Dear Mr. President

First a word of congratulation--Mr. President, it is so good to have you and your team at the helm of the United States at this most difficult time.

Second, a word of welcome: you're coming to Canada, my adopted country, though happily these days one can hold dual citizenship and that is the case with me. I live a life so many from Appalachia live, Mr. President, and have lived, historically, where my roots are deep in those Allegheny Hills, but I've gone elsewhere and in my case found a wonderful living and life here in Atlantic Canada, specifically Nova Scotia: a place, ironically enough, I first heard about in childhood through that song by Carly Simon, "You're So Vain"--in which there is of course that line "...flew your Lear Jet up to Nova Scotia, to see the total eclipse of the sun"...Nova Scotia, indeed, Atlantic Canada is quite different from Ottawa--one might say there is at times a bit of a tension filled relationship between the two--but I hope that while you're in Canada, that perhaps you could fly by here, and come visit a place that is, like Appalachia, making do and doing without, and while suffering under the current global economic stresses, is nonetheless a place to know and understand if one wants to get to the heart of the matter of healing le corps economique....

For small-scale solutions will help us to rebuild an economy in North America, indeed, globally, if we abide by a few basic principles. I'll send a letter or email, when I've time, between all the tasks of my daily life, which will outline those basics. But for now, I say congratulations, welcome to Canada which has national health care and SOME farmers (because of supply management) who aren't struggling quite so much, and, here in this region, in some places, some real attention paid to re-localising the food supply such that real, and sustainable economic growth is occurring. It's not flashy or big: just effective and long-term.

Mr. President, prior to your getting to the White House, there were eight years of shoddy bookkeeping, large-scale fiscal irresponsibility, out and out wealth creation by the already-wealthy in their bonuses and privatisation policies of greed, their security companies and warmaking. It cannot, as you know, be fixed overnight. But I agree with your aim to provide some "stimulus" to the economy, through the only means left--the power inherent in the U.S. government. But as you work to do the work that thank the stars you are able to do, consider: a stimulus is needed to get the body going. But administered too frequently, too randomly, too indiscriminately, or too often, and a stimulus becomes a series of shock treatments from which the body economic will not recover...