But Suddenly a guitar playing lad
whose languid lean brings back the sunny south
strikes up a tune all gay & bright & glad
to keep the gall from biting in his mouth
Then drowsy as the rain
soft sad black feet
dance in this juice joint
on this city street
— Langston Hughes
Daily Bleed web page updated, big page, too many graphics:
http://www.recollectionbooks.
Excerpts:
MOLLY IVINS
Witty & brave liberal,
American political humorist.
FESTIVAL OF TRANSMISSION ERRORS.
FEAST OF GREAT TYPOS.
SCOTLAND: LIGHTING OF THE
BEACONS FESTIVAL.
______________________________
1606 -- Guy Fawkes, the only man to enter Parliament with
honest intentions, at Westminster in London, jumps to his
death moments before his execution for treason. See the Daily
Bleed Guy Fawkes Gallery page,
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1627 -- Spain: The government goes bankrupt.
(& here you be thinking all governments be
bankrupt...)
1899 -- US: Prevented from delivering her lecture today,
"Authority versus Liberty," Emma Goldman's comrades
print & distribute 5,000 copies of a manifesto containing
the text of the her barred speech.
America, extol again the virtues of Free Speech.
1901 -- Anton Chekhov's "Three Sisters" opens to mixed
reception at the Moscow Art Theater in a production
directed by Konstantin Stanislavsky.
Some wag once said that the only thing
characters do in Chekhov plays is
wait for the train from Moscow.
1915 -- Thomas Merton lives, Pyrenees-Orientales, France.
Radical pacifist US priest. "The Seven Storey Mountain,"
describing his journey from Columbia University student days
to his decision to become a Trappist monk, was a best seller.
http://www.merton.org/
1919 -- Scotland: Bloody Friday, The Red Clydeside, Glasgow:
upwards of 60,000 demonstrators gather in George Square in
support of the strike; police mounted a vicious & unprovoked
attack on the demonstrators, felling unarmed men &
women with their clubs.
1923 -- Novelist/socialist Norman Mailer lives.
1924 -- George Popov (1900-1924) dies.
Bulgarian teacher, poet, speaker & anarchist organizer
& guerrilla. Popov took refuge in the mountains, forming
guerrilla anarchist groups. When his hiding place was discovered,
he committed suicide rather than fall into the hands of the army.
1927 -- "Drag", a homosexual comedy in three acts
by Mae West, opens, Bridgeport.
1928 -- Scotch Tape is first sold. The Smart Set prefer duct tape,
God's Gift to Woman.
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1929 -- Erich Maria Remarque novel Im Westen nichts neues is published.
1933 -- "There's A
New Day
Comin' " Ted
Lewis & His
Band, 1/31/33
Released six days after Franklin Delano Roosevelt's
inauguration on March 4, 1933, this peppy ode to full
employment put on a bright face even as the banking
system was collapsing.
1940 -- US: Another 'Rags to Riches' Story? First social security
check issued, $22.54, to Ida Fuller, Brattlesboro, Vermont.
Proves there are commies under every American bed.
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1961 -- Dick Higgins opera "The Peaceable Kingdom"
& also "Amazing Grace" premier, Cooper Union, NYC.
1963 -- US: Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara declares:
"The war in Vietnam is going well & will succeed."
1968 -- Tet Offensive catches South Vietnam
off guard as war escalates.
On 1 January Beloved & Respected Comrade
Leader General Westmoreland said:
"Our forces have been able to detect impending
major offensives & to mount spoiling attacks."
(Warning: This is the same sort of intellectual outfit
running the current American war against terrorism.)
"We poured gasoline into the sawed off fifty-five
gallon drums of shit; it mixed with the piss that
was covering the shit. We then lit long sections
of toilet paper & dropped them into the barrels,
hoping for success."
— David Willson, "REMF" (Rear Echelon Mother Fucker)
1970 -- Bluesman Slim Harpo harps no more.
1971 -- US: Cold Day in Hell? The Winter Soldier Hearings
begin in a Howard Johnson's motel in Detroit.
The veterans testify that the My Lai massacre was not an
isolated incident & that American troops have committed
atrocities. More than 100 veterans, in fact, testify to brutal
US acts. The proceedings capture little attention.
1980 -- Guatemala: Elias Barahona, official spokesman for
the Ministry of the Interior, reveals the President, General
Romeo Lucas García, ordered police to set fire to the
Spanish embassy with its occupants inside.
39 people are roasted alive, including 27 Indians
peacefully occupying the embassy to denounce
massacres in the Quiche region.
Barahona also claims a "Program of pacification"
being carried out is based on a 420 page document
drawn up by specialists in the US based on their
experience in the Vietnam War.
In the first half of this year 27 university professors,
13 journalists, & 70 campesino leaders, mainly Indians,
have been murdered.
The repression has special intensity for Indian
communities in the Quiche region, where large oil
deposits have recently been discovered.
1992 -- US: Post office issues a 29-cent W.E.B. du Bois
stamp — the first Communist on an American stamp.
2003 -- British PM Blair meets with George W. Bush
to plan war against Iraq.
2009 -- Iraq: Shoe sculpture in Tikrit, honoring the journalist
who threw his footwear at Beloved & Respected Lord of
MisRule George W. Bush, is dismantled.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/
________________
"...semiotics is in principle the discipline
studying everything which can be used in
order to lie."
— Umberto Eco, "A Theory of Semiotics"
________________
— anti-Lie, 2009, perhaps
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