Category Archives for SAINTS

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint – ELIZABETH GURLEY FLYNN

“The Rebel Girl” of Wobbly fame.

August 7, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
Egypt: FEAST OF ‘AUT-YEB, Personification of Female Joy.

ALSO ON AUGUST 7 IN HISTORY…
1890 — “Rebel Girl” Elizabeth Gurley Flynn born, Concord, New Hampshire.
1958 — Emilia Newcomb spontaneously combusts, walking to a party.
1959 — Explorer VI sends back first picture of Earth from space.
1978 — Love Canal, upstate New York, declared toxic disaster area.
1791 — Slave uprising leads to revolution in Haiti.
1809 — American utopianist Albert Brisbane born, Batavia, New York.
1908 — Anarchist photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson born, Chanteloup, France.
1948 — Black American griot poet Sekou Sundiata born, Harlem, New York City.
2006 — International Astronomical Union demotes Pluto from “planet” status.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint: Scott Nearing

scottnearing

AUGUST 6 — SCOTT NEARING
Back-to-the-earth political radical, social drop-out.

wikipedia excerpt: “As the Vietnam War took center stage in the mid-1960s, and as a large back-to-the-land movement developed in the U.S., a renewed interest in Nearing’s work and ideas occurred. Hundreds of anti-war believers flocked to Nearing’s home in Maine to learn homesteading practical-living skills, some also to hear a master radical’s anti-war message.”

August 6, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
* Feast of Everything Green Except Money

Also on August 6 in history…
1637 — British comic genius and satirist Ben Jonson dies.
1774 — Religious-protesting Shakers arrive in New York.
1883 — Back-to-the-earth rebel Scott Nearing born, Morris Run, Pennsylvania.
1890 — First electric chair execution in U.S.
1945 — U.S. drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.
1969 — Frankfort School theorist Theodor Adorno dies, Visp, Switzerland.
1970 — Yippies invade Disneyland. Social chaos in wonderland. (See AP account below)

yippieland

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint — Friedrich Engels

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August 5– Friedrich Engels
Karl Marx’s partner, provider, and sometime heir. Theorist of the origin of property, marriage and state.

August 5, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*U.S.: National Failures Day.

ALSO ON AUGUST 5 IN HISTORY…
1890 — American utopianist Adin Ballou dies.
1895 — Communist theorist Friedrich Engels dies, London, England.
1962 — Sex goddess Marilyn Monroe dies in an affair-of-state.
2000 — Indonesian activist Jafar Siddiq Hamzah disappears, Medan, Sumatra.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint — PERCY SHELLEY

shelley
August 4– Percy Shelley
Romantic atheist, pagan pamphleteer and poet.

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number –
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you –
Ye are many – they are few.

Read more from Shelley on Project Gutenberg.

August 4, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Norway: Peer Gynt Festival Days.

ALSO ON AUGUST 4 IN HISTORY…
1578 — King of Portugal and his court killed in failed crusade in Morocco.
1792 — Poet, anarchist Percy Shelley born, Sussex, England.
1875 — Storyteller Hans Christian Andersen

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint — WAHHAB AL-BAYYATI

bayyati
August 3– WAHHAB AL-BAYYATI
Urbane Iraqi left-communist writer, exile; he revolutionized modern Arabic poetry.

The dictator hides his disgraced face in the mud.
Now he is having a taste of his own medicine,
and the pillars of deception have collapsed,
his picture is now underfoot,
trampled by history’s worn shoes.
The deposed dictator is executed in exile,
another monster is crowned in the hapless homeland.
The hourglass restarts,
counting the breaths of the new dictator,
lurking everywhere,
in the coffeehouse, the brothel,
in the nightclub, and the marketplace.

Read the rest of Bayyati’s poem The Dragon (with commentary).

August 3, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Feast of Caligo, mother of Chaos.

ALSO ON AUGUST 3 IN HISTORY…
1821 — Knights of Labor founder Uriah Stephens born, Cape May, New Jersey.
1922 — “The Wolf,” world’s first radio play, presented, Schenectady, New York.
1931 — Chicago eviction riots leave 3 dead; 60,000 march for anti-eviction laws.
1954 — French novelist Colette dies, Paris, France.
1971 — Golf… on the Moon!
1999 — Modernist Iraqi poet Abd-al Wahhab al-Bayyati dies in exile, Damascus.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint — JAMES BALDWIN

baldwin
August 2– JAMES BALDWIN
Suave, gay proponent of the fire this time
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7Of0Abi10A&feature=related

August 2, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Australia: Picnic Day.

