An Open Letter to President Trump

Dear President Trump:

Because we are hearing so much about making America great again, I thought that you  might welcome a review of the wisdom of your peers, and so have assembled memorable observations from previous American presidents who have, in fact, helped to make America great. 

It is appropriate to begin at our country's metaphorical front door with the Statue of Liberty's invitation to the world on Liberty Island: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

Presidents of both parties have embraced the invitation and vision of a multicultural nation that has defined the United States and made us admired around the world. Our success and prosperity have been based on our gradually expanding beliefs and experiences that have defined our country, at least until your administration, as a place of welcome and diversity. Here is how you you make America great again.

George Washington: "Observe good faith and justice toward all nations."

Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

John Q. Adams: “If conscience disapproves, the loudest applauses of the world are of little value.”

Abraham Lincoln: "Our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all . . . are created equal."

and

"The strongest bond of human sympathy . . . should be one uniting working people of all nations and tongues and kindreds."

WilliamMcKinley: "The mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation."

Franklin Roosevelt: "We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out."

Harry Truman: "Whether discrimination is based on race, or creed, or color, or land of origin, it is utterly contrary to American ideals of democracy."

Dwight D. Eisenhower: "You do not lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership."

Also from President Eisenhower "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

John F. Kennedy: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

Jimmy Carter: "We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams."

George H. W. Bush: "We don't want an America that is closed to the world. What we want is a world that is open to America . . . Leadership to me means duty, honor, country. It means character, and it means listening from time to time."

Barack Obama: "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America: there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and a Latino America and an Asian America: there's the United States of America."

    Two additional observations from leaders in your position: Thomas Jefferson wrote: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupt absolutely." Abraham Lincoln reminded us that "If you want to test a man's character, give him power."

    President Trump, you have been given power and are being tested every day. Your legacy right now is of a bombastic, self-serving demagogue corrupted by the illusion that you have absolute power . . . that you, as you have said, "Rule the world." That is how you will be remembered, with a footnote that you destroyed the reputation of the United States of America and were responsible for the decline of the United States in influence and prosperity around the world.

    Sir, think about it. You can still save your reputation and make America great again.

    Sincerely,

    Kathleen Coskran

Perfect Day

It was cold, but the sun was shining and the cat was on her lap, comfortably on her lap, asleep with that faint snoring/purring sound it had mastered.

Cats know a lot about breathing, she wrote in her journal, the first sentence for the first day of the week, for Monday, a day of invitation and possibility, a whole day, a whole week, a whole life ahead. It was a day with the gift of waking up, filling the cat's dish, making coffee, pouring the cereal and beginning.

"Every day is a beginning," she said, out loud. Nobody heard, not even the snoring, purring cat on her lap heard.

"But I heard," she said, not realizing her stream of thoughts had escaped, had been spoken aloud. She should have known. It was one of those facts, one of the gifts of living alone. Everything in the open, even the daily minutiae of the moment--the pleasures--warm cat in her lap; first day of the week, the possibilities ahead. 

And the problem: what to do today? 

She knew Monday's answer, always the same: Rejoice in the moment, in the day, celebrate the gift of being and being enough.

And so she did.

Morning Has Broken

         The baby was crying, the phone in her pocket trembling and ringing with that too loud ring tone she'd chosen, and the toast was burnt, stuck in the old toaster . . . again. 

     Well, first things first--she unplugged the toaster before the smoke alarm could go off, silenced her phone, and walked, no, ran down the hall to the baby's room. It was too early for an infant to be up and crying but apparently little Rosie had not yet perfected or enjoyed 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep

    Which of course affected her mother--and now her father because Maria slapped the bedroom door--hard--as she passed; it was her way of letting Norman that it was a new day, time to rise and shine, which she shouted just as her hand hit the door. 

    She knew he hated those words--I'm not shining for anyone--but, as she had pointed out more than once, it worked--better than any alarm clock. . . a bit of irritation gets you right up.  

