Dear President Trump,

Last night Laura and I had our evening chores (including my letter to you) done early enough that we could take a walk while it was still light out. We piled the dogs into the car and drove up to the odd gated-yet-open community at the top of the ridge that overlooks Lake Washington in Northeast Seattle. There’s a nice loop around the neighborhood that passes between the homes and the golf course that rings much of that area.

At the beginning of the walk we noticed a couple standing in their yard looking out to the Southeast and following their gaze, we saw the oddest rainbow either of us has ever seen. It was a stubby little thing extending pretty much straight down from underneath a large cumulus cloud. There was no arc coming out of the top of the cloud, just a rainbow leg sticking out of the bottom of it. It was gorgeous. The path of the walk took us in the opposite direction, but Laura and I both kept turning around to see if we could catch another glimpse of it.

A little later at home I must have been in a fanciful mood because some of the clouds over the Olympics looked quite like a couple of unicorns for a bit. Laura had dropped the dogs and me off at home and was at the grocery so she was spared having to pretend she was seeing what I was seeing (a frequent occurrence). But still, it was cool to see a weird rainbow and some weird cloud unicorns within an hour of one another.

The cloud unicorns reminded me of the 2005 YouTube sensation “Charlie the Unicorn.” Laura loves Charlie and used to have a Charlie T-shirt (it got too ragged to wear) so I actually wish she’d been home for us to tease about poor grouchy Charlie. Do you know the story? You should. Basically Charlie is cajoled into going on a fake trip to “Candy Mountain” by two shyster unicorns who end up trapping him in a cave and stealing one of his kidneys. I had to Google CTU to remember some of the details and the name of the creator (Jason Steele), but boy-howdy did Steele and those two shyster unicorns presage how you and your campaign hoodwinked your base into thinking you were going to shower them with endless demand for coal while you stole one of their lungs and served it to them on a “dismantle the ACA platter.”

May our kidneys and lungs be safe.
May we be happy when the universe shows us cool things.
May we not let you gut our healthcare system to score political points.
May we all make peace with the need to change how we source our energy.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson