#baltimore uprising

[fatovamingus]

2015 photo in Baltimore by Devin Allen

[evilhorse]

Empire: Uprising TPB signed by Barry Kitson at the 2024 Baltimore ComicCon

[soon-palestine]

what is the 1033 program?

The U.S. Department of Defense administers the 1033 program, which transfers excess military equipment to U.S. police forces—federal, state and local. This program has so far sent $6 billion in military gear to police departments. The militarized police responses seen in Ferguson in 2014, Baltimore in 2015 and in cities throughout the country during the 2020 uprisings after George Floyd’s murder can be directly attributed to the 1033 program.

The demand to abolish the 1033 program has been a part of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP)’s program since its founding. Read more about our program and our umbrella campaign, No Compromise, No Retreat: Defeat the War on African/Black People in the U.S. and Around the World.

[kemetic-dreams]

Haitian Immigration : Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Many Haitians moved to Louisiana during and after the Haitian Revolution, which began in 1791 and lasted for 13 years:

The long, interwoven history of Haiti and the United States began on the last day of 1698, when French explorer Sieur d'Iberville set out from the island of Saint Domingue (present-day Haiti) to establish a settlement at Biloxi, on the Gulf Coast of France's Louisiana possession.

For most of the eighteenth century, however, only a few African migrants settled there. But between the 1790s and 1809, large numbers of Haitians of African descent migrated to Louisiana. By 1791 the Haitian Revolution was under way. It would continue for thirteen years, result in the independence of the first African republic in the Western Hemisphere, and reverberate throughout the Atlantic world. Its impact would be particularly felt in Louisiana, the destination of thousands of refugees from the island's turmoil. Their activism had profound repercussions on the politics, the culture, the religion, and the racial climate of the state.

From Saint Domingue to Louisiana

Louisiana and her Caribbean parent colony developed intimate links during the eighteenth century, centered on maritime trade, the exchange of capital and information, and the migration of colonists. From such beginnings, Haitians exerted a profound influence on Louisiana's politics, people, religion, and culture. The colony's officials, responding to anti-slavery plots and uprisings on the island, banned the entry of enslaved Saint Domingans in 1763. Their rebellious actions would continue to impact upon Louisiana's slave trade and immigration policies throughout the age of the American and French revolutions.

These two democratic struggles struck fear in the hearts of the Spaniards, who governed Louisiana from 1763 to 1800. They suppressed what they saw as seditious activities and banned subversive materials in a futile attempt to isolate their colony from the spread of democratic revolution. In May 1790 a royal decree prohibited the entry of blacks - enslaved and free - from the French West Indies. A year later, the Haitian Revolution started.

The revolution in Saint Domingue unleashed a massive multiracial exodus: the French fled with the bondspeople they managed to keep; so did numerous free people of color, some of whom were slaveholders themselves. In addition, in 1793, a catastrophic fire destroyed two-thirds of the principal city, Cap Français (present-day Cap Haïtien), and nearly ten thousand people left the island for good. In the ensuing decades of revolution, foreign invasion, and civil war, thousands more fled the turmoil. Many moved eastward to Santo Domingo (present-day Dominican Republic) or to nearby Caribbean islands. Large numbers of immigrants, black and white, found shelter in North America, notably in New York, Baltimore (fifty-three ships landed there in July 1793), Philadelphia, Norfolk, Charleston, and Savannah, as well as in Spanish Florida. Nowhere on the continent, however, did the refugee movement exert as profound an influence as in southern Louisiana.

Between 1791 and 1803, thirteen hundred refugees arrived in New Orleans. The authorities were concerned that some had come with "seditious" ideas. In the spring of 1795, Pointe Coupée was the scene of an attempted insurrection during which planters' homes were burned down. Following the incident, a free émigré from Saint Domingue, Louis Benoit, accused of being "very imbued with the revolutionary maxims which have devastated the said colony" was banished. The failed uprising caused planter Joseph Pontalba to take "heed of the dreadful calamities of Saint Domingue, and of the germ of revolt only too widespread among our slaves." Continued unrest in Pointe Coupée and on the German Coast contributed to a decision to shut down the entire slave trade in the spring of 1796.

In 1800 Louisiana officials debated reopening it, but they agreed that Saint Domingue blacks would be barred from entry. They also noted the presence of black and white insurgents from the French West Indies who were "propagating dangerous doctrines among our Negroes." Their slaves seemed more "insolent," "ungovernable," and "insubordinate" than they had just five years before.

That same year, Spain ceded Louisiana back to France, and planters continued to live in fear of revolts. After future emperor Napoleon Bonaparte sold the colony to the United States in 1803 because his disastrous expedition against Saint Domingue had stretched his finances and military too thin, events in the island loomed even larger in Louisiana.

The Black Republic and Louisiana

In January 1804, an event of enormous importance shook the world of the enslaved and their owners. The black revolutionaries, who had been fighting for a dozen years, crushed Napoleon's 60,000 men-army - which counted mercenaries from all over Europe - and proclaimed the nation of Haiti (the original Indian name of the island), the second independent nation in the Western Hemisphere and the world's first black-led republic. The impact of this victory of unarmed slaves against their oppressors was felt throughout the slave societies. In Louisiana, it sparked a confrontation at Bayou La Fourche. According to white residents, twelve Haitians from a passing vessel threatened them "with many insulting and menacing expressions" and "spoke of eating human flesh and in general demonstrated great Savageness of character, boasting of what they had seen and done in the horrors of St. Domingo [Saint Domingue]."

The slaveholders' anxieties increased and inspired a new series of statutes to isolate Louisiana from the spread of revolution. The ban on West Indian bondspeople continued and in June 1806 the territorial legislature barred the entry from the French Caribbean of free black males over the age of fourteen. A year later, the prohibition was extended: all free black adult males were excluded, regardless of their nationality. Severe punishments, including enslavement, accompanied the new laws.

However, American efforts to prevent the entry of Haitian immigrants proved even less successful than those of the French and the Spanish. Indeed, the number of immigrants skyrocketed between May 1809 and June 1810, when Spanish authorities expelled thousands of Haitians from Cuba, where they had taken refuge several years earlier. In the wake of this action, New Orleans' Creole whites overcame their chronic fears and clamored for the entry of the white refugees and their slaves. Their objective was to strengthen Louisiana's declining French-speaking community and offset Anglo-American influence. The white Creoles felt that the increasing American presence posed a greater threat to their interests than a potentially dangerous class of enslaved West Indians.

American officials bowed to their pressure and reluctantly allowed white émigrés to enter the city with their slaves. At the same time, however, they attempted to halt the migration of free black refugees. Louisiana's territorial governor, William C. C. Claiborne, firmly enforced the ban on free black males. He advised the American consul in Santiago de Cuba:

Males above the age of fifteen, have . . . been ordered to depart. - I must request you, Sir, to make known this circumstance and also to discourage free people of colour of every description from emigrating to the Territory of Orleans; We have already a much greater proportion of that population than comports with the general Interest.

Claiborne and other officials labored in vain; the population of Afro-Creoles grew larger and even more assertive after the entry of the Haitian émigrés from Cuba, nearly 90 percent of whom settled in New Orleans. The 1809 migration brought 2,731 whites, 3,102 free persons of African descent, and 3,226 enslaved refugees to the city, doubling its population. Sixty-three percent of Crescent City inhabitants were now black. Among the nation's major cities only Charleston, with a 53 percent black majority, was comparable.

The multiracial refugee population settled in the French Quarter and the neighboring Faubourg Marigny district, and revitalized Creole culture and institutions. New Orleans acquired a reputation as the nation's "Creole Capital."

The rapid growth of the city's population of free persons of color strengthened the "three-caste" society - white, mixed, black - that had developed during the years of French and Spanish rule. This was quite different from the racial order prevailing in the rest of the United States, where attempts were made to confine all persons of African descent to a separate and inferior racial caste - a situation brought about by political reality in the South that promoted white unity across class lines and the immersion of all blacks into a single and subservient social caste.

In Louisiana, as lawmakers moved to suppress manumission and undermine the free black presence, the refugees dealt a serious blow to their efforts. In 1810 the city's French-speaking Creoles of African descent, reinforced by thousands of Haitian refugees, formed the basis for the emergence of one of the most advanced black communities in North America.

Soldiers, Rebels, and Pirates

Many Haitian black males eluded immigration authorities by slipping into the territory through Barataria, a coastal settlement just west of the Mississippi River. Some became allies of the notorious pirates Jean and Pierre Lafitte, white refugees of the Haitian Revolution. Surrounded by marshland and a maze of waterways, Barataria was an effective staging area for attacks on Gulf shipping. The interracial band of adventurers dominated the settlement's thriving black-market economy.

But pirates and smugglers did not make up the whole of Barataria's fugitive residents. Some two hundred free black veterans of the Haitian Revolution, including Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Savary, a former French republican officer, were among them. In 1799 seven hundred soldiers, opposed to Toussaint L'Ouverture fled to Cuba and later migrated to Louisiana. By 1810 this movement of Haitian soldiers from Cuba had created a black military presence in Louisiana that seriously worried Governor Claiborne. He anxiously requested reinforcements. The number of free black men "in and near New Orleans, capable of carrying arms," he wrote, "cannot be less than eight hundred."

Colonel Savary and other republican veterans of the Haitian Revolution remained committed to the French revolution's ideals of liberté, egalité, fraternité (freedom, equality, fraternity.) They regrouped to aid insurgents attempting to establish independent republics in Latin America. In November 1813 Savary offered to send five hundred Haitian soldiers to fight with Mexican revolutionaries. When their effort to establish a Mexican government in Texas failed, Savary and his men returned to New Orleans. Within the year, however, the colonel and other Haitian veterans would be rallying against the forces of the British crown.

As British forces threatened to invade New Orleans in 1814, American authorities sought to win the loyalty of battle-hardened black soldiers like Colonel Savary. They were also well aware of the prominent role that free men had played in slave rebellions. With the English approaching, pacifying them would be strategically sound.

General Andrew Jackson arrived in New Orleans in December 1814 and immediately mustered 350 native-born black veterans of the Spanish militia into the United States Army. Colonel Savary raised a second black unit of 250 of Haiti's refugee soldiers. Jackson recognized Savary's considerable influence and knew of his reputation as "a man of great courage." On Jackson's orders, Savary became the first African-American soldier to achieve the rank of second major.

The Haitians in Barataria also fought in the battle of New Orleans. In September 1814 federal troops invaded their community and dispersed the Lafittes and their followers. Hundreds of refugees poured into the city. Andrew Jackson offered them pardons in return for their support in defending the city. After the victory, he commended the two battalions of six hundred African-American and Haitian soldiers whose presence in a force of three thousand men had proved decisive. He praised the "privateers and gentlemen" of Barataria who "through their loyalty and courage, redeemed [their] pledge . . . to defend the country."

Jackson observed that Captain Savary "continued to merit the highest praise." In the last significant skirmish of the battle, Savary and a detachment of his men volunteered to clear the field of a detail of British sharpshooters. Though Savary's force suffered heavy casualties, the mission was carried out successfully.

Within weeks of the victory, however, Jackson yielded to white pressure to remove the men from New Orleans to a remote site in the marshland east of the city to repair fortifications. Savary relayed a message to the general that his men "would always be willing to sacrifice their lives in defense of their country as had been demonstrated but preferred death to the performance of the work of laborers." Jackson, though not pleased, refrained from taking any action against the troops. In February, the general even lent his support to Savary's renewed efforts to rejoin republican insurgents in Mexico.

Afro-Creoles and Americans

In colonial Louisiana and in colonial Haiti, military service had functioned as a crucial means of advancement for both free and enslaved blacks. After the battle of New Orleans, however, support for the black militia declined among free people of color. The disrespect shown to the soldiers who fought so valiantly, along with their disappointment at not receiving some measure of political recognition, contributed to their disillusionment.

Afro-Creoles' anger mounted as Louisiana's white lawmakers embarked upon an unprecedented and sustained attack upon their rights by formulating one of the harshest slave codes in the American South. In 1830 the legislature reaffirmed the 1807 ban on the entry of "free negroes and mulattoes" and required slaveholders to ensure the removal of freed people within thirty days of their emancipation. In Louisiana, as elsewhere in the South, segregation, anti-miscegenation laws, and the legal ostracism of racially mixed children signified the imposition of a two-category pattern of racial classification that relegated all persons of African ancestry to a degraded status.

Reduced to a debased condition, deprived of citizenship, denied free movement, and threatened with violence, Afro-Creoles, both native-born and immigrant, developed an intensely antagonistic relationship with the new regime. Under the United States government, black Louisianians had anticipated an end to slavery and racial oppression and had looked for the fulfillment of the democratic ideals embodied in the founding principles of the new American republic. But contrary to their expectations, the process of Americanization negated the promise of the revolutionary era. Instead of moving toward freedom and equality, the new government promoted the evolution of an increasingly harsh system of chattel slavery.

From Revolution to Romanticism

Following the example of intellectuals in France and Haiti, Afro-Creole activists in Louisiana - led by Haitian émigrés, their children, and French-speaking native Louisianians - had been nurturing their republican heritage. As political expression was stifled, they poured their energies into a new vehicle of revolutionary ideas, the Romantic literary movement.

New Orleans' highly politicized black intelligentsia thereby tapped into the Atlantic world's ongoing current of political radicalism, protesting injustice in their literary work. Their principal forum was La Société des Artisans. Founded by free black artisans and veterans of the War of 1812, the organization provided local Creole writers the opportunity to exchange ideas and present their numerous artistic works in a friendly setting.

Among these young writers was Victor Séjour. His father, a Haitian émigré, was a veteran of the War of 1812 and a prosperous dry-goods merchant. The young Séjour had been educated at New Orleans' prestigious black school Académie Sainte-Barbe, under the tutelage of Michel Séligny, the most productive Afro-Creole short-story writer. Séjour's audience at La Société proclaimed him a prodigy, and his father, determined to see his son fulfill his artistic potential and anxious for Victor to escape the burden of racial prejudice in Louisiana, sent him to France to complete his education. In Paris, the youth quickly came under the influence of another writer of African-Haitian descent, renowned novelist Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers (1844), The Count of Monte Cristo (1844-45), and many other celebrated works.

Séjour made a dramatic debut on the literary scene with the publication, in March 1837, of an impassioned attack on slavery, "Le Mulâtre" (The Mulatto), the first short story by an African-American writer to be published in France.

Following the publication of "Le Mulâtre," Séjour embarked on a remarkably productive artistic career. When he was only twenty-six years old, the famed Théâtre Français produced his first drama; it would be followed by two dozen more. In one season, French theaters produced three of his works simultaneously, and Emperor Napoleon III attended opening nights of two of them.

Ironically, Séjour's first story, though it may have circulated privately within the black community, was never published in New Orleans. It fell within the parameters of an 1830 Louisiana law prohibiting reading matter "having a tendency to produce discontent among the free coloured population . . . or to excite insubordination among the slaves." Violators faced either a penalty of three to twenty-one years at hard labor or death, at the judge's discretion.

Despite such restrictions, the city's free people of color managed to fashion a vibrant literary movement, dominated by Haitian refugees and their descendants. The influence of the French Romantic movement among New Orleans' black intellectuals became more evident in 1843 with the publication of a short-lived, interracial literary journal L'Album littéraire: Journal des jeunes gens, amateurs de littérature (The Literary Album: A Journal of Young Men, Lovers of Literature). Its most prominent black founder was Armand Lanusse, of Haitian ancestry and one of the city's leading Romantic artists. Lanusse and his fellow writers, both émigré and native-born, ignored the 1830 literary censorship law and, like their fellow Romantics in France and Haiti, used their literary skills to challenge existing social evils.

In a series of introductory essays,the anonymous contributors to L'Album deplored "the sad and awful condition of Louisiana society," where the spectacle of rampant greed, unrelieved poverty, and institutionalized injustice "grips our hearts with deep sorrow, showering grief over all our thoughts, filling the soul with terror and despair."

Within a year of its debut, L'Album disappeared from the literary scene after critics attacked the journal for advocating revolt. Lanusse then edited a collection of poems by Creoles of color in 1845; Les Cenelles: Choix de poésies indigènes was the first anthology of literature by African Americans in the United States. Les Cenelles was much more subdued in tone than its predecessor. Still, Lanusse in his preface emphasized the value of education as "a shield against the spiteful and calamitous arrows shot at us." He and his colleagues considered their art form a springboard to social and political reform.

The Haitian Influence on Religion

In 1847 Lanusse and his friends helped to assure the survival of a small Catholic religious order dedicated to charitable work among the city's enslaved people and free black indigents. The congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family was founded in 1842 by Henriette Delille, yet another prominent Afro-Creole of Haitian ancestry. As Delille's sisterhood struggled to maintain their community during the 1840s, a coalition of Afro-Creole writers, artisans, and philanthropists obtained corporate status and funding for the religious society.

When Delille took her formal religious vows in 1852, she headed Louisiana's first Catholic religious order of black women and the nation's second African-American community of Catholic nuns. Bearing striking testimony to the enormous impact of the Haitian diaspora, the first Catholic community of African-American nuns, the Oblate Sisters of Providence, founded in 1829 in Baltimore, originated in the Haitian refugee movement.

In 1848, Armand Lanusse and other Romantic writers took concrete measures to promote reform by establishing La Société Catholique pour l'Instruction des Orphelins dans l'Indigence (Catholic Society for the Instruction of Indigent Orphans). Through their organization, black activists executed the terms of a bequest by Madame Justine Firmin Couvent, a native of Guinea and a former slave, to establish a school in the Faubourg Marigny for the district's destitute orphans of color. Appalled by the indigence and illiteracy of the children, Couvent donated land and several buildings for an educational facility of which Lanusse became the first principal.

While Lanusse pursued his reform agenda within the existing institutional framework, another contributor to the volume, Nelson Desbrosses, followed a nontraditional path to empowerment and change. He traveled to Haiti before the Civil War, studied with a leading practitioner of Vodou, and returned to New Orleans with a reputation as a successful healer and spirit medium. Desbrosses undoubtedly recognized Vodou's historical significance in Haiti's independence struggle. During the revolution, the religion served as a medium for political organization as well as an ideological force for change. On the battlefield, Vodou's spiritual power proved decisive in reinforcing the determination of revolutionaries in their struggle for freedom. In the North Province, houngans (Vodou priests) sustained the revolt by mobilizing as many as forty thousand enslaved people. 

Vodou thrived in New Orleans until the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, when President Thomas Jefferson and other political leaders sought to undermine Creole predominance by Americanizing the culture of southern Louisiana. The post-1809 influx of Haitian refugees, however, slowed the Americanization process and assured the vitality of New Orleans' Creole culture for another twenty-five years. Immigrant believers in Vodou infused the religion's Louisiana variant with Afro-Caribbean elements of belief and ritual.

In the relatively tolerant religious milieu of antebellum New Orleans, Haitian immigrants joined with Creole slaves, free blacks, and even whites to assure the religion's ascendancy. Through Vodou, practiced in secrecy, Afro-Creoles preserved the memory of their African past and experienced psychological release by way of a religion that served as one of the few areas of totally autonomous black activity.

In transcending ethnic, class, and gender distinctions, Vodou helped to sustain a liberal Latin European religious ethic that recognized the spiritual equality of all persons. Vodou's interracial appeal and egalitarian spirit, reinvigorated by Haitian immigrants, offered a dramatic alternative to the Anglo-American racial order.

Beginning in the 1860s, Vodou assemblies were systematically suppressed, but the famed "Vodou Queen" Marie Laveau continued to exert great influence over her interracial following. In 1874 some twelve thousand spectators swarmed to the shores of Lake Pontchartrain to catch a glimpse of Laveau performing her legendary rites. By that time Laveau and other Afro-Creole Vodouists had fashioned some of the nation's most lasting folkloric traditions, as well as a religion of resistance that endures to the present moment.

The Civil War

Federal forces occupied New Orleans in 1862, and black Creoles volunteered their services to the Union army. The newspaper L'Union - whose chief founders, Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez and his brother, Jean-Baptiste, were of Haitian ancestry - announced its agenda in the premier issue. The editors condemned slavery, blasted the Confederacy, and expressed solidarity with Haiti's revolutionary republicans.

