I am turtle, & death is not yet my robe, for drums still throb the many centers of my tribes, & a young child smiles me of tomorrow,     "& grandparent," another child whispers, "please tell me again my clan's beginning."     — Peter Blue Cloud (Aroniawenrate), excerpt, "Turtle"

NOVEMBER 21

ALEXANDER BERKMAN
Lover of Emma Goldman, failed anarchist assassin, US deportee,
suicide following sorry Soviet heartbreaks.

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NOSTALGIA FOR THE FUTURE DAY.

FALSE CONFESSIONS DAY.

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479 BC -- Chinese philosopher Confucious dies.


1694 -- Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet) lives, Paris. At 65 he spends all of three days writing Candide.

FRANCOIS VOLTAIRE

Daily Bleed Patron Saint 1998. "All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds."

"The best is the enemy of the good."

http://www.reocities.com/Athens/7308/

1748 -- John Clelland's Fanny Hill is advertised (volume 1).


1783 -- France: Jean Francois Pilatre de Rozier & the Marquis Francois Laurant d'Arlandes made the first flight in a balloon, becoming the first men to fly — period. They flew nearly six miles around Paris in 25 minutes reaching an altitude of about 300 feet. Benny Franklin was a spectator at the gaseous event.


1784 -- James Armistead is cited by French General Lafayette for his valuable service to the American forces in the Revolutionary War. Born into slavery 24 years earlier, he worked as a double agent for the Americans while supposedly employed as a servant of British General Cornwallis.


1794 -- Honolulu Harbor discovered. The natives lament, "If only we'd seen it first!"


1801 -- US: "Federal Bonfire Number Two": a mysterious fire sweeps the offices of the Department of Treasury, destroying books & papers, after Republicans demanded proof that the expenditures of Timothy Pickering, the recently replaced Federalist Secretary of War, could be properly accounted for. (see November 8).


1817 -- US: Infuriated by Seminole resistance, Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader General Edmund Gaines orders 250 soldiers to attack & destroy the Seminole village of Fowltown.



1820 -- Thirteen-year-old Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's first poem, "The Battle of Lovell's Pond" is published in the Portland, Maine, Gazette.
http://www.auburn.edu/~vestmon/gif/long2.jpg


1831 -- France: Silk workers' strike in Lyon, district de la Croix Rousse. The whole city rises in insurrection when Nationale guard kills several workers. Barricades are thrown up & the black flag makes its appearance with the inscription:

"Vivre en travaillant ou mourir en combattant."

http://www.ephemanar.net/novembre21.html

1835 -- Hetty Green, record-breaking miser, lives.


1837 -- Thomas Morris of Australia skips rope 22,806 times.



1855 -- Anarchist Leo Tolstoy & Ivan Turgenev meet, beginning an often tempestuous friendship between the two authors.



1855 -- No Self-Esteem?: Attempting to avoid an outbreak of Thomas Carlyle's violent temper, Jane Carlyle goes alone to the Income Tax Commissioners & asks for a lower assessment of her husband's literary earnings.


1855 -- France: Émile Gravelle lives, Douai. Militant anarchiste & naturalist. Published the review L'Etat Naturel. Collaborated with Henri Zisly & Henri Beylie on La Nouvelle Humanité, followed by Le Naturien, Le Sauvage, L'Ordre Naturel & La Vie Naturelle.
[Details / context]


1856 -- China: US forces capture three Chinese forts.


1863 -- Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (Q), critic & editor of the 1900 Oxford Book of English Verse, lives, Cornwall, England.


1863 -- England: Troops are called in to prevent Guildford celebrating its November Fifth Bonfire Night.

... show details

The extent of riot accompanying this event in recent years had been such that the Head Constable had taken to locking his men in the cells for their own protection. With the army's withdrawal today, the fun now begins & PC Sutton is thrown into the fire. The annual festivities will only come to an end in 1865 when several men are nicked for trying to club a copper to death. Previous highlights include tearing up the entire Merrow racecourse grandstand as fuel for the vast fire.

