Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 17:30:11 -0500 (EST)
From: Sound Of Great Wind Breaking <dcombs-AT-bloomington.in.us>
Subject: Saturday Daily Rabble: 12/5 GERSHOM SHOLEM (fwd)





All Bleeding Eventually Stops:
http://www.eskimo.com/~recall/bleed/1205.htm

Things To Do Today: Make new friends  *
(go to a poetry recital & ask why each poem doesn't rhyme).


DECEMBER 5

GERSHOM SHOLEM
Modern Jewish mystic, Kabbalist, renegade radical.

Ancient Rome: FESTIVAL OF FAUNUS. Feasting & merrymaking.

Belgium: ST. NICHOLAS' EVE. Black Peter, Nick's Moorish
servant, drops down the chimney with gifts for the children.


1349 - Jews are massacred at Nuremberg in Black death riots.

1770 - Six of the British troops involved in the Boston
Massacre found innocent, largely due to defense attorney John
Adams' intimation that Crispus Attucks, America's first black
hero, may have caused "the dreadful carnage of that night"
with his "mad behavior...at the head of...[a] rabble of Negroes..."

1784 - Phillis Wheatley dies, aged about 31 years, Boston.
First black woman poet &, after Anne Bradstreet, only the
second woman poet of note in the US.  The 39 poems in *Poems
on Various Subjects, Religious & Moral*,
published in 1773 in England under the sponsorship of the
Countess of Huntingdon, help spread her reputation in Europe
as well as in America.

1786 - Shay's Rebellion in Massachusetts.

1791 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dies, Vienna, Austria.

1804 - Thomas Jefferson re-elected US president, George
Clinton is his vice-president.

1830 - Poet Christina Rossetti lives, London. Sister of fellow
poet Dante Gabriel & historian William Michael Rossetti.
http://library.utoronto.ca/www/utel/rp/authors/rossettc.html
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rossetti.htm

1854 - Folding theatre chair patented.

1876 - Monkey is As Monkey Do?: Anarchist Daniel Stillson
patents first practical pipe wrench; forms a gang, then throws
it in the works.

1890 - Filmmaker Fritz Lang lives, Vienna, Austria.

1896 - Henry Poulaille lives, Paris. Author, anarchist,
director of éditions Grasset, where he published proletarian
authors, & the journal "Le nouvel =E2ge littéraire" which
promoted worker literature & gained him the enmity of the
Communist Party. Founded "Le musée du soir", for reading,
meeting & debating. Jailed for signing Louis Lecoin's anti-war
leaflet, "Paix immédiat". Founded the proletarian review
"Maintenant". Wrote numerous novels, often autobiographical,
*Le pain quotidien* (1931); *Les damnés de la terre* (1935);
*Pain de soldat* (1937); *Seul dans la vie =E0 14 ans* (1980),
etc. Died 30 March 1980.

"Il s'était mis =E0 l'écart dans ses livres, alors qu'il
inclinait naturellement vers la rébellion. Or, la vie était la
revendication de vivre... Qu'était sa position =E0 lui? Les cris
des femmes dans les marchés, que faisait garder par les flics
le préfet Lepine, le ramenaient =E0 une conception plus juste de
la situation. Ses lectures l'avaient prédisposé =E0 la révolte.
C'est chez les révoltés qu'il chercherait les contacts avec la vie."
In "Seul dans la vie =E0 14 ans".

1897 - Jewish mystic Gershom Sholem lives, Berlin, Germany.

1897 - Nunnally Johnson lives. American screenwriter,
producer, director, who made scripts to such film as *The
Grapes of Wrath*(1940, directed by John Ford), *The Woman in
the Window* (1944, directed by Fritz Lang), & *How to Marry a
Millionaire* (1953), starring Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall, &
Betty Grable.   http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/nunnally.htm

1901 - Animator, amusement park builder Walt Disney lives.

1901 - Theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg lives,
Wurzburg, Bavaria.
WERNER HEISENBERG 1997 SAINT
German quantum theorist who may have helped slow Nazi progress
in development of atomic weaponry.

1908 - First football uniform numerals used, University of Rome.

1910 - Abraham Polonsky lives. American director,
screenwriter, novelist, who wrote essays, radio scripts &
several novels before starting his career in Hollywood. Joined
the Communist party & was active in union politics. His film
projects were stopped when he refused to testify before the
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Although
blacklisted Polonsky continued in film industry,
writing TV scripts & doctoring screenplays. Other blacklisted
screenwriters: Paul Jarrico, Michael Wilson, Hugo Butler,
Dalton Trumbo, Howard Fast.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/polonsk.htm
http://www.moderntimes.com/palace/blacklist.htm

1912 - General Strikes in both Germany & US in response to
declarations of war yesterday -- no one will go to war --
forcing cancellation of the war within the week. (Jack London,
*The Iron Heel*.) Jack London Collection at:
 http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/ Includes *The Iron Heel*;
chapter 13 is about the General Strike,
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/Writings/IronHeel/chapter13.html

1919 - Representative Isaac Siegel, after a trip to Ellis
Island yesterday, declared he had discovered
how anarchists are made.

