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 …
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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Worth doing
Dear President Biden, It had been coming on for a bit, but I finally hit a pretty low point yesterday evening as I considered the enormity of what we’re facing and how, even at the micro-relational level, people can’t seem to get along. All day I’d been hearing stories about people yelling at those they’re …
May we not run out of AMOC
Dear President Biden, Had you heard of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) system before last week? Or, to be fair to the rest of us mere mortals who aren’t oceanographers or presidents – how about before you elected to be elected to serve as America’s Safeguarder-In-Chief? Well, before I made myself read the WP …
Rounding error, walking intersections, and new fires
Dear President Biden, For several days I’ve been saving two ideas from two very different sources that on their faces don’t seem to marry up especially well. I’ve kept them perched up here at the top of the Word document where I write my letters to you and I’ve been scrolling past them the last …
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We share this place
Dear President Biden, So, we topped out at 100 yesterday. The forecast for today is 99 but since yesterday was only supposed to get to 91, I’m thinking we’re likely to blow past 99. We’ll see. Before I got up this morning Laura did all sorts of things to mitigate the heat build up – …
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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The vaccine bone’s connected to the carbon bone…
Dear President Biden, You know that song about how the toe bone is connected to the foot bone? It’s variously called “Dem Bones,” “The Skeleton Song,” or “Dry Bones”. Well, back when we lived in Albuquerque and had our most wonderful dog, Barbara the Doberwoman :), Laura used to sing that song to her with …
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Reality nuggets
Dear President Biden, Lately I’ve been hanging out at work (via Zoom-like platforms) with way more young people than old people. I’m humbled and grateful to say that they’ve become my teachers. So many of them are living out loud and questioning what is and why is it is that what is is the way …