Source: 'Calendar Riots'

1866 -- Egyptian pan-Africanist Duse Mohammed Effendi lives.


1870 -- Alexander Berkman lives, Vilna, Russia. Wrote one of the classics of prison literature, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist.

Berkman's Prison Memoirs has gone through numerous editions & reprints, including one prefaced by poet Kenneth Rexroth.

Berkman also wrote one of the earliest expose/denunciations of the failure of the Russian Revolution in The Bolshevik Myth (1921). He also provided his lifelong pal Emma Goldman with his own writing & research materials & helped her with editing her books. Nestor Makhno & Alexander Berkman hanging out...up to no good no doubt. "Free thought, necessarily involving freedom of speech & press, I may tersely define thus: no opinion a law — no opinion a crime."        — Alexander Berkman

1871 -- Firing Squat?: The first human cannonball, Emilio Onra, is shot.

1877 -- Thomas A. Edison, who really dug the jazz he heard from his newest invention, told those gathered that he just invented the "the talking machine" (phonograph). On February 19, 1878, Edison received a patent for the device & was enrolled as a charter member of the Columbia House Record Club where he received his first 10 selections free — with only six selections purchased at regular prices(!) over the next three years...


1878 -- US: Marshall "Major" Taylor lives, Indianapolis, Ind. International cycling star, first native-born African-American to win a national sports title. Wins over 100 races & one-on-one matches in the US & nine other countries.


1880 -- France: In 1880, after six & a half years in exile, Louise Michel began her long journey home. Today, November 21, Louise speaks at her first public meeting in Paris. Her anarchiste speeches are inspirational & effective.

"It is the people who will deliver us from the men who have been corrupting us, & the people themselves will win their liberty."

http://libcom.org/history/michel-louise-1830-1905

1893 -- Granville T. Woods, African American inventor, patents the "Electric Railway Conduit."



1894 -- Spain: In Barcelona, Santiago Salvador Franch is executed. He threw two bombs (on November 7, 1891) into the audience at Teatre Liceu during a performance of the opera William Tell, killing 22 people.

The violence of the anarchists did not always land at the feet of tyrants...

Photo credit, www.historia.uff.br: http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/misc/@fotos.htm

[Details / context]

1895 -- Start of Sherlock Holmes' "Adventure of Bruce-Partington Plans" (BG).



1897 -- Russia: Mollie Steimer lives. Russian-American-Jewish-Mexican anarchist & labor agitator. Her militant activities got her deported from both the US in 1921 (after getting 15 years of prison for publishing a leaflet opposing the landing of US troops in Russia), & by Lenin in Russia (1923). Arrested as a German Jew in France, then escaped a Nazi internment camp & fled to Mexico, where she died in 1980.
[Photo: Senya Fléchine, Voline et Mollie Steimer en 1927]
courtesy L'Ephéméride Anarchiste
[Details / context]


1897 -- US: Emma Goldman continues her heavy lecture campaign throughout the midwest.

Having completed lectures in Kansas & Michigan, Emma lectures in Cleveland before several liberal societies, including the Franklin Club. She lectures today, November 21, on "What Anarchy Means" & collects donations for the Firebrand editors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Society
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jessica-moran-the-firebrand...

1898 -- Surrealist painter Rene Magritte lives, Lessines, Hainaut, Belgium.

Daily Bleed Patron Saint 2003-04

Witty Belgian-born Surrealist painter of the impossible everyday occurrence, one-time Communist Party figure.

1910 -- Coleman Hawkins lives, created virtual tenor saxophone for jazz.


1918 -- Loaded?: Two German ammunition trains explode in Hamont Belgium, 1,750 die.


1920 -- Karel Capek play "The Makropolous Secret" premiers, Praha.


1920 -- Ireland: Black & Tans fire on a stadium crowd, Bray, killing 14.


1920 -- Italy: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Mussolini's squad begins terror; 11 die in Bologna.



