unserious-seeming goings-on,
& some seem to come by wing,
wheeling,
saying things as worms would,
putting stories between much railing,
& getting leather by language,
but some are always jumping
as if they were letting potatoes get bad
or seeing something that seems to be wax,
& some are being brothers to some others,
& some are doing waiting,
& some are being flies,
& some are putting in languages other than English.
Finally some give eggs to someone loose or seem to do so,
& some go about being units.
— Jackson Mac Low, "20th Dance — Going About Between & Through Unserious-Seeming Goings-On," 2 March 1964, from The Pronouns — A Collection of 40 Dances — For the Dancers
"TOOTIE" MONTANA
New Orleans carnival chief, political activist.
Alternate Saint from the Jubilee Saints Calendar:
PHILIP K. DICK
Neo-Gnostic sci-fi genius, cultural rebel.
Alternate Alternate Saint from the Jubilee Saints Calendar:
MARGARET MEAD
American anthropologist, guru of sex roles & culture.
Mexico: First of eight nights of Posadas, the children's Christmas festival. Processions, singing, & breaking piñatas.
Aztec Malinalli Day; The protector of day Malinalli (Grass) is Patecatl. This day signifies tenacity,rejuvenation, that which cannot be uprooted forever. Malinalli is a day for persevering against all odds & for creating alliances that will survive the test of time. It is a good day for those who are suppressed, a bad day for their suppressors.
1431 -- France: 10-year-old King Henry VI of England is crowned king of France, Paris. Not too confused...& to think, the lad hasn't even got a driver's license yet.
[Source: Robert Braunwart]
[Hereafter noted with symbol: ]
1770 -- Composer Lud Beethoven lives, Bonn, Germany.
1773 -- US: No WTO? Boston Tea Party celebration, Boston, Massachusetts — blatant terrorism & violation of property rights.
Glorifies the destruction of property by vandals — & inspire "Eugene anarchists" during WTO protests in Seattle 1999.
American vandals patriotic colonists, dressed as American Indians, sneaked aboard a British cargo ship & dumped its load of teas overboard, in protest of the heavy taxes placed by the British on their American exports.
1787 -- Mary Russell Mitford lives, Alresford, Hampshire. English dramatist/poet/essayist, chiefly remembered for sketches of English village life. The sketches published in "The Ladies Magazine" from 1819, fill five volumes of Our Village.
1811 -- US: At the Mississippi River Valley near New Madrid, Missouri, the greatest series of earthquakes in U.S. history begins when a quake of an estimated 8.6 magnitude on the Richter scale rocks the region.
Although the earthquake greatly changed the topography of the region, the area was only sparsely inhabited at the time & there were no known fatalities. The earthquake raised & lowered parts of the Mississippi Valley by as much as 15 feet, changed the course of the Mississippi River, & actually caused the river to momentarily reverse its direction, giving rise to Reelfoot Lake in northwest Tennessee.
1835 -- US: Most of New York City consumed by a fire which destroyed 650 buildings. The estimated $22 million loss bankrupted most NY insurance companies, precipitating the Depression of 1837.
1851 -- Earliest specific date in Willa Cather novel Death Comes for the Archbishop.
1863 -- George Santayana lives. Philosopher, he supported Franco's fascist takeover of Spain.
History is always written wrong, & so always needs to be rewritten."
1871 -- France: Louise Michel, a 36-year-old popular communard & teacher, is brought to trial by the Versailles Government. She is accused of:
1. Trying to overthrow the government.
2. Encouraging citizens to arm themselves.
3. Possession & use of weapons, & wearing a military uniform.
4. Forgery of a document.
5. Using a false document.
6. Planning to assassinate hostages.
7. Illegal arrests, torturing & killing.
For her heroic role in the Paris Commune, Louise was sent to a prison colony & spent four months locked in a cage on a prison ship with Natalie Lemel, who converted her to anarchism. Later she was allowed to educate the Kanak children of New Caledonia where she was exiled. France granted amnesty in 1880, but Louise moved to England when she discovered a plot to have her committed to an insane asylum.
After an assassin attempted to take her life, she defended him in court, claiming "he was misled by an evil society."
1872 -- Spain: The Congress of Cordoue unanimously adopts the positions of the anarchist l'internationale Anti-autoritaire de Saint Imier, in opposition to the Marxist First International. http://struggle.ws/spain/pam_intro.html
1878 -- Karl Gutzkow dies in Sachsenhausen, Frankfurt am Main. First a journalist, he first attracted attention with the publication of Maha Guru: Geschichte eines Gottes in 1833.
1878 -- France: Amédée Dunois lives (d. 1945). Anarchist militant, communist, & then a revolutionary socialist trade unionist. Arrested by the Nazis & sent to Bergen-Belsen, he died March 21, 1945. He is the author of several works of history (in particular on the Paris Commune) & of the chapter "Marxism & socialism" in Sébastien Faure's Anarchist Encyclopaedia.
photo courtesy Ephéméride Anarchiste
1893 -- US: At a benefit concert & ball held in New York City for Emma Goldman & others imprisoned for speaking at an August 21 demonstration, Voltairine de Cleyre delivers a speech , "In Defense of Emma Goldman & the Right of Expropriation."
Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1912) was an American anarchist / feminist writer & theorist. She is the person who, in response to U.S. Senator Joseph R. Hawley's offer of $1000 to have a shot at an anarchist, said:
"You may, by merely paying your carfare to my home, shoot at me for nothing — but if payment of the $1000 is a necessary part of your proposition, then when I have given you the shot, I will give the money to the propaganda of the idea of a free society in which there shall be neither assassins nor presidents, beggars nor senators."
1902 -- Poet Rafael Alberti lives, Puerto de Santa María, Spain, of Italian-Irish ancestry. One of the major Spanish poets of the last century.
1902 -- US: Aisle See You There? Majestic Theater, New York, ushers in a new era by becoming first in US to employ women ushers.
LABOR
1906 -- US: Emma Goldman lectures on "False & True Conceptions of Anarchism" before the Brooklyn Philosophical Association.
1907 -- The "Great White Fleet," comprising most of the US Navy, is sent by Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Ted Roosevelt on a world cruise, principally to show Japan, whose laborers he just excluded from the US, how powerful & large his is.
1908 -- Spain: Remedios Varo lives (d.1963). Surrealist artist & anarchist. Member of the art group Logicophobiste, active in the Spanish Revolution, companion of poet Benjamin Péret with whom she escaped to Mexico, & later became the companion of the surrealist painter Gunther Gerzso.
When you have consumed all the broth, run to the bed & jump between the prepared sheets, quickly take the clothespins & put one on each big toe. These clothespins must be worn all night, firmly pressed to the nails, at a 45 degree angle from the toes.
This simple recipe guarantees good results, & normal people can proceed pleasantly from a kiss to strangulation, from rape to incest, etc., etc.
Recipes for more complicated cases, such as necrophilia, autophagia, tauromachia, alpinism, & others, can be found in a special volume in our collection of Discreetly Healthy Advice.
— Remei Lissaraga Varo, excerpt, "A Recipe: How to Produce Erotic Dreams"
1910 -- England: "Houndsditch Murders," in London's East End.
Three policemen are shot dead & two others seriously wounded by a gang of Latvian anarchists who bungle a jewellery shop burglary. Investigators focus on the Anarchist Club in Jubilee Street & Malatesta is wrongly implicated. Prelude to the "Sidney Street Siege" in January.
1913 -- Charlie Chaplin begins his film career at Keystone for $150 a week. [More than BleedMeister makes almost a hundred years later...but I'm catching up.]
1913 -- US: Despite warnings by the Paterson, N.J., police forbidding Emma Goldman from speaking, she addresses members of the IWW on "The Spirit of Anarchism in the Labor Struggle." Emma is forced off the platform.
Audience members engage in battle with the cops to release her. Just like a rock concert!
Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, "Labor history in the US is treated like pornography."
1915 -- Melvin Edward Alton “Turk” Murphy lives, Palermo, California.
Turk began playing in Frisco dance bands as early as 1930. In 1939 he teamed with the legendary Lu Watters, joining Waters’ Yerba Buena Jazz Band which began a steady engagement at the Dawn Club in the basement of the Monadnock Building on Market between Third & Annie streets.
In 1960, he opened his first “Earthquake McGoon’s” on Broadway, named for the then-popular Al Capp cartoon character.
1917 -- Cuba: Government declares war on Austria (WWI). Österreicher fangen shakin in ihren Aufladungen/Austriacos comienzan el shakin en sus cargadores/Austrians begin shakin in their boots.
1920 -- China: One of the deadliest earthquakes in history hits the Gansu province of western China, causing massive landslides & the deaths of over 200,000 people. The earthquake, which measures an 8.5 magnitude on the Richter scale, affects an area of some 25,000 square miles, including ten major cities.
1922 -- USSR: Strip-Tease Party? Lenin has a stroke that leaves him partially paralyzed. After recovering somewhat, Lenin plans a Party congress scheduled for April 1923 in which he plans to denounce Stalin publically & strip him of all power.
1928 -- Science-fiction great Philip K. Dick lives. American science fiction writer par excellence.
Author of Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, Crack in Space, Man in the High Castle, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Time Out of Joint, etc.
"I always feared that my own TV set or iron or toaster would, in the privacy of my apartment, when no one else was around to help me, announce to me that they had taken over, & here was a list of rules I was to obey."
1939 -- China: Mass demonstration against the Japanese by the students of Peking.
[Source: K.S. Karol]
1944 -- General Ike D. Eisenhower's clerk Rickey marries corporal Pearlie.
1944 -- Belgium: Nazi forces create a large bulge in the Allied front of the Ardennes Forest with a surprise counter-attack. Hitler masterminded the attack against his general's advice, in the hope of splitting Allied ground forces near Germany's border.
1944 -- On or about today the first number appears, of the newspaper "Le Rebelle", organe de combat et d'expression libertaire. Published without authorization, it changes its name to "L'Insurgé" (The Insurrectionist) in December 1945. http://ytak.club.fr/decembre3.html En-tête du numéro 7 de juin-juillet 1946
1955 -- NATO decides to equip forces with nuclear weapons.
1956 -- US: Cardinal Francis Spellman, the Archbishop of New York, personally denounced the yet-to-be released movie "Baby Doll," saying Catholics would be committing a sin if they saw it. The flock flocks.
1960 --
Long Voyage...
16 to 26 Exhibition of the tapestry The Long Voyage (14 x 1.8m) by Asger Jorn & Pierre Wemaëre, Quatre Saisons Gallery, Paris.
1961 -- US: Martin Luther King, Jr., 266 others arrested in Albany, Georgia.
1962 -- US: Only man ever to reach the mainland alive after an escape from Alcatraz Prison emerges from San Francisco Bay, immediately captured by waiting authorities.
1965 -- US: Long Arm of the Law? In Seattle, Washington Juvenile Court, Judge Stanley C. Soderland orders haircuts for three boys accused of burglaries. The young men, two aged 17, one 15, are chastised by the judge, who likens their looks to that of young girls.
"If you think you're being cute with that long hair," bellowed the judge, "you're wrong!
You may think you are showing yourselves as rebels but you just look ridiculous. Why don't you go all the way & wear skirts & paint your faces?"
Did anyone point out the silly dressing gown the judge was wearing?
1966 -- US: The Diggers' "Death of Money & Rebirth of the Haight Parade," Frisco, California. Anarchists don't have no money nohow anyhow... http://www.diggers.org/chronology.htm
1967 -- Second annual Grope for Peace at the Straight Theatre, Frisco.
