Rebecca Offendort

This morning I found my thoughts wandering to Rebecca, Who Slammed Doors For Fun And Perished Miserably. The poem by Hilaire Belloc began "A trick that everyone abhors / In little girls is slamming doors." It told how Rebecca Offendort was given to that furious sport, and how as a result she met a "deadful" end, unexpectedly crushed by a marble bust of Abraham.

I suspected the seed of a column in my remembrance of this morbid poem. I consulted Cindy Holly, Muse of Other, Muse of Few Words, and expert in unexpected memories. She said, "It has to do with something you've been obsessing about lately. Figure out what that is. Then write what the poem has to say about it." [Right: Cindy, as she appears every third week, if the moon is bright.]

The Iraq War, the "War on Terrorism", the fact that America is a world leader in incarcerations, the city's "proactive cleanups" of homeless encampments, and the fact that last Friday I was assaulted by a vigilante in Pioneer Square. Which could have to do with Rebecca Who Slammed Doors?

All of them!

Americans slam doors. We've slammed doors on lives in Iraq. We've slammed doors on freedom at home. We slam doors on the homeless by depriving them of their property without due process.

America, itself, is Rebecca Offendort, the wealthy banker's little daughter of Palace Green, Bayswater.

America loves to make noise and sound important wherever she goes, whether she's going in or going out. America slams doors so hard it scares everyone else, but she just giggles and goes on doing it.

The Committee to End Homeless in King County is Rebecca Offendort. The CEH says it's about ending homelessness, then makes sure there are no new shelter beds, ever. Then it shouts, "Chronic homelessness is the problem! Chronic homelessness is the problem!" It oversees the housing of whatever chronically homeless are housed, totals up how many and shouts, "We're solving the problem! We're solving the problem!" Slamming the door on the chronically homeless they missed and the "not chronically homeless this year but next year they'll qualify"-homeless, and creating the impression throughout the community that the problem of homelessness is all about personal failings, forget the working poor who just can't pay their rents.

Along with the Downtown Seattle Association, the CEH has created the atmosphere within which it's possible for the city to steal and trash the tents and bedrolls that homeless people need to survive, without stirring outrage in the rest of Seattle. Why should the rest of Seattle care that the rights of homeless people are being trampled in the course of "cleanups"? They're dirty, failed people, right? Why should they be secure in their property? They're a problem to be solved.

Just like I was a problem to be solved last Friday. I went to Saveway Market by Occidental Park to buy yeast. Not seeing any, and not wanting to interrupt the busy clerk attending to a long line, I left. A man followed me out and yelled at me to come over to him. It being Pioneer Square, I thought I was being mugged. I ran to Washington Street where there might at least be witnesses. He threw me to the street, pinned me down, and went through my pockets.

A witness did show. I don't know if I would otherwise have been mugged or not. My assailant stopped going through my pockets then and took me back to the store, where he told the clerk he'd caught a shoplifter.

The clerk was grateful to my attacker! At least, she was grateful until my pockets were emptied and nothing of hers was there. Then she was all smiles and told me, no, that man doesn't work here, and when I started complaining she said, "You have to go now."

Who needs to be free from violent attack when there's dirty poor people stealing for drug money everywhere?

Thanks CEH. Thanks DSA. Thanks America.

The poem says watch out for Abraham.
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For the sake of reference:

Rebecca

Who Slammed Doors For Fun And Perished Miserably

A trick that everyone abhors
In little girls is slamming doors.
A wealthy banker's little daughter
Who lived in Palace Green, Bayswater
(By name Rebecca Offendort),
Was given to this furious sport.

She would deliberately go
And slam the door like billy-o!
To make her uncle Jacob start.
She was not really bad at heart,
But only rather rude and wild;
She was an aggravating child...

It happened that a marble bust
Of Abraham was standing just
Above the door this little lamb
Had carefully prepared to slam,
And down it came! It knocked her flat!
It laid her out! She looked like that.

Her funeral sermon (which was long
And followed by a sacred song)
Mentioned her virtues, it is true,
But dwelt upon her vices too,
And showed the deadful end of one
Who goes and slams the door for fun.

The children who were brought to hear
The awful tale from far and near
Were much impressed, and inly swore
They never more would slam the door,
-- As often they had done before.

-- Hilaire Belloc [left]