People always ask what
am i going to be
when i grow
up & i always
just think
i'd like to grow
up
— Nikki Giovanni, "Poem for Rodney," from Spin a Soft Black Song
DECEMBER 31
JOHN WYCLIFFE Leader of the dangerous Lollards,
13th-century English spiritual revolutionaries.
ANNUAL WORLD PEACE MEDITATION.
NEW YEAR'S EVE. In Germany prowling demons & spirits of darkness must be routed this night by mummery & lots of noise. People used to dress in straw clothing with deerskin masks of animals & run through the streets, clanging & dragging chains (Birt?).
Mobile, Alabama: COWBELLION HERD ESCAPADE & REVEL honors Michael Krafft, who founded mystic society, "Cowbellion de Rakin" in 1830, first of all the mystic societies & crewes which stage the Mardi
gras extravaganza in Mobile & New Orleans.
Japan: NAMAHAGE. Men dressed as devils go door-to-door screaming,
"Any good-for-nothings here about?" (Birt?)
Aztec Malinalli Day. A day for persevering against all odds & for creating alliances that will survive the test of time.
-46 -- The last day of the Year of Confusion, a 445-day Roman year (OS).
Ahhhhhh, the Good Ol' Days!
1320 -- John Wycliffe lives. Here...
1384 -- John Wycliffe dies. British radical clergyman, reformer, founder of "poor priest" movement, major influence on Lollards & later reformers. Dead & gone...
1646 -- Corneille's "Le Cid" becomes the first play performed in Quebec, Canada.
1744 -- James Bradley announces discovery of Earth's nutation motion. The planet's a natural born "Wobbly."
1747 -- Writer G. A. Burger lives.
1775 -- Canada: American attack on the city of Quebec is launched during a blinding snowstorm. General Montgomery, one of the two American leaders, is killed, & the second, General Benedict Arnold, is wounded during the opening encounter. The attack fails, the Canadians having killed or wounded fully half the American troops.
1777 -- P.D.Q. Bach completes his "Gross Concerto," according to Schickele.
1817 -- James T. Fields lives, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. A partner in Ticknor & Fields, publishers, he will succeed James Russell Lowell as editor of the "Atlantic Monthly."
1830 -- Alexander Smith, Scottish poet/writer, lives, Kilmarnock.
1842 -- US: Yikes!? Alabama becomes first state to license dental surgeons. Creeping socialism!
Pioneer of Dutch anarchism & the International Anti-Militarist Association. Born in Amsterdam, a preacher in Harlingen in 1870. Leader of a socialist union & first socialist senator (1891) in The Netherlands. He then abandoned politics for the anarchism of Mikhail Bakunin in 1897.
Published Socialism in Danger (1894; preface by Élisée Recluse) & Libertarian Socialism & Authoritative Socialism (1895).
One of the organizers of the antimilitarist congress of Amsterdam in June 1904, as well as in August 1907, & an ardent proponent of the General Strike. In 1914, Nieuwenhuis opposed the "Manifesto of the 16" (siding with the allies during WWI). A signatory, with Emma Goldman, Errico Malatesta, et al, of the antiwar manifesto, "L'internationale et la guerre." In 1918, a supporter of Rudolf Rocker, who had been deported to Germany. Died in 1919.
"There is no possible distinction between the offensive wars & the defensive wars," said Domela Nieuwenhuis, noting that it would be "naive & puerile (...) to seek to establish the responsibilities for such or such government."
"We must benefit from all the movements of revolt, of all dissatisfactions, to foment the insurrection, to organize the revolution, of which we await the end of all social iniquities."
Second fall of reddish rain (see Dec. 28, 1860), exact same quarter of Siena (see also Jan. 1, 1860) [Year Book of Facts, 1861-273] http://www.resologist.net/damn03.htm
1863 -- Alfredo Panzini lives. Italian novelist, short story writer, essayist, who, in his lifetime, ranked with Carducci & D'Annunzio as a 'modern classicist', but is no longer held in such esteem. His style had similarities with the French writer Anatole France.
