December 30, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

We're leaving in a few minutes to begin our return to Chicago, across the great plains of Nebraska and Iowa and into the bustle and noise of the city once again. It will be good to be home. As before, Internet connections will be hard to come by on the road. I'll be sure to write you, but will not be able to send until I'm home.

Talk to you soon,

Dan

December 29, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

Our last full day here, with three days blocked out for the drive home. The days have been accelerating--faster and faster until they're over before they even started. Today we're cramming as much in as possible, in the hopes of the day never actually ending.

Hope your vacation has been going well,

Dan

December 28, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

Spent an hour and a half today in Baby's R Us putting together a registry for our tiny son. Most of that time was spent figuring out what not to buy. The baby industry is such a racket--I mean who needs baby wipes warmers?

Outside, in the parking lot, a worker was returning shopping carts. He looked around to see if no one was watching, then ran with a stack of carts as fast as he could and jumped on the back, riding them for 50 yards or so. You could see a cartoon word bubble pop up above his head that read "This is the best part of my day."

Yours,

Dan

December 27, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

Driving into Denver today, you could see a heavy yellow cloud hovering just over the buildings. It stretched for miles in every direction, butting right up against the beautiful mountainsides that line the city to the west. Having never been to LA or your beloved Houston, I have never seen pollution like this--so thick and close and visible it looked like you could reach up and touch it, your hand blistering from coming in contact with the noxious yellow fog. I made a joke about needing gas masks when we got out of the car.

We were making the trip down to visit family in a suburb south of Denver, one of many that sprawl forever across the southeastern plains; suburbs that spring up fully formed in a matter of minutes, the cookie-cutter housing developments hemmed in by strip malls and glass-walled low-rise office buildings. The growth in this area is stunning in its speed and its uniformity, Mr. Bush, and every new Chilis that gets built, every new field that gets cleared for another subdivision, every new health club that opens--and every massive SUV that gets parked in the acres of shining parking lots or pulled into a brand-new three-car garage---contributes to the thick gas that floats just overhead.

The people that live here pride themselves in their breathtaking vistas, their clear, cold springs, their awe-inspiring mountains; they spend more time outdoors than anyone I have ever known. That they are poisoning themselves and their children with every mile they drive, every 24-hour super-store they build, every vacation home in the mountains they heat, seems stubbornly counterintuitive to me.

But in a way, I suppose it makes sense. I mean, why else buy a car so massive and heavy it gets 10 miles to the gallon, why else live in a home with vaulted ceilings lined with marble and grand staircases, why else obsess over sports and contests and winning, than in order to deny your own mortality? Isn't all of this--the grandeur, the speed, the scale--just a way of cheating the death that looms above, just out of reach; a death that has been formed out of the very things built to avoid it?

La'chaim,

Dan

December 26, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

As you sit with your family today, full, rested, and content from a hearty Christmas celebration, huddled warmly by a fire as a band of fridged cold stretches across the country, I want you to know that there are thousands of Iraqis returning to their homes in Falluja only to discover they have no home to return to. Their city lies in ruins, Mr. Bush, and their resentment for the people that destroyed it only grows.

Stay warm,

Dan

December 25, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

I'm not sure if I've ever told you that I'm lactose intolerant. Not that I've ever been diagnosed as such, but a few years ago, after complaining about, well, some bathroom "issues," Janice suggested I cut out dairy from my diet. I didn't believe that it would work, but wouldn't you know it, my "issues" cleared right up. So since then, I've tried to steer clear of milk and cheese.

Well, today that wasn't possible. What with the cheese plates, egg nog, and the rich desserts that accompany any good Christmas feast, I'm now paying the price.

I hope your Christmas has settled in your stomach better than mine,

Dan

December 24, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

“You know what I think about sometimes that kinda freaks me out?” Janice asked in the car today as we hurtled across the frozen landscape. “I think about how lucky I am that I’m not pregnant in a country that’s ripped apart by war, or a country where there’s genocide going on, or a land poisoned by AIDS. Sometimes I stay awake thinking about how horrible it would be--how hard, how exhausting and impossible--to have to be pregnant and in hiding, or running from something terrible, or having to live cut off from clean water or enough food, or surrounded by disease.”

I nodded and continued to navigate down the curvy, ice-covered road.

“I think about how hard it is to just stay fed and rested and well here, in this country, where I’ve got access to all the food I need, all the water I can drink, and doctors if something goes wrong. And I feel so horrible that there are people that don’t even know where they’re staying tonight, what they’re eating, where their water is coming from, and how they have to worry every second of every day if their baby is going to live.”

I nodded again and added, “And if they are going to live, what kind of life they’ll have.”

And I thought of you, Mr. Bush, sitting around the White House Christmas tree with Laura and the twins, exchanging simple gifts and sipping mulled cider. And I wondered if tonight, when you’re tucked in your bed listening closely for the sound of the soft clip-clop of hooves on the roof, you instead hear the cries of the thousands of babies caught in situations like the ones Janice lays awake thinking about: babies in peril because of the wars you’ve fought and the ones you haven’t.

And to all a good night,

Dan

December 23, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

Christmastime in a red state means the evening news leads off with a story of a local Christian group protesting stores' use of "Happy Holidays" to greet shoppers instead of "Merry Christmas." The newscasters report this with gravely serious voices, as if somehow this was an full-frontal assault on Christianity itself. They cut to an "expert" who insists that "if a space alien were to land here, they would think this was a celebration of trees and lights, not of the birth of the Christ child." The report wraps up with one well-groomed newscaster turning to his look-alike partner, shaking his head sadly and sighing, "unbelievable, isn't it?" before cutting to the fifth weather report of the evening.

Churches are everywhere here--huge and white and built out of cement and tar and glass. They appear overnight, seemingly out of nowhere, their massive parking lots and light-up signs making them look more like malls than places of worship. They offer a super-sized salvation that I can't understand at all, having been raised a "small-C" christian with yearly trips to see the Christmas Pageant and the occasional family funeral my sole churchgoing experience. Yet even my limited knowledge of the subject has me wondering if the gaudy, overstuffed religion offered by these churches isn't as far removed from Jesus's teachings as you can possibly get.

When you became born again after years of drinking, Mr. Bush, was it this kind of religion--this big-box approach to something so seemingly intimate--that attracted you? Was it the promise not only of being saved but also of belonging that drew you in? Because being out here and seeing how pervasive these churches have become and how powerful they are, I can understand how that would be appealing; these churches offer not only a savior, but also warmth and certainty and community.

But seeing the power these churches have amassed and the way they choose to wield it has the opposite affect on me. Two days before Christmas, watching these church groups being taken seriously about something as inconsequential as how stores greet their shoppers, I just feel cold and scared and alone.

Happy Holidays,

Dan

December 22, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

Sitting in a hippie cafe in Colorado, finally emerging from the travel-induced news blackout, staring at a headline that reads "Bush defends Rumsfeld as 'a caring fellow'" and trying to figure out if you even believe the words that are coming out of your mouth. The day after 22 soldiers died in Mosul, nothing could feel further from the truth, here in a lonely liberal outpost in a beet-red state, than your insistence that, "I have heard the anguish in his voice and seen his eyes when we talk about the danger in Iraq and the fact that youngsters are over there in harm's way."

Yours,

Dan

December 21, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

Technology is a funny thing. You never really notice how much it has changed until you're forced backwards in time, trying to run your business, keep in touch with friends, and write these daily letters on an ancient computer with a dial-up connection running Windows 95 on a screen so small that reading a single line of text requires scrolling from side to side. But these are the sacrifices we make when we become a family: you give up your DSL, your wireless, your ease-of-use in favor of spending time with those you love--or those that love the one you love. And so it its that teaching a three-year-old how to do double thumbs up (she kept using her index fingers instead of her thumbs) or lulling a newborn back to sleep on my shoulder isn't something I would trade in for modern gadgetry.

To living low fi,

Dan

December 20, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

500 more miles logged, our dog can barely keep hear head up, crashed out on the carpeted floor of Janice's parent's house. She looks up with these comically red eyes, as we call her name and laugh at just how tired she looks, secretly knowing that we look the same. I'm not sure what it is about driving, but just sitting there--your leg pinned to the gas pedal, the distance streaking by you as you slice across the country--is enough to drain every ounce of energy from you. But now that we're here, it's nice to know that the pillow I'm about to rest my head on is the same one I'll be using for a week.

To staying put,

Dan

December 19, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

500 miles later, in Lincoln, Nebraska, watching Men in Black on the motel's cable TV. Across two states on the coldest day of the year; two states to go until we truly rest.

Dan

December 18, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

A later start than we'd have liked, and miles to go before we're done.

Dan

December 17, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

It was a sprint to the finish at work today, but I finished all that I could and now I'm off for almost two weeks out west visiting Janice's family. I'll be sure to write every day, but may not be able to get to a computer to send the e-mail on the road, so my correspondence with you may come in fits and starts over the next two weeks. But don't worry--I'll be thinking about you, so don't forget about me!

Talk to you soon,

Dan

December 16, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

The anxiety coarsing through everyone's mind--will they or won't they--was palpable today on the train. For the last few months, the transit authority has been threatening to cut service to trains and busses by twenty percent, and today was the day they were going to vote on whether to enact it. The line I live off of would stop running twenty-four hours a day; many parts of the city that the trains don't reach would see their bus service dramatically reduced. Every rider, every day, would feel the effect of a cut as deep as the one proposed. And so today, on the train, you could feel the worry coursing through the car. As each stop was announced, more people would get on, and the group anxiety would increase, everyone knowing of the very real possibility of a few weeks from now having to pay a lot more for the ride or that the ride may not be there at all.

And then tonight, Mr. Bush, the transit board announced that they would simply wait until July, wait for some magical money to appear and fill the gaping hole in their budget. It's money that has to come from somewhere, and our state is already deeply in dept, like so many have become since you enacted your tax cuts. And so, like so much else in the last four years, the burden will be carried by those of us that can least afford it.

It's what we do, Mr. Bush: We carry your debt. Whether it's through paying more for a ride downtown, or with our lives on the battlefield, we carry your load. We may not complain about it all that much, but we will never forget.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be,

Dan

December 15, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

Coming home tired from a taxing day at work yet elated from an evening midwife appointment, the last thing I wanted to read was an article that started like this:

"Sad to the depths of his 4-year-old soul, Jack Shanaberger knew what he didn't want to be when he grows up: a father. "'I don't want to be a daddy because daddies die,' the child solemnly told his mother after his father, Staff Sgt. Wentz 'Baron' Shanaberger, a military policeman from Fort Pierce, Fla., was killed March 23 in an ambush in Iraq."

Almost 900 US children will be spending the holidays this year without a parent because of your war, Mr. Bush. Today, I don't even want to talk to you.

Dan

December 14, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

I feel like I may be the only person in the country that couldn't care less whether athletes use steroids or not. I mean, seriously, aren't there hundreds of more pressing health issues that you could be dealing with than whether some overpaid jocks are juicing? Last time I checked, tens of millions didn't have health insurance. Start there, get to the steroids later.

Just a thought,

Dan

December 13, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

I hear you're having some trouble with your weight and thought I'd tell you that I've been feeling a little heavier recently as well. Last year I lost a good deal of weight. It wasn't by design--I've never dieted in my life, and never plan to--but instead simply by cooking more food instead of eating out or eating frozen and by starting to skateboard on a regular basis. This year, as my workload has increased and my life has become more inwardly-focused, I've started to put on a few more pounds again. With winter starting, when the option of hitting the skatepark or going on a long walk with Janice and the dog is not as feasible, I'll probably add a few more still.

I remember growing up and feeling like a fat kid. I always wore clothes that were too big, I always dressed really fast in gym class. When I would go swimming, I'd wear a T-shirt in part to cover up my body. I was one of those kids who, when people would want to play football and break the teams into shirts and skins, would break into a blind panic if I was on the skins side; one of those kids that changed in the bathroom at sleep-overs for fear of ridicule. Remember those Special K commercials, the ones that go "Thanks to the K, you can't pinch an inch--on me"? Well I distinctly remember reaching down, pinching the center of my gut and being horrified.

But the thing is, Mr. Bush, I was never actually that big. I was pretty average for a growing kid; certainly no bigger than most of my friends. There was just something in my head that told me that I had something to keep hidden.

Even as I grew older and the little bit of baby fat I had was stretched over a much larger frame, I never stopped feeling like a bigger guy. I remember being in high school and feeling chunky, but looking at photos now, I realize that I wasn't big at all--just a six foot rail with long, blonde locks and horrendous facial hair (it was high school, Mr. Bush, forgive me). But back then, it felt like something I had to cover up, to hide.

