Left Bank Books, Robert Lynn, Conchita Guillén Bertolín, Paquita Jolis Puig, Adalgisa Fochi, Raphael Friedeberg, Emma Goldman, Jean Barrué, Sante Geronimo Caserio, Ernesto Álvarez, La Revista Social, Pierre Martin

AUGUST 16
TINA MODOTTI
Italian-born radical photographer
& model, active in Mexican workers' struggles & revolutionary politics.

Tutbury Castle, England: FESTIVAL OF THE MINSTRELS.
ST. ROCH'S DAY. "As this falls during the time when there is nothing to do but quietly await the ripening of the grapes, it is normally the occasion for several days of feasting & merriment."

1254 -- Court case about a chess player who stabbed his opponent to death.
Source: [Robert Braunwart]
[Hereafter attributed with symbol: ]

1617 -- New Old World: First African slaves delivered to Virginia, sparking the local economy.

1678 -- Andrew Marvell, satirist & poet, dies at 57 in London.
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/

1762 -- Samuel Johnson & Joshua Reynolds set out on a walking tour through Devonshire.
http://www.samueljohnson.com/

1774 -- Voltaire, writing to Frederick the Great after Lord Chesterfield's death, calls him, "The only Englishman who ever argued for the art of pleasing as the first duty of life."

Those who can make you believe absurdities
can make you commit atrocities.
                                        — Voltaire

http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/95nov/voltaire.html

1777 -- US: Americans defeat British in Battle of Bennington, not in the state of Vermont.

1812 -- Imminent American attempt to invade & annex Canada fails before it begins when General William Hull, reportedly frightened into "a state of near incoherence," surrenders his entire army at Detroit without firing a shot to a lesser British & Indian force (He is court-martialed two years later.)

1812 -- US: A mass meeting in NYC denounces the War of 1812.

1819 -- England: Manchester Massacre: Police charge unemployed workers at a demonstration.

1819 -- England: Peterloo Massacre. Soldiers, apparently drunk, kill 11 people & about 400, including 100 women, are wounded. Caricaturist George Cruikshank, like many people, was deeply shocked by the slaughter & he responded with one of his most powerful drawings, "Massacre at St. Peter's."
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRfemale.JPG
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRpeterloo.htm

1856 -- France: Pierre Martin lives (1856-1912), in Paris. Militant anarchiste, antimilitarist & pacifist.
http://www.ephemanar.net/aout06.html

1872 -- Spain: Manresa (près de Barcelone), sortie du premier numéro de l'hebdomadaire anarchiste La Revista Social, porte-parole de l'A.I.T ; il reprend les articles de la Révolte et du Bulletin de la Fédération Jurassienne. A partir du 11 juin 1881, il sera édité à Madrid par Juan Serrano Oteiza sous le nom de Revista Social, Eco del Proletariado et défendra les thèses fédéralistes et anarcho-collectivistes. Son tirage sera alors de vingt mille exemplaires.
http://www.ephemanar.net/aout16.html

1884 -- Hugo Gernsback, held responsible for science fiction becoming an independent literary form, lives.

1890 -- Spain: In Madrid, Ernesto Álvarez issues the first number of the weekly La Anarquía.
Madrid weekly. from 16 August 1890 to 15 June 1893, 144 issues. with texts from Mella, Juan Montseny (pseudonym of Federico Urales), Büchner, López Montenegro, Fermín Salvochea, Gustavo, Prat, Setabas, López Maldonado, Anselmo Lorenzo, Renan, Bo, Bigeon; also issued & directed by Álvarez, previously, from 1882-85 in Madrid. This name was used by a number of other publications over the years.
http://www.christiebooks.com/PDFs/Encyclopedia1.pdf
http://www.ephemanar.net/aout16.html

1891 --

Brusselles

August 16-23rd, 1891
{

2on. congrés de la Segona Internacional. In attendance is Pablo Iglesias.

Iglesias founded the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) in 1879.
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSOE
Source: [Congressos Obrers]

1894 -- France: Sante Geronimo Caserio (or Santo Jeronimo) guillotined at precisely 5am. The Italian anarchico stabbed Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader French President Sadi Carnot to avenge the execution of Auguste Valliant. Carnot dies from the wounds.
"Corragio camaradi, evviva l'anarchia!"
— Caserio, face-to-face with the guillotine

See the Italian song, L'interrogatorio di Sante Caserio,
http://struggle.ws/songs.html

Valliant & some anarchist attitudes towards assassinations, see "propaganda by deed"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sante_Geronimo_Caserio
http://www.ephemanar.net/juin24.html

Illustration by Flavio Costantini

(In Ancône, Italy, a year & a day after the execution, a bomb explodes at the French Consulate, busting up the doors & windows.)

1895 -- Emma Goldman sails to England under the name "Mrs. E. G. Brady" fearing that her real identity as an anarchist would limit her freedom to travel in Europe. Funds for her travel & a portion of living expenses are provided by Modest Stein.

1896 -- Radical photographer & model Tina Modotti lives, Udine, Italy.

http://www.modotti.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_modotti

1897 -- US: A meeting of 1,000 people in NY celebrate Cánovas's assassination by Michele Angiolillo. Emma Goldman is among several speakers.
[Details / context]

1900 -- Fiske publishes "The Early History of Chess" in the Nation.

1902 -- France: Jean Barrué lives (1902-1989), Bordeaux. Professor of mathematics, militant communist then a revolutionary anarchist syndicalist.
Seminal figure in the "Groupe Sébastien Faure."

"Si nos idées ont une valeur pour l'avenir, elle doivent en avoir une aussi pour le présent et nous devons favoriser ou créer tout groupement d'individus décidés à produire ou à consommer en dehors du cycle capitaliste."

[Details / context]

1902 -- Spain: Paquita Jolis Puig lives (1902-1982). Militant member of Mujeres Libres.
With a score of others, including her sister Asunción, she belonged to one of the 50 groups of anarchist women of the Catalan area. They were active in the town council & founders of the Musée de Physique et Sciences Naturelles.

A refugee in France, she died in Marseille in 1982, on her birthday.

http://www.struggle.ws/ws98/ws54_mujeres_libres.html
http://libertaire.pagesperso-orange.fr/archive/2000/233-nov/mujeres.htm

Source: [l'Ephéméride Anarchiste]

1911 -- US: The good citizens of Coatesville, Pennsylvania, tie African American Zacharia Walker to an iron bedstead & burn him alive. Bystanders pursued Walker after he shot & killed a guard in a robbery. Under gunfire, Walker tried unsuccessfully to kill himself. Bystanders took him to a hospital for his wound. Then they tied him to his cot, put him on a pyre, & burned him to death. A short distance from Walker's execution, local children make a game of kicking his scorched torso down the road.

1911 -- Alternative economist E.F. Schumacher lives, big & ugly, in Bonn, Germany.

1912 -- Wallace Thurman, African-American editor, critic, novelist, & playwright associated with the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, lives, Salt Lake City, Utah.

1918 -- US: Gompers & AFL delegation travel to Europe on one of 14 troop ships carrying 40,000 American soldiers. On September 1 they attend the British TUC & on Sept. 17, the Inter-Allied Socialist & Labor Conference. They also travel to France & Italy.

1919 -- Spain: Conchita Guillén Bertolín lives (1919-), Alfondseguilla, Valencia. Militant anarchist & member of Mujeres Libres.
Forced into refuge in France with the rout of the Republican forces in 1939. In 1999 she participated in the collected work Mujeres Libres, will luchadoras libertarias, translated into French by the Ascaso-Durruti Center of Montpellier in 2000 & published by Los Solidarios.

"(...) des femmes qui avaient des connaissances idéologiques solides, qui s'y connaissaient en pédagogie, et autres sciences s'offrirent bénévolement pour instruire le groupe de jeunes qui n'avaient rien d'autres que leur bonne volonté."

[Details / context]

1920 -- Charles Bukowski, lives, Andernach, Germany.
Bukowski spent most of his life in Los Angeles, California, & began publishing his unique poetry in 1955. Violent images & graphic language in poetry & fiction become trademarks.

American author of the second wave Beat Generation, noted for his stories of survival & heavy drinking on the fringe of society.


Sway with Me

sway with me, everything sad —
madmen in stone houses
without doors,
lepers streaming love & song
frogs trying to figure
the sky;
sway with me, sad things —
fingers split on a forge
old age like breakfast shells
used books, used people
used flowers, used love
I need you
I need you
I need you
it has run away
like a horse or a dog,
dead or lost
or unforgiving.

http://recollectionbooks.com/links.html#CharlesBukowski

1920 -- Alexander Berkman & Emma Goldman travel through Russia.
[Details / context]

1920 -- US: Baseball's Ray Chapman, of the Indians, is hit in the head by Yanks' Carl Mays pitch; he dies tomorrow, the only major league baseball fatality.

