Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 16:18:30 -0500 (EST)
From: danceswithcarp <dcombs-AT-bloomington.in.us>
Subject: Saturday Full Blood: 2/13 GRANT WOOD 




Subject: Saturday Full Blood: 2/13 GRANT WOOD

Web version: http://www.eskimo.com/~recall/bleed/0213.htm

Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's Day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.

     * William Shakespeare, Ophelia in Hamlet

FEBRUARY 13

GRANT WOOD
Witty painter of corn, hogs & Heartland Americans.

Northumberland, England: *BLESSING THE SALMON NETS.*

Ancient Rome: *PARENTALIA*, a week-long festival for deceased
relatives begins, all temples closed, weddings prohibited.


1633 - Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for
trial before Inquisition for professing belief that earth
revolves around the Sun.
http://es.rice.edu/ES/humsoc/Galileo/Student_Work/Trial96/

1635 - First public school in the U.S. (the Boston Latin
School) is founded.

1641 - Iroquois Confederacy begins war against Canada.

1692 - Scotland: Massacre of Scots by English army, Glencoe.

1728 - US: Puritan fundamentalist preacher Cotton Mather dies. Finally!

1769 - Ivan Krylov (1769-1844) lives. Writer of fables which
satirizes social types in the guise of beast. Produced 203
fables in nine books. They are still an integral part of
Russian primary & secondary education. "The weak against the
strong. Is always in the wrong."
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/krylov.htm

1777 - Another sade chapter in history?: de Sade arrested
without charge, imprisoned in Vincennes fortress.

1837 - Flour riot in New York City, early US riot of the poor
against property. 6,000 New Yorkers assault local flour
merchants who, they claim, are hoarding flour in order to
drive up the price. Inspires the 1960s Flour Power movement.
http://detnews.com/menu/stories/38508.htm

1866 - Jesse James holds up his first bank, Liberty, Missouri.

1874 - Troops land in Honolulu, Hawaii to protect the king &
U.S. "interests".

1883 - Anti-Semite, proto-fascist German composer Richard Wagner dies.

1891 - American heartland painter Grant Wood lives, Anamosa, Iowa.
http://www.ben.esu6.k12.ne.us/ite/wood.html
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~sbilling/graphics/gothic/gothictext.html

1903 - Georges Simenon (1903-1989), Belgian author, creator of
Inspector Maigret novels, lives, Liege. Though not activist, &
not reflected in his crime novels, during an interview he
states he has considered himself an anarchist since the age of 16,
adding,

"Je me consid=E8re comme un anarchiste non violent, car
l'anarchie n'est pas nécessairement violente, celui qui s'en
réclame étant un homme qui refuse tout ce qu'on veut lui faire
entrer de force dans la t=EAte ; il est également contre ceux
qui veulent se servir de lui au lieu de lui laisser sa liberté de
penser".
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/simenon.htm

1907 - English suffragettes storm British Parliament & 60
women are arrested.

1917 - Strikes & meetings held in Petrograd factories:
beginning of the Russian Revolution.

U]nless Socialists are prepared openly & avowedly to profess
that the satisfaction of the needs of each individual must be
their very first aim; unless they have prepared public opinion
to establish itself firmly at this standpoint, the people in
their next attempt to free themselves will once more suffer a defeat."

    "Vladimir Ilyich [Lenin], your concrete actions are completely
    unworthy of the ideas you pretend to hold."

     * Kropotkin
    http://tigerden.com/~berios/libertarians.html
    http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/2163/bolintro.html

1921 - Peter Kropotkin's funeral held in Moscow -- the last
public anarchist gathering & the last non-state-sponsored mass
assembly in Russia for 70 years, as Lenin, Trotsky & the
Bolsheviks begin crackdown. Under pressure of the
libertarians, anarchist prisoners are allowed to attend the
funeral. 100,000 follow the coffin to the cemetery. Black
flags are deployed, & banners proclaiming:

    *Where there is authority, there is no freedom"

    "The anarchists ask to be released from the prison of
    socialism"

http://www.web.net/blackrosebooks/kropot.htm
http://freedom.tao.ca/kropot.html
http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/kropotkin/kropotkin.html
http://www.worldmedia.com/manucon/cards/kropot.htm
http://www.pitzer.edu/~dward/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/Kropotkinarchive.html

1945 - Over 130,000 killed in Allied firebombing of Dresden,
Germany. Remains little-known event even today.

