Dear President Biden, I’m reading Alyssa Rosenberg’s WP editorial about how many of us are apt to engage in highly problematic hero worship when it comes to elected officials. So far she’s already taken apart the ‘Cuomosexual’ phenomenon, which I’m grateful to say I somehow completely missed, as well as the Ruth Bader Ginsberg ‘Notorious …
Power and freedom
Dear President Biden, I’m not sure what happened, but it seems like the Twitter-verse went into a time warp because a piece in the Atlantic by Ibram X. Kendi from two years ago appeared in Laura’s stream this morning. She didn’t realize it was old and pulled it up for me to read, which was …
That sort of day
Dear President Biden, Happy (Observed) Juneteenth, a worthy federal holiday, for sure. I am, however, holding out for voting day being designated as a federal holiday as well as passage of a robust version of HR1 and the John Lewis Voting Act, so please don’t let me (and democracy) down on these things. And really, …
Crows, flickers, and White obliviousness
Dear President Biden, Since this is going to be a bit of a lurch-y letter, I’ll just let you know up front that I’ve got a couple of bird things to tell you about and then I’m going to switch over to swimming pools. First, remember how the mean crow swooped me on my morning …
Re-membering
Dear President Biden, A friend of mine texted yesterday morning to let me know that he’d been thinking of Joe Manchin in response to my “Joe McConnell” flub rather than about you. While I do think it’s reasonable to harbor concerns about why you, too, keeping pressing for the completely unrealistic unicorn of bipartisanship, it …
‘Divide and Conquer’ ~ The American Way
Dear President Biden, If you are keeping up with what’s going on in the world, you probably did check out the clip of The Linda Lindas’ performance of Racist, Sexist Boy that I told you about yesterday since it was splashed all over the place, from NPR to the Washington Post. If you did, then …
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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Magpie words
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. …
Strides aren’t enough; we need to hold out for leaps
Dear President Biden, I’m rather in a funk today. It’s not a big deal at all – it’s just what happens when I need to buckle down and start drafting a paper that doesn’t feel straightforward to frame. I spent much of the day picking through Google Scholar trying to get a better handle on …
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The weight of history
Dear President Biden, Do you know what “the weight of history” means? I thought it was a super common idiom that must have a fleshy backstory, but Googling it didn’t yield much of anything. Maybe it’s too basic for anyone to bother unpacking, but it’s been bugging me. I can only speak from my position …
The Biden Letters 