January 31, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

So January is over, the month speeding by like the city through the windows of a train--blurring and blending together until the buildings and people and cars are only just a mass of accelerating shapes and colors mixing together and melding into one.

Dan

January 30, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

Well it would appear as if your prayers last night were answered--the elections in Iraq took place without the complete disaster many were predicting. However, it makes me wonder just how free a people are when the only way they can express it is when their entire country is locked down so tightly that traffic wasn't even allowed on Baghdad streets.

Dan

January 29, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

Tonight, as you're kneeling down next to your bed to say your prayers, are you praying for a miracle in Iraq? Because the elections are tomorrow and they're going to need all the help they can get. Lord knows you haven't given them stability or safety so, really, praying that there isn't a mass slaughter at the polls is truly the least you can do.

As I lay me down to sleep,

Dan

January 28, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

During the process of moving into our home almost two years ago, I somehow lost my winter parka. It was a quasi military-issue one, you know the kind: large and black with a hood lined with fur. It was the warmest jacket I'd ever had and, at the time, the coolest piece of clothing I ever owned (it probably still is, come to think of it). This was before every rapper was wearing a parka in their videos and before they became something you could buy at Target, and I would actually get stopped on the street and asked where I got it from all sorts of people. When winter came the year after we moved in, I searched for my parka, but came up empty; with horror I realized I must have left it in my old apartment.

That I bought my parka because of an Oasis 12" single cover was something I never admitted, but there's one--it was for a song off their third album, you know the one that, after it came out, everyone realized the band wasn't actually all that good--where one of the Gallagher brothers is wearing a parka with the hood pulled down around his neck but zipped all the way up, and he just looked regal standing there in the crowd, so warm and aloof. I remember seeing that cover and heading over to the army-navy surplus store the next day to buy my own.

There have been a few times this winter--a winter truly deserving of a big, heavy parka if ever there was one--that I've almost gone out and bought a new one, but I've stopped myself each time because they're not cheap coats and I just haven't had the money. But I have to say, after seeing your vice president wearing one yesterday at the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp--the collar turned up like he had just stepped away from the filming of some kind of bizarre rap video, the bling-bling of its white fur offsetting the black knit hat that covered his bald pate --I think that I never need to own one again.

Yours,

Dan

January 27, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

A day spent correcting classwork in time to get grades in tomorrow has left me entirely too tired to continue on tonight. I promise a better letter tomorrow.

Dan

January 26, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

"Any time we lose life it is a sad moment," you remarked today, a day where more US troops died in Iraq than any other. I can assure you for those with family and friends that aren't coming back from Iraq, the sadness will last more than a moment. Your assurances about planting "a flag of liberty" and of "doing the right thing" is not going to dull the ache in their hearts and the terrible emptiness of their homes. They will lie awake tonight, all of them, their chests pained and heavy, and wonder how they will continue on. Will you do the same?

Dan

January 25, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

$427 billion, huh? I'm not sure which gets me more: that you dug us into this hole in the first place or that my tiny, two-pound son still floating safely in his mother's belly will have to pay for it for the rest of his life.

A day late and a dollar short,

Dan

January 24. 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

Wednesday I worked until 4:00 in the morning; Thursday until 3:30. Friday I took a night off and was back at work by 8:30 the next day--that night, I was up until 3:00. Last night, 1:30. And today, finally, I finished another issue of the magazine I have worked on for eleven years. This one, hands down, was the most difficult issue we've ever done and it's without hesitation that I say I'm glad to see it go. That it turned out even remotely readable would be a feat, but somehow it turned out amazing. I tell you this not to let you know how late I've been working or complain about the lack of sleep that I've had. I tell you this simply to tell you that I work.

My work is important to me; it shapes who I am in ways both tangible and intangible. It has created a life that I never would have expected and brought people into it that I never would have met. Every day it is exciting and new and every day I can not believe I am able to do this for a living.

However, every day is hard. Every day is more work than a person can possibly believe. Every day it comes home with me, lurking in the back of my mind as I go about my evening. Today is no different; tomorrow will be the same. It is work.

But as tired as I am, and as difficult emotionally and physically the last week or two has been, I can't think of anything that I'd rather do.

To work,

Dan

January 23, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

Another lengthy work day, but it at least ends with sleeping in my bed--which is where I'm headed now.

Sleep well,

Dan

January 22, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

The snow was magnificent today, lying thick and heavy across everything; piling up so quickly that it threatened to bring the entire city to a standstill. Today was the kind of day you wished you were a kid again, able to forgo your plans for a day spent on a sled hurtling down hills at speeds much too thrilling to be safe. But for me, it was mostly a day spent inside, trapped in a large but windowless office, only able to imagine the wonders taking place outside.

"Because of the way the wind is blowing, it looks like it's snowing upside down," wrote Janice in a mid-day e-mail--she was also locked in at work on a Saturday, thoughtfully reporting the view through her office window. In an update later in the day she wrote, "It is no longer snowing upside down, but rather sideways. I guess that's an improvement."

Well after midnight and still with work to finish, I decided to take a break and see what the day had truly looked like. Bleary-eyed, I ventured out into the silence of a sleeping, snow-covered city. I walked along a street untouched by car tires, foot-deep boot prints slowly trailing out behind me, and breathed in the sharp, cold air. It felt good, so crisp and cold and fresh, and I walked for a block or two in silence, just breathing and listening to the soft, tinny crunch of snow beneath my feet.

Yours,

Dan

January 21, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

Finally a night at home after two nights working well past three in the morning. It's only a brief respite in a working weekend, but it's one I'm going to enjoy with those I love and not with you.

TGIF,

Dan

January 20, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

A short note before going to sleep after my second day of too many hours awake, working both nights until I literally can't see straight. It's not safe for me to drive myself back home at this point--the snow and my exhaustion are not a good combination--so sleep will come bent and crowded onto the office couch, my right hip sure to ache like an old man's by the time I wake, my throat sure to burn from breathing the dusty, cold office air.

I've been doing my job for almost eleven years now, Mr. Bush, and it never gets easier. There is always some new crisis, some new mistake, some new roadblock to getting the job done. But somehow, thanks to the Herculean effort of far too few people, it gets done anyway. With three days before we're through with the latest issue, the end may be in sight, but I'll be damned if I know how to get there.

After two entire days of inauguration parties and ceremonies, I'm sure you're as tired as I am--though I bet your sleeping accommodations are better.

Sleep well,

Dan

January 19, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

As you spend the night before your inaguration dancing and chuckling, making off-color jokes through a half-smiling mouth and grabbing hands with that two-handed shake you do--you know, the one where you're shaking with one hand while you're reaching out and touching their elbow with the other--do you think at all about whether the next four years is going to be worth it? You've got a massive budget defecit, are tied up in a seemingly unwinnable battle in Iraq, can't seem to get this economy re-started in any meaningful way, are losing jobs overseas, have millions living without healthcare . . . The list goes on and on and it's up to you to solve it all. Are you up for it?

During this fall's debates, you mentioned that being president was "hard work." But there's a difference between saying it and doing it. In your case, the work is only ahead of you and it only grows larger and more insurmountable. And I'm just curious if, as you skidded across the dance floor on the still-slick leather of your new fancy-dress boots, gripping Laura's hand just a little tighter to keep from spillling to the floor, you had a moment of worry--just a passing flash, even--that perhaps you might have been better off if the other guy was being sworn in tomorrow. I suppose it's too late for those kind of wishes, though I'm sure you're not alone in the thought.

Rest up, you've got a big day tomorrow,

Dan

January 18, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

The snow swirled across the streets tonight in a way that made it seem like you weren't driving on pavement, but instead floating over a churning, angry cloud. The roads were hypnotic, the snow dancing across them in a come-hither rhythm that called to drivers like a siren to the ships of old. It made for a tense drive home that took twice as long as it should have, every car on the road taking it slowly and carefully (a rarity here in Chicago, to say the least). It was a drive that I would have liked to have avoided, having just worked a straight 12 hour day, never leaving the office even for lunch, my eyes burning from staring at words all day. It was made all the worse knowing that the entire day would be repeated tomorrow and the next.

To a break,

Dan

January 17, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

You said today that you "wouldn't rule out" military strikes on Iran if they don't cease their nuclear ambitions. But I have to wonder, Mr. Bush, you and what army? The armed forces are stretched thin and recruitments are down significantly. You've lengthed tours and kept reservists on duty long after they should be off. How exactly would you go about waging yet another war?

Actually, on second thought, don't answer that. I really don't want to know.

