8/18/2021

My Dear Friend & POTUS, JRB,

            Do you remember that ad with the lady in the bathtub saying, “Calgon, take me away?” I feel like that right now & I’m sure you do, too. It just feels like too much. In my case, it’s the smoke that I want to get away from.

Doing math is my get-away. I find it soothing to think about something that is totally logical, has a clear answer & lets me indulge myself in putting order on things. For my husband, it’s the Spelling Bee in the NYT. He likes to be a “genius” which means he has identified almost all of the words that can be made out of 7 specific letters in the alphabet, including the  or 2 “pangrams,” that contain all of the letters. Yesterday it was “plebian.” What do you do to preoccupy yourself when events of the day become too complicated to fathom?

            Is it true that you are “resolutely focused” on getting our troops out of Afghanistan? If so, perhaps the situation there is not preoccupying you today. I’m afraid that my reading of my suite of newspapers has left me quite unsettled. In the NYT, Malala writes about her fear of a return to a religious-only, single-sex education which will prevent girls from realizing their full potential. In the WP, Elaine Shannon points out that the Taliban is running the world’s largest narco-state which benefits from sowing poppy seeds and chaos. In the G, Jason Burke explains that there are 8 to 10 thousand foreigners with guns in Afghanistan, many of whom see the new rulers as sell outs because they are motivated by the idea of “jihadi Salafism”. Taliban soldiers shot live ammunition at protestors in Jalalabad & I worry that the death toll of protestors in Afghanistan will mount quickly. A messy situation with no easy answers!

            The Myanmar news is equally disturbing. Today’s includes a report that 1001 protestors have been killed since the coup in Feb, many of whom were tortured in prison.

            I am holding us all in the Light,