In a three-day period, 3,400 tons of explosives and
incendiaries were dropped, reducing six square miles of the
city to rubble and killing 135,000. Many Allied officials were
outraged--Germany was clearly on the verge of collapse, and
Dresden was not a German war production city. Dresden had been
famous for its artwork and historic buildings until it became
the victim of the single most destructive air raid of World War II.
http://www.natvan.com/free-speech/fs953d.html
http://www.codoh.com/incon/inconabr.html

The soldier -- Kurt Vonnegut Jr. -- tried for many years to
put into words what he had experienced during that horrific
event. "I thought it would be easy for me to write about the
destruction of Dresden, since all I would have to do would be
to report what I had seen," Vonnegut noted. It took him more
than 20 years, however, to produce *Slaughterhouse-Five, or
The Children's Crusade, A Duty-Dance With Death*.

"I cannot remember a time when I was not aware of the
Holocaust. As a small boy, no more than 6 or 7 years old, I
would write ``Hitler'' on the bottom of my shoe -- so I could
wipe out his name as I walked."

---American son of a Holocaust survivor
http://www.bigeye.com/jj081896.htm

1946 - The blinding of Isaac Woodard.

They beat me about the head & face & left a bloody trail
All down along the sidewalk to the iron door of the jail;
He knocked me down upon the ground & he poked me in the eyes;
When I woke up next morning, I found my eyes were blind.

They drug me to the courtroom, & I could not see the judge;
He fined me fifty dollars for raising all the fuss;
The doctor finally got there but it took him two whole days;
He handed me some drops & salve & told me to treat myself.

It's now you've heard my story, there's one thing I can't see,
How you could treat a human like they have treated me;
I thought I fought on the islands to get rid of their kind;
But I can see the fight lots plainer now that I am blind.

 * Woody Guthrie,  THE BLINDING OF ISAAC WOODARD (WOODY
GUTHRIE/tune: "THE GREAT DUST STORM") (Aug 16, 1946)
"This one I made up so's you wouldn't be forgetting what
happened to this famous Negro soldier less than three hours
after he got his Honorable Discharge down in Atlanta....
http://www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/parton/2/history.html

1949 - Ecuadorian mob burns down radio station following
broadcast of *War of the Worlds.*
http://cse.unl.edu/~gberigan/War-of-the-Worlds/

1953 - US: Major-league baseball owners warned by Senator
Edwin Johnson against televising their games nationwide --
that broadcasting these games to a national audience would be
a threat to the survival of minor-league baseball.

1960 - France becomes the fourth nuclear power.

1966 - Bad boys, *The Rolling Stones* appear on *The Ed
Sullivan Show.*

1967 - National Student Association reveals it has "secretly &
indirectly" received more than $3 million from the CIA over a
15-year period. NSA President Eugene Grove denies any of the
money was used for intelligence work. Duh.

"The highest ambition of the integrated spectacle is still to
turn secret agents into revolutionaries, & revolutionaries
into secret agents."
                        ---GUY DEBORD, 1988

1967 - USSR & China exchange gunfire on Manchurian border.

1967 - Carrying huge photos of Napalmed Vietnamese children,
2,500 members of the group Women Strike for Peace storm the
Pentagon, demanding to see (quote) "the generals who send our
sons to Vietnam."

Women strike for peace members always dress neatly & appear as
they are -- middle-class homemakers. When Pentagon guards lock
the main-entrance doors, the women take off their shoes & bang
on the doors with their heels. They're finally allowed inside,
but Defense Secretary Robert McNamara will not meet with them.
Senator Jacob Javits agrees to meet a few hundred of the
women, but he's roundly booed & heckled when he denies the US
is using toxic gas in Vietnam.

1968 - US: Five soldiers arrested at pray-in for peace, Fort
Jackson, South Carolina.