An 1862 editorial written by a newly enlisted Union officer, Afro-Creole Romantic writer Henry Louis Rey, urged free men of color to join the U.S. Army and take up "the cause of the rights of man." Rey invoked the names of Jean-Baptiste Chavannes and Vincent Ogé. Their ill-fated 1790 revolt had paved the way for the Haitian Revolution:

CHAVANNE [sic] and OGÉ did not wait to be aroused and to be made ashamed; they hurried unto death; they became martyrs here on earth and received on high the reward due to generous hearts...hasten all; our blood only is demanded; who will hesitate?

The editors of L'Union described Rey and the Afro-Creole troops as the "worthy grandsons of the noble [Col. Joseph] Savary." The paper insisted that military service entitled them to the political equality that had been denied their ancestors who fought valiantly in the American Revolution and the War of 1812. Furthermore, its editors warned, the men had resolved to "protest against all politics which would tend to expatriate them."

When federal officials undermined their suffrage campaign, Afro-Creole leaders took their case to the highest level. In 1864 L'Union cofounder Jean-Baptiste Roudanez and E. Arnold Bertonneau, a former officer in the Union army, met with President Abraham Lincoln; they urged him to extend voting rights to all Louisianians of African descent.

In L'Union, and its successor, La Tribune, the Roudanez brothers and their allies foresaw the complete assimilation of African Americans into the nation's political and social life. During Reconstruction they called on the federal government to divide confiscated plantations into ten-acre plots, to be distributed to displaced black families. They insisted that the formely enslaved were "entitled by a paramount right to the possession of the soil they have so long cultivated."

The aggressive stance and republican idealism of La Tribune prompted the authors of Louisiana's 1868 state constitution to envision a social and political revolution. The new charter required state officials to swear that they recognized the civil and political equality of all men. Alone among Reconstruction constitutions, Louisiana explicitly required equal access to public accommodations and forbade segregation in public schools.

The Consequences of the Haitian Migration

After Reconstruction collapsed in 1877, Creole activists fought the restoration of white rule. In 1890 Rodolphe L. Desdunes, a Creole New Orleanian of Haitian descent, joined with other prominent rights advocates to challenge state-imposed segregation. Their legal battle culminated in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision. Though the nation's highest tribunal upheld the "separate but equal" doctrine, the decision included a powerful dissent that would be used to rescue the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments in later Supreme Court decisions. The descendants of Haitian immigrants would play key roles in civil rights campaigns of the twentieth century.

Haitians exerted an enormous influence on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Louisiana. Their sustained resistance to Saint Domingue's regime of bondage forced repeated changes in French, Spanish, and American immigration policies as frightened white officials attempted to isolate Louisiana from the spread of black revolt.

The massive 1809 influx of Haitian refugees ensured the survival of a wealth of West African cultural transmissions, as well as a Latin European racial order that enhanced the social and economic mobility of both free and enslaved blacks. In early-nineteenth-century New Orleans, the immigrants and their descendants infused the city's music, cuisine, religious life, speech patterns, and architecture with their own cultural traditions. Reminders of their Creole influence abound in the French Quarter, the Faubourg Marigny, the Faubourg Tremé, and other city neighborhoods.

The refugee population also reinforced a brand of revolutionary republicanism that impacted American race relations for decades. With an unflagging commitment to the democratic ideals of the revolutionary era, Haitian immigrants and their descendants appeared at the head of virtually every New Orleans civil rights campaign. Their leadership role in the struggle for racial justice offers dramatic evidence of the scope of their influence on Louisiana's history. From Colonel Joseph Savary's militant republicanism to Rodolphe Desdunes's unrelenting attacks on state-enforced segregation, Haitian émigrés and their descendants demanded that the nation fulfill the promise of its founding principles.

In his 1911 book Our People and Our History, Rodolphe Desdunes described Armand Lanusse's anthology, Les Cenelles, as a "triumph of the human spirit over the forces of obscurantism in Louisiana that denied the education and intellectual advancement of the colored masses." African Americans in Louisiana triumphed over these forces in their distinguished history of military service, their embrace of artistic and scholarly pursuits, their campaign for humanitarian reforms, and their Civil War vision of a reconstructed nation of racial equality. Their Haitian heritage was central to those victories.

[askallianything]

What's the most intense mission you've ever been on?

The most intense mission I've ever been on? Well, it'd definitely have to be the Twotanic case...but I'm not supposed to talk about that. So I guess it'd be the Baltimore Zombie Incident of 2017.

It was my first mission, actually. I don't know why they sent a newbie like me to deal with such a serious case though... it's almost like The Institution was trying to get rid of me >~<

Anyways, there was this huge zombie uprising in Baltimore. It was my job to take out the zombies and infected citizens.

During the mission, I came across a zombie that was different from the others. I called him Mori. Mori had more awareness and humanity than most zombies. I kept him somewhere safe where the other members of the Zombie Control Group wouldn't find him. I visited him every day and fed him whatever I could scavenge from the citizens I had to... dispatch. Mori started getting really attached to me and I started getting attached to him. I guess we were kinda dating? That's what I've always told people.

I couldn't keep him safe forever though... he eventually was found by someone else in the Zombie Control Group and....yeah.

Whoopsies! I didn't mean for that to get so depressing! But yeah, it was a pretty intense mission. It's also what pushed me to start being so pro-anomaly. Anomalies like Mori deserve a chance, ya know? I miss him a lot... but the whole incident happened years ago. I got over him, so hopefully I'll get over what happened to Nadja too someday!

[ausetkmt]

The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America

The world gasped in April 2015 as Baltimore erupted and Black Lives Matter activists, incensed by Freddie Gray's brutal death in police custody, shut down highways and marched on city streets. In The Black Butterfly―a reference to the fact that Baltimore's majority-Black population spreads out like a butterfly's wings on both sides of the coveted strip of real estate running down the center of the city―Lawrence T. Brown reveals that ongoing historical trauma caused by a combination of policies, practices, systems, and budgets is at the root of uprisings and crises in hypersegregated cities around the country.

Putting Baltimore under a microscope, Brown looks closely at the causes of segregation, many of which exist in current legislation and regulatory policy despite the common belief that overtly racist policies are a thing of the past. Drawing on social science research, policy analysis, and archival materials, Brown reveals the long history of racial segregation's impact on health, from toxic pollution to police brutality. Beginning with an analysis of the current political moment, Brown delves into how Baltimore's history influenced actions in sister cities such as St. Louis and Cleveland, as well as Baltimore's adoption of increasingly oppressive techniques from cities such as Chicago.

But there is reason to hope. Throughout the book, Brown offers a clear five-step plan for activists, nonprofits, and public officials to achieve racial equity. Not content to simply describe and decry urban problems, Brown offers up a wide range of innovative solutions to help heal and restore redlined Black neighborhoods, including municipal reparations. Persuasively arguing that, since urban apartheid was intentionally erected, it can be intentionally dismantled, The Black Butterfly demonstrates that America cannot reflect that Black lives matter until we see how Black neighborhoods matter.

The best-selling look at how American cities can promote racial equity, end redlining, and reverse the damaging health- and wealth-related effects of segregation. Winner of the IPPY Book Award Current Events II by the Independent Publisher

[dailyanarchistposts]

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[arctic-hands]

"Racism was a long time ago, get over it!" For one, if you think pervasive and systemic racism, both anti-Black as well as racism against other marginalized racial and ethnic groups, in America is "over", you're probably too willfully obtuse to bother to continue reading, but on the rare chance you do, I'll indulge your claim that "racism is over!":

I just turned thirty this month, May twenty twenty-three. My father was born four years before Loving v. Virginia granted the basic right for Black and white peoples to marry each other in every state. My mother was born the same year the Green Book ceased publication. My grandmother was barely thirty when she attended the RFK rally in Indianapolis where Kennedy announced that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. My father (not in attendance) was not quite five. My father was a fourth grader the year Fred Hampton was assassinated in his own bed by the FBI and local law enforcement. My mother was two years from giving birth to my older brother when the Black Panther Party was torn apart by COINTELPRO, my father was a few couple years into college. My father wasn't even thirty when I was born. My mother is a few years younger.

The LAPD beating of Rodney King and the consequential riots happened almost exactly a year before I was born, I was nineteen when Rodney King passed away. That was two years before Mike Brown was killed by Ferguson police and the consequential uprising. I was twenty-two and living just outside Baltimore the year Freddie Gray was killed in the back of Baltimore PD van from a "rough ride" and the consequential uprising. I had fun (despite covid and the lockdowns) on my twenty-seventh birthday when my four roommates and I got drunk and sung bad karaoke, less than three weeks before George Floyd was murdered (as defined the court and the rulings proving guilt) by Minneapolis PD and the consequential worldwide uprisings. Today I'm just two weeks and a day past my thirtieth birthday when I woke up to the news that a U-haul truck bearing the Nazi flag tried ramming the fence to the White House. That's the same day the NAACP issued a travel warning for Black people to not go to Florida, fifty-seven years after the Green Book ceased publication. This is just a few weeks after Jordan Neely, a Black man my age who was having a mental health episode was killed by a white marine being encouraged by other people in the subway car. Florida governor Ron DeSantis is funding that white marine's defense team.

Ruby Bridges is still alive, as are all but one of the Little Rock Nine–as is the white teenager who was forever caught on camera screaming at them. It's only in the last few years that the civil rights leaders of the Fifties and Sixties who weren't assassinated have started dying of old age, and many more are still alive. I was in seventh grade when Rosa Parks died, I was almost done with third grade when the white bus driver who had her arrested died.

This isn't "a long time ago". This isn't old history. It's all within living memory. Our living memory. Our grandparents' memories, our parents' memories, the memories of you and I that are still forming.

Anyway I don't know how to end this, I'm shaken by the NAACP warning I guess, and I'm not even Black. And you're a willful fool if you think racism is over and has been over for a long time.

