Whether it is a speaker, taut on a platform, who battles a crowd with the hammers of his words, whether it is the crash of lips on lips after absence & wanting: we must close the circuits of ideas, now generate, that leap in the body's action or the mind's repose. Over us is a striking on the walls of the sky, here are the dynamos, steel-black, harboring flame, here is the man night-walking who derives tomorrow's manifestoes from this midnight's meeting; here we require the proof in solidarity, iron on iron, body on body, & the large single beating. & behind us in time are the men who second us as we continue. & near us is our love: no forced contempt, no refusal in dogma, the close of the circuit in a fierce dazzle of purity. & over us is night a field of pansies unfolding, charging with heat its softness in a symbol to weld & prepare for action our minds' intensity. — Muriel Rukeyser, "Metaphor to Action"

921 -- Rabbi Saadiah Gaon cautions the Jews of Egypt to reject the religious calendar adopted by Rabbi Aaron B. Meir of Palestine. Probably a spat over Day Light Savings.
[Source: Robert Braunwart] [Hereafter noted with symbol: ]


1585 -- The first notable poet in Scotland to write deliberately in English, William Drummond, lives, Edinburgh. He is also be the first to use the canzone, an Italian metrical form, in English verse.


1616 -- Cervantes' "Persiles y Sigismunda" is accepted for publication.
http://www.malaspina.org/cervantesm.htm


1634 -- Thomas Kingo, clergyman & poet whose works are the high point of Danish Baroque poetry, lives, Slangerup.



1683 -- Biographer/author Izaak Walton (The Compleat Angler), 90, dies at Winchester.

"His landscapes are enameled like the meadows about the feet of Medieval saints. His innkeepers are both gentle & jovial. His barmaids are as wholesome as the ale they serve."

— Kenneth Rexroth, Classics Revisited
http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/cr/6.htm

1711 -- Trumpeter John Shaw invents the tuning fork. Now he can play trumpet & eat tuna at the same time!


1766 -- Oliver Goldsmith's "Poems for Young Ladies" is published.



1787 -- US: First street person arrested for illegal goofing off.


1791 -- US: Bill of Rights ratified as first 10 amendments to Constitution.

Numerous modern polls have shown that, with questions couched in law & order terms, most Americans oppose the Bill of Rights.

1796 -- "Mad Anthony" Wayne dies.


1814 -- US: Convention of New England States recommends protection of citizens from possible draft, Hartford, Connecticut. (or 1815?)


1815 -- Jane Austen's Emma is published, one day before her 40th birthday. In it she notes: "One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other."

1854 -- First street-cleaning machine used.

1855 -- George Meredith novel The Shaving of Shagpat is published.


1866 -- Italy: Luigi Molinari lives. Teacher, militant libertarian.

Molinari was arrested & convicted by a military tribunal for instigating an insurrection, in 1894, by armed bands of anarchists supporting Sicilian victims of the "State of Siege" (the government was repressing revolts against increased flour prices). Sentenced to 23 years in prison, Molinari was released in 1895 as the result of massive protests.

[Details / context]

1869 -- US: Norton I, Emperor of the United States & Protector of Mexico, & the greatest American ruler in history, leaves San Francisco to seek his yearly tribute from the legislature & lobbyists. He inspects the new capitol during the gala ball celebrating the buildings’ inauguration.
http://www.zpub.com/sf/history/nort.html
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/norton.html



1870 -- France: Achille Daude lives (1870-1963). Trade unionist, anarchist especially involved in co-operatives.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/DaudeAchille.htm


1876 -- US: There is a rain of snakes, Memphis, Tennesee. Skin, man.


1880 -- First Henrik Ibsen play in England is produced, "Pillars of Society," London.


1882 -- Australia: First women's trade union in Australia, of tailoresses, is formed.


1883 -- Scotland: You Shoulda Seen the One That Gottaway!!?? A shower of live perch falls, Airdric. As the saying goes, live free or die.