1921 -- England: The Times of London exposes the forgery of the anti-semitic document "The Protocol of the Elders of Zion" (-Aug. 18). That little ol' automaker, war-profiteer, & vicious anti-Semite Henry Ford continues to publish the "Protocols," in 91 subsequent editions.
[Details / context]

1921 -- Kenneth Owen Ghormley lives, Tacoma, Washington. Member of Redlands Fortnightly Club, Redlands California. (Believed to be the second oldest literary club in the United States.) Author of a family history which involves the anarchist Home Colony.
http://www.redlandsfortnightly.org/papers/ghorm99.htm

1924 -- Italy: The body of Giacomo Matteotti is found outside Rome. A socialist elected to parliament, murdered by fascist thugs.
[Details / context]

1925 -- US: Charlie Chaplin's film The Gold Rush premiers.

1926 -- Beat poet Lew Welch lives.
http://www.beatsupernovarasa.com/thebeats/thebeats.htm
http://home4.swipnet.se/~w-40997/lewstart.htm

1936 -- Germany: Jesse Owens leaves Berlin Olympics with four gold medals.

1938 -- The devil comes to collect Robert Johnson’s soul. Revolutionary blues singer dies a mysterious death, at age 27, in Greenwood, Miss. Probably of poison administered by a jealous husband, after having allegedly sold his soul to the devil. A revival of interest in his music occurs in the 1990's when a boxed set of 41 of his recording is issued to critical & popular acclaim.
Posing as the owner of a bar Johnson was playing at, Satan slipped some poison into the singer’s drink, & let it slowly eat him away. He fulfilled his end of the bargain — Johnson being famous forever after, & his music continues to thrill people.

http://www.artandculture.com/users/244-robert-johnson
http://latailla.club.fr/blues.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd60nI4sa9A
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson_(musician)

1940 -- Raphael Friedeberg (b.1863), legendary German anarchist & medical doctor, dies. Die Straße. Settled in the Acona sanitarium community (GERMANS IN THE TREETOPS, WAY UP HIGH) in 1904.

1946 -- ¶ During this summer the communal group of which Beatster Jack Kerouac is part begins to disband.

1948 -- US: Baseball legend Babe Ruth dies of cancer in New York at 53.

1955 -- Fiat Motors orders first private atomic reactor.

"Don't you hear the H-bomb's thunder/
Echo like the crack of doom?"

— John Brunner

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/baoppe.html

1957 -- Italy: Adalgisa Fochi (1865-1957) dies. Mother of Camillo Berneri, grandmother of Maria Luisa Berneri & Giliana Berneri. Antifascists & anarchists, the whole lot of them.
http://www.comune.re.it/manifestazioni/berneri/adalgisa.htm
http://www.ephemanar.net/aout16.html

1960 -- Too obviously higher than a kite, Kittinger makes highest parachute jump, 102,800 feet.

1962 -- Cuba: Anarchist publications & public activities banned in Castro country.
Tis the way it is for anarchists under capitalist/communist regimes.

As part of a concerted drive against political & social dissenters, the Cuban government force the Libertarian Association of Cuba to cease publishing its journal El Libertario & suspend public activity because they had voiced minor criticisms of the Communist role in the government & their domination of the labor unions.

... show details

See Cuba — The Anarchists & Liberty by Frank Fernandez (English translation by Charles Bufe),
http://www.yelah.net/arkiverad/cuba

Noam Chomsky on Cuba, http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/11/03/an-interview-with-noam-chomsky-on-cuba/
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/1985----.htm
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/4334

See also suggested references, "Anarchism in Cuba,"
http://www.theyliewedie.org/ressources/biblio/en/Flood_Andrew_and_Alt_Greg_-_2_mails_over_Cuban_Anarchism.html

1962 -- Ringo Starr bests Pete, as the Beatles' drummer.

1964 -- US: Racial riots break out in Chicago (-Aug. 17).

1965 -- US: 16 days of rioting ends in Watts, Los Angeles — 34 die.
http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/10.Watts.htm

1970 -- US: A warrant is issued for the arrest of black activist Angela Davis in connection with George Jackson's attempted escape from San Quentin.

1972 -- King Hassan II of Morocco survives a brief attack by his country's own air force while traveling by plane.

1973 -- James Gronen, 14, won the annual soapbox derby in Akron, Ohio, but was stripped of his title when it was revealed he concealed an electromagnet in his racer to give himself an illegal head start.