[afrotumble]

No Justice, No Peace by Devin Allen | Hachette Book Group

About the Author

DEVIN ALLEN is a self-taught artist, born and raised in West Baltimore. He gained national attention when his photograph of the Baltimore Uprising was published on the cover of Time magazine in May 2015—only the third time the work of an amateur photographer had been featured. He is winner of the 2017 Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship. Also in 2017, he was nominated for an NAACP Image Award as a debut author for his book A Beautiful Ghetto. His photographs have been published in New York Magazine, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Aperture, and are also in the permanent collections of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum in Baltimore, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. He is the founder of Through Their Eyes, a youth photography educational program, and recipient of an award from the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture for dynamic leadership in the arts and activism. He lives in Baltimore.

[ariadnelives]

Chapter 20 — Eve Of Destruction

Missed a chapter? Catch up here!!

“How do you think Pete is handling things?” Ariadne asked, tinkering with the metal frame she'd spent the entire day fine-tuning.

Spacebreather was taken aback by this question. “Who the hell is Pete?”

“You know, Baltimore and Beam's little buddy. The convenience store clerk,” Ariadne explained, “skinny white boy, brought all those sodas to the wedding.”

“I haven't thought about that man in seven years,” Pilar said, “and the last time I thought about him, I was just like 'oh good, mixers for the bar.' I didn't realize we had, like, an ongoing relationship with the soda delivery man. Why did he jump into your mind just now?!”

“I told Father Y to make contact with him once the bio-domes had been transported,” Ariadne said, “so he can, like, liaise between the Oort and the Martians.”

“Big job, but I'm sure he wouldn't have agreed to it if he wasn't up to the task.”

Ariadne briefly stopped tinkering, sat there a moment, and started again.

“Yeah! He… definitely wouldn't have… agreed to something he couldn't handle,” she replied.

Ariadne hunched down and got to work tightening a bolt that didn't need tightening.

“Ari?” Pilar asked.

“Yes querida?”

“You did tell Pete you were sending Father Y to his house, right?”

“Oh, who remembers?” Ariadne asked, “It's been a busy day. We're going to war tomorrow, I've had to coordinate the mass-production of thousands of these things with Upendo and Santiago. Who can really say if I remembered to call the soda delivery man?”

“Uprising is staying home for the battle, right?” Pilar asked.

“Of course. Essential personnel only. No more Janes,” Ariadne said.

“Great. I'm gonna leave her with the task of sending Pete an apology basket if we die,” Pilar explained, and added pointedly, “and since I'm setting her to a task, I'm going to tell her about it.”

“Do you think this plan is insane?” Ariadne asked.

“Course I do,” Pilar shrugged, “but it'll work. It's you doing it.”

“I appreciate how you always have more confidence in me than I do,” Ariadne said. “But… I worry, like, the Nameless is a telepath. The only people who know the whole plan are in our inner circle, but we're also the only people whose minds she'll definitely look in for it. We've been at this for months now, don't you think we should've spent some of that time developing a way to block her telep–”

Ariadne was suddenly struck with a splitting headache. This had been happening more and more often lately, whenever she fixated on her anxieties about being unprotected against the Nameless' powers. When she tried to interrogate the connection between the anxieties and the headaches, her mind simply went foggy, and she forgot what she was thinking about. She knew it probably wasn't wise, but pushing it out of mind was the only thing that worked on the headaches, so that's what she did.

Pilar suddenly looked very serious. “What was that thought, Querida?”

“Nothing, don't worry about it,” Ariadne explained. “You think Upendo and Santiago are holding up their end?”

“You gave them the schematics and told them where to put these things,” Spacebreahter explained. “Now it's up to them to get the soldiers through them.”

The metal frame standing before them was Ariadne and Alicia's collaborative masterwork. While traditional teleportation jumps required precise calculations, and a software handshake between the launchpad and receiving pad. Alicia had, years earlier, developed a technique to safely teleport without a receiving pad, which had become central to Ariadne's ability to move through the system undetected, and required use of a stasis field to keep teleported objects from being atomized on arrival.

The device they'd constructed was quite a bit cleaner and less complex than a teleporter. Using the quantum shift generators recovered from Dr. Simon's life centers, Ariadne had constructed gateways about the size and shape of a refrigerator. Each gate was linked to a partner, and anything standing within the bounds of a gate would have all of its particles held in a state of quantum superposition, existing in two places at once, until the occupant left the gate. The quantum shift generators activated whenever an object passed through, and ensured that the object would never emerge from the same gate it entered. Since each gate had only a single partner, this meant reliable instantaneous site-to-site transport.

It was inspired, years earlier, by an associate of La Pesadilla that Ariadne and Pilar had nicknamed Galaxy-Sweater, who had once idly said of the quantum-shift generators, “would've made a great public transit system if there was some way to predict which storefront you'd come out of.”

Galaxy-Sweater had not expected Ariadne to take this as a challenge.

Alicia called the device the Teleportal. Ariadne insisted they could do better, but had, much to her chagrin, failed to do so before they had to deliver hundreds of the things to Upendo and Santiago, in order to covertly transport Earth's ground forces to the surface of Mars.

“We'll know how they did for sure when we get there,” Ariadne said. “If there aren't a hundred thousand Earth marines in the bio-dome with us, we'll know we're screwed.”

“This is going to work,” Pilar assured. “Peace is a smart woman. If she wasn't, she wouldn't be on our side. Plus, Sasha's stockpile provides us with enough serum for each suit of marine armor to auto-administer a dose upon fatal injury twice. That means we've basically got triple the number of troops.”

“I've been meaning to ask about that,” Ariadne said, “that much serum would've taken months to manufacture. When did Sasha have time to–”

Ariadne was struck with a headache again, and when it cleared away moments later, she'd forgotten her question.

“Querida?”

“I'm not worried about winning the battle,” Ariadne explained, composing herself, “the Rizzo army is a snake, so we provided a mongoose for it to fight while we get in position to cut off the head. I'm worried about that, though. It's not easy to face down your failures like that.”

“What failures?” Pilar asked.

“The Nameless,” Ariadne said. “I took her into our home. We trained her. Let her near our friends, our family, and she hurt them. Killed them. Damn near took over the whole goddamn system. We gave her so many chances, and look at what she's done with them. If I hadn't made the mistake of trusting her–”

“–Then she would've found somebody else to take advantage of,” Pilar interrupted. “The Nameless holds a grudge against you because you didn't have endless patience with her. Don't tell me you're beating yourself up for having too much patience.”

“I did, though,” Ariadne said. “I should've thrown her out straight away.”

“You mean like you did the second you found out what she did?” Pilar asked.

“I should've killed her for it,” Ariadne said, “but I'm not… strong like you. If I had just done what I needed to do, when it needed to be done, I'd–”

“Stop,” Pilar said, “I'm serious, cut it out. You look for the best in people and you give them the chance to bring it to the surface. It's your best quality, and I won't have you throwing dirt on your own name because of it.”

“Then why couldn't I do that with the Nameless?” Ariadne asked.

“You did bring out the best in her,” Pilar said, “she just happens to suck. Her best turned out to suck, just like her. It's admirable of you to look for a silver lining in every cloud, and finding a cloud that doesn't have one doesn't change that.”

“Look what happened, though,” Ariadne said, “because I kept looking for a silver lining where there was none.”

“You love Sweettalk, right?” Pilar asked.

“What?!” Ariadne replied.

“Sweettalk. Short girl. Never shuts up. Banging my sister, which I know because she never shuts up.” Pilar explained.

“Yes, I know who Sweettalk is,” Ariadne said, “of course I love her. Everybody does.”

“And you remember a few years back, when she stepped up to defend Sasha when I was being unreasonable?”

“Of course,” Ariadne said, “caring about Sasha is one of the fastest ways for anyone to earn my affection.”

“Well, I didn't love Sweettalk during all that,” Pilar explained. “I'd take a bullet for that girl now, but back then I thought she was a real piece of shit for trying to tell me what was best for my sister. I thought we were looking at a cloud with no silver lining. A rough with no diamond.”

Pilar laughed at the thought.

“Think about that,” Pilar continued. “Sweettalk. No diamond. Ridiculous, right? But I've always wished I was more like you, more patient and forgiving. So I decided to dig into her and look for that thing that made her worth loving, and nurturing, and trusting. I found it, and I wouldn't have, if I had made the call I usually make. And the truth is, I make that call all the time. You know what happens most of the time, when I decide there's no good in somebody? Or that if there is good in them, it's not worth bothering to find?”

“You… kill them?” Ariadne asked jokingly.

“Bingo,” Pilar said, not joking at all. “Now, I want you to close your eyes. And just imagine a world where things went a little different. Instead of me trying to do things your way, you did things my way. Killed the Nameless on the spot, the second somebody came forward with allegations against her… but also, back when I thought Sweettalk was an insubordinate little twerp, we shoved her out the airlock. Can you honestly say that world is better?”

“Obviously I'm glad you didn't kill Sweettalk,” Ariadne said.

“Me too,” Pilar said, “my point is, this thing you think of as a flaw that hurts people, it's the thing about you I truly admire. I wished I was more like that, and that's why Sweettalk is part of our family today. For her, aren't you glad you weren't more like me?”

“Yeah, but… for the Nameless… I definitely wish I'd been more like you.”

“And isn't that beautiful?” Pilar asked. “My love, that's why we found each other. When I needed to be more like you, I did something glorious, and let Sweettalk into my heart. And when you needed to be more like me… well, I look forward to seeing it play out tomorrow.”

“Well, I'm definitely having an effect,” Ariadne said, “remember when you were the cynic in the marriage?”

Pilar took two fingers, placed them on Ariadne's jaw, and tilted her head upwards from the teleportal, so they were looking directly into each other's eyes. “Try being married to you without finding something to believe in.”

Ariadne leaned upwards and gave her a kiss.

“Tomorrow, I return the favor,” Ariadne said. “I swear to you, her last days are upon us.”

Pilar smiled. “Attagirl.”

***

Vigil and Ghostrunner sat on a bench in the old Xiagu town square. Most of the residents had at least visited the station by now. Some had retrieved possessions and returned to their lodgings in Xiagu, others had resumed their residence on Ariadne's station.

“So she's only taking us?” Vigil asked.

