How dull it is to pause!

It's time for Dover Bitch to hang 'em up. This blog has been neglected by me for some time, but I've been waiting until an appropriate day to put it to rest, and that day is finally upon us.

It is the end of an era, at last: The country is now out of Dick Cheney's cold grip. Many of us survived. Some spectacular people did not.

When I started this blog, it did not actually occur to me that anybody would read it. I had zero ambition for it. It was to be my online catharsis.

The day I met Digby, I gave her a poem by Theodore Roethke, "Against Danger." The word "against" is the greatest of all adpositions. Unlike "on," "within" or "among," the word "against" carries with it a vitality. There is an implied force behind it. A will. And to have been a left-leaning blogger during the Bush years was certainly to have been "against danger."

During the anthrax attacks, I had an epiphany while re-reading Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" and Anthony Hecht's "Dover Bitch." In short, it occurred to me that it was presumptuous to assume that the woman in both poems was the "bitch." Perhaps it was Arnold (Hecht makes Arnold the speaker of his own poem). Perhaps it's the man in "Dover Bitch." Perhaps it's all or none of them. A situation can certainly be a bitch. The complaints of both speakers could be bitching.

But the revelation I had is that attempts to reject the world fail. Arnold looked out his window and did not realize the world he despised was right there in the room with him. In fact, his window is a part of that world. He, too, is a part of the world. It is reason I named this blog Dover Bitch and gave it the description: Your window to the world is a part of the world and so are you.

With that spirit, I tried to do more than be "against danger." More often than not, I think I failed. But I learned quite a bit, mostly through my interactions with other bloggers and commentators. And so I would like to thank a few of them.

First and foremost, I would like to thank Digby. Guest posting at Digby's blog is a real fast way to discover how much better she is than everybody else (or at least, than I). I'm happy to say that I think I saved my best post ever for General JC Christian's blog. Thanks for everything, General! I'd also like to say thank you to Glenn Greenwald, who definitely made blogging a more rewarding experience.

Other people who made my blogging days rewarding (and I'm sure I will forget more than a few), some of whom I was fortunate to meet and some of whom I was lucky to engage in correspondence (some I only read) are: Atrios, TRex, Steve Gilliard, Roy Edroso, Dengre, Batocchio, Jane Hamsher, Christy Hardin Smith, Suzanne, SteveAudio, Greg Sergent, Josh Marshall, Steve Benen, Brad R, David Neiwert, MJS, Lindsay Beyerstein and Kagro X. I'd also like to thank a certain Maverick, whom I was never able to lure into the world of blogging. He would have made this a much better blog with his own personal touch, but he influenced it, nonetheless.

Finally, it is not only because Obama will be president in just a few days that I'm shutting down today. This blog actually began on the anniversary of Anthony Hecht's death, and it seems fitting to end it on his birthday, January 16th. So in tribute to him, I say farewell on this day.

Maybe I'll see you around in the comments somewhere. Maybe one day I'll feel compelled to call myself a blogger again. I don't expect to. But I wish you all health, happiness and peace, and I leave you with one of Hecht's finest poems...

-DB

Riddles

And the Spirit of God
moved upon the waters

Where the wind listeth, there the sailboats list,
   Water is touched with a light case of hives
Of wandering gooseflesh. The strange power and gist
   Of whatever it is that animates our lives

Scrawls with a lavish hand its signature
   Of ripples gathered into folds and pleats
As indecipherable, chiselled, pure
   And everlasting as the name of Keats.

The surface wrinkles in spirit-shapes that sprint
   Like small rapids or frightened schools of fish;
They blot out images of cloud, the print
   Of passing hulls, obeying something's wish.

These vagrant hieroglyphs, now here, now there,
   In which the fate of everything lies writ
By the invisible majesty of air,
   Prove we are one and all illiterate,

And should be asking: "What do they portend?"
   Other, please God, than those fiery words for coins
That signified to Belshazzar the end
   Of all his hopes and the issue of his loins.

Zzzzzzzzz... did I miss something?

Oh. I guess that was McCain's acceptance speech.

I'm heading away for the weekend. Need to clean out my brain after all this washing. While I'm gone, I'll leave you with a few things...

Once again, if you have some coin to spare, consider keeping good satire flowing through the tubes.

Here's the dumbest paragraph I've seen today:

Culturally, there is little for the Heartland to dislike. By now, you've probably seen picture or two of Palin sporting a rifle. Apparently, she's left carcasses strewn across the Alaskan wilderness. In some places -- areas where the nation is growing -- owning a gun is not yet a sin. And unlike Obama, Palin seems to believe that the Second Amendment means the exact same thing in rural Alaska as it does in the streets of Chicago.

Aside from Harsanyi's deep understanding of the "Heartland" as seen from New York City (where I believe he still resides), he appears to be implying that Chicago's streets should be littered with carcasses. A sort of 12 Monkeys vision of the future under McCain/Palin.

I forgot to thank Digby, dday and tristero for having me over at Hullabaloo. It was a pleasure to spend time there, as always. Thanks also to Batocchio, who did a bang-up job posting there with me.

Finally, it's been a while since I posted a poem. Here's one I like:

The Revenant by Billy Collins

I am the dog you put to sleep,
as you like to call the needle of oblivion,
come back to tell you this simple thing:
I never liked you--not one bit.

When I licked your face,
I thought of biting off your nose.
When I watched you toweling yourself dry,
I wanted to leap and unman you with a snap.

I resented the way you moved,
your lack of animal grace,
the way you would sit in a chair to eat,
a napkin on your lap, knife in your hand.

I would have run away,
but I was too weak, a trick you taught me
while I was learning to sit and heel,
and--greatest of insults--shake hands without a hand.

I admit the sight of the leash
would excite me
but only because it meant I was about
to smell things you had never touched.

You do not want to believe this,
but I have no reason to lie.
I hated the car, the rubber toys,
disliked your friends and, worse, your relatives.

The jingling of my tags drove me mad.
You always scratched me in the wrong place.
All I ever wanted from you
was food and fresh water in my metal bowls.

While you slept, I watched you breathe
as the moon rose in the sky.
It took all of my strength
not to raise my head and howl.

Now I am free of the collar,
the yellow raincoat, monogrammed sweater,
the absurdity of your lawn,
and that is all you need to know about this place

except what you already supposed
and are glad it did not happen sooner--

that everyone here can read and write,
the dogs in poetry, the cats and the others in prose.

Prayer for Big Sur

As some readers have keenly noticed, the image in this blog's header is from Big Sur, California. So is the image in the footer.

Big Sur is a very important place for this particular blogger. Today, all residents were ordered to evacuate because of the Basin Complex Fire that is burning out of control.

Please keep your fingers crossed that no more historic places, homes or -- especially -- lives are lost. And if you can help, please do.

Happy New Year

Hello from the Pacific Northwest, the new residence of Dover Bitch. After nearly two decades in sunny SoCal, DB finally packed up the jalopy and headed for wetter digs. I will definitely miss my friends and family there -- and more than a few restaurants -- but the move was for the better and I have no regrets at all.

Still feeling out the local press. Thank heavens for the Internet. I'm not sure right now if I'm more irritated at the NY Times for giving Bill Kristol a paycheck or for continually enticing New Yorkers to come out to Portland. But at least I can feel good about having dumped my LA Times subscription when they hired that imbecile.

Sorry I was gone for so long, but after taking a short time off for the move, it became hard to overcome the inertia. I decided to wait until 2008 to get this thing going again. As I've written before, the upside of being a Z-lister is having the ability to disappear every now and then.

I just wanted to make a mention of one thing before I start up again. DB will be in mourning this year for a family friend who wasn't around this holiday season. Christmas dinner was tough for me this year because we lost her to cancer. I learned she had it this summer and she was gone before Thanksgiving.

A week after she died, I discovered that she had known about it for nearly two years. She had no insurance and was saving up to get the treatment that would have saved her life had she been able to tackle it sooner. Obviously, I'll be asking questions to myself about this for the rest of my life. But one thing is certain: She should have been eating dinner with us this year and America needlessly lost a great soul.

Whomever we call president-elect in 2008, that person better be ready to fix a health care system that is, for lack of a better word, fucked.

Away

DB was lured out of vacation, but I'm truly taking time off indefinitely. Here's another poem until I return:

Away, Melancholy
by Stevie Smith

Away, melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.

Are not the trees green,
The earth as green?
Does not the wind blow,
Fire leap and the rivers flow?
Away melancholy.

The ant is busy
He carrieth his meat,
All things hurry
To be eaten or eat.
Away, melancholy.

Man, too, hurries,
Eats, couples, buries,
He is an animal also
With a hey ho melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.

