Dear Mr. President,

My husband and I don’t have children but our brothers and sisters do and many of our friends do – or are about to. We have been increasingly worried about the state of our …well the state of everything. And by we, I mean Matthew, Mati, the Italian, Matidoll, my husband and co-author of this letter writing campaign. He’s rather knowledgeable about history, literature and politics but you’d probably enjoy talking sports too. My voice is more feminine and filled with important sentiment and good instincts. The two balance nicely, I think you’ll find.

We decided on this letter writing campaign in search of a more powerful dialogue. We decided on this letter writing campaign to share with you, the hopeful undertakings of extraordinary people and the good sound science for an improved world, to ask the difficult questions and with the possibility of having our own hopeful voices heard. And maybe you’ll never lay eyes on this. It may be necessary only to know that it’s to you we write regularly since after all, it’s you who is in the business of change.

I suspect my voice and Matthew’s represent many who go unheard and our voices are also on behalf of those who have no voice at all because they are children. They are the children of our brothers and sisters, your children and theirs, who will inherit our mess if we don’t do more, faster.

My intention is not to complain or to find blame. My intention is to live differently and share it with you. My intention is to write to you, ask questions when there’s nobody else to ask and show you the example of others who are heroes and heroines for hope since, respectfully, your schedule is way too busy to meet with them anytime soon in order to ask them yourself, about their brilliant ideas and helpful work in the world.

We intend to let you know that there are some who understand the magnitude of individual responsibility. There are some who appreciate the urgency of making more dramatic changes in order to evolve at the rate we need to if we are to improve the state of the planet our children are to inherit. There are some who exchange worry for hope and then move into the action of saving the world they are in love with.

We, the people, should be having no other conversation than how it is that we are going to make things better and fast. We should be speaking frantically, with urgency about what we are going to, each of us, individually, do to save our planet. We are irresponsible to talk about anything else. We are remiss to make it to the dinner table each night without having tried to figure out how we, each of us, can do more. We should be talking to each other every day as if the survival of our planet depended on every choice we make throughout our days.

So we have made time for this, Mr. President. We have made time to talk to you– to share our own adventure with you in taking personal and most importantly, drastic responsibility. We hope you will hear our benevolent intentions. We hope you will hear our softer voices, feel our lion heartbeats. We hope you know that we take our responsibility seriously. We plan to be good stewards of the land. We plan to take care of the earth and each other.

And so now, let’s get down to the real business of change – Big powerful profound healthy change.

We’ll keep you posted (pun intended : )

Respectful Regards,

Ruth and Matthew