"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."
— Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers
--
DECEMBER 19
ÉDITH PIAF
Iconic French chanteuse, cultural & political rebel.
Hindu FESTIVAL OF THE GODDESS SANKRAT. The Gods Wake up after six months of sleep. A day for exchanging gifts, feasting & visiting.
1055 -- Seldjuken under Toghril Beg occupy Baghdad.
1675 -- New World: Colonial forces escalate King Phillip's War by burning 300 old men, women & children alive in their village, & later attack the Naragansetts in the Great Swamp, killing over 1,000 Indians.
1686 -- Robinson Crusoe leaves his island after 28 years (so says Defoe).
"& thus I left the Island, the Nineteenth of December as I found by the Ship's Account, in the Year 1686, after I had been upon it eight & twenty Years, two Months, & 19 Days; being deliver'd from this second Captivity, the same Day of the Month, that I first made my Escape in the Barco-Longo, from among the Moors of Sallee."
1732 -- Benjamin Franklin begins publication of Poor Richard's Almanack (-1757). http://www.fi.edu/franklin/
1741 -- Vitus Bering, Dutch navigator & explorer, dies, just as he sees the sea bering his name.
1764 -- Oliver Goldsmith's "The Traveller" is published.
1766 -- Spare Change?: English Parliament suspends NY legislature for voting against Quartering Act.
1770 -- Oliver Goldsmith's "Life of Bolingbroke" is published.
1776 -- US: Thomas Paine publishes his first 'American Crisis' essay. American revolutionary & Deist (the true "word" of God is nature).
1862 -- Bulgaria: Nicolas Stoïnoff lives, Choumen. The "patriarch" of Bulgarian anarchism; antimilitarist, writer, journalist, teacher, author of several books & many articles. Stoinoff never ceased denouncing the odious crimes of the Soviet occupation during his 101 years. His last book: Un centenaire bulgare parle:
alt; Nicolas Stoinoff
"Peuples du monde entier, décidez:
la suppression du militarisme!
la suppression du service militaire!
l'éducation de la jeunesse dans l'esprit d'humanisme et de paix!"
"C'est aussi la conclusion de ma vie, la clameur d'un centenaire, mes dernières paroles aux hommes."
1871 -- Boxer?: Corrugated cardboard patented by Al Jones.
1871 -- X-Rated!? Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) obtains his 1st US patent, for "an improvement in adjustable & detachable garment straps."
1875 -- US: Black educator/historian Carter Woodson lives.
CARTER WOODSON Important Black American educator, historian. Saint 1998.
1878 -- US: Despite mass protests, Ezra Heywood gets two years hard labor for advocating free love / sexual emancipation as part of women's rights.
Heywood was an individualist anarchist "arrested" by prude & vigilante Anthony Comstock. He was married to Angela Tilton, considered more radical than he in her day. One admirer, the anarchist Dyer D. Lum, was inspired to write a poem to immortalize the phrase that Angela used when she referred to
marriage — that is, 'The Penis Trust.'
Released on 19 December 1878. Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Rut Hayes issues a pardon tomorrow.
Anarchist, pictured here with Voline & Mollie Steimer in 1927. Moved to the US before he was forced to return to Russia, where he was imprisoned by the Bolsheviks. Released in response to protests & exiled. Fleshin was active in Paris with Alexander Berkman & Nestor Makhno. He eventually moved to Mexico with his companion Mollie Steimer.
1902 -- US: Voltairine de Cleyre is shot by an insane former student named Herman Helcher.
One of Philadelphia's best-known anarchist orators (George Brown the other) Cleyre was a Philadelphia teacher, an atheist & free-thinker, feminist & anarchist. She made many lecture tours, including in Europe, & was known in the international movement for her many essays & poems.
Hit by three bullets while awaiting a trolley, she was treated at Hahnemann Hospital by Daniel Modell, a general practitioner who was an anarchist.
Voltairine earned the lasting respect of both her anarchist friends & the general public by her refusal to testify against her assailant, who was a familiar face in the anarchist scene.
1907 -- US: 239 workers die in a coal mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania.
1908 -- Annie Murchison divorces Henry in Hubert Creekmore novel The Chain in the Heart.
1908 -- US: Seattle Public Library is dedicated, Spring & Madison. Designed by P.J. Weber & funded by Andrew Carnegie. By 2003, the building is history.
1910 -- France: Criminal, author/playwright, Saint Jean Genet lives, Paris.
JEAN GENET
Already "sainted" by Jean-Paul Sartre. We agree.
See Sartre's existentialist biography, Saint Genet: Actor & Martyr.
1910 -- US: First city ordinance requiring white & black residential areas, in Baltimore.