    Rosie was standing in the crib, one hand holding the railing, the other reaching out in anticipation of her mother's sudden appearance, their early morning meeting choreographed down to the last detail: baby cries, smells toast burning, mother slaps the bedroom door, instinctive rumble from Dad, Mother appears, scoops up baby, both bodies warming the other, and they're off . . . morning has broken and a new day begun as Rosie snuggles her head into her mother's chest so they can both slow down and breathe together.

Fact of the Day

     "Look at this!" he said in that voice of awe and amazement that she had come to expect the moment she heard the soft rip of a new page in the Bird-a-Day calendar.  

    Look at this was his predictable burst of wonder at the infinite variety of just one species of the creatures that inhabit our planet. Today's "this" was a Stellar Jay, solemn and regal on a pale, un-leafed birch branch--sharp beak, perpendicular brown head feathers, and a plumb body clothed in feathers that radiated a deep shade of blue. 

    "Beautiful," she said, automatically, because it was true, always true, and this bird was particularly beautiful, and perfectly named--the Steller's (because it was stellar?) Jay was indeed regal and deeply hued. "I'd love one of those feathers,": she said. "It's blue, my favorite color--I could wear it in my hair."

    He smiled knowingly at that. "Those feathers aren't really blue."     

    "What! Look at them. Of course they are!"

    "No," he said. "No blue bird feathers are truly blue. They don't contain a blue pigment, not an all."

    "Right," she said, "so I shouldn't believe my lying eyes?"

    He smiled, nodded, clicked something on his damn phone (adjective mentally supplied by her ever time he raised the damn thing to prove a point). "'The vibrant blue color we see is actually a result of structural coloration where the microscopic structure of the feather scatters light and amplifies blue wave lengths. The feathers themselves don't contain blue pigments.'"

    "That's ridiculous," she said.

    "Yep," he said, "and true. The actual pigment in a so-called blue feather is a shade of brown."

    "And I suppose the red-headed woodpecker's feather is actually . . . what? Green?"

    He laughed, shook his head. "No, a red feather is red because of the red pigment in the feather."

    Which made no sense--a red feather was really red, but a blue feather wasn't blue? Her instinct was to continue to argue the point but, after thirty years of these conversations, she knew that he'd looked it up. and he believed Google (powered by an invisible, untraceable AI--too formidable opponent at 7 am on a Wednesday morning).

    "Hmmm, interesting," she said. "Coffee's ready."

    "Great--thank you."

    She almost pointed out that black coffee was really orange because of the way the molecules diffused light or some such thing, but restrained herself, (admirably in her opinion), and they both went back to their phones and the morning paper--which, or course, isn't a paper at all, but, according to AI, is a series of "radio waves that carry data generated by antennae which create oscillating electrical and magnetic fields that propagate through space."

All is Well

     It was a still morning, a quiet morning, and, most likely, a too early morning when she got up, but she didn't look at her watch or a clock. She just got up.

    Got up naturally, she liked to think, evidence she was tuned in, perfectly tuned it to her own circadian rhythm.

    People were not meant to live by machines she had said to Phil just the day before, and thought of it again when she went to bed. She even got up, unplugged the clock and put her watch in a drawer, then went back to bed, to see what would happen when she depended only on natural rhythms, the harmonies of her own body in the physical world it lived in.

    She would be quick to emphasize the "physical" experience of her world when she explained it to Phil, so he couldn't/wouldn't assume she was off on some new quest--which is what he would call it.

    Well, yes, she'd had brief flirtations with Buddhism, the Tao, and even Jainism, but had come to think, no, to know that each day, each hour, each minute, each moment of the movement and rhythm of planet Earth was all she needed.

    The stars still visible in the early morning sky also had their stories, their planets and rhythms, their days and nights--of course, they did--but she was here, on earth, her home, complicated enough for one lifetime of exploration, discovery, and love.

