Today in Labor History April 15, 1986: Author Jean Genet died on this day. Genet was a novelists, political activist and petty criminal. His book, The Thief’s Journal (1949), relates his experiences as a young prostitute and thief. That same year, the authorities tried to sentence him to life in prison for his ten convictions. Jean Cocteau, Jean-Paul Sartre and Pablo Picasso successfully petitioned the government on his behalf. In 1968, Genet was censored in the U.S. and expelled from the country after they refused him a visa. But he returned in 1970, upon an invitation by the Black Panthers. He stayed three months, giving lectures and attending the trial of Huey Newton. Later that year, he went to Palestine and visited refugee camps. He supported U.S. political prisoners Angela Davis and George Jackson. He also supported the anti-prison, anti-police brutality work of Michel Foucault, in France.
Today in Labor History February 11, 1938: BBC Television produced the world's first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of the Karel Čapek play R.U.R., that coined the term "robot." He derived the word “robot” from the Czech word for forced labor by Serfs. R.U.R. is an archetype for many of the science fiction stories and films that followed, like Bladerunner, West World and Terminator, and others about robots, replicants and hosts that rebel against humans. However, “R.U.R.,” like Čapek’s 1936 novel “War with the Newts,” is also a satirical critique of totalitarianism, which was already on the rise in Europe at the time he wrote the play.
Today in Labor History February 7, 1917: A court wrongly convicted labor organizer Tom Mooney for the San Francisco Preparedness Day bombing in July 1916. The governor finally granted him an unconditional pardon after 22.5 years of incarceration. 10 people died in the bombing and 40 were injured. A jury convicted two labor leaders, Thomas Mooney and Warren Billings, based on false testimony. Both were pardoned in 1939. Not surprisingly, only anarchists were suspected in the bombing. A few days after the bombing, they searched and seized materials from the offices of “The Blast,” Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman’s local paper. They also threatened to arrest Berkman.
In 1931, while they were still in prison, I. J. Golden persuaded the Provincetown Theater to produce his play, “Precedent,” about the Mooney and Billings case. Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times wrote, “By sparing the heroics and confining himself chiefly to a temperate exposition of his case [Golden] has made “Precedent” the most engrossing political drama since the Sacco-Vanzetti play entitled Gods of the Lightening… Friends of Tom Mooney will rejoice to have his case told so crisply and vividly.”
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 December 17, 1760: Deborah Sampson was born on this date in Massachusetts. Sampson disguised herself as a man in order to fight with the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. She called herself Robert Shirtliff (as in don’t lift my shirt) and stood 5’9”, taller than the average man in those days. She fought in several skirmishes with British forces before being wounded and discovered and then honorably discharged from the army. She later petitioned the government to be repaid the wages that had been denied her because she was a woman. Her friend Paul Revere advocated for her full compensation. Finally, in 1816, Congress granted her request. There are several other women known to have secretly fought in this war. Sampson’s story has been portrayed in several plays and works of fiction, including “Portrait of Deborah: A Drama in Three Acts” (1959) by Charles Emery, “I'm Deborah Sampson: A Soldier of the Revolution” (1977) by Patricia Clapp and Revolutionary (2014), by Alex Myers, one of her descendants. Whoopi Goldberg played her in an episode of “Liberty Kids.”
Today in Labor History December 10, 1896: Alfred Jarry's play, Ubu Roi, premiered in Paris. At the end of the performance, a riot broke out. Many in the audience were confused and outraged by the obscenity and disrespect they felt in the performance. Others, like W. B. Yeats, thought it was revolutionary. Jarry’s work was a precursor to Dada, Surrealism and the Theatre of the Absurd. Ubu Roi is a parody of Shakespeare's Macbeth and parts of Hamlet and King Lear. However, having recently reread the play, I found an uncanny resemblance between Pere Ubu and Donald Trump.
Today in Writing History September 25, 1930: Shel Silverstein, American author, poet, illustrator, and songwriter was born (d. 1999). He is perhaps most remembered today for his amusing children’s poetry and fiction, like “The Giving Tree.” However, he also wrote many songs like "One's on the Way" and "Hey Loretta" (which were hits for Loretta Lynn), and "25 Minutes to Go," about a man on Death Row, and "A Boy Named Sue," both made famous by Johnny Cash. He also wrote "The Unicorn," which The Irish Rovers made famous. He also wrote many songs about drugs and sex, like “I Got Stoned and I Missed It,” “Quaaludes Again,” “Masochistic Baby,” and “Freakin’ at the Freaker’s Ball.”
#UPC rozpoczyna proces wymiany sprzetu u abonentow po tym jak polaczylo sie z #Play
Proponuje uswiadomic / ostrzec starsze i mniej oblatane sprzetowo osoby w rodzinie, ze taki proces bedzie mial miejsce, zeby przy okazji nie zgadzaly sie na dosprzedaz uslug - wymiana sprzetu tak, ale nic ponadto
<pre class="ql-syntax" spellcheck="false">[HELLO! I EXIST HERE NOW AND I AM MAKING THAT EVERYONE ELSE'S PROBLEM]
[I AM [NARRATIVOHAZARD EXPUNGED](1), LOCAL TYPING QUIRK AND FOOTNOTE USER, UNCONTAINED ANOMALY(2), CORRUHEAD(3), ANAFABULA IN TRAINING(4), GASTER VIBE HAVER APPARENTLY, AND WANNABE ARG AUTHOR]
[I AM ALSO: DESPERATELY HOPING I AM DOING THIS "CORRECTLY" PLEASE GOD I BEG OF TH]
1 - SDKLAMTDMZSPBSEH⁽⁷⁾
2 - >:)
Today we fixed the biggest wish of Doris for the treehouse; a lift stairs. We have to make a rope so the kids can pull it up from the inside so no one can enter. Big fun!