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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.

Islamic: Mawlid An-Nabi, Muhammad's Birthday.

"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.

EARTH HOUR: Turn off all your electric lights.

PROBLEM IN FONT COLOR & BOLD HERE TO TRACK DOWN


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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.

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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://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/243


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://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 Émile Digeon. Digeon (1822-1894) was a revolutionary journalist who headed the Commune, proclaimed in conjunction with Paris Commune.

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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."
[Details, click here]

1873 -- Henry James writes, after meeting Matthew Arnold: "He is not as handsome as his photographs — or as his poetry."
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/88


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.

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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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Society
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jessica-moran-the-firebrand...



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



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



1914 -- Octavio Paz, poet/critic/diplomat lives (1914-1998), México City. Wrote The Other Mexico; The Bow & the Lyre. Received the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.

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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 Péret), 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://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/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 & jailed. Thus, too, is Miguel Burgos murdered.

"Ley de fugas"

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"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


1932 -- US: 150 wild swans perish, going over the Niagara waterfall.


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."

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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://web.archive.org...eduardo.galeano/memoria.del.fuego/19640331.htm

Brazil: It's Official:

April Fools! ... show details 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 anniversary 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.jimihendrix.com/



1967 -- US: San Francisco Mime Troupe appears at Fluxfest at Longshoremen's Hall.

The Mime Troupes 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.

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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).



1972 -- England: CND begins 56-mile march from London to Aldermaston. More than 500 people attend a rally in London ahead of a four-day demonstration against nuclear arms. Protesters— singing, blowing horns & carrying banners — are launching the latest leg of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The black banner carried on the first march to Aldermaston in 1958 was hung around the plinth of Nelson's Column.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/31



1976 -- Paul Strand, renowned American photographer, dies.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAPstrand.htm
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/strand_paul.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 canceled 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!

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Seattle's fab Recollection Used Books was once nearby, a 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 at Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Moon_Tavern

Blue Moon blog,
http://www.myspace.com/bluemoonseattle

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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.

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

1999 --

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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.)

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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!