Our Daily Bleed...
H.G. WELLS
Pioneer science fiction writer, radical socialist, visionary.
Belize: INDEPENDENCE DAY.
Bashi, Zaire: FESTIVAL OF NYAMUZINDA, God of famine & Epidemics.
Selkup, Siberia: FEAST OF KUODOR-GUP, God of Riches.
BLEEDING HEARTS CLUB DAY.
19 -- [BC] Virgil, 50, dies in Brundisium, having removed from his last will an earlier request that the Aeneid be burned upon his death.
1638 -- New World: In the final act of the Pequot War, English officials & their Native American allies in Connecticut divide the surviving 72 Pequots & enslave them.The Puritans had lived under an uneasy truce with the Pequots, but they wanted them out of the way so they could take their land. Using the murder of a white trader & Indian-kidnapper as an excuse, the English attacked Indians on Block Island two years ago. Realizing that battle with tribal warriors was only one way to destroy their will, the colonists have turned to a terrorist strategy of massacring non-combatants. Before today's slave deal, the war concluded with an English attack on a Mystic River village, where troops led by Captain John Mason killed at least 600 Pequots.
1741 -- England: A rain of gossamer falls on Selborne, Dorset.
[Source: Calendar Riots]
1776 -- US: Fire sweeps through New York City, destroying nearly 300 buildings.
1784 -- US: First successful daily newspaper in the U.S., the "Pennsylvania Packet & General Advertiser", begins publication.
1786 -- US: Live Free or Die?: New Hampshire Militia attacks a mob surrounding the State Legislature, ending a three-day siege. The mob, armed with muskets, swords, & staves, was demanding the issuance of paper money & the equal distribution of property.
1814 -- US: Black troops cited for bravery in Battle of New Orleans.
1832 -- US: As a result of the Black Hawk War, the Sauk are forced to cede their lands in Iowa (also known as "The Black Hawk Purchase").
1864 -- Italy: Soppressione della protesta a Torino contro il trasferimento della capitale a Firenze. La polizia e l'esercito sparano sui dimostranti: oltre 180 morti.
[Source: Crimini e Misfatti]
1870 -- US: Make Room, Make Room!?: Decree from Norton I, "Dei Gratia" Emperor of the United States & Protector of Mexico, that the Grand Hotel furnish him rooms under penalty of being banished.WHEREAS, our friends & adherent are dissatisfied that we are not better lodged, & hold that we ought to have a suitable palace years ago; WHEREAS, the treasonable proscriptive acts of some of the hotel keepers of this city have kept us out of decent rooms for our accomodations, so that we have been unable to make our family arrangements in order.
NOW, THEREFORE, we do hereby command the proprietors of the Grand Hotel to forthwith furnish us with rooms, under penalty of being banished.
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/norton.html
1870 -- US: Joshua Norton I, "Dei Gratia" Emperor of the United States & Protector of Mexico, He Banishes a Traitor:PROCLAMATION
WHEREAS, one Phillipmagilder Alamagoozalum Whangdoodlum Larryum Murrayum is engaged in plotting with conspirators to usurp our prerogatives & is a traitor to our person & scepter; & WHEREAS, all movements of such nature tend to weaken the stability of our government at home, & cause it to fall into contempt & ridicule with foreign Nations; NOW, THEREFORE, we, Norton I, Dei Gratia Emperor of the United States & Protector of Mexico, hereby decree that said Phillipmagilder Alamagoozalum Whangdoodlum Larryum Murrayum be appointed Chief of Police to ex-Emperor Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, & that he forthwith leave our realm to fill such an appointment.
— Forged by Philip Magilder & Larry Murray
1872 -- US: Connections?: Norton I orders a survey to determine if a bridge or tunnel would be the best possible means to connect Oakland & San Francisco. He also orders the arrest of the Board of Supervisors for ignoring his decrees.
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/norton.html
1881 -- Ernst Frick lives (1881-1956), Swiss anarchist, artist, archaeologist & scholar of primitive languages (Anarchist - Kunstmaler - Archäologe - Urspracheforscher).Frick was involved with the circle around Erich Mühsam, Johannes Nohl (anarchist & one of Hermann Hesse's analysts), & the anarchist Freudian Otto Gross. He & Frieda Gross had a long relationship & three daughters together.http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/FrickErnst.htm
1886 -- H.G. Wells, author & futurist, lives, Bromley, Kent, England. English novelist, journalist, sociologist, socialist & historian, best known for his science-fiction novels.In 1915 he confesses to Henry James: "I had rather be called a journalist than an artist, that is the essence of it."
1896 -- US: The state militia is sent to Leadville, Colorado to break a miner's strike.
1897 -- US: 8-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon had written a letter to "The New York Sun": "I am eight years old. Some of my friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, 'If you see it in "The Sun", it's so.' Please tell me the truth. Is there a Santa Claus?" Editor Frank Church wrote:"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love & generosity & devotion exist.... No Santa Claus! Thank God! He lives & lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay ten times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood. & of course suck dry the wallets of adults. The insanity of mindless consumerism that is modern-day Christmas is of course a travesty of everything Jesus stood for, but that's OK because, everybody does it."
1904 -- US: Chief Joseph (Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt) (1840-1904) of the Nez Perce dies in his lodge at Nespelem, Washington; The US government stole the lands granted the Nez Perce by treaty, then relentlessly pursued & destroyed them.The agency physician lists Joseph's cause of death as "a broken heart." Another glorious chapter in American history.
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/chiefjoseph.htm
http://content.lib.washington.edu/aipnw/buerge2/buerge2.html
1909 -- Ghana: Kwame Nkrumah lives, Nkroful. A leader in African colonial liberation, the first prime minister of Ghana, forced into exile following a coup.
1911 -- Australia: The Federal Minister for Home Affairs, King O'Malley, issues a directive that "absolute preference" in employment be given to trade unionists.King O'Malley, an American I.W.W. (Industrial Workers of the World) member was Minister for Home Affairs in the Labor government in power 1910 - 1913.
During 1910 to 1913 union membership increased a staggering 44%. To circumvent this directive, employers set up "scab" unions
1913 -- US: "Mother" Jones leads a march of miners' children through the streets of Charleston.Mother Jones attracted the country's attention in 1912-13, during the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike in West Virginia; the strike's frequent violence brought the publicity. On February 12, 1913, she was arrested after leading a protest over living conditions for the striking miners.
1915 -- England: Stonehenge auctioned off for a rock-bottom £6,600 to C.H. Chubb.
1915 -- In a letter to a friend, Ezra Pound first mentions a "cryselephantine [sic] poem of immeasurable length which will occupy me for the next four decades unless it becomes a bore." When he dies, in 1972, the Cantos remain unfinished.
1920 -- Chile: FECH's headquarters broken into, the burning of books, furniture, & ultimately the whole building. FECH (Federación Estudiantes Universidad de Chile) was a militant student organization involving anarchists, Marxists, democrats, etx., & had strong links with the radical labor movement.
Overall 1920 was a year of brutal repression for the workers movement - many labor locals were burnt down, agitators murdered, workers sent to prison etc. & the following year witnessed the San Gregorio Massacre where hundreds of miners were killed mercilessly.
1921 -- Russia: The anarchist poet Lev Chernyi is shot by the Cheka.In 1921 a new wave of arrests swept the country. The anarchists are scattered to the prison camps, dying of illness, hard labor — or Cheka executioners. Afew managed to flee into exile.'Grey are the passing days. One by one the embers of hope have died out. Terror & despotism have crushed the life born on October. The slogans of the revolution are foresworn, its ideals stifled in the blood of the people. The breath of yesterday is dooming millions to death; the shadow of today hangs like a black pall over the country.
Dictatorship is trampling the masses underfoot. The revolution is dead; its spirit cries in the wilderness... I have decided to leave Russia.'