Man of all creatures
Is superlative
(Away melancholy)
He of all creatures alone
Raiseth a stone
(Away melancholy)
Into the stone, the god
Pours what he knows of good
Calling, good, God.
Away melancholy, let it go.

Speak not to me of tears,
Tyranny, pox, wars,
Saying, Can God
Stone of man's thoughts, be good?
Say rather it is enough
That the stuffed
Stone of man's good, growing,
By man's called God.
Away, melancholy, let it go.

Man aspires
To good,
To love
Sighs;

Beaten, corrupted, dying
In his own blood lying
Yet heaves up an eye above
Cries, Love, love.
It is his virtue needs explaining,
Not his failing.

Away, melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.

Vacation

DB is taking a break from blogging for a bit. Not sure how long. Here's a poem:

A Statesman's Holiday
by William Butler Yeats

I lived among great houses,
Riches drove out rank,
Base drove out the better blood,
And mind and body shrank.
No Oscar ruled the table,
But I'd a troop of friends
That knowing better talk had gone
Talked of odds and ends.
Some knew what ailed the world
But never said a thing,
So I have picked a better trade
And night and morning sing:
Tall dames go walking in grass-green Avalon.

Am I a great Lord Chancellor
That slept upon the Sack?
Commanding officer that tore
The khaki from his back?
Or am I de Valera,
Or the King of Greece,
Or the man that made the motors?
Ach, call me what you please!
Here's a Montenegrin lute,
And its old sole string
Makes me sweet music
And I delight to sing:
Tall dames go walking in grass-green Avalon.

With boys and girls about him.
With any sort of clothes,
With a hat out of fashion,
With Old patched shoes,
With a ragged bandit cloak,
With an eye like a hawk,
With a stiff straight back,
With a strutting turkey walk.
With a bag full of pennies,
With a monkey on a chain,
With a great cock's feather,
With an old foul tune.
Tall dames go walking in grass-green Avalon.

Correction: Wrong McCain quote

DB saw this timeline of Friedman Units and decided to look for a missing McCain entry I blogged about here and at Hullabaloo. To my horror, I realized that I pulled the wrong item from my notes and used an incorrect example of McCain calling for more troops at a time which coincided with Michael Hirsh's appearance on CNN.

I linked to this appearance from McCain on Meet Tim Russert and assigned it the date of Nov. 12, 2005, the day after Hirsh's visit to CNN. That appearance was actually from Nov. 12, 2006.

I regret the error. However, I was certain that McCain had been saying the exact opposite of what Hirsh described the military was supporting at that time and I was not wrong about that. I simply pulled the wrong quote.

Here is the example I should have given, from Nov. 10, 2005, the day before Hirsh's appearance on CNN:

To enhance our chances of success with this strategy, and enable our forces to hold as much territory as possible, we need more troops. For this reason, I believe that current ideas to effect a partial drawdown during 2006 are exactly wrong. While the U.S. and its partners are training Iraqi security forces at a furious pace, these Iraqis should supplement, not substitute for, the coalition forces on the ground. Instead of drawing down, we should be ramping up, with more civil-military soldiers, translators, and counterinsurgency operations teams. Our decisions about troop levels should be tied to the success or failure of our mission in Iraq, not to the number of Iraqi troops trained and equipped. And while we seek higher troop levels for Iraq, we should at last face facts and increase the standing size of the U.S. Army. It takes time to build a larger army, but had we done so even after our invasion of Iraq, our military would have more soldiers available for deployment now.

Again, although the substance of my post isn't altered a bit by my mistake, I regret that I picked the wrong example from my notes.

The Arc of Icarus

This is going to be an extremely busy few days for DB, with another voyage scheduled later in the week. Just in case I won't be able to post anything, as usual, I offer a poem. This one is dedicated to Glenn Greenwald, whose excellent book A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency arrived in my mailbox this week. I'll write more about it when I finish reading it. So far, I find it to be as methodical and damning an accounting of the Bush administration's disastrous tenure as the best posts on Glenn's blog, Unclaimed Territory at Salon.

Here's a poem for all Dover Bitch readers, picked out for you, Glenn:

Musee des Beaux Arts
by W.H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Thanks, Hullabaloo

DB would like to thank Digby and all the Hullabaloo readers for the hospitality this week. It was definitely a tough assignment filling in for her.

I wrote earlier here that I would be "pinch-hitting," but in reality, I was "eating innings." And I had no idea I'd be following a live speech! I've compared Digby to Jimi Hendrix before... Now I'm reminded that nobody wanted to follow Hendrix on stage when he made his American debut as a superstar at the Monterey Pop Festival almost exactly 40 years ago (off by just one day.)

The reader comments were outstanding and illuminating -- part of the reason Hullabaloo is such a great blog. I must admit, I was a little disappointed that a Hullabaloo reader who took the name "Enoch Root" didn't seem to notice I gave one of my posts the title "Show some adaptability," which is pulled from the pages of Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. (One of the characters in that book is named Enoch Root.)

Again, thanks Digby and congratulations on the well-deserved award!

Pinch-hitting

DB's posting here has been pretty thin lately, sorry. With all the work and travel, there hasn't been much time to write a whole lot over here.

But this week things should pick up a little as I have the honor of supplementing the awesome work of Digby over at Hullabaloo. That is, if I can figure out how to publish over there correctly. When I do, I'll cross-post over here.

Also, I've been asked by TRex to help out with the Friday night Late Night FDL shift, which I have done the past two weeks. (Here's last week's.) I won't be there next Friday (on the road again), but after that I hope to post regularly.

UPDATE: Still working on getting a post up on Hullabaloo. I don't want to post it here until I can get it working over there. Hopefully, I'll get this straightened out soon. Sorry for the anti-climax.

What did I miss?

Quite a bit it looks like. It's amazing how much happens in one week these days. DB was without Neternit access or TV (more or less) while travelling. Every time that happens, I come home mildly optimistic... maybe things straightened themselves out while I was gone!

Nope. Going to be a while before I catch up, but I did see that Joe Lieberman is still insane. Thanks again, Connecticut.

Here's a post at Daily Kos, picking up on DB's ongoing frustration with Congress' absolute lack of political will when it comes to preventing Bush from unilaterally deciding to expand this terrible war to Iran.

Gone fishing

DB is taking off for about a week. First, I'll be subbing for the sensational TRex at Firedoglake tonight (here and here.) But after that, I'll be heading out of town. I'll try to post if I get a chance, but it probably won't happen until Thursday.

So here's another poem to keep you going:

The Fish
by Elizabeth Bishop

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung like strips
like ancient wall-paper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wall-paper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
- the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly -
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
- It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
- if you could call it a lip -
grim, wet and weapon-like,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels - until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

First 100 Days

One of the most interesting questions in last night's Democratic debate was posed by an audience member:

BLITZER: Let's go back to Jennifer.

VAUGHN: OK, Wolf. We have Ivy Merrill with us tonight. You are a substitute elementary schoolteacher.

QUESTION: Yes, I am.

VAUGHN: What's your question tonight?

QUESTION: Well, thank you for being here. Given that the circumstances in this country and in our world were essentially the same when you take office, what would be your top priority for your first 100 days?

Well done, Ivy. Too bad the answers and debate ended like this:

BLITZER: Senator Dodd, very quickly. We've got five seconds.

But it really is a great question. I'd like to know what readers and other bloggers would do in their first 100 days as president.

To get the ball rolling, here's what DB would do at the beginning of the Dover Bitch Administration:

Restore habeas corpus and all our Fourth Amendment and other Constitutional protections

Issue an Executive Order reaffirming that torture has no place in American military or intelligence operations

Close Gitmo and bring our processes back into the best traditions of American law

Ask my top military commanders for a plan on my desk detailing the U.S. exit from Iraq that I would expect to complete by the end of the calendar year with no permanent bases

Repair our armed forces and ask the Defense Dept. to prioritize our pursuit of al-Qaeda worldwide and our work in Afghanistan

Ask Congress to fully fund the physical and mental health care our returning soldiers require and courageously earned with their service

Restore our National Guard to its proper role protecting America at home and ask Congress to fund the restoration of its equipment and capabilities

Require DHS to outfit our nation's first responders within nine months with the interoperable communications systems they need to do their jobs well and with a minimum of risk to themselves

Permanently and immediately end the indentured servitude, forced prostitution and forced abortions in American territories like the Marianas

Create a pro-business, bipartisan task force to address practical, immediate and effective solutions to climate change, and a similar, ancillary task force to address energy independence