1885 -- Babette's Feast (in Isaak Dineson story & the movie).


1888 -- American playwright Maxwell Anderson lives. Noted for his efforts to make verse tragedy a popular form.



1890 -- US: Sioux Chief Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotake) murdered, South Dakota, as he steps from his cabin to submit to arrest as the alleged "power" behind the outlawed Ghost Dance Movement — a Messianic religion which preached that all Indians would soon be free.

SITTING BULL
Visionary war chief of the Ogalala Sioux; eliminated Custer at Battle of the Little Big Horn.
Daily Bleed Saint March 21, 2004-05

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/set/HISTbull.html
http://www.dickshovel.com/sittingbull.html

1893 --

"La Revue Libertaire" begins publishing, under the direction of Charles Chatel, Henri Gauche & Henri Guerin, in Paris. Victim of the anti-anarchist laws ("lois scélérates"), the review is shut down, after a mere five issues, on February 20, 1894. The epigraph for the first number (which changed each issue) is from Henrik Ibsen: "The State is the curse of the individual" http://www.ephemanar.net/decembre15.html

1896 -- Paul Citroen lives, Berlin, born of Dutch parents. Painter, graphic workman, photographer, writer.

After working in a bookshop for some time, Citroen was asked to establish a special book shop for art by Herbert Walden, owner of the famous gallery Der Sturm. This was not an easy job, because there were few art books at that time. Walden introduced Citroen to the main artists of the Berlin Dada-movement, such as George Grosz, Walter Mehring & John Heartfield.

http://www.andibradley.com/whatya/dec15.htm

1896 -- Henrik Ibsen play "John Gabriel Borkman" is published.


1904 -- Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, lives, in this NY borough.


1908 -- Donald Grant Mitchell, American farmer & writer (Reveries of a Bachelor & Dream Life), dies in Norwich, Connecticut.


1910 -- Musical producer John Hammond, Jr. lives, New York City.

JOHN HAMMOND 1997 SAINT
Rock, Jazz, popular musical producer without equal.

1913 -- US: Poet Muriel Rukeyser lives, New York City. Depicted social & political problems, issues of equality, especially feminism & class struggle. In addition to her 14 volumes of poetry, she wrote biography, books for juveniles, criticism, & translations of the poetry of Octavio Paz & Gunnar Ekelof, among others.

"The universe is made of stories, not of atoms."

Rukeyser extended the boundaries of American literature, seeing poetry as the very essence of our everyday lives, & she broke through the taboos of her time, writing candidly about sexuality, motherhood, the female body, lesbian life, eroticism. She taught at the California Labor School, Vassar College, Columbia University & Sarah Lawrence College.

Whether it is a speaker, taut on a platform,
who battles a crowd with the hammers of his words,
whether it is the crash of lips on lips
after absence & wanting : we must close
the circuits of ideas, now generate,
that leap in the body's action or the mind's repose.

— Muriel Rukeyser,
excerpt from "Metaphor to Action"

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/rukeyser/rukeyser.htm
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/rukeyser-metaphor.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muriel_Rukeyser

1913 -- US: Emma Goldman hosts a social gathering for British syndicalist Tom Mann. Mann was Secretary of the British ILP, & a leader of the famous 'dockers tanner' strike & later a founding member of the British Communist Party (in 1920).
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/REmann.htm




1916 -- US: Dr. Ben Reitman is again arrested for distributing illegal birth control literature at one of Emma Goldman's lectures in Rochester, NY.

See Mecca Reitman Carpenter, No Regrets: Dr. Benjamin Reitman & the Remarkable Women Who Loved Him. A Biographical Memoir. (Lexington: Southside Press, 1996).
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/hnetreview.html

1917 -- US: [Agent Report] In re: Meeting held for Benefit of Alex Berkman at the West Side Auditorium, Chicago, 1917 Dec. 15 Reel 60
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Guide/titleindex.html


1919 -- Edna St. Vincent Millay play "Aria Da Capo" premiers, NY.


