Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 18:13:10 -0500 (EST) From: danceswithcarp <dcombs-AT-bloomington.in.us> Subject: Daily Bleed: 4/15 THOMAS HART BENTON http://www.eskimo.com/~recall/bleed/0415.htm "As for me, I've chosen; I will be on the side of crime. & I'll help children not to gain entrance into your houses, your factories, your laws & holy sacraments, but to violate them." * Jean Genet APRIL 15 THOMAS HART BENTON Heartland painter, political radical, free thinker. AFRICAN FREEDOM DAY. USA: TAX RESISTOR'S DAY. USA: IRS Terrorists demand war tribute (Pay or Die). CONVERSATIONS WITH A TAX COLLECTOR ABOUT POETRY Your form has a mass of questions: 'Have you traveled on business or not?' But suppose I have ridden to death a hundred Pegasi in the last 15 years? And here you have -- imagine my feelings! -- something about servants and assets. But what if I am simultaneously a leader and a servant of the people =2E.. Citizen tax collector I'll cross out all the zeros after the five and pay the rest. I demand as my right an inch of ground among the poorest workers and peasants ---Mayakovsky 74 - Suicide of the Defenders of Masada. 1285 - A Ghost dances at the wedding of Alexander III, King of Scots, & Joleteta, daughter of the Count de Dreux, at Jedburgh. 1452 - Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci lives. 1715 - The Wamasees & Catawbas attack Charleston, South Carolina, which leads to counter-attacks resulting in their virtual extermination. 1755 - Samuel Johnson's magnum opus, *A Dictionary of the English Language*, is published. He says: "Dictionaries are like watches. The worst is better than none, & the best cannot be expected to go quite true." http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jlynch/Johnson/ 1813 - US troops seize the Spanish fort at Mobile, thereby invading & occupying the eastern half of West Florida. (The western portion of the territory was annexed in 1810 to "protect U.S. interests".) 1834 - France: The end of the "Bloody Week" in Lyon. The second great insurrection of the Silk workers is subdued in a blood bath, with several hundred victims. Those insurrectionists captured rather than killed will appear in a "monster trial" in Paris in April 1835. 1843 - Henry James lives (1843-1916), New York. In 1913, for his 70th birthday, friends & admirers present him a golden bowl. http://www.newpaltz.edu/~hathaway/ http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hjames.htm 1862 - Thomas Wentworth Higginson receives a letter from Emily Dickinson containing four poems, which launches her "career." Only a few are published in her lifetime. http://www.sappho.com/poetry/e_dickin.htm 1865 - President Abraham Lincoln dies, 7:22 am. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm075.html 1874 - Let Freedom Ring?: After being defeated in his race for governorship of Arkansas, Reconstructionist Joseph Brooks, claiming a stolen election, forcibly took possession of the State House. 1882 - Pierre Ramus (true name of Rudolf Grossman) lives (1882-1942). Propagandist & Austrian anarchist writer. In the US, in 1900, Ramus collaborated on Johann Most's newspaper "Freiheit " (Freedom) in NY. Returned to Europe in 1904, & introduced revolutionary syndicalism in Austria, & founded an anarchist group in Vienna. In August 1907, Ramus attended the international anarchist Congress of Amsterdam & an antimilitarist congress. A pacifist who advocated the General Strike & direct action, he published many German newspapers & booklets & wrote *La reconstruction de la société par l'anarchisme communiste* & the five volume *"L'annuaire de la génération libre"* (1910-1914). In the 30s Ramus organized the German FKAD (Federation of Anarchistic Communists of Germany) & its newspaper " Der freie Arbeiter ", an organization parallel with the FAUD, founded by Rudolf Rocker. In 1938, he fled Austria, to France where he was arrested & interned with the declaration of war. Released, Pierre Ramus made it to Morocco, but died on a ship (torpedoed by the Germans) trying to make it to Mexico. http://perso.club-internet.fr/ytak/mai4.html#27 1888 - Critic/poet Matthew Arnold, 65, dies in Liverpool. http://library.utoronto.ca/www/utel/rp/authors/arnold.html 1889 - Painter & radical Thomas Hart Benton lives. http://www.nbmaa.org/HTML-Pages/Artists.html#b 1889 - Black labor leader & peace activist A. Philip Randolph lives (president, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.) Randolph believed that no permanent social change or reform would happen in America without the direct, democratic participation of those most affected by the injustice they sought to change. http://www.wimall.com/pullportermu/apri.html http://www.worldbook.com/fun/aajourny/html/bh073.html http://www.pbs.org/weta/apr/ http://www.wimall.com/pullportermu/index2.html 1889 - Louis Bertho lives (known as Jules Lepetit), Nantes. French anarchist/syndicalist, reported missing after a trip to Moscow. A shipyard worker in Saint-Nazaire, he took a false identity to escape military service. In 1912 he joined the Anarchist Communist Federation in Paris, & the Syndicat des Terrassiers. Exempted from the war for health reasons, on June 19, 1917 he was sent to prison for two years for clandestinely publishing the paper "Libertaire." Bertho, as a trade union activist, was invited to the Second Congress of the Communist International in Moscow, in July 1920, along with R. Lefebvre & Vergeat. After having met Victor Serge & visiting the Ukraine they disappeared, probably eliminated by the Communists. http://perso.club-internet.fr/ytak/avril3.html#15 1895 - Josephine Blatt (US) makes hip-and-harness lift of 3564 lb (record). 