The Daily Bleed: Julien Toublet, Maurice Vlaminck, Jules Thomas, Émile Armand, Dorothea Dix, Lautremont, Elisee Reclus, Tristan Tzara, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, William G. Greene, et a, What Happened on this day, in recovered history April 4

listen, you will
hear the deafening song of the stars
a silence brilliant & ringing as ice
a lovesong, it seems, made out of no love
and no song,
& the earth here to hear it.

— Tobey Hiller, "Night"

APRIL 4
DOROTHEA DIX
Advocate of humane treatment for so-called "mentally ill."

Ancient Rome: FESTIVAL OF THE MAGNA OF PHRYGIA,
a reliquary embodied in a small meteorite. An ecstatic procession with the magna mater in a chariot drawn by lions, castrated priests leaping & dancing & gashing themselves to a din of Flutes, cymbals & drums.

1581 -- Queen Elizabeth dines on board the "Pelican," the ship in which Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the World, &, after dinner, knighted him.

1774 -- Asked on his deathbed if his mind is at ease Oliver Goldsmith, 45, replies: "No it is not." The poet, novelist, playwright, & member of Samuel Johnson's circle is regarded by friends, somewhat erroneously, as an oaf. Says Dr. Johnson:
"No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had."

1802 -- US: Dorothea Dix lives, Hampden, Maine.
We All Are Born Mad.
Some Remain So.
Reformist, who called attention to "the present state of Insane Persons confined . . . in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens! Chained, naked, beaten with rods, & lashed into obedience!"

1812 -- England: Luddite Riots at Stockport; Mr Goodwin's steam-looms destroyed.
Source: [Luddite Chronology]

1819 -- US: William G. Greene lives. A cofounder of the Modern Times anarchist colony, founded in NY, along with Josiah Warren & Stephen Pearl Andrews.
See Kenneth Rexroth's chapter on Josiah Warren in Communalism.
See also "The Lemonade Ocean & Modern Times" by Hakim Bey,
http://www.evolutionzone.com/kulturezone/bey/lemonade.ocean.and.modern.times.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_B._Greene

1841 -- US: Live like him? After serving only one month, William Henry Harrison sets sterling example — becoming the first American president to die in office. Cheap excuse to get out of work. But we wish more would be inspired by his exemplary example.

1846 -- Lautréamont lives, Montevideo. Poet of outrage & terror. In French, see Raoul Vaneigem's "Isidore Ducasse et le Comte de Lautréamont dans les Poésies,"
http://library.nothingness.org/articles/all/fr/display/72

1862 -- Russia: Kropotkin during this month (I don't have exact day — ed.), finally leaves Irkutsk & returns to St. Petersburg.
Although he had left military service, Peter could not bring himself to leave government service. He became a member of the Central Statistical Committee. This position required very little work & allowed him to concentrate on work for the Geographic Society. He also enrolled in the university, but did not complete the requirements for graduation due to financial concerns.

1868 -- Japan: US troops again land in Japan during the Meiji Restoration (-May 12).

1870 -- US: Golden Gate Park established in Frisco, California by City Order #800.

1871 -- France: Tentative establishment of Commune in Limoges; meanwhile, the army attacks the Commune of Marseille.
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Les Fédérés de la Commune menèrent des combats contre les troupes versaillaises, pendant lesquels Élisée Reclus est fait prisonnier, le 4 avril 1871. La Commune fut affaiblie, par la suite, dans cette lutte par les dissensions politiques et des erreurs sur le plan économique. Les troupes versaillaises entrèrent dans Paris, le 21 mai et mirent fin à la Commune par un véritable carnage : la Semaine Sanglante suivit du 22 au 28 mai.

http://lycee.reclus.free.fr/Communard.htm

1871 -- France: Paris Communards take the archbishop of Paris hostage.

