Dear President Biden,
I know there are dozens and dozens of scary, weighty things going on in the world and maybe I’ll feel like treading into some of that territory later today, but this morning I just want to tell you about the hummingbird I saw yesterday. Hummingbird sightings are fairly common around here, especially in spring/summer when lots of stuff is blooming. This hummingbird, however, wasn’t going after the usual flowery fare, it was fixated on the giant fir tree two yards over. It was too far away to really get a good look at what exactly it was doing, but it seemed to be poking its little pointy beak in and out of the branch tips, moving clockwise around the perimeter of the tree for several minutes before it finally flew off. I’m pretty sure it was eating, though I’m not sure what it was eating.
I just Googled “hummingbird fir tree” to see if I could find out about this odd behavior and aside from a random blog entry by someone from Canada talking about how they removed their hummingbird feeder but saw a hummingbird alight in a fir tree for a nanosecond, there was nothing suggesting that sometimes hummingbirds get sustenance from fir trees. They do apparently eat tiny insects so maybe that’s what it was doing or maybe it felt like a pollen treat was just the thing. I don’t know, but it was really pretty cool to have my understanding of what hummingbirds “do” get shaken up like that.
The other cool thing I’ll leave you with is a link to The Linda Lindas performance of their original punk song “Racist, Sexist Boy.” It’s another great example of shaking up usual expectations since the band consists of four teenage girls (they describe themselves as a half Asian/half Latinx band) very loudly and very angrily calling out racist, sexist boys in the middle of a library. It’s awesome.
Things are changing.
May we all be safe to express our fury at injustice.
May we all be willing to give girls space to tell us what we need to hear.
May we all respect strong voices and strong messages wherever they originate from.
May those who need to accept that things are changing, hurry up already.
Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson
The Biden Letters 