1921 -- Russia: Mollie Steimer, Jacob Abrams, Samuel Lipman, & Hyman Lachowsky arrive in Moscow after being deported from the US as victims of the Red Scare in America. They find that Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman have already departed for the West, disillusioned by the turn the revolution has taken.

On August 23, 1918 Mollie Steimer, along with other members of her group (one of whom, Jacob Schwartz, was beaten to death in his cell by the cops) was arrested for distributing leaflets against the American invasion of Russia.

The resulting Abrams case, as it became known, is a landmark in the repression of civil liberties, cited in all standard histories as one of the most flagrant violations of constitutional rights during the Red Scare hysteria.

[Details / context]

1923 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Calvin Coolidge releases 31 WWI conscientious objectors still imprisoned five years after the end of the war.


1925 -- US: First road with a depressed trough, opened to traffic, Texass. Probably so all the blood from the state prison executions will have a place to flow.


1930 -- Albert Einstein urges militant pacifism & an international war resistance fund.



1932 -- Edna O'Brien lives, Twamgraney, County Clare, Ireland. Novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter noted for portrayals of women & sexual candor. Like James Joyce & Frank O'Connor, Ireland has banned her books.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/eobrien.htm


1933 -- Canada: Emma Goldman arrives in Toronto from France, where she applies for a visa at the US consulate for a proposed three-month lecture tour.

Roger Baldwin works with the US immigration authorities, attempting to secure a visa for Emma Goldman, while the committee organized by Mabel Carver Crouch issues a formal invitation to Emma to visit the US. Commissioner of Immigration. Daniel W. MacCormack advises Baldwin that it is Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins who has the legal right to admit her.

Emma Goldman is offered, but declines, a large sum to appear in vaudeville theaters in the United States.

1936 -- George Orwell dispatches manuscript of The Road to Wigan Pier to publishers & leaves for the revolution in Spain.

"This was in late December, 1936...The anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia & the revolution was still in full swing...when one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona was something startling & overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle."

       — George Orwell, Homage To Catalonia

http://web.archive.org/web/20070627015446/www.levity.com/corduroy/orwell.htm
http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/
http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/

1936 -- Lillian Hellman play "Days to Come" premiers, NY (7 performances).


1939 -- "Gone With the Wind" movie makes its world premiere, Atlanta, Ga. Actress Hattie McDaniel cannot attend because the theater is for whites only.


1941 -- US: After a brief visit to Hawaii, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox tells the press,

"I think the most effective Fifth Column work of the entire war was done in Hawaii with the possible exception of Norway."

This claim is made despite the complete lack of evidence of such sabotage. But then what is evidence to a politician, or the media?

[Sources]

1941 -- US: The AFL labor union pledges there will be no strikes in defense-related industry plants for the duration of the war.
[Sources]



1943 -- Black American jazz singer Fats Waller (Hot Chocolate), dies at 38, in Kansas City, Missouri.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfNYtC9uye0
http://jass.com/fats.html




1944 -- Bandleader, Major Glenn Miller, lost over English Channel.



1944 -- Brazil: Ecological martyr Chico Mendes lives, Pote Seco. Murdered in 1988 by landowners because of his efforts to stop the destruction of Amazon rainforests.


1948 -- US: Alger Hiss, former State Department official, indicted for perjury, after denying he passed secret documents to Whittaker Chambers for a communist spy ring. His second trial ended in conviction & five years in prison, on 21 January 1950.


1953 -- US: Veteran James Kutcher, who lost both his legs in WWII, informed his disability is being cut off due to his membership in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). This is in America, Land of Freedom, by the way... first they come for your legs, then your food...


1954 -- Kirk Douglas/James Mason movie "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" released.


1957 -- Sammy Davis Jr. initiates a Westinghouse syndicated radio talk show with a "round-table" discussion of rock & roll. His guests are Columbia Records executive Mitch Miller & MGM Records president Arnold Maxim. When Davis & Miller blast rock & roll as "the comic books of music," Maxim takes an opposing viewpoint & says, "I don't see any end to rock & roll in the near future, as long as Buddy Holly is alive."


