11/2/2024

My dear Friend & POTUS, JRB,

            We were both humbled yesterday. You for making another gaffe & me for an attempt to canvass in Reno.

Here’s my story. My daughter & I drove over Donner Pass ignoring the info on the CalTrans website about the chain requirement. At the Washoe Dem Headquarters, we got our MiniVan app list with 58 “doors.” They did not warn us we were heading into a “dead zone” where we would find it challenging to make contact due to the low-rent apartments with no-trespassing signs on locked gates. In the end we spoke with 8 people & found 7 “not home.” Every place else was “inaccessible.” Moreover, our list coincided with two other canvassers so the few people we did speak with told us someone else had recently visited.

Our best chats were with elderly black males – one didn’t want to have anything to do with the government & the other assumed 45 was “our” POTUS. Interesting!

            Lesson learned – canvass close to home where you know the lay of the land & can optimize efficiency, like the crew your sister recruited from Wilmington Friends School in 1970 to get the vote out for your campaign for New Castle County councilman.

            I also learned two new words today. 1)IRENIC as in “Biden’s decades-long relationship with St Joseph remains irenic despite his controversial stances on life & family issues.”  2) EXONYM – as in the word "Chin" is considered a pseudo-exonym for the tribes in Western Burma.

            Irenic came from a piece in “Juicy Ecumenism” which attempted to explain your relationship with the folks at St. Joseph on the Brandywine where you engage in a “liberal, post-Vatican II brand of a hip, modern Catholicism.”

            Exonym appeared in a description from the Center for Strategic & International Studies about the tensions in Chin state between the various PDFs in the region. I hope they find a way to get along. Please see what you can do to bring peace to them & everyone else in Burma.

            BYBS,