1921 -- US: Columbine Massacre (the one you never heard about); IWW picketing miners massacred in Columbine, Colorado.

"The dreamer is the designer of tomorrow. Practical men... can laugh at him; they do not know that he is the true dynamic force that pushes the world forward. Suppress him, & the world will deteriorate towards barbarism. Despised, impoverished, he leads the way... sowing, sowing, sowing, the seeds that will be harvested, not by him, but by the practical men of tomorrow, who will at the same time laugh at another indefatigable dreamer busy seeding, seeding, seeding." — Ricardo Flores Magón [Details / context]

1928 -- Edgar Rice Burroughs completes his novel Tanar of Pellucidar.


1929 -- Marilyn French lives. American author, famous for her feminist novels. In her works she underlines that US culture is founded on contempt for women, as examined in her study The War Against Women (1992).
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mfrench.htm


1930 -- US: 450 people attend a fund-raising banquet for Alexander Berkman in New York City to celebrate his 60th birthday. Berkman cannot attend because he is not allowed into the "land of the free."




1934 -- US: Yanks buy Joe DiMaggio from San Francisco Seals.
http://www.sealrockinn.com/



1934 -- Date of the alleged rape in Harper Lee novel To Kill a Mockingbird.


1935 -- England: In June of this year Emma Goldman began mobilizing anarchist writers & editors of the movement's press — for example, Rudolf Rocker, Max Nettlau, & Albert de Jong — to publish articles to mark Alexander Berkman's 65th birthday today.
[Details / context]


1941 -- US: Juanita Spellini, first woman executed in California.



1942 --




Tweety Bird, aka Tweety Pie, debuts in "Tale of Two Kitties."



1945 -- US: 200,000 United Auto Workers strike against General Motors.

1945 -- Having said, "The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him," in My Ten Years in a Quandary, Algonquin Round Table wit Robert Benchley dies in New York.

I had just dozed off into a stupor when I heard what I thought was myself talking to myself. I didn't pay much attention to it, as I knew practically everything I would have to say to myself, & wasn't particularly interested.

— Chips off the Old Benchley

1945 -- France: De Gall?: Five communists enter de Gaulle's government.


1954 -- Chicago: Late this month [exact date unknown — ed.] The anarchist Catholic Dorothy Day notes:

When one is travelling it is often only possible to write a chronicle like a Pepys diary & there is not much room for comment. So here is the bare bones of my trip during this last month in the way of a letter to our readers, which, thanks to Ammon Hennacy’s street selling campaign, is increased by some thousands...

My last two meetings in Chicago were at Wilmette, in the basement of the rectory of St. Joseph’s church of John Mella’s promotion, & with a group of young anarchists led, if they can be said to be led, by Joffre Stewart, in the vicinity of the University of Chicago.

http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/reprint.cfm?TextID=679

1959 -- Guy Debord

France: Guy Debord, questioned by the police tribunal about his participation in the Declaration on the Right to Insubordination in the Algerian War, has it recorded in his deposition that by the fact of having signed the declaration alone, he assumes complete responsibility for publication & distribution, 'equal to that of its signatories, whatever their identity, & the persons responsible, whomever of them might wish to be recognized as such.' Also today, Spur #2, journal of the German section of the Situationist International, published in Munich. Editors: Helmut Sturm, Heimrad Prem, Hans-Peter Zimmer, Lothar Fischer, & Jřrgen Nash, Katja Lindell & Christel Fischer. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

1962 -- Switzerland: SALT II disarmament talks open, Geneva.


1964 -- US: World's longest bridge "Verrazano Narrows," suspended, New York City.


1965 -- Musician, singer, actress Bjork Gudmundsdottir lives, Reykjavik, Iceland.

