-- FEBRUARY 10

BERTOLT BRECHT
Great German political dramatist & poet,
inventor of modern "epic theater,"
the "gest," & the "alienation effect."

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A BAD DAY FOR PRIESTS, according to Mayan chronological estimation.

Tampa, Florida: GASPARILLA DAY.

Spanish pirate defeated by US Navy in 1821.
Beginning of week long festival.
Someone playing Gasparilla is crowned Pirate King, given keys to city, etc.

---

60 -- St. Paul thought to have been shipwrecked at Malta. Not a saint just yet, drank a lotta malta likker.
Some say this is the source of the hallucinatory despair found in the Book of Revelations.
http://www.geocities.com/NapaValley/3108/



1354 -- England: A bad day for the children of the privileged too: citizens of Oxford — having been attacked by University students — fight back in style, killing several. 'Town' & 'Gown' is born.
'Calendar Riots'


1535 -- The Naked City?: 12 nude Anabaptists run through Amsterdam streets. Inspires 20th Century streaking.


1655 -- The first, third, 10th, 19th & 21st of February are good days for marriage — according to
Andrew Waterman's 1655 Almanac. However, this seems to have been based on
"nothing more than Waterman's wish to fill a few pages with random dates." Yo!
'Calendar Riots'


1749 -- Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones, in 10 small volumes, finishes serial publication begun seven days ago.




1763 -- Treaty of Paris signed, ending the French & Indian War.


1775 -- Essayist/critic Charles Lamb lives, London.



1794 -- France: Suicide of Jacques Roux (1752-1794) in his Paris prison cell.

French revolutionist, known as the pitiless & sometimes cruel "Red Priest," but also a precursor of socialism & modern anarchism. He denounced those monopolizing the revolution, the speculator, the merchant — & also government & the whole apparatus of the parliamentary state.

Jacques Roux wrote the famed "Manifeste des enragés" (signed by Jean Varlet & Leclerc d'Oze). A spokesman of the poorest "sans-culottes" & he also incited women to assert their rights.

See Peter Kropotkin's The Great French Revolution
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/kropotkin/frenchrev/lviii.html

"Liberty is no more than an empty shell when one class of men is allowed to condemn another to starvation without any measures being taken against them. & equality is also an empty shell when the rich, by exercising their economic monopolies, have the power of life or death over other members of the community."

"So you would use us for bumfodder?

Not for Long!"

— Address of the Sansculottes of the Rue Mouffetard to the Convention, 9 December 1792

1837 -- Aleksandr Pushkin, 37, dies in Moscow of wounds received in a duel defending his wife's honor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Pushkin



1846 -- The first edition of Edward Lear's A Book of Nonsense published by Thomas McLean.
There are altogether 72 limericks in two volumes selling at 3s 6d each.

Lear deserves his small virtual space as much as his contemporary poetical colleague Lewis Carroll. After all, Lear may be considered the inventor of the term 'snail mail' & has a jet named after him.

http://www.accd.edu/sac/english/bailey/lear.htm
http://edwardlear.tripod.com/learwk.html


1855 -- US: The Women's Hospital of New York City is founded. Although it provides much needed care for poor women, the hospital was also the arena for J. Marion Sims, known for his hatred of women & ruthlessly cutting up their bodies. Here he performs brutal operations, including ovariotomies & clitoridectomies, & uses indigent women as guinea pigs before audiences of men.

Sims began his career performing dangerous sexual surgery on black slave women who were housed in a stable in his yard. On a slave named Anarcha, he performed 30 operations. After affiliating with the NY Women's Hospital, Sims performs the same number of operations on Irish indigent Mary Smith from 1856 to 1859. Internationally famous & honored by his peers, Sims was an object of adulation at Harvard Medical School, counted as one of the immortals.

1862 -- Floored?: Dante Gabriel Rossetti returns from a night on the town with Algernon Charles Swinburne, finds his wife on the floor, having taken a fatal overdose of laudanum.
http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poet284.html


1863 -- Fire extinguisher patented by Alanson Crane.



1863 -- P.T. Barnum stages wedding of Tom Thumb & Mercy Lavinia Warren. The ceremony ended with their duet of "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues."

Now if you see Saint Annie
Please tell her thanks a lot
I cannot move
My fingers are all in a knot
I don't have the strength
To get up & take another shot
& my best friend, my doctor
Won't even say what it is I've got

http://bobdylan.com/songs/index.html

1869 -- France: Octave Jahn (1869-1917) lives, Cherbourg. Anarchist who founded, with Tortelier & others, the "League of the Anti-patriots" in 1886.

