludes Japanese laborers from the continental US.


1907 -- US: Stock market crash, New York City.


1909 -- Italy: Gaetano Salvemini pubblica sull'"Avanti" un articolo contro Giovanni Giolitti definendolo "il ministro della malavita", accusandolo di aver incentivato la corruzione nel Mezzogiorno e di essersi procurato il voto dei deputati meridionali mettendo "nelle elezioni, al loro servizio, la malavita e la questura".
[Source: Crimini e Misfatti]
[More on Salvemini]


1912 -- Italy: Antonio d' Alba shoots at Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader King Victor-Emmanuel III who is attending a mass funeral for Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Umberto I (killed on July 29, 1900 by Gaetano Bresci). The young anarchist d' Alba is sentenced to forced labor.


?
1912 -- US: IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) agrees to terms granting wage increases as 10,000 strikers gather & vote, successfully ending the "Bread & Roses" Lawrence Textile Strike of 32,000-people against wool mills. The strike was precipitated by wage cuts & horrendous working conditions. Lawrence, Massachusetts.

"They are always marching & singing.

The tired, gray crowds ebbing & flowing perpetually into the mills had waked & opened their mouths to sing."

— Mary Heaton Vorse

Martial law had been declared by a city owned by big business; workers were arrested, some sent to jail for a year; a young Syrian striker, John Ramy, was bayoneted to death (But, noted Joe Ettor, "Bayonets cannot weave cloth."); a pregnant woman beat so badly by police that she gave birth to a dead baby; & the strike dragged on. But the workers refused to give in.

& when the raises were won, the strikers insisted that the largest increases go to the lowest-paid.

http://linux.cohums.ohio-state.edu/redir/1912_history.htm
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/Wobblies_ZR.html
http://infoshop.org/texts/iww.html

  • See also Howard Zinn, The Twentieth Century: A Peoples History




1914 -- Canada: United Farmers of Ontario founded at Toronto's Labor Temple.


The Capitalist Vampire
1915 -- England: Walter Crane dies. Artist & libertarian socialist.

Deeply influenced by Morris's pamphlet Art & Socialism, Crane became involved in both the Art Workers' Guild & the Arts & Crafts Society. Like Morris, Crane created designs for wallpapers, printed fabrics, tiles & ceramics.

In December 1914 Crane's wife Mary was killed by a train. The couple had been married for 44 years & Crane was devastated by her death. Walter Crane died today, three months later, in Horsham Hospital.

Walter Crane illustration, The Capitalist Vampire, Justice Journal (1885)

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



1919 -- France: The 23-year-old Louis-Emile Cottin is sentenced to death. This is commuted to 10 years in prison following a protest campaign organized in the pages of the anarchist "Libertaire." See February 2, 1919.
http://ytak.club.fr/mars14.html#cottin


Malatesta
1921 -- Italy: Errico Malatesta, Armando Borghi & Corrado Quaglino launch a hunger strike in the San Villore prison in Milan.

In October of 1920, Borghi, Malatesta & other anarchists were rounded up on no particular charges. Today the three go on their hunger strike to force the court authorities to set a trial date. After nine months in prison on remand, by late July, they were brought for trial to the Assizes in Milan. All of those charged were freed. Malatesta & Borghi had offered a vigorous defence of themselves.

Fascism was now in the ascendant & the lives of antifascist militants were in the balance. Borghi & Virgilia d'Andrea were continually receiving death threats.




1922 -- Less than a year after beginning work at the Shawmut National Bank, author & founder of the Black Sun Press Harry Crosby resigns following a six-day bender.
Source: Geoffrey Wolff, Black Sun (Random House, 1976)
http://www.banger.com/banger/crosby/bio.html


1932 -- Emma Goldman, anarchistGermany: Emma Goldman's tour continues (14-23) with two meetings in Dresden & Leipzig, & further engagements in Naumburg, Zella-Mehlis, Erfurt, & Sömmerda.



1934 -- England: National Civil Liberties Council founded.


1944 -- US: TWU organizes Philadelphia transit workers into Local 234.
[Source]


1944 -- Russia: L'Unione Sovietica è il primo degli stati a riconoscere il governo dell'ex-fascista Pietro Badoglio. Tra cinici voltagabbana ci si intende a meraviglia.
[Source: Crimini e Misfatti]


1949 -- US: To protest the American military build-up, 41 people publicly refuse to pay income tax.