Growing up in a highly musical household, Bjork released her first album of traditional Icelandic folk songs when she was only 11. Throughout her teen years, Bjork sang for a series of anarchist punk bands, then formed "The Sugarcubes" before launching a successful solo music career. Bjork won Best Actress prize at the Cannes Film Festival for her role in Dancer In The Dark (2000). She & her director Lars von Trier were nominated in 2001 for a Best Song Academy Award for I've Seen It All.

http://www.biography.com/people/bj%C3%B6rk-9542528

1967 -- US: Need a Lift?: Exorcism of the Pentagon, Washington, DC march: 50,000. 250 arrested including author Norman Mailer.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/nmailer.htm


1968 -- US: A portrait of Frederick Douglass appears on the cover of Life magazine. The cover story, "Search for a Black Past," is the first in a four-part series of stories in which the magazine examines African-Americans, a review of 50 years of struggle, with interviews of Jesse Jackson, Julian Bond, Eldridge Cleaver, Dick Gregory, & others.



1969 -- US: Avon Calling?: 50 US commandos stage a daring helicopter raid on North Vietnam's Sontay Prison Camp, 23 miles from Hanoi, in an attempt to rescue POW's, only to discover that the camp had been evacuated three weeks before.


1969 -- US: Dork? US Senate turns down first Supreme Court nominee (Nixon's) since 1930, some clown named...



1969 -- US: A Healthy Occupation? Alcatraz occupation health clinic set up by Jenny Joe (Navajo), Stella Leach (Colville-Sioux) & two others who request anonymity.
Source: 'Calendar Riots'


1971 -- US: Richard Baker becomes a teacher at the SF Zen Center.
http://www.sfzc.org/



1972 -- US: The Chicago Seven Trial: The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reverses the convictions of Hoffman, Rubin, Dellinger, Davis, & Hayden.

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Chicago7/chicago7.html
http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Exhibits/Track16.html#Poster
http://theaction.com/Abbie/

1973 -- US: Evil Jeanius? 18 minute gap discovered in subpoenaed tape of Watergate conversations made by President Dick M Nixon three days after the Watergate break-in. White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig later attributes The Gap to "sinister forces." He would know.


1973 -- Allan Sherman, singer, dies at 48.


1974 -- US: Freedom of Information Act passed over Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Prez Jerry Ford's veto (Ford was a-fearing the 18-minute gap would get out.) Oh, sure. Yah. Yup.


1975 -- Prune Danish on Ice?: Icelandic novelist/short-story writer Gunnar Gunnarsson dies in Reykjavik. Most of his work is written in Danish, but he drew exclusively on Icelandic history & his Icelandic background in his writing.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ggunnar.htm


1977 -- Canada: The issue of Body Politic, with the article "Men Loving Boys Loving Men," goes on sale, Toronto; the controversy this causes eventually leads to the folding of the gay paper.


1977 -- Honduras: Business As Usual? Landowners' mercenaries massacre campesinos at La Union.


1977 -- John Cage's "49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs" premiers, Illinois.
http://www.sterneck.net/john-cage/kostelanetz/index.php


1981 -- 400,000 demonstrate in Amsterdam against cruise missiles.
http://getlost.home.xs4all.nl/


1983 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Acting President Ronnie Reagan receives the annual White House Thanksgiving turkey. "You're looking at the press a lot like I do sometimes," he says to the bird, "with your mouth wide open & a total misunderstanding of everything they're asking."


1984 -- US: TransAfrica's Randall Robinson, congressional delegate Walter Fauntroy, & US Civil Rights Commissioner Mary Frances Berry arrested at a sit-in at the South African Embassy in Washington, DC.

... show details

Their demonstration against apartheid spreads to NY, LA, Chicago, & elsewhere, involving such notables as Jesse Jackson, Arthur Ashe, Harry Belafonte, & Stevie Wonder. Their efforts play a large part in the passage of the Antiapartheid Act of 1986, imposing economic sanctions against South Africa.

http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?include=docs/misc/2010/umzabalazo.html

1986 -- 24-year-old George Branham wins the Brunswick Memorial World Open. It is the first time an African-American wins a Professional Bowlers Association title.

