NOVEMBER 7 — ALBERT CAMUS
Stylish French existentialist, explorer of the human irrational. “A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.”
NOVEMBER 7, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
FESTIVAL OF STOLEN FIRE. FEAST OF FREE PAMPHLETEERS
ALSO ON NOVEMBER 7 IN HISTORY…
1837 — Abolitionist journalist Elijah P. Lovejoy dies, Alton, Illinois.
1879 — Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky born, Yankova, Ukraine.
1912 — First appearance of I.W.W. Ernest Riebe’s “Mr. Block” comic strip.
1913 — French existentialist writer Albert Camus born, Mondovi, Algeria.
1917 — Bolshevik Revolution launched, Petrograd seized.
1919 — Palmer’s “Reign of Terror” begins; 3,000 anarchists imprisoned
on Ellis Island in New York harbor.
1978 — Surrealist painter, cultural renegade Giorgio de Chirico dies, Rome, Italy.
NOVEMBER 6 — MARIO SAVIO
Youthful Berkeley leader of 1960ʼs Free Speech Movement.
NOVEMBER 6, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
FESTIVAL OF PARTIAL SUBMISSION. MAROONED WITHOUT A COMPASS DAY.
ALSO ON NOVEMBER 6 IN HISTORY…
1880 — German novelist Robert Musil born, Klagenfurt, Austria.
1931 — Playwright Mike Nichols born, Berlin, Germany.
1971 — Onondaga Nation, NY, protests intrusion of interstate highway.
1986 — Iran-Contra scandal begins to break in U.S.
1996 — Free Speech Movement activist Mario Savio dies, Sebastopol, California. Christian anarchist, novelist of epic and historic scale.
NOVEMBER 5 — EUGENE DEBS
I.W.W. founder, jailed seditionist & perennial candidate. NOVEMBER 5, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
CELESTIAL SAXOPHONE DAY. RETURN OF THE FEAST OF NO RETURN.
ALSO ON NOVEMBER 5 IN HISTORY…
1605 — Gunpowder Plot to blow up English Parliament detected.
1779 — Hollow Earth theorist John Cleves Symmes born, New Jersey.
1855 — American socialist politician Eugene Debs born, Terre Haute, Indiana.
1857 — Anti-capitalist muckraker Ida Tarbell born, Erie County, Pennsylvania.
1926 — Negro History Week initiated by Carter G. Woodson.
1960 — Film comedy producer Mack Sennett dies.
NOVEMBER 4 — JUDI BARI
Homespun American humorist, speaker of truth to power.
NOVEMBER 4, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
England, Australia and New Zealand: MISCHIEF NIGHT.
ALSO ON NOVEMBER 4 IN HISTORY…
1870 — French proto-surrealist Comte de Lautreamont dies.
1879 — American humorist Will Rogers born, Oologah, Oklahoma.
1922 — Tut-ankh-amen’s tomb discovered, Egypt.
1949 — Earth First environmental activist Judi Bari born, Baltimore, Maryland.
1972 — U.S. Communist Party headquarters in New York City firebombed.
1979 — 65 American hostages taken in Iran.
1982 — Maverick Canadian classical musician Glenn Gould dies, Toronto, Ontario.
OCTOBER 27 — BRAD WILL Indymedia activist, killed in street protests, Oaxaca, Mexico. OCTOBER 27, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
FEAST OF THE LORD OF MISRULE.
PUNKIE NIGHT: Children parade with gourd lanterns on last Thursday in October.
ALSO ON OCTOBER 27 IN HISTORY…
1904 — New York City subway opens.
1912 — Player piano composer Conlon Nancarrow born, Texarkana, Arkansas.
1914 — Welsh poet Dylan Thomas born, Swansea, Wales.
1932 — American poet Sylvia Plath born, Boston, Massachusetts.
2006 — New York Indymedia journalist Brad Will killed, Oaxaca, Mexico.
OCTOBER 26 — NESTOR MAKHNO
Ukrainian anarchist general, fought both Reds and Whites.
OCTOBER 26, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
Old Siam: TOP-SPINNING CEREMONY. Brahmins spin three large tops,
each made of nine metals, to divine the events of the coming year.
ALSO ON OCTOBER 26 IN HISTORY…
1764 — Painter, satirist William Hogarth dies, Leicester Fields, London, England.
1806 — “Lord” Timothy Dexter, classic American crackpot, dies.
1881 — Gunfight at the OK Corral, Tombstone, Arizona Territory.
1889 — Anarchist general Nestor Makhno born, Gulyaj-Polye, Ukraine.
1902 — U.S. women’s rights leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton dies, New York City.
OCTOBER 25 — MAX STIRNER
Young Hegelian individualist anarchist. “Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man’s lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one’s self.”
OCTOBER 25 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
Soissons, France: ST. CRISPIN’S DAY cobbler’s procession.
Chadron, Nebraska: UGLY PICKUP truck contest, and UGLY PICKUP QUEEN.
ALSO ON OCTOBER 25 IN HISTORY…
1400 — British poet Geoffrey Chaucer dies, London, England.
1806 — Ego-philosopher Max Stirner born, Bayreuth, Bavaria.
1860 — American Mountain Man Grizzly Adams dies, Charlton, Massachusetts.
1881 — Spanish painter, commie Pablo Picasso born, Málaga, Spain.
