Loving kindness meditation for a new era
Dear President Biden, I didn’t think the Chauvin verdict would come so quickly and rather than pivot now, I’m going to go with what I drafted this morning before work. But please know, I am relieved and grateful for Chauvin’s conviction on all three counts. At the same time, please know, I grieve for young …
Continue reading "The brilliance of “Tired” by Langston Hughes"
Dear President Biden, This morning I started a cup of dried chickpeas soaking in water so I could make falafel for dinner tonight. It was to be a Sunday treat – “was” being the operative word here. After several hours I looked into the bowl to check on the plumping progress and noticed some weird …
Dear President Biden, Please, sir, please read today's WP editorial by Jonathan Capehart entitled Being Black in America is Exhausting. It should be required reading for all White people. That’s all I have to say today except to reiterate, please read it. May we all be safe to be.May we all be willing to radically …
Dear President Biden, For days now I’ve been thinking about the eggshell skull rule (or the brittle bone rule) and how one of Nelson’s many lame-ass defense arguments on behalf of his client, Derek Chauvin, is that it wasn’t Chauvin’s knee grinding down on George’s neck (spine, windpipe, carotid artery) for 9 minutes and 29 …
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 …
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 …
Dear President Biden, A couple of weeks ago I read something where someone was taking diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts to task. He was focused on the inclusion aspect and concluded that it’s beyond a bad idea to just invest in including more BIPOC and other varieties of under-represented people in the same old oppressive …
Continue reading "Transformational Inclusivity, Diversity, and Equity ~ TIDE"
Dear President Biden, Happy belated St. Patrick’s Day to you – I know you are super proud of your Irish roots so I hope you enjoyed the holiday yesterday. You probably know this, being both Irish and Catholic, but just in case you don’t, I learned yesterday morning that Patrick was born in Britain to …
Dear President Biden, What a frothy, weird, unsavory, hopeful jumble the headlines are this morning. We’ve got everything from the half dozen stories about the numerous ground-shifting positives of the American Rescue Plan to lamentations about the past year since the WHO declared the COVID-19 pandemic to stories about the GOP and their mouthpieces grasping …
Dear President Biden, I told you the other week about my now favorite podcast Hear to Slay by Roxane Gay and Tressie McMillan Cottom. Well, this past week R&T talked with a young Black activist named Amber J. Phillips and at the end of the conversation when they asked her how they and their listeners …
Continue reading "The revolutionary gift of seeing and naming"
The Biden Letters 