Our Daily Bleed...
Fish bones walked the waves off Hatteras. |
GUILLERMO CABRERA INFANTE
Biting, innovative Cuban novelist, social critic.
EARTH DAY. She's dying, awash in the human garbage.
FESTIVAL OF FABULOUS ANDROGYNES.
1348 -- England: King Edward III retrieves the Garter of the Countess of Salisbury, & remarks "Shame be to him who thinks evil of it," thus beginning the Order of the Garter & Sororities.
1500 -- Portuguese sailors find westward progress obstructed by Brazil.
1526 -- New World: First (known) slave revolt in an "American" settlement occurs, only eight years after the first slaves are transported from Africa to the Americas.
1707 -- Henry Fielding lives (1707-1754). British writer, playwright, journalist, founder of the English Realistic school in literature with Samuel Richardson. Wrote 25 plays but acclaim came with novels, notably The History of Tom Jones .
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hfieldin.htm
1724 -- Immanuel Kant lives (1724-1804), Königsberg. German philosopher/professor.Kant's habits were so regular people used to check their watches when as walked past their houses — the only time his schedule changed was while reading Rousseau's Emile, & he forgot his walk.
His most important works were three Critiques. The last attempted an objective basis for aesthetic judgments, influencing later art criticism. He argued that aesthetic judgments do not depend on any property — such as beauty — of the object.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ikant.htmThe other story is that that he didn't walk at the usual time on the day that the news of the fall of the Bastille arrived in Koenigsberg.
— Derek Bryant, UK, 22 Apr 2002
Very Strange Stuff:
A great explosion did occur over Colchester today...
"Casting me adrift 3,500 miles from a port of call! You're sending me to my doom, eh? Well, you're wrong, Christian. I'll take this boat, as she floats, to England if I must. I'll live to see you — all of you — hanging from the highest yardarm in the British fleet..."— Charles Laughton as Bligh, in the 1935 film http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/jhall.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Nordhoff
Daily Bleed Saint 2003, NICOLA SACCO
Italian-American anarchist executed with partner Bartolomeo Vanzetti, wrote stunning letters from prison.
On Aug. 23, 1977 Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis proclaims "Nicola Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti Day" on the 50th anniversary of their death.
Sacco's friend & associate, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, strapped into the electric chair, said,
"I wish to tell you that I am an innocent man. I never committed any crime but sometimes some sin. I wish to forgive some people for what they are now doing to me."
They both spoke nobly at the end, left a great heritage of love, devotion, faith, & courage, believing the time would come that no human being should be humiliated or be made abject.
Vanzetti further noted that for him, as for both, if it had not been for "these thing" he might have lived out his life talking at street corners to scorning men, died unmarked, unknown, a failure:
"Now, we are not a failure.
This is our career & our triumph.
Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as now we do by accident. Our words — our lives — our pains — nothing! The taking of our lives — lives of a good shoemaker & a poor fish peddler — all!
That last moment belongs to us — that agony is our triumph."
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/oj/porterf.htm
http://www.torremaggiore.com/saccoevanzetti/storia.html
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAsaccoN.htm
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/sacvan.html
Excerpted testimony by Edward Teller against Oppenheimer, accused of being a security risk, questioned by Roger Robb, attorney for the Gray Board,
[Details / context]
Oppenheimer lost his clearance, & Teller lost most of his friends & associates.
As David Halberstam notes in The Fifties, the hearing — "a trial, really — ...was one of the lowest moments in American politics."
Writer John Mason Brown suggested to Oppie he had been subjected to a "dry crucifixion"; Oppie smiled & mused,
"It wasn't so dry. I can still feel the warm blood on my hands."
US: Emma Goldman speaks in Salt Lake City, Utah, April 22-26.US: Emma Goldman describes her engagements, February 22-April 22, in Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Mo., Coffeyville, Lawrence, & Topeka, Kansas, as "dreadfully uneventful & dull." 
Lecture topics include "Sex Sterilization of Criminals," "The Psychology of Anarchism," "Woman's Inhumanity to Man," "Syndicalism — the Modern Menace to Capitalism," "Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist," "Syndicalism, the Strongest Weapon of Labor — a Discussion of Direct Action, Sabotage & the General Strike," & the modern drama.
Germany: Emma Goldman arrives back in Berlin, where she learns that CBS has canceled her planned radio broadcast, fearing that it will be interpreted as an effort on her part to reenter the "Land of the Free".
Can't have that. In Nazi Germany America this is extolled as a "Free Press".
1935 -- 
Canada: Emma Goldman returns to Montreal where her niece Stella Ballantine visits her on April 26.
1937 -- Actor Jack Nicholson (Little shop of Horrors; Easy Rider; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; The Shining) lives.
1938 -- US: "The Red Jacket Mine Explosion" in a coal mine on Keen Mountain, Virginia: 45 men die. Among them Smith Arrington who died on his 28th birthday.
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/4987/smith.html http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/4987/redjack.html
http://www.americanamusicplace.com/album_details.asp?inventoryID=1340
1943 -- US: First UAW-CIO labor contract at NAA.
1943 -- American poet Louise Glück lives, in New York. Known for her insights into the self & a willingness to confront in her writing the horrible, the difficult, & the painful. Her first collection of poetry, Firstborn (1968), uses a variety of first-person personae, all disaffected or angry.
1944 -- US: Sit-in by 200 blacks results in desegregation of restaurants in Washington, D.C.
1945 -- Germany: Death of peace artist Käthe Kollwitz, notable for innovative technique & prints conveying social justice themes.
I do not want to die...until I have faithfully made the most of my talent & cultivated the seed that was placed in me until the last small twig has grown.