1876 -- Maurice Vlaminck lives (d.1958). Artist & a founder of Fauvism. A racing cyclist as a young man. In 1900 he met André Derain & began to paint seriously, earning his living by playing the violin. At this time he also contributed to anarchiste magazines. Like Derain, a fascist collaborator during WWII.
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"Many modernists — including Pablo Picasso, Frantißek Kupka, Maurice Vlaminck, & Kees van Dongen — thought anarchist politics to be inherent in the idea of an artistic avant-garde & created new formal languages expressive of their desire to effect revolutionary changes in art & society. Yet while Fauvism, Cubism, & Orphism radically altered the art of this century, the social-esthetic theories that nurtured some of their most significant manifestations were discredited by the decline of the anarchist movement after 1914, the rightward swing of political discourse during & after the war, & the concurrent advent of a resolutely apolitical formalist art criticism. Thus a "revolutionary esthetics" — a "politics of form" — played a crucial role in the development of modern art in prewar France, but its significance was first suppressed & then forgotten."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_de_Vlaminck
http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/016_02/3858
See also "Cubism, Futurism, Anarchism: The 'Aestheticism' of the "Action d'art" Group, 1906-1920" by Mark Antliff, Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 21, No. 2 (1998), pp. 101-120.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1360616?uid=3739856&uid;=2&uid;=4&uid;=3739256&sid;=21101975148031
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kees_van_Dongen

1877 -- First home telephone installed.

1892 -- US: Jules Thomas (1839-1892) dies. A French Icarien, Parisian Communard, Blanquist. Thomas fled to NY, with the defeat of the Paris Commune, where he was a founder of the "Société des réfugiés de la Commune." It was here too that he became an anarchist following his reading of Peter Kropotkin.

1892 -- Edith Södergran lives (1892-1923) . Pioneer of poetry in Swedish language in Finland, died of lung disease. Södergran had a significant impact on Nordic poetry, especially 1920s Finnish modernism. Comparable as a modernizer of poetry only to Katri Vala, Edith Södergran became one of the most loved Nordic writers. "Jag längtar till landet som icke är,
ty allting som är, är jag trött att begära."

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

1892 -- Italy: Tiene, nella sede del “Consolato operaio” di Milano, una conferenza dal titolo “Socialismo legalitario e socialismo anarchico” dove chiarisce le posizioni critiche dell’anarchismo nei confronti del socialismo “riformista” giudicandolo autoritario e parlamentarista.
http://www.nelvento.net/addio-lugano.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qF2O48B_Dk

1893 --

Canada: Looney Tunes?? The new Ontario Legislature opens in Queen's Park, Toronto, built on the site of a lunatic asylum.

Animated Émile Henry Groupe button

1894 -- France: In Paris, during the trial of Émile Henry, a bomb explodes at the Foyot restaurant. The libertarian writer Laurent Tailhade, who was there by chance, lost an eye in the explosion. The anarchiste Louis Matha was suspected of being the author of the attack, but no proof could be found against him.

1896 -- Playwright Robert E. Sherwood (The Petrified Forest; Abe Lincoln in Illinois) lives, New Rochelle, New York.

1900 -- Belgium: Near miss: Prince of Wales escapes anarchist assassination attempt. 16-year-old Jean-Baptiste Sipido takes two shots at the Prince in a Brussels railway station in protest against the Boer War. Apprehended, but acquitted 5 July.
Source: 'Calendar Riots'

1905 -- India: Earthquake in Kangra kills 370,000.

1912 -- France: Émile Armand assumes the editorship of "L’Anarchie", from April 4th, 1912 to September of this year.
See Armand's article, "A Visit to L'Anarchie," at the Stan Iverson Memorial Archives,
http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/

[Details / context]

1913 -- Edward Dowden dies in Dublin, Ireland. Shakespeare critic, Shelley scholar, Whitman discoverer & friend.

1914 -- Marguerite Duras lives (1914-1996), Gia Dinh, Indochina (Vietnam).

