U nblemished fruit, untouched by worm or frost,
whose firm, polished skin cries out to be bitten!
— Baudelaire
FEBRUARY 22
HUGO BALL Founder of Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. Dada genius.
See our Daily Bleed Saint Page.
Navaho: FEAST OF HASTSELTSI, the Red God, God of racing.
1630 -- New Old World: Popcorn invented by Quadquina, Massachusetts Bay Colony. Amerindians introduce invading settlers to popcorn — get that kettle out!!?? Inspires Micro Wave Ovens.
1631 -- New Old World: First Thanksgiving, Massachusetts Bay Colony.
1732 -- New Old World: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader George Washington lives, Bridges Creek, Virginia. Rich white slave owner, military man, last US President who could not tell a lie.
1788 -- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) lives. German philosopher who considered true philosophy as art, & accessible for only a few heads of the first order. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/arthursc.htm
1815 -- US: Former Spanish Florida, including unceded Seminole land, becomes US territory. (or 1821?)
1819 -- James Russell Lowell, poet/essayist/diplomat, lives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1860 -- US: Barefoot In The Park? Nationwide shoemakers' strike.
1864 -- Jules Renard lives. French writer in the vein of La Fontaine & La Bruyére. His prose, stripped of superfluous words, influenced later French writers. Best known for his childhood memoirs Carrots.
1879 -- US: F.W. Woolworth opens his first five-&-dime store in Utica, New York.
1879 -- Switzerland: "Le Révolte" first appears, founded by Peter Kropotkin, François Dumarteray, Élisée Reclus, etc. Jean Grave, director since 1883, moved the paper to France in 1887 & changed the name slightly, to "La Révolte," to avoid possible legal prosecution. Errico Malatesta recalls helping out at preparatory meetings while visiting in Geneva. Kropotkin himself recalls how he & comrades in Geneva met in a small cafe when the first number of "Le Révolte" came out [2,000 copies]:
"Tcherkesov & Malatesta lent us a hand & Tcherkesov instructed us in the art of folding a paper."
1882 -- Stone carver/wood engraver/writer/typographer Eric Gill lives, Brighton, England. His type designs (Perpetua, Bunyan, & Gill Sans-serif, et al) are prevalent worldwide. http://www.myfonts.com/person/Eric_Gill/
1886 -- Dada cabaret founder & poet Hugo Ball lives, Pirmasens, Germany. A staunch pacifist, leaves Germany during World War I for neutral Switzerland in 1916.
1886 -- Saverio Friscia (1813-1886) dies. One of Michael Bakunin's most ardent advocates in Italy at the time — along with Carlo Gambuzzi, Giuseppe Fanelli, & Alberto Tucci — who formed the Neapolitan section of the First International.
anarchico
1892 -- Edna St. Vincent Millay lives (1892-1950), Rockland, Maryland. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. She remarks on the hazards of poetry:
A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down.... If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book, nothing can help him.
1894 -- France: Contemptible anarchist!??: Marius Monfray dies in Lyons. French trade unionist. In November 1886, he was sentenced to eight days in prison for organizing an illegal lottery (providing support funds for Toussaint Bordat, a defendant in the "Trial of the 66"). His shout in response — "Vive l'anarchie!". Such impudence, for "contempt of court," got him two years in prison tacked on to his eight days. [Details / context]
1898 -- US: Black postmaster lynched, his wife & three daughters shot, Lake City, South Carolina.
1900 -- Surrealist filmmaker/director Luis Buñuel (1900-1983) lives, Calanda, Spain. Noted for his early Surrealist films & his work in the Mexican commercial cinema.
Bunuel is distinguished for his highly personal style & controversial obsession with social injustice, religious excess, gratuitous cruelty, & eroticism.
1918 -- US: Birth of Brutus, Ben Reitman's son with Anna Martindale.
1918 -- US: At the height of the Red Scare, the office of the "Cronaca Sovversiva," an anarchist newspaper both Sacco & Vanzetti had written for & donated money to, is raided. The names Sacco & Vanzetti are for the first time linked by officials to anarchist activities.
1932 -- Germany: Emma Goldman does a series of lectures, February 22-March 10.
Emma speaks to a well-attended meeting of the League for Human Rights on "Crime & Punishment in America," confining herself to political & labor cases; to the Gilde freiheitlicher Bücherfreunde on "The Drama as a Social & Educational Factor"; to the Anarcho-Syndikalistischer Frauenbund on "The Child & Its Enemy"; & to a FAUD meeting on "Is the Spirit of Destruction a Constructive Spirit?" She also speaks in Oberschoneweide & Potsdam.
In addition to lecturing, in Berlin Emma is preoccupied with schemes to earn money — a CBS radio broadcast to America, for which Alexander Berkman works up themes; a German translation of her autobiography; & German translation projects for Berkman.