1968 -- Spain: Hasty Decision? The order expelling Jews from country imposed by Queen Isabella in 1492 is revoked.
1970 -- Poland: Pacification of Polish coastal cities where workers rebel against high prices; the Communist army & police shoot shipyard workers, killing over 50 (among the victims are soldiers who refuse to shoot people): officially, 47 are killed; independent sources claim 147 are killed in Szczecin (ger. Stettin) alone.
1976 -- US: Government flu inoculation program halted after 535 cases of Guillain-Barre Syndrome (& numerous deaths) result.
1976 -- George, a goose that lived to 49 years 8 months, dies returning from the evening meal. His last mortal words: "I'm stuffed."
1977 -- Italy: Nell'ottobre 1975 il processo si conclude senza né suicidio né omicidio ma con l'allucinante verdetto di malore attivo. Il Pinelli secondo la giustizia si sarebbe sentito male e avvicinatosi alla finestar con attorno 6 persone sarebbe inavvertitamente scivolato. Cosa impossibile perchè il baricentro della sua altezza(1,67 m) era inferiore all'altezza della ringhiera (97 cm).In pochi credono a quella sentenza il 16-12-77 con un corteo i democratici e dli antifascisti milanesi portano per ricordare Pinelli una lapide in piazza Fontana dove si trova tuttora. http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/PinelliGiuseppe.htm
1980 -- Harland "Colonel" Sanders, McChickens out, slow-roasted to perfection at 90. Dies returning from the evening meal.
1983 -- Columnist Lars-Erik Nelson after checking the citations on all 434 Congressional Medal of Honor awarded during World War II, reveals that not one of them matches the story acting President Reagan told the other day. "It's not true," writes Nelson. "It didn't happen. It's a Reagan story . . . The President of the United States went before an audience of 300 real Congressional Medal of Honor winners & told them about a make-believe Medal of Honor winner."
Responds Reagan's man, Larry Speakes, "If you tell the same story five times, it's true."
1988 -- US: Political cult leader Lyndon LaRouche convicted of tax, mail fraud. Set-up, like a bowling pin, by the Queen of England.
1990 -- Haiti: Populist priest Jean Aristide elected President despite extensive U.S. assistance to his opposition.
1991 -- Canada: Indian Affairs Minister announces "final" agreement with the Inuit of the eastern Arctic, creating the new native-run Territory of Nunavut.
When details are worked out three years later, it develops that natives will only control land deemed not to be of commercial or military value to Canadian government.
1991 -- Belgium: Papal Bull...? Activists in Brussels, protesting Vatican funding for an observatory desecrating sacred Apache site at Mount Graham, Arizona, pull a bulldozer up to a prominent local cathedral.
1991 -- US: A drunk driver hits a truck carrying 5 tons of nuclear fuel, Massachusetts. Should have used this guy to find Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq.
1994 -- Russian General Babichev refuses orders to kill Chechen civilians.
1996 -- Thailand: The torching of two Sanyo Universal Electric PLC buildings after negotiations over year-end bonuses broke down stirs fears about Thailand's record of "harmonious" labor relations.
The increasingly open conflictuality has been officially documented.
"The Labor Ministry recorded 1,075 labor disputes in 1995, with 74 of them resulting in strikes or lockouts while in 1991 there were 495
disputes & 63 work stoppages.
The confrontations are becoming sharper as well. For example, a strike against Japanese motorcycle manufacturer Suzuki's Thai operations shut it down for three months"
(Far Eastern Economic Review, 1/9/97).
1996 --
"I am looking to the day when I will not have my personal identity celebrated as one of a handful of revolutionaries selected to be on a calendar, but will be honored as one among countless thousands, whose contributions will be continually evaluated & repeated."