Blissfully ignorant,

Dan

January 16, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

I have stayed up half the night trying to figure out how we are going to afford health care once we add a baby into our family. That you are inventing a crisis in Social Security benefits instead of focusing on the very real one that affects so many of us every day as we make difficult and expensive choices concerning our health is despicable. I am exhausted to the point of illness and truly sick of worrying about this, but simply wishing for change won't do anything. So instead, I'll stay up for hours more hoping that the next page, the next website, the next brochure will offer something beyond pure fantasy.

Dan

January 15, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

The cold today hovered around everything; watching and waiting for an opening it could sneak its way in through in order to reach soft, warm skin. You could wrap yourself as tightly as possible and it would still find a loose fold or a tiny hole and leave you pained and shocked. Tomorrow, they say, is going to be the same.

To staying warm,

Dan

January 14, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

I remember waking up hung over on a friend's couch in a city thousands of miles from here and blearily watching their dog walk by with what was clearly a child's toy in its mouth, followed almost immediately by their young son swinging a dog toy wildly above his head. And I remember lying there laughing and rubbing my throbbing head and thinking "This is going to be my life someday--a life where the dog toys and the kid toys all just meld into one."

And today as Lucy, our dog, sits begging for me to toss the soft-sculpture crab we just got as a gift for the baby, I realized that soon enough that foggy-minded thought will become true. I think there are two kinds of parents: the kind that keeps the dog toys and the human toys clearly separated and the kind that lets everything just kind of drift into a single pile.

I'm glad to count myself among the latter.

Dan

January 13, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

Today during class the strangest thing happened. I was in the middle of a lecture about the influence of advertising on the editorial decisions of mainstream magazines when suddenly the faint sound of a marching band wafted into the room. Confused, I lost my train of thought and started to follow the sound, which seemed to be seeping in through the room's closed windows.

Our classroom's windows overlook a slightly downtrodden edge of Chicago's downtown--not a place where you'd normally find a marching band--and we opened the blinds and strained to look into the murky dusk for the source of such a boisterous sound. Finally, in a parking lot two blocks away, I made out the distinct outline of sousaphones twisting and turning to choreographed dance moves and behind them a tiny drumline rat-tat-tatting their way across the dingy lot that sits next door to a homeless shelter.

I wanted to throw open the window and bring the sound in more, letting the trumpets blare through the room, but as I went to fiddle with the latch one of my students pointed out that it was freezing outside, the air dense with a misty fog, the result of a 30 degree drop in temperatures from yesterday. Yet, on this inhospitable night--a weekend-long freeze just starting to settle in--and in the most unlikely of locations, there they were: a marching band creating the most beautiful racket I'd heard all day. And it made me realize that even during a week where every surprise has been terrible, sometimes the unexpected can be truly amazing.

Yours,

Dan

January 12, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

Your search ended today, empty-handed in the desert, the same as it began. There were no weapons, no smoking guns, buried there beneath the sand. There was no truth the words that you spoke so forcefully two years ago; no reality behind the bluster and promises of "mushroom clouds" and "imminent threats."

There's a part of me that wishes you did find something, Mr. Bush. A part that hoped that this wasn't all meaningless. There's a part that has woken up every day since you began your war, thinking that perhaps I would read that everything was true, that in the stifling desert heat there was a secret bunker filled with nightmares and demons, just like you said. Because if it was true, then it would give some sort of a purpose to the lives that have been lost, the dreams shattered, the chaos that has erupted throughout that poor country.

But instead it's all hollow. We spent two years in the desert chasing a fiction you created just to get us there in the first place. Two years chasing our tails; two years tracking phantoms. And because of it, a whole country is burning. For nothing.

Tilting at windmills,

Dan

January 11, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

A second day spent cleaning up after messes too convoluted and frustrating to even begin to describe here. A second day coming home so drained that even the thought of making dinner and eating it seems like too much. A second day fighting to keep my eyes open long enough to type this.

Dan

January 10, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

Today was such a disaster that I should never have gotten out of bed. From the moment the clock struck midnight, the entire day began to degenerate, until now, with an hour and a half to go, there's really nothing left. Just the shattered remains of a day lost.

To tomorrow,

Dan

January 9, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

"This is one of those situations where living in Europe would benefit us greatly," Dan said this morning as we had an impromptu new-father's lunch at a corner cafe.