    Celebrate this day! Now and here!

    "So easy," she said aloud.

    "Too easy," the dark voice deep inside replied, automatically, unbidden, like a machine always dialed to Negative.

    But this morning she laughed, switched off that internal machine, and stood at the window a moment longer, in love with the last of the stars fading in the morning sky. It was more than enough. No explanation needed. It was enough.

Here Comes the Sun*

     It was as if she'd never seen it before, the sky before dawn, before the yellow ball rose, arc by arc, pulling day after it, the new day, that globe of possibility, with the gift of hope, of intimation of what could be next. The celebrated sunrise was clear proof of God, or, at least, the possibility of God, through the gift of everyday wonder, light that appeared unbidden, every day.

    So, she knew she should celebrate the sunrise, the promise kept every twenty-four hours but now, today, before the inevitable happened again, before it appeared, all she could see or think about was the beauty of the purple sky--not dark with the black of night or the soft blue of day, but a brightening hint of what was coming. It was as if the sun behind the curtain was preparing the daily gift of light just for her, new light, dependable and inevitable, the next verse of everybody's song.

    Yes. That's it. The beginning of a song, a story, a poem; a day's slow dawning that felt more like love than tragedy, more like possibility than despair. It was a gradual beginning, from the barely conscious moment after sleep until she became herself again, fresh from the mystery, from unremembered dreams that were as real as life when they happened, that had been an event and were now a mystery.

    Really? Who knew? Or needed to know? Nobody.

    So, again, she woke into the new day, an everyday day, a day that was enough, that was just right that was fine, and she said, as she always did, "It's all right."

*With a bow to Paul, George, and Ringo 

(Google says John wasn't on that track)

 

       

Bird Tango

It was a yellow bird, a bird with obvious discernment and taste, evidenced by its portrayal on an azalea bush. Artistic, even: the deep pink of the azalea announcement of spring emphasized by the bright yellow bird. Obviously a boy bird because the males are always brighter, more deeply hued, right?

Well, she should have paid attention . . . somewhere. Her first thought which made her laugh. Always her first thought: the litany of her ignorance, Should have . . . should have . .. should have ... Where should she have paid attention? Nobody learned bird names in school, not even in high school science.

What about college? Avians of the World? World Fowl in a college syllabus? Nope. Not even Common American birds and fowl.

So it wasn't her fault. She'd have to buy a bird book herself to get the information. The damn Bird a Day Calendar he gave her offered no information, just pictures of boy birds. But what about Google--best friend Google?

AI Overview: The Common Yellowthroat is a small warbler, typically 4.3-5.1 inches long. Males are easily recognized by their bright yellow throat, black mask around the eyes and face, and olive-brown upper parts. Females and immature birds lack the black mask and are more olive-brown overall.

Of course. The females are more olive brown overall. Which meant that the birds featured in the Bird-a-Day are all male, not just the Yellowthroat. 

Figured.

So now what? Toss the calendar? Make her own female bird a day list, focusing on salient facts, nest building, egg incubation, endless sitting, insuring the survival of the species, while the male just brings food and wards off predators.

       Just?

       Oh.

       Okay. 

       It takes two, like so much in life.. . .takes two to tango . . . even for a common yellow bird.

Holy Gift

         "They buried the pope today--the Pope among the People. That's what they called him: Pope Among the People."

    She doesn't respond, doesn't even look up. He has the feeling, again, of being alone in the room, of talking to himself, or, worse, of being a man with nothing to say, nothing of interest or import, nothing that helps.

    She's not doing anything, not that he can see, not even filing her nails--one sign of her obsession or is it depression? He doesn't know. He's stopped trying to figure it out or take responsibility for it . . . and then realizes he had hoped that the funeral for the Holy Father, the Servant of Servants, the Pope, the Pontiff, carried in the pomp, in the quiet, in the peace and the calm of the whole procession (with the inevitable taking heads, of course, but he'd muted the sound.) They just watch the slow procession together, and then it's over.