Declare the U.S. aversion to bilateral talks with other nations over

Demand aggressive action from the United Nations and countries and corporations with leverage in Sudan to put an end to the genocide, with a simultaneous commencement of a strategy involving possible intervention by NATO

Ask Congress to fully fund an intensive effort to round up the world's loose nukes by the end of the calendar year

After my first 100 days, I would roll up my sleeves and start working on these important issues, all of which will likely take an entire term to even make a dent in solving:

Sensible immigration reform

Rebuilding our country's education system with a focus on early childhood development

Fulfilling Bush's promise to rebuild New Orleans

Fixing our broken Health Care system

Replacing every unqualified hack at every level in every facet of the government who was installed by the Bush regime for ideological reasons

What would your first 100 days look like?

Steve Gilliard, 1966-2007

Often, there are days when DB thinks about closing up shop here.

When I used to play guitar, I was always amazed at how Jimi Hendrix could simultaneously inspire me and make me want to put my guitar away forever. What was the point of playing when the benchmark was so high?

I wrote that once to Digby, in reference to her blogging. Blogging is harder than it looks. It is especially harder than some bloggers in particular make it look.

Steve Gilliard was also like Jimi Hendrix to me. I'm not sure I have a bigger compliment in me than that.

Though there are reasons I sometimes think of hanging it up, every now and then -- often enough to keep me going -- things happen that keep me inspired to contribute, at least to try. Here is just one example:

Last summer, when Net Neutrality was coming up for a vote in corrupt Senator Ted Stevens' Commerce Committee, I had the pleasure of authoring a few posts at FireDogLake. I was trying to lead progressive people to come up with some creative analogies to help explain what the issue was all about. Then, to act locally to get the message out.

It was a thrill to have a chance to be a positive influence with regards to an important issue that means a great deal to me. It was an honor to be invited to post at FDL.

But the most satisfying moment, for me, was when I looked at the FDL homepage and saw one of my posts sandwiched between a post by Digby and another by Steve Gilliard. I sent Christy an email to tell her exactly that.

I'm not crazy enough to think that means I'm in either Digby's or Steve's league when it comes to blogging. I cannot tell you how impressed I am, having done this now as long as I have, with the amount of consistently insightful, well researched and truly powerful posts that bloggers like Steve Gilliard produced day after day.

It's a tremendous amount of work and you have to have a tremendous fire inside to do it. You have to really care about people to try as hard as Steve did to make this a better world.

Rest in peace, Steve. You are already deeply missed.

Happy Memorial Day

Apologies... DB went away for the weekend and didn't say goodbye or even post a poem. In the meantime, I see another exceptional piece about the importance of hate crimes legislation at Ornicus. (Thanks for the link, Dave.)

Here's a poem for Memorial Day. This is one of DB's favorites:

For the Union Dead
by Robert Lowell

Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam.

The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.

Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.

My hand draws back. I often sigh still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized

fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.

Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse,

shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.

Two months after marching through Boston,
half the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.

Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.

He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound's gently tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.

He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man's lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die--
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.

On a thousand small town New England greens,
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.

The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year--
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns . . .

Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his "niggers."

The ditch is nearer.
There are no statues for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling

over a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages"
that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
When I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.

Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessèd break.

The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.

The ancient owls' nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down,

and then a baby rabbit jumped out,
short-eared, to our surprise.
So soft!- a handful of intangible ash
with fixed, ignited eyes.

Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!
O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
clenched ignorant against the sky!

Can't we all just get along?

It was 15 years ago today that Rodney King asked that question. DB was at a friend's house.

The first night of the riots, the local news was showing maps of Los Angeles with little fire icons slowly moving towards my location. I called my future roommate to ask what was happening at the apartment in Koreatown where I would soon be living. Buildings were blazing out the window. I ended up staying with a friend in Highland Park for a few nights. Between the carnage and the curfew, where you were was where you ended up.

Eventually, we had to get used to seeing tanks parked at the 7/11 instead of cops. Store owners walking on their roofs with rifles. Strange days.

I went down to Florence and Normandie a couple years ago and it looked alright. I don't have much occasion to go there, but I had a work assignment that brought me nearby. It was hard to picture so much violence in that neighborhood at that point. I guess Los Angeles has come a ways, if not a long way.

I hadn't been in Los Angeles for very long when the riots happened. I had been living someplace where you knew just about everybody. The riots were an eye-opener for me in a lot of ways. The complete breakdown of order, now all too familiar, had previously been beyond my imagination.