1961 -- US: B-52 carrying nuclear weapons crashes in California while on a training flight.


Giovanna Caleffi Berneri, anarchist
1962 -- Giovanna Caleffi Berneri dies. Italian anarchist, married to Camillo Berneri (murdered by the Communists in Spain), mother of Marie Louise Berneri, Giliana Berneri (anarchists all).




 Patsy
1964 -- US: Dallas jury finds Jack Ruby guilty of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald.

1968 -- US: Alphabet Soup? CBS TV suspends RFE free advertising because RFE (Radio Free Europe) doesn't make it clear it is sponsored by the CIA.


1968 -- Brazil: Commission report publishes evidence of large-scale extermination of tribes (poisoning & machine-gunning) by Brazil's Indian Protection Service. Nearly 30 years later, such attacks are still alarmingly common.



Ben Shahn
1969 -- US: Graphic artist & social conscience Ben Shahn dies, New York City.
See our Saints page,
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/saints/StBenShahn.htm
http://www.music.columbia.edu/~roosevlt/shahn/shahn1.htmlhttp://www.artmuseums.harvard.edu/shahn/



1970 -- US: Stamp Act? First American postal strike.



Fannie Lou Hamer
1977 -- US: Mississippi's angriest woman, Fannie Lou Hamer, dies in Ruleville, Mississippi, at age 69.

In 1962, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC [snick] approached her to register to vote. This got her fired &, that night, a mob shot into her home. Then Hamer began her work in the civil-rights movement as SNCC field secretary. In 1963, an arrest & beating in Winona, Mississippi, left her permanently injured.

Hamer gained national attention as a leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which challenged the state's all-white delegation to the 1964 National Democratic Convention. She also concentrated on African American self-reliance, including the Freedom Farm Cooperative, which fed 1,500 people.

Why such devotion? Hamer's famous response (now engraved on her headstone):

"I'm sick & tired of being sick & tired."

http://www.ibiblio.org/sncc/hamer.html





1978 -- Spain: In the Carabanchel prison, the militant anarchist Agustin Rueda (b.1952), who after years of harrasment & recent beatings while in jail, dies from his injuries.

Efforts to keep his life from being forgotten have resulted in commemoration gatherings around Spain, including one on the 25th anniversary of his death (March 14, 2003) & another on October 31, 2004 celebrated with recollections, music & poetry.



1979 -- China: A military jet cargo plane on a training mission crashes into a factory outside Peking, killing the 12-member crew & 32 factory workers.


1981 -- Eric Clapton admitted to United Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota after a serious attack of bleeding ulcers.


1983 -- For the first time in its 23-year history, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Coutries (OPEC) agrees to cut the prices of its crude oil. The decision reflects falling worldwide demand for OPEC products.


1984 --
YOUTH ROBS WOMAN TRAPPED UNDERNEATH BUS IN TRENTON OF $2000.

—The New York Times




Ed Abbey, anarchist author
1989 -- US: No More Monkeying Around? American naturalist novelist, anarchist, xenophobe, Cactus Ed Lives! — or dies — more or less, today.

Edward Abbey wanted his body transported in the bed of a pickup truck. He wanted to be buried as soon as possible. He wanted no undertakers. No embalming, for Godsake. No coffin. Just an old sleeping bag... Disregard all state laws concerning burial. "I want my body to help fertilize the growth of a cactus or cliff rose or sagebrush or tree," said the message. ... show details


"I work best under duress. In fact I only work under duress."

A Prayer for the Traveler

by Edward Abbey

May your trails be crooked, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into & above the clouds, May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples & castles & poets towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch & monkeys howl, through miasmal & mysterious swamps & down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes & pinnacles & grottos of endless stone, & down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come & go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something more beautiful & more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you — beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.

http://www.abbeyweb.net/abbey.html

"It's a fools life, a rogue's life, & a good life if you keep laughing all the way to the grave."



1990 -- US: Sixteen disabled rights activists arrested at the US Capitol demanding passage of what becomes the Americans With Disabilities Act.



John Fante
1993 --
When Gay Talese raised the question, "Where are the Italian American Novelists?" on the front page of the March 14, 1993 "New York Times Book Review," I believed that he might be bringing, for the first time, national attention to the possibilities that there might be a literary tradition that is distinctly Italian American.