1915 -- France: Edith Piaff lives (1915-1963), Paris. French singer, cultural rebel, who entertained POW's while refusing to sing for Nazis during WWII.
Edith encouraged a number of anarchist songsters like Leo Ferre & François-Henri Jolivet.
"Édith Piaf. If her life wasn't anarchy, then I misunderstand the term."
1917 -- US: During this month anarchist & feminist poet Louise Olivereau is convicted for antiwar activities & sent to a Colorado prison.
"Through the length & breadth of the country stalked the madness of jingoism. One hundred & sixty I.W.W.'s were arrested in Chicago & held for trial on charges of treason. Among them were Bill Haywood, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Arturo Giovannitti, Carlo Tresca, & our old comrade Cassius V. Cook.
Another victim of this frightfulness was Louise Olivereau, an idealist of the finest type of American womanhood, who was condemned in Colorado to 45 years' imprisonment for a circular in which she voiced her abhorrence of human slaughter. There was hardly a city or town in the wide United States where the jails did not contain some men & women who would not be terrorized into patriotic slaughter.
— Emma Goldman, Living My Life (Goldman herself was free during appeal of her own conviction for antiwar speeches.)
(In the Pacific Northwest Louise Olivereau's name was used to kick the Cooperative Campers out of Mt. Rainier camping areas when Park Supervisor Reaburn argued "that [Anna Louise] Strong had been recalled from the School Board for her anti-war statements", & that "her bosom companion, Miss Olivereau was given a penitentiary sentence of 10 years.")
(Sorry, you can no longer view this photo of Mt. Rainier on any American government site, removed for fear Osama bin Laden & Co. terrorists will blow it up).
1919 -- Spain: Pépita Carpeña lives (1919-2005), Barcelona. Militant Spanish anarcho-syndicalist & feminist. Combatant during the Spanish Revolution, member of the CNT, "Jeunesses Libertaires" (JJLL) & "Mujeres Libres." Escaped Barcelona on January 25, 1939, interned in France. Involved with CIRA de Marseille during the 80s & 90s. Wrote De toda la vida, & appeared in two films, Richard Prost's Un autre futurDe toda la vida. Pépita died three years after the death of her companion Juan Martinez Vita (Moreno).
http://ytak.club.fr/decembre3.html#carpenahttp://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=672
1923 -- US: "Many years ago the citizens of Marlow, Okla., decided that no negro would ever stay there overnight & posted numerous signs to that effect... [Dec. 19]
Robert Jerrigan, a negro, who took a job in a Marlow hotel, stayed on until two o’clock in the morning. Now he is dead as well as a Mr. A. W. Birch, the man who employed him.
Fifteen men dragged Jerrigan out of bed, & when Mr. Birch tried to interfere with the lynching party he was shot. The men did not conceal their identity. "
1930 -- Jackie Coogan movie "Tom Sawyer," based on the story by Mark Twain, is released, US.
1931 -- Erle Stanley Gardner story "The Human Zero" is published in "Argosy."
1933 -- US: Electric Home & Farm Authority Inc., authorized.
1936 -- Germany: University of Bonn withdraws author Thomas Mann's honorary doctorate.
1940 -- US: Civilian public service camps for conscientious objectors (CO) established.
1940 --
1940 -- Songster Phil Ochs lives El Paso, Texass ("Joe Hill," "War is Over"). His music didn't sell. He is most famous for songs protesting a war everyone wants to forget. A folk singer, a "protest" singer, a freedom rider, a suicide. His boyish voice challenged the history of his time, or tried to.
Now they sing out his praises on every distant shore,
But so few remember what he was fightin' for.
Oh why sing the songs & forget about the aim,
He wrote them for a reason, why not sing them for the same?
& now he's bound for a glory all his own,
& now he's bound for glory.
“While the Movement died a natural death, the music died by hanging.”
1960 -- US: 50 die as the aircraft carrier Constellation, under construction at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, is swept by fire. The blaze starts as a deck lift truck severs the plug on a 500-gallon fuel tank & sends a gusher of gasoline down a bomb elevator shaft, where a welding torch ignites it. Total damage: $75 million.
1961 -- John Corigliano Jr.'s "Fern Hill" (words by Dylan Thomas) premiers, NY.
1962 -- US: Street signs in Golden Gate Park, Frisco, California, approved by Park Commission. (Signs of the times?)
1965 -- Demonstrations against Vietnam War, worldwide.
1968 -- US: Six-time Socialist Party Presidential candidate Norman Thomas dies at 84.
1969 -- Italy:
Sanguinetti
Is the Reichstag Burning?, tract by Gianfranco Sanguinetti & signed 'Friends of the International,' published in Milan.