1902 — American writer Frank Norris dies, San Francisco, California.
1914 — American poet John Berryman born, McAlester, Oklahoma.
1950 — Tibet invaded by Red China. Dalai Lama flees for India.
1983 — U.S. troops invade Grenada following death of Maurice Bishop.
1984 — Hippie writer Richard Brautigan commits suicide, Bolinas, California.
free103point9 radio presents Tony Martin’s new site-specific installation “Light Pendulum” with live music by Michelle Nagai as part of their radio festival 2009, which features “radio installation, performance, theater, walks, and a transmitter building workshop, with live video web streams:”
Tony Martin is a founder of art works using light, and has created seminal new media works since the 1960’s. Light Pendulum is a new work that is controlled by site-specific environmental conditions including light, sound, and motion. Light Pendulum functions both as a stand-alone kinetic sculpture as well as a temporal instrument used in a performance-based setting. Light Pendulum is comprised of a six-inch diameter glass pendulum suspended with nylon line from the installation space ceiling. An LED pin-light is installed at the top of the line. The pendulum’s motion is caused by the earth’s rotation and conditions of air movement. A large parabolic mirrored dish is installed directly underneath the pendulum. Receptors and sensors are positioned at the center of the dish. These receptors function as photocells, photovoltaic cells, and other signal and current producing and regulating components.
Michelle Nagai utilizes sound, physicality and concept to create site-specific performances, installations, radio broadcasts, dances, walks and other interactions that address the human state in relationship to its setting. These works and activities explore the exchange of perception between performer and audience/viewer. Nagai recognizes transmission, reception and “limbo” as continuously shifting, highly interactive states of being. She engages these states in her working process in order to open up the field of perception and action beyond that which she is herself capable of comprehending, making or doing.
Soundscape by Michelle Nagai w/ Projections by Ursula Scherrer:
Saturday, October 24th -- Wine & cheese at 8pm, performance beginning at 9pm Ontological-Hysteric Theaterat St. Mark’s Church
131 E. 10th St. / New York, NY 10013 Free admission!
OCTOBER 24, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
Buddhist PAVARANA. UNITED NATIONS DAY. LA GRAND BOUFFE.
ALSO ON OCTOBER 24 IN HISTORY…
1644 — American colonial reformer William Penn born, London, England.
1868 — Feminist explorer Alexandra David-Neel born, Paris, France.
1911 — Death of lighthouse keeper, feminist Ida B. Lewis, Limerick, Rhode Island.
1926 —Spanish surrealist screenwriter Rafael Azona Fernández born, Logroño.
1940 — So-called 40-hour work-week established in U.S. — Hah!
1955 — Eighteen-day bout of “smog” claims Los Angeles, California.
Above: Alexandra David-Neel in typical Tibetan traveling clothes, 1927.
OCTOBER 23 — LOUIS RIEL
Manitoban leader of the Mètis Rebellion.
OCTOBER 23, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
San Juan Capistrano: SWALLOWS DEPART. NATIONAL MOLE DAY.
CANNING DAY. FESTIVAL OF FORGOTTEN GODS. FEAST OF GOOD AND PLENTY.
ALSO ON OCTOBER 23 IN HISTORY…
1734 — French writer, early communist theorist Restif de la Bretonne born.
1844 — Mètis Rebellion leader Louis Riel born, Manitoba, Canada.
1850 — First national Women’s Rights convention, Worcester, Massachusetts.
1926 — Leon Trotsky expelled from Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
1927 — Surrealist Beat poet Philip Lamantia born, San Francisco, California.
1956 — Revolution erupts in Hungary, Russian tanks called in.
1958 — Russian Boris Pasternak wins Nobel Lit Prize for Doctor Zhivago.
OCTOBER 22 — SARGON BOULUS
Iraqi-born Assyrian beatnik poet, translator.
OCTOBER 22, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
INTERNATIONAL DAY OF ACTION AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY FEAST OF FOOLS.
ALSO ON OCTOBER 22 IN HISTORY…
1878 — Anti-Socialist Law passed in Germany.
1887 — Greenwich Village revolutionist John Reed born, Portland, Oregon.
1897 — World’s first car dealership opens, London, England.
1913 — Action photographer Robert Capa born, Budapest, Austria–Hungary.
1918 — Flu epidemic claims one fourth of all Americans, killing half a million.
1962 — Missile crisis develops over Soviet warheads in Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
2007 — Assyrian Iraqi beatnik poet Sargon Boulus dies, Berlin, Germany.
OCTOBER 21 — ANTE CILIGA
Croatian born Left-Communist, anti-Stalinist theorist.
OCTOBER 21, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
FESTIVAL OF PARLOR SHAMANISM.
ALSO ON OCTOBER 21 IN HISTORY…
1772 — British Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge born, Devon, England.
1888 — Spiritualist Margaret Fox confesses spirit rappings were a put-on.
1917 — Jazz great Dizzy Gillespie born.
1929 — Utopian novelist Ursula K. LeGuin born.
1967 — Yippies exorcise evil spirits from Pentagon, causing it to visibly levitate.
1969 — American Beat writer Jack Kerouac dies, St. Petersburg, Florida.
1984 — French filmmaker François Truffaut dies.
1992 — Croatian council communist writer, theorist Ante Ciliga dies, Zagreb.