To: The Tool It’s clearly not a new phenomenon in either our longer-term collective history or when it comes to you and your base, but given the phenomenal degree of nutso-ness (a totally technical term, btw) I’m not finished unpacking mass hysteria. Here’s the definition that my Google algorithm delivers (from Wikipedia): “In sociology and … Continue reading Mass hysteria on steroids
Learning
The imperative of acing Electoral College 101
President* Trump, I know this is something of a theme by now, but I need to credit you with pushing me to learn all sorts of things that never would’ve occurred to me to learn pre-you. To be sure, I was probably exposed to much of it in a long-ago high school civics class, but … Continue reading The imperative of acing Electoral College 101
The Double V Campaign and déjà vu all over again
President* Trump, I’m reading Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi’s book Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning. I got through about 45% of Kendi’s How to Be An Antiracist before the library loan expired so I thought it would be a good idea to go … Continue reading The Double V Campaign and déjà vu all over again
A Labor Day reimagining of America
President* Trump, Happy Labor Day, you exploitative oligarch. I read an HP article this morning about your pipe dream of withholding federal funding from school districts that reform their US history offerings to more thoroughly address slavery and introduce systemic racism to students. The article included a Twitter exchange involving you and someone who goes … Continue reading A Labor Day reimagining of America
The wheels are coming off the Trump bus
President* Trump, Laura and I drove down to Portland this morning to see my mom and then back again this evening. Despite the masks and social distancing, we had a really nice visit and it was so good to see her – it’d been a long time. There weren’t nearly as many Trump signs along … Continue reading The wheels are coming off the Trump bus
.csv files are not my favs
President* Trump, I’m in sort of a mood this evening. I spent quite a lot of the day working on a project that involved sorting survey responses into categories in excel only to discover that when I saved the file, the file type only saves the last worksheet that was open. I was getting ready … Continue reading .csv files are not my favs
Getting to know our discomfort zones
President* Trump, I’ve been toggling back and forth between two books on my Kindle – Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be An Antiracist and Glennon Doyle’s Untamed. So far it’s been a pretty invigorating pairing as both authors are strong writers and they are adept at using first-person narrative and family stories to illustrate their … Continue reading Getting to know our discomfort zones
The fitness of friendliness
President* Trump, Remember I told you I was overwhelmed yesterday morning by having read a whole bunch of news articles and editorials about you? Well, the one bright spot was a WP article by Marlene Cimons about the idea that Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” natural selection theory wasn’t referring to an alpha male, might … Continue reading The fitness of friendliness
Do no harm
President* Trump, Exactly a month ago today a friend from church introduced several of us in our neighborhood group to the work of Meera Mohan-Graham, who describes herself as a QPOC photographer, artist, coach, and writer focusing on “giving voice to complex identities and journeys.” He shared a link to a blog post that Mohan-Graham … Continue reading Do no harm
Aspiring to “always make new mistakes”
President* Trump, I don’t know whether what I’m going to try and articulate today will end up being coherent enough to send you (which, really is sort of silly given how low the bar is to match your coherence when you’re at your absolute best, but I do have standards for myself and I’m not … Continue reading Aspiring to “always make new mistakes”