Sanguinetti knew —when he & other members of the Italian section of the SI wrote & distributed "Il Reichstag Bruccia?" ("Is the Reichstag Burning?") — that the state's secret services were the real culprits for acts of terrorism such as the bombing of the Piazza Fontana (12 December 1969), & he knew why they had been called into service in this fashion.
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]
1971 -- Malcolm McDowell movie "A Clockwork Orange" premiers (rated X). Based on the novel by Anthony Burgess. BleedMeister & Gus Hellthaler (MidWest Field Secretaries for USSPA/College Press Service) see this X-rated film in Chicago near Loyola University.
1972 -- Vietnam: North Vietnam reports US bombs dropped on Bach Mai Hospital in Hanoi yesterday.
1972 -- High Seas: Collision involving the Sea Star, in the Gulf of Oman, dumping 115,000 gallons of oil into the gulf.
1973 -- Spain: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Spanish Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco gets closer to God when a land mine blows him & his car clear over a church.
[Source: Calendar Riots]
1974 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Nelson A. Rockefeller sworn-in as the 41st occupant of the office of vice.
1977 -- France: In Paris, an attack destroys Fauchon, a luxury food store. The newspaper "Front libertaire" headline: "Yes, Fauchon WAS a worker grocer."
1982 -- US: Dwight Macdonald (1906-82), social critic & combative journalist & anarchist, dies.
Daily Bleed Saint December 4, 2003-4
American social critic, philosopher, political radical.
1984 -- US: 27 workers at Wilberg Mine die due to a speedup disaster, Orangeville, Utah.
1984 -- Ted Hughes is named British poet laureate to succeed John Betjeman.
1985 -- France: Karim Khalki attempts to free his comrades Georges Courtois & Patrick Thiolet from the Law Courts in Nantes — see 'When Reality Breaks the Screen'.
[Source: Calendar Riots]
1986 -- Russia: USSR frees dissident Andrei Sakharov from internal exile.
1990 -- Austin Train dies in a bomb blast at his own trial.
Once the world was a wind-up toy, we watched it spin & dance
We watch it now from the other side of our last remaining chance
& the world falls down like some tired bull in a crimson Spanish ring
We've learned to love it far too late to save it from anything
1990 -- US: B-18 bomber engine fails in landing approach, Dyess Air Force Base, Texass. This is not good.
1994 -- EZLN
Mexico: Los zapatistas rompen el cerco militar y pacíficamente, establecen posiciones en 38 cabeceras municipales declarándoles municipios autónomos y rebeldes.
// Mexico: Zapatista rebels in Southeastern Mexico break through an army siege designed to contain & neutralize them, briefly occupying 38 towns, rebel outposts outside the original zone of conflict, in Chiapas state, crippling Wall Street investments in the Mexican bond market.
1998 -- US: Non-violent Civil Disobedience Campaign to Free Leonard Peltier begins. In 2000-2001 the FBI, always dedicated to serving truth & justice, launches a publicity campaign to prevent Clinton from issuing a pardon to a man whose sentencing judge said he should go free. http://www.freepeltier.org/
1998 -- US: Crank-Pot? Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Clinton nearly impeached. Gains the distinction of being the recipient of the most expensive non-sex sex act in the history of man.
Rumors swirl that, after bottom-feeders dispose of Clinton, the rightwingers will take out President Al Gore before Jan 6, allowing Newt Gingrich to be President, while his House replacement Bobby Livingston resigns to begin new extra-marital affair & Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott is named "Man of the Year" by the Yuppie KKKlan (Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) — "The people in this room stand for the right principles & the right philosophy") — & the Republican Party sings a new swan song.
Better yet, have Jeb Bush install George Junior in the White House.
2000 -- US: Earth Liberation Front (ELF) burns a Long Island home under construction.
2001 -- Argentina: Government declares state of siege, trying to stop the worst looting & riots in a decade sparked by austerity measures & poverty.
Tomorrow Beloved & Respected comrade Leader Cavallo resigns. On the 20th the finance minister resigns after 16 die in riots. On the 21st de la Rua resigns after thousands take to the streets of the capital to protest his government's handling of the country's worsening economic crisis. At least 22 people are killed in riots & looting around the country...
2002 -- US: The US declares Iraq in violation of a UN resolution to disclose its weapons of mass destruction. (It has none, despite the Bush regime's absolute assurances it does...as it's pretext for invading the country with the largest oil reserves in the world).
2005 -- Bolivia: Evo Morales becomes the latest lefty
to win the Presidency in South America.
3000 --
Moe: "When the roll is called up yonder I’ll eat pie."
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
anarchist, labor, &radical 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
Oliver Goldsmith's "The Traveller" is published. 
France: Gustave Hervé launches his revolutionary socialist paper, La Guerre sociale (The Social War).
[Details / context]
EZLN