1969 - US: 33 arrested at administration building sit-in,
University of Massachusetts.

1970 - Women takeover station WCBN in Boston.

1970 - Man-eating tiger is reported to have killed 48, 80 km
from New Delhi.

1971 - No Hope?: Having struck three spectators with his first
two golf shots at the Bob Hope Classic, Beloved & Respected
Corrupted Leader Effete Duffer US Vice-President Spiro T.
Agnew throws down his club & quits. None too soon.

1972 - Led Zeppelin forced to cancel Singapore concert when
officials won't let them off the plane because of their long hair.

1974 - Author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn expelled from the Soviet
Union.  http://www.soc.pu.ru/gallery/solzhenitsyn/home.htmle

1979 - US: The Hood Canal Floating Bridge suddenly became just
the Hood Canal Bridge during a violent wind storm.

1981 - Longest sentence published by NY Times-1286 words.

1982 - Grave matters: Lynyrd Skynyrd singer Ronnie Van Zant's
300 pound gravestone stolen from his resting place.

1982 - South Africa: 15,000 black & white attend funeral of
Neill Aggett -- trade union organizer -- to protest &
commemorate his death.

1982 - Zeng Jinlian Hunan grew to 8'1" (tallest woman) dies at 17,
China.

1985 - South African police arrest 13 -- nearly all the
leaders of the United Democratic Front (main opposition group).

1989 - Salvadoran army attacks Encuentros hospital, rapes,
kills patients.

1991 - During the Persian Gulf War, approximately 400 Iraqi
civilians, mostly women & children, are killed during a US
laser-guided missile attack on a fortified bunker in the
center of Baghdad, the capital of Iraq.

Economic boycott imposed this year by US will lead to the
deaths of 1,500 children under the age of 5 -- every month
from 1991 through 1999 -- according to the UN. US media,
fixated on military acts & being "patriotic", flexes its knees.
http://www.worldmedia.com/archive/articles/z9105-what-we-say.html

1995 - Chase Manhattan Bank distances itself from a newsletter
produced by its Emerging Markets Group calling on Mexico to
"eliminate the Zapatista" rebels in Mexico, according to the
NY Times. Authored by Riordan Roett, director of Latin
American Studies at the John Hopkins School of Advanced
International Studies, analysts pointed to the uprising in
Chiapas as a major element in the flight of foreign investors
that weakened the Mexican peso.

Mexican security forces began a large-scale takeover of former
rebel areas on February 9 (New York Times, Feb. 21 1995, A13),
less than a month after the memo was published. Mexican
security forces engaged in widespread violation of the human
rights of citizens in the region (which still continues to this day.)

Roett also suggested the Mexican government might not find it
convenient to honor the results of upcoming elections.
gopher://mundo.eco.utexas.edu:70/1m/mailing/chiapas95.archive/chase
"The uprising has boosted the price of the Mexican Indian
blood," said the man known as Subcommander Marcos, who leads
the Zapatista National Liberation Army in Chiapas. "Not long
ago, it was valued less than two chickens, now it is the
condition for the largest loan of ignominy in history," he
said (referring to a $40 billion loan proposed by Clinton.)
gopher://mundo.eco.utexas.edu:70/0R86075-91582-/mailing/chiapas95.archive/chase

1998 - Ace Hayes, 58, dies. Editor & guiding light of the
Portland Free Press, warrior for justice.
http://www.radio4all.org/pfp/ace.html
http://www.radio4all.org/pfp/current.htm


    That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something
    you've understood all your life, but in a new way. There's a
    pressure on us all the time to go on to something that seems
    new because there are new words attached to it. But I want to
    take words as ordinary as bread. Or life. Or death. Cliches. I
    want to have my nose rubbed in cliches.

                        --Doris Lessing, *The Four-Gated City*

Anti-copyrite 1999
--
Dave
Recollection Used Books | 4519 University Way NE
Seattle Wa 98105 | (206)548-1346 | email: recall-AT-eskimo.com

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tersely define thus: no opinion a law -- no opinion a crime."

       ---Alexander Berkman