Today in Writing History January 19, 1809: Edgar Allan Poe was born. “The Raven” made Poe an overnight sensation. Yet, he spent much of his life in poverty. Poe originally considered having an owl or parrot, rather than a raven, quote “Nevermore.” Poe was a binge drinker who sometimes remained sober for months before falling off the wagon again. His alcoholism worsened as he got older. He died in 1849, mostly likely from alcoholism. His grave remained unmarked until 1865. For 60 years, from 1949 until 2009, the “Poe Toaster” left a bottle of cognac and three roses on Poe’s grave every January 19th.
Today in Writing History January 19, 1829: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's “Faust: The First Part of the Tragedy” premiered. It’s the story of a scientist who makes a pact with the devil to gain power and knowledge. It took him 37 years to complete the play. Goethe also published scientific works on anatomy and botany. In the late 1700s, he wrote that variation in plants and animals was due to descent from common ancestors. This idea later influenced Darwin, who also credited Goethe with discovering the intermaxillary bone. Goethe’s novel, “Sorrows of Young Werther,” led to a suicide craze in Europe.
Today in Labor History January 17, 1536: Francois Rabelais was absolved of apostasy by Pope Paul III and allowed to resume his medical practice. Rabelais was a physician, writer, Catholic monk and Greek scholar. He published “Pantagruel” in 1532. He later incorporated it into his larger work, “Gargantua and Pantagruel,” which satirized the nobility, the church, the legal system, explorers, machismo and pretty much all that was sacred to the French ruling elite. Consequently, he was persecuted much of his life. His last will stated: “I have nothing. I owe a great deal. The rest I leave to the poor.”
One of my favorite passages: The FURREED Law-Cats are most terrible and dreadful monsters; they devour little children, and trample over marble stones. Pray tell me, noble topers, do they not deserve to have their snouts slit? The hair of their hides doesn’t grow outward, but inwards… They have claws so very strong, long, and sharp that nothing can get from ‘em what is once fast between their clutches... Among ‘em reigns the sixth essence; by the means of which they gripe all, devour all, burn all, draw all, hang all, quarter all, behead all, murder all, imprison all, waste all and ruin all, without the least notice of right and wrong; for among them vice is called virtue; wickedness, piety; treason, loyalty; robbery, justice. Plunder is their motto, and all this they do because they dare; their authority is sovereign and irrefragable.
“A child is a fire to be lit, not a vase to be filled” –Rabelais
Today in Labor History January 13, 1898: Émile Zola's J'accuse…! exposed the Dreyfus affair. The scandal began in 1894 when the state convicted Captain Alfred Dreyfus of treason. He was a 35-year-old French artillery officer of Jewish descent, falsely convicted for espionage and imprisoned in Devil’s Island in French Guiana. Émile Zola’s open letter “J’Accuse” helped build a movement of support for Dreyfus, putting pressure on the government to reopen the case. In 1899, Dreyfus was returned to France, retried and convicted again, but was pardoned and released.
Emile Zola was French novelist, journalist, playwright. He was an important part of the literary school of naturalism. He was nominated for the first and second Nobel Prizes in Literature in 1901 and 1902. He published over 30 works, the most well-known being “Germinal,” about a coal miners’ strike in northern France in the 1860s. He influenced many modern writers like Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, and Truman Capote. “Germinal” influenced my novel, “Anywhere But Schuylkill.”
Today in Labor History January 9, 1905: Russia’s “Bloody Sunday” occurred, with soldiers of the Imperial Guard opening fire on unarmed protesters as they marched toward the Winter Palace. They killed as many as 234 people and injured up to 800. They also arrested nearly 7,300 people. The people were demanding better working conditions and pay, an end to the Russo-Japanese War and universal suffrage. Bolsheviks and Mensheviks opposed the march because it lacked revolutionary demands. The public was so outraged by the massacre that uprisings broke out in Moscow, Warsaw, Riga, Vilna and other parts of the empire. Over 400,000 participated in a General Strike. Protests and uprisings continued for months. The backlash was horrific. The authorities killed 15,000 peasants and sent 45,000 into exile. Another 20,000 were seriously injured. Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony is subtitled “The Year 1905.” Maxim Gorky’s novel, “The Life of a Useless Man,” depicts Bloody Sunday.
Today in Labor History January 9, 1905: French anarchist Louise Michel died from wounds after an assassin shot her in the ear. Michel was a leader in the Paris Commune and cofounder of the Women’s Battalion. She also cofounded the journal “Le Libertaire,” with Sebastien Faure. 100,000 mourners attended her funeral. Before the Commune, she was a school teacher. After the Commune, while in prison, she wrote children’s books.
Today in Labor History January 9, 1890: Karel Capek was born in Bohemia, Austria-Hungry (now Czech Republic). He was an internationally renowned Czech novelist, short-story writer, playwright and essayist. Two of his best-known works include “R.U.R” (Rossum’s Universal Robots), which first introduced the word “robot,” to the English language, and “War With the Newts,” which satirized fascism and totalitarianism.
Today in Labor History January 6, 1878: Author-poet Carl Sandburg was born on this date in Galesburg, Illinois. Sandburg also worked as a labor organizer. His work was published in the “International Socialist Review,” as well as Max Eastman’s “The Liberator,” and later worker for the “Chicago Daily News.” The Feds accused him of being a Bolshevik symp, when he was actually just a working class symp. Sandburg died on July 22, 1967.
WORKING GIRLS (by Carl Sandburg)
THE working girls in the morning are going to work--
long lines of them afoot amid the downtown stores
and factories, thousands with little brick-shaped
lunches wrapped in newspapers under their arms.