1898 - Blues vocalist great Bessie Smith lives, Chattanooga, Tennessee. "Gimme a pigfoot & a bottle of beer..." "Gimme a reefer & a gang of gin..." http://alt.venus.co.uk/weed/bessie/welcome.htm http://www.redhotjazz.com/bessie.html 1899 - US: Theft of the Stanford University Axe. http://stst.edgemedia.net/History/BayArea/AlamedaCounty/Berkeley/StanfordAxe/ 1912 - *Titanic* sinks at 2:20am. Harry Elkins Widener goes down clutching his 1598 edition of Bacon's *Essays*. Most Americans think it is just a movie. 1915 - IWW union Agricultural Workers Organization forms in Kansas, Missouri. http://iww.org/labor/ 1919 - Start of victorious six-day strike across New England by first women-led US union, Telephone Operators Department of IBEW. 1921 - Einstein gives a lecture on temporal relativity. 1938 - César Vallejo dies, Paris, France. Left his native Peru in 1923, & once expelled from Paris in 1930 as a political militant. Kept involved with Peru by publishing in *Amauta*, a journal established by his friend José Carlos Maria=E1tegui, founder of the Peruvian Communist party. http://www3.rcp.net.pe/rcp/vallejo/index.htm 1940 - Phil Lesh bassist, lives. Plays great, lesh philling! 1942 - In Stockholm, Swedish writer Ludvig Nordstr=F6m, dies. Popular as a short story writer & novelist; wrote *Landsortboh=E8me* (1911, "Small-town Bohemia"); *Planeten Markattan* (1937, "The Monkey Planet"). 1947 - Rudolph Hess, a leading member of the Nazi party, is hanged. 1947 - French freighter Grandcamp docks at Texas City, Texass (today or 4/16?) & took on 1,400 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. Tonight a fire broke out in the hold, a ball of fire engulfed the ship, & a nearby Monsanto chemical plant exploded, killing & maiming hundreds of workers & spectators. Most of the business district was devastated, & fires raged along the waterfront, where huge tanks of butane gas stood imperiled. Shortly after midnight, a second freighter, also carrying nitrates, exploded, & the whole sequence began again. At least 468 people died, & another 1,000 were seriously injured in the disaster. The probable cause of the initial blast was careless smoking aboard the Grandcamp. 1951 - Beginning of first strike wave in fascist Spain, beginning in the Basque country & spreading to Catalonia. Workers from a number of different industries & cities participate, with over 100,000 defying the government's order to return to work. 1955 - Ray Kroc starts the McDonald's chain of fast food restaurants. "You deserve a kroc today." 1959 - Makah Indians in Washington state recognized as entitled to compensation for loss of halibut & seal hunting, because of international treaty. 1960 - US: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), one of the main organizations of the civil rights movement, forms. In the late 60s it becomes a black militant organization & far from non-violent in position. Nearly 150 students from nine states met in North Carolina with Ella Baker, James Lawson & Martin Luther King, Jr. By this time, in mid April, over 50,000 students have participated in sit-ins. SNCC [snick], is founded at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. One of SNCC's most profound influences was Ella Baker, an older woman who directs Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Baker lost her conference job after relentlessly prodding King to be more aggressive. Saying racism is rooted in economic disparities, Baker has little use for a group that tries to inspire whites to reach a higher level of morality. As King distances himself from her, SNCC will rely on Baker's experience & strategies. 1961 - Cuba: CIA invasion force lands at the Bay of Pigs. A fiasco, defeated within two days. http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Parliament/1857/ 1963 - Greece: Mass rally after release of 2,000 arrested for trying to hold Marathon peace march, Acropolis, Athens. 1967 - US: First mass burning of draft cards as 400,000 march in New York City & 80,000 in San Francisco opposing the Vietnam War. Culmination of April 10-15th Vietnam Week featuring draft card burnings & turn-ins & anti-draft recruiter demonstrations all over the country. In NY addressed by Martin Luther King, Jr., McKissick, Stokely Carmichael, Benjamin Spock. http://www.webcom.com/peaceact/history.html 1968 - US: "Spring Mobilization Committee To End the War in Vietnam." 1969 - Several thousand welfare recipients march in New York City to protest benefit cuts. 1970 - Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Rep. Gerald Ford calls for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. Ford will go on to become perhaps America's Greatest President. Disputably able to chew gum & govern at the same time. 1970 - US: Police tear-gas anti-Vietnam War protesters staffing flaming barricades which were set up to block access to the University of Oregon in Eugene. 