1871 -- Ellen Horup, anti-militarist feminist, lives, Denmark.
1872 -- Can't Wait?: Though some of his work isn't recognized for almost another century, the creator of Finland's modern literature, Aleksis Kivi dies in Tuusula. His most widely read novel is Seitsemän veljestä (Seven Brothers).
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/akivi.htm
1877 -- Gustave Courbet (1809-1877) dies. French painter, revolutionary socialist, man of independent character. Leader of the realist school.
Courbet was placed in charge of all art museums under the revolutionary Paris Commune of 1871 & saved the city's collections from looters.
With the fall of the Commune he was accused of allowing the destruction of Napoleon's triumphal column in the Place Vendôme; he was imprisoned & condemned to pay for its reconstruction, but fled to Vevey, Switzerland, where he died. Camille Pissarro's circle was strongly influenced by Courbet (who painted the famous portrait of the anarchist Proudhon.)
1879 -- Power Trip? Edison gives his first public demonstration of incandescent lighting with the words, "Now it's on. Now it's off."
1883 -- Spain: Eusebio C. Carbó lives. Held the secretaryship of the CNT in 1942 while in exile in Mexico. A great public speaker & a writer of excellence possessed of a punchy style, his output is strewn throughout countless publications along with a number of books he wrote. Carbó died in México in 1958.
1887 -- US: Frances Steloff lives. Founded the Gotham Book Mart on January 1, 1920. She died in 1989, ripe at the age of 101.
Stories about the shop & Steloff's dedication to it & to writers grew over the years till they assumed the quality of legend.
Miss Steloff lovingly kept up correspondence with many of the writers she met in her shop.
She championed the experimental & challenged the censors which resulted landmark decisions on censorship....
1889 -- Ion Creanga (1839-1889) dies tonite after donuts & brandy. Author of many of Romania's most loved stories ("The Goat & its Three Kids," "The Story of the Pig," "The Story of a Lazy Man," & "The Mother-in-law & Her Three Daughters-in-law," to name a few.
Friends put him into a coffin but can't get it out of the house. The coffin — too big — the doors too narrow.
How to get out?! The wall was demolished & he was taken to Eternitatea cemetery, where he is buried on January 2, 1890.
1902 -- Maksim Gorki play "The Lower Depths" opens in Moskva, Russia.
1907 -- US: For the first time a ball drops at Times Square to signal the new year.
1910 -- Editor, poet, critic, essayist, & journalist Holbrook Jackson (The Anatomy of Bibliomania; The Fear of Books; The Printing of Books) lives, Liverpool.
1913 --
Spain: Isabel Mesa Delgado lives (d.2002). Militant anarcho-syndicalist, member of the CNT from the age of 14, secretary of Valencian Mujeres Libres &, following the defeat of the revolution, organized a clandestine resistance group & provided aid to prisoners & their families under the fascist dicatatorship. With the death of Franco Isabel helped with new libertarian projects, like Radio Klara & the ateneo "Al Margen."
“I am daughter, granddaughter & biznieta of anarchists”.
When she died at the age of 88, her coffin was draped with a black flag, as she wanted, with her true name stitched on it (rather than the alias "Carmen Delgado Palomares" she adopted in 1941), & the song «A las barricadas» in accompaniment.
The PROVINCES - VALENCIA 3 of March 2002
Death of a libertaria Isabel Mesa the past went Monday surrounded in a flag anarchist & with sones of “A the barricades”. One went with his real name, not the one that he had to adopt to flee from one double until death pro-Franco sentence. Unionist from the 14 years, was one of the leaders in Valencia of the libertario movement. Lost the war, organized a clandestine group of resistance.
The libertaria Isabel Mesa Delgado died Monday the past.