We had been discussing the stresses of trying to figure out how to balance work and caring for our children and had reached an impasse of staggering proportions. The key problem for both of us lies in insurance: our partners get insurance through their jobs, while we're both self-employed and pay for our own insurance. For either of our partners to move to part-time work would mean that they would lose their insurance, and to cover the insurance cost out-of-pocket would mean finding almost $800 a month from an already-stretched household income. Of course, for both parents to work full time means paying a staggering amount of money for child care, which seems to contradict the whole point of full time employment in the first place. Figuring out the answer to this puzzle has kept me awake many nights now, Mr. Bush--it's keeping me up right now, in fact. And today, at breakfast, we were talking about it, both of us hoping that the other had a come up miraculous solution.

Instead, we only came up with tales of foreign lands.

"My friend Mats lives in Sweden," Dan continued. "He's an avant-garde jazz musician and his wife is an interpretive dancer. These aren't the hobbies they do on the side, these are their full-time jobs. They live in a beautiful home in Stockholm and don't have to worry about insurance."

"Not only that," I added, "but Swedes get over 400 days off when they have a kid."

And with that we both sat there in frustrated silence, wishing that somehow the fate that landed us born US citizens had perhaps shifted over a few thousand miles to the east.

To a solution,

Dan

January 8, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

A baby shower tonight for friends and meeting another friend's month-old child for the first time made me realize just how much our own lives are accelerating. Faster and faster and faster until suddenly there will be a delicate, crying child of our own in our midst.

Yours,

Dan

January 7, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

I heard you on the radio today explaining that we were "making great progress"in Iraq. "It's exciting times for the Iraqi people," because of the elections on the way. Sitting in my car, it's heater fighting back the fridged wind outside, I laughed at your optimism of a situation defined by some in your own military brass as complete chaos.

Riverbend, a Baghdad-based writer in her mid-twenties, writes about your elections in her weblog. "People don't really sense that this is the first stepping stone to democracy as western media is implying," she writes. "Many people sense that this is just the final act of a really bad play."

She goes on to talk about the way the election is being handled where she lives, and it's a frightening counterpoint to your insistance that "I think elections will be such a incredibly hopeful experience for the Iraqi people."

Riverbend writes:

"We're being bombarded with cute Iraqi commercials of happy Iraqi families preparing to vote. Signs and billboards remind us that the elections are getting closer...

"Can you just imagine what our history books are going to look like 20 years from now?

"'The first democratic elections were held in Iraq on January 29, 2005 under the ever-watchful collective eye of the occupation forces, headed by the United States of America. Troops in tanks watched as swarms of warm, fuzzy Iraqis headed for the ballot boxes to select one of the American-approved candidates...'

"It won't look good.

"There are several problems. The first is the fact that, technically, we don't know the candidates. We know the principal heads of the lists but we don't know who exactly will be running. It really is confusing. They aren't making the lists public because they are afraid the candidates will be assassinated.

"Another problem is the selling of ballots. We're getting our ballots through the people who give out the food rations in the varying areas. The whole family is registered with this person(s) and the ages of the varying family members are known. Many, many, many people are not going to vote. Some of those people are selling their voting cards for up to $400. The word on the street is that these ballots are being bought by people coming in from Iran. They will purchase the ballots, make false IDs (which is ridiculously easy these days) and vote for SCIRI or Daawa candidates. Sunnis are receiving their ballots although they don't intend to vote, just so that they won't be sold.

"Yet another issue is the fact that on all the voting cards, the gender of the voter, regardless of sex, is labeled "male". Now, call me insane, but I found this slightly disturbing. Why was that done? Was it some sort of a mistake? Why is the sex on the card anyway? What difference does it make? There are some theories about this. Some are saying that many of the more religiously inclined families won't want their womenfolk voting so it might be permissible for the head of the family to take the women's ID and her ballot and do the voting for her. Another theory is that this 'mistake' will make things easier for people making fake IDs to vote in place of females.

"All of this has given the coming elections a sort of sinister cloak. There is too much mystery involved and too little transparency. It is more than a little bit worrisome."

I don't even know what to say to you,

Dan

January 6, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

I suppose congratulations are in order: you officially won your second term in office today. Sure, it didn't go down hitch-free, but end result, we all knew, was inevitable.

I'm sure you've been busy celebrating today, but I thought you should know that while your electoral votes were being tallied, seven US troops died in Baghdad.

