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, …
Mending
Dear President Biden, I so hope you all are truly hard at work saving the planet – for reals. I know you and most other heads of state can’t make for real promises about cutting emissions and all the rest of it on your own, but somehow you all have to move beyond the “blah, …
The filibuster is not foundational to our democracy
Dear President Biden, Just in case it was confusing to you that we were able to make scrambled eggs without power on Sunday night, we have a gas stovetop, which Laura kindly lit for me (if I absolutely have to, I can strike a match or use the flicker thing to ignite the gas stove …
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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 magical leaf
Dear President Biden, Last night when I took Buddy for his evening constitutional I had the great good fortune to see a gorgeous medium-small oval-shaped reddish-orange-ish leaf dangling about five feet from the tree limb from which it likely fell and hovering about a foot above the scrappy lambs ears underneath said tree. Such sightings …
We can’t live together because we don’t really want to
Dear President Biden, Happy New Fiscal Year’s Eve! And nice job getting the stopgap-funding bill signed before we all turned into pumpkins. I know it was just a can kicking exercise and we’ll be facing the same demonic BS from the GOP on the debt ceiling in October and a real funding bill will have …
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Hard, hard choices
Dear President Biden, This is a hard letter to start. Most of me wants to deflect and focus on something current and removed that deserves hefty measures of righteous anger. Mitch and the GOP mobsters are generating an endless supply of such things so it wouldn’t be hard to pivot to a rant about the …
“DON’T GIVE UP”
Dear President Biden, I didn’t tell you (why, I don’t know), but I took the latter part of this past week off from work and it was lovely. Laura, dog-Buddy, and I went on around-town-excursions every morning for three whole days, two of which were to Discovery Park. I’m pretty sure I’ve told you about …
This shit is real
Dear President Biden, I’m not sure what exactly tipped my brain over into that space where it’s acting like a tongue that can’t leave a rough tooth alone, but just now the phrase “existential dread” landed like a lead balloon and won’t leave me alone. Actually, I doubt it was any one thing having just …