Few know it by that name, the authentic one, because from 1941 Hard-twisted Carmen Delgado went to all the effects, name with which avoided to the pro-Franco justice, that had condemned it to two capital punishments to collaborate in the edition of a newspaper of the resistance & by its libertaria activity.
One of its last desires was to vindicate its true name, which, in great letters, printing in the flag had left anarchist who surrounded his coffin. Carmen, already for always Isabel Mesa, went as she wanted, sharing with his friends a last song to the barricades.
Isabel Mesa was the secretary of the local grouping of Free Women in Valencia, the first feminista organization with sense of class in Spain, say the historians. The national federation of this organization, compatible to the CNT, was constituted in Valencia in 1937 & there she was she, who did little that had arrived at the republican capital. Because Isabel was of many sites: of Round, where he was born & soon he marched because to his father, union meaning anarchist, anybody employed to him; of Ceuta, where by her young age & for being woman had problems to obtain the membership card of the CNT (number 1 of the union of the needle) & where she mobilized to Moors & white by a worthy wage for all; of Malaga, where she arrived in falucho - like the pateras from now in 1936, fleeing from a repression which she began & that she would often see the face him in the course of his 88 years of life.
Lost the war, tried to flee to Algeria by the port of Alicante, but as other thousands of republicans it remained in earth, hoping boats that did not arrive. It managed to escape of the nationals becoming to happen through one of them & one went on foot, following the routes of the train, until Almeria. From there to Malaga, to resist, not to leave they folded its dreams & their ideas. Nor although they until death condemned it in revolt. Thus en1941 arrived at Valencia again, with another name & now for always. Without fear & with illusion to organize other women along with, the majority libertarias, a clandestine group (the Union of Democratic Women).
There it was, mainly, Maruja Lara, his other I since they fell in the same house in 1937 & until the death. They got to be 40 women, of different ideological tendency. Every Sunday they met in the old fair of samples, in the stroll of the Tree-lined avenue, thanks to that the companion of Amelia Torres (the sister of the ex- mayor Domingo Torres) let to them enter without making questions.
They looked for food & aid for the prisoners of the pro-Franco jails & their families & tried to maintain the hope in the duros & grays alive days of the postwar period.
“I have seen discuss by a banana rind & how they stopped the saints in front of the door to which us they considered atheistic red and”, Isabel, then Carmen related to him, to this journalist less ago than two years.
Isabel & Maruja revolted to the fear, bought a typewriter & with her, at night, they composed octavillas clandestine of the group. So that neighbors would not discover them, a girl sang & its voice hid the peening of the keys. Its kiosk, the one that mounted after the seam factory which they had could not defend of the great factories, was warehouse of where left toys that cheered the celebrations of many children of prisoners. By that back room of the Uruguay street they passed many Valencian - some with sotana- to even leaf through the free press & anarchist.
“There was much fear”, recounts Maruja, & very little freedom, & the group dissolved in 1953, the same year Franco signed the concordato with the Vatican & the pact with the United States.
Isabel, who never had been imprisoned, spent eight days of torture in the police station of the Samaniego street - well-known through his brutality in 1956. Maruja remembers that gave lodging to a persecuted companion & this one committed the imprudence to write to its woman. The letter was intercepted & Isabel, who appeared like renter, lengthy.
“If I am alive, still it lives the CNT”, it narrates the historian To pound Molina, of the Rescuing Foundation I followed (it prepares a biography of Isabel), that talked back the police to him that said to him that the CNT already had disappeared.
“Guantazo stuck such to Me - Isabel years ago in the book remembered To lose the war of Jose Maria Azkárraga-, that when I left the taxi driver asked to them” to this one where I take it to the cemetery to its house or? “”.
They watched long time, but with the years the thing went to less and, when the dictator died & the liberties were plus a right that a word, Isabel & Maruja removed from the back room newspapers of the CNT. Later it would help the creation of new libertarios forums, like Radio Klara or the Athenian To the Margin. Any cronista of the last years of this city remembers it in an encounter of old resistant, with its flag tricolor, that that she & Maruja embroidered in the 40 for Democratic Women.