— Herman Bell, Black Liberation Army prisoner; statement for the North American Anarchist Black Cross calendar, 1996.
1997 -- Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Billy Clinton names his Labrador retriever, "Buddy" (after his penis "Good Buddy.")
1998 -- William Gaddis dies. His first novel The Recognitions (1955), rich in language & imagery, was met with controversy, & Gaddis published nothing for 20 years. A second novel, JR (1975), uses long stretches of cacophonous dialogue to depict greed, hypocrisy, & banality of the American business world. Gaddis' third novel, Carpenter's Gothic is even more pessimistic in its depiction of moral chaos in modern American society.
"Breakage. Here, replacing glass, repairing doors, painting, refinishing & so forth, thirty-three thousand two eighty-five. Thirty-three thousand dollars for breakage, isn't that what we're really talking about? Plain unvarnished vandalism? & another fourteen thousand plus item down here, repairs & replacement, chairs, desks, project tables, pianos, same thing isn't it? Breakage. . . ?"
The day on which a libidinal American President, counting the hours before his impeachment, launched yet another series of bomb attacks on an Iraqi population already unconscionably squeezed & starved, America's
most proficient satirist died....
2000 -- US: The president of the Florida Holocaust Museum recently noted that George W. Bush's grandfather derived a portion of his personal fortune through his affiliation with a Nazi-controlled bank.
John Loftus, former prosecutor in the Justice Department's Nazi War Crimes Unit, said Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a principal in the Union Banking Corp. in the late 1930s & the 1940s.
Leading Nazi industrialists secretly owned the bank & were moving money into it through a second bank in Holland even after the US declared war. The bank was liquidated in 1951 & Bush's grandfather & great-grandfather received $1.5 million as part of that dissolution. That money flows into American politics today, Loftus said, from "a series of multinational corporations behaving like pirates. They don't care about ideology; they care about money."
"That's where the Bush family fortune came from: It came from the Third Reich."
Loftus is the author of Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis & the Swiss Banks, documenting the Swiss bank accounts that harbored funds confiscated from Holocaust victims & the participation of Italian Catholic priests in smuggling Nazi war criminals to safe haven in Canada, Central & South America & the United States after the war.
See also Ted Kane's recent letter to a Very Small Bush regards current opportunism in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Oddly there are some who believe that as his "stature" rises with the media & general public, Bush keeps getting morally & politically smaller (impossible!? some quirk in physics?)
"The streets are safe in Philadelphia,
it's only the people who make them unsafe."
— Frank Rizzo, Philadelphia Police Chief, Philosopher King
Welcome to Seattle, WTO, 1999:
Anarchy in Oz, Favorite Anarchist sites
anti-CopyRite 1997-3000, more or less Subscribe to daily email excerpts/updates (include 'subscribe bleed' in subject field), or send questions, suggestions, additions, corrections to: BleedMeister David Brown
anarchist, labor, &radical booksSee also: Anarchist Encyclopedia http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/gallery/galleryindex.htm Stan Iverson Memorial Library http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/ Anarchist Time Line / Chronology http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/indexTimeline.htm
[About Jackson Mac Low]
"TOOTIE" MONTANA
Aztec Malinalli Day; The protector of day Malinalli (Grass) is Patecatl. This day signifies tenacity,rejuvenation, that which cannot be uprooted forever. Malinalli is a day for persevering against all odds & for creating alliances that will survive the test of time. It is a good day for those who are suppressed, a bad day for their suppressors.
]
France: Amédée Dunois lives (d. 1945). Anarchist militant, communist, & then a revolutionary socialist trade unionist. Arrested by the Nazis & sent to Bergen-Belsen, he died March 21, 1945. He is the author of several works of history (in particular on the Paris Commune) & of the chapter "Marxism & socialism" in Sébastien Faure's Anarchist Encyclopaedia.
US: Emma Goldman lectures on "False & True Conceptions of Anarchism" before the Brooklyn Philosophical Association.