1937 -- Tomás Herreros Miquel (or Miguel) dies. Writer, gifted speaker, active in the Arte de Imprimir, organizer, & a street activist.
Spanish anarcho-syndicalist militant frequently jailed — it was while cooling his heels in a Madrid jail that Herreros introduced Diego Abad de Santillán to anarchism.
CNT militant, editor of "Solidaridad Obrera" & "Tierra y Libertad," Herreros' high profile accounts for his having been harassed & even targeted for murder (Baldrich's rightwing gunmen stabbed him with a stiletto as he stood in front of his book stand).
1942 -- Suicide of Stefan & Lotte Zweig. State funeral at Petropolis cemetery. German poet/translator/biographer, short-story writer/novelist, Stefan achieved fame with his interpretations of many imaginary & historical characters.
One of the most widely translated authors of the 1930s. Driven into exile by the Nazis & began to see Hitler's persecution of Jews directed at him personally, & never recovered from this paranoia. His story The Royal Game used two games of chess to illustrate the horrors of Nazism. Committed suicide with his second wife in Persepolis, near Rio de Janeiro on February 23, 1942.
1943 -- Germany: Sophie Scholl, a 22-year-old activist at Munich University, is executed after being convicted of urging students to rise up & overthrow the Nazi government.
1952 -- Korea: Air Force F-84 crashes near Pusan, hitting a power plant, four homes, & a hospital. 15 dead, 20 injured.
1956 -- Billboard reviews James Brown's debut record "Please, Please, Please":
"A dynamic, religious fervor runs through the pleading solo here. Brown & the Famous Flames group let off plenty of steam."
1965 -- US: Sam Lovejoy cuts down weather tower for proposed nuclear plant, Montague, Massachusetts. First act of civil disobedience against nuclear power in America. http://www.downtheyellowcakeroad.org/
1966 -- Italy: Fabrizio Fabbrini, assistente alla facoltà di legge, è condannato dal tribunale militare a 1 anno e 8 mesi di reclusione per obiezione di coscienza. Lo stato non può essere altro che militarista e repressivo. Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]
1967 -- US: Broadway premiere of Barbara Garson's Mac Bird!
1968 -- France: The Minister of Education announces a limited liberalization of access to universities.
Too little....
....too late.
This follows a series of demonstrations by students throughout the country demanding more freedom, a prelude to the events of May '68 when students, radicals & workers band together & nearly topple the government. In late March some 150 student anarchists occupy the administrative building at Nanterre University & the pot begins to boil.
1969 -- US: AFL-CIO Executive Council, meeting in Bal Harbour, Florida, dismisses the concept of "black capitalism" as "apartheid, antidemocratic nonsense."
1969 -- W. H. Auden, reviewing a biography of Alexander Pope, in The New Yorker writes: "As I get older, & the times get gloomier & more difficult, it is to poets like Horace & Pope that I find myself more & more turning for the kind of refreshment I require."
1969 -- US: 1,000 students & 200 faculty rally protesting presidential appointment at Rice University.
1973 -- Anglo-Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen dies, London, age 72. Wrote The Death of the Heart, The Heat of the Day.
1974 -- US: At the first free food give-away demanded as the $4 million ransom for the return of kidnapped Patty Hearst, the 5,000 strong crowd beat the reporters & cameramen who have assembled, loot stores & attack the police. The rioting (against the inferior quality of the food? against handouts from the high & mighty — the state and/or the SLA?) continues in Oakland all day — see also 5 February & 3 April. Source: [Calendar Riots]
1976 -- Former Supreme Florence Ballard, 32, dies of coronary thrombosis in Detroit. Despite being an original member of the premiere female vocal trio (they had ten Number One pop hits in the 60's), she lived on welfare her last few years after losing an $8.7 million suit for back royalties against Motown Records in 1971. http://www.cedarville.edu/resource/education/schools/chca/othergrades/sixties/culture.htm
1977 -- Italy: Following a trade-union open meeting in Naples, luxury shops are plundered.
1983 -- US: Lube Job? Four years after the Three-Mile-Island nuclear power plant meltdown, the Salem-One reactor in Massachusetts almost causes another disaster when its automatic-shutdown system fails.
The circuit breakers are supposed to trigger control rods that shut down the reactor. They were designed to be oiled every six months, but an investigation reveals they have been lubricated only once in the past seven years — & the wrong lubricant was used.
1989 -- Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy" wins the Grammy award for Song of the Year. Much criticism, some worry-warts are un-happy.
1989 -- UK physicist Stephen Hawking calls Star Wars a "deliberate fraud."
1989 -- US: Authors demonstrate over Iranian death threats against Salman Rushdie, author of Satanic Verses.
