Mind Wanderings
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The Island of Trumpland (formerly Greenland)
Greenland Acres (Episode 1) (A Satirical Ballad, to the tune of the “Green Acres” theme) TRUMP: 🎵 Greenland is the place to be! Glacier livin’ is the life for me! Ice spreadin’ out so far and wide — Keep Denmark,…
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The Land at the Top of the Stairs
A bedtime adventure with Levi and Wyatt By Joe Broadmeadow (aka Grandfather) It was the kind of gray afternoon when the rain taps politely at the tall windows and the big old mill building goes quiet and cozy. Grandfather had…
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An Armed Officer Is Still the Default Answer to a Crisis
When 988 Answers, but No One Can Come Rhode Island built an impressive front door for people in psychiatric crisis. Dial 988 and the call is answered in-state, around the clock, by trained counselors at BH Link, with one of…
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Investigate the Conduct, Not the Belief
“You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.” George Orwell 1984 For twenty years I carried a badge, and for much of…
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Second Floor, Rear
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly…
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The Wise Old Trout
In a quiet bend of the river lived two trout: Old Finn, who had survived three floods, two droughts, and one summer involving a boy with a net, and young Skip, who had survived mostly on confidence. One afternoon, a…
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The Check Always Comes After the Election
By Joe Broadmeadow Investigators learn to distrust a particular kind of statement. Not the lie that collapses when you check the phone records. The dangerous one comes wrapped in a future tense. The money is coming. Call me after the…
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Borrowed Convictions
“”Why is my verse so barren of new pride,So far from variation or quick change?Why with the time do I not glance asideTo new-found methods, and to compounds strange?Why write I still all one, ever the same…”Sonnet 76, William Shakespeare…
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We Open Sourced Knowledge. Ignorance Came Along for the Ride.
I carry the Library of Alexandria in my pocket. So does everyone else. So does the guy who is convinced the moon landing happened on a soundstage in Burbank. For most of human history, knowledge sat behind gates: a university,…
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The Keeper of Echoes
The mill had been dead since 1981, yet it still made noise. Aldo Ferreira had gotten used to it the way a man gets used to his own heartbeat. Pigeons shifting in the clerestory. The river working patiently at the…