Category Archives for SAINTS

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint — Thomas Disch

disch
July 5– Thomas Disch
Gay American science fiction writer, dystopianist, suicide victim.


Mallarmé drowning
Chatterton coughing up his lungs
Auden frozen in a cottage
Byron expiring at Missolonghi
and Hart Crane visiting Missolonghi and dying there too

The little boot of Sylvia Plath wedged in its fatal stirrup
Tasso poisoned
Crabbe poisoned
T.S. Eliot raving for months in a Genoa hospital before he died
Pope disappearing like a barge in a twilight of drugs

The execution of Marianne Moore
Pablo Neruda spattered against the Mississippi
Hofmannsthal’s electrocution
The quiet painless death of Robert Lowell
Alvarez bashing his bicycle into an oak

The Brownings lost at sea
The premature burial of Thomas Gray
The baffling murder of Stephen Vincent Benét
Stevenson dying of dysentery
and Catullus of a broken heart

— Tom Disch

JULY 5, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Tomar, Portugal: Fiesta do Tapuleiros begins. An elaborate harvest fiesta, featuring 600 girls wearing 30-pound headresses made of bread, as tall as the girls and decorated with flowers, with Maltese crosses on top.

ALSO ON JULY 5 IN HISTORY…
645 — Flint-Sky-God K accedes to Mayan throne of Dos Pilas.
1857 — German radical feminist Clara Zetkin born, Widerau, Saxony.
1861 — Lincoln suspends habeus corpus, leading to 18,000 “subversive” arrests.
1889 — French surrealist filmmaker Jean Cocteau born, Maisons-Lafitte.
1894 — Pullman Strike starts in Chicago; federal troops will kill 34 unionists.
1932 — First prisoners arrive at Bolshevik prison-labor camp, Kolyma, Siberia.
2008 — Dystopian American science fiction writer Thomas Disch dies, New York City.

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 — Mao Dun


July 4– Mao Dun
Famed radical Chinese writer, journalist, cultural critic.

JULY 4, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*U.S.: Independence Day.
*Flag-burning day
*Hannibal, Missouri: Tom Sawyer Fence-Painting Day.

ALSO ON JULY 4 IN HISTORY…
1585 — English colonists land on Roanoke Island, New World.
1627 — Virginia Colony orders “scorched earth” policy for neighboring natives.
1776 — Liberty Bell rings, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: not all it’s cracked up to be.
1826 — New Harmony utopianists sign Declaration of Mental Independence.
1840 — “Calico Indians” rise up in 5-year-long Hudson Valley Anti-Rent Wars.
1845 — Henry David Thoreau takes up 26-month-long squat, Walden Pond, Mass.
1855 — Walt Whitman, age 36, self-publishes “Leaves of Grass.” Dismal sales.
1896 —Radical Chinese writer Mao Dun born, Tongxiang, Zhejiang, China.
1904 — Jazz great Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong born, New Orleans, Louisiana.
1905 — Radical anarchist geographer Elisée Reclus dies, Thourot, Belgium.
1928 — Black American beat poet Ted Joans born, riverboat near Cairo, Illinois.
1966 — LBJ signs U.S. Freedom of Information Act.
1980 — Anthropologist, cultural theorist Gregory Bateson dies, San Francisco.

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 — GIL WOLMAN

wolman
July 3– Gil Wolman
Prominent French Lettrist and Situationist theorist.
Read A User’s Guide to Detournement by Wolman and Debord on Bureau of Public Secrets.

JULY 3, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Montana: Annual Sun Dance of the Assiniboine tribe.
*Festival of Wilderness

ALSO ON JULY 3 IN HISTORY…
1832 — Opium exempted from US federal tariff duty.
1883 — Modern allegorist writer Franz Kafka born, Prague, Czechoslovakia.
1917 — Petrograd uprising. Street fighting. Lenin goes into hiding.
1971 — Poet, Doors frontman Jim Morrison dies of heart attack, Paris, France.
1976 — U.S. Supreme Court reverses itself, says death penalty OK.
1982 — Black Panther and Move activist Mumia Abu-Jamal sentenced to death.
1988 — US kills 290 civilians aboard Iranian airliner without punishment.
1990 — Bulgarian Federation of Anarchist Youth protest Commie Prez Mladenov.
1995 — French Situationist theorist Gil J. Wolman dies, Paris, France.

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 — Patrice Lamumba

lumumba
July 2 – PATRICE LAMUMBA
Martyred Congolese pioneer of African liberation.
Read Speeches and writings by Lamumba on Marxists.org

JULY 2, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
Besse-en-Chandesse, France: The Black Virgin is carried into the mountains, where she once went on her own.
Siena, Italy: Madonna di Provenzano Festival. Horse race, followed by revelry and music, in honor of armless madonna.

ALSO ON JULY 2 IN HISTORY…
1717 — First American book auction held, Boston, Massachusetts.
1776 — New Jersey, in oversight, gives right to vote to some women.
1778 — Jean-Jacques Rousseau, French philosopher and social theorist, dies.
1789 — Marquis de Sade shouts from Bastille that prisoners are being slaughtered.
1881 — U.S. President Garfield shot by overlooked politician Charles Guiteau.
1903 — U.S. leases Guantanamo military base from Cuba, “in perpetuity.”
1925 — Martyr Patrice Lumumba born, Katako Kombe, Belgian Congo.
1939 — First World Science Fiction Convention opens, New York City.
1950 — Protesting ban on Communists, NYC Teachers Union resigns from NEA.
1993 — 35 die in anti-Salman Rushdie riots, Sivas, Turkey.
1995 — Radical journalist George Seldes dies, Hartland Four Corners, Vermont.

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 — Mikhail Bakunin

bakunin
July 1– MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
Conspirator, anarchist, rival of Marx, assassin of God.
From Bakunin’s God and the State:
“Yes, our first ancestors, our Adams and our Eves, were, if not gorillas, very near relatives of gorillas, omnivorous, intelligent and ferocious beasts, endowed in a higher degree than the animals of another species with two precious faculties-the power to think and the desire to rebel

JULY 1, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
Half-Year Day.
Canada Day.
Roman Catholic Church: Feast of Precious Blood.
Japan: Mt. Fuji Day, opening of the climbing season.

ALSO ON JULY 1 IN HISTORY…
1566 — Death of rhyming prognosticator Nostradamus. Saw it coming?
1656 — First Quakers arrive in America, having come to what will be Boston.
1804 — Feminist writer,“lifestyle anarchist” George Sand born, Paris, France.
1876 — Russian anarchist theorist Mikhail Bakunin dies, Bern, Switzerland.
1916 — 20,000 slaughtered on first day of Battle of the Somme.
1983 — Bucky Fuller, Canadian engineer, inventor, social theorist, dies.

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 — HENRI LEFEBVRE

lefebvre
June 29– HENRI LEFEBVRE
Radical critic of the politics of everyday life.

JUNE 29, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Russia: St. Peter’s Day. Celebration of the “Funeral of Kostrama”: Bonfires kindled; maiden chosen to be carried in procession and to reign over games and dancing.
* Sacrament of the Silicon Host.

ALSO ON JUNE 29 IN HISTORY…
48 BC — Julius Caesar bests Pompey to become absolute ruler of Rome.
1635 — London’s Globe Theatre, while Henry VIII plays, burns to the ground.
1886 — Harlem photographer James Vander Zee born, Lenox, Massachusetts.
1900 — Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupery born, Lyons, France.
1940 — Individualistic Swiss artist Paul Klee dies, Muralto, Switzerland.
1991 — French social critic Henri Lefebvre dies, Navarrenx, Haut Pyrenee.
1994 — U.S. reopens Guantanamo, Cuba base to “process refugees.”

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 — Gaston Couté

coute
June 28 — Gaston Couté
French vagabond poet, cabaret anarchist, songwriter.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOQlCOlcWQY&feature=player_embedded

JUNE, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Paul Bunyan Day.
*Festival of Terrible Poetry.

ALSO ON JUNE 28 IN HISTORY…
1712 — French philosopher, writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau born, Geneva.
1816 — England: Luddites attack Heathcoat and Bodenmila.
1887 — Greenwich Village free-love radical Floyd Dell born.
1911 — French anarchist cabaret musician Gaston Couté dies, Paris, France.
1964 — Malcolm X founds Organization of Afro-American Unity.
1979 — Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries hikes oil prices 24 per cent.

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 — EMMA GOLDMAN

goldman
June 27– EMMA GOLDMAN
Writer and activist editor of Mother Earth, exile, she knew innumerable jailings, revolutions, love affairs.
Read Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman online.

JUNE 27, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Provence, France: Festival of the Thrasque. The man-eating monster charges down city streets, snapping at people.

ALSO ON JUNE 27 IN HISTORY…
1869 — Anarchist rebel Emma Goldman born, Kaunas, Lithuania.
1872 — Black American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar born, Dayton, Ohio.
1880 — Deaf, mute, blind socialist Helen Keller born, Tuscumbia, Alabama.
1884 — French philosopher Gaston Bachelard born, Bar-sur-Aube, France.
1905 — Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World) founded in Chicago.
1969 — Police harassment provokes Stonewall Riot of gays in New York City.

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 – AIMÉE CÉSAIRE

June 26– AIMÉE CÉSAIRE
Martiniquean Négritude poet, disillusioned communist.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac7RZJP2_uk

JUNE 26, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Aragon, Spain: Feast of the Shepherds. Head shepherd is clown for the day; music, dancing, and clowning all afternoon, and in the evening people do whatever they please.
*Festival of Ranting & Vaporing.

ALSO ON JUNE 26 IN HISTORY…
1856 — Anarchist philosopher Max Stirner dies, Berlin, Prussia.
1893 — Haymarket anarchists pardoned by Illinois Governor Altgelt.
1913 — Négritude poet, politcian Aimée Césaire born, Basse-Pointe, Martinique.
1926 — Radical philospher Karel Kosik born, Prague, Czechoslovakia.
1933 — Greek poet C. P. Cavafy dies, Alexandria, Egypt.
1938 — God’s Trombones author James Weldon Johnson dies.
1975 — Two FBI agents killed during attack on Oglala Sioux reservation; AIM leader Leonard Peltier framed for murder.

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 — George Orwell

June 25– George Orwell
British novelist, anarchist journalist, anti-Stalinist.

*Spain: Fiesta of Santa Orosia. Pilgrims climb to murdered maiden’s mountain sanctuary where the saint’s head is displayed, picnic, sing, dance, drink, fight and make love.

ALSO ON JUNE 25 IN HISTORY…
1822 — German phantasist E.T.A. Hoffman dies, Berlin, Germany.
1852 — Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi born, Reus, Tarragona, Spain.
1868 — Six southern, former Confederate states readmitted to U.S.
1876 — Genocidal General George Armstrong Custer killed at Little Big Horn.
1878 — Ezra Haywood gets two years hard labor for advocating sexual emancipation in the U.S.
1903 — George Orwell born as Eric Blair, Motihari, Bengal, India.
1913 — Anti-colonialist surrealist Aimé Césaire born, Basse-Pointe, Martinique.
1950 — War breaks out in Korea as North Korean troops invade the South.
1983 — Alexander Haig reluctantly relinquishes control of the U.S. White House following near-assassination of Ronald Reagan.
1984 — French philosopher Michel Foucault dies of AIDS, Paris, France

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