would she have said it was the wrong time if I had found her then i don't want too much a field across the road & a few good friends she used to come & see me but she was always there & gone even the very longest love does not last too long she'd stand there in my doorway smoothing out her dress & say "this life is a thump-ripe melon—so sweet & such a mess" & I'm looking for rexroth's daughter here on my own side street... & i'm looking for rexroth's daughter & i guess i always will be... —Songster Greg Brown http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/20000122/ra_files/000122_rexrawlsdaughter_28.ram http://www.gregbrown.org/index.html

MAY 6

HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Celebrant of uncomplicated natural life, the future primitive.

---

FEAST OF THE FIERY FLYING ROLL.

NURSES DAY.

---

1536 -- Perú: Manco Inca rise up against the Spanish conquerors. In Spanish, see the Eduardo Galeano's Memoria del fuego:
http://web.archive.org...eduardo.galeano/memoria.del.fuego/15360506.htm


1626 -- Wanna Buy A Bridge?: In North America, Dutchman Peter Minuit "buys" Manhattan Island from the Manahatta Indians, (Shinnecock Indians?) who live in Brooklyn, for trinkets valued at $24. The joke is on Pete, (but don't tell (F)red) or Ayn Rand): the locals didn't have a legal title to the land.



1794 -- Toussaint L'Ouverture leads Haitian revolution for independence. Inspiration for artist Jacob Lawrence's "Toussaint L'Ouverture" series of paintings.

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE (Saint, October 12, 1998)
Leader of the first successful slave revolt in the New World.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toussaint_L'Ouverture

1812 -- Black emancipationist Martin Robinson Delany lives, Virginia. Spiller of the beans on the Seven Finger High Glister, HooDoo Master of the Great Dismal Swamp.
Daily Bleed Saint 2008
Physician, Black nationalist, Pan-Africanist. His novel Blake reveals the existence of the Seven Finger High Glister, HooDoo Master of the Great Dismal Swamp.

Between 1843 & 1846 Delany published his own newspaper — the Mystery. Subsequently, he worked with Frederick Douglass on his weekly newspaper — The North Star...

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASdelaney.htm
http://www.libraries.wvu.edu/delany/home.htm

1856 -- Sigmund Freud lives to tie knots & issue pink slips. Austrian psychiatrist & founder of psychoanalysis, the most influential psychological theorist of 20th-century. Freud's theories, including the formation of the Oedipus complex, have had an enormous influence on art, literature & social thinking. Freud lived in Vienna, where anti-Jew laws were canceled, worked at the General Hospital & experimented with cocaine, using it himself. Primary themes: Sex & drugs (sorry kids, there was no rock'n'roll yet).

Freud never received a Nobel, but in 1928 an attempt was made ...

[Details / context]

1862 -- Death of Henry David Thoreau, back-to-the-land advocate, war tax resister, jailbird & author of "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience." His last words?: "Moose. Indian."

Where's Waldo?

Ralph Waldo Emerson walked by the jail one day & found Hank there & asked, "Henry, what are you doing in there?!"

Henry looked at him & asked, "No, Waldo, the question is, what are you doing out there?"

http://blackeyepress.wordpress.com/2009/03/01/henry-david-thoreau-1817-1862/
http://www.burningcircus.com/
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/waldo

1877 -- US: Chief Crazy Horse surrenders to US troops, who later murder him (on September 5th he is bayoneted in the back on orders; Dakota Sioux Chief Sitting Bull leads 5,000 of his followers into Canada to ask protection from the Queen & petition land for a reserve after defeating Gen. Custer & US 7th Cavalry at the Little Big Horn. The Canadian government refuses.
[Details / context]



1880 -- George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) gets hitched seven months before her death at 61, to a 40-year-old NY investment banker, Hanover Square, London.


1882 -- US: Congress passes the first Chinese Exclusion Act over the veto of President Garfield, making it unlawful for Chinese laborers to enter the US for the next 10 years & denying naturalized citizenship to the Chinese already here. Chinese immigration is essentially shut off for the next 60+ years, as the act is extended in both 1902 & 1904.
[Details / context]


1882 -- Irish republicans assassinate Lord Frederick Cavendish (Irish Secretary) & Thomas Burke (Under-secretary) in Phoenix Park, Dublin. Imposition of a poll tax triggers Zulu revolt [1906].
Source: [Calendar Riots]


1884 -- Brokerage firm of Grant & Ward, in which former Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Ulysses S. Grant was a silent partner, failed under the weight of $16,725,466 worth of debts. It soon became known that Ward was a swindler who had used Grant's "good" name to perpetuate one fraud after another.


1889 -- Stanley Morison, typographer & adviser to Cambridge University Press & the Monotype Corporation, lives, England. Designed Times New Roman in 1932 — presumably the typeface you are viewing now.


1890 -- PollyMath?: Mormon Church renounces polygamy.


1895 -- Poet José Martí is elected jefe supremo de la revolucion cubana.
http://www.rcgfrfi.easynet.co.uk/ratb/cuba/history2.htm


1902 -- Start of Sherlock Holmes story "Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place."
http://www.diogenes-club.com/hoybaringgould.htm



1904 -- Harry Martinson lives (1904-1978).

Swedish novelist/poet — self-taught, working class writer, awarded the 1974 Nobel Prize with Eyvind Johnson.

A merchant seaman, laborer, & vagrant. Wrote Ghost Ship, Trade Wind, & The Road.

His epic poem "Aniara: A Review of Man in Time & Space" (translated by Hugh MacDiarmid & E. Harley Schubert) depicts the voyage of a generation starship. Karl-Birger Blomdahl based an internationally successful opera upon the poem, featuring pioneering electronic effects.

http://runeberg.org/authors/hmartins.html
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/harrymar.htm
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1974/martinson-bio.html

1905 -- Toots Shor, American raconteur/restauranteur, lives.


1906 -- Imposition of a poll tax triggers Zulu revolt.
Source: [Calendar Riots]


1910 -- US: Emma Goldman is pleased by the overwhelmingly positive reception to her lectures & debate in Los Angeles; claims to have delivered that city's first-ever Yiddish lecture.



1913 -- Douglas Stewart, poet, playwright, & critic who helped establish an Australian national tradition through mythical re-creation of the past, lives, Eltham, New Zealand.



1914 -- Belgium: Louis Mercier Vega (or Luis) lives (1914-1977; born Charles Cortvrint; pseud., Charles Riedel, Santiago Parane, etc.), Brussels, to a French father & Chilean mother. Activist, propagandist, libertarian thinker who joined the movement at age 16. Lifelong writer for the libertarian press & founder of several reviews, including "Revision" (1938), the trilingual "Aporte" (1966-1972), "Interrogations" (1974), & author of numerous works, such as Anarcho-syndicalisme & syndicalisme révolutionnaire; La chevauchée anonyme; L'increvable anarchisme.
[Details / context]




1915 -- Filmmaker Orson Welles lives, Kenosha, Wisconsin.



1916 -- US: Alexander Berkman starts the No Conscription League & notes that the meetings attract crowds by the thousands.

On one occasion, "there were fully 35,000 that tried to gain admission," wrote Berkman. At the same time, Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Liberal President Woody Wilson, elected on the promise that he would keep America out of the war, was actively preparing the country to enter the European conflict.

http://www.socialanarchism.org/mod/magazine/display/33/index.php

1919 -- Wizard of Oz creator L. Frank Baum dies, Hollywood, California. Wrote 14 of the series, which were continued by another author when he died.

A rabid Indian hater, Baum actively promoted & defended the extermination of Native Americans while an editor/publisher in the Dakotas.

See May 15, 1856.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2004/06/26/indian-hating-in-the-wizard-of-oz/

1920 -- US: The Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee forms with Aldino Felicani as Treasurer.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/SaccoVanzetti/chronologyByDAttilio.htm
http://web.archive.org/...daver/anarchism/saccvanz.html


1926 -- Fabian Socialist/dramatist George Bernard Shaw — asked if he agrees with Sinclair Lewis' refusal of the Pulitzer Prize — snaps: "I don't agree with anything."
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/socsig/shawintro.html


1931 -- The 'Say Hey Kid' — African American baseball great Willie Mays — lives.