1993 -- "...in the lexicon of the political class, the word "sacrifice" means that the citizens are supposed to mail even more of their income to Washington so that the political class will not have to sacrifice the pleasure of spending it."
— George Will (Newsweek, 2/22/93)
1994 -- Canada: George Woodcock, Canadian literary critic, anarchist & historian, receives the Freedom of City award, Vancouver, B.C.
1997 -- France: Nearly 100,000 march in Paris against new anti-immigration bill sponsored by fascist far right.
1999 -- American poet William Bronk (1918-1999) dies, some time at night, apparently peacefully.
2001 -- John Fahey (b.1939), eccentric folk guitarist heralded as a unique alchemist of American roots music & a powerful influence on his peers, dies, aged 61.
In 1957, Fahey heard a Blind Willie Johnson song that mesmerized him & he began combing the south for old blues recordings that shaped his musical mindset. His foray into recording was an instant rarity — famously, only 95 copies of his first album, "Blind Joe Death," were cut in 1959.
2003 -- Canada: Rooting Out Evil sends a team of volunteer weapons inspectors into that greatest of rogue nations, the United States of America.
"We have selected the US as our first priority based on criteria provided by the Bush administration. According to those criteria, the most dangerous states are those run by leaders who:
1) have massive stockpiles of chemical, biological, & nuclear weapons;
2) ignore due process at the United Nations;
3) refuse to sign & honour international treaties; &
4) have come to power through illegitimate means.
The 2003 US administration fulfills all these criteria. & so, again following Bush’s guidelines, Rooting Out Evil is demanding that his administration allow immediate & unfettered access to international weapons inspectors to search out their caches of chemical, biological, & nuclear weapons.
We are currently assembling an international team of weapons inspectors - so far, it includes a Canadian Member of Parliament, a British Member of Parliament, a union leader, & a professor. & we're busy recruiting scientists, religious leaders, military personnel, & others.
On the weekend of February 22/23, the team crosses into the US on a mission of peace, & is greeted by Americans who favour true global cooperation, an end to weapons of mass destruction, & a regime change in the US at the next election.
The team attempts to inspect a US site suspected of housing weapons of mass destruction.
The campaign gathered the support from more than 25,000 virtual weapons inspectors who supported the team (which found proof of their existence).
2003 -- England: Anarchist, artist & bus conductor Arthur Moyse dies, ripe young age of 88.
Arthur Moyse seems to have attended every street protest in London from the 1930s onwards. He was also involved in the London scene of the 1960s, especially the literary part around Soho's Better Books shop. It was along the way that Arthur became a self-taught artist, a cartoonist & an art critic.
2004 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Education Secretary Rod Paige calls the nation's largest teachers union, National Education Association (NEA), a "terrorist organization" during a White House meeting with state governors. Everyone but this fool knows, of course, it's the students who are the real terrorists.
The Bush administration maintains it has the right to imprison citizens or non-citizens indefinitely without trial or access to lawyers, family members or journalists, as long as they are suspected terrorists. It is the administration, of course, who decides if someone is a suspected terrorist.
"Every Child Behind Bars" makes a catchy a new education motto.
2010 -- Action Comic Book Sells for $1 Million one minute after being put up for sale. When Action Comics #1 originally hit stands in 1938 it cost about 10 cents.
In these hands, the cities; in my weather, the armies
Of better things than die
To the scaly music of war.
The different men, who are dead,
Had cunning; they sought green lives
In a world blacker than your world;
But you have nourished the taste of sickness
Until all other tastes are dull in your mouths;
It is only we who stand outside the steaming tents
Of hypocrisy & murder
Who are "sick" —
This is the health you want.
Yours is the health of the pig which roots up
The vines that would give him food;
Ours is the sickness of the deer which is shot
Because it is the activity of hunters to shoot him.
In your hands, the cities, in my world, the marching
of nobler feet than walk down a road
Deep with the corpses of every sane & beautiful thing.
— Kenneth Patchen
4000 --
Quotes from anarchists
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
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anarchist, labor, & radical used 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
France: Contemptible anarchist!??: Marius Monfray dies in Lyons. French trade unionist. In November 1886, he was sentenced to eight days in prison for organizing an illegal lottery (providing support funds for Toussaint Bordat, a defendant in the "Trial of the 66"). His shout in response — "Vive l'anarchie!". Such impudence, for "contempt of court," got him two years in prison tacked on to his eight days. 
[Details / context]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcgYwTnBIIQ
One of the most widely translated authors of the 1930s. Driven into exile by the Nazis & began to see Hitler's persecution of Jews directed at him personally, & never recovered from this paranoia. His story The Royal Game used two games of chess to illustrate the horrors of Nazism. Committed suicide with his second wife in Persepolis, near Rio de Janeiro on February 23, 1942.
