Dear President Biden, There’s just so much. So, so much. And it’s pretty distressing/depressing knowing that what I’m personally aware of from the news and from simply existing is just the barest tip of the proverbial iceberg. Do you sleep at night? At all? I don’t know if it’s because there’s so much heaviness and …
Hello ~ reality is intruding!
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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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 …
The System continues to work as designed
Dear President Biden, I’m still checking in with the news a couple of times a day, but I’ve been making the check-ins briefer in an effort not to let myself get lost in the various mucky rabbit holes of our body politic. We’re a flipping mess. And yes, we would absolutely be more of a …
The embrace of anti-truth
Dear President Biden, The other day I registered my dismay at your American exceptionalism rhetoric and the toxic masculinity that’s laced through such posturing and today I will register my dismay at what’s happening several notches up the toxic masculinity continuum. As you may have guessed, I’ve been reading about the House vote to censure …
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, …
Victim-blaming and victim-claiming
Dear President Biden, I don’t know yet whether there’s something substantive linking the two stories that have formed a mash-up in my brain or if it’s just my propensity to see connections between random-ish things. I’m hoping that by writing about them, I’ll figure out why my brain is so insistently juxtaposing them. The two …
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 …
The Biden Letters 