after a 63 days' voyage, 63 days of feverish
expectancy, we perceived strange fires,
moving in zig zags on the sea."
— Opening sentence, Paul Gauguin, Noa Noa
Web pain in full,
http://recollectionbooks.com/
excerpts for the less adventuresome:
JUNE 8
THOMAS PAINE.
True "Founding Father" of American revolutionism.
China: DRAGON-BOAT RACES commemorates search for
Ch'i Yuan (3rd century BC) who threw himself in river. No
finish line, no judges. Arguments & fist fights always break
out, but ends with merry feast.
NAME YOUR POISON DAY.
http://recollectionbooks.com/
______________________________
632 -- Islamic prophet Mohammed dies, Medina, Arabia.
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1809 -- Thomas Paine dies in obscurity in New York. Six people
follow his casket to the grave. 10 years later William Cobbett,
essayist/pamphleteer who attacked Paine during his lifetime,
retrieved & sent the coffin to England, to honor Paine with a
memorial there, but the plan collapsed, & his remains were lost.
1867 -- Mark Twain embarks on the journey through Europe to the
Holy Land; inspires The Innocents Abroad.
1904 -- US: Battle between the Colorado Militia & striking
mine workers at Dunnville ends with six union members dead &
15 taken prisoner. 79 of the strikers were deported to Kansas two
days later. Courtesy of Rockefeller who owns the state government
& militia.
1909 -- US: Emma Goldman is blocked by police from speaking
on Thomas Paine.
Emma is scheduled to speak in East Orange, N.J., at a meeting
organized by Alden Freeman to commemorate the 100th anniversary
of Paine's death.
Police — who, surprisingly, haven't read The Rights of Man —
prevent her from entering the lecture hall (she was also unable
to deliver her speech on May 23 due to police zealously guarding
free speech rights with yet another healthy dose of suppression).
1917 -- US: Granite Mountain Mine Disaster, also known as the
Speculator Mine fire, Butte, Montana, killing 168 men.
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1925 -- US: Supreme Court upholds the NY conviction of
Benjamin Gitlow for publishing "The Left Wing Manifesto"
pamphlet. Some Americans are left more free than others.
1927 -- Barbadian George Lamming, novelist & poet, lives.
A tireless anti-colonialist activist, Lamming ties together collective
history through the shared humanity of his characters.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/
1928 -- Peru: Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino lives, Lima. Theologian &
founder of Liberation Theology.
Liberation theology "has arisen out of the experience of the
poor, the oppressed, the "wretched of the earth" in Latin America,
with whom [Gutiérrez] lives six days each week."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
1943 -- US: Rose Bonavita (Rosie the Riveter) & Jennie Fiorito
set a record by driving 3,345 rivets in one shift at a Tarrytown,
NY aircraft factory.
1943 -- US: The Los Angeles city council outlaws the wearing
of zoot suits; meanwhile the US navy declares Los Angeles off
limits because of the Zoot Suit riots.
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1955 -- "A poem from 1955 that I sent to Kenneth Rexroth &
I thought it was good because it was a dream & it had this
illumination of a dream & it was about William Burroughs's
late wife..."
A drunken night in my house with a
boy, San Francisco: I lay asleep:
darkness:
I went back to Mexico City
& saw Joan Burroughs leaning
forward in a garden chair, arms
on her knees. She studied me with
clear eyes & downcast smile, her
face restored to a fine beauty
tequila & salt had made strange
before the bullet in her brow.
— Allen Ginsberg, "Dream Record, June 8, 1955":
& this is about the last poem I wrote before "Howl."
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1968 -- As students & workers continue to rebel in Paris, Mexico
City & Prague — police in Milan, Italy, storm the Catholic
University of the Sacred Heart, arresting 250 students & put 30 in
the hospital.
God's work is interrupted.
More than 200 students have occupied the school &
held the rector captive in his office.
They also attacked the right-wing paper, "Corriera
della Sera," forming barricades & overturning cars
on Milan's main streets.
Responding to the protest, the Catholic church
demands all students swear their loyalty to the
university's rules & hierarchy.
1971 -- US: Bridge, Anyone? New York bridge workers hopelessly
snarl the city's traffic by leaving drawbridges open, the result of a
rejection by New York State of their pension demands.
1988 -- Here's Lookin at You?: Nippon Airways announces
that painting eyeballs on jetliners cuts bird collisions by 20%.
1995 -- South Korea: President Kin Young Sam warns that a
planned strike at the state-owned telephone company would
be akin to "an attempt to overthrow the state."
1997 -- Not So Cricket?: Anti-genetic food activists play cricket
using bioengineered potatoes previously scheduled for harvesting.
2007 -- Richard Rorty, master of bricolage, dies, age 75. American
philosopher with a high reputation in France & Germany, & a public
intellectual who was influential in literary theory & political thinking
as well as in philosophy. Influenced by Dewey & Derrida, Davidson &
Wittgenstein, & married the thought of these dissonant philosophers.
_________________________
So don't think you can fool me with your political tricks
Political right, political left, you can keep your politics
Government is government, & all government is force
Left or right, right or left, it takes the same old course
Oppression & restriction, regulation, rule & law
The seizure of that power is all your revolution's for
— Crass, Bloody Revolutions (1980 )
_________________________
— anti-Snarl 1997-3000, more or ...
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