Mind Wanderings
-
The Slow Visitor
In 1977, the United States launched Voyager I spacecraft. Sometime in November 2026, after traveling for 49 years, it will achieve a remarkable and sobering milestone. It will be one light day (25,901,515,140 kilometers ) from the Earth. One day! The…
-
Let Police Officers See the Video First
(Author’s note: this piece first appeared in Rhode Island Current and on the News from the States national platform. https://rhodeislandcurrent.com/2026/07/13/let-police-officers-see-the-video-first/) I spent 20 years in East Providence and retired as a captain. I’ve written after-action reports on calls I could…
-
The Disappointing Future
I was promised a flying car. I want that on the record because a contract was made, not in ink and not by anyone with legal standing, but by a cartoon that aired in 1962 with the confidence of a…
-
The Hydrogen Line
The signal arrived on a Tuesday, which seemed wrong in ways Mara Voss could not explain. Important things, she had always believed, should announce themselves with some gravitational ceremony—a Sunday, perhaps, or a storm. Not a Tuesday in February with…
-
Lights, Please
Charlie Brown sat on the porch of the assisted-living facility with a mug of decaf he wasn’t allowed to drink and watched Linus fold his blanket into a perfect square. It had taken him about a decade to accept that…
-
The First Murder Case
The courtroom was full long before the judge arrived, a quiet electricity humming through the spectators like a storm waiting to break. Reporters packed the back rows, their devices poised, while legal scholars whispered predictions that none of them truly…
-
Our Better Angels: Seek No Joy in Anyone’s Death
Lindsey Graham is dead. As dead as a doornail, and I’ll ask you to remember, as Dickens insisted we remember about old Marley, that this must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I mean to…
-
Salt and Ember
The boat does not rot, though it should have, a hundred winters ago. Eilif knew this the way a man knows the smell of his own blood. He had built it himself, plank by steamed plank, the year his brother…
-
The Tragicall Historie of Vamlet, Prince of Ohio
A Parody in the Manner of the Bard DRAMATIS PERSONAE DONALD, King of Mar-a-LagoJ.D. VAMLET, Prince of Ohio, heir apparent and Vice-RegentThe GHOST, spirit of a conscience long pastPOLLSTERS, COURTIERS, and a CHORUS OF DONORS ACT I, SCENE I—A gilded…
-
The Cartographer’s Debt
The man who drew the maps was the last person anyone expected to erase a town. Elias Vorn worked for the county assessor’s office for nineteen years, updating parcel boundaries, noting easements, correcting the slow drift of survey markers that…