However, hindered by his lack of familiarity with the vast body of literature created by American writers of Italian descent, Talese reduced the experience of Italian-American writers to his own....


In John Fante I found the Italian-American Hemingway. He wanted to be a writer so badly that he sent stories, accompanied by long letters to H. L. Mencken, then one of the leading voices of American literature. Mencken rejected the stories & published the letters.

By 1940, Fante had already published half of his lifetime production of short stories in national magazines ... & had also published two novels & a collection of his stories (Dago Red, 1940).

His four-book saga of Arturo Bandini, of which Wait Until Spring, Bandini! is the first, follows a young Italian Catholic who lights out for California with the intent of escaping his family & its ethnicity by becoming a writer.

All of Fante's work spoke to me with a voice that drowned out all the American literature I had read in school.

http://www.italianstudies.org/iam/essay.htm




Mujeres in red logo
1993 -- Soledad Estorach Esterri (1915-1993) dies. Anarchist, feminist, member of Mujeres Libres, companion in arms with Concha Liaño.
http://ytak.club.fr/mars14.html#estorach
http://www.nodo50.org/mujeresred/libertarias.htm
http://struggle.ws/ws99/ws57_mujeres.html
http://www.alasbarricadas.org/ateneovirtual/index.php/Soledad_Estorach_Esterri



1998 -- US: Pi in the Sky?: At the Exploratorium in Frisco, California, mathematicians assemble, as usual, to celebrate pi (3.14159 etc.). One of probably dozens or maybe hundreds of such assemblies worldwide at which people sing songs & recite poetry about pi, have pi trivia quizzes, & eat pie.

(Pi, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, is a mathematically irrational number, & is thus considered to be a symbol for the mystery of the universe.)

Moe: "When the roll is called up yonder I’ll eat pie."
Curly: "Pi r²?"
Moe: "No, pie are round; cake are square."
Curly: "Oh."
Moe: "No, O are round, also."




Third Annual Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair poster
1998 -- US: Third Annual Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair, Frisco, California. Artists & speakers include Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Arther Evans, John Shirley, Pat Califia, & Will Rosco. Over 50 exhibitors from all over the United States hawk radical & anti-authoritarian books, records, posters & tee-shirts.

http://www.infoshop.org/bookfair98.html



2003 -- Millions of Europeans participate in a 15-minute work stoppage to protest Beloved & Respected Comrade President Bush's relentless war drive against Iraq.
http://www.markfiore.com/user/1/animation/232
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/05/19/lies/
http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/scheer/2003/09/10/bush_speech


2003 -- US: The campaign staff of the Elder Party's inveterate presidential candidate announced today that Cthulhu will not be running in the 2004 election.

"George W. Bush has undermined our entire campaign platform," complained one staffer, who went on to explain that Cthulhu's presidential campaign slogan has always been, "Why Vote For The Lesser Evil?"

"Ever since Dubya rose to power, the Great Cthulhu is the lesser evil. How could anyone — or anything — compete with his vile policies & sinister agendas?"




2007 -- Germany: A mass refusal to pay water charges in the city of Bremen quickly escalates into a series of bitter & widening conflicts with authorities.

After two demonstrators are killed by police, city workers go on strike, followed within a few days by most of the rest of the country.

Deployment of UN troops triggers all-out revolt, which spreads into France & Italy. 10 days later & Western Europe is in insurrectionist hands, though it will take more than three years & no little bloodshed before the last of the global capitalist economy is dismantled, & the period of universal harmony is inaugurated.

Source: 'Calendar Riots'




3000 --


"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government & the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this."

— Albert Einstein, "My First Impression of the U.S.A.", 1921





3500 --

"Too many of our poets novelists essayists seem to be taking the side of the State in that ancient & inevitable conflict between the State & the independent individual. This is wrong; that is not the natural place for a writer. If it weren't for all these fools & fanatics running around trying to make things better, then most certainly things would get worse. We need this constant pressure against the barriers to change in order simply to prevent a collapse into total evil. The tension against wrong. To keep things from getting worse."

      — Ed Abbey




George W. Bush as a chimp with crown, flag & cymbals
3500 --


5000 --
South American in colorful Native garb; source jargonbooks.com "Anarchist history Day book, anarchist almanac, anarchist daybook, anarchist chronology" Anarchist Day book, anarchist almanac, anarchist daybook

http://www.jargonbooks.com




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