1931 -- During this month Emma Goldman learns that, despite the dreadful economic situation, Knopf intends to publish Living My Life in two volumes at what she considers an exorbitant price.
'Emma Goldman Papers'



1933 -- Germany: Nazis raid the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin, which doubles as headquarters of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, a 36-year-old gay-rights organization. All the archives, including priceless books, scientific data, photographs & manuscripts, are destroyed. The organization ceases to exist. Nazis intensify the persecution by interning gays in concentration camps & forcing them to wear a pink triangle as identification.
[Insurgent Radio Kiosk]


1933 -- US: Ferry "Peralta" (later rebuilt as the "Kalakala") burns down, in Oakland. Presumably this is the one sitting on Lake Union, in Seattle, 2003, just south of Auntie Dave's.


1934 -- Alfred Marpaux (1862-1934) dies. French federal credit militant, typesetter, trade unionist & coopérativist, a "socialist possibilist." Influenced by the ideas of Proudhon, Bakunin & Benoît Malon, his socialism had the distinct imprint of the libertarian ideas embodied by the anarchist Jura Federation.
http://www.ephemanar.net/novembre15.html Ouvrier typographe à Dijon, il adhère au syndicat de sa corporation dont il est délégué au 3ème congrés des Bourses du travail à Lyon du 25 au 27 juin 1894. Il prend part également au développement des coopératives à Dijon puis à Saint-Claude (dans le Jura). Influencé par les idées de Proudhon, de Bakounine et de Benoît Malon, il se revendique d'un "socialisme intégral" enpreint des idées libertaires qui avaient présidées au sein de la "Fédération Jurassienne." Il participe ensuite à la création de la "Fédération (régionale) de l'Est" et se montre un actif propagandiste; "socialiste possibiliste" partisan de Jean Allemane (qui s'écarte des idées anarchistes par sa participation aux éléctions). En 1894, Marpaux se montre un ardent dreyfusard. En mai 1896, il est élu à la municipalité de Dijon; en tant que premier adjoint au maire, il est associé à de nombreuses réalisations sociales : caisse de chômage, maison de retraite, assistance médicale gratuite, cantines scolaires (gratuites pour les plus pauvres) etc. Au congrès socialiste de Paris en 1899, il s'élève contre le sectarisme et se prononce pour un fédéralisme communal. " Vous voulez que l'individu soit libre dans la commune libre, vous voulez que l'Etat ne soit que l'ensemble des communes fédérées, eh bien! sachons faire dans notre parti ce que nous voulons appliquer au gouvernement." Après la défaite municipale de 1900, il quitte Dijon pour diriger une imprimerie coopérative dans l'Ain. Malade, il poursuivra ensuite son militantisme au sein de la SFIO jusqu'à sa mort le 6 mai 1934. Il est l'auteur de nombreux articles dans la presse socialiste et de divers ouvrages et brochures. After the municipal defeat of 1900, it leaves Dijon to direct a co-operative printing works in Ain. Patient, it will continue then his militancy within the SFIO until his death on May 6, 1934. He is the author of many articles in the socialist press & of various works & booklets.


1935 -- US: WPA is established in Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader FDR's New Deal; the state becomes make-work employer.



1937 -- US: The Hindenburg disaster occurs over Lakehurst, New Jersey, when the hydrogen filled dirigible burst into flames, killing 35 of the 97 passengers on board.