Looking back, other than the heroes who saved Reginald Denny and whatever other acts of bravery took place over those insane days, nobody at all came out looking good.

President George H.W. Bush looked clueless, especially when he insensitively stated flatly that the system worked.

Mayor Tom Bradley was outraged at the verdict. But when the choke hold was banned, the police ended up with those steel batons and Bradley saw the injury rates steadily increasing during his tenure. He didn't act when he could have (and he was asked to).

Chief Gates presided over a department that allowed the officer seen flailing over King to remain on duty even though he failed a baton test only two hours earlier. And his department's relationship to its community was obviously beyond substandard.

Unless that community was someplace like Simi Valley, which brings us to the justice system. As bad as it was for the jury to let the cops off completely, it was the mindboggling decision of a couple judges to move the trial to an extremely cop-friendly town with an all-White jury. They almost couldn't have put the trial in a place more likely to return an acquittal.

The way the media edited the footage of the beating also set up false expectations in the minds of the jury.

And then there were the people of Los Angeles. As I wrote above, some were heroes. But many were not. Fifty-four were killed. Hundreds of buildings burned to the ground.

A decade later a friend called me from another state. He had been my next door neighbor and we were actually together when we saw the verdict handed down. I hadn't spoken to him in years. What he told me was shocking to me.

He said that he moved out of California because during the riots, while I was asleep in Highland Park, he was out breaking curfew. He was walking around looking to contribute to the carnage. He was a college graduate, out of steady work (the first Bush presidency was not friendly to the L.A. economy) and ready to explode. The riots pushed him to act out.

He didn't tell me what, if anything, he did while roaming. But when the fever finally broke, it left him wondering what kind of person he was and what living in Los Angeles had done to him. I can tell you what kind of person he was; he was good. It was all just too much for him and soon he was back in his home state, living at his parents' house.

The riots changed my world views as well. They certainly changed my life. The career path I had laid out for myself was shattered by the lack of faith I suddenly had in all these institutions.

Sometimes you look back and say "I can't believe it's been 15 years..." but this time, it seems like a lifetime ago for me. I remember thinking that the Bush presidency was a disaster. I had no idea that his offspring would eventually reach new depths.

UPDATE: Just found this excellent look at key figures in the riots and where they are today at TIME Magazine.

Labels

DB has (finally) finished retroactively adding labels to old posts, taking advantage of this new blogger feature. Apologies to Dover Bitch readers who use the RSS feed and have been seeing old posts appear in the recent post list.

I'm sure the arbitrary system I came up with isn't the best, but it will have to do.

Here's an awesome poem to make amends:

Danse Russe
by William Carlos Williams

If when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,-
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades-

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

Life

DB would write about how dark today's SCOTUS decision on abortion is...

But a new member of DB's family entered the world this morning, so we're celebrating life over here today.

Labels

The newer version of blogger allows me to add "labels," categorical links to the bottom of posts here. So DB is wasting time retroactively adding them to old posts.

The upside is that I'm finding stuff like this: Pay attention, Satveer.

Back from Europe

DB went to Europe for the first time since just before 9/11. What an excellent vacation.

I'll be back to blogging soon. Sorry for the cobwebs here.

In the meantime, here's a sensational poem by Archibald MacLeish

YOU, ANDREW MARVELL

And here face down beneath the sun
And here upon earth's noonward height
To feel the always coming on
The always rising of the night

To feel creep up the curving east
The earthy chill of dusk and slow
Upon those under lands the vast
And ever climbing shadow grow

And strange at Ecbatan the trees
Take leaf by leaf the evening strange
The flooding dark about their knees
The mountains over Persia change

And now at Kermanshah the gate
Dark empty and the withered grass
And through the twilight now the late
Few travelers in the westward pass

And Baghdad darken and the bridge
Across the silent river gone
And through Arabia the edge
Of evening widen and steal on

And deepen on Palmyra's street
The wheel rut in the ruined stone
And Lebanon fade out and Crete
High through the clouds and overblown

And over Sicily the air
Still flashing with the landward gulls
And loom and slowly disappear
The sails above the shadowy hulls

And Spain go under the the shore
Of Africa the gilded sand
And evening vanish and no more
The low pale light across that land

Nor now the long light on the sea

And here face downward in the sun
To feel how swift how secretly
The shadow of the night comes on...