Dear President Biden, I’m not sure if it’s because I no longer have a daily practice of writing to the Oval Office occupant or if I’m just a lot busier than I was during the full-on DJT nightmare or if the ongoing toxic miasma that’s our news cycle is just too hard to bear, but …
Tilting at a pretty silly windmill
Dear President Biden, Yesterday I read the WP’s 2022 preview – the collection of mini-essays by a handful of reporters and editorialists wherein they attempt to read the tea leaves and predict the big ticket issues for the coming year. Here’s the list of topics (in order): The Pandemic; Climate Change; Elections; Food; Pants; Dogs; …
A New Year haiku
Dear President Biden, Happy New Year to all of US! Here is a haiku to ponder as we make our way headlong into the new year: Twenty twenty-two;same old, same old, or can webreak free into love? May we all fall safely into new ways of being together.May we conjure joy every single day.May we …
Unpacking US style democracy (and enfranchisement)
Dear President Biden, It seems apropos to be winding down 2021 still stuck in our house due to Covid and the weather. The case count for King County is super high at 599.5 per 100,000 and the side streets here in Seattle are still impassable if one doesn’t have all-wheel drive. Plus, it’s not as …
Continue reading "Unpacking US style democracy (and enfranchisement)"
The end of our system’s lifespan is nigh
Dear President Biden, We’re starting Day 3 of our weather-related, housebound holiday vacation and as grateful as I am that we have a house in which to be bound and that the power has somehow stayed on throughout, this is not exactly the winter break we’d envisioned. Fortunately we got two hikes in on Christmas …
Touching base
Dear President Biden, Thank you for the two semi-personalized responses to my letters your people sent recently. Somebody had to dig a bit to get the salutation right since I don’t think I’ve clicked on that field at all in months and months. The especially specific salutation was the main clue that the responses were …
“all women and men are created equal”
Dear President Biden, If Twitter is to be believed it would seem that Fox News outlets reporting on your addition of “women” to your recitation of the “created equal” part of the preamble to the Declaration of Independence had completely lost their shit over it. Maybe there’s an outlet somewhere where that was true, but …
World-tilting invisible history
Dear President Biden, I think I told you a few months ago that I was reading James Loewen’s book Lies My Teacher Told Me, a world-tilting treatise on how American history is so thoroughly white- (and male-) washed as to wholly misrepresent how our country came into existence and the forces that shaped and continue …
Please don’t fall on the filibuster sword
Dear President Biden, I swear I didn’t use the words “surreal” or “unreal,” or anything at all like them before the young woman I was speaking with yesterday said that it’s feeling to her as though we’re living through a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction sort of dystopian time. And then later in the day, Laura said much the …
Continue reading "Please don’t fall on the filibuster sword"
Ominous omicron
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 Biden Letters 