"Books in our public libraries help to make anarchists," he
said. "I found a boy on the Island -- Thomas Buhokanob,  17
years old, a native of Russia, who came here seven years ago.
He was educated in Public School 38. He read  anarchist books
out of the Harlem Public Library. Then he helped circulate
Emma Goldman's 'Mother Earth.' After that he went to
Greenpoint, where he organized Russians who could not speak
English and taught them what he had learned about anarchy.

"He told me he did not believe in the Constitution, in any
form of government or in God."

Mr. Siegel is a member of the House Congressional Committee
appointed to investigate conditions at the Island.

Mr. Siegel said the committee would meet in Washington on
Monday, when it will question Secretary of Labor Wilson, Louis
F. Post, Assistant Secretary of the Department of Labor, &
other officials.

1923 - One of the founders of the Irish Literary Theatre,
Edward Martyn, dies in Tulira, County Galway, Ireland. Broke
with the mainstream of Irish revivalism, but later helped
found the Irish Theatre in Dublin. Some of his noted plays are
*The Heather Field* & *Maeve*.

1929 - Folks just hanging out, form first US nudist
organization, American League for Physical Culture, New York City.

1931 - Clean Old Man?: Vachel Lindsay, 52, commits suicide by
drinking Lysol.
Lysol questions? Start at
http://www.catsmag.com/chat/messages/10742.html
On Lindsay, pre-Lysol:
http://www.marshfield.coos-bay.k12.or.us/OPUS07/lindsay.html

1932 - German physicist Albert Einstein fleeing Nazi Germany,
granted a Visa, after rejection by Mastercard.

1933 - US: Drinkers toast the end of Prohibition & the end of an era.

It had been 14 years between (legal) drinks. The long dry
spell ended at 5:32 p.m., when Utah became the last of 36
states to ratify the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
(repealing the 18th Amendment, that had prohibited all booze).

1934 - Joan Didion lives, Sacramento, California. Novelist
(*Play It As It Lays*) & observer of contemporary mores (*The
White Album; Salvador*).  She notes of the writing profession,
"Writers are always selling somebody out."
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~ghostv/didion.html

1944 - Wildcat strike at Dodge truck plant, Detroit, Michigan.
One of many "illegal" wartime strikes.

1951 - "Dragnet" premiers.
http://www.papermag.com/cgi-bin/wordup/dragnet

1955 - Two largest US labor organizations merge to form the
AFL-CIO, with membership about 15 million. George Meany president.

1955 - Montgomery, Alabama civil-rights bus boycott begins.
Lasts for 54 weeks, to end segregation practices. Rosa Park's
refusal to give up her bus seat on 1December starts year-long
Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott by 30-40,000 Negro riders (out
of a Negro population of 50,000). The Montgomery Improvement
Association (MIA) is formed to coordinate the boycott, & Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., is elected president. Boycott ends in
victory 21 December 1956).

1963 - French soldiers stop protest march from Accra, Ghana
against French nuclear weapons tests. Western Sahara, Africa.

1965 - Aircraft loaded with a nuclear bomb rolls off a US
aircraft carrier somewhere in the mid-Pacific.

1967 - Dr. Benjamin Spock & poet Allen Ginsberg among those
arrested at New York City army induction center, opposing the
Vietnam War.
 December 5-8,"Stop the Draft Week" at Whitehall, NY Army
Induction Center. Over 500 arrested. Demonstrations also
occurred in Madison, Manchester, N.H., Cincinnati, New Haven.

1967 - England: Opening of Apple Shop, Baker St, London, with
murals by The Fool.

1972 - End of conscription announced in Australia.

1974 - Monty Python's final episode airs on BBC.

1982 - Interviewer asks Fran Lebowitz "Do you ever use a thesaurus?"

    "No. I've never been able to figure out how to use one. I must
    have been absent that day."

"Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is
therefore both unseemly & unproductive to irritate the
situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless
urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet & the feeling will
pass."
http://www.bemorecreative.com/one/260.htm

1984 - 93 workers killed in mine disaster in Taiwan.


            "Never judge a cover by its book."

                                                   * Fran Lebowitz


Auntie-Lysol 1998
--
Dave
Recollection Used Books | 4519 University Way NE
Seattle Wa 98105 | (206)548-1346 | email: recall-AT-eskimo.com

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Public Secret #75: 7+ million used books from
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http://www.mxbf.com/

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"Free thought, necessarily involving freedom of speech & press, I may
tersely define thus: no opinion a law -- no opinion a crime."

       ---Alexander Berkman