APRIL 22, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Earth Day
*U.S.: Secretary Day
*Festival of Fabulous Androgynes
ALSO ON APRIL 22 IN HISTORY…
1526 — First New World slave revolt occurs, Haiti.
1724 — Philosopher Immanuel Kant born, Konigsberg, East Prussia.
1870 — Bolshevik Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin born, Simbirsk, Russia.
1893 — Italian-American anarchist Nicola Sacco born, Tarremaggiore, Italy.
1904 — Nuclear scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer born, New York City.
1922 — Jazz great Charles Mingus born, Nagales, Arizona.
1970 — First Earth Day environmental celebrations observed.
1995 — Gray Panthers founder Maggie Kuhn dies, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
April 20 — Joan Miro
Great Catalan painter, sculptor, printmaker, bon-vivant.
APRIL 20, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
* Thailand: Rice Planting Day
* Jewish Passover
ALSO ON APRIL 20 IN HISTORY…
1494 — Antinomian religious protestant Johannes Agricola born.
1893 — Surrealist painter Joan Miro born, Montroing, Spain.
1914 — Ludlow massacre of striking miners and families by National Guard.
1953 — U.S. Justice Department makes Communists register as foreign agents.
1969 — People’s Park planted, Berkeley, California.
1998 — German terrorist Red Army Faction announces dissolution after 28 years.
April 19 — Lord Byron
Wit, dandy, into incest and man-boy love. Died fighting for Greek freedom and romantic ideals. Good poet, too.
APRIL 19, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Snakes Return to Ireland Day
ALSO ON APRIL 19 IN HISTORY…
1824 — British romantic poet Lord Byron dies of malaria, Missolonghi, Greece.
1943 — Warsaw Uprising begins in Jewish ghetto, Poland.
1993 — Feds end siege of Branch Dividians near Waco, Texas.
2005 — German Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger elected Pope Bendect XVI.
ALSO ON APRIL 18 IN HISTORY…
1839 — French decadent Charles Baudelaire expelled from college.
1850 — American anarchist poet Jo Labadie born, Paw Paw, Michagan.
1857 — American lawyer for the underdog Clarence Darrow born.
1898 — French Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau dies, Paris, France.
1906 — Great San Francisco earthquake destroys much of the city.
1955 — Relativist theorist Albert Einstein dies, Princeton, New Jersey.
Above: A Zapatista, photographed in Chiapas by Shawn Mortensen. Courtesy Peter Relic.
Shawn Mortensen was a passionate photographer, activist, storyteller and human being, who expected the best out of everybody. He gave much, much more than this world gave him.
Shawn was a friend, a fellow traveler, a comrade.
It is fair to say that his personal and professional support helped bring Arthur Magazine into being, and without him there would be no Arthur. He helped me see that I could edit and publish a culture magazine—not just that I could, but that I had to—and he rallied support from others, and provided countless instances of support, much of it in private. I still have an email he sent to me and our friend Peter Relic on July 28, 2000 at 1:30am, entitled ‘MORTY”S MANIFESTD,’ [sic] which was a typically typo’d, irreverent, stream-of-Mortensen call to (publishing) arms, written from the green zone (the real one, not the one that they’d build in Baghdad three years later) where we had spent so much time together, turning each other on to stuff, generating ideas and figuring out how to get The Work done.
Shawn realized how it (culture, politics, love) all fit together; his success was in embodying it, to the degree that he could; his frustration was that others couldn’t (yet) see what he did. But of course, who could, really? Who else among us had seen as much as Shawn had—the good, the great, the bad, and the really bad? Shawn was almost over-aware.
Shawn’s photograph of Beck performing at Aron’s Records was used in Arthur’s pre-launch promotional materials. His photograph of Peaches ran in Arthur No. 1. For our ‘real’ first issue, Arthur No. 2, he photographed Devendra Banhart (possibly Devendra’s first-ever “photo shoot”?) and Genesis P-Orridge & Douglas Rushkoff. As the magazine matured, Shawn always offered his services, free of charge, in addition to his contacts, his wealth of knowledge, his archives and his moral support. That we did not collaborate further was (mostly) a matter of bad timing. I profoundly regret that we did not achieve together what we had set out to do, on the scale we had hoped for.
That said: Without Shawn, my life would be significantly different, and not nearly as good.
I am in shock that he is gone at this moment, forever.
For those who never met him, or who want to see (and hear) him today, this video shows a lot of what he was about.
Journalist Drew Tewksbury has posted a long piece from Shawn about the early to mid ’90s, composed in 2007 for Flaunt Magazine, on his website. Shawn’s writing voice was always enthusiastic, manic, exciting to read. This is no different, and I am happy that it’s been shared with us all.
ALSO ON APRIL 15 IN HISTORY…
1452 — Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci born.
1882 — Anarchist Rudolph Grossman (aka Pierre Ramus) born, Vienne, Austria.
1889 — Painter and radical Thomas Hart Benton born, Neosha, Missouri.
1898 — Blues vocalist great Bessie Smith born, Chattanooga, Tennessee.
1921 — Albert Enstein gives a lecture on temporal relativity.
1938 — Peruvian poet Cesar Vellejo dies, Paris, France.
1908 — Marxist existentialist Jean Paul Satre dies, Paris, France.
1986 — Gay French novelist, criminal, Saint Jean Genet dies, Paris, France.
2001 — Joey ramone, iconic punk outcast, dies of cancer, New York City.
April 14 — GORDON CHILDE
Australian Marxist archeologist and prehistorian.
APRIL 14, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Dreams of Reason Feast Day, dedicated to discarded scientific theory and science fiction futures.
*Good Friday
*Pan American Day
ALSO ON APRIL 14 IN HISTORY…
1865 — U.S. President Abraham Lincoln shot by John Wilkes Booth.
1828 — Noah Webster copyrights his first Dictionary.
1874 — American communalist Josiah Warren dies, Boston, Massachusetts.
1892 — Radical anthropologist Gordon Childe born, North Sydnet, Australia.
1912 — The unsinkable mega-ship Titanic sinks, hitting an iceberg.
1956 — First videotape demonstrated, Chicago, Illionoise.
1964 — American ocology writer Rachel Carson dies, Silver Springs, Maryland
1966 — Swiss pharmaceutical firm Sandoz discontinues production of LSD.
1970 — Two students fatally shot in anti-war protest, Jackson State University, Mississippi.
1986 — French philosopher and feminist Simon de Beauvoir dies, Paris, France.
April 13 — György Lukács
Marxist philosopher, cultural theorist, social critic, likely dupe of Stalinist counter-revolution.
APRIL 13, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
* Meme Appreciation Day.
* Revolutionary Tricks of History Day
ALSO ON APRIL 13 IN HISTORY…
1743 — American politician Thomas Jefferson born, Shadwell, Virginia
1828 — Josephine Butler born, Glendale, Northumberland
1885 — Marxist philosopher György Lukács born, Budapest, Hungary.
1906 — Samuel Beckett, Irish writer, born, Dublin.
1909 — American writer Eudora Welty born, Jackson, Missippi.
1912 — Too poor to book the Titanic, Theodore Dreiser waits for another ship.
1919 — Eugene Debs imprisoned for opposition to WWI.
1945 — Belsen and Buchenwald nazi concentration camps liberated.
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