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2160
http://web.stargate.net/zeppelin/

1937 -- Spain: (Thursday): "La Batalla" reprints the Friends of Durruti handbill. "La Batalla" also appeals for workers to back down. The paper "Solidaridad Obrera" disowns the Friends of Durruti handbill.
http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/spain/sp001780/chap1.html
http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/spain/sp001780/chap5.html
http://www.reocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/8195/Durruti.html
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/DurrutiColumnEarly.htm

1938 -- Brazil: Michael Löwy lives, Sao Paulo. Anthropologist, lawyer, mediator, sociologist, writer & activist, co-author, with Joel Kovel, of the International Ecosocialist Manifesto (2001). Author of several books, including Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin's 'On the Concept of History'. alt spelling, Brasil
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_L%C3%B6wy
http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/michaell%c3%83%c2%b6wy


1940 -- John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath wins the Pulitzer Prize as most distinguished novel of 1939. He gets the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.

Banned in 1980 in two Iowa high school sophomore classes after a parent complained the book was "profane, vulgar, & obscene."

The head of the school board defended the action, noting the US was "going pell mell downhill" morally & they were reversing the trend.

http://as.sjsu.edu/steinbeck/

1940 -- Canada: Stella Ballantine & Emma Goldman's brother Morris & his wife Babsie travel to Toronto to join Dorothy Rogers & Arthur (aka Attilio) Bortolotti at Emma's bedside after she suffers a second hemorrhage today. On May 14 Red Emma will dance no more...




1944 -- India: Twenty Three Strikes or So & You're Out? Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) released from his last imprisonment. No 3 strikes law here.
http://www.fred.dk/peace/gandhi.htm


1949 -- Nobel Prize-winner, Maurice Maeterlinck, dies at 86, Nice, France. Belgian poet, playwright. His Pelléas et Mélisande (1892) is considered a masterpiece of Symbolist drama, &, in composer Claude Debussy's sensitive musical setting (1902), remains popular in the public eye. He was praised by anarchist critics, such as Octave Mirbeau (whose review first made Maeterlinck famous), & Emma Goldman, who included him in her famed drama lectures.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1911/maeterlinck-bio.html
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/socsig/monna.html


1949 -- George Perle's "Two Songs in German" (from Rilke) premiers, NYC.



1953 -- US: William Gropper is called to testify before Beloved & Respected Comrade Senator Tail-Gunner Joseph McCarthy & his Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Gropper allowed the State Department to distribute prints of his painting celebrating American Folklore.

Tail-Gunner considered the pictures "subversive," & questioned why copies were kept by US embassies abroad. To avoid self-incrimination, Gropper plead the Fifth.

Tail-Gunner believed the picture featuring the likenesses of folk characters such as Paul Bunyan & Rip Van Winkle revealed valuable secrets to communists. In a good mood (drunk?), apparently, he did not machine gun Gropper.

[More about Gropper]

1954 -- Keeping Track: Roger Bannister breaks 4 minute mile (3:59:4).


1955 -- Spain: Guérilla Francisco Sabaté & four others rob a bank; he robbed many, using the funds to finance their activities & distribute propaganda for the activist groups in Barcelona & adjoining towns & villages.
Source: Antonio Tellez, Sabate: Guerrilla Extraordinary


1957 -- ¶ Beatster Jack Kerouac & his mother move, via Greyhound Bus from Orlando, Florida to Berkeley, California; rents a small house at 1943 Berkeley Way.

During this Spring: Kerouac writes more of his Book of Dreams; writes "A Dharma Bum in Europe"; types up "Book of Sketches" (from his notebooks); begins writing the novel Avalokitesvara; meets LuAnne Henderson for an afternoon in Golden Gate Park.

Source: Kerouac Chronology

1960 -- US: Years of agitation result in Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Eisenhower signing Civil Rights Act so the South can ignore & violate it.

1960 -- US: In Birmingham, Alabama, 1000 children & adults are arrested, making a total of about 2500. Includes Ella Baker, Dave Dellinger, James Forman, Dick Gregory, Guy & Candie Carawan, Joan Baez. Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Eisenhower ends up ordering the Alabama National Guard placed under Federal control, which is used as a display of military force to impose desegregation.

[Details / context]

1963 -- Poet William Carlos Williams & biographer Leon Edel win Pulitzer Prizes; William Faulkner wins a posthumous one for The Reivers; Samuel Barber wins for his "Piano Concerto No. 1."