LAS PROVINCIAS - VALENCIA 3 de Marzo 2002
Muerte de una libertaria
Isabel Mesa se fue el pasado lunes envuelta en una bandera anarquista y con los sones de «A las barricadas». Se fue con su nombre real, no el que tuvo que adoptar para huir de una doble condena a muerte franquista. Sindicalista desde los 14 años, fue una de las líderes en Valencia del movimiento libertario. Perdida la guerra, organizó un grupo clandestino de resistencia.
La libertaria Isabel Mesa Delgado murió el pasado lunes. Pocos la conocen por ese nombre, el auténtico, porque desde 1941 fue a todos los efectos Carmen Delgado Palomares, nombre con el que esquivó a la justicia franquista, que la había condenado a dos penas de muerte por colaborar en la edición de un periódico de la resistencia y por su actividad libertaria. Uno de sus últimos deseos fue reivindicar su verdadero nombre, el cual, en letras grandes, quedó estampado en la bandera anarquista que envolvió su ataúd. Carmen, ya para siempre Isabel Mesa, se fue como quería, compartiendo con sus amigos un último canto a las barricadas.
Isabel Mesa fue la secretaria de la agrupación local de Mujeres Libres en Valencia, la primera organización feminista con sentido de clase en España, dicen los historiadores. La federación nacional de esta organización, afín a la CNT, se constituyó en Valencia en 1937 y allí estuvo ella, que hacía poco que había llegado a la capital republicana. Porque Isabel era de muchos sitios: de Ronda, donde nació y pronto marchó porque a su padre, significado sindicalista anarquista, nadie le daba trabajo; de Ceuta, donde por su corta edad y por ser mujer tuvo problemas para conseguir el carné de la CNT (el número 1 del gremio de la aguja) y donde movilizó a moras y blancas por un salario digno para todas; de Málaga, donde llegó en un falucho -como las pateras de ahora- en 1936 , huyendo de una represión que empezaba y a la que le vería la cara muchas veces en el transcurso de sus 88 años de vida.
Perdida la guerra, intentó huir a Argelia por el puerto de Alicante, pero como otros miles de republicanos se quedó en tierra, esperando unos barcos que no llegaron. Logró escapar de los nacionales haciéndose pasar por uno de ellos y se fue a pie, siguiendo las vías del tren, hasta Almería. De allí a Málaga, a resistir, a no dejar que doblegaran sus sueños y sus ideas. Ni aunque la condenaran a muerte en rebeldía.
Así llegó a Valencia de nuevo en1941, con otro nombre y ahora para siempre. Sin miedo y con ilusión para organizar junto con otras mujeres, la mayoría libertarias, un grupo clandestino (la Unión de Mujeres Demócratas). Allí estaba, sobre todo, Maruja Lara, su otro yo desde que cayeron en la misma casa en 1937 y hasta la muerte. Llegaron a ser unas 40 mujeres, de distinta tendencia ideológica. Cada domingo se reunían en la vieja feria de muestras, en el paseo de la Alameda, gracias a que el compañero de Amelia Torres (la hermana del ex alcalde Domingo Torres) les dejaba entrar sin hacer preguntas. Buscaban comida y ayuda para los presos de los cárceles franquistas y sus familias e intentaban mantener viva la esperanza en los duros y grises días de la posguerra. «He visto discutir por una cáscara de plátano y cómo nos paraban los santos delante de la puerta a los que nos consideraban rojos y ateos», le relató Isabel, entonces Carmen, a este periodista hace menos de dos años. Isabel y Maruja se sublevaron al miedo, compraron una máquina de escribir y con ella, de noche, componían las octavillas clandestinas del grupo. Para que ningún vecino las descubriera, una niña cantaba y su voz ocultaba el martilleo de las teclas. Su quiosco, el que montaron después de que el taller de costura que tenían no pudiera defenderse de las fábricas grandes, fue almacén de donde salieron juguetes que alegraron las fiestas de muchos hijos de presos. Por aquella trastienda de la calle Uruguay pasaron muchos valencianos -alguno incluso con sotana- para hojear la prensa libre y anarquista.