French novelist, representative of nouveau roman, screenwriter, scenarist, playwright, & film director, internationally known for her screenplays of Hiroshima Mon Amour, directed by Alain Resnais (1959) & India Song. She was also a member of the French Resistance during the German occupation. Other titles include The Sea Wall; The Ravishing of Lol Stein; Destroy, She Said.

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

1914 -- US: Unemployed riot in Union Square, NYC.

1915 -- Blues guitarist Muddy Waters lives.
http://www.muddywaters.com/
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/muddy-waters-mn0000608701

1915 -- US: A blurb in The New York Times (April 4, 1915) lists a petition of bankruptcy filed against John Rompapas Books & Postcards at 325 Madison Street in New York.
John Rompapas founded Rabelais Press, a New York radical publishing house that funded the "Revolutionary Almanac", a journal edited by the notorious anarchist, Hippolyte Havel.

[Details / context]

1917 -- Russia: Lenin presents his April Theses to a Bolshevik committee, which rejects them (Apr. 17 NS); also the new government grants equality to Jews, for the first time in Russian history.

1919 -- The Bavarian Soviet Republic is proclaimed (-May 1)

1919 -- The Philippines demands independence from the US.

1922 -- Finally obtaining temporary German visas, Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman travel to Berlin.

1928 -- Maya Angelou lives, St. Louis, Missouri. African-American poet whose autobiographical work explores economic, racial, & sexual oppression themes. Her first work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), is followed by Gather Together in My Name (1974), The Heart of a Woman (1981), & All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986).
http://mayaangelou.com/

1933 -- US: Dirigible Akron II crashes, killing 73 at the New Jersey coast, near where, four years later, the Hindenburg explodes & kills 36.

1937 -- England: In Bristol Emma Goldman speaks in the afternoon to a conference of ILP delegates & in the evening on "The Relation of the Church in Spain with Fascism" at a meeting arranged by the local ILP.
Also during this month in her correspondence with the Spanish comrades Emma criticizes the C.N.T. [Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo, the anarcho-syndicalist labor union, which is the largest union in Spain] for collaborating ('pajaros carpinteros') with the Communists & accepting Soviet support; publicly she remains an unwavering supporter.

1945 -- Daniel Cohn-Bendit lives — to laugh in the face of cops, Montaubanin (the south of France).

http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/Bendit/benditbio.html
http://www.elmundo.es/larevista/num132/textos/fue2.html

1950 -- US: Longshoremen's union leader Harry Bridges is convicted of lying when he denied being a Communist.

1955 -- Australia & UK agree to establish nuclear testing ground, Maralinga, South Australia.

1957 -- Creator of the original Internet Literary Calendar (began in Japan in 1995), Timothy Ervin, lives, with little fanfare.
[More information]

1958 -- England: 4,000 begin first of what becomes eleven consecutive annual Easter protest marches from London to Aldermaston AWRE spy base in England. The march arrived three days later.

1964 -- Billboard reports, "just about everyone is tired of Beatles. Disc jockeys are tired of playing the hit group, the writers of trade & consumer publications are tired of writing about them & the manufacturers of products other than Beatles records are tired of hearing about them. Everyone's tired of the Beatles — except the listening & buying public."

1967 -- US: Martin Luther King, Jr., preaches against Vietnam War & calls for common cause between civil rights & anti-war movements, Riverside Church, New York City.
http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/vietnam.html

1967 -- US: Future Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Congressman Ron Dellums elected to Berkeley City Council. In the same election, Jerry Rubin receives 22% of vote for mayor of Berkeley, California.

1968 -- US: Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., 39, shot & killed in Memphis while visiting city in support of striking sanitation workers during Poor People's Campaign. The US government has made the observance of his birth one of those moveable feasts.
... show details

Exactly a year ago, addressing a huge anti-war rally at the United Nations Plaza in New York City, King proposed merging the civil-rights & anti-war movements. He called the US government (quote),
"The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."
This radical condemnation of US foreign policy earned King the disfavor of many civil-rights moderates & the government. After today's assassination, African Americans revolt in more than a hundred US cities. The government deploys 75,000 National Guard troops. When the smoke clears, 39 people are dead & 2,500 injured.