1964 -- Joe Orton play "The Entertaining Mr. Sloan" premiers, London.


1965 -- Light at the End of the Tunnels?: First two Marine divisions arrive Vietnam.


1966 -- US: Jefferson Airplane, & the Jaywalkers at the Fillmore Auditorium in Frisco.



1968 -- England: Apple Corps Ltd., the Beatles' new record company, management & publishing firm, opens offices at 95 Wigmore Street, London.




1968 -- France: Parisian Universities are closed, & new demonstrations of solidarity with those rounded up & jailed May 3 ends in violent confrontations with the forces of repression.

Barricades are drawn up.

May 6-30: Student demonstrations in France lead to a general strike throughout the country. Ten million workers strike, 10,000 battle police in Paris.

On Monday May 6th the 'Nanterre 8' pass through a police cordon singing the 'Internationale.' They are on their way to appear before the University Discipline Committee. The students decide to march through Paris. On their return to the Latin Quarter they are savagely attacked by the police on the Rue St. Jacques.

The students tear up paving stones & overturn cars to form barricades. Police pump Tear Gas into the air & cry for reinforcements. The Boulevard St. Germain becomes a bloody battleground.

The result is staggering: over 900 wounded & 422 arrests.

... show more Battles in the Quartier Latin: 422 arrests; 345 police & about 600 students are hurt. Students at universities throughout France pledge support. "Bloody Monday" marks one of the most violent days of the Parisian student revolt. Five thousand students march through the Latin Quarter with support from the student union & the instructors' union. Reports of the ensuing riot conflict, either the police charge unprevoked, or demonstrators harass them with thrown stones. The fighting is intense with rioters setting up barricades & the police attacking with gas grenades. Over-night the battle subsides, but only after engaging the sympathies of large numbers of French unionists. [WholeWorld is Watching] 6 mai 68   Cohn-Bendit, Alain Geismar et Jacques Sauvageot. Premières barricades du quartier Latin. Début des troubles dans les universités de province. http://struggle.ws/ws93/paris39.html http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/May68docs.htm

1968 -- US: Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night published.



1968 -- US: Columbia University reopens following student occupations in April; students boycott classes.
[Details / context]



1970 -- Congressional hearings begin on ratification of Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the US Constitution.

1970 --

Between today & about the 20th, student strikes disrupt 448 colleges, involving 1 million+ students (possibly as many as "4 million students"; Todd Gitlin believes 750+ campuses [of 2,500 nationwide], with demonstrations at 1200+ demonstrations against sending troops to Cambodia); Stanford University experiences "worst riots in its history."

75 campuses remain closed thru rest of the school year.

http://world.std.com/obi/Emi.Anthology/tears.html

1970 -- Cambodia: US forces open three new fronts. More than 100 US colleges shut down to protest US invasion of Cambodia.


1973 -- France: Demonstrations against Pacific nuclear tests in 14 cities.


1973 -- US: FBI besieges Native Americans at Wounded Knee because of activities of the newly emerging American Indian Movement (AIM).


1975 -- Philip Glass's "Another Look at Harmony" (parts 1 & 2) premiers, NYC.


1979 -- US: 125,000 rally in Washington, DC to oppose nuclear power.


1980 -- Russia: 170,000 workers in Togliatti auto plant stay home in support of bus-driver walkout.


1982 -- US: Don't Choke On This?: Los Angeles police chief Daryl Gates explains how a disproportionate number of blacks have been injured or killed by police choke holds "because in some blacks . . . the veins or arteries do not open up as fast as they do in normal people."


1982 -- US: CBS-TV cancels "Lou Grant" because Ed Asner opposes US Salvadoran policy.


1983 -- US: Gasquet-Orleans Road bulldozers blockaded by Earth First! & the Kalmiopsis Action Alliance. An injunction is finally granted in late May.


1986 -- Belgium: A general strike is held to protest austerity measures.


1987 -- US: God's Plan?: PTL's Jim Bakker & Rich Dortch dismissed from Assemblies of God, for some really "good" ministering.