... show details

Meanwhile, in 1998, Nummer One Son, 7 weeks after touching his first bowling ball, scores his first Turkey (3 strikes in a row). Also leads his All-City League team, his All-Regional League Team for best average & highest game (165). Also holds a nummer of Youth League records for season. Sez he, "the thing I like about this, Dad, is that I don't have to practice." What Dad likes is the discovery you can smoke in bowling alleys...the last bastion for indoor smokers. (Lucky) Strike Now! While the ash is hot...

1999 Update: Last week at a City Tournament he bowled six games; his lowest game was 133, his highest 178; yesterday he bowled another 178.

1986 -- US: The shredding machine in White House aide Oliver North's office jams, plays "Dixie."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/

1987 -- US: Cuban prisoners at a detention center in Oakdale, Louisiana riot & take control when the US announces reactivation of a 1984 agreement allowing Cuba to take back 2,000 "undesirables" in the US A federal prison in Atlanta was commandeered two days later. The Oakdale standoff ended 29 November with release of hostages; the Atlanta crisis was resolved 4 December after the government agreed to grant a fair review of each Cuban's case.
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/dolgoff/cubanrevolution/toc.html


1989 -- Czechoslovakia: 1 million demonstrators over the next week, & the movement becomes a General Strike.


1990 -- US: Crime Pays?! Junk bond king Michael Milken (Milk'em?) sentenced to 10 years for tax fraud.


1991 -- Amnesty International says the Perúvian government has killed 250 in the last year.


1991 -- Cuba: Poet & dissident Maia Elena Cruz Varela is arrested.

1993 -- US: Congress passes North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Beloved & (dis)Respected President Clinton signs immediately so that the treaty can take effect by the new year.

We are free, truly free, when we don't need to rent our arms to anybody in order to be able to lift a piece of bread to our mouths. — Ricardo Flores Magón

1995 -- Asinine? Green Day singer Billie Joe Armstrong is arrested for dropping his pants at a concert in Milwaukee. He is fined $141. A dollar for each short hair.


1997 -- US: Microradio movement news accounts on the struggle to free the airwaves: FCC Responds to Micropower Broadcasting Court Victory With a SWAT Team; Phonezap the FCC; Philadelphia pirate station WSKR silenced by FCC (Philadelphia Inquirer).
Source: [Pirate Radio Kiosk]



2000 -- US: DisneyWorld...

Subject: Consequences of failing to elect a president

NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE

... show details

To the citizens of the United States of America,

In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA & thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths & other territories.

Except Utah & Texass, which she does not fancy.

Your new prime minister (The rt. hon. Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections.

Congress & the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

2000 -- US: The Seattle Union Record is launched by the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild as a Web site today, the day about 1,000 workers for The Seattle Times & the Seattle Post-Intelligencer went on strike over wages & other issues.
... show details

On Friday, November 24, the first of 18 tabloid print editions was distributed free in & around Seattle. The strike against the Times lasted 49 days; the Post-Intelligencer strike was shorter, lasting 38 days. The Web site ceased covering current news on Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2001, & the final print edition of the Union Record appeared Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2001.

http://recollectionbooks.com/SeattleRadicalTimeLine.htm


2001 -- México: A judge frees six paramilitaries convicted of the 1997 massacre 45 Indigenous at Acteal, Chiapas.


2002 --

US: Robert Brentano (1926-2002) dies. Cosmopolitan, humane anarchist & longtime history professor. http://contemporary-anarchist.blogspot.com/2002_12_01_contemporary-anarchist_archive.html

2007 -- Spain: Fernando Fernán-Gómez (1921-2007) dies. Famed Spanish film actor & director, novelist (El viaje a ninguna parte), anarquista.

http://www.christiebooks.com/PDFs/FernanGomez.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Fern%C3%A1n_G%C3%B3mez

2010 -- Egypt: Opposition parties restricted with parliamentary elections looming next week, with security forces arresting hundreds of opposition activists, & clamping down on the media.

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3000 --





3500 --

What's the ugliest part of your body? I think it's your mind...

    — Lenny Bruce

4000 --