Dear President Trump,

I’m going to go with some bits of good news today since it really is out there and we need to not lose sight of it in the midst of all the crappy changes you’ve been putting us through all these long months.

Starting close to home, yesterday in my clinical team meeting the young woman who now runs the meetings as part of her training opened with something like “Hi guys, thanks for being here.” Innocuous enough but she uses the “guys” language a lot and it always grates on me. I don’t know if I visibly shuddered but the man sitting next to me responded with “Or how about gals, there are more women here than men and “guys” is sort of going with the patriarchy, don’t you think?” It was wonderful and the young woman rolled with it just fine and said he had a really good point; she used “everyone” instead. The other very nice thing on this same general topic is that Harvey W was arrested today. Of course he spent no time in jail, but he was cuffed, had to surrender his passport, and is wearing an ankle monitor. A banner day, really!

Another cool couple of things has to do with guns. First, in her weekly substantive letter our Mayor informed us that we now have a city ordinance requiring that guns be stored safely in people’s homes and imposing penalties if guns are stolen or involved in accidental or intentional shootings. The second thing regarding guns is really about how guns are invoked culturally. One of my major indulgences is a subscription to Dwell magazine. I love it. Mostly. The architecture is incredible and it’s getting more socially conscious, but annually they have a series highlighting up and coming young designers who they call “The Young Guns.” It’s bothered me for years and this evening I was thinking I finally needed to email them to tell them they should change it when lo and behold there was a letter to the editor about it in this month’s edition! The editor responded that they’ve heard from lots of people with this concern and are planning to change to some as-yet-undetermined catchy alternative.

If you don’t do something really nasty, scary, or egregious in the next 12 to 24 hours, I’ll send you some more good news tomorrow.

May we be safe to relax a little sometimes.
May we be happy to notice the positives that are happening.
May we remember it’s healthy not to have tunnel vision on either all bad or all good stuff.
May we keep peace front and center and not let you slide us into war.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson