My brain was a hill country & the moon was unequal to itself Rivers were flowing through my head from ear to ear. — Fouad El-Etr, "Tonight the Stars Are in Tatters"

---

Ancient Roman SATURNALIA (December 17-23). "Unrestrained & intemperate jollity." Relaxation of social rules, no business transacted courts closed, wars suspended, feuds forgotten, slaves take the place of masters. This is the big one - & should last at least seven days.Teh LORD OF MISRULE is selected.

Aztec: ACATL DAY. The protector of day Acatl (Reed) is Tezcatlipoca. Acatl is the scepter of authority which is, paradoxically, hollow. It is a day when the arrows of fate fall from the sky like lightning bolts. A good day to seek justice, a bad day to act against others.

---

908 -- The Good Ol' Days? al-Mustada is caliph for one day, before being deposed & murdered.


1493 -- Paracelsus lives. Swiss physician, chemist, alchemist, & one of the fathers of modern medicine. Paracelsus was the pseudonym of Dr Theophrastus Bombastus Hohenheim, which meant 'beyond Celsius', implying that he was a greater physician than the then-revered Roman physician Aulus Cornelius Celsius.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/parace.htm


1526 -- Pope Clemens VII publishes degree Cum ad zero, forms Inquisition.


1531 -- Pope Clement VII founds the Inquisition in Lisboa. Frei Diogo da Silva is appointed the first inquisitor-general of Portugal.



1660 -- Andrew Marvell petitions House of Commons to release John Milton from prison.
http://johnmilton.org/




1790 -- The great Aztec stone calendar discovered, Mexico.


1791 -- US: New York City creates the first one-way street. Strait to hell we suspicion...


1807 -- John Greenleaf Whittier lives. American author/abolitionist. Many of his poems are sung as church hymns.

When the Atlantic Monthly gives a party to celebrate the poet's 70th birthday, Mark Twain, in a speech, shocks the diners by comparing Longfellow, Emerson & Holmes, (all guests) to three drunken tramps in the Sierras.

1826 --

Strange Events:

France: A gigantic red cross is reported in the sky over a church in Migne.

1830 -- Colombia: Latin American liberationist Simón Bolivar dies, Santa Marta.

1843 -- Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is published.

1852 --

Strange: December Fortean Events

Sighting of a triangular cloud in a storm, with a red nucleus about half the apparent diameter of the moon & a long tail; visible 13 minutes; explosion of nucleus. [London Roy. Soc. Proc., 6-276] http://www.resologist.net/damn03.htm

1860 -- France: Passport system abolished, considering it "both absurd & vexatious" [since reintroduced, apparently to keep out creeping salacious Scots in kilts!].
Source: [Calendar Riots]


1862 -- Urbain Gohier (Urbain Dégoulet) lives (1862-1951), Versailles. French writer, journalist, lampoonist, antimilitarist, burning supporter of Dreyfus, & writer for the anarchist "Libertaire." Author of L'armée contre la nation (1898), Les prétoriens et la Congrégation & A bas la caserne, etc. Sank gradually into anti-semitism & patriotism, becoming a collaborationist during WWII.

The very existence of the State demands that there be some privileged class vitally interested in maintaining that existence. & it is precisely the group interests of that class that are called patriotism.

— Mikhail Bakunin, Letters on Patriotism, 1869

http://www.ephemanar.net/juin29.html

1873 -- Ford Madox Ford lives, England. Novelist, international influence in early 20th-century literature. See Kenneth Rexroth's More Classics Revisited. Also editors' introduction to a selection by Rexroth of recent British poetry "Five Earnest British Poets" (n.d.).



1875 -- Canada: Violent bread riots in Montreal.


1878 -- A meeting is held at L.L. Zamenhof's home to celebrate the creation of Esperanto.

Esperanto, a neutral & easily learned idiom (at least for Westerners), is designed to facilitate comprehension & communication between peoples.

Among its early enthusiasts were many anarchists, seeing here not only a means of countering warmongering nationalisms, but also a way to diffuse the libertarian ideal beyond the official statist borders.

"& as you can imagine, Esperanto, without any difficulty, has also crossed the seas. Travel to America, Africa or Oceania & you will find Esperantists everywhere who will be able to understand you when you speak the language. Esperanto is the surest & the speediest vehicle of civilization."

— Jules Verne
http://www.suite101.com/pages/article_old.cfm/esperanto/27579
http://raforum.info/spip.php?article3664⟨=en

1883 -- France: Hoche Meurant lives (1883-1950). Anarcho-syndicalist, antimilitarist.


1885 -- Alphonse Barbé lives. French anarchiste & antimilitarist. Barbe met Sébastien Faure who introduced him to anarchism.

Barbe was briefly involved the Communist Party for short periods before 1934 when he began running "Le Semeur de Normandie," a newspaper devoted to cultural ideas & the defense of conscientious objectors. In 1936 Barbe was actively aiding the Spanish revolutionists & also published Lu dans la presse libertaire syndicaliste espagnole (1937-38).

[Details / context]

1890 -- France: Pierre Lentengre (aka Pierre Lentente) lives (1890-1982) Paris. Militant & founder of a Parisian anarchiste group. Administrator of "La voix libertaire" (1928-1939) & active in "The Friends of Sébastien Faure." See the Anarchist Encyclopedia, http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/LentengrePierre.htm




1893 -- Theatrical director Erwin Piscator lives (1893-1966), Ulm, Germany. Famed for ingenious Expressionistic staging techniques, originator of epic theatre style later developed by German playwright Bertolt Brecht.

http://homepages.tesco.net/~theatre/tezzaland/webstuff/piscator.html



1898 -- Chekhov's play The Seagull is revived in Moskva — a success.


1900 --

Mars Bars?: 1st prize of 100,000 francs offered for communications with extraterrestrials. Little Grey Martians from Texass executed excluded because they are considered too easy.

1903 -- American author Erskine Caldwell lives, Coweta County, Georgia. Unadorned novels & stories (Tobacco Road, God's Little Acre) about rural poor of the American South mix violence & sex in grotesque tragicomedy — & he is particularly esteemed in France & the former Soviet Union. He struggled with censorship more than any other writer in his time.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/caldwell.htm


1903 -- Wright brothers perform the first powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The crowd cheered, "Wright on!" 65 years later men flew to the moon.




1904 -- Paul Cadmus, lives to see the Fleet arrive in port. Gay painter of sailors on liberty & suchlike. His notorious erotic painting The Fleet's In! launched his career as a full-time artist.

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/cadmus_paul.html
http://www.history.navy.mil/ac/cadmus/cadmus.htm
http://www.queer-arts.org/archive/9809/cadmus/cadmus_bio.html



1908 -- New Zealand writer/teacher Sylvia Ashton-Warner lives, Stratford, N.Z. Adapts British teaching methods to needs of Maori children, aiming for peace & communication between radically different cultures — which her fiction & nonfiction reflects.


1910 -- Jean Maitron lives. French libertarian historian. Wrote numerous works, including Histoire du mouvement anarchiste en France (1880-1914).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Maitron
http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/1998/02/RIVIERE/10039.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Maitron


1910 --

---

1910

El horror a la revolución «¿Por qué temer al la guerra? Si se tiene que morir aplastado por la tiranía capitalista y gubernamental en tiempo de paz, ¿por qué no morir mejor combatiendo lo que nos aplasta? Es menos espantoso que se derrame sangre que conquista la libertad y el bienestar, que continúe derramándose bajo el actual sistema político y social en provecho de nuestros explotadores y tiranos.» Ricardo Flores Magón "Regeneración", 17 de diciembre de 1910 Deconstructing Columbus Mexican workers revise history

---

1910 -- France: Rafael Barrett Álvarez de Toledo dies at age 34. Correspondent & journalist who covered the revolution & conditions in Paraguay which got him deported to Uruguay. By 1907 he was more radicalized as he became preoccupied with social issues. In 1908, he declares himself as an anarchist, publishing the article "Mi Anarquismo."
[Details / context]



1911 -- US: Emma Goldman presents a farewell lecture, in New York City, before departing for annual lecture tour with Dr. Ben Reitman.



