Daily Bleed: July 13, Brion Gysin, Toma Sik, Clifford Harper, Juana Belén, Marie Equi, Frida Kahlo, Sex Pistols, Ed Abbey, Emma Goldman ...

Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! & again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.

— William Wordsworth,

"Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye on a Tour, July 13, 1798"

JULY 13
COMPAY SEGUNDO
Cuban "Compadre," musician, songwriter, free spirit.

Border of France & Spain: FESTIVAL OF THE THREE COWS. Result of an ancient Basque blood feud in which French shepherds killed Spanish shepherds & were condemned to pay a blood tax in perpetuity, an elaborate ritual in which three cows are given to the Spanish Basques, followed by revelry.
http://www.cowswithguns.com/
FESTIVAL OF INNER WORLDS.

Swaziland: REED DANCE DAY.

Japan: OBON: Spirit of the deceased return home to visit their families. During the time also known as the Feast of Lanterns, huge bonfires in the shape of the character dai are burned on hillsides to bid farewell to the spirits of the dead who have come to revisit.

Paris: NIGHT WATCH. Torchlight processions, bands.

FOOL'S PARADISE DAY.

1380 -- Death of Bertrand Du Guesclin, Constable of France.

1568 -- Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral perfects a way to bottle beer.
Aluminum cans & plastic bottles lose market share.

God, indeed, moves in mysterious ways.

http://www.stpauligirl.com/

1573 -- Harlem surrenders to the Spanish army;
a massacre follows.

http://www.east-harlem.com/

1637 -- New Old World: Pequot War begins when colonists attack & murder 500 Pequot Indians; ends with the massacre of the tribe near Fairfield [Connecticut].

1773 -- Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, lives, Berlin. Writer & critic & originator, with his friend Ludwig Tieck, of some of the most important ideas of German Romanticism. In 1797, on Tieck's advice, his writings are published as Herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders ("Outpourings of an Art-Loving Monk").

1775 -- New Old World: Several canoes of Quinault Indians meet Spanish ship Sonora off coast of Olympic Peninsula [Washington]; problems arise, seven Quinault are killed.

1786 -- US: Northwest Ordinance enacted, stating,
"The utmost good faith shall always be observed toward the Indians...in their property, rights, & liberty they shall never be disturbed."

See Above, below, before & since.

1787 -- US: Congress outlaws slavery in Northwest Territories (present-day Upper Midwest).

1793 -- English poet John Clare lives, village of Helpston, England. He was 27 years old when his first book of poems made him famous overnight, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life & Scenery (1820). His later collections were never as popular & financial problems affected his health. He spent the final 23 years of his life in an asylum, writing some of his best poems.

1798 -- William Wordsworth, on a walking tour through the Wye Valley, visits the ruins of Tintern Abbey & a few miles farther on composes a poem about them.

1832 -- US: Source of Mississippi River discovered by Henry R. Schoolcraft.

1836 -- US: Patent #1 (after 9,957 unnumbered patents), for locomotive wheels. Apparently there were complaints about the square ones.

1852 -- Scotland: Author Thomas Babington Macaulay is elected M. P. for Edinburgh.

1854 -- Nicaragua: Sandinistas? US forces shell & burn San Juan del Norte. US ship Cyane shells & destroys the city of Greytown, in reprisal for an insult directed at the American Minister during a street fight.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Faces&Masks.htm;#1856Nicaragua

1859 -- England: Sidney Webb, economist, socialist, statesman, & a founder of the Fabian Society, lives, London. With his wife Beatrice, he wrote many books, including Decay of Capitalist Civilization & Soviet Communism: A New Civilization?

1863 -- US: Massive anti-draft protest in New York City.
... show details

Modern history's bloodiest riot began when a mob of 50,000 Civil War draft protesters burn buildings (including an orphan asylum), stores & draft offices, attack police. Some club, lynch & shoot large numbers of blacks, who they blame for the war.

Rioters were protesting the provision allowing true red-blooded flag-waving Americans to make cash payment in place of serving in the army (see 3 March).

When troops returning from Gettysburg finally restored order, 1,200 were dead.

You remember this from your school history books, right?

1868 -- US: Oscar J Dunn, former slave, installed as governor of Louisiana.

1869 -- US: Street riots against Chinese laborers begin in San Francisco.
Source: [Robert Braunwart]
[Hereafter attributed with symbol: ]

1876 -- Auguste Durand lives, in the Tarn. French antimilitarist, militant & Marseille revolutionary syndicalist.
[Details / context]

1881 -- Italy: Un gruppo di facinorosi attacca il corteo che porta la salma di Pio IX dalla Basilica di San Pietro alla tomba di San Lorenzo fuori le mura, minacciando di gettare la salma del pontefice nel Tevere. Le cosiddette forze dell'ordine dello stato italiano non intervengono che molto in ritardo.
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]

1892 -- US: Martial law imposed, Coeur D'Alene, Idaho. National Guard & federal troops are called out following the dynamiting at the Frisco mine two days ago (during the miners strike, April-July).
[Details / context]

1892 -- US: During the Homestead Strike, Alexander Berkman arrives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, intending to assassinate Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Henry Clay Frick. While in Pittsburgh he uses the name Rachmetov, a central character from Chernyshevsky's novel, What is to be Done.
[Details / context]

1894 -- Isaak Babel lives, Jewish ghetto of Odessa, Ukraine, where he grew up in an atmosphere of persecution, reflected in the pessimism of his stories. Russian short story writer/playwright. Served as a soldier in various Bolshevik campaigns.
... show details

In the early 1930s Babel's literary reputation was high but in the mid-1930s he was silenced under increasing Stalinist persecution.

In 1939 he was arrested, & died two years later (March 17, 1941?) in Stalin's paradise, a prison camp in Siberia. He was 'rehabilitated' in 1954.

See: Isaac Babel by P. Carden (1972); Isaac Babel by J.E. Falen (1974)
Wrote: Odessa Tales; Red Cavalry; Sunset; Collected Stories.

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/babel.htm

1901 -- Mickey "Toy Bulldog" Walker welterweight boxing champ (1922-26), lives.

1913 -- US: Due to her popular success last month, Emma Goldman is welcomed back to San Francisco to continue her lecture series.

Red Emma debates socialist Maynard Shipley, does a series on modern drama, & several talks on general topics including "The Relation of the Individual to Society" &, in Yiddish, "Should the Poor Have Many Children."

She notes that her lecture on "The Social Evil" attracted the biggest & most diverse audience.

1913 -- France: Maurice Pernette lives.
... show details

Anarchiste, small press publisher, author.

Wrote « Louis Mandrin, bandit d'honneur: capitaine général des contrebandiers » (M. Pernette, 1956); Editor, La Poussière du Temps ("The Dust of Time"; Poems by 14 workers; Limited edition of 1,000 copies; Editions "Les Poètes du Livre," 1939) Anonimo (siglantesi M.P. ovvero Maurice Pernette): due meno che amatoriali illustrazioni in guisa di frontespizio per Dorci, ou la Bizarrerie du sort suivi de Dialogue entre un prêtre et un moribond, (Paris, les cahiers de l'archipel, Maurice Pernette, novembre 1957) Also, "La révolution estudiantine" (1975)

http://www.la-presse-anarchiste.net/article.php3?id_article=617
http://openlibrary.org/...Poe%CC%80mes-condamne%CC%81s.

1916 -- Natalia Ginzburg lives, Palermo. One of Italy's best-regarded novelists & essayist, who has written of her unconventional family & its opposition against Fascist oppression.
... show details

On account of anti-Fascist activities she & her husband spent three years in "confinement," then allowed to move to Rome in 1943. Leone Ginzburg was arrested again, & was tortured to death.

Her son Carlo has published books on 16th-century religious radicalism & witchcraft.

