Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 11:20:09 -0700 From: David Brown <recall-AT-eskimo.com> Subject: Daily Bleed: 5/13 HELEN NEARING Web thing: http://www.eskimo.com/~recall/bleed/0513.htm excerpts: MAY 13 HELEN NEARING Back-to-the-land dropout advocate, race activist. http://www.tilburyhouse.com/nearing.htm Ancient Anatolian festival of PURULLIYAS commemorates legend of conquest of dragon Illuyankas by the Weather God controlling rainfall over the dragon of drought & flood. Connected with European folk customs linking Rogation Day, Ascension & St. George's Day. LEPRECHAUN DAY. KIRTLAND'S WARBLER DAY. 1501 - Amerigo Vespucci departs Lisbon on the voyage that gets the New World named after him. 1665 - A statute is enacted in Rhode Island, offering freemanship with no specifically Christian requirements, thus effectively enfranchising Jews. 1794 - Whiskey Rebellion begins in western Pennsylvania. Tax collector tarred & feathered during rebellion. Robert Benchley, when told drinking & smoking are "slow poison": "So? Who's in a hurry?" http://www.ideasign.com/chiliast/pdocs/whisky.htm 1828 - The absurdly high "Tariff of Abominations," to the surprise & horror of the Jackson supporters who framed it as a political ruse, is passed by Congress, & subsequently wreaks havoc with the nation's economy. 1840 - Alphonse Daudet lives (1840-1897), Nîimes. French writer, remembered for stories of southern France. Wrote ^ÓLetters from My Mill^Ô & ^ÓThe Prodigious Adventures of Tartarin of Tarascon^Ô. Lived his last years in prosperity & fame but suffered consequences of venereal disease. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/daudet.htm 1842 - Popular British opera creator Sir Arthur Sullivan lives. 1842 - Anti-American?: A "People's Government," organized by reformer Thomas Dorr, attempts to seize power in Rhode Island by capturing the arsenal at Providence, but is repulsed when the incumbent regime calls out the militia. 1846 - U.S. Congress declares war on Mexico. With victory the US annexes Mexico's northern half, including much of what is now California, Arizona, New Mexico, & Texas, to satisfy Southern political pressure to add new slave-owning states. 1886 - US: NY State commission named to report on humane & practical methods of execution. Some believe NY City police's present-day tendency towards summary execution has possibilities. 1888 - Brazil, which imported more African slaves than any other Western Hemisphere country (including the U.S.), abolishes slavery. 1893 - Crackpot, flagpole-sitting champion Alvin "Shipwreck" Kelly lives. 1893 - Western Federation of Miners (WFM) organized. 1906 - Willa Cather becomes an editor for muckraking ^ÓMcClure's Magazine^Ô. http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/~cather/ 1907 - Daphne du Maurier lives (1907-1989). English novelist/playwright best known for her novel ^ÓRebecca^Ô (1938), filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940. She describes writing a book as "a purge; at the end of it one is empty . . . like a dry shell on the beach, waiting for the tide to come in again." http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/dumaurie.htm 1931 - A Wild & Crazy Guy: Jim Jones, Kool Aid Reverend, lives. Jonestown's images persist: 914 suicides & murder victims swollen & stacked like lengths of wood; a metal vat on a platform with purple, cyanide-laced Kool-Aid at its bottom. 1937 - Roger Zelazny (aka Harrison Denmark) (1937-1995) lives. A prominent American "new wave" science fiction writer along with P.K. Dick, Samuel Delany, Thomas Disch, Ursula K. LeGuin & Harlan Ellison. His abiding interest in magic, myths & dreams appear in early books such as This Immortal, Lord of Light, The Dream Master, & The Doors of His Face, which are among his best. "I had been . . . crossing & recrossing the line between sanity & madness so many times that I had all but rubbed it out." --Corwin, Prince of Amber, in The Guns of Avalon, by Roger Zelazny http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/zelazny.htm 1950 - 'Tis Wonderful, "Tis Marvelous?: Steveland Morris Hardaway lives, prematurely. Too much oxygen in the incubator left him permanently blind. Not a handicap to Steveland's musical talents as a singer, songwriter & multi-instrumentalist. At the tender age of ten, Little Stevie Wonder -- as he was called by Berry Gordy at Motown -- was discovered singing & playing the harmonica. 1954 - Natives of Marshall Islands plead for an end to H-Bomb testing. Probably all commie-dupes. 1957 - Wasson's mushroom article appears in ^ÓLife^Ô magazine. 1958 - Rockin Good Time?: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Dick M Nixon's motorcade greeted with rocks & bottles, Caracas, Venezuela. Hundreds of anti-US demonstrators hurl melon-size rocks at his limo. Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Eisenhower immediately orders four companies of Marines & paratroopers to Caribbean bases to back White House demands that Venezuela guarantee Nixon's safety. The Trickster & the King trade "too stoned" on the road tales. 1960 - Students hold "sit-in" against "red-hunting". Protests against HUAC turn into violent stand-off with cops. Includes Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Abbie Hoffman. San Francisco police attack students protesting a local hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). ^ÓMany writers continued their Hollywood careers under pseudonyms, or "fronts," sometimes with comic results. Alfred Levitt, for example, screenwriter of The Boy with Green Hair (1948), relates how a story conference got off on the wrong foot when he was addressed by four different names." http://www.moderntimes.com/palace/blacklist.htm http://www.weeklywire.com/ww/11-17-97/boston_books_2.html http://www.chireader.com/movies/archives/0896/08096a.html 1961 - On Stand-by?: Police watch while counter-protesters beat pro-Castro "Fair Play for Cuba" demonstrators in downtown Seattle. 1967 - Blacks riot in San Francisco's Playland by the Pacific, while the Diggers host a "love feast" in Haight-Ashbury. 1968 - France '68: The Sorbonne is occupied by students & others in the May upheaval. This is the first in the series of occupations which last throughout the month & into June. Today discontent with the government spreads into the labor force & workers began joining in the protest with a series of strikes & factory occupations. PARIS POLICE opened fire when students attacked a police van which had knocked down several of them in the Place Deufert- Rochereau. Negotiations between the North Vietnamese had begun. Both sides seemed prepared for a long stay. Essex University virtually declared itself independent. A meeting of 1,000, both staff and students, voted to set up a 'free university'. Students from the French Academy in London demonstrated in sympathy with their compatriots. Force was used to evict 40 Gypsy families at Forest Road, Redbridge near London. Their caravans were forced open with crowbars & they were pulled out. The strike by French students & workers leads to General Strike by 10 million workers. 1970 - Houston, Texass: Listener-sponsored radio station KPFT's transmitter is blown up by person(s) unknown. 1974 - Over 50 people are hurt when youths start hurling bottles outside a Jackson 5 concert at RFK Stadium in Washington D.C. 43 are arrested. 1977 - Mohawk end three-year occupation of Ganienkeh "Land of Flint" in Adirondack Mountains, in exchange for 5,700 acres elsewhere in New York. 1981 - In St. Peter's Square, Rome, Turkish terrorist Mehmet Ali Agca, 23, shot & seriously wounded Pope John Paul II in an assassination attempt. TV viewers jam the switchboards of stations across America to complain that their soap operas & game shows have been preempted by coverage of the shooting of Pope John Paul II. 1985 - A long-running confrontation between Philadelphia police & a radical black cult called MOVE comes to a head when mayor Wilson Goode orders its headquarters bombed. The resulting blaze destroys 61 homes, killing 11. Says one resident, "MOVE in its wildest day never perpetrated anything on our block like what Wilson Goode did." The mayor defends his strategy as "perfect, except for the fire." 1989 - Tasmanian Devils?: Greens gain balance of power in House of Assembly, Tasmania. 1990 - Robert Jospin (1899-1990) dies. French socialist & also a pacifist & one-time libertarian. A speaker of talent, deeply affected by WWI, he gave many speeches as secretary of the Ligue Internationale des combattants de la paix. Jospin was arrested in 1942 for helping the Resistance. The libertarian scenario writer Bernard Baissat, devoted a film to him just before his death. Robert Jospin was also the father of the current politician Lionel Jospin. http://perso.club-internet.fr/ytak/mai2.html#13 1991 - Apple releases Macintosh System 7.0. Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Chairman Bill Gates said "That's it, I quit!" Now you too can pie Bill, get a Pie Bill Screensaver, play the game, watch the movie, etc, at the Pie Bill Gates Web Ring: http://www.fortunecity.com/underworld/dukenukem/204/index.html 1992 - Ecuador's government grants 148 native communities legal title to more than three million acres (slightly less than the size of the state of Washington) in the Amazon Basin. 1993 - Eight African-American protesters are indicted in Chattanooga, Tennessee, for participating in a demonstration at the unveiling of a memorial for Chattanooga police. The demonstration was in protest of the failure of a local grand jury to bring charges against a policeman who choked to death an African-American motorist, Larry Powell. Hackers?: "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." --- Henry David Thoreau, ^ÓWalden^Ô Auntie-BranchesOfEvil 2001
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