1923 -- Russia: Following their deportation from Russia, where they were imprisoned for anarchist activities, Mollie Steimer & Senya Fleshin join Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman in Berlin.http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAsteimer.htm
1923 -- Italy: Vengono arrestati esponenti di spicco del partito comunista d'Italia tra cui Palmiro Togliatti, Angelo Tasca e Alfonso Leonetti.
[Source: Crimini e Misfatti]
1934 -- Japan: Typhoon strikes Honshu Island, kills 4,000.
1934 -- Leonard Cohen lives, Montreal, Canada. "What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility...Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous & finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine & twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love."
— Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers (1966)
http://www.leonardcohen.com/
http://www.soften.ktu.lt/~elecs/Cohen/megstamiausios_dainos.html http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/cohen2.jpg
1936 -- "One group of people really get on my nerves, it is the volunteers who have come as observers (French for the most part). They come here with the airs of priests & got up like cowboys to spend half the time in cafes."— anarchist Camillo Berneri, Spain, 21st September, 1936
http://www.municipio.re.it/manifestazioni/berneri/dopo.htm
1937 -- J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit published.The anarchist Michael Moorcock, also a fantasy & scifi writer, despises Tolkien's written work, calling the Lord of the Rings,"John Buchan for teenagers. A compendium of disguised bigotry & English high church snobbery.
"I hate it for exactly those qualities which made it so popular. It's a lullaby. Not sure we need lullabies at the moment.
"Unless we're all just going to give up, go to sleep & wake up dead."
http://www.corporatemofo.com/stories/Moorcock3.htm
http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/Moorcock.htm
1945 -- US: 200,000 coal miners strike to support the supervisory employees' demand for collective bargaining.This is part of a strike wave following the end of the war. This month the number of man-days lost to strikes doubles & doubles again in October. All a prelude to the great strikes of 1945-1946.
Source: Jeremy Brecher, Strike!
1947 -- Stephen King begins a horrorible life. American novelist/short-story writer, whose enormously popular books revived the interest in horror fiction from the 1970s.Kings' stories have been adapted to screen, including Carrie (1976), The Shining (1980), Misery (1990), & The Shawshank Redemption (1995).
See: The Stephen King Companion, ed.George W. Beahm (1989), The Shape Under the Sheet: The Complete Stephen King Encyclopedia (1991), The Work of Stephen King: An Annotated Bibliography & Guide by Michael R. Collings (1991); The Films of Stephen King by Ann Lloyd (1994).
Other famous modern horror writers: Ramsey Campbell, Clive Barker, John Farris, Stephen Gallagher, James Herbert, Peter James, Dean R. Koontz, Richard Laymon, Brian Lumley, Graham Masterton, Robert McCammon, Anne Rice, John Saul, Peter Straub, Whitley Strieber.
1948 -- Palestine: Folke Bernadotte, U.N. mediator, assassinated by Jewish paramilitaries.
1953 -- US: "Sky King" premieres on television.
1956 -- US: Plane crashes & burns in California's San Bernardino National Forest, touching off a blaze that rages out of control for five days, consuming 20,000 acres of virgin timber.
1956 -- Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Anastasio Somoza, Nicaraguan dictator, assassinated by Rigoberto Lopez Perez.
http://www.patriagrande.net/uruguay/eduardo.galeano/memoria.del.fuego/19560921.htm
1957 --During this month [I don't have the exact day — ed.],
Guy Debord begins work on Mémoires, a book 'composed entirely of prefabricated elements.'
[Situationist Resources]
1961 -- Poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) dies, buried on Nisky Hill, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, among her family. She had written to Pearson, "I think I did get what I was looking for from life & art."H.D. had lifelong friendships with Marianne Moore & Ezra Pound. She met them both before & during her days at Bryn Mawr, but dropped out & found her way to England in 1911. Her romance with Ezra Pound had ended, but he introduced her to London's literary circles. In London she also met the novelist Richard Aldington, whom she married.
1961 -- Antonio Abertondo swims the English Channel round trip (44 miles).http://www.mermaid1.demon.co.uk/index.htm
1963 -- US: War Resisters League organizes first anti-Vietnam War demonstration in US, in New York City.http://www.nonviolence.org/
1964 -- Jim Koethe, "Dallas Times Herald" reporter, killed by a karate chop.
1965 -- The Jefferson Airplane opens for Lightnin' Hopkins at the Matrix on Fillmore St. Norm Mayell backed Hopkins on drums.He patted him on the back no sooner Mr. Charlie had stooped over
He said, mi'mi mi'mi Mr. Charlie
Mr. Charlie straightened up & looked at him & say
Boy you tryin to tell me somethin
He say, Now if you can't talk it then sing it& he say
oooooooohhhh mister charlie
your rollin mill is burnin down— Lightnin Hopkins, Once in the Country
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightnin%27_Hopkins
http://tinpan.fortunecity.com/kowalski/112/artistswithsongs/lightnin_hopkins_1.htm
http://www.island.net/~blues/arhoolie.html
1965 -- O Kommissarova (USSR) sets women's longest parachute jump (46,250').
1966 -- Jimi Hendrix & manager Chas Chandler arrive in London from NY, where Chandler discovered Hendrix working in Greenwich go-go clubs. He convinces Hendrix that Britain would be more receptive to his style. During the transatlantic flight, Hendrix changes the spelling of his first name from Jimmy to Jimi.An interview in the PBS series "The History of Rock & Roll" revealed the not-at-all-surprising fact that Hendrix played guitar eight hours a day.
Jimi Hendrix, especially after his death, likely did more to sell Fender Stratocaster guitars than any other individual or organization including the manufacturer. I had finally pestered my parents into getting me one by the time I was 17."
— Bleeder Ben Bradley, GuitarMeister
http://www.musicfanclubs.org/jimihendrix/
1970 -- England: Wimbledon Conservative Association firebombed. One of many attacks in England & France during this year, attributed by the media to the anarchist 'The Angry Brigade' or similar groups.
1970 --'Formation of the 'Tendency for the Truth of our Practice' by Jon Horelick & Tony Verlaan, Situationist International American section. They are excluded from the SI in late November.
[Situationist Resources]
1972 -- US: 60,000 acre (nearly 1,000 square mile) McQuinn Strip in Oregon returned to Warm Springs Confederated Tribes after 85 years.
1976 -- US: Former Chilean Foreign Minister & Ambassador to the US Orlando Letelier, & his colleague Ronni Moffitt, a US citizen, are murdered in Washington D.C. by CIA-supported agents of U.S.-installed Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Chilean President Augusto Pinochet."Never a leaf moves in Chile without my knowing of it."
— General Pinochet 1975
The individual case of Orlando Letelier does not only exemplify each & every one of the terrible fates that Pinochet imposed on his victims, but the reality that it will open, with renewed hope, relations between men, nations, & justice in the next century. Human rights are universal. & there is no statute of limitations for crimes against human rights.
— Carlos Fuentes, "A Victim of Pinochet" ...The man in the river
wears a white shirt, dark pants & sprawls
as if sleeping while water riffles his hair.
This is a photograph from the coup or golpe,meaning also hit or shock — just one death
from thirty thousand.— Stephen Dobyns, "Paco"
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/dobyns.htm
http://www.lamurals.org/MuralistPages/Letelier.html
http://www.themodernword.com/fuentes/
Background materials on the Chilean workers' movement in the 1970s, at the Stan Iverson Archives
1980 -- US: Keep on Truckin'?: Two canisters containing radioactive material fall off a truck on New Jersey's Route 17. The driver of the truck discovers the cargo missing when he reaches Albany, New York.
1980 -- Philippines: 10,000 Filipinos defy government order & stage "Freedom March". Eight people killed.
1981 -- US: Senate confirms Sandra Day O'Conner for the Supreme Court — the first woman appointed to that court.
1983 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader James Watt describes the makeup of his coal-leasing commission to a group of lobbyists. "We have every kind of mix you can have," he says. "I have a black, I have a woman, two Jews & a cripple."
1984 -- NASA launches Galaxy-C.
