Frederick Douglass

Happy birthday, you! The first summer I heard The Violent Femmes I also visited the house you died in. I can see how you would have liked being so close to our nation's capitol, but damn, Anacostia is far away from the reach of our government, save the National Monument service, which was thankfully in full effect around your house. Fuck Robert Frost. I remember getting off of the subway and waiting at the Main Astoria bus terminal with my sister, feeling all white and vulnerable all of a sudden, finally able to attribute some of my DC summer wetness to nervousness. To my credit it wasn't only racial tension that was scary that summer, seeing the fireworks on the capitol lawn in 2002 was scary if you in any way believed Al Qaeda was real and wanted to kill you. They tested water bottles at like, the National Portrait gallery. Paranoia on the Potomac produces fear from Foggy Bottom. Chaos in Chocolate City confuses Christian Coalition kids from Kansas. I'd say it's insular in DC, but I think it's more insular within DC. Most of America's problems are pretty well on display in some form or another, plenty of inspiration for a Mr or Ms Smith, should our fictions ever decide to save us.

Anyway. I always liked your beard, Mr. Douglass. It's a legitimation of everything you did and said on par with changing your last name to 'X'. Disowning our aesthetic standards in favor of your own conclusions, making sure every child who sees your picture immediately knows you tell people what it's about. I would write more but I'd rather use this morning to rewrite an essay, changing it's subject matter from some vague disowning of America on my part (I'm not alienated, America's just busy right now, is all) to something more tangible and therefore, uh, likely to get me a decent grade. Defiance is for weekends and kids with fake IDs.





Neat hat, guys.





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