“Essential personnel only,” Ghostrunner clarified. “Sasha and her apprentices will have their hands full. Sweettalk is Spacebreather's right hand, so she'll be right there in the thick of it. Then, of course, you and I have our stealth mission.”

“I'm still not comfortable with it,” Vigil said.

“You can stay here,” Ghostrunner said. “Nobody will be mad. Ariadne can figure something else out, no problem.”

“Not that,” Vigil said, “it's… your mission is incredibly dangerous. I don't understand why you need to do this, when I'm invisible to the enemy.”

“When I was a girl,” Ghostrunner explained, “my father told me: 'what's the difference between one idiot and two? At least two idiots have somebody to watch their back.'”

“So we're two idiots?” Vigil asked playfully.

“We can be,” Ghostrunner laughed. “But that's the problem with being the one who can dig themselves deeper than anybody else. If they're on their own and get in over their head, they don't have anybody who can dig down far enough to pull them back up. If you get captured, wouldn't you want someone with the skills to rescue you?”

“Not if it means putting you in danger,” Vigil said.

“Okay, let me rephrase,” Ghostrunner said. “I am going. I am doing this. If I get captured, won't you be glad there's somebody to rescue me?”

“A much more compelling argument,” Vigil said. She looked up at the large banner that Ariadne had hung in the town square.

“ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL ONLY,” it read, “NO MORE JANES.” Ariadne had explained to the crew that they would not be joining her on the battlefield, and had been armed to defend the homestead while the battle was underway, in case the Nameless' forces found their home. Many had asked her why they needed to defend their stronghold, if Blue's protection was enough to keep the Nameless from finding it. The real answer was that she needed an excuse to keep them from joining her in the line of fire. The answer she gave them was “what if she finds it anyway? Do you want to lose your home again, so soon after getting it back?” It helped that both answers were pretty good points.

Vigil's hand went to the drive holster on her thigh. “You know, I've been thinking a lot lately,” she said, “about this.”

“Ah, your 'twin.'” Ghostrunner said. “I'm sure Ariadne will be excited to build a body like yours for them.”

“They're not quite a twin,” Vigil said, “not yet. See, this thing doesn't have a processor. This is only a potential life. The cybernetic equivalent of a frozen viable embryo. Until it's switched on, it's just a hunk of metal.”

“Are you having second thoughts about activating it?” Ghostrunner asked.

“No,” Vigil said, “I know I have to activate it. But I think I have a responsibility for what to do with it.”

“A responsibility?” Ghostrunner asked.

“A debt,” Vigil said. “Someone died to create what's on this drive. To create me. The spark of life in me exists because someone else, someone I'll never know, had their spark extinguished. That's something I need to pay back.”

“You don't owe anything to anyone, Vigil,” Ghostrunner said. “You didn't ask to be made.”

“No,” Vigil said, “I didn't. But it doesn't change the fact that someone's ultimate sacrifice is why I'm here.”

“How exactly do you expect to fix that?” Ghostrunner asked. “What's done is done, and it was done before you were born. I know it hurts, but it's not like you can pay it back.”

“Of course I can't,” Vigil said. “I've made peace with that. I can't bring back the person who died to make me, I know that… but I've been carrying around the spark of life in my pocket. Can't I at least make it so the universe does more than break even on their sacrifice? Even if it's too late to give them a second chance, shouldn't someone get that second chance?”

“That's incredibly kind of you,” Ghostrunner said, suddenly understanding what she meant, “and practical at that. It means the drive can't fall into the wrong hands anymore. But you don't have to make that sacrifice. You deserve the sisterhood you've been seeking.”

Vigil looked at Ghostrunner. “I have it,” she said earnestly. “This crew has given me a home and a place to belong, and doing this will only add to that. This isn't a sacrifice. I have the power to do something for my sisters, to right a wrong.”

Ghostrunner raised her eyebrows. “So now you're doing it, not just considering it?” She smiled. “You should really take it to Cyan. If anybody can pull this off–”

“I…” Vigil began. “I did it three hours ago. Cyan thinks she can do it. I had to do this before we left, in case I didn't come back.”

She pulled up the edge of her cloak to reveal the empty holster the casket had once been contained within.

Ghostrunner was overcome. “This is…” she hesitated. “Vigil, this is the kindest thing I've ever seen anyone do.”

“It doesn't feel kind to me,” Vigil said, “it just feels like doing what's right.”

“There's your answer,” Ghostrunner said.

“My answer…?” Vigil asked.

“You once asked me how we knew Ariadne wasn't wrong to trust you, to let you get close,” Ghostrunner explained. “How she knew she wasn't taking in another Nameless. But you just told me that the kindest, most selfless act I've ever witnessed just seemed like the right thing to do. That's how we know we're right to see good in you.”

Ghostrunner kissed Vigil on the cheek.

“You're right,” she told Vigil, “this crew is where you belong.”

***

“I feel like my skills are being underutilized here,” Sweettalk said, flicking her balisong open and closed. “We're going to all-out war. What good am I on a battlefield?”

“Pretty handy with that butterfly knife,” Sasha replied, pulling her robe on and settling into bed next to Sweettalk.

“This is to improve dexterity and impress girls and you know it,” Sweettalk said. “Besides, we're gonna be in spacetight combat armor. Not much cause for knife-fighting.”

“Tell that to Blue,” Sasha said.

“I'm not telling anything to that woman,” Sweettalk said, “only person I know who always leaves me speechless.”

“She asked about you last time I saw her,” Sasha said, “told me I was lucky to have you, and asked how you use your skills outside of work. She's known me since I was nine, so it's actually quite sweet of her.”

Sweettalk laughed. “Yeah, okay. But what words did she use? How exactly did she say that?”

Sasha shifted. “Is that important? That's what she means, what does it matter how she said it?”

“Babe…”

Sasha sighed. Her poor Martian-Catholic heart never allowed her to quote Blue directly without feeling like she needed a shower. “She said 'that little squeeze of yours seems like a demon between the sheets. Besides scamming, what else that mouth do?'”

Sweettalk burst out laughing, and almost fell out of bed. “That is the most charitable possible reading of that sentence! I would've slapped her!”

“Oh, I did,” Sasha said, “she laughed, said I was 'a good kid,' clapped me a little too hard on the back, and told me that if we get married, she'd be glad to officiate.”

“Okay, couple things,” Sweettalk said, “First off, when we get married, I do not want Blue running the show. Second, you know I'm gonna make you tell me what she actually said, so there's no point trying to clean it up.”

Sasha turned bright red.

“Come on,” Sasha said, “or I'll ask her myself tomorrow.”

Sasha exhaled sharply. “She said… 'if you're trying to get hitched, I'm an ordained minister.'”

“And the part that's making you turn into a maraschino cherry?”

“She told me that if I needed any advice for the wedding night,” Sasha said, “that she… 'wrote the book on satisfying people's wives.'”

Sweettalk gradually caught her breath, composed herself from laughing, and wiped a tear from her eyes.

“Please tell me she's being literal,” Sweettalk said, “I need to read that book.”

“Oh, it's a real book,” Sasha said. “There are drawings. We'll definitely end up with a copy… no way out of that.”

“Well, if she's gonna be on the battlefield, I have less to worry about,” Sweettalk said, putting her arms around Sasha. “Hell, she might kill everybody herself.”

“In all seriousness,” Sasha said, “I'm glad you'll be there. Someone needs to have Pilar's back.”

“If she led me to the gates of hell, I'd follow without question,” Sweettalk said, “you know that.”

“As long as you bring her back from the gates.”

“I don't think she'll need me,” Sweettalk said. “I'm glad to be there for her, but I don't think I'll have all that much to do. When your job is 'make sure Pilar wins the fight,' it's kind of like a shopkeeper hiring anti-Dracula security. Doesn't really make much of a difference whether they're up to the job.”

“Unless Dracula shows up,” Sasha pointed out. “So make sure your stakes are nice and sharp.”

Sweettalk flicked her balisong open and closed again. “I'd make an excellent vampire hunter.”

“I've always thought I'd make an excellent vampire,” Sasha replied. “Always drawing blood and staying up late.”

“You as a vampire,” Sweettalk laughed. “I'm gonna spend a lot of time imagining that.”

Sasha affected an exaggerated Transylvanian accent. “Why imagine?”

Sasha gave Sweettalk a playful bite on the neck.

“Oh my, and here I am without my crossbow!” Sweettalk tossed her balisong onto her nightstand and leaned into the kiss.

***

“Lib?” Nicks asked. “Libs, can you hear me?”

'Get off of me!” The Nameless said, pushing Nicks aside and getting up from the ground. “I'm fine.”

“I just watched you collapse,” Nicks said, “you're not fine.”

“So now you know how I am better than me?!” The Nameless snarled. “I'm fine! We're two hours out from Mars. This is our big moment. This is the day Ariadne dies.”

“Have you had anything to eat today?” Nicks asked.

“Get off my fucking back,” The Nameless replied flatly.

The Nameless propped herself up and stared out at the distant red speck they were barreling towards. Nicks quietly pulled the firearm on her hip and pointed it at the Nameless' back. She cocked it, flicked off the safety, and rested her finger on the trigger. She had to know.

She pulled the trigger. The gun clicked, but nothing happened. Good, she thought. She placed the gun back in its holster.

The pistol was an old-fashioned revolver, firing actual ballistic projectiles instead of plasma rounds. Earlier in the day, she had loaded a single bullet into one of the gun's six chambers, and spun the cylinder. In order for this experiment to work, her thoughts would have to be genuine: she had to really think she was trying to kill her partner.

The Nameless, as she had the previous three times Nicks had tried this experiment, seemed to take no notice. Nicks breathed a sigh of relief. She had spent the past several months conditioning herself to project false surface thoughts and conceal her true thoughts from her partner.

Over the past year, she'd seen the Nameless leave mercenaries catatonic for insubordination. She'd seen her slit throats for “taking a tone.” The Nameless had even bitten a chunk out of a man's face for bumping into her in the hallway. She had no impulse control whatsoever.

Nicks knew this meant her conditioning had worked. If her partner had any knowledge of this little game of Russian Roulette, she would be dead where she stood. If her conditioning failed, she was dead anyway, the second she went against an order. If it succeeded and the gun didn't fire, she knew her thoughts were protected. If the gun did go off, she figured well, that would solve the problem in its own way.