Jahn was an untiring, much-traveled anarchist propagandist, in France, North Africa, Switzerland, England, Spain, & Mexico, where he settled. He participated in the Mexican Revolution, supporting Emiliano Zapata & wrote for the anarchist press as well as writing the song "Les pieds plats" (The Flat Feet). Jahn was married to the anarchist Salud Borras (daughter of the Spanish anarchist Martin Borras).

See the Anarchist Encyclopedia page,
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/JahnOctave.htm

1869 -- German Jewish poet / writer Else Lasker-Schueler lives, Elberfeld. Wrote poems, dramas, & stories, & become good friends with Gottfried Benn, & other writers. Emigrates to Jerusalem in 1933.


1872 -- France: Eugene Bigel lives. French Ardennes anarchist & proponent of direct action. Dynamited numerous police stations, inflicting material & psychological damage. His last attempted bombing, July 15, 1891, at the residence of an industrialist, failed to explode & was traced to him. Bigel received heavy sentences & was sent to the prison colony in Cayenne.
[Source: L'Ephéméride Anarchiste]


1884 -- Italy: Una nota del Papa Leone XIII critica duramente una sentenza della Corte Costituzionale che impone alla Congregazione de propaganda fide la conversione di tutti i suoi beni immobili in cartelle del debito pubblico. L'ingerenza e l'arroganza dello stato italiano nei confronti del Vaticano non conosce limiti.
[Source: Crimini e Misfatti]


1888 -- Italy: Giuseppe Pasotti (1888-1951) lives. Anarcho-syndicalist & member of the Italian League of Human Rights.


1890 -- Boris Pasternak lives, Moscow. Librarian, translator, novelist (Doctor Zhivago), poet.
http://www.rjgeib.com/heroes/pasternak/paster.html
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/pasterna.htm


1892 -- Spain: Four farmworkers are executed during the repression following the uprising of 8 January, in Jerez, Andalusia, setting off new waves of violence.

In January of 1892, hundreds of farm workers calling for "social revolution," took over the town of Jerez. The insurrection was quickly subdued, the leaders captured & tortured. Manuel Fernández Reina, José Fernández Lamela, Manuel Silva Leal & Antonio Zarzuela Granja (considered anarchists) were condemned to death & executed today.

[Source: L'Ephéméride Anarchiste]

1896 -- US: Home Colony Co-Operative (Mutual Home Association) founded on Van Geldern Cove near Seattle & Tacoma, Washington.

The Home Colony was a peculiar combination of communism & anarchism, organized by a group who had already been in the Glennis Co-operative Industrial Company, a Bellamy colony. It was quite as successful as the others of its time. Private homesites were limited to two acres. Members were carefully chosen. There were about 150 members. Great stress was laid on individual liberty & non-resistance. There was a high degree of mutuality, though more unorganized & undirected than in any other colony. There seems to have been less internal friction here than in most colonies. Financial troubles led to disbanding after about 10 years.

See the Stan Iverson Archives, http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/HomeColony.htm

1898 -- Germany: Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht lives, Augsburg. Doctor, poet, playwright, theatrical reformer. Fled rightwing German Nazis. After moving to the US, fled from the Land of the Free when HUAC's right wingnuts come after him during the Cold War.

http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~jamesf/goodwoman/brecht_bio.html
http://www.moderntimes.com/palace/blacklist.htm
http://www.weeklywire.com/ww/11-17-97/boston_books_2.html
http://www.chicagoreader.com/movies/archives/0896/08096a.html
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/brecht.htm
http://katesharpleylibrary.net/costantini/gallery/d38-Brecht.html

1911 -- US: Emma Goldman lectures in Chicago for the next 6 days.



1912 -- US: Emma Goldman's annual lecture tour begins in Ohio, February 10-18; speaks in Cleveland, Lorain, Elyria, Columbus, & Dayton; topics include "Anarchism, the Moving Spirit in the Labor Struggle" & "Maternity," a Drama by Eugene Brieux (Why the Poor Should Not Have Children)." Source: 'Emma Goldman Papers'



1920 -- England: Alex Comfort lives. British anarchist, poet, & author of the ever-popular Joy of Sex. Involved with Freedom Bookstore in the 40s & ‘Anarchy' magazine in the 50s — & author of the hugely successful « Joy of Sex ». He also lectured in physiology at London Hospital Medical College. Devoted to "unreason" — or the imagination. Wrote lyrics for Pete Seeger. Oh, Joy! Oh, Joy!

"You have only to speak for once — they will melt like the dust:
you have only to spit in their faces — they will go
howling like devils to swindle somebody else

but if you choose to obey, we shall not blame you
for every lesson is new. We will make room for you
in the cold hall were every cause is just.

Perhaps you'll go with us to frosty windows
putting the same choice as the years go round
or sit debating 'When will they disobey?'

wrapped in our coats against the impartial cold."
All this I think the buried me would say,
clutching their white ribs & their rusted helmets

nationless bones, under the still ground.

— Alex Comfort (1920-2000),
excerpt from "The Soldiers"

1931 -- US: Karl Yoneda attends a demonstration in Los Angeles, where the Red Squad severely beats him & toss him into a cell.

“‘Come & pick up this goddamn Jap, he’s dying anyway’ he told me," Black recalled in her biography The Red Angel.

“He was a bloody mess. The bandages hadn’t been changed on his head. Everything was covered with blood."

Whether by some stroke of compassion or just because he didn’t want Yoneda dying in custody, Red Squad chief William Hynes called Elaine Black of the International Labor Defense group. (The cops had dubbed Elaine the “Red Angel" for her tireless work getting strikers out of jail.)

As a student Yoneda read the works of Marx & the Russian anarchist Vasily Eroshenko, who was kicked out of Japan in 1921 for his politics & lived in China. Yoneda found passage to China & hitchhiked to Beijing, meeting the blind Russian in 1922. Along the way in the port of Shimonoseki he worked his first job as a longshoreman unloading coal. He studied with Eroshenko for two months & took dictation, earning his way back to Japan.

Karl Yoneda later became an organizer for the Communist Party in Los Angeles.

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/EroshenkoVasily/people_0599.htm
http://www.well.com/user/sfflier/heroics-aftermath.html

1932 -- Spain: Anarcho-syndicalist CNT proclaims General Strike; insurrections follow. Within the week the Catalan city of Terrassa is taken over & anarchist communism is declared.
http://recollectionbooks.com/anow/history/spain/


1933 -- US: Noteworthy? First Singing Telegram sung, New York City.


1941 -- Netherlands: Anti-Nazi "Het Parool" begins publishing.


1946 -- Singer Donovan lives, near Glasgow, Scotland. Gets high on banana peels.




1948 -- Great Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein dies ("Potemkin," "Ivan the Terrible," "Ten Days That Shook the World").




1949 -- Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller opens at the Morosco Theater in NY.



1952 -- US: Alfred Sanftleben (1871-1952) dies, Los Angeles, California. Militant German anarchist, active there, Switzerland & the US. Typesetter & translator, friend of Max Nettlau, Gustav Landauer, Rudolf Rocker & the Flores Magón brothers, & much influenced by Giovanni Rossi.
[More on Sanftleben]


1953 -- US: Albert Theodore Schroeder dies (1864-1953), age 88.

He met & came to know the liberals, socialists, radicals & anarchists whose civil liberties he worked to uphold; the other defenders of civil liberties; & leading personalities in the field of psychology.

Schroeder's interest in free speech & press as well as social injustices grew to the point where he led the movement to incorporate the Free Speech League.

Schroeder took part in such cases as that against Moses Harmon, editor of Lucifer The Light Bearer, the San Diego Free Speech Fight, involving the well-known anarchists Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman. Schroeder took an interest in the Denver Free Speech Fight (involving Emma & Ben L. Reitman), The Blast Case (Alexander Berkman); The Masses Case; the Margaret Sanger Case ; in the Debs & La Follette cases among many, many others.

http://www.lib.umich.edu/spec-coll/ishill/schroedr.html

1954 -- US: The FDA files a decree for injunction to curtail Wilhelm Reich's work with Orgone energy & the medical use of orgone energy to treat injuries, physical disease & health conditions. Reich refused to appear in court on the decree motion but did respond in a letter to the Judge regarding the courts unclear jurisdiction of scientific discovery. The FDA was granted the injunction on March 19th.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orgone_energy
http://www.orgone.org/wr-vs-usa/wr40210a.htm
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/banned-books.html


1957 -- Laura Ingalls Wilder, author & the last surviving member of the pioneering Ingalls family, dies in her Rocky Ridge home. Laura's daughter Rose became a noted author & right-wing libertarian.
http://www.ecommcode2.com/hoover/research/wilder/


1961 -- England: Voice of Nuclear Disarmament pirate radio station begins operation off shore.


1961 -- Italy: Vengono finalmente abrogate le norme fasciste che sottoponevano a restrizioni il libero spostamento di residenza delle persone all'interno del territorio italiano.
[Source: Crimini e Misfatti]


1962 -- Francis Gary Powers, a CIA pilot allows both himself & his super-secret airplane to be captured by the Russians, then confesses everything before a Soviet court. Exchanged for reputed Soviet master spy Rudolf Abel (see 1 May, 5 May, 7 May).