1990 -- South Africa: Formerly banned CP leader Joe Slovo speaks to 30,000.


1991 -- 16,000th performance of Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap," London.


1992 -- Alone at last. Film actress, recluse Marlene Dietrich dies.

“The most intriguing woman I've ever known.”

— John Wayne

1992 -- Eric Overmyer play "Dark Rapture" premiers, Empty Space, Seattle, Washington.


1993 -- US: "The NY Times" reveals Walt Disney was an FBI informer on Hollywood "subversives."


1994 -- The famed Pearl Jam vs. Ticketmaster fight begins as the band files a complaint with the US Justice Department charging that the company has a monopoly on the master ticket business.


1996 -- Germany: 15,000 police protecting a nuclear-waste train clash with antinuclear demonstrators (-May 8).


1999 -- Recollection Baldly Used Books receives Links2Go Award as a key resource page for its Seattle Used Bookstore Guide. Our reputation for never having received any Internet awards is an increasingly difficult & untenable position from which we will, nevertheless, hold the line & fight to the last html [— BleedMeister, AuntieAward 1999].

Recollection's web page, "Seattle Used Bookstore Guide," online at http://recollectionbooks.com/seattle.html

2000 -- Canada: Montreal's first-ever Anarchist Book & Freedom Fair. Includes AK Press, Black & Red Books, Marginal Distribution, as well as distributors from Toronto, Syracuse, Boston & elsewhere. Quebec-based booksellers & distributors include Édition et diffusion l'Aide-mutuelle (ŠDAM), La Sociale, Ecosociété, Planéte rebelle, le Groupe Emile-Henri, Ao!/Espaces de la Parole from Drummondville & the Alternative Bookshop, among others.
http://www.anarchistbookfair.ca/bookfairposter2011



2002 -- US: Free Admission? The Bush administration "unsigns" the UN treaty for an International Criminal Court, fearing that it would prosecute US war crimes.



2002 -- Burma: Government releases opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi after 19 months of house arrest.


2012 -- Transit of Venus.


3500 --

---

"Arbeit mach das leben suesse, aber faulheit staerkt die gliederung."

("Work makes life sweet, but foolishness gives it structure.")

— motto on a turn-of-the-century postcard found in Milwaukee by Bleeder Scott L.

UPDATE:

Hello Dave:

I don't always spend my time beating on dead anythings but the "Arbeit macht das leben..." quote caused me to be inordinately curious. So I called Mom, whose first language was German, & she tells me that the noun "glieder" references body parts, appendages, arms & legs — that sort of thing. "Gliederung" would be a collection of those parts.

The adage then becomes wonderfully ambiguous & its meaning subject to wildly different interpretations. We could be talking about the work ethic as opposed to "idle hands..." or the combination of the value of work with the creativity enabled by leisure.

Ain't linguistics grand?

— Bleedster Andris

_____________

Dear Dave,

Translations are such risky business. But in any case my sister Petra & I both got a kick out of the anonymous German quote you ended the bleed with ... I guess it must have been written in some dialect because the German seems a little odd — even to my unaccomplished eye & ear. This is Petra's & my take on it:

Arbeit mach(t) das leben suess[e], aber faulheit staerkt die gliederung.

Work makes life sweet, but laziness strengthens the masses*.

*Gliederung has many possible meanings. However, in this context it means rank & file. Or it could mean masses.

—Bleedster Gus H.

_____________

Yoiks!@#!* faulheit? what's faulheit? babelfish can't translate it.

My sister who lived in Germany for a time told me it means foolishness or frivolity, a more literal translation might be idleness or laziness..... Arbeit mach das leben suesse, aber faulheit staerkt die gliederung.

It's a motto that came from a turn of the century postcard I found in Milwaukee. Loosely translated it says, "Work makes life sweet, but foolishness gives it structure."

Anti-Dave's new translation, after much (over)due consideration:

"Work makes life bitter sweet,
but foolishness makes us Fat & Happy."

4511 --

Anarchist quotes

http://www.iisg.nl/exhibitions/art/voorstellen2.html