Dear President Trump, In a way it’s good you have an obnoxious last name that connotes spiteful dominance because if I was writing “Dear President Smith” or “Dear President Jones” every day to someone who aspires to spiteful dominance, I think it would be even harder to stay polite. Your name, though, automatically pulls in … Continue reading What is in a name?
Month: June 2018
COAL → diamond → CURE
Dear President Trump, When we teach veterans mindfulness skills so they can better cope with stress, pain, depression, and PTSD we address both specific strategies (e.g., mindfully attending to one’s in-breath and out-breath and corralling one’s attention back to the breath over and over) and the cultivation of certain attitudes towards oneself and one’s experience. … Continue reading COAL → diamond → CURE
Thin white skin
Dear President Trump, Yesterday when Nina Totenberg quoted the R.E.M. line “it’s the end of the world as we know it” in reference to Justice Kennedy’s retirement announcement, I started crying. It does look like it’s the end of the world as we know it and I don’t feel fine. You, however, must be beyond … Continue reading Thin white skin
Swallows, roosters, and “Darth Becky”
Dear President Trump Sunday we took the dogs to the Union Bay Natural Area on Lake Washington. About a quarter mile into the walk one of our dogs apparently got too close to a swallow’s nest because suddenly two swallows came at me, screaming and darting around my head. I was furthest away from where … Continue reading Swallows, roosters, and “Darth Becky”
Odious, despicable, hateful
Dear President Trump, I’m struggling today. I’m at a loss as to how to respond to what you are doing to people, to our country, to the world. This isn’t a new experience, by any means, but the Supreme Court’s decision upholding your Muslim travel ban in the wake of our country separating children from … Continue reading Odious, despicable, hateful
We voted not to spit in your food
Dear President Trump, Laura’s dad was an old guy in the early 1990’s, but he had a pin that said “I’m surrounded by idiots.” I wish we still had that pin. Even more, I wish we still had Laura’s dad. He and I got along really well. We’d sit quietly for hours in his screened-in … Continue reading We voted not to spit in your food
Grappling with bias yet again
Dear President Trump, The other day I was stuck behind a midnight blue Nissan I thought was really beautiful and thought, ‘I know, along with green cars, I’ll send blessings to ones I think are pretty.’ I immediately recoiled from my own mental process. Sending nice thoughts to green cars still seems ok as I … Continue reading Grappling with bias yet again
The pieces
Dear President Trump, I need to address three (related) topics today so I am going to allow myself way more than my usual 2500 characters for this letter, which of course doesn’t matter to you because you never read them. First, there is the issue of whether punishments fit crimes or don’t fit crimes. Regardless … Continue reading The pieces
Woke choice
Dear President Trump, The day after the summer solstice always feels bittersweet to me. It means the official start of summer, but it also means we are no longer gaining a couple of minutes more light each day and instead we start losing minutes of light until we get to down to only seven and … Continue reading Woke choice
“Why are you lying about it, sir?”
Dear President Trump, What happens now? Are you going to start detaining entire families in cages? Although that would be marginally better than sending parents and children to separate cages hundreds of miles away from each other, it is still a sick, cowardly approach to the humanitarian crises asylum seekers and immigrants from Mexico and … Continue reading “Why are you lying about it, sir?”
Daily Trump Letters 