Wrote: The Road to the City; Dead Yesterdays; I Married You for the Fun of It; Serena Cruz, or True Justice

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/nataliag.htm

1917 -- Brazil: A 3-day General Strike erupts in São Paulo following the killing of the anarchist shoemaker, Antonio Martinez, three days ago.
Martinez was killed police during a demonstration in support of textile strikers.

Transport is paralysed & much plundering occurs despite heavy repression. Today a Workers' Committee of Defense is formed, composed of six people, including the anarchists Edgard Leuenroth & Gigi Damiani, who present the demands of the workers for better working conditions; they are partially conceded.

[Details / context]

1918 -- Marcia Brown, three-time Caldecott Award winner, lives, Rochester, New York. Illustrator working in a variety of media including watercolors, wood blocks, & linoleum prints. Among the titles she wrote & illustrated: Cinderella, Once a Mouse, & Stone Soup.

1920 -- Italy: Trial in Milan (July 12 & 13) of the anarchists Guido Villa, Aldo Perego, Elena Melli & Maria Zibardi ends.
... show details

Villa & Perego are convicted for complicity in the bombing of the "Circolo dei Nobili ou au Caffè" (September 7, 1919).
(19-year-old Bruno Filippi was climbing the steps of the building where the "club of nobles" was located. He was carrying a bomb, hoping to destroy this meeting place for the richest people of the city.) With the primary culprit killed in the explosion, justice comes down heavy on his presumed accomplices: Perego gets 20 years & Villa 10 years in prison.

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/ArchiveMirror/terrorismesAnarchistes.htm

1923 -- Ashley F. Bryan, storyteller, lives. African American children's author, wrote Ashley Bryan's ABC of African American Poetry; Dancing Granny & The Cat's Purr..

1923 -- Date of the events in the Vanessa Redgrave movie "Mrs. Dalloway."

1925 -- Reporters covering the Broadway beat were most impressed by Will Rogers, an Oklahoma cowboy, who had been standing in for W.C. Fields on a temporary basis in the "Ziegfeld Follies."

1928 -- US: Using psychic powers, novelist Upton Sinclair's brother-in-law in Pasadena transmits the image of a fork to Sinclair's wife in Long Beach (described in Sinclair's book Mental Radio).

1933 -- Author David Storey lives, Wakefield, England. Wrote Saville (1976), an autobiographical account of a coal miner's son which won the Booker Prize.

1934 -- Wole Soyinka lives, Abeokuta, Western Nigeria. Playwright, poet, novelist, critic; first black African to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1986.
... show details

Imprisoned for criticizing fraudulent elections. Several writers, including Lillian Hellman & Robert Lowell, got him released. Jailed in 1967-69 during the Nigerian Civil War.
In 1972 went into exile. Despite government pressure, he was active in the Nigerian theater, satirizing corruption & the prosperity brought to Nigeria by the oil industry.

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/soyinka.htm

1935 -- Author Earl Lovelace lives, Toco, Trinidad.
... show details

West Indian novelist, short-story writer, & playwright celebrated for descriptive, dramatic fiction about West Indian culture.

His first novel, While Gods Are Falling (1965), featuring a protagonist who feels that only by returning to his remote village can he truly find himself, is highly acclaimed. Other books include The Schoolmaster (1968), & The Wine of Astonishment (1982), as well as several plays & collections of short stories.

1936 -- ‘Free jazz’ musician Albert Ayler lives, Cleveland, Ohio.
http://recollectionbooks.com/links.html#AlbertAyler

1942 -- US: Top-secret Manhattan Project to develop nuclear weapons begins, Chicago.
"Bomb songs expressed people’s political hopes & fears, their religion, & even their sexual fantasies. People boogied with the Bomb, & they prayed with the Bomb. Here is a cross-section of the best of that music, interspersed with short documentary news clips from the time. It is a reflection of an earlier, more innocent America trying to come to grips with the new atomic era. Just as important, it is a collection of seldom-heard vintage music which remains exciting & dynamic today."