    "Pope among the People, gone and buried," he says.

    "Like everybody else," she says.

    The sound of her voice is so surprising, so unexpected, that his head shoots up, but, luckily, he stifles his urge to shout, You're talking! Say more!

    Grace slows him and he says, "Yes." One word. Simple and true. Yes. She's seen it all, the voices from the screen muted and, apparently, the voices in her head also silenced. She watched the slow procession of His Holiness to the Basilica in silence.

    "Yes," he says again, and she says it too, her "yes" clear as an echo, a "yes" that raises his hopes, that makes him smile, reach over, brush her hand--nothing too fast, too hard or exuberant, just a touch. He needs a human touch and maybe she does too. It's enough for now.

    And tomorrow? Tomorrow will be fine--the holy gift of a new day.

 

Just an Expression

     Lola was hungry.

    Again.

    Her mother had said, more than once, "You must have a tape worm."

    Those words meant no sense to her--tape worm--a worm that was taped to her stomach so her breakfast went straight to the worm rather than to her always empty stomach? The thought was disgusting. It was so confusing and repulsive that she googled it. "Tapeworms are flat, parasitic worms that can live in the intestines of animals, including humans. They can grow to be over 12 feet long and live for years."

    She stopped reading, slammed her phone down, then picked it up just as quickly, then stopped. What to do? This was an emergency, right? A worm in her body 12 feet long and she barely four and a half feet tall! Yes, it was an emergency. She remembered her mother saying, "Your growth spurt is late," in a tone meant to be reassuring. Lola had forgotten all about it, but the reason was now clear.

    She had a tapeworm. A paralyzing thought. The worm was eating her food, growing longer and longer as she failed to grow at all. She panicked, felt worse, hungrier than ever, and dialed 911, which she knew is what you do in an emergency. She gave her address, stuttered something apparently unintelligible, but did manage to say, close to tears, that, yes,  it was an emergency, an emergency, put down the phone, and stepped outside to wait.

    By the time the ambulance arrived, her stomach was a hard ball of worry. She stood up, just as her mother appeared on the front porch and two men hurried up the sidewalk carrying a stretcher.

~

    What happened next was worse than a 12-foot tapeworm in her gut: two guys with a stretcher shaking their heads and laughing, laughing . . . at her. Her mother red-faced, angry, not laughing. Her mother was explaining and apologizing, glaring at Lola, saying something about just an expression, and then everybody looking at her, the men smiling, her mother tightlipped and waiting, Lola knew, just waiting for the men to take their stretcher and leave.

    When they finally did go, smiling and shaking their heads, her mother began with the predictable, "You have some explaining to do . . . " but then paused, took a breath, and said, "Perhaps I should first explain what 'just an expression' means."

    Just the grace note Lola needed.

The Game

     "Any thoughts about the Great Horned Owl?"

    It was one of those questions, his daily effort . . . or impulse . . . to get a rise out of her, to start the day off with curiosity for the natural world he claimed, but she knew, from long experience, the goal was to emphasize her ignorance, or, perhaps, her inability to care all that much.

    "No," she said this time, and repeated what she always said when he asked her thoughts on the so- called natural world. "We live in a condo."

    "But where is the condo?"

    "In Minneapolis, the city of Minneapolis."

    "And where is Minneapolis?"

    At first she was sucked in to answering the endless and, now predictable, stream of questions that sounded mildly challenging at first blush, then expanded from the challenging to the impossible and, finally, to the ridiculous.

    But she was done with playing the game, his game. Finished.  She had ignored him for three days, but once he was in the grip of his endless persistence, he broke her resolve every time.

    "So, where is Minneapolis, if not in the natural world?"

    "It's a city! Steel and brick buildings,  paved streets."

    "Which aren't natural?"

    "They're manufactured, constructed. Trees are natural! Grass is natural!"