It's an impulse that I've been able to overcome to a certain degree at this point, Mr. Bush (lord knows, those that suffered through my wrestling singlet stage can attest to that), but still today, when I tried on a shirt that fit me well over the summer and discovered it was a little tighter now, my initial reaction was to toss a big sweater on over it. But I caught myself and changed into a smaller sweater (actually, a little extra bulk helps out on days that it barely cracks thirty), and remembered a time when I couldn't even conceive of wearing a size large.

So fight that impulse to cover it up, Mr. Bush, this new weight will either become a part of you or it will pass away unnoticed. Either way, embrace who you are; you don't get a second chance.

Eat up,

Dan

December 12, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

A day spent Christmas shopping, editing a book, and making breakfast with friends has left me spent and exhausted. I'll catch up with you tomorrow,

Dan

December 11, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

Janice said goodbye to her truck today. It was her first car she bought herself; her first chance to be truly free from her hometown. It traveled across the country with her more times than she can probably remember, carrying all her possessions and her energetic puppy--forced to sit in the back in a nest made from sleeping bags and blankets--from one locale to another. It moved with her to towns so small they're not on maps and to cities so large they take up their own page in the atlas. It drove with her away from heartbreaks and helped her to start new lives; eventually it brought her to me. It was the first place we kissed, suddenly and passionately during a strange mid-winter fog. It moved her from apartment to apartment here in Chicago and it helped to move us into the home we now share together, the home we're slowly readying for our tiny, growing son. And it's because of our son--and because it was twelve years old and showing every one of its hundred and twenty-four thousand miles--that we traded it in today for a new car. If we are lucky, we will carve our memories into this new car the same way the dreams and adventures and lives of a young woman were etched into every inch of that beautiful black truck. May it find a new owner to whom the same world of opportunities opens, because behind the wheel of a truck anything is possible.

To the memories of old things and the promise of new,

Dan

December 10, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

Stayed up until after midnight talking with, of all people, my parents. Becoming an adult is one thing, but being treated like one by the people that raised you continues to take me by surprise.

Talk to you tomorrow,

Dan

December 9, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

I read today that your war in Iraq is producing amputee soldiers at a rate twice that of previous wars. In that kind of cold-hearted irony that wars often bring, this is due to the fact that, thanks to all the new battlefield technology, less soldiers are dying when they get hit. But a kevlar vest only covers the chest, Mr. Bush, making the fatal heart shot difficult, but blasting off a foot or an arm is still fair game. In fact, the amputees are coming at such a rate that the VA hospital system "literally cannot handle the load."

How do you repay someone for a lost hand, a lost arm, a lost leg, Mr. Bush? How do you explain to a parapalegic that they served their country well? How do you look these people in the eye, and say it was worth it? Is it even possible?

It reminds me of a song I used to listen to obsessively when I was in high school by an obscure singer/songwriter named Eric Bogle. The song is called "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" and is truly haunting and heartbreaking in its depiction of a nameless soldier shipped off to Gallipoli in the first world war. (A brief aside, Mr. Bush: Shane MacGowan's pained, off-key wail does the song true justice in the Pogue's rendition on the singular Rum Sodomy and the Lash.)

"In 1915, my country said, "Son, / It's time you stop ramblin', there's work to be done. / So they gave me a tin hat, and they gave me a gun, / And they marched me away to the war," the song begins.

As his platoon departs, they're sent off as heros, but things don't go well--"how well I remember that terrible day, / how our blood stained the sand and the water; / and of how in that hell that they call Suvla Bay / we were butchered like lambs at the slaughter"--and the narrarator finds himself in a situation that many soldiers in Iraq are now experiencing:

"Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head / And when I woke up in me hospital bed / And saw what it had done, well, I wished I was dead / Never knew there was worse things than dying."

Pogue mahone,

Dan

December 8, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

I worked a sixteen hour day today. My fingers are so tired I can barely even type; my eyes so tired they can barely see. But so it goes, I suppose. To paraphrase your defense secretary, you get to work with the day you have, not the day you wish you had.

Good night,

Dan

December 7, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

Wouldn't you know that right after Janice and I finally decided that we would sell our cars to help buy one that's going to work with the new addition to our family, my car blows its muffler and shreds its axles. Since we're still a few months away from truly being able to get a new car, and we've still got a holiday treck to visit family in Colorado ahead of us, I had to bite the bullet and get my decade-old Honda fixed. $600 later, I can't help but feel like I'm the biggest sucker in the world. Sometimes you just can't win.

To losing,

Dan

December 6, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

I hope you didn't try to call my house tonight, because the phone had been in use for almost four hours straight, calling family and friends to share the news from today's ultrasound. The old cordless phone was beeping in low-battery protest as Janice and I converted our dreams--a boy, believe it or not--into little electrical pulses that shot out across the country and into the ears of those we love the most. It's a draining process, packing that much emotion, wonder, and excitement into such a tiny phone cord, and once we were through we were both exhausted, but oddly wired, and so we took the dog for a walk around the neighborhood to try and calm ourselves enough for sleep.

The air was strange for early December--spring-like and humid without that normal hint of the biting cold to come that usually hovers in the wind this time of year--and the ground was slick from the misty rain that's been falling for most of the day. But we walked and we laughed, sharing small jokes about the son floating inside Janice's belly, and we nodded hello to neighbors--the old woman sweeping leaves off her porch, the muslims sharing a smoke outside the mosque down the street--and we felt satisfied with the knowlege that the world is full of hidden miracles.

Yours,

Dan

December 5, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

"It will be the first seed of civil war," Tawfik al-Yassri, a member of Iraq's interim parliament, said today, after a wave of violence killed 80 of his countrymen over the weekend. Those have to be horrible words to utter, coming after all the talk of "freedom" and "liberation" that you have been promising since you started dropping bombs. To finally arrive at the conclusion that al-Yassri came to--pushed to the brink after 80 more deaths were added to the tally of the almost countless number that have come before--is as sure a sign of defeat as any I have ever heard. For your sake, Mr. Bush, I hope one day he will forgive you.

Sleep tight,

Dan

December 4, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

I suppose it's only fitting that what was perhaps the most adult day of my entire life ended with a drunken run to eat pancakes at the corner diner. After a day spent touring our birthing hospital and shopping for a car that's big enough to fit our little family, the evening was spent making beer-fueled wisecracks, telling lurid stories, and feeling young (though Anne did point out the the pancake runs used to happen at a much later hour back when we truly were young).

It's weird, Mr. Bush, this whole getting older thing. On one hand you embrace it, but on the other, you find yourself standing awkwardly in a hospital orientation, looking around and thinking, Who are you people? Why am I here with you? I am not old and boring and square. But I suppose that's the trick of it, isn't it Mr. Bush: You find a balance between being responsible and still being able to embrace the world as the never-ending source of wonder that it is. Maybe that's the trick, or maybe it's not, but it'll have to work for now.

Good night,

Dan

December 3, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

I broke two mops today trying to clean the office floor. Sometimes you just can't win.

TGIF,

Dan

December 2, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

My dad has this theory that the reason time seems to move so quickly as you get older is because your perception of every day--of every hour, of every minute--gets shorter with every passing moment. The way he explains it is this: When you're five years old and a year goes by, it feels like it lasts forever because, in a way, it does. After all, when you're five, a year comprises one fifth of your entire life. But when you're 30, a year is all of a sudden 1/30th of your life and so it can't possibly feel as long as it did when you were five. When you start thinking of that not in terms of years, but in terms of weeks or days or seconds, you can see how time can slip by so quickly without even hardly noticing.

And even though I know this and believe it to be true--true in the way that simple theories often are--today I sit here shocked that in just one short month, another year is going to end. A year that, honestly, feels like it's just beginning.

Say good night to Laura for me,

Dan

December 1, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

Today you announced that you were sending 1,500 more troops to Iraq. When you announce something like that, what do you do in the morning? Are you able to think about other stuff, or do you just spend the day distracted, staring into space and thinking about the ramifications of it all? Do you sit there, absentmindedly pushing your fork around your breakfast plate--not really hungry, but not really not hungry either--checking your watch and wondering how long it will be until you feel normal again? Do you wander the halls making polite conversation, never remembering what it was you said or who it was to? Do you move papers around your desk, not for any reason other than it lets your brain relax around spacial relations and useless organization instead of concentrating on the big, black hole the news has created in your head?

Sending 1,500 people off to war--a war where almost exactly that many have died--shouldn't be something that you can just fit into your daily business. It should be the kind of thing that it takes you days to finally feel centered again, finally ready to move on to something else. So was it, Mr. Bush?

Happy December,

Dan