Dear President Biden, Things have been full on both at work and with volunteer activities so it’s tempting to skip writing to you today, but given what’s been gnawing at me, I figure I better go ahead and tell you about it. You see, I started realizing several months ago that I have a very …
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 …
The Big Lies
Dear President Biden, It’s a small problem, but it’s one that I don’t think is unique to me (though how it manifests for me might be a tad unusual), which is the problem of not knowing exactly how to efficiently call out the “bad guys” anymore. It comes up every morning when I’m reciting the …
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 lives we are all entitled to.”
Dear President Biden, This morning on our dog-walk-in-the-rain we took a lap around the Sandpoint Country Club to the east of us, an old haunt that we used to frequent almost once a week pre-COVID for it’s lush landscaping, sweeping views of Lake Washington, and sedate drivers. About halfway around the loop I pondered aloud …