Yours,

Dan

January 5, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

It snowed today--piles and piles of downy-soft snow, white and clean and quiet covers every corner of the city. It's still coming down even now, with a promise of the heaviest still to come.

The city always comes to something of a standstill when it snows. I'd like to think it's because of the muffling effect the snow has on the ambient noise of the city. You walk outside and it's silent, silent like it must have been two hundred years ago before the city grew up from the prarie and destroyed the peace and quiet that engulfed everything. There's something about that silence that makes people take notice, makes them begin to see the world around them a little more. It's a transformative thing, to suddenly have the noises you don't even notice anymore taken away from you. It makes the city seems smaller, more human; fragile and old and beautiful.

Let it snow,

Dan

January 4, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

The greatest hot dog stand in Chicago--and, very possibly, the world--re-opened today after being shut down by a fire over half a year ago. Back before it burned, it was a glorious place; a place where more often than not I would run into someone I knew, seated with friends around a table, everyone laughing and eating, and you could pull up a chair and laugh with them, waiting for your food to come out, steaming hot and heaping with toppings. It was the kind of place no one ever spoke ill of; a magic place--if you believe in that sort of thing--where nothing ever went wrong.

I wrote about the place a few years ago in my magazine. It was a theme issue about Chicago, and I felt like nothing embodied the spirit of this city more than a hot dog stand run by a kind-hearted proprietor who had trained to be a gourmet chef, but instead found his calling in making an honest lunch for honest people. In a lot of ways, that's really all any of us can hope to do.

When word spread of the fire--not their fault, I'd like to point out, Mr. Bush--every person who heard the news witnessed their heart break just a little bit. Everyone waited longingly for the place to reopen, but with each month that passed, our hope faded--until that last glimmer of hope actually turned into a reality.

And so it was that five of us from work went to the store's new location this morning--early enough to be there when they opened, though we weren't the first ones there--and shared once again in the greatest lunch five dollars can buy. And as we sat there, eating and laughing and talking with friends (fully three-quarters of the place was occupied by people we knew one way or the other, though no one had planned it), I thought about how, in this week filled with destruction and devastation, it's good to know that it's possible to regroup and rebuild.

To Doug,

Dan

January 3, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

Going back to work after an extended time away is always a rough transition. You come back to dozens of little crisis that need to be addressed, piles of mail, and the sudden realization that time didn't stop while you were away. This time was no different--the clock most definitely didn't take a break and I have an unbelievable amount of catchup work to do--but there's still this strange glimmer of wonder and expectation I bring back with me when I come back from a trip.

Ever since I was a little kid, I remember coming home from vacations expecting to have my tiny world totally transformed. For some reason, I always thought the house next door would have been knocked down and replaced by a penguin sanctuary or that an amusement park would have been installed in the lot across the street. Of course, nothing ever happened in the slow, suburban town I grew up in, but that didn't stop me from holding my breath in anticipation as the family car rounded the last corner ahead of our house, softly choking in anticipation at the changes that had happened while I was away.

Even though I'm older and have come to realize that real change doesn't happen overnight, I still catch myself walking my dog through the neighborhood and thinking something amazing will be behind the very next corner. But, of course, the only thing amazing is the corner itself and the neighborhood it's in, and while that may not change much, it's enough to know it's there waiting for me to return and become a part of it again.

To returning,

Dan

January 2, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

Another day spent recovering from the road and preparing for the changes our lives are going to take in 2005.

More tomorrow,

Dan

January 1, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush,

We got home in one piece, having successfully cheated the death that was promised by each weaving car that passed us. A three AM arrival, coupled with a rare cup of coffee choked down to get us there, meant that I was too wired to get enough sleep and have felt groggy and half dead today. Ironically, it's the first New Years in some time that I could have felt great this morning. Anyway, it's good to be back.

Happy New Year,

Dan

December 31, 2004

Dear Mr. Bush,

Our New Years' resolution was a simple one: not to die, either by drunk drivers swerving across the road, or by the looming ice storm being teased on the motel's TV. We decided to choose the former, and not risk being stuck in Iowa City for a second night, stranded by ice coating the highways. And so it is that we plunge into the darkness of post-midnight New Years' Eve, nerves already strained from an eight hour driving day, and now four more to go.

Wish us luck,

Dan