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/mlkbirm.htm
Rioting began within two hours of King's death, in 29 states, & lasted until April 4-11. Some of the cities to see uprisings are Chicago, Baltimore, Washington DC, Cincinnati, Boston, Detroit, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Toledo, Pittsburgh & Seattle.
Presumably assassinated by James Earl Ray, who confessed to the slaying & is sentenced to 99 years in prison, but then recanted. Numerous people originally involved in investigating him have raised serious doubts about his guilt.

Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Johnson designates Sunday, April 6, as a national day of mourning.

Martin Luther King Jr. spends the day at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis working & meeting with local leaders on plans for his Poor People's March on Washington to take place late in the month. At 6pm, as he greets the car & friends in the courtyard, King is shot with one round from a 30.06 rifle. He will be declared dead just an hour later at St. Joseph's hospital. After an international man-hunt James Earl Ray is arrested on June 27 in England, & convicted of the murder. Ray died in prison in 1998. There is a photograph of King, Ralph Abernathy — who assumes leadership of King's Southern Christian Leadership Coalition — & Jesse Jackson, standing on the Lorraine balcony the previous day.

Robert Kennedy, hearing of the murder just before he is to give a speech in Indianapolis, Indiana, delivers a powerful extemporaneous eulogy in which he pleads with the audience "to tame the savageness of man & make gentle the life of this world."

The King assassination sparks rioting in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, Newark, Washington, D.C., & many others. Across the country 46 deaths are blamed on the riots.
[Source: WholeWorld is Watching]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.

1969 -- First totally artificial heart of dacron & plastic implanted in a human.

1969 -- US: CBS-TV touches off censorship controversy by its cancellation of the irreverent & anti-war "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour."

1969 -- US: April 4-6, demonstrations on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's death & anti-war protests: Chicago; Memphis, 10,000 gather to pay tribute; NY, 20,000+ up Fifth Ave, some with "33,000" armbands (explain? Also, is this the Bryant Park demo?).

1969 -- On a square in the southeastern Bohemian city of Jihlava, a forty-year-old technical official named Evzen Plocek sets himself on fire.
In August 1968 he'd been a delegate at an illegal high congress of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, & through his actions he knowingly took up the legacy of Jan Palach & Jan Zajic. He died on April 9, 1969.

http://archiv.radio.cz/palach99/eng/plocek.html

1971 -- Canada: Marine clay under houses liquefies, 31 die, St-Jean-Vianney, Quebec.

1972 -- US: Demonstrators in Harrisburg, Pa. support Phil Berrigan & six codefendants; verdict rendered tomorrow. Did Phil really want to kidnap & put up with Beloved & Respected Comrade MotorMouth Henry Hank Kissinger? Will the Pentagon be without heat?

1975 -- Vietnam: "Operation Babylift" begins as a Lockheed C-5A transport leaves Saigon's Ton Son Nhut Airport carrying the first of 2,000 South Vietnamese orphans to a new life in America. Minutes after takeoff, the plane crashes in a rice paddy; approximately 140 of the children & some 50 adults are killed.
What wonderful people these Americans! Giving their all to help these poor orphans. One needs only forget how they became orphans — what disaster has beset these crippled, maimed & homeless, what people, what nation, what government could have allowed — God forbid, perpetrated — such "disaster"?

Perhaps, in the name of putting the past behind us, reconciliation, we can move forward, without memory, having learned nothing.
http://www.adoptvietnam.org/adoption/babylift.htm

1977 -- British CBS releases the Clash's self-titled first album, a 14 song which contains such punk battle cries as "White Riot," "Police & Thieves" & "London's Burning." CBS in the US refuses to release it until 1979 & even then will get rid of the more virulent songs. Meantime, Americans will buy 100,000 imported copies of "The Clash", making it one of the biggest-selling import records of all time.