1962 --

February 10 to 11 Fourth session of the Internationale situationniste's Central Council, in Paris. Participants: Debord, Kotànyi, Kunzelmann, Lausen, Nash, Vaneigem. Nicht Hinauslehnen (Don't Lean Out!), bilingual tract in German & French, illustrated by Gericault's Raft of Medusa, publicizing the exclusion of the 'Spurists.' Spur #4, journal of the German section of the SI, Munich. Hanegal, gallisk poesiealbum, book by Jørgen Nash illustrated by JV Martin. édition Internationale situationniste, Paris. The cover is made of cardboard & wire. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

1965 -- China: Playing Dominos? Meeting between Mao Tse-tung & Kosygin in Peking ends without any agreement on joint Chinese-Soviet aid for North Vietnam.
[Source: K.S. Karol]


1967 --

1967 "Tribute to J. Edgar Hoover" at California Hall. Music by the Jook Savages, Blue Cheer & the Mojo Men. John H. Myers Blues Project, Jimmy Reed & John Lee Hooker at the Fillmore Auditorium.

1969 -- Mozambique: Eduardo Mondiane, president of Frelimo, assassinated.



1970 -- France: Dry powder avalanche moving at 120 mph smashes into youth hostel killing 40 Belgian, French, & German youths, Val d'Isere.



1970 -- England: Ian Purdie is imprisoned for nine months for throwing a petrol bomb at the Ulster Office in Saville Row during an Irish Civil Rights Campaign march. One of numerous actions in England & France during this year, some of which are attributed to 'The Angry Brigade' or similar anarchist groups.



1971 -- NY Times reports Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention are forced to cancel a concert in London that was to include the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra & songs from the score of "200 Motels." Officials objected to Zappa's film "200 Motels," finding it obscene.

"It would be easier to pay off the national debt overnight than to neutralize the long-range effects of OUR NATIONAL STUPIDITY."

1971 -- US: National protests against US invasion of Laos include 1,500 protesters & nine arrests at the University of Washington in Seattle.


1972 -- England: & a bad day for the pigs as they're routed by 18,000 at Saltley Gates.
'Calendar Riots'


1973 -- US: Gigantic storage tank filled with liquefied gas explodes, Staten Island, New York, killing 40 workmen.


1978 -- Italy: Nothing on TV Again? Looters in Cagliari attack & burn the RAI-TV van that is being used to film their actions.
'Calendar Riots'


1981 -- US: Jamestown Clallam tribe, on Olympic Peninsula, in Washington State, receives federal recognition.



1982 -- Canada: Got Flippers?: 28 skiers perform backflips while holding hands, Bromont, Québec.


1989 -- US: To gain deregulation WWF admits pro wrestling is an exhibition & not a sport, in a New Jersey court.


1990 -- Wired to the Gills?: Perrier Water pulls bottled water from the shelves due to benzene contamination. Just a little cleaner than you want to swim in, Perrier is a great place to visit, but don't drink the .....
http://www.bottledwaterweb.com/links.jsp


1990 -- Brasil: Not only that, but a bad day for shopkeepers as eight hundred loot a Rio de Janeiro food market as striking security guards look on.
'Calendar Riots'


1992 -- Alex Haley, who assisted Malcolm X with his autobiography, & wrote the highly popular Roots, dies in Seattle, Washington.



1992 -- Spain: During this month the TV film, A Matar Franco (To Kill Franco) is made in Madrid. A documentary based on news coverage, previously unshown film, & current shooting, tells in full for the first time of the various, mostly unpublicised, attempts to kill Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Franco by the Spanish CNT, the Basque nationalist ETA & various international anarchists (Spanish, Mexican, Belgian, French, Italian & British).
http://www.spunk.org/library/writers/meltzer/sp001591/app1.html


1993 -- Michael Jackson grants his first interview in 15 years to TV goddess Oprah Winfrey. Jackson claims he has a disorder destroying his skin pigmentation & sez he's had little plastic surgery.



2000 -- US: Microradio movement news accounts on the struggle to free the airwaves: 'Free Radio Austin Rejects FCC License.' Also, 'FCC ruling won't affect low-power radio pioneer.'
[Source: Pirate Radio Kisok]



2001 -- US: Tribes of the Cass Corridor founded, Detroit, Michigan; buncha ice skaters without skates: "Think where man's glory most begins & ends, / & say my glory was I had such friends." — William Butler Yeats
http://corridortribe.com/


3000 --

"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.... A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear & realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill."

— H.L. Mencken

3000 --

4500 --