— Charles Wolfe
... show details

SIDE ONE:

ATOM & EVIL by the Golden Gate Quartet
Audio Clip: Maj. Thomas Ferebee, "Enola Gay" bombardier, 08/15/45
WHEN THE ATOMB FELL by Karl & Harty
Audio Clips: President Harry S Truman, 08/09/45; Capt. Kermit Beehan, "Great Artiste" bombardier, 08/15/45
WIN THE WAR BLUES by Sonny Boy Williamson
Audio Clip: David E. Lilienthal, the first Chairman of the A.E.C.
ATOMIC POWER by the Buchanan Brothers
Audio Clip: Winston Churchill, 03/31/49
JESUS HITS LIKE AN ATOM BOMB by Lowell Blanchard & the Valley Trio
Audio Clip: Rep. James E. Van Zandt (Republican), Penn., 05/08/53
WHEN THEY DROP THE ATOMIC BOMB by Jackie Doll & His Pickled Peppers
ATOMIC SERMON by Billy Hughes & his Rhythm Buckeroos
OLD MAN ATOM by Sons of Pioneers
SIDE TWO:

URANIUM by The Commodores
50 MEGATONS by Sonny Russell
ATOM BOMB BABY by The Five Stars
SATELLITE BABY by Skip Stanley
ATOMIC COCKTAIL by Slim Gaillard Quartette
ATOMIC LOVE by Little Caesar with the Red Callendar Sextette
ATOMIC TELEPHONE by Spirits of Memphis Quartet
RED'S DREAM by Louisiana Red
The Songs That Got Away:

Jayne Loader: "There were some (songs) we never could find: "Atomic Polka" & "Atomic Boogie" & one amazing song called "Fallout Shelter," in the "Tell Laura I Love Her" genre; the father tells the son that he can't bring his girlfriend into the family fallout shelter, so the boy & girl leave the shelter & die in the streets."

Atomic Boogie (Pete Johnson, 1946) (2:37)
The paranoia of the late 40s & 50s led to similar songs in this vein: "Rock H-Bomb Rock," "Stalin Kicked the Bucket," "Uranium Fever," "Brush the Dust from That Old Bible," "No, No Joe" by Hank Williams, & "Tic, Tic, Tic" by Doris Day.
http://www.conelrad.com/atomic_cafe.html
http://web.archive.org/...publicshelter.com/main/tac.html

1942 -- Government Slaughterhouse: 15,000 Jews of Rovno, Polish Ukraine are executed by the Nazis. The SS shoots 1,500 Jews in Josefov, Poland. See 1991 below.

1942 -- México: Juana Belén Gutiérrez de Mendoza (b.1857) dies. Anarquista involved with the PLM, a lecturer, writer, & feminist, Juana Belén also participated in developing Zapata's Plan de Ayala (1911).
http://www.alasbarricadas.org/ateneovirtual/index.php?...Juana_Belen

1948 -- Belgrade: The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Republic of Yugoslav Macedonia adopted a resolution which charged the Bulgarian Communist Party with being "deeply chauvinistic."
http://www.corkscrew-balloon.com/travel/9807france/

1949 -- England: Clifford Harper lives, Chiswick, North London. Artist & self-described "committed anarchist."
[Details / context]

1952 -- Dr. Marie Equi (1872-1952) dies.
Equi was sent to prison during WWI for sedition (as were countless others opposing American involvement in one of Europe's bloodiest wars) under a newly amended Espionage Act.

The law "forbade criticism of the U.S. government, the constitution, the military, the flag, navy or uniform."

At her trial, Special Agent William Bryon called her "an anarchist, a degenerate, & an abortionist."

A lesbian & labor organizer, in her later years she recalled how she & her mother were spat upon in the streets of Portland during this period.

[Details / context]

1952 -- US: Series of UFO sightings begins in Washington, DC (-July 29). Actually just another day in Congress.

1953 -- US: l54.42 cm of rain falls in Ellsworth, Maine; Wilhelm Reich attributes it to his orgone-powered "Cloudbuster" rainmaker.