— Käthe Kollwitz
Bleedster Boardman wrote April 24, 2003: > Why would the first atmospheric bomb tests not be > #1 Alamagordo, 1945 > #2 Hiroshima, 1945 > #3 Nagasaki, 1945 > ? > > William Boardman > Woodstock Vermont Hiroshima, Nagasaki don't really "qualify" as "tests". These bomb tests were generally categorized as air drops, tower, surface, tunnel & balloon tests. Actually, the claim for this date is certainly wrong. The first atmospheric tests in the US began in January 1951. I have a couple very good links: http://www.shundahai.org/US_Atmospheric_Nuclear_Tests_Database.htm http://www.angelfire.com/tx/atomicveteran/photos.html http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/facility/nts.htm — Ante Davehttp://www.shundahai.org/US_Atmospheric_Nuclear_Tests_Database.htm#Argus
Six months later, South Vietnamese generals, charging Diem had "trampled on the people's rights," seized power in a coup "encouraged" by the US.
http://www.recollectionbooks.com/cats/vietnam_nf.htm
http://recollectionbooks.com/vietnamlist.html
http://www.wfu.edu/academics/history/StudentWork/wreview/bbatten.html
"We really wanted to join in the first Earth Day. It meant we got to get out of school. We spent maybe 20 minutes picking up trash near the High School & since then absolutely nothing. People see earth day events sound/photo bits on the news & delude themselves that "something" is getting done."
Karl Hess (1923-1994), often described as the "most beloved libertarian," dies.
In 1964 he was the chief speech writer for the Barry Goldwater presidential campaign befor becoming an anarchist. Hess was a journalist & editor of the Libertarian Party News from 1986-1990. He wrote over a dozen books, including Dear America, Community Technology, & Capitalism for Kids.
Karl was the subject of a 26-minute documentary entitled Karl Hess: Toward Liberty. The film won two Oscars in 1981.
http://www.lp.org/lpn/9406-Hess.html
Daily Bleed patron Saint, April 19, 2003-05
Founder of Gray Panthers, radical activists for the aged (ie, "old coots").
"Stop or I'll Email you!"
"He’s entertained everywhere from the streets & medicine shows to Bob Dylan's dressing room. In this day & age, seeing the Seattle based singer-songwriter-guitarist who calls himself Baby Gramps is the closest you’ll ever get to experiencing Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music in person. He sings in a voice that is somewhere between Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards’s & Blind Willie Johnson’s, & his style evokes long dead pickers such as Charlie Patton & Riley Puckett. He plays with metal finger-picks on a battered National Steel that at last count had four useable frets left on it & an old clamp wrench holding one of the tuning pegs on. With a long, flowing beard & mannerisms that recall early Popeye, Baby Gramps is something of a national treasure, the final repository of an entire era of pop culture. Gramps draws from thousands of Paleozoic jazz, blues, hillbilly, & pop tunes. He is a genuine eccentric talent, an old-time songster & an incredible entertainer."
— Time Out
With a repertoire that blends challenging Dylan covers such as "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" with cartoon like anthems like "A Heart Warming Medley of Worm Songs," Gramps tends to coerce an audiences mind to wander toward unexpected territory. Notorious for word play such songs as "Palindromes," "Anagrams," & "Aptonyms".
http://www.pauserecord.com/events/Baby_Gramps_400.html
2000 -- Brazil: Smashing the Clocks of Domination?Today the government & the ruling class of Brazil wants to celebrate the 500 year anniversary of its "discovery" by Europeans come to dominate & exploit the resources & people of the land, imposing expansionist & mercantile value.
http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/smashclocks.htmlGlobo network, Brazil’s largest entertainment corporation, has been the main promoter of this celebration. For years, Globo has put on events promoting this celebration, & has built big clocks in all the state capitals of Brazil.
But during the week ending today, there has been a large mobilization of indigenous people, students, landless & others to demonstrate against the nationalist & capitalist ideals behind the celebration.
In the largest mobilization of indigenous people ever known in Brazil, people going to Porto Seguro — where the Portuguese arrived in 1500 & where the official celebrations are to take place today — went through Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, where they shot their arrows at the Globo clock until they stopped it.
One of them managed to enter the national congress & pass through security with an arrow in his hand pointing at one of the most powerful men in Brazil, Senator ACM, the "emperor" of the state of Bahia.
2001 -- US: Black Bloc Marches for Women's Reproductive Rights in Washington, DC.A hot & sunny day today, didn't deter 50 anarchists from Baltimore & Washington, DC from donning their famous black-clad gear & joining the NOW Emergency March for Women's Reproductive Rights. They join over 4000 other supporters of abortion rights for several hours of speakers & music. The rally was followed by a feisty march past the Supreme Court & around the US Capitol.
http://infoshop.org/news_archive/afem_dc1.html
3000 --The trial of Jesus of Nazareth, the trial & rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, any one of the witchcraft trials in Salem during 1691, the Moscow trials of 1937 during which Stalin destroyed all of the founders of the 1924 Soviet Revolution, the Sacco-Vanzetti trial of 1920 through 1927 — there are many trials such as these in which the victim was already condemned to death before the trial took place, & it took place only to cover up the real meaning: the accused was to be put to death.
These are trials in which the judge, the counsel, the jury, & the witnesses are the criminals, not the accused. For any believer in capital punishment, the fear of an honest mistake on the part of all concerned is cited as the main argument against the final terrible decision to carry out the death sentence.
There is the frightful possibility in all such trials as these that the judgment has already been pronounced & the trial is just a mask for murder.
— Katherine Anne Porter, The Never-Ending Wrong
Anarchist Almanac/Day book/anarchy archives http://www.shaftagents.com/dk2cell.htmVisit the complete Daily Bleed Archives
The Daily Bleed is freely produced by Recollection Used Books
Unique visitors since May 29, 2005 (220,000+ page loads)