ALSO ON AUGUST 2 IN HISTORY…
1776 — U.S. Declaration of Independence signed.
1876 — Wild Bill Hickok killed in poker game, Deadwood, South Dakota.
1924 — Black, queer American writer James Baldwin born, New York City.
1931 — Albert Einstein urges scientists to refuse military work.
1972 — Anarchist cultural critic Paul Goodman dies, North Stratford, Connecticut.
1976 — Filmmaker Fritz Lang dies, Beverly Hills, California.
1997 — Experimental Beat writer William S. Burroughs dies, Lawrence, Kansas.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint — HARKISHAN SURJEET

surjeet
August 1– HARKISHAN SURJEET
Indian communist leader, prisoner, independence fighter.

August 1, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Southern California: Laughter Day.
*Ghana: Homowo, or “Hooting at Hunger,” in which the Ga people feast and mock famine.
*Lammas, a Druid Harvest Feast. First-baked bread of new harvest blessed, effigies of corn spirit, called maiden corn, carried in procession.

ALSO ON AUGUST 1 IN HISTORY…
1744 — Naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck born, Bazentin-le-Petit, France.
1819 — American novelist Herman Melville born, New York City.
1916 — Indian communist leader Harkishan Singh Surjeet born, Jalandhar, Punjab.
1942 — Grateful Dead ‘Captain Trips’ Jerry Garcia born, San Francisco, California.
1983 — U.S. resumes making chemical weapons after 14-year suspension.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint — Primo Levi

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July 31– PRIMO LEVI
Italian-born chemist, Auschwitz survivor, writer… suicide?

JULY 31, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Always Live Better Than Yester Day.

ALSO ON JULY 31 IN HISTORY…
1777 — Marquis de Lafayette commissioned major general in Continental Army.
781 — Earliest recorded eruption of Mt. Fuji, Japan.
1703 — Writer Daniel Defoe, pilloried for seditious libel, is pelted with flowers.
1919 — Auschwitz survivor, chemist, writer Primo Levi born, Turin, Italy.
1944 — Antoine de Saint-Exupery disappears on flight over southern France.
1957 — Non-commercial radio pioneer Lewis Hill dies, Duncans Mills, California.
2006 — Cuban jefe Fidel Castro cedes state power to brother Raul.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint — Thorstein Veblen

veblen
July 30– THORSTEIN VEBLEN
Iconoclastic, sardonic theorist of profit, status and class, he probed the irrational forces of capitalist culture.

The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods.

Read more Veblen on Project Gutenberg.

JULY 30, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Virginia: Crater Day. Civil War holiday.

ALSO ON JULY 30 IN HISTORY…
1857 — Economist and social theorist Thorsten Veblen born, Valders, Wisconsin.
1889 — Radical woodcut artist Frans Masereel born, Blankenberge, Belgium.
1925 — Rootless cosmopolitan Alexander Trocchi born, Glasgow, Scotland.
1938 — Hitler presents highest non-citizen award to Henry Ford in Berlin.
1958 — Left-wing coup in Iraq arouses Western fears of domino effect.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint — JEAN BAUDRILLARD

baudrillard
July 29– JEAN BAUDRILLARD
French cultural theorist, media philosopher, art critic.

Our point is not to defend radical thought. Any idea that can be defended is presumed guilty. Any idea that does not sustain its own defense deserves to perish. But we have to fight against charges of unreality, lack of responsibility, nihilism, and despair. Radical thought is never depressing. This would be a complete misunderstanding. A moralizing and ideological critique, obsessed by meaning and content, obsessed by a political finality of discourse, never takes into account writing, the act of writing, the poetic, ironic, and allusive form of language, the play with meaning. This critique does not see that the resolution of meaning is right here, in the form itself, in the formal materiality of an expression. As for meaning, it is always unfortunate. Analysis is by its very definition unfortunate since it is born out of a critical disillusion. But language on the contrary is fortunate (happy), even when it designates a world with no illusion, with no hope. This would in fact be here the very definition of radical thought: an intelligence without hope, but a fortunate and happy form. Critics, always being unfortunate (unhappy) in their nature, choose the realm of ideas as their battle field. They do not see that if discourse always tends to produce meaning, language and writing on the contrary are always a matter of illusion. Language and writing are the living illusion of meaning, the resolution of the misfortune of meaning operated through the good fortune of language. This is the only political or transpolitical act that a writer can accomplish.

From Baudrillard’s article Radical Thought, read more Baudrillard online here.

JULY 29, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Norway: Oslok, the festival of Saint Olaf the Fat.
*Quimperle, Brittany: Pardon of the Birds. Festive fair and picnic with a bird theme.

ALSO ON JULY 29 IN HISTORY…
1883 — Italian Socialist Party leader turned fascist Benito Mussolini born.
1890 — Dutch crackpot painter Vincent Van Gogh dies, Auvers-sur-Oise, France.
1921 — Adolf Hitler becomes president of the German Nazi Party.
1929 — French media theorist, art critic Jean Baudrillard born, Reims, France.
1979 — New Left theorist, radical hero Herbert Marcuse dies, Sternberg, East Germany.
2006 — French radical historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet dies, Nice, France.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective