Dear Re
I never thought I would be talking to you about stuff like this in an open letter, but maybe it’s best this way. I have, over the past few years, been consistently queasy about a few things and what they mean to me, to your father, and collectively for us as a family, and the more I write, the clearer it seems to get.
I still don’t know most of the answers, but as long as we keep sending our questions to the universe, some light will emerge. So this Children’s Day, I wanted to talk to you about divisiveness.
About your name. I know by now you wear it proudly and you even love to say it aloud: Rehaan Iyer-Agarwal. I knew I always wanted you to be an Iyer-Agarwal because I am an Iyer and your father is an Agarwal and we both brought you into this world together. May be you...
Lifestyle
Dear Kid Rock,
Congratulations on your new album! You're everywhere these days promoting it and, while I wish you the best and baddest of luck, I can't help but notice that right in there with "First Kiss is a return to form" and "Kid Rock is a real American badass," a key element of your marketing campaign seems to be "it's fun to use the word 'gay' as a pejorative." You told TMZ that selfies are "so gay." In an interview with the Guardian, you called rap-rock "gay." You regaled Howard Stern the other day with a story about how miserable and oppressed your son felt in a Malibu high school that hung a single sign forbidding the use of the word "gay" as an insult, and how you shared a moment of father-son bonding over how gay the sign itself was. "If someone says you can't say 'gay'...
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Dear Drake,
Hey dude. You don’t know me but my name’s Tyler and everyone says I’m a real shit, which I take as a compliment!
I’m writing to you not just because I love your raps. (I do, though. My mom tells me I can’t listen to music with swears but that just makes me want to listen to it more, you know? She’s kind of a shit-ass.) Mainly I’m writing to you because I’m about to enter junior high this fall and I wanna thank you for inspiring me to be a better bully as I enter this new stage of schooling.
I used to think you were probably lame because I knew you were on Degrassi which is a show for girls/Canadians, but this beef you are having with Meek Mill has taught me you are actually a professional-level bully. Here are some things you’ve done recently that I found really...
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Last Friday night, your dog wondered up onto our porch. Signs of the abuse she had somehow escaped, riddled her body. The fresh bite marks on her muzzle, the scars that covered her body, the exposed pink and purple flesh around her neck, where she was obviously tied up with ropes that cut their way into her skin, over and over again.
The obvious signs that she had been bred,
relentlessly, time after time. The pressure wounds on her elbows that bled whenever they touched anything, from being tied and forced to lay on cement ground and metal cage mesh.
None of those things are even the worst part. Upon examining her teeth to gauge her approximate age, I burst into tears. I found that you had pulled the majority of them out and the ones you left, had been filed down. And you did this...
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Dear Andrea,
My daughter was born into a community that faces many funding challenges when it comes to child care. My family is lucky right now because we can afford child care if we need it. But many other parents in my community are facing a far worse situation because of a lack of affordability and subsidies for licensed child care spots.
Currently in Durham Region we have 3,800 children waiting for a subsidy for an opportunity to have safe and affordable licensed child care. That’s 3,800 children waiting for the political leadership to put our community and those communities like ours first.
I read your proposal on $100 million for child care. On one hand I was excited that the ONDP is the only party to mention child care. On the other hand I feel as though our community is...
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Dear Minister Broten:
Thank you for your call of June 27, 2012 asking for public feedback on Modernizing Child Care in Ontario.1 The Institute of Marriage and Family Canada welcomes the opportunity to respond before the September 24, 2012 deadline and is encouraging parents to write their own letters before this date.
We would like to express two basic concerns with Modernizing Child Care in Ontario:
1) The report is not centred on what is best for children
2) The report is not centred on what is best for families, more specifically, parents.
In short, the Government of Ontario is pursuing family policies that do not benefit families, particularly when contrasted to policies that could offer substantial aid, like tax credits for parents to increase their cash flow...
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Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
The Council of Conference Ministers of the United Church of Christ and the Collegium of Officers offer this open letter to the church in response to the flood of child refugees coming to the United States from Central America. We write it in solidarity with our sister churches in the Southern California/Nevada Conference, the Southwest Conference, and the South Central Conference whose boundaries are coterminous with our neighbors to the South.
We have all been watching over the last weeks child refugees by the tens of thousands risk life and limb to flee violence and poverty in their homeland, hoping to find safety in America. The story of this land being rich with possibility can be heard even by children in far away lands. It is the same story...
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Dear Speaker Gingrich:
I write to you as a fellow American and a fellow Catholic. As Americans, we share a Constitution that values freedom and promotes the right of everyone to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. As Catholics, we share the teachings of Jesus and our forebears who call us to unrelentingly uplift the dignity of all in pursuit of the common good. We are called, both by the founders of our country and our holy texts, to use our opportunities to open the doors of opportunity for others so that as many people as possible in this great nation of ours have the chance to reach their God-given potential. These are ideals that have been foundational to me, as an American and a Catholic, and they are ideals which have undergirded the actions and policies of so many great...
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Dear friend,
My name is Bukra, which, in my language, Albanian, means “beautiful.” I am 14 years old. I live in a poverty-stricken suburb of Albania’s capital city, Tirana.
I was born in this poor place in 1998, and I still live here. About six years ago, I remember my life as normal -- at least compared to other young children in the area. I had a happy family of two parents and five children. I am the fourth child. I have two older brothers and an older sister as well as a younger sister.
However, in 2005, our lives changed. My father left the country to find work, like so many other men at the time. He took my older brother with him, leaving us four younger children and Mom at home. A few years later, we heard that my father was living with another woman who was expecting a...
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