Favorite poem meme

I am, by my own description, mostly poetry-blind. I can't read verse for more than ten or twenty lines without my attention wandering; my brain overemphasizes the line breaks, or something, and I just run off the rail. I can get around this by listening to poems, especially when sung, but broadly the pleasures of poetry are not mine.

Still, there are some that even I can see the virtue in. The fifth stanza of William Blake's best-known poem, for instance, which packs an entire theodicy into four lines:

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Or the conclusion of Roger Waters's "Watching TV":

And she is different from Cro-Magnon man
She's different from Anne Boleyn
She is different from the Rosenbergs
And from the unknown Jew
She is different from the unknown Nicaraguan
Half superstar half victim
She's a victor star conceptually new

And she is different from the Dodo
And from the Kankanbono
She is different from the Aztec
And from the Cherokee
She's everybody's sister
She's symbolic of our failure
She's the one in fifty million
Who can help us to be free

Because she died on T.V.

And I grieve for my sister.

But for today, I'm going with "Eden", by Natalie Merchant:

We are the roses in the garden, beauty with thorns among our leaves.
To pick a rose you ask your hands to bleed.
What is the reason for having roses when your blood is shed carelessly?
It must be for something more than vanity.

Believe me, the truth is we're not honest, not the people that we dream.
We're not as close as we could be.
Willing to grow but rains are shallow.
Barren and wind-scattered seed on stone and dry land, we will be.
Waiting for the light arisen to flood inside the prison.
And in that time kind words alone will teach us, no bitterness will reach us.
Reason will be guided another way.
All in time.

But the clock is another demon that devours our time in Eden, in our Paradise.
Will our eyes see well beneath us, flowers all divine?
Is there still time?
If we wake and discover in life a precious love, will that waking become more heavenly?

Of course, given the day

Happy 200th birthday to the most influential short-story writer in American history.

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil! —
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted —
On this home by Horror haunted — tell me truly, I implore —
Is there — is there balm in Gilead? — tell me — tell me, I implore!"
Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

One statement to Obama

Over at The Reality-Based Community, a correspondent of Mark Kleiman's mentions that she may get to shake Obama's hand during the inaugural ceremonies tomorrow. She asked Kleiman for suggestions of what one sentence she should say to the newly minted president.

Kleiman's responses are good (including the amusingly self-serving but still valid "Mark Kleiman knows how to have half as much crime and half as many prisoners") and thoughts about the way to make such a statement or question effective.

I will confess that if I had ten seconds to talk to Obama, I'd probably be self-indulgent, too: "The dirty fucking hippies have been right about every single thing for the last decade; you might try listening to some of them." But I might just echo what I said to my senators during the Social Security battle three years ago: "Clout brings clout. Get things accomplished and you can get even bigger things accomplished as a result."

And you?

The sound of the shovels must never stop

One of the terms which has thrust itself into the political discourse in recent months is "shovel-ready"--that is, infrastructure or other governmental construction projects that can start hiring and spending immediately. This concept is important because the Stimulus Package needs to start as soon as humanly possible; projects which will take six months of planning before laborers can be hired are important, too--after all, someone has to do the planning, and there are a lot of out-of-work engineers, too. But the greatest benefit is seen once projects start hiring the serious, less-skilled workers in great numbers. This concept shows up, among other places, in Krugthulhu's "What Obama Must Do: A Letter to the President", in last week's Rolling Stone.

Traditional WPA-type programs — spending on roads, government buildings, ports and other infrastructure — are a very effective tool for creating employment. But America probably has less than $150 billion worth of such projects that are "shovel-ready" right now, projects that can be started in six months or less. So you'll have to be creative: You'll have to find lots of other ways to push funds into the economy.

He goes on to point out that there are other infrastructure projects (the upgraded electrical grid, universal broadband) and direct aid to the states for unemployment and other benefits that can consume stimulus money.

