Dear President Trump, The Poem-a-Day this morning is by Todd Fredson and is entitled [Erratum: Found Ecology Piece], the brackets being part of the title (you can read it here if you want: https://poets.org/poem-a-day/ for today’s date). It’s a short poem and seems simple enough, but it’s had me thinking hard all day. It’s nominally … Continue reading Revolutionary evolution
Inclusivity
Revolt until we get it right
Dear President Trump, Remember how the other day I offered a modest re-write of the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence, swapping in ‘people’ for ‘men’ and ‘we are endowed by Creation’ for ‘ they are endowed by their Creator’? Well, I’d like to move us on to the next major sentence fragment. It … Continue reading Revolt until we get it right
‘Truthbusters’
Dear President Trump, You are actually way ahead of me on this, but it finally dawned on me that while those who are testifying before Congress during the impeachment inquiry are doing so under oath, the people questioning them are not doing so under oath. I don’t believe you’ve framed the issue this way; instead … Continue reading ‘Truthbusters’
No, “men” does not now mean “all people”
Dear President Trump, Did you tune in this morning to Nunes’s screed about the impeachment inquiry into your Majesty? I couldn’t bring myself to listen and only watched the live closed-captioning for a few minutes – where do you find these louts? Over the course of the hearings thus far it’s almost been funny watching … Continue reading No, “men” does not now mean “all people”
Early voting rights and lack thereof
Dear President Trump, Yesterday I told you that I want to refocus my attention on the work we’ll need to do after you’ve finally high-tailed it out of office. We have such a tremendous amount of very, very hard work to do together to close all the loopholes you’ve managed to exploit and to do … Continue reading Early voting rights and lack thereof
What did you do? What will you do?
Dear President Trump, Well, today marks the 1,000th consecutive day that your inbox has received a letter from me. Next Saturday will mark the 1,000th consecutive day that I kept copies of the letters, but I think today is the real anniversary. Would I have taken on this daily correspondence to you if I’d known … Continue reading What did you do? What will you do?
Fresh eyes and fresh beliefs
Dear President Trump, Sometimes the Twitter-verse does weird stuff with time like it did yesterday when Laura excitedly read me a Tweet about 19 African American women having been elected into judgeships in Harris County, Texas (Houston area) and how this means that now 25 of the 75 judges in that county are African American … Continue reading Fresh eyes and fresh beliefs
Language matters ~ a lot
Dear President Trump, The other day Laura played me a song from Brittany Howard’s new album Jaime. The song is “13th Century Metal” (see Genius Lyrics). It’s Howard’s riff on what we need to do to come out of our own 21st century Dark Age. She promises to think before she speaks and to be … Continue reading Language matters ~ a lot
HHS evils weren’t enough to prevent GOP losses
Dear President Trump, I feel like I should go to Target and buy up a bunch of lipsticks to send you so you can try to pretty up the pig that, to you, is the lost Kentucky Governor’s seat. There’s no amount of spin that’s going to convince any sentient being that you all are … Continue reading HHS evils weren’t enough to prevent GOP losses
Doing the work with eyes wide open
Dear President Trump, A couple of weeks ago the WP ran a long piece about Ibram X. Kendi and his latest book “How to Be an Antiracist.” I’ve kept the tab to the article open on my computer this whole time, returning to the final paragraph every other day or so as something of a … Continue reading Doing the work with eyes wide open