1971 - *Rolling Stone* reports that the Illinois Crime Commission has issued a list of "drug oriented rock records." Included are" "Lets Go Get Stoned," "A Whiter Shade of Pale" & "White Rabbit." 1972 - Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader US President Nixon & Canada's Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader P.M. Pierre Trudeau sign pact to clean up Great Lakes. 1972 - US: April 15-28, the nation experiences a new wave of antiwar protests on campuses & near military & defense- industry installations -- with hundreds of arrests across the country. This month has seen, recently, heavy US bombing of North Vietnamese entering South Vietnam & demonstrators in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania turning out in support of anti-war activist Phil Berrigan & six co-defendants. 1974 - Kidnapped heiress Patricia Hearst is filmed participating in a bank robbery, along with 8 other members of the SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army), in Sacramento, California. 1980 - Marxist existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre dies, Paris. "I keep creating omelets one after another, like soldiers marching into the sea, but each one seems empty, hollow, like stone. I want to create an omelet that expresses the meaninglessness of existence, & instead they taste like cheese. I look at them on the plate, but they do not look back. " http://icemcfd.com/wayne/sartre-cookbook.html 1980 - U.S. Court of Appeals dismisses suit by Eastern Cherokee to prevent the construction of the Tellico Dam by the TVA because plaintiffs are unable to demonstrate the land is indispensable to the practice of the tribe's religion. 1984 - Australia: 250,000 attend nuclear disarmament rallies across the country. 1986 - Saint Jean Genet dies in Paris. French criminal, social outcast later turned novelist & a leading figure in the avant- garde theater & political radical. At age 32, while in prison, he started writing his first manuscript, *Our Lady of the Flowers*. It was discovered & destroyed. Genet rewrote it from memory. It was smuggled out of his cell & came to the attention of Cocteau & Sartre, who lobbied vigorously for a pardon from a life-sentence. Over 40 intellectuals & artists petitioned the French government on his behalf. Genet's stature as an original & important writer was cemented with Sartre's study of him in the work *Saint Genet*. Genet, like Artaud, believed the theatre should be an incendiary event. He also portrayed the gay world openly, without apology or explanation. Genet's sense of solidarity was even stronger with thieves, & others of society's dispossessed. In later life, he championed the causes of the Black Panthers in the US & Palestinian soldiers in Jordan & Lebanon. His final work, *Un captif amoureux * (Prisoner of Love), is a record of his years spent with these two groups. Jean Genet died in a hotel room of the same working class district where he'd been abandoned as a child 75 years earlier. He is buried in Morocco. *But now I am afraid. The signs pursue me & I pursue them patiently. They are bent on destroying me. Didn't I see, on my way to court, seven sailors on the terrace of a cafe, questioning the stars through seven mugs of light beer as they sat around a table that perhaps turned; then, a messenger boy on a bicycle who was carrying a message from god to god, holding between his teeth, by the metal handle, a round, lighted lantern, the flame of which, as it reddened his face, also heated it? So pure a marvel that he was unaware of being a marvel. Circles & globes haunt me: oranges, Japanese billiard balls, Venetian lanterns, jugglers' hoops, the round ball of the goalkeeper who wears a jersey. I shall have to establish, to regulate, a whole internal astronomy.* http://www.hglc.org/hglc/ew_genet.htm 1986 - US bombs Libya base. 1989 - Before a Liverpool/Nottingham Forest FA Cup semifinal soccer match, 95 fans are crushed to death against a fence surrounding the field as gatecrashers surge into Hillsborough Stadium, Sheffield, England. 1996 - The rest of Jerry Garcia's ashes were scattered near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. A small portion had been scattered in the Ganges River in India 11 days ago. "How can you help resenting the absurdity of time, its march into the future, & all the nonsense about evolution & progress? Why go forward, why live in time?" * E.M.Cioran Auntie-Time 1999 -- Dave Recollection Used Books | 4519 University Way NE Seattle Wa 98105 | (206)548-1346 | email: recall-AT-eskimo.com Catalogs+100s of book-related links: http://www.eskimo.com/~recall The Daily Bleed - Sinners & Saints galore "Better to go hungry than to feast on lies.": http://www.eskimo.com/~recall/bleed/calmast.htm Public Secret #75: search 15+ million used books direct from 5,000 used bookstores online: http://www.bookfinder.com/ Public Secret #32: BleedMeister's favorite search engine: http://www.infind.com/ "Free thought, necessarily involving freedom of speech & press, I may tersely define thus: no opinion a law -- no opinion a crime." ---Alexander Berkman
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