“I'm having a cheese plate sent up,” Nicks said. “You may not want to eat, but personally I think your moment of triumph is an occasion worthy of a little ceremony and celebration.”

“I suppose you're right,” the Nameless shrugged.

Nicks tapped the order onto the battleship's console. She'd expected this result. It was easy to get Libby to follow through on requests that stroked her ego, and Nicks wasn't about to get killed because her partner in crime had low blood sugar.

She thought back to her previous partner in crime. What the hell had his name been? Preston? Something like that. He was an unreliable little sleaze, but at least they'd had some fun during their relationship. She found herself almost missing him. When they'd been together, they'd sought thrills as smalltime outlaws. She'd given that up, and if memory served, thrown him under the bus in order to pursue full time animosity with Ariadne.

It had been good at the beginning, when she was just taking hostages to get Ariadne's attention. She wondered if she'd just stuck with that, if she could've gotten close to Ariadne without doing all of this.

Now, she was just a political power-player. Donna Nicoletta. Living exactly the life she'd found so boring that she turned to Preston or Presley or whatever the hell his name was for cheap thrills.

She briefly considered picking which of the Rizzo army struck the proper balance between “hot” and “suggestible,” so she could run off with him and start a new life. Maybe she could rob some banks or try her hand at serial killing if she needed some excitement.

But she pushed that away. Having Ariadne as a nemesis was a high that couldn't be substituted. If she played things right today, she and Ariadne would be locked in battle for the rest of her life.

Interlude 4 An excerpt from the Personal Journals of Father Y

Sometimes I think people don't even want to understand the Oort. They can't put their finger on one neat little explanation for us, so they try and act like we don't make sense, as though there's ever been any group of people who can be understood with one neat little explanation.

People say we're fusions of man and machine. That we're mutants. Genetically engineered. That we've been driven insane by isolation and harsh conditions. Mixed up with the DNA of alien races unknown to the sun-seers. That we've made deals with demons. That we're demons trying to make deals with you. That we eat people. That we're religious fanatics.

Thing is, every one of those statements is true for some, false for others. Wild thing is, all of them are true and false for every group of people in the system. Fusions of man and machine? On a sun-seer they call that “bionic limbs.” Mutants? Plenty of mutations happened on Earth before we even dipped our toes into the stars. Genetically engineered? How do you think they cured cancer? Driven insane by isolation and harsh conditions? Go talk to anybody who's ever spent time in rural Pennsylvania. Mixed up with Alien DNA? I bet most Earthers would be none too thrilled to find out how many aliens they've got in their family tree. Colluding with demons? Being demons? Religious fanaticism? You ever heard of a guy named George W. Bush?

I keep banging this drum: the Oort are just people, and people are always people. When somebody reaches the bounds of their understanding, and decides to go further, that's what makes them a person. From the very moment we're born, knowing nothing at all, when we start trying to make sense of who mama is, what our hands are for, and why there's all this light and noise, we start expanding our consciousnesses.

The Oort are “weird” because we've had more than our share of stuff to figure out. The things we say “don't make sense” because we've got answers to questions the sun-seers haven't yet had the opportunity to ask.

You may have heard me talk about how I've got “greater ambitions” than most of my people. I know I'm meant to show everybody, Oort and Sun-Seer alike, the truth of our people and theirs. That's my greater ambition. All this selling wishes for souls stuff, that's a fun way to pass the time. But preaching the truth about us all, how we're all just people solvin' problems or dyin' tryin'? That's my calling.

I talked to that Ariadne girl again today. She's going off to war. She's got a problem she's never faced before. I saw what she's done to solve it. I've never seen anything like that, and I've seen more than most. Found myself thinking “is this girl insane?”

She had answers to questions I never thought to ask. I told her I hoped we could make an Oort out of her. I'm not sure she got the joke.

She's always been one of us. Even before she trained with Blue. Even back when she was a little girl on Earth.

The Oort are just people, solving problems. In other words, people.

[inumerable]

interesting how little crossover online platforms can have - everything about madeline pendleton on tumblr is quotes from their book that is kind of memoir/personal finance manual. meanwhile my feed on tt is exploding with the back and forth between vitriolic liberal democrats (who think they are "leftists") being mad that they published emails they received soliciting pro-democrat social media content for thousands of dollars. i encountered the term "blue maga" in the last 24 hours - it feels pretty apt, if unnecessarily novel. the particularly intense thing to see is the mobilization of "listen to Black people" as a tactic to shut up critiques of the state + its noxious election cycle. how deeply despairing - like watching the rise of abolitionism re-coded into funding social workers in police departments - that a decade of contemporary Black uprising has modulated a culture shift in which critique of the most conservative Democratic nominee in my lifetime can be effectively attacked by mobilizing Black calls for life. the identity of it all has already been failing for a long time. this is something that has always been so clear in Baltimore: a Black city run by frequently corrupt Black politicians, whose Black state's attorney made her career on technically prosecuting the cop murderers of Freddie Grey, only for them to all get off entirely while stubbornly refusing to decarcerate Keith Davis Jr. after he was nearly beaten to death by police in 2015. Harris is pushing right to compensate for her Blackness, but also because she is a warmonger top-cop who desires the position of commander in chief of the most heinously overfunded imperial military in the world.

[fatovamingus]

Baltimore Uprising after killing of Freddie Gray 2015, Devin Allen photo

[theloniousbach]

LIVESTREAM and ALMOST: TODD MARCUS/VIRGINIA MacDONALD with Bruce Barth, Blake Meister, and Eric Kennedy, SMALL’S JAZZ CLUB, 23 JULY 2024, 7:30 and (partial) 9 pm sets

What a find!

Billed as a two clarinet front line with Bruce Barth (sold!), I was ready to watch the later set during the day (and I did). But I came in the middle of the early set in real time just to get a feel for the set and I stayed. TODD MARCUS, it turns out, plays bass clarinet and, remarkably, is an Egyptian American. I came in the middle of the first movement of his Suite Something which was dedicated to the 2011 uprising that was central to that Arab Spring. Clarinets of course suit such music, so I was hooked.

MARCUS is from Baltimore and seems to play regularly with Blake Meister and Eric Kennedy, so they are a solid, tried and true rhythm section. Kennedy can be too exuberant but he has a rich and bright style. Barth is always good to see and he provided a steadiness and heft. VIRGINIA MacDONALD is a more recent collaborator and she really is the co-leader contributing tunes (and organizational chops for this bands recent tour of Canada, where she’s from, and the Northeast) and her own approach to the clarinet. Another thoroughly modern player on the instrument to join Anat Cohen and Ben Goldberg, she wasn’t always as woody as them, sidling up to soprano sax territory while not crossing the line. She was fluid and inventive and wove around Marcus as he wove around her. Her contrafact on George Shearing’s Conception, Retrogression, made that complex tune even trickier and Up High, Down Low was a catchy closer to the second set.

Marcus had another Middle Eastern tune, Cairo Street Ride, that seemed to be the gem of the first set. But, damn, if the following ballad had a commanding quiet with Barth playing an important role. That was probably MacDonald’s; the closer, Windmills, was Marcus’ and it was both easy and pensive.

These folks create compelling music in those paradoxes. I hope to see more of them.

[brookston]

Holidays 4.19

Holidays

Americas’ Day (Honduras)

Army Day (Brazil)

Bicycle Day

Bitcoin Halving Day

Blue Jay Day

Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Action Day

Day of the Indian (Venezuela)

Dog Parent Appreciation Day

Dutch-American Friendship Day

Electrical Load Shedding Day (Ecuador)

419 Day

Global Day of Action Against Spyware

Hanging Out Day

Holocaust Remembrance Day (Poland)

Horseless Carriage Day

Humorous Day

Indian Day (Brazil)

International Day of Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Awareness

International Spandex Day

John Parker Day

King Mswati III Day (Eswatini)

Landing of the 33 Patriots Day (Uruguay)

Leucothea Asteroid Day

Lexington & Concord Day

Lydia Asteroid Day

National Canadian Film Day (Canada)

National Cat Lady Day

National Day of Silence

National Dog Parent Appreciation Day

National Fingering Day

National Hanging Out Day

National Hayden Day

National Health Day (Kiribati)

National Indigenous People’s Day (Brazil)

National North Dakota Day

National Oklahoma City Bombing Commemoration Day

National Paw Parent Appreciation Day

National Poker Day

National Slow Down Day (Ireland)

National Spice Smoking Day

Night of Destiny (Bangladesh)

Navpad Oli (a.k.a. Ayambil Oli; Jain)

Oklahoma City Bombing Commemoration Day

Patriots’ Day (Florida)

Plastic Free Lunch Day

Primrose Day (UK)

Printing Industry Day (Russia)

Refresh Your Goals Day

Republic Day (Sierra Leone)

The Simpsons Day

Snakes Return to Ireland Day

Snowdrop Day

Stoner’s Eve (Orthodox Christian) [Day before 4.20] (a.k.a. ... 

4/20 Eve

Got a Minute Day

Gotta Day

The Pre-Bake

Ursine Garlic Day

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Remembrance Day

World Day of Action in Solidarity with Venezuela

World IBS Day

World Liver Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

Garlic Day

Espresso Italiano Day (Italy)

National Amaretto Day

National Chicken Parmesan Day

National Rice Ball Day

3rd Friday in April

Empire Day (Canada) [Weekday before 24th]

Friendship Friday [3rd Friday]

Fry Day (Pastafarian; Fritism) [Every Friday]

Make a Quilt Day [3rd Friday]

National Clean Out Your Medicine Cabinet Day [3rd Friday]

Weekly Holidays beginning April 19 (3rd Week)

Four-Twenty Weekend (Weekend Closest to 4.20]

National Dance Week [thru 4.28]

Independence & Related Days

Independence Declaration Day (Venezuela)

Kuban (Adoption into Russia; 2018)

Lexmark (Declared; 2019) [unrecognized]

Taman (Adoption into Russia; 2018)

Zimbabwe (Independence Day Holiday)

New Year’s Days

New Years Holidays (Myanmar0

Festivals Beginning April 19, 2024

Baltimore Old Time Music Festival (Baltimore, Maryland) [thru 4.20]

Buds-A-Palooza (Phoenix, Arizona)

California Poppy Festival (Lancaster, California) [thru 4.21]

California Wine Festival (Dana Point, California) [thru 4.20]

Cider, Wine & Done Weekend (Henderson, North Carolina) [thru 4.21]

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival (India, California) [thru 4.21]

Crawfish Music Festival (Biloxi, Mississippi) [thru 4.21]

Dubai Food Festival Dubai, UAE) [thru 5.12]

East European Comic Con (Bucharest, Romania) [thru 4.21]

Jersey Shore Restaurant Week (Jersey Shore, New Jersey) [thru 4.28]

Kaunas Jazz (Kaunas, Lithuania) [thru 4.29]

La Fete Du Monde (Raceland, Louisiana) [thru 4.21]

Moscow International Film Festival (Moscow, Russia) [thru 4.26]

National Cannabis Festival (Washington, DC) [thru 4.20]

New England Folk Festival (Marlborough, Massachusetts) [thru 4.21]

Northwest Cherry Festival (The Dalles, Oregon) [thru 4.21]

Pompano Beach Seafood Festival (Pompano Beach, Florida) [thru 4.21]

River Falls Bluegrass, Bourbon & Brews Festival (River Falls, Wisconsin) [thru 4.21]

Schmeckfest (South Dakota) [3rd & 4th Fridays]

Texas SandFest (Port Aransas, Texas) [thru 4.21]

Hebrew Calendar Holidays [Begins at Sundown Day Before]

Education and Sharing Day [11 Nisan]

International Passover Joke Day [11 Nisan]

Feast Days

Ælfheah of Canterbury (Anglican, Catholic; Saint)

Alphege (Christian; Saint)

Amanda Sage (Artology)

Bandage and Lozenge-Sucking Competition (Shamanism)

Bendideia (Ancient Greece)

Cerealia (Roman Festival to Ceres, Goddess of Barley & Agriculture)

Conrad of Ascoli (Christian; Saint)

David Koresh Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Elphege, Archbishop of Canterbury (Christian; Saint)

Emma of Lesum (Christian; Saint)

Expeditus of Melintine (Christian; Saint) [Hoodoo; Nerds; Santerians]

Fernando Botero (Artology)

George of Antioch (Christian; Saint)

Geroldus (Christian; Saint)

Lager Day (Pastafarian)

Leo IX, Pope (Christian; Saint)

Ma Zu (Goddess of the Sea's Birthday; Taoism)

Olaus and Laurentius Petri (Lutheran; Saint)

Persephone’s Return (Pagan)

Pierre (Muppetism)

Strabo (Positivist; Saint)

Start of Pastover (Pastafarian)

Ursmar (Christian; Saint)

Veronese (Artology)

Willem Drost (Artology)

Zoot’s Day (Muppetism)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Prime Number Day: 109 [29 of 72]

Sensho (先勝 Japan) [Good luck in the morning, bad luck in the afternoon.]

Tycho Brahe Unlucky Day (Scandinavia) [19 of 37]

Umu Limnu (Evil Day; Babylonian Calendar; 18 of 60)

Premieres

Alvin’s Solo Flight (Noveltoons Cartoon; 1961)

Bob & Doug (Animated TV Series; 2009)

Cake Boss (TV Series; 2009)

Carousel (Broadway Musical; 1945)

Fast Color (Film; 2019)

Goodie the Gremlin (Noveltoons Cartoon; 1961)

The Harder They Come, by T. Coraghessan Boyle (Novel; 2015)

Hound About That (Noveltoons Cartoon; 1961)

Illmatic, by Las (Album; 1994)

Iphigenia in Aulis, by C.W. Glucks (Opera; 1774)

Just a Little Bull (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1940)

King of Jazz (Oswald the Lucky Rabbit Cartoon; 1930)

The Land of Fun (Color Rhapsody Cartoon; 1941)

The Last Battle, by Cornelius Ryan (Novel; 1966)

L.A. Woman, by The Doors (Album; 1971)

Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit of …), by Lou Bega (Song; 1999)

Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics, by Erich Fromm (Philosophy Book; 1947)

Man Plus, by Frederik Pohl (Novel; 1976)

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (Film; 2024)

Money Doodles (Noveltoons Cartoon; 1960)

Moosylvania Saved, Part 1 (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S6, Ep. 363; 1965)

Moosylvania Saved, Part 2 (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S6, Ep. 364; 1965)

Mrs. Winterbourne (Film; 1996)

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (Film; 2002)

National Barn Dance (Radio Music Series; 1924)

Oblivion (Film; 2013)

Oxford English Dictionary, 1st Edition (Dictionary; 1928)

Peg Leg Pete, the Pirate (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1935)

Plenty Below Zero (Color Rhapsody Cartoon; 1943)

The Producers (Broadway Musical; 2001)

Ring of Fire, by Johnny Cash (Song; 1963)

The Scorpion King (Film; 2002)

The Secret Life of Plants: A Fascinating Account of the Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Relations Between Plants and Man, by Peter Tompkins (Science Book; 1973)

Service with a Guile (Fleischer/Famous Popeye Cartoon; 1946)

Sing, Sing Prison (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1931)

Sinkin’ in the Bathtub, featuring Bosko (Looney Tunes Cartoon; 1930) [1st Warner Bros. cartoon]

A Small Town in Germany, by John le Carre (Novel; 1969)

Stand Up & Cheer (Film; 1934) [1st Shirley Temple film]

Symphony No. 6, by Jean Sibelius (Symphony; 1923)

Ticket to Ride, by The Beatles (Song; 1965)

Timid Tabby (Tom & Jerry Cartoon; 1957)

Tortured Poets Department, by Taylor Swift (Album; 2024)

The Trip (Noveltoons Cartoon; 1967)

Triplet Trouble (Tom & Jerry Cartoon; 1952)

Water, Water Every Hare (WB LT Cartoon; 1952)

Wings (TV Series; 1990)

The Zürau Aphorisms Franz Kafka

Today’s Name Days

Gerold, Leo, Marcel (Austria)

Ema, Konrad, Rastislav (Croatia)

Rostislav (Czech Republic)

Daniel (Denmark)

Aalike, Aleksandra, Alli, Allo, Andra, Sandra (Estonia)

Pälvi, Pilvi (Finland)

Emma (France)

Emma, Gerold, Leo, Timo (Germany)

Haroula, Theoharis, Theoharoula (Greece)

Emma (Hungary)

Emma, Ermogene, Espedito (Italy)

Fanija, Liba, Vēsma (Latvia)

Aistė, Eirimas, Leonas, Leontina, Simonas (Lithuania)

Arnfinn, Arnstein (Norway)

Adolf, Adolfa, Adolfina, Alf, Cieszyrad, Czech, Czechasz, Czechoń, Czesław, Leon, Leontyna, Pafnucy, Tymon, Werner, Włodzimierz (Poland)

Ioan (Romania)

Jela (Slovakia)

Expedito, León (Spain)

Ola, Olaus (Sweden)

Garey, Garett, Garret, Garrett, Garvey, Garvin, Gary, Gerald, Geraldine, Geri, Gerry, Jared, Jarod, Jarred, Jarrett, Jarrod, Jerald,Jeri, Jerod, Jerri, Jerrod, Jerry (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 110 of 2024; 256 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 5 of week 16 of 2024

Celtic Tree Calendar: Saille (Willow) [Day 6 of 28]

Chinese: Month 3 (Wu-Chen), Day 11 (Guy-Chou)

Chinese Year of the: Dragon 4722 (until January 29, 2025) [Wu-Chen]

Hebrew: 11 Nisan 5784

Islamic: 10 Shawwal 1445

J Cal: 20 Cyan; Sixday [20 of 30]

Julian: 6 April 2024

Moon: 84%: Waxing Gibbous

Positivist: 26 Archimedes (4th Month) [Frontinus]

Runic Half Month: Man (Human Being) [Day 10 of 15]

Season: Spring (Day 32 of 92)

Week: 3rd Week of April

Zodiac: Aries (Day 30 of 31)

[brookstonalmanac]

Holidays 4.19

Holidays

Americas’ Day (Honduras)

Army Day (Brazil)

Bicycle Day

Bitcoin Halving Day

Blue Jay Day

Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Action Day

Day of the Indian (Venezuela)

Dog Parent Appreciation Day

Dutch-American Friendship Day

Electrical Load Shedding Day (Ecuador)

419 Day

Global Day of Action Against Spyware

Hanging Out Day

Holocaust Remembrance Day (Poland)

Horseless Carriage Day

Humorous Day

Indian Day (Brazil)

International Day of Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Awareness

International Spandex Day

John Parker Day

King Mswati III Day (Eswatini)

Landing of the 33 Patriots Day (Uruguay)

Leucothea Asteroid Day

Lexington & Concord Day

Lydia Asteroid Day

National Canadian Film Day (Canada)

National Cat Lady Day

National Day of Silence

National Dog Parent Appreciation Day

National Fingering Day

National Hanging Out Day

National Hayden Day

National Health Day (Kiribati)

National Indigenous People’s Day (Brazil)

National North Dakota Day

National Oklahoma City Bombing Commemoration Day

National Paw Parent Appreciation Day

National Poker Day

National Slow Down Day (Ireland)

National Spice Smoking Day

Night of Destiny (Bangladesh)

Navpad Oli (a.k.a. Ayambil Oli; Jain)

Oklahoma City Bombing Commemoration Day

Patriots’ Day (Florida)

Plastic Free Lunch Day

Primrose Day (UK)

Printing Industry Day (Russia)

Refresh Your Goals Day

Republic Day (Sierra Leone)

The Simpsons Day

Snakes Return to Ireland Day

Snowdrop Day

Stoner’s Eve (Orthodox Christian) [Day before 4.20] (a.k.a. ... 

