Dear President Trump, This morning I had nada for you. All I could muster was the date and the salutation – I was so blank I thought I’d probably end up just writing a haiku. Well, you’re in luck because that was the then but now I have not one thing to tell you about, … Continue reading “Fixing” curves and bringing history into focus
White supremacy
We’re in trouble when our enemies have more substance than our loves
Dear President Trump, OMG has time gotten wonky. I thought I had opened the tab holding W. B. Yeats’s poem “The Stare’s Nest By My Window” days and days ago, but it was just yesterday morning that it was the featured ‘poem-a-day’ poem (an interesting choice for Mother’s Day). It was a very long, very … Continue reading We’re in trouble when our enemies have more substance than our loves
Different sorts of mothers and warriors
Dear President Trump, In her WP editorial, Margaret Sullivan warns the media not to buy into your propaganda aimed at normalizing the covid-19 death toll, first outlining the false dichotomy between a closed economy being bad and an open economy being good before she goes on to say: “Then there’s Trump’s latest trope: “We have … Continue reading Different sorts of mothers and warriors
Hope and a big gamble
Dear President Trump, There’s nothing like starting off a letter to you still teary and feeling verklempt after reading a sweet article about President Obama. Guess what he did yesterday – he called three Chicago schoolteachers and had video chats with them to express his appreciation for them and their work. They were so beyond … Continue reading Hope and a big gamble
I beg your pardon, but inequality is not a mere distraction
Dear President Trump, I have a hyper-local vignette and a bigger picture take for you for today. I’m not sure whether I’ve mentioned this before, but pre-you, Laura and I played Scrabble most weeknights. However, once you were installed as POTUS, it wasn’t until covid-19 slowed everything down and eliminated my commute time that it … Continue reading I beg your pardon, but inequality is not a mere distraction
Bad politics kill
Dear President Trump, Throughout this primary season our daughter has been texting with Laura about the candidates, about how the process is going, how the issues are (and are not) being covered, and who we are voting for and why (I get the texts about recipes and airline schedules). A couple of weeks ago she … Continue reading Bad politics kill
Imagine…. if there were no International Women’s Day
Dear President Trump, Well, where to start on this 110th anniversary of International Women’s Day (111th if we count its initial instantiation in 1909 in NYC as National Women’s Day)? There are so many relevant directions one could go, but I think I’ll start by telling you that Friday night when we went to the … Continue reading Imagine…. if there were no International Women’s Day
History and privilege
Dear President Trump, Yesterday morning I read poet Lisel Mueller’s WP obituary first because it was at the top of the stack (Katherine Johnson had just died and so hers hadn’t yet made it to the main page) and about midway through there was an interesting quote in reference to her poem “Happy and Unhappy … Continue reading History and privilege
Daily Trump Letters 