8/22/2023

My Dear Friend & POTUS, JRB,

            You must be exhausted after your trip to Maui yesterday. Seeing that devastation & consoling grieving people must have been heart wrenching. I appreciated your comments about the banyan tree being a “diamond in the rough of hope” & that the “fire cannot reach its roots.”

            Arborists have their fingers crossed that the tree will come out of its “coma” intact. Apparently, they worry that its thin bark was unable to protect it sufficiently. They’ve noticed it’s not producing sap at its usual rate so they are waiting to see how it will fare.

            That’s the way I’m feeling about our democracy & our planet. Things feel so precarious these days, it’s hard to stay positive.

I wish I had your reserve of lines of poetry to recite in dark moments. The one you came up with yesterday from The Cure at Troy, “once in a lifetime, that longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up, & hope & history rhyme,” was a wonderful tonic.

I found another intriguing turn of phrase from Kipling this AM. I found myself looking up his poem, the “Road to Mandalay” after reading about the possibility that the NUG Minister of Defense has a mission, called “All Roads Lead to Naypyidaw” which has folks wondering if “resistance forces operating in the Bago Region pose a threat to the Myanmar generals residing in the capital Naypyidaw.”

Kipling’s poem has not worn well & has some misinformation, but it does have the catchy stanzas, “O the road to Mandalay, Where the flyin'-fishes play, An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!”

            Please go out there & make hope & history rhyme!

BYBS,

RCA