1960 -- US: Government announces it backs a right-wing group in Laos; it seizes power tomorrow.


1961 -- Israel: Adolf Eichmann, former Nazi leader, sentenced to death, Jerusalem. Hannah Arendt argued he showed no trace of anti-Semitism & was not psychopathic, calling him the embodiment of the "banality of evil." Hanged June 1, 1962, his last words, reportedly, "I had to obey the rules of war & my flag."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Eichmann


1965 -- US: Labors AFL-CIO pledges "unstinting support" for the US war effort in Vietnam.


1965 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Communist Party Honcho Gus Hall delivers an address later published as "Communism, Mankind's Bright Horizon," Columbia University. Yup. Bright & receding.


1966 -- US: Animator & fascist sympathizer Walt Disney dies. (He's still in the fridge).


1966 -- US: 67 arrested in blockade of Manhattan army induction center, New York City.


1968 -- Grace Slick, performing with the Jefferson Airplane on the "Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour," appears in blackface & raises a black-leather glove in the black power salute at the conclusion of "Crown of Creation." The incident is one of several which leads to the TV show's cancellation the following season.

Pinelli, secretary of the Anarchist Black Cross, is tossed through a window to his death by police, which became a national scandal.

Pinelli, Valpreda & others were also arrested, following the anti-anarchist hysteria orchestrated by the government & press, accused of the bombing in Milan. Only much later is it revealed that the bombing was the work of rightwing fascists, in collusion with government reactionaries.

Pinelli's police murder was the subject of Nobel Prize-winner Dario Fo's play, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, filmed by Pasolini.

[Details / context]

1969 -- US: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) reaffirms its Biblically ordained exclusion of blacks from the ministry.


1970 -- Poland: Youths & workers torch the Gdansk Communist Party HQ & quietly watch it burn.



1970 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Nixon signs the Taos Land Bill. 48,000 acres of land are returned to the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, the first US legislation ever to return a sizable amount of federal land to the Native Americans from whom it was stolen.


1970 -- US: The Nez Perce tribe of Idaho & Confederated Tribe of Colville, Washington, win $1.1 million for loss of tribal lands in 19th century.



1970 -- Outer Space: Soviet Venera 7 is the first human spacecraft to land on another planet; Venus.
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00307


1970 -- Poland: ZOMO riot police shoot miners striking at "Manifest Lipcowy" mine in Jastrzebie, Upper Silesia, 4 wounded.
Source: Piero/poprostu.pl


1972 -- Italy: Government recognizes the right to conscientious objection to military service.


1973 -- US: It's a Psychiatric Association's prerogative to change its mind, & the American Psychiatric Association did so on this date when it declared that homosexuality was not a mental illness.



1976 -- US: Argo Merchant goes aground at Nantucket, Massachusetts, spills 7,700,000 gallons of oil.


1980 -- France: As part of an ongoing campaign of terror, a group of about 30 rightwing students attack students on Nanterre campus. But those attacked fight back this time, & a few hundred even chase the rightwingers off campus & catch them attempting to escape by subway, returning blow for blow.


1980 -- Allen Ginsberg completes his poem "Capitol Air," Frankfurt & NY.


1980 --

Japan: The semi-monthly "The Japanese Libertarian" reaches its 131st issue. http://www.ephemanar.net/decembre15.html#libertaire-j

1982 -- United Nations General Assembly calls for nuclear weapons freeze.

I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way & let them have it.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

1983 -- Cliff Notes?: Ed Meese tells the National Press Club that literature's classic miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, to whom he has recently been compared, suffered from bad press in his time.