1954 -- Artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) dies.

1955 -- Ruth Ellis hung.

1960 -- US: Democratic National convention nominates Senator John F Kennedy, son of a prominent bootlegger & fascist sympathizer, for president.

1960 -- Italy: Lo stato, tramite un suo organo quale la Corte Costituzionale, dichiara legittimo il monopolio statale delle trasmissioni televisive. La manipolazione e l'indottrinamento possono continuare.
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]

1962 -- Russia: British Committee of 100 demonstrates against all nuclear weapons, Red Square, Moscow.

1963 -- Albert Steffen, dies in Dornach. Novelist & dramatist, president of the anthroposophical movement & editor of its review, Das Goetheanum, from 1921 to 1950. His Der Künstler zwischen Westen und Osten (The Artist Between West & East, 1925) is a book of essays, & Buch der Rückschau (1939) is autobiographical.

1963 -- Israel: No More Politicians? Raising of swine in Jewish settlements is prohibited by law.

1966 -- US: Eight of nine student nurses murdered, one by one, in a Chicago dormitory. Five days later, Corazon Amurao, the lone survivor, identified Richard Speck, who sported the tattoo "Born to Raise Hell," as the murderer.

1967 -- US: Newark Riot, July 12-16, continues. The rioting was set off yesterday when chess player, trumpet player, Army veteran, now cabdriver John Smith, a 40-year-old black, audaciously went around a double-parked police car.
http://www.67riots.rutgers.edu/n_index.htm

1968 -- Vietnam: Ulf R. "Ron" Heller arrives in South Vietnam. Serves in Battle of "Remington Raiders":
We don't retreat, we just backspace.

http://www.vietvet.org/vnbktoc.htm

1973 -- US: Existence of Beloved & Respected Comrade Used Car Salesman Dick m Nixon's White House tapes revealed & are the nail in his coffin.
... show details

Along with May/June disclosures of White House fun (wire-tapping, black bag jobs, domestic spying, paid attacks on antiwar protesters, dirty tricks, Huston Plan, illegal bombings in Cambodia, & lying to Congress about it all, Agnew forced out in disgrace & reports of Nixon's tax evasion & shady financial deals), Nixon was again drinking heavily & on the verge of mental collapse.

1973 -- The Everly Brothers break up on stage during a concert at Knott's Berry Farm when Phil smashes his guitar & storms off stage.
http://www.everly.net/

1973 -- Lon Chaney, Jr. dies at 67.

1977 -- US: New York City blackout, July 13-14th. Much looting.

Inspired by newspaper accounts of New York's own...mental failure, emotional breakdown...

"Get me off the streets, get me on my feet"...

"Nothing to lose, nothing to gain"...

— David Bowie, "Blackout," From the promotional album 'Bowie Now'

http://blackout.gmu.edu/archive/a_1977.html

1978 -- England: BBC bans the Sex Pistols' "No One is Innocent."

1978 -- Court martial begins in USSR for Valeri Sablin (Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October).

1984 -- Sportscaster Howard Cosell said that he was "tired of being tied to the football mentality" & asked to be released from duties on "Monday Night Football." Roone Arledge obliged. In fact, Cosell was removed from all television a year later.

1985 -- "Live Aid," a 17-hour rock concert broadcast on radio & TV from London, England & Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to 152 countries, raises $70 million famine relief in Africa.
... show details

Organized by Boomtown Rats lead singer Bob Geldof & features dozens of major acts — Baez, Bowie, Dylan, Jagger, McCartney, Elton John, Tina Turner take part (previously did USA for Africa with "We Are the World"). It's estimated the shows were either watched or listened to by an audience of one & a half billion. Dylan performs a rather drunken set with Keith Richards & Ron Wood of The Rolling Stones. & the people in Africa? Still starving ..... but hey ... great show!

http://www.bobdylan.com/

1986 -- Painter, cut-up writer, Brion Gysin dies.
Daily Bleed Patron Saint, 2005-2008
Innovative painter, inventor of cut-up writing technique.
... show details