4/20 Eve

Got a Minute Day

Gotta Day

The Pre-Bake

Ursine Garlic Day

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Remembrance Day

World Day of Action in Solidarity with Venezuela

World IBS Day

World Liver Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

Garlic Day

Espresso Italiano Day (Italy)

National Amaretto Day

National Chicken Parmesan Day

National Rice Ball Day

3rd Friday in April

Empire Day (Canada) [Weekday before 24th]

Friendship Friday [3rd Friday]

Fry Day (Pastafarian; Fritism) [Every Friday]

Make a Quilt Day [3rd Friday]

National Clean Out Your Medicine Cabinet Day [3rd Friday]

Weekly Holidays beginning April 19 (3rd Week)

Four-Twenty Weekend (Weekend Closest to 4.20]

National Dance Week [thru 4.28]

Independence & Related Days

Independence Declaration Day (Venezuela)

Kuban (Adoption into Russia; 2018)

Lexmark (Declared; 2019) [unrecognized]

Taman (Adoption into Russia; 2018)

Zimbabwe (Independence Day Holiday)

New Year’s Days

New Years Holidays (Myanmar0

Festivals Beginning April 19, 2024

Baltimore Old Time Music Festival (Baltimore, Maryland) [thru 4.20]

Buds-A-Palooza (Phoenix, Arizona)

California Poppy Festival (Lancaster, California) [thru 4.21]

California Wine Festival (Dana Point, California) [thru 4.20]

Cider, Wine & Done Weekend (Henderson, North Carolina) [thru 4.21]

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival (India, California) [thru 4.21]

Crawfish Music Festival (Biloxi, Mississippi) [thru 4.21]

Dubai Food Festival Dubai, UAE) [thru 5.12]

East European Comic Con (Bucharest, Romania) [thru 4.21]

Jersey Shore Restaurant Week (Jersey Shore, New Jersey) [thru 4.28]

Kaunas Jazz (Kaunas, Lithuania) [thru 4.29]

La Fete Du Monde (Raceland, Louisiana) [thru 4.21]

Moscow International Film Festival (Moscow, Russia) [thru 4.26]

National Cannabis Festival (Washington, DC) [thru 4.20]

New England Folk Festival (Marlborough, Massachusetts) [thru 4.21]

Northwest Cherry Festival (The Dalles, Oregon) [thru 4.21]

Pompano Beach Seafood Festival (Pompano Beach, Florida) [thru 4.21]

River Falls Bluegrass, Bourbon & Brews Festival (River Falls, Wisconsin) [thru 4.21]

Schmeckfest (South Dakota) [3rd & 4th Fridays]

Texas SandFest (Port Aransas, Texas) [thru 4.21]

Hebrew Calendar Holidays [Begins at Sundown Day Before]

Education and Sharing Day [11 Nisan]

International Passover Joke Day [11 Nisan]

Feast Days

Ælfheah of Canterbury (Anglican, Catholic; Saint)

Alphege (Christian; Saint)

Amanda Sage (Artology)

Bandage and Lozenge-Sucking Competition (Shamanism)

Bendideia (Ancient Greece)

Cerealia (Roman Festival to Ceres, Goddess of Barley & Agriculture)

Conrad of Ascoli (Christian; Saint)

David Koresh Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Elphege, Archbishop of Canterbury (Christian; Saint)

Emma of Lesum (Christian; Saint)

Expeditus of Melintine (Christian; Saint) [Hoodoo; Nerds; Santerians]

Fernando Botero (Artology)

George of Antioch (Christian; Saint)

Geroldus (Christian; Saint)

Lager Day (Pastafarian)

Leo IX, Pope (Christian; Saint)

Ma Zu (Goddess of the Sea's Birthday; Taoism)

Olaus and Laurentius Petri (Lutheran; Saint)

Persephone’s Return (Pagan)

Pierre (Muppetism)

Strabo (Positivist; Saint)

Start of Pastover (Pastafarian)

Ursmar (Christian; Saint)

Veronese (Artology)

Willem Drost (Artology)

Zoot’s Day (Muppetism)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Prime Number Day: 109 [29 of 72]

Sensho (先勝 Japan) [Good luck in the morning, bad luck in the afternoon.]

Tycho Brahe Unlucky Day (Scandinavia) [19 of 37]

Umu Limnu (Evil Day; Babylonian Calendar; 18 of 60)

Premieres

Alvin’s Solo Flight (Noveltoons Cartoon; 1961)

Bob & Doug (Animated TV Series; 2009)

Cake Boss (TV Series; 2009)

Carousel (Broadway Musical; 1945)

Fast Color (Film; 2019)

Goodie the Gremlin (Noveltoons Cartoon; 1961)

The Harder They Come, by T. Coraghessan Boyle (Novel; 2015)

Hound About That (Noveltoons Cartoon; 1961)

Illmatic, by Las (Album; 1994)

Iphigenia in Aulis, by C.W. Glucks (Opera; 1774)

Just a Little Bull (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1940)

King of Jazz (Oswald the Lucky Rabbit Cartoon; 1930)

The Land of Fun (Color Rhapsody Cartoon; 1941)

The Last Battle, by Cornelius Ryan (Novel; 1966)

L.A. Woman, by The Doors (Album; 1971)

Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit of …), by Lou Bega (Song; 1999)

Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics, by Erich Fromm (Philosophy Book; 1947)

Man Plus, by Frederik Pohl (Novel; 1976)

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (Film; 2024)

Money Doodles (Noveltoons Cartoon; 1960)

Moosylvania Saved, Part 1 (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S6, Ep. 363; 1965)

Moosylvania Saved, Part 2 (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S6, Ep. 364; 1965)

Mrs. Winterbourne (Film; 1996)

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (Film; 2002)

National Barn Dance (Radio Music Series; 1924)

Oblivion (Film; 2013)

Oxford English Dictionary, 1st Edition (Dictionary; 1928)

Peg Leg Pete, the Pirate (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1935)

Plenty Below Zero (Color Rhapsody Cartoon; 1943)

The Producers (Broadway Musical; 2001)

Ring of Fire, by Johnny Cash (Song; 1963)

The Scorpion King (Film; 2002)

The Secret Life of Plants: A Fascinating Account of the Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Relations Between Plants and Man, by Peter Tompkins (Science Book; 1973)

Service with a Guile (Fleischer/Famous Popeye Cartoon; 1946)

Sing, Sing Prison (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1931)

Sinkin’ in the Bathtub, featuring Bosko (Looney Tunes Cartoon; 1930) [1st Warner Bros. cartoon]

A Small Town in Germany, by John le Carre (Novel; 1969)

Stand Up & Cheer (Film; 1934) [1st Shirley Temple film]

Symphony No. 6, by Jean Sibelius (Symphony; 1923)

Ticket to Ride, by The Beatles (Song; 1965)

Timid Tabby (Tom & Jerry Cartoon; 1957)

Tortured Poets Department, by Taylor Swift (Album; 2024)

The Trip (Noveltoons Cartoon; 1967)

Triplet Trouble (Tom & Jerry Cartoon; 1952)

Water, Water Every Hare (WB LT Cartoon; 1952)

Wings (TV Series; 1990)

The Zürau Aphorisms Franz Kafka

Today’s Name Days

Gerold, Leo, Marcel (Austria)

Ema, Konrad, Rastislav (Croatia)

Rostislav (Czech Republic)

Daniel (Denmark)

Aalike, Aleksandra, Alli, Allo, Andra, Sandra (Estonia)

Pälvi, Pilvi (Finland)

Emma (France)

Emma, Gerold, Leo, Timo (Germany)

Haroula, Theoharis, Theoharoula (Greece)

Emma (Hungary)

Emma, Ermogene, Espedito (Italy)

Fanija, Liba, Vēsma (Latvia)

Aistė, Eirimas, Leonas, Leontina, Simonas (Lithuania)

Arnfinn, Arnstein (Norway)

Adolf, Adolfa, Adolfina, Alf, Cieszyrad, Czech, Czechasz, Czechoń, Czesław, Leon, Leontyna, Pafnucy, Tymon, Werner, Włodzimierz (Poland)

Ioan (Romania)

Jela (Slovakia)

Expedito, León (Spain)

Ola, Olaus (Sweden)

Garey, Garett, Garret, Garrett, Garvey, Garvin, Gary, Gerald, Geraldine, Geri, Gerry, Jared, Jarod, Jarred, Jarrett, Jarrod, Jerald,Jeri, Jerod, Jerri, Jerrod, Jerry (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 110 of 2024; 256 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 5 of week 16 of 2024

Celtic Tree Calendar: Saille (Willow) [Day 6 of 28]

Chinese: Month 3 (Wu-Chen), Day 11 (Guy-Chou)

Chinese Year of the: Dragon 4722 (until January 29, 2025) [Wu-Chen]

Hebrew: 11 Nisan 5784

Islamic: 10 Shawwal 1445

J Cal: 20 Cyan; Sixday [20 of 30]

Julian: 6 April 2024

Moon: 84%: Waxing Gibbous

Positivist: 26 Archimedes (4th Month) [Frontinus]

Runic Half Month: Man (Human Being) [Day 10 of 15]

Season: Spring (Day 32 of 92)

Week: 3rd Week of April

Zodiac: Aries (Day 30 of 31)

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Labor Organizer Spotlight

Herman Grossman, first President of the ILGWU from 1900-1903.

Born in Austria, Grossman later emigrated to New York City and became a cloakmaker. A member of the United Brotherhood of Cloakmakers of New York and Vicinity, he was one of eleven delegates from local unions in New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Newark that, representing roughly 2000 members, founded the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. At this meeting on June 3, 1900, he was elected the union's first president. During Grossman's first term as president, the International's first local union in Chicago was formed, as well as what would later become one of the ILGWU's most powerful locals, the Amalgamated Ladies' Garment Cutters Union Local 10, was formed.

A portrait of Grossman, c. 1910.

After his second term as union president ended in 1907, Grossman continued to work with the ILGWU. He was a representative of the ILGWU during the "Uprising of the Twenty Thousand" in 1909, and a member of the general strike committee during the "Great Revolt" in 1910. He later worked in the offices of the New York Cloak Joint Board of Cloakmakers Unions. 

When Grossman passed away in 1934, David Dubinsky noted that the former ILGWU president, "was not only one of the generals and leaders of the International but also one of its first soldiers who prepared the ground and sowed the seeds from which our Union has sprouted and grown."