"If you really look at the facts, he didn't exploit Bob Cratchit." Explains Meese, "Bob Cratchit was paid 10 shillings a week, which was a very good wage at the time ... Bob, in fact, had good cause to be happy with his situation. He lived in a house, not a tenement. His wife didn't have to work ... He was able to afford the traditional Christmas dinner of roast goose & plum pudding ... So let's be fair to Scrooge. He had his faults, but he wasn't unfair to anyone."

1985 -- Beginning of the contemporary section in Fannie Flagg novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.



1986 -- US: CIA director William Casey suffers a cerebral seizure, at work, before he can answer questions about Iran-Contra Affair.

"Casey was a bad guy. He was a pathological liar. He was close to President Nixon &, for that reason, became first the Chairman of the Securities & Exchange Commission & then the Director of the CIA. Casey & I did not get along. He sued me five times while he was chairman of the SEC. It was because of Casey, & the efforts of his right hand man, Stanley Sporkin, that my name is permanently enshrined on the official shit list of the SEC. I only hope they remembered to drive a stake through his heart before they buried him."

http://www.reocities.com/CapitolHill/8425/gt-fund.htm

1989 -- El Salvador: 70,000 Salvadorans demonstrate for democracy — hundreds are "disappeared."


1990 -- England: Broughton Tin Can Band, Northants: saucepan-banging for no good reason just after midnight.

A council ban of 1929 is defied by a huge face-blackened crowd, whose din can be heard for miles. Those charged with breach of the peace are cheered on their way to court, & their fines paid by a supper dance on the evening of the sentence. The next year, those bound over merely hold cans — which are struck by others, & the ban is lifted. (1990? I may have year wrong — ed.)
Source: [Calendar Riots]

1992 -- Poland: 300,000 coal miners strike.


1993 -- Nobel author Gabriel García Márquez calls for legalization of drugs. Magic Realism indeed!



1994 -- Italy: Raid on the house where anarchist weekly "Canenero" is edited & printed, with a warrant seeking "documentation concerning the committing of armed robberies." Part of a long, dragged out legal farce to suppress the Italian libertarian movement.
http://www.freewebs.com/frameup/chronology.html


1996 -- Italy:

Circolo Anarchico Ponte della Ghisolfa de Milan (CAPDG) commemorates 27° anniversaire de la mort de Giuseppe Pinelli (murdered by the police).
http://artic.ac-besancon.fr/histoire_geographie/HGFTP/Autres/Utopies/anitadat.doc
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/PinelliGiuseppe.htm

1999 -- US: Seattle songster Jim Page plays the Freight & Salvage.

Jim Page is acerbic, powerful, poignant, clever & very funny — & can improvise a song in a flash. He reveals the nuances, twists & turns of political & everyday life in songs that are crafted to be engaging, one interesting lyric at a time.

there's a shadow on the promised land
shiver in the winter
freezin' in the empty space
seems like nobody really cares about anybody anymore
if you ain't got a lot of money
or a pretty face
& it's slander for slander, it cuts like a knife
this ain't no game we're playin', this is real life

& all they want to talk about at city hall
is how to build a better building to play baseball

Whose World is This?
Stranger In Me
http://www.jimpage.net/

2000 -- Canada: SANTARCHY!! Vancouver becomes the first Canadian & non-American city to host a full on Santa event. The tradition started in San Francisco with a bunch of DEGENERATE FREAKS in 1995 & has since spread like a red cheap-suited cancer across the US.

"No force on earth can stop 100 Santas!"

http://santarchy.com/

2000 -- US: Congress mandates Internet censorship software for libraries.


2000 -- Russia: Nuclear power plant Chernobyl officially closed, making room for new ones around the world. Lesson learned...
http://www.iisg.nl/today/en/15-12.php


2004 -- Human Rights in Iraq?: The US is forced to release evidence revealing prisoners in Iraq were subject to mock executions, electric shocks, & burns by US Barbarians Marines.


2005 -- The journal Nature concludes that Wikipedia is almost as accurate on science topics as the Encyclopædia Britannica, but notes Wikipedia's writing is more disorganized.

4500 --

---

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