However, there's one thing I haven't seen anyone mention. For as long as I've been following politics beyond the top-level of elections, there's been a steady drumbeat of "public schools don't have enough money". My home town (lovely Yonkers, NY) came very close to completely canceling all extracurricular programs and the music and art programs about three years ago. Public schools strike me as an almost infinite potential recipient of money, and much of it can go to construction projects and low-skilled workers. Besides the fact that there are a lot of un- or under-employed people with valid teaching certificates, you don't need certification to be a classroom or library assistant, or a cafeteria monitor, or facilities staff. Increase the amount that schools can spend on lunches and improve the quality. Buy computers for entire classes. Similar spending can be pumped into public (and even private) colleges.

And putting money into the schools for warm bodies and equipment, as opposed to facilities, is infrastructure support; an entire generation of students are going to leave education and hit the job market every few months. The spending will help now; giving students better school experiences will help the world a year from now, and a decade, and a generation.

ETA: The new president's first radio address (24 Jan 09) included this specific bit of spending:

To ensure our children can compete and succeed in this new economy, we’ll renovate and modernize 10,000 schools, building state-of-the-art classrooms, libraries, and labs to improve learning for over five million students. We’ll invest more in Pell Grants to make college affordable for seven million more students, provide a $2,500 college tax credit to four million students, and triple the number of fellowships in science to help spur the next generation of innovation.

So, yay for first steps.

Measuring the circle

We shall pick up an existence by its frogs. Wise men have tried other ways. They have tried to understand our state of being, by grasping at its stars, or its arts, or its economics. But, if there is an underlying oneness of all things, it does not matter where we begin, whether with stars, or laws of supply and demand, or frogs, or Napoleon Bonaparte. One measures a circle beginning anywhere.

—Lo! Charles Fort

I've been thinking for many days about the phrase that sums up the era now ending. I think I have to go with "They created a lawless prison.".

Even in a courtroom that was closed to the public and the press, and with the detainees allowed access to the proceedings only by telephone, the court could find no reason to hold these men. This decision makes it clear once again that even with presumptions in its favor, the government cannot muster the barest evidence in support of its arbitrary detentions. For seven years, the Bush administration sought to avoid the courts because it had no evidence and sought instead to create a lawless prison.

Let me tell you, it was a tough choice. Another leading contender is "cock-headed man-whore":

Not only is Jeff Gannon not interesting, the whole sordid crendentialling of Gannon isn't itself such a big deal, except as it is symptomic of the way the White House uses their power and your tax dollars to replace real journalists with friendly political operatives.

Or perhaps "whiz with":

While running for president, John Kerry ordered a cheesesteak with Swiss cheese. The sane response to that fact is, of course, "who cares?" The media response was to mock Kerry for ordering the "wrong" cheese. Supposedly, it reinforced his "elitist" image. Kerry's cheesesteak order continues to draw media attention years later.

During that same campaign, President Bush told Pennsylvania voters "I like my cheesesteak 'Whiz with,' " which The New York Times dutifully reprinted, spelling out for readers the contrast Bush sought to draw: "Mr. Kerry made the mistake of ordering a cheese steak last August and requesting Swiss cheese -- when the choices included Cheez Whiz, American and provolone -- for which he was widely lampooned."

But Bush was apparently lying. A less credulous reporter than those employed by the Times -- Kathleen Carey of the Delaware County Daily Times -- did some investigative reporting and found that Bush actually orders his cheesesteaks not with Cheez Whiz, but with American cheese.

I've mentioned before the principle of "the self-similarity of the wingnut function"--that one sees the same patterns reflected at every scale of the Republican crime that is tomorrow being moved out of, at least, the Oval Office. The same disrespect for truth, for law, for decency, the same shamelessness and monomaniacal pursuit of power is the driving force at every level, from the black sites, kidnappings, and torture-murders at the macrocosm down, through hiring an actual, literal prostitute to feed softball questions during presidential press conferences, to the microcosm of lying about how one ordered a sandwich.

The other unifying factor of the Bush administration is that the public and private apparatus of the civil society stood meekly aside and let it happen. We have been sleeping. We have to wake up.

Wake up and get to work. Because, you know, the world isn't going to fix itself.