Dear President Biden, It’s been quite a week, hasn’t it? Did you have a nice Thanksgiving last Thursday? I hope so. And did you observe National Native American Heritage Day on Friday? I hope so. As for us, the less said about the whole Thanksgiving deal the better. I will tell you, though, that 3 …
The System continues to work as designed
Dear President Biden, I’m still checking in with the news a couple of times a day, but I’ve been making the check-ins briefer in an effort not to let myself get lost in the various mucky rabbit holes of our body politic. We’re a flipping mess. And yes, we would absolutely be more of a …
The embrace of anti-truth
Dear President Biden, The other day I registered my dismay at your American exceptionalism rhetoric and the toxic masculinity that’s laced through such posturing and today I will register my dismay at what’s happening several notches up the toxic masculinity continuum. As you may have guessed, I’ve been reading about the House vote to censure …
Circling back to what matters
Dear President Biden, Busy, tired, uninspired – I’m sure there’s more to it, but that trio of words sound good together and do a decent job of summing up why it’s been almost a week since I’ve written to you. Busy, tired, uninspired, and well, the overwhelm associated with living in this weird situation where …
Letting go of “both sides” for good
Dear President Biden, I do sometimes have original thoughts. Or at least I think I do. Mostly, though, my best thinking is reactive – or perhaps if I’m giving myself grace, my best thinking is responsive. Whichever adjective I go with here, what I’m referring to is my propensity to find the gaps in arguments, …
Victim-blaming and victim-claiming
Dear President Biden, I don’t know yet whether there’s something substantive linking the two stories that have formed a mash-up in my brain or if it’s just my propensity to see connections between random-ish things. I’m hoping that by writing about them, I’ll figure out why my brain is so insistently juxtaposing them. The two …
Scramble and Scrabble by candlelight
Dear President Biden, Yesterday the power went out and we ended up making scrambled eggs and playing Scrabble by candlelight (and a battery operated camping lantern). It wasn’t an especially strong wind gust – just 40 knots or about 46 MPH that caused it – but somehow it made the lights toggle on and off …
A walk in the woods
Dear President Biden, I was hoping to keep this letter on the positive side of the scale and maybe in the end it’ll have tilted that way, but reading yesterday about the woman who was raped on a train in Philadelphia while onlookers snapped pics and recorded video but did nothing to help her, has …
Radical resets needed
Dear President Biden, So I think this past week was the longest no-letter-to-a-president interval since I started writing to DJT in February of 2017. I have been thinking about you and about what’s going on (and what’s not going on) but haven’t been able to settle on any one or two things enough to write …
A hollow gesture
Dear President Biden, It was so moving to read your proclamation designating October 11, 2021 as Indigenous People’s Day this afternoon – reading it brought tears to my eyes. But now I feel snookered. I thought at first that you were getting rid of Columbus Day and replacing it with Indigenous People’s Day and that’s …
The Biden Letters 