1977 -- US: Catawba Indians of South Carolina ask Congress to settle their claims regarding 144,000 acres, stemming from a 1763 treaty with the British. Ayn Rand denies they had any property rights.**

1979 -- Pakistan: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Overthrown President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto hanged for ordering the murder of three political opponents while in office, Rawalpindi.
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/pakistan

1981 -- US: Yellow thunder Camp established in the Black Hills.

1984 -- Oceania: Winston Smith opens his journal.
It doesn't look good for our hero.
Thankfully, Winston has Big Brother to help him through these difficult times.

1985 -- US: Congress rejects Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Ronnie Reagan's appeal for support for Nicaragua contras.
Reagan's administration takes to the high ground, staking out the low ground. Rife with moral neuters & criminals from top to bottom, it secretly provides illegal aid. Involves the White House, the CIA, the military & various other government departments. Apparently one must destroy democracy to preserve democracy...

1991 -- France: Julien Toublet (b.1906) dies. Militant anarcho-syndicalist, as was his son Jacky Toublet.
http://www.ephemanar.net/aout27.html#toublet

1996 -- Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir & Jerry Garcia's widow, Deborah, scatter part of Garcia's ashes in the Ganges River in India.
When in Seattle, you DeadHeads you, The Blue Moon Tavern (once near the fabulously famous home of the Daily Bleed, Recollection Baldly Used Books, etc.) has Dead Nite once a week — nothing but Dead Tunes all nite long — Sundays! (or twice a week if you count Monday Opera Night as dead).

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mleone/dead.html
http://www.geckographics.com/
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/11/26/121126fa_fact_paumgarten?currentPage=all
http://www.benjerry.com/flavors/our-flavors/#product_id=8

1996 -- US: Four arrested in New York City during march in support of Puerto Rican political prisoners in America.

1999 -- Lower East Side community organizer Armando Perez dies of injuries suffered in an assault.
Armando Perez ... Daily Bleed Saint, Nov 3, 2009-2010
Slain New York City community, social justice & arts activist. A founder of Charas/El Bohio Cultural & Community Center, in the East Village.
http://www.thevillager.com/vilager_26/laplazacultural.html
http://tenant.net/Tengroup/Metcounc/May99/perez.html

"Armando was not afraid of death, but no one expects to find it around the corner in a flurry of blows."

http://www.thevillager.com/vilager_26/laplazacultural.html
http://tenant.net/Tengroup/Metcounc/May99/perez.html

2005 -- Israel: Government decides to violate international treaties by dumping 10,000 tons of rubbish in the West Bank every month — which may pollute the main Palestinian water supply. A company jointly owned by illegal Israeli colonies is handling construction & the project expects to yield enormous profits.
http://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/israel-plans-dump-tons-israeli-garbage-west-bank

2006 -- France: Three million people march in labor protests against the First Employment Contract (CPE) law. Student organizations call for a general strike.

2011 -- Israel: Actor & peace activist Juliano Mer-Khamis is gunned down in the West Bank by masked militants.

3000 --

"I had been . . . crossing & recrossing the line between sanity & madness so many times that I had all but rubbed it out."
— Corwin, Prince of Amber, in The Guns of Avalon, by Roger Zelazny

"I can see that you have a lot to unlearn."
"If you are talking about my vulgar instinct for survival, forget it."
— Hugi; Corwin, Prince of Amber, in The Courts of Chaos, Roger Zelazny

" . . . the issue is not whether you're paranoid . . . The issue is whether you're paranoid enough."
— Max, in Strange Days

"If you hadn't screwed up my past, your future wouldn't be like this."
— Bill Watterson as Calvin (8:30) to Calvin (6:30)

"I let my mind wander & it didn't come back."
— Bill Watterson as Calvin

"It's not denial. I'm just very selective about the reality I accept."
— Bill Watterson as Calvin

3001 --

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Use of formerly advanced computing technology does not imply an endorsement of Western Industrial Civilization.

3500 --

3502 --

anti-CopyRite 1997-3000, more or less
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