Today in Writing History September 10, 1960: Alison Bechdel, American author and illustrator was born. She is most famous for her “Dykes to Watch Out For,” comic strip. And for her “Bechdel Test,” originally intended as a joke in one of her comics, but which has since become a routine metric used by critics as an indicator for the active presence of women in a film.
Today in Labor History September 9, 1918: Scottish & Anzac troops at the Etaples army base launched a successful five-day mutiny against harsh treatment and bad conditions by attacking the military police and carrying out daily demonstrations. Siegfried Sassoon described the terrible conditions in his poem "Base Details." English writer Vera Brittain described the atmosphere in her book “Testament of Youth.” William Allison and John Fairley wrote about it in their 1978 book, “The Monocled Mutineer.”
Today in Labor History September 9, 1828: Leo Tolstoy, Russian author and playwright was born. He is most famous for novels like Anna Karina, and War and Peace. He chose the name for the latter after reading French anarchist Proudhon’s publication called War and Peace. Tolstoy also wrote many short stories, an autobiography and many works of nonfiction. After witnessing a public execution in 1857, he wrote: "The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens ... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere." In the 1870s, he experienced a profound spiritual awakening, which led him to become a Christian anarchist and pacifist, and which he wrote about in his non-fiction work Confession (1882). He also wrote about nonviolent resistance in The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), which influenced Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Wittgenstein. He was repeatedly nominated for Nobel prizes in both literature and peace.
“In the tradition of Upton Sinclair and Jack London, Michael Dunn gives us a gritty portrait of working-class life and activism during one of the most violent eras in U.S. labor history. Anywhere but Schuylkill is a social novel built out of passion and the textures of historical research. It is both a tale of 1870s labor unrest and a tale for the inequalities and injustices of the twenty-first century.”
-Russ Castronovo, author of Beautiful Democracy and Propaganda 1776.
Available on Sep 19, 2023, from all the usual online distributors, or direct from my publisher: http://wix.to/M9gMx11
Maybe you know the feeling. Maybe you know what it's like. To compose a life of scraps and fragments. To live in jumbled lines. Between stitches and tight sentences. In the texture of torn out paper, crumpled and dismayed. All our dead darlings, balled up on the floor.
Today in Labor History September 6, 1869: The Avondale fire killed 110 miners, including several juveniles under the age of 10. It led to the first mine safety law in Pennsylvania. Avondale is near Plymouth, Pennsylvania. The Susquehanna River flows nearby. The mine had only one entrance, in violation of safety recommendations at the time. In the wake of the fire, thousands of miners joined the new Workingmen’s Benevolent Association, one of the nation’s first large industrial unions (and precursor to the United Mineworkers). My book, “Anywhere But Schuylkill,” opens with this fire. My main character, Mike Doyle, joins the bucket brigade trying to put out the flames shooting out of the mineshaft.
Poor people probably didn't get a lot of stories published. That's why they don't start: "I was sentenced to three months in the insane asylum for being poor." 🤔
That's the funny thing about real life, isn't it? We're either always denied the things we want or discovering that we never really wanted them at all. Did you think it wasn't true? You can tell me I'm wrong, but you know it too.
Any moment is every moment. Any day is everyday. What you do with this one, how you hold it, how you view it, how you put it to use, says all you'll ever need to about how'll spend all of them, about who you are, about what'll do, about what you'll be. Whether you'll become something different, or whether you'll stay the same...
Today in Labor History September 5, 1964: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn died in Moscow. Flynn was an anarchist, labor militant and highly successful organizer with the IWW. before joining the American Communist Party. She was also a founding member of the ACLU. She is portrayed in Jess Walter’s historical novel, “The Cold Millions,” about the Spokane Free Speech Fight.
Any introvert worth their weight in cancelled plans will tell you, it's easier to slip out early when you've learned to sneak in late. The best part of every guilty pleasure, is the pleasure you get from not feeling guilty when you know nobody sees...
Today in Labor History September 3, 1838: Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland to freedom in the north, where he became a leader of the abolitionist movement. During his lifetime, he wrote 3 autobiographies and became a best-selling author. He also fought for women’s suffrage and was the first black man nominated to run for vice president. Douglass opposed colonialism and segregated schools. He was the most photographed American of the 19th century, never smiling once for the camera so as to not play into the racist myth of the happy slave.
"Anywhere but Schuylkill" by Michael Dunn - coming soon from Historium Press! Check it out!! http://wix.to/M9gMx11
“The Banshees of Inisherin and 1917 are two of the best historical films I’ve seen in recent years, particularly the cinematography. Yet the visuals Michael Dunn creates in Anywhere But Schuylkill, are richer, more vivid, more imaginative, and more haunting and indelible than what I recall in those brilliant films. It’s like the author transports himself to each scene and brings to life each physical detail, each expression, each emotion, and each word of dialogue with the care of a Renaissance painter.”
—David Aretha, award-winning author of Malala Yousafzai and the Girls of Pakistan and Martin Luther King Jr. and the 1963 March on Washington.
We tell ourselves that we're just one discovery, one uncovering, one goal, one task, one accomplishment, one thing, away from happiness, from contentment, from satisfaction, from rest, from peace. But it never comes, never arrives. We never meet the need...
"Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
An amusing look at the rise and fall of “Dr.” Joseph Brinkley, America’s premier quack in the 1920s and 30s. He popularized the implanting of goat testicles(!) into men to cure…impotence, I guess …
Odds and ends:
– In the early nineteenth century, there was a pretty strong anti-elite movement, to the point where licensing requirements for doctors were repealed in all but three states!
– The chief surgeon at San Quentin prison in California thought that physically unattractive people were more likely to become criminals, so he started a program to give prisoners nose jobs!
– Diploma mills were a big problem in the 1920s, but some “doctors” had bought their diplomas from widows of actual doctors and assumed their names"