    "Oh, so no trees in Minneapolis?"

    Bait and switch, reverse in midstream, his dependable tactic in the daily game . . . she assumed it was a game . . . they'd been playing too long to stop now

    So there was no way to stop it unless . . . unless she asked the next question, anticipated the barrage of objections that would follow her half-hearted attempt to out-play him with her wit, with her quick repartee, to throw out something more ridiculous, with less connection or relevance to the harmless statement that set the whole thing in motion.

    "Any thoughts about the Great Horned Owl," he said, again, as she knew he would.

    "Yes, of course I do," she said. "They taste best over ice cream, one scoop of vanilla, or chocolate if you have it. One scoop only with finely chopped Owl," she said slowly to  emphasize the validity of her response, and to appreciate his sudden silence, his slow response which gave her time to bag up the compost, drop it in the compost bin, step around him, and drive off into the sunset, a winner at last.

  Boobie Breakfast

"Who names . . . or named . . . the birds?"

"What?"

"I mean, really...Nazca Boobies! I understand the scientific names for categorization, organization, all that stuff that scientists think they need and can agree on, but the common name . .  . Sounds like NASCAR."

"Well," she says, patiently, but with the trace of a smile that hints at her pleasure, or, is the word 'enjoyment,' of his fascination, bordering on indignation, at the daily revelation of a bird species neither of them has ever seen or heard of. The Blue Boobie back in March was memorable, but today's Nazca Boobie is her favorite so far....and only five days before the end of the year--no doubt there is significant significance there. "Well," she says again, "it was probably somebody local to their origin who named it, and the name so perfectly described it, that it caught on."

"But 'boobie!?' Sounds like a joke," he says, then laughs. "It is a joke! Have you seen this bird?"

She is vigorously stirring the oatmeal to keep it from burning, but turns toward him to feign interest in the boobie. "Hmmm," she says, then swivels back to the oatmeal before it is scorched.

"That hardly says it."

"The oatmeal is ready," she announces, but he is now too deep in the history of boobies, muttering something about the origin of the word, then he proclaims, loudly and triumphantly, "The name booby was based on the Spanish slang term bobo, meaning "stupid" because the booby bird had a habit of landing on board sailing ships where they were easily captured and eaten."

Her immediate instinct is to sling a spoonful of hot oatmeal if not the whole pot on the boobie standing next to her, but grace, or a vision of the mess it would create, stops her in time. She dishes up two bowls, hands one to her favorite boobie, and the day begins, again,  without a bobo incident. 

Blowing in the Wind

     The wind was up. 

    Blowing.

    Relentless.

    "Gale force," she said.

    "Worse," he said.

    "How could it be worse than gale force?"

    "Well, easy," he said. "Just look out the window." Which she had been doing for the last ten minutes, watching as the wind spewed up dirt in the bald patch of grass, then picked up that scourge of urban life, the plastic bag, spun it up, up, up, then hurled it towards them, and slammed against the picture window, a giant, a misshapen white eye on the glass. They laughed and backed up.

    "Quit your staring," she said.

     "Careful, Mister," he said. "Remember you are only a bag."

    "Yes," she said, "and not even compostable.

    The bag slid an inch down the window, as if in agreement, then a sudden gust lifted it up, up, then a shift in the wind pasted it against the window again, inches from her face. The implication was clear: Take that--which made her mad at first, genuinely angry until she started to laugh, more than a chuckle, but, thankfully, short of hysteria. The bag trembled on the window pane, but didn't really move. The force of the wind kept it plastered it there, inches from her face.

    "That's the nastiest bag I've ever seen," she said.

    "Hmmm, a bag with personality," he said, instinctively accepting the assignation of conscious behavior to a thin piece of white plastic with three red concentric circles.

    "Well, I wasn't thinking . .. . "

    "It's okay," he said. "The wind will take care of it."

    She took a step back, to show that she was abandoning the top-of-her-head, first-thing-in-the-morning conversation and wondered, with a whiff of compassion that bordered on interest, how he would extricate himself from the pointless morning banter.

    "Blowing in the wind," he crooned. "How many roads must a bag blow down before you can call it a bag."

    "And how many bags must rise up to the roof before they are sent to the trash," she sang.

    "The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind."

    "The answer is blowing in the wind." They hit the last note perfectly and laughed together, also perfectly, a gift of their long partnership.

Cake Eaters

     She leapt up at the sound of the timer, the insistent buzz of the damn timer that came with the stove, with the apartment, with the cheap rent for a cramped efficiency in a "good" neighborhood. Well, her dad was happy about that--a safe place for his little girl, he'd bragged, probably was still bragging about how he had found the perfect flat for his baby girl, et., etc. Well, at least she couldn't see or hear him.

    Not yet, at least.

    He was the reason for the timer, the cake in the oven, the probably bad-idea cake in the oven. What was she thinking? She could have bought a cake, an already baked and frosted cake, or a pie--he loved pie--but there were no pies or pie mixes at the corner store, just Betty Crocker's Triple Chocolate Fudge cake mix. And, of course, who remembered frosting? She had nothing to decorate it with . . . and no candles either.

    Well, she'd say, "It's the latest thing----better for you, purer, stripped to the essential . . ." and here she'd practice the dramatic pause . . ."chocolate cake baked just for you!"

    He valued (1) efficiency and (2) bare essentials. "Strip to the bare essentials," was his favorite phrase, repeated ad nauseam, so that was the welcome she was preparing, a bare essentials cake that merged perfectly with her favorite phrase, Let them eat cake.

    She was her father's daughter, after all.

Touch

     The old dog was sick. Obviously. He--it--was walking too slowly, too tentatively, as if it were ill or lost or depressed. She smiled at the thought. Depressed? Can dogs be depressed? Sad? Do they have feelings?

    Of course they do. She remembered King, her brother's dog, and the way it mourned when their old cat died. A cat! The rival pet in the household, the animal King had stalked, barked at, pushed out of the way at the water bowl. Well, King didn't really push that old cat, but cozied up uncomfortably close, a tease rather than an assault.

    So maybe this old dog, mutt of some kind, was recovering from something rather than being actively ill . . . or rabid. Funny how the threat of rabies sprang up so quickly--her mother's fear still embedded fifty years later.

    Well, the dog slouching up the sidewalk was not rabid: no foam oozing from its jaw, no swaying hips, just a sad, slow one paw in front of the other progression. She'd never seen a dog, or any animal for that matter, move so slowly, so deliberately.

    So, she should do something, go to it, offer some comfort. She knew the power of touch, the power of welcome as well as anybody, probably better than most, so she popped the brake on her chair, and wheeled down the ramp to the sidewalk.

    The dog heard her coming, stopped, lifted his head to look. She waved, then laughed at herself--who waved to a dog?

    Well, the dog saw her. He had stopped, was waiting, obviously waiting, for her, and when she got to him, he lifted his great head for her touch.

    Just what they needed, both of them.

Gift

We were sitting there, at the window, facing east, as the sun rose, slowly, but without hesitation. First the stripe of red light, a promise that expanded, widened, faded to pink, then pale blue, but still slowly, so slowly. . . then faster than you'd expect, clear evidence of the earth spinning, moving, making the morning, making a new day.

"Here comes the sun," somebody says. You say, because it is true, the only thing that is happening, the only thing that matters. Here comes the sun, on time, on schedule, steady and faster than you knew, a line of light expanding to an arc, half-circle, rounding, nearly complete, then, there it is! 

The sun!

The sun rose again and still rises as the earth spins, with movement barely visible, until it  becomes a child's drawing, a round yellow ball above the tree tops--and, it's all right, it's all right. It's just a day, a new day, an ordinary day.

A gift every day.