Dear President Biden, I don’t think I’ve confessed to you before that I’m a magpie – I collect things, ideas, words, stuff that catches my eye, or my heart. Some of the physical bits are sitting on the kitchen windowsill or the mantel, but mostly the stuff gets incorporated into these letters or my art. …
Safety, love, and respect are not pies to be apportioned
Dear President Biden, I’m pretty sure it was Saturday, but it could have been Friday, and I was sitting in our living room looking out the window when the 73 bus passed by heading south on the arterial out front. This is not a remarkable thing in and of itself – buses go up and …
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Biden needs to stop mollycoddling Whites and gaslighting Blacks
Dear President Biden, I saw in the Washington Examiner that Friday morning you said the following on NBC’s Today show: “I don’t think America is racist, but I think the overhang from all of the Jim Crow — and before that, slavery — have had a cost.” What a shitty dance you all are doing. …
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Waiving patent rights calls for an awesome PR campaign
Dear President Biden, I’m so happy to see that you and your administration have come around to the humanitarian and highly practical decision to waive the patent rights on the coronavirus vaccines – well done! I know there’s a lot more wrangling, hashing out, and parsing of language that needs to happen before the thing …
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Better yet, have fun
Dear President Biden, This is a short little tale about a chance encounter with a boy with green hair, the difference between “good luck” and “have fun” and how much I still have to learn before I can reliably be a true advocate for the beloved community. Saturday morning Laura and I were circling back …
The Big Lies
Dear President Biden, It’s a small problem, but it’s one that I don’t think is unique to me (though how it manifests for me might be a tad unusual), which is the problem of not knowing exactly how to efficiently call out the “bad guys” anymore. It comes up every morning when I’m reciting the …
It’s ok to get off the damn hamster wheel
Dear President Biden, It might not rank in the tippy-top tier of Big Lies, but the tyranny of glorifying uber-productivity and over-extension is certainly right up there on the list. Moreover, I’m convinced that it’s purposely wielded like a cudgel to keep scads of us off-balance and mired in shame and self-doubt, constantly worrying that …
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Joe Manchin ~ ‘he’s got the whole world in his (grubby, power-hungry, little) hands’
Dear President Biden, At the end of his article about where things stand on the For the People Act (HR1/S1), Mike DeBonis quotes Senator Richard Durbin (Il) as saying: “I say a prayer every morning and evening for Joe Manchin.” Indeed. Joe M. may just become the most difficult person in my loving-kindness meditation not …
Not again….
Dear President Biden, Have you ever crossed a crow? For your sake, I hope not. Not only can such encounters be immediately scary and unpleasant, but if your perceived transgression is somehow bad enough or the crow you crossed happened to be in a particularly snitty mood, you could be in for months (and months) …
Hummingbirds and girl rockers
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 …