Each morning as I move through this river of young-
woman life I feel a wonder about where it is all
going, so many with a peach bloom of young years
on them and laughter of red lips and memories in
their eyes of dances the night before and plays and
walks.
Green and gray streams run side by side in a river and
so here are always the others, those who have been
over the way, the women who know each one the
end of life's gamble for her, the meaning and the
clew, the how and the why of the dances and the
arms that passed around their waists and the fingers
that played in their hair.
Faces go by written over: "I know it all, I know where
the bloom and the laughter go and I have memories,"
and the feet of these move slower and they
have wisdom where the others have beauty.
So the green and the gray move in the early morning
on the downtown streets.
Some #AIart using #Midjourney for a story I've been working on I've called "Eternity."
It about a post biblical apocalypse brought on from a corrupt USA theocratic government manipulating text and artifacts uncovered from WW2 from Nazi Germany. Inspired by the PC classic "Doom" among other things it follows the horrific adventures of a woman who betrays The Church in the future who was once a controlled supernatural weapon. She was one of their "Prophets" created by fusing the blood/DNA of demons to transform her physical self granting unnatural abilities. She is forever tied via a blood bond to her soulmate- a thought to be one of a kind giant raven demon. If one dies they both die.
I've had this story in my head for decades. I hope to get it out eventually.
Hey all, I want to set-up some kind of quid-pro-quo driven writing exchange group. A place to get and give feedback on works-in-progress. E.g., at the outline and/or scene/chapter level, rather than finished stuff. Might use @scrivini that I created a while back as
I didn't find an existing hashtag or group dedicated to this, but happy to join if there is one.
Any interest?
Time to continue meeting The Silk Rope Masters, book 3 - Ash.
A natural born Dom, Ash Siddiqi, 53, head Master, confirmed bachelor & co-owner is happy not to have a relationship with any woman.
But when he saw Sophie Laurent, Ash was caught. Unfortunately it appears Sophie dislikes him. Now he has to think of a way to change her mind before she’s out of his life forever.
I recommend not publishing on Medium, for starters.
Full disclosure, I opened the article to see if its 2024 #accessibility recommendations were the same as the 2004 or 2014 recommendations (headings, alt text, contrast, etc.) but now I cannot be sure what new insights it contains. #a11y
@aardrian 1/2 I am currently looking into various options for #publishing#texts. I am asking myself the following questions:
⭕ How much does it cost and how much do I earn from direct payments?
⭕ What environment am I operating in? (My topics? Nazis?)
⭕ Does the platform bring in the masses of fans or is it more my social media work?
⭕ Which functions do I need? (Paywall, newsletter, blog?)
⭕ How high are the hurdles for new readers? @writers
Today in Writing History December 26, 1891: The author Henry Miller, American was born. I still have the copy of Tropic of Cancer that I stole from my parents when I was a teenager. And it still has the graffiti that a French feminist friend scrawled in it when visiting me: “Sexist piece of shit!” In the 1980s, when I was visiting Paris, she told me that all punk rock was sexist. So, I combed through the Parisian record shops and found her a copy of “Penis Envy,” by Crass. After that, she conceded that some punk rock was good, maybe even radically feminist.
So close to death is the sorrow of love
—the ecliptic joy,
that I can feel its
long fingertips,
its sharp, venom-dipped nails
reach behind, right behind,
my inward-turned eyes:
they no longer see what I've always felt
they've seen,
they see man as you saw him—
in everyone else.
Today in Labor History December 25, 1831: The Great Jamaican Slave Revolt, the largest slave uprising in the British West Indies, began on this date. Samuel Sharpe, a black Baptist deacon, led the revolt of 60,000 enslaved people. The 11-day uprising began as a General Strike, but quickly turned violent. 14 whites and 207 enslaved black people died in the siege. However, another 340 rebels were executed afterward. The rebels had been inspired by the abolitionist movement in London and had intended to call for a peaceful uprising. The rebellion was depicted in Andrea Levy's 2010 novel, “The Long Song,” and in Herbert de Lisser’s The 1929 novel “The White Witch of Rosehall.”
Today in Labor History December 25, 1968: Forty-four Dalits (untouchables) were burnt to death in the Kilvenmani massacre in Tamil Nadu. The Dalits had been striking for higher wages. The incident helped lead to major changes in the local rural economy, including a large redistribution of land. Meena Kandasamy portrayed the event in her 2014 novel “The Gypsy Goddess.”
The wheel of life turns, consciousness makes abrupt shifts between, on one hand, a clear and distinct image of reality, and on the other hand, a vague and hallucinatory projection of the realm of imagination. Is it then possible to observe your own consciousness? Does it cease to be conscious of the link to the otherworldly if it is not dusted off?
The wheel of life turns, consciousness makes abrupt shifts between, on one hand, a clear and distinct image of reality, and on the other hand, a vague and hallucinatory projection of the realm of imagination. Is it then possible to observe your own consciousness? Does it cease to be conscious of the link to the otherworldly if it is not dusted off?
Walking past thousands of openings in the ether, long reddish cracks in a seemingly invisible wall, as they would appear to the trained eye, we were truly happy. Lyanna held my hand—something she usually didn't do for some unknown, inexplicable reason. I, on the other hand, was a romantic fool; hence, I loved holding her hand, showing her, and the whole fucking world, that I belonged to her. That I was her grangent, and nobody else's…
We always found ourselves in Magdalena, a quaint, abandoned town nestled far in the western reaches, Lya and I, as we ventured into the Spree. I didn’t know why. And I had never really thought about it. Until now. Something had changed. An unfamiliarity settled in, akin to a glitch in the synaptic code—subtle yet present, behind the scenes—rendering the details of our surroundings more vivid; the once-dimmed sun now brighter, the pale blue sky intensifying, and the weight of the prairie dust seeming to lift…