1973 -- US: Juan de la Cruz, a 60-year-old United Farm Workers (UFW) member, is shot to death by a strike breaker. This is during the UFW's a second grape boycott, opposing the Teamster Union signing sweetheart deals with the California growers.
http://www.ufw.org/history.htm

1973 -- US: Nagi Daifullah (the UFW's second martyr) is beaten to death. In three days another member is shot to death by a strike breaker. This is during the UFW's a second grape boycott, opposing the Teamster Union signing sweetheart deals with the California growers.
http://www.ufw.org/history.htm

1976 -- Cliff Richards begins a 20 date tour of the Soviet union at Leningrad's Hall of the October. The crowd's enthusiasm of his performance horrifies Russian officials who ask him if he wants barricades put up between himself & the audience for later shows. He declines.

1977 -- Elvis Presley dies, on the crapper ... or so we're told!!
"I don't know anything about music.

In my line you don't have to."

— Elvis Presley (1935-1977)

1985 -- US: "The Dukes of Hazzard" ends its 6-1/2 year run on CBS-TV. The series was credited, along with having the sophistication of a house fly, with using more stunt men than any other TV series in history. It used as many as eight cars per episode when the crash sequences got complicated.
http://www.buyersmls.com/americantv/dukes.htm

1987 -- Charles Wesley dies in Washington, DC. Noted historian, wrote over a dozen books on African-American life, including The Negro in the Americas, The Quest for Equality, Negro Labor in the US 1850-1925, Richard Allen, Apostle of Freedom, & The History of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, published when he was 92 years old.

1987 -- The Harmonic Convergence, remember? C'mon, you remember!
New Age cultists gather at various "sacred sites" & "power points" around the world for the Harmonic Convergence, an effort to prevent a predicted quarter century of catastrophe by holding hands, humming, & in the words of one participant, "meditating our buns off."

Obviously didn't work so well.

1988 -- US: Blind Leading the Blind? New York's Mayor Koch says he plans to wipe out street-corner windshield washers. Auto accidents suddenly surge in NYC.

1990 -- Iraq: Government orders 4,000 Britons & 2,500 Americans in Kuwait to Iraq; meanwhile Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Pres. Bush orders US ships to enforce the blockade of Iraq, while the the UN Secretary-General says the use of force to support sanctions against Iraq would violate the UN Charter. Yup.

1990 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Pres. Bush declares the recession is near an end. Yup. Then his kid can destroy it.

1996 -- Scotland: Robert Lynn (1924-1996) dies, age 72. The Scottish anarchist movement loses one of its oldest activists. Militant trade unionist & Stirnerite.
An activist in the Glasgow Anarchist Group (adherents of Max Stirner) since 1950, Lynn initiated a number of events over the years, especially the Glasgow Anarchist Summer School which now attracts libertarian socialists from all over Britain.

Lynn died just before the 1996 school session & his last immortal words were:

"Oh fuck, now I'll miss the summer school."

[Details / context]

1997 -- Pakistan: Sufi qawwali singer Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan (1948-1997) dies. Mystical Sufi seeker of the "stateless state" of Enlightenment, Daily Bleed Saint October 13.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nusrat_Fateh_Ali_Khan

1998 -- Dorothy West, the Harlem Renaissance writer who experienced her own renaissance in her 80s, dies at age 91. The Boston native began writing stories in 1914, at age 7; at age 19 she moved to Harlem to join the burgeoning literary & artistic movement led by Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, & many others. The movement faded in the early 1930s, as did her fame. Then in 1995 she published The Wedding, which became a bestseller (& made into a TV miniseries by Oprah Winfrey).

2000 -- Canada: Beloved & Respected PM Chretien (KREE-ten) is struck in the face with a pie, PEI Civic Centre. Members of the PEI Pie Brigade braved the infamous "Shawinigan handshake" in order to offer a Roundup Ready Frankencreampie to Jean Chretien, the first head of state to receive the distinction of being pied.
http://bioticbakingbrigade.org/?fof=Y

2000 -- A comet is scheduled to hit the earth in the movie "Deep Impact." Like George Dubya Bush.

2003 -- US: Left Bank Books Collective in Seattle holds its 30th Anniversary party, Richard Hugo House, 6-10pm. Much loud music, multi-media slide show, old photos, newspaper clippings, leaflets, announcements, etc. About 200 current & former LBers attend. Sadly noted by BleedMeister that many are not here, scattered on the winds. A few dinosaurs look to have aged (present company excepted) a bit since the olden early days.

3500 -- http://www.theaoi.com/

3500 --

http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

anti-CopyRite 1997-3000, more or less
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