Burroughs' extensive use of cut-ups in Nova Express, The Ticket That Exploded, & other books made the method highly controversial in the literary world. There was talk to the effect that Brion was a bad influence, a keef-crazed, razor-wielding, dada-spouting anarchist whose high-art theorizing was corrupting an authentic American voice. In time, cut-ups became enshrined as an alternative strategy for dealing with words, studied & employed by poets & novelists & even playing a part in pop music, as a lyric-writing aid or inspiration for, among others, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Mick Jagger & Keith Richards.

http://www.wendtroot.com/spoetry/folder4/ng45.html
http://www.topfoto.co.uk/gallery/beathotel/default.htm

The cut-up method brings to writers the collage, which has been used by painters for fifty years. & used by the moving & still camera. In fact all street shots from movie or still cameras are by the unpredictable factors of passersby & juxtaposition cut-ups. & photographers will tell you that often their best shots are accidents . . . writers will tell you the same.

— William S. Burroughs, THE CUT-UP METHOD OF BRION GYSIN, from The Third Mind

1986 -- Nicaragua: Symposium on the State, Autonomy & Indigenous Rights opens, Managua.

1988 -- Sting performs his 1st Rainforest benefit concert.

1989 -- US: Nurses' local 1199 goes on strike in Seattle, Washington area.

1991 -- US: Chicago police chief calls for suspension of constitutional rights so police can fight crime & praises the "low crime rate" of Nazi Germany. For fine example, see 1942 above.

1993 -- US: The word penis appears in 30-point type in the NY Times.

1995 -- Canada: Road Kill? Montreal policemen convicted of beating a cab driver to death are sentenced to 60-90 days in jail, to be served on weekends.

1995 -- US: Workers strike the "Detroit News" & the "Detroit Free Press."

1996 -- England: A Real Jam?: 7,000 Anti-Roads protesters take to the roads, take over the A41 motorway in London to stage a huge all-day street party.
Probably not what Merle Haggard had in mind when singing "White Line Fever."

http://www.mcspotlight.org/campaigns/current/mcspotlight/rts.html
http://rts.gn.apc.org/sp'96/spphoto.htm

1996 -- Arthur C. Clarke completes his novel 3001: The Final Odyssey. Couldn't wait until 3001.

1996 -- Germany: 500,000 attend Berlin's "Love Parade" outdoor festival.

1998 -- US: Kiowa Indian Tribe of Oklahoma v. Hoover; a landmark decision enforcing the boundaries of the Kiowa Nation, is handed down today. Better late than never.
http://www.indians.org/welker/kiowa.htm

1999 -- Beloved & Respected comrade Leader Gov. Pedro Rossello asks the UN to declare Puerto Rico an American colony.

2000 -- Fiji: Terrorists release their 18 hostages in exchange for naming the next government.

2001 -- US: Reality TV? TV movie "World War III" premiers on Fox. Fox gets the scoop. Again.

2003 -- Buena Vista Social Club guitarist Compay Segundo dies, Havana, Cuba.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2dFLlaEaIU
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3064557.stm

2004 -- Hungary: Toma Ŝik (1939-2004) dies. Hungarian-Israeli antimilitarist, pacifist, anti-Zionist, anarchist. Pioneer of the Israeli-Palestinian search for peace, a forerunner of the present day pacifist-refuseniks. His non-doctrinaire libertarian socialist politics & strong vegan life style were almost unique in the Israel of the 70s & 80s. Today they are embodied in part in the work of groups like Ma'avak Ehad (‘One Struggle’).
http://www.ainfos.ca/04/jul/ainfos00494.html
http://indymedia.org.il/article/2004/7/toma-sik-dead
http://libcom.org/history/articles/1939-2004-toma-sik/
http://www.wri-irg.org/news/2004/toma-en.htm

3000 --

"Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hard-headed realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, & county commissioners."
— Ed Abbey

Quotes from Anarchists