the quiet poetry of action

i talk a lot about the desperate state of our nation.

and while it may be therapeutic to vent about the eye-popping stupidity afoot in the land, it's hard to imagine that howling at the moon is an effective agent of change.

so i recently made a donation to the democratic national committee. it felt good, like a small but smart investment. or maybe like a single brick in a low wall between reason and chaos.

it felt so good, in fact, that a few days later i made a similar donation to the campaign of darcy burner. burner, in a local '06 congressional race, lost a by a razor-thin margin to bush sock-puppet dave reichert. the '08 season is well underway, and burner is back to try again.

this time she wins.

on an unrelated note, this morning an escalade blew past me at the ballard bridge. the guy had to have been going 20 over the limit, which is a bad idea approaching the grating on a drawbridge. he began to slide toward oncoming traffic when he hit the bridge deck, and barely recovered in time to avoid a head-on collision.

heading down the approach on the other side, there sat one of seattle's finest on a motorcycle. brake lights were coming on all around, but the escalade never slowed until the cop pulled him over.

to sum up, the guy in the huge suv thought the law didn't apply to him, and he didn't change his behavior after putting other people at risk. he would've kept right on going if the cop hadn't been there to stop him.

pure poetry.