1913 -- Ford Madox Ford begins writing The Good Soldier.


1913 -- Edgar Rice Burroughs completes his novel Nu of the Neocene.


1914 -- The Turks expel the Jews from Tel Aviv & send them to Egypt.


1917 -- Ford Madox Hueffer [Ford] writes his poem "One Last Prayer."


1917 -- Russia: The Bolsheviks confiscate all church property in Russia.


1919 -- South African author/teacher Ezekiel Mphahlele lives. His autobiography (Down Second Avenue [1959]), a South African classic, combines a young man's coming of age with penetrating social criticism of apartheid.
http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/cm/africana/mphahlel.htm



1921 -- Gabriela Zapolska, Polish novelist/playwright of the naturalist school, dies in Lwow, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine). Wrote cheap, sensationalist novels, full of bitterness toward middle-class values, morality, & hypocrisy.


1926 -- Nigerian poet/scholar S(olomon) Adeboye Babalola lives. Known for his illuminating study of Yoruba ìjalá (a form of oral poetry), folk tale translations, & collecting & preserving the oral traditions of his homeland.


1927 -- US: Submarine S-4 collides with Coast Guard destroyer Paulding off Provincetown, Massachusetts. All 40 men aboard the sub die.


1936 -- Dummy Up?: Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy make first appearance.


1936 -- USSR: In Moscow, Pravda announces that in Catalonia (Spain), the "cleaning" out of Trotskyites & the anarcho-syndicalists has already started. Stalin's agents will carry out these purges:

"As for Catalonia, the purging of Trotskyist & anarcho-syndicalist elements has begun; this work will be carried out with the same energy with which it was done in the USSR."

http://www.reocities.com/CapitolHill/9820/spain11.html
http://struggle.ws/berneri/in_government.html

1936 -- Spain: The anti-Stalinist Marxist party POUM is expelled from the Catalan government.
http://libraries.ucsd.edu/speccoll/visfront/chron.html


1936 -- Spain: Large international meeting organized by the Regional Committee of the C.N.T. Among the many speakers are Pierre Besnard, secretary of the A.I.T; Paul Lapeyre, C.G.T- S.R delegate; Gaston Leval, for the C.N.T. of Catalonia; Lorenzo Justi for the Italian section; etc.
http://www.ephemanar.net/decembre17.html



1937 -- Spain: Snow storm in Teruel.

A veritable blizzard cut communications between headquarters & advancing troops. Planes are grounded & trucks stranded on the icy roads, but the Republican infantry is moving forward, lightly wounded men rising from the snow to rejoin the advancing march. Soldiers in the freed outskirts are embraced & celebrated by the population. (General Franco, after recapturing the city in February 23, orders the killing of the remaining civil population for their support of the Republican soldiers!)

Republican soldier killed while stringing telephone lines
As a result of our wartime alliance with China, this act was passed by the US Congress to repeal the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, & subsequent acts, allowing for the first time in 60 years the legal immigration of Chinese into the US However, the quota for Chinese was very low compared to European countries, a fact which was not altered until 1965.

[More on Exclusion Act, click here]



1944 -- Abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky dies.

http://www.anthroposophie.net/bibliothek/kunst/malerei/kandinsky/bib_kandinsky.htm




1944 -- US: Japanese-Americans released from detention camps. US Army announces end of excluding Japanese-Americans from West Coast.

1948 -- Brazil: Anarchist Congress convenes in São Paulo, marking the resurgence of the movement after the "derrubada" (the falling trees) of the dictatorship.

Held at Nossa Chácara, in the Itaim barrio (December 17-19), a diverse cross-section of ideas & experience is represented by this mix of Brazilians & the many Italian, Spanish & Portuguese militants living in the country. Source: [Arquivo de História Social]

Congresso Anarquista do Brasil - Realizado na Nossa Chácara, no bairro de Itaim, de 17 a 19 de dezembro de 1948. ressurgimento do movimento anarquista após a derrubada da ditadura de Getúlio Vargas. Contou com a presença de anarquistas de vários pontos do Brasil e diversos militantes italianos, espanhóis e portugueses residentes no Brasil ou de passagem. / anarquismo


1951 -- Netherlands: Too Unruly? Dutch Communist Party members are forbidden to be civil servants.


1952 -- Charles Laisant (1911-1952) dies. A pacifist & anarcho-syndicalist, Charles is part of a generational family of anarchists: His father Albert Laisant, his brother Maurice, & his grandfather Charles Ange Laisant (1841-1920), were all militant libertarians.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/gallery/galleryindex.htm#CharlesLaisantpetitfils


1957 -- US: Atlas Shrugged? America tests its first Atlas Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM; weapon of mass destruction).


1960 -- Germany: US Air Force C-131 Convair smacks into Munich, West Germany church steeple, falls on a streetcar, kills all 20 on the plane, 18 passengers in the trolley, & 11 more on the street.


1963 -- US: Last Gasp!? Congress passes first Clean Air Act.


1965 -- Philippines: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Ferdinand Marcos is "elected" president (accompanied by his ShoeHorn pal Imelda.) To protect US interests & get Imelda some decent shoes.


1965 -- US: Largest newspaper ever appears — the Sunday edition of "The New York Times" at 946 pages ($0.50) — almost as thick as a Daily Bleed! (But neither as accurate nor revealing.)


1965 -- US: Ken Kesey holds his 4th Acid Test, Muir Beach Lodge.
http://wild-bohemian.com/kesey.htm


1966 -- Against US wishes, U.N. General Assembly approves an international treaty banning nuclear weapons in space.

1966 -- Death & Rebirth of the Haight-Ashbury (Hairy Henry & Fyllis busted).
Current home of the anarchist Bound Together Books Collective.
Source: Emmett Grogan, Ringolevio, p 261 & Counterculture Timeline 1966-1967:
http://www.diggers.org/ringolevio/ring261.html
http://www.well.com/user/mareev/TIMELINE/1966-1967.html
http://www.dmoz.org/Shopping/Publications/Books/Politics/Anarchism/

1966 -- US: Benefit for Legalization of Marijuana (LEMAR) at California Hall. Country Joe & the Fish entertained.
http://www.hempfest.org/


1969 -- Miss Vicki, 17, married Tiny Tim, 47, on the TV's Tonight Show. Think they were weird? What about the estimated 50 million bozos who tuned in.

1969 -- US: USAF closes Project Blue Book, concluding no evidence of extraterrestrial spaceships behind thousands of UFO sightings.

http://www.roswell-online.com/clipart/ufoclip1.htm

1973 -- France: During this month, sortie à Lyon du premier numéro du magazine "I.R.L." Information Rassemblées à Lyon (qui deviendra ensuite "Informations et Réflexions Libertaires"), journal d'expressions libertaires, paraissant tous les deux mois. Indépendant des organisations anarchistes existantes, ce magazine de qualité saura s'entourer de nombreux collaborateurs.
http://www.ephemanar.net/decembre17.html



1977 -- Elvis Costello & the Attractions appear on NBC-TV "Saturday Night Live" in place of the Sex Pistols, who can't get a visa to enter the country.

Producer Lorne Michaels refuses to allow Costello to perform "Radio, Radio" (because of the song's criticism of the broadcasting industry), but a few measures into "Less than Zero," Costello halts his group & goes into "Radio, Radio."

He will never be invited back.

From: Bleedster Chris K (Dec 2001): Elvis Costello returned to SNL this past year with the Beastie Boys.

1982 -- US: Federal District Court Judge decides not to grant preliminary injunction against completion of the Gasquet-Orleans Road thru Siskiyou Indian religious area.


1986 -- South Africa: Nine members of End Conscription Campaign placed on trial.
http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?include=docs/misc/2010/umzabalazo.html



1987 -- Marguerite Yourcenar dies, Northeast Harbor, Maine. First woman elected to the Académie Française. Her most important works are historical novels, especially Memoirs of Hadrian (1951).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marguerite_Yourcenar


1991 -- Spain: First Palestinian-Israeli peace talks begin in Madrid.


1996 -- Yugoslavia: 200,000 demonstrators protest Milosevic's murderous regime, Belgrade.


1997 -- Chechnya: Five Poles, including members from the Polish Anarchist Federation (FA) kidnapped, while delivering medicine, food & other supplies from a Polish-Chechen friendship society. Their van was found 40 kilometers west of Grozny with its two front tires shot out. They were attacked by a gang of 15. Two Chechen bodyguards (friends of one of the hostages) shot two of the attackers.
http://alter.most.org.pl/fa/chechen.html

1997 -- US: Blue Moon Tavern forced to move a pool table!

One of the pool tables is moved out of the way because more than 100 people show up for readings by the Deaf Poets Society.

---

Deaf Poets are signing examples

Seattle Times, February 5, 1998

The event, organizers decided, would be a regular gig. It was given the name Deaf Poets Society.

Owner Gus Hellthaler (aka Joe Schmoe) backed them up. The first event was held in December. One of the pool tables had to be moved out of the way because more than 100 people showed up.

Stale Urine Review:
http://staleurine.com/reviews/connie-blue-moon.html

Subject: Deaf Poet Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 07:22:54 -0800

Dave, sorry it took so long to reply, but with my faulty memory I thought it would be best to ask some of the deaf folk what they remembered about the first night of the Deaf Poet Society. The best I can cobble together out of the disparate memories is that it took place on Wednesday, December 17, 1997. After researching this tiny bit of information with people who actually participated, including myself, I now sit in awe that any history is ever written. Or, can't stand that it is written with a straight face. All these years I thought that Impressionism was simply an art movement. Oh well... — Gus

People do more at the Blue Moon Tavern than just drink beer & talk, but they are usually drinking beer & talking while they are doing them!

Weekly Events: Monday is Opera Night from 7-10pm
Tuesday is Peanut Night- more free peanuts than you want!
Saturday is Live Music Night- Live music up-close-and-personal!
Sunday is Grateful Dead Night-Seattle's acclaimed DeadHead get- together

Monthly Events:
First Wednesday is Poetry Night-Open mic, open minds....

(Sorry, We're Open!)

---

1999 -- US: Welcome mat for WTO in Seattle, Washington. Ya'll come back, hear!?! &, yes/no, this photo is/is not the Blue Moon Tavern on Opera Nite!:

Seattle Radical Timeline

2001 -- US: Martin Glaberman (1918-2001) dies. Influential Marxist, teacher, & militant autoworker. Associated with the Johnson-Forest Tendency, a radical left group that split from the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, recognizing the Soviet Union as a state capitalist society rather than as a degenerated workers' state. Comrade of the West Indian Marxist C.L.R. James. Historian of Wildcat strikes in the American auto industry during WWII, poet, small press publisher, & a specialist in Marx's Das Kapital.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/glaberman/index.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Glaberman
http://www.clrjamesinstitute.org/glabobit.html

2002 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Bush orders deployment of an illegal "Star Wars" missile defense system even though it doesn't work. Should probably contract it out to China or Halliburton-Walmart, get the job done quick, right & on-the-cheap.


2004 -- December 17, 2004 Cuban authorities put up photos of abused Iraqi prisoners in front of the US interests section in Havana after the U.S. displayed Christmas decorations in a protest against Cuba's human rights record. (BBC)


2005 -- New Zealand: A group of over 40 people, dressed in Santa Claus costumes, go on a rampage through downtown Auckland, robbing stores & assaulting security guards.


3000 --

Secretary of Labor: Sir, the workers are revolting, they demand shorter hours! President Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx): Excellent! We'll begin by shortening the lunch hour.        — Duck Soup

9002 --

---

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

Visit the complete Daily Bleed Calendar

The Daily Bleed is freely produced by Recollection Used Books

Over 1.97 million a'mopers & a'gawkers since May 2005

anarchist, labor, & radical used books

See 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