1986 -- Hunter S. Thompson claims he remained sober on this day.Ah, lives there a man with soul so dead,
who never to himself hath said
As he hunched & rolled in his comfortable bed:
To hell with the rent... I'll drink instead!— Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway
1986 -- Former Beloved & Respected Comrade Philippine Leader Imelda Marcos explains that the reason there were so so many shoes (several thousand) in her closets was,"Everybody kept their shoes there. The maids ... everybody."
1989 -- Israeli soldiers begin a 42-day occupation & house-to-house destruction of the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, in retaliation for its mass two-year refusal to pay taxes to the occupying Israeli government.
1991 -- US: Basketball announces "Dream Team" for the 1992 Olympics.
1997 -- The Daily Bleed lives.The first Daily Bleed began as as an imposing, ambitious, over-reaching email of indelible nuance & grace. To see the original posting, see http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/0921a.htm
The phrase first popped up when a varmint, passin hisself off as U-TahTex-Ass BeamMeister Doktor Weldin' Dan Wirt, uses it rather loosely a month ago.
The Bleed itself was a knee-jerk response to some warm fuzzy toothless thing called the "Daily Read" on a used book subscription called BiblioPus.
History has never been the same.
1998 -- First anniversary of the Daily Bleed. A Wake Up Call,"Better than Boiled Coffee!"
For he who sins a second time
Wakes a dead soul to pain,
And draws it from its spotted shroud
And makes it bleed again,
And makes it bleed great gouts of blood,
And makes it bleed in vain!
— Oscar Wilde: The Ballad of Reading Gaol
http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/lit/poetry/PoemsbyOscarWilde/chap84.html
1999 -- Second anniversary of the Daily Bleed."In the carriages of the past, you can't go anywhere." — Maxim Gorky, The Lower Depths
2000 -- Third anniversary of the Daily Bleed. http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/0921-1.htm
2001 -- Fourth anniversary of the Daily Bleed. http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/0921-1.htm
2003 -- Umpteenth anniversary of the Daily Bleed. Currently 600+ subscribers to the email virgin; 118, 911 visitors to our Calendar Archive Page, & those through the "back door"; but most days host about 200 readers. 27, 240 visitors to our Anti-authoritarian Encyclopedia since March, 2001; 184 to our Stan Iverson Library since Nov 2002 (the counter has been stuck on this figure since the first month; seized up like rusty ticker)...We still hold the record for having once received a $10 donation (which we promptly drank way back in '99). We decided to give ourselves an award, noting after many years no one else seems about to do so.
Them's the facts as we knows them.
2004 -- Ditto all the above, more or less Daily Bleed. 157, 434 visitors to the Bleed's calendar Index Page. 42, 979 visitors to the Anti-authoritarian Encyclopedia since March, 2001; 184 to our Stan Iverson Library since Nov 2002 (the counter stuck on this figure since the first month)... This year we elected to give ourselves something to wear, protect us from the cold of reality:
2005 -- Ditto all the above, more or less Daily Bleed. 190,942 visitors to the Bleed's Calendar Archive. 61,904 visitors to the Anti-authoritarian Encyclopedia since March, 2001; 184 to our Stan Iverson Library since Nov 2002 (the counter has been stuck on this figure since the first month)... but 1,007 since we added a new counter June 1, 2005.No donations, no awards. Just chug, chug, chuggin' along,
2006 -- More of the same, only more. 254,212 visitors to the Bleed's Calendar since May of 2005. 84,468 visitors to the Anti-authoritarian Encyclopedia since March, 2001; 184 to our Stan Iverson Library since Nov 2002 (the counter has been stuck on this figure since the first month)... but 4,923 since we added a new counter June 1, 2005.Still chug, chug, chuggin' along,
"Scufflin' like ducks in the desert."
Them's the facts as we once knew them.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/0921-1.htm
3000 --
"The truth is more important than the facts. "
— Frank Lloyd Wright, architect (1868-1959)
"A good joke is the one ultimate & sacred thing which cannot be criticized. Our relations with a good joke are direct & even divine relations."
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton
4000 --
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