«Había mucho miedo», cuenta Maruja, y muy poca libertad, y el grupo se disolvió en 1953, el mismo año que Franco firmaba el concordato con el Vaticano y el pacto con Estados Unidos.
Isabel, que nunca había estado presa, pasó ocho días de tortura en la comisaría de la calle Samaniego -conocida por su brutalidad- en 1956. Recuerda Maruja que dieron alojamiento a un compañero perseguido y éste cometió la imprudencia de escribir a su mujer. La carta fue interceptada e Isabel, que figuraba como inquilina, detenida. «Si yo estoy viva, aún vive la CNT», narra la historiadora Pilar Molina, de la Fundación Salvador Seguí (prepara una biografía de Isabel), que le replicó al policía que le dijo que la CNT ya había desaparecido.
«Me pegó tal guantazo -recordó Isabel hace unos años en el libro Perder la guerra de José María Azkárraga-, que cuando salí el taxista les preguntó "¿a ésta dónde la llevo a su casa o al cementerio?"».
La vigilaron mucho tiempo, pero con los años la cosa fue a menos y, cuando el dictador murió y las libertades fueron más un derecho que una palabra, Isabel y Maruja sacaron de la trastienda los periódicos de la CNT. Después ayudaría a la creación de nuevos foros libertarios, como Radio Klara o el ateneo Al Margen. Cualquier cronista de los últimos años de esta ciudad la recuerda en un encuentro de viejos resistentes, con su bandera tricolor, aquella que ella y Maruja bordaron en los 40 para Mujeres Demócratas.
1915 -- US: American branch of Fellowship of Reconciliation founded.
1918 -- US: Dr. Marie Equi (1872-1952) is found guilty of sedition (as were countless others opposing American involvement in one of Europe's bloodiest wars) under a newly amended Espionage Act.
The law "forbade criticism of the US government, the constitution, the military, the flag, navy or uniform." At her trial, Special Agent William Bryon of the Dept. of Justice, called her "an anarchist, a degenerate, & an abortionist."
During the next year & a half, her attorneys fought vainly to have her conviction overturned.
1919 -- US ... The highly touted "Land of Freedom."..
1919 -- Italy: Huge crowds turn out in Milan to greet & honor Errico Malatesta, touring the country following his return from exile on the 24th. Animation par Armando Borghi.
1930 -- Nicaragua: Troops lead by the Sandinista Miguel Angel Ortez ambushes a Marine patrol in the muddy ravines of Achuapa.
Nicaragua — a country condemned to produce cheap desserts (bananas, coffee, sugar) — keeps giving its customers belly-aches. In vain the invaders seek victory through hunger, by burning huts & crops.
Families are forced to flee & wander unprotected in the mountains, leaving behind pillars of smoke & bayoneted animals.
The campesinos believe Sandino knows how to lure the rainbow to him; & as it comes it shrinks until he can pick it up with just two fingers.
1931 -- US: John Haynes Holmes lectures on Emma Goldman's Living My Life to an overflow audience at Temple Emanu-El in New York City.
Growing interest in dramatizing Living My Life prompts Emma to grant lawyer Arthur Leonard Ross full charge of negotiations over dramatic, radio, & cinema rights to her life.
1931 -- US: 60,000 unemployed workers rally at Pitt Stadium in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh near Father Cox's Shantytown.
Located near St. Patrick's Catholic Church in the Strip District of Pittsburgh, the shantytown existed from 1929 to 1932, & was the staging base for the Reverend James Cox's unemployed army.
1933 -- US: American socialist leader Morris Hillquit quits for good.
MORRIS HILLQUIT 1997 SAINT
Early official historian of American labor.
