Dear President Biden, Is it just a coincidence that the WP published exceedingly little MLK-related material yesterday or was it a conscious tactic to duck the fact that we are again (or really, still) battling over the systemic racism (and thinly veiled greed) that’s driving the GOP’s efforts to roll back voting rights, state by …
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 …
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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 …
Soft-pedaled toxic masculinity is still toxic masculinity
Dear President Biden, First of all, congratulations on getting the infrastructure bill passed and signed. Hopefully you all will get the other one done in quick order and then buckle down and deal with voting rights and democracy saving measures since without an at least semi-functional democracy, none of the rest of it matters much …
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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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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 …
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 …
Here we are
Dear President Biden, I’m not sure I can muster even a decent haiku under the current circumstances, but here goes: Inside my cocoonI feel safe. And powerless.But out is scary. Indeed. The sky is blue, the wind is calm, the traffic is quiet this morning but we are a world of mounting, creeping, lurching, hurtling …
Circus-like excrement
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 …