A "centrist" Marxist — opposing both mild reformists & revolutionaries. Hillquit was one of the chief opponents of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) & demanded the expulsion of Bill Haywood from the Socialist Party's National Executive Committee.
1936 -- Germany: Thomas Mann's Letter to the Dean of the Humanities Faculty at the University of Bonn in response to the subsequent loss of his honorary Ph.D. degree under the Nazi regime. He has been stripped of his citizenship earlier this month (See Dec 2).
"Where men burn books / They will burn people also in the end"
1943 -- US: Police called in to control crowds at a Frank Sinatra concert at the Paramount Theatre in Brooklyn, NY. What you call "mob connections." http://www.deathclock.com/
1946 -- US: World War II hostilities terminated by Presidential Proclamation.
1950 -- Karl Renner dies, Austria.
1958 -- Cuba: The guerrilla columns of Camilo Cienfuegos & Che Guevara take Yaguajay & the city of Santa Clara. Beloved & Respected Comrade Batista, American government & Mafia favorite, flees Cuba & a new historical cycle begins for the Cuban people.
Cienfuegos has the beard & mane of a biblical prophet, but where a worry-creased face should be, there's only an ear-to-ear grin.
The feat he is most proud of is that time up in the mountains when he fooled a light military plane by painting himself red with iodine & lying still with his arms crossed.
1962 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Governor Edmund G. Brown announces his state of California is now the most populous of the 50 United States. NY's governor, Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Nellie Rockefeller, disagreed & refused to concede. This "loss of face" led to the mass suicide of millions in New York....which further bolsters Rhode Island's competing claims.
A moderate socialist, Montehus became (1906) an ardent antimilitarist, close to the positions of Gustave Herve & his newspaper "The Social War."
Author of a hundred well-known songs, such as, "Gloire au 17e" (1907) & "La Grève des Mères" (The Strike of the Mothers;1910) which were taken up by revolutionary Paris. The recital of his songs are often stopped by the anti-semitic reactionaries of Drumont or the police because of their subversive contents, & are the source of many brawls. But when WWI erupts in 1914, Montehus follows Gustave Hervé in a turnabout, applauding "l'union sacré" & its patriotism.
1966 -- 385,000 American troops now occupy South Vietnam. See below, 1967, 1969, 1970.
1967 -- Vietnam: 486,000 American troops occupy South Vietnam. Of the 15,000 Americans killed to date, 60% died in 1967.
1967 -- US: Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Paul Krassner, Dick Gregory, & friends pronounce themselves "Yuppies."
Activists partying at Abbie Hoffman's New York loft resolve to hold a Festival of Life during the Democrats' "Convention of Death." Paul Krassner christens the group "Yippies." See 1984 below.
1968 -- Italy: La polizia di stato ferisce gravemente lo studente Soriano Ceccanti durante scontri davanti al locale notturno La Bussola di Marina di Pietrasanta (Lucca).
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]
1969 -- US: Badgered & Bewildered? Twin-engine Cessna takes off from an airport outside Madison, flies 35 miles north, & drops three bombs on the Badger Army Ammunition Plant.
An anonymous phone call to the University of Wisconsin student newspaper, "The Daily Cardinal," identifies the bombers as members of (quote) "The Vanguard of the Revolution." (end quote) (aka the "New Years Gang").
The Cessna was stolen by Dwight & Karl Armstrong (an uncle had died in the plant in 1945 in an accidental explosion). Anti-Vietnam War incidents like these are indicative of "Bringing the War Home."
Aside: Auntie Dave & cohort Gus Hellthaler, of the US Student Press Association/College Press Service (USSPA/CPS), are called in to help straighten the paper out in 1972. The Cardinal is still trying to recover from that little visitation. http://lists.village.virginia.edu/lists_archive/sixties-l/1684.html
1969 -- Vietnam: Over 100,000 Americans have died in South Vietnam since the initial invasion designed to subdue the country for US interests. 65,000 troops are brought home in a troop reduction designed to undercut the antiwar protest movement which is finally spreading to the larger population & the military itself.
1970 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Used Car Salesman President Dick Nixon signs a bill calling for the removal of silver from all American coinage.
1970 -- US: Congress repeals the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. Congress finally fesses up to having been hoodwinked by a pack of lies the US military, NSA & the government had produced to test their knee-jerk reaction. Good knees resulted in heavy bombing & dramatically increased US military attacks on Vietnam.
1970 -- US: Elvis tours FBI headquarters. Great gathering place for cross-dressers, drug addicts & rock-n-roll has-beens.
1970 -- Jimi Hendrix & Band of Gypsies premier at Fillmore East & record "Machine Gun II."
1973 -- England: Three-day week introduced in Britain. Revolutionaries! — one more push to be zero-workers.
1978 -- US: Indian Claims Commission is terminated, ending the process of "repaying" tribes for lands stolen by the American government.
1978 -- Real Dead?: Bill Graham's Winterland's last concert (Grateful Dead & Blues Brothers perform.)
1980 -- Paul McCartney sues the Beatles to dissolve their partnership.
1982 -- One of New York City's longest running rock clubs, Max's Kansas City closes. The watering hole for Andy Warhol & the Velvet Underground in the late 60s. Here Devo made its sensational NY stage debut, introduced by David Bowie in 1976. Also a young unknown Bruce Springsteen played solo acoustic sets in the early 70s, opening for Bob Marley & the Wailers. http://www.maxskansascity.com/
1982 -- Poland: Martial law, declared in December 1981 in an effort to destroy the labor union, SolidarnoϾ (Solidarity), is suspended. It is formally ended on July 22, 1983.
alt sp; Solidarnosc
1984 -- US: "Newsweek" declares this the "Year of the Yippie" (Dec 31, 84 issue). See 1967 above.
1984 -- Right Wing?: Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen loses his left arm in an auto accident in England. Allen continued on with the band, using a specially adapted drum kit.
1985 -- US: Over 54,500 people play kazoos in downtown Rochester, New York. The assembled multitude played, "A Bicycle Built for Two," in tribute to the tragic death of millions in 1962 (see above).
1986 -- Puerto Rico: Two hotel workers start a fire in the ballroom of the DuPont Plaza hotel after a meeting of their union, killing 96, in San Juan.
'It is significant that in all Aryan languages those words which indicate a productive effort mean suffering.'
Clean Slate
It is 1938 in the French West Africa village of Bourkassa & the police force is tired of being a doormat. In this dark comic adaptation of Jim Thompson's 'POP 1280,' the hapless officer decides to take the law into his own hands & rid the town of its human waste.
Foreign Films, English , 1981, Color, 128 min. NTSC, Rating: Not Rated http://web.archive.org/...geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/6437/jim.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thompson_(writer)
Moral Collapse Coup de Torchon
Directed by Bertrand Tavernier, With Phillipe Noiret, Isabelle Huppert
Video: Home Vision Cinema t first, it is horrible," says Chief of Police Lucien Cordier of Bourkassa, Senegal (played by Philippe Noiret), "but then you start to think about starving kids, little girls sold into slavery, women whose sex is sewn up. God created murder out of pure kindness. Murder's nothing compared to those horrors."
It's this type of reasoning about the absurdity of justice in an unjust world that pervades the disturbing Coup de Torchon, a 1981 French film (now on video) based on Pop. 1280, a story by American noir writer Jim Thompson.
This "little" man is crushed by his superiors, his wife, & his own inadequacies, but he acquires a social conscience that compels him to rid the world of evil — starting with all those who have stepped on him. The director plays on our delight in watching this poor slob get the best of his oppressors, but Tavernier also creates a masterful study in irony, since the man ends up more callous than his enemies & just as impotent as ever.
Card catalog description
Because the Baptist minister's children in a small North Carolina town have difficulty conforming to the roles their father wishes them to play for public consumption, fifteen-year-old Neal feels he must hide his consuming interest in jazz music.
Customers who bought titles by Jim Thompson also bought titles by these authors:
Robert Polito, Horace McCoy, David Goodis, Raymond Chandler, Anton Chekhov
A 400-year-old instrument made to chart the position of the sun & moon is believed to be the oldest piece of equipment affected by the millennium bug. When the clock strikes midnight on December 31, 1999, the device known as the Equatorium will stop working. The year 2000 problem is usually thought of as a danger to systems dependent on modern technology. But the underlying fault afflicting both the Equatorium & modern computers is the same - a failure to plan beyond the end of the millennium.
Whoever invented it apparently did not imagine it would still be in use almost four centuries later. They decided to finish the timeline at the year 2000. Museum staff are at a loss as there appears to be no way of altering the device & extending its lifespan.
1999 -- Panama: Control of Panama Canal reverts to Panama.
1999 -- New Year Resolution:
Follow not too closely on the heels of the truth, lest it dash thy teeth in.
— HemoMeister
1999 -- US: Earth Liberation Front (ELF) sets a fire at MSU Agriculture Hall, Lansing, Michigan.
1999 -- Criswell predicts a black rainbow will suck oxygen from face of earth. "Black Rainbow" is clearly a codeword for politicians.
2000 --
Y2K preparations completed — 6 gallons of water, 12 rolls toilet paper, bottle of rum, 2 bottles of whiskey, case of wine, cord of wood & a case of canned chili.
Hey, we're ready!!
Every night we sit around the wood stove with mulled wine or hot cider & rum & sing a medley of "So Long, Mom, I'm off the drop the bomb"... & "Hey, Now Utah, here we Come!!, Reagan's zonked so don't be glum..."
Happy New Year!!
[Midnight Moscow time comes at 4 pm e.s.t., so get under a desk & K.Y.A.G.!]
2003 -- Shanghai: The world's first commercial maglev train is inaugurated; it reaches 420 kph.
2004 -- England: Alan Barlow (1928-2004) does not live to see 2005. Trade unionist & anarchist, arrested, charged & imprisoned in 1969 for his role in the "1st of May Group" bombing of the Francoist Banco de Bilbao in London.
2009 -- We wrap the year with a quote from SaintMeister, resident slave laborer who provides the framework & a large portion of the Daily Bleed with his Jubilee Saints Calendar (published yearly by Autonomedia):
If we have learned well to recognize ignorance & dependence in ourselves & the world at large, & if we have learned to draw on the inexhaustible well of humor within which laughs aside our fears & pretensions, cheering us in our search for a true humanity, then we shall be the shining citizens of the Great Dismal City of Refuge, brothers & sisters in the global swamp-rat communion.
— Jim Koehnline, "The Legend of the Great Dismal Maroons"
2011 --
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
I feel fine
— Rem
All things eventually fade & are no more. As impermanent beings ourselves, we know & ungracefully accept this fact. One day, the end will come for our friends, our family, our neighbors, our IRS auditors, & even for ourselves. Yes, even the world, itself will one day stop spinning on its familiar axis & its property value on the open market will plummet.
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
The last day of the Year of Confusion, a 445-day Roman year (OS).
US: John Haynes Holmes lectures on Emma Goldman's Living My Life to an overflow audience at Temple Emanu-El in New York City.
[Details / context]
France:
Here Devo made its sensational NY stage debut, introduced by David Bowie in 1976. Also a young unknown Bruce Springsteen played solo acoustic sets in the early 70s, opening for Bob Marley & the Wailers.
t first, it is horrible," says Chief of Police Lucien Cordier of Bourkassa, Senegal (played by Philippe Noiret), "but then you start to think about starving kids, little girls sold into slavery, women whose sex is sewn up. God created murder out of pure kindness. Murder's nothing compared to those horrors."
