From the desk
Writing
Essays, op-eds, and mind wanderings on justice, policing, aging, the trail, and whatever else won’t leave me alone.
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Confessions of a Recent Convert
How I Became a Red Sox Fan for All the Wrong Reasons By Joe Broadmeadow I did not arrive at Red Sox fandom through the front door. I came in through the bulkhead, after dark, carrying a duffel bag and…
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Deep Right
by Joe Broadmeadow Author’s note: The following is sort of a true story with the names changed to protect no one. While I may not have spent my entire baseball career in right field, I had a pretty good run…
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The Machinery of Certainty
Joe Broadmeadow “…men fight for their servitude as if for their salvation.” Baruch Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, preface, 1670 Certainty that answers to no evidence, handed instruments that answer to no one, will reach the same destination every time. It reclassifies…
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The Self-Destruct Sequencer
by Joe Broadmeadow My dryer died eleven days after the warranty expired. Eleven days. Not eleven months, which would suggest ordinary wear. Not eleven hours, which would suggest something too obvious to survive a class action. Eleven days: long enough…
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A Guide to Controlled Bedlam
Field Operations Manual for the Grandparent on Duty by Joe Broadmeadow There is a moment, somewhere around hour two, when you realize the house has gone quiet. Twenty years in law enforcement taught me that silence is not peace. Silence…
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Fear is not Evidence
By Joe Broadmeadow Fear makes a poor witness. It fills the gaps in a story with whatever frightens us most. Watch the public argument over transgender Americans and you can see fear doing exactly that, dressed up as concern and…
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That Won’t Kill You… But This Will
By Joe Broadmeadow Over twenty years with the East Providence Police Department, I stood in a lot of kitchens on the worst day of somebody’s life. I commanded the Investigative Services Division, worked narcotics, and served on the Organized Crime…
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Thauma
And under the stairs, in the space where the light went soft, wonder settled in beside a new little boy and got to work. Joe Broadmeadow By Joe Broadmeadow (Please share the story) When Levi was four, the world was…
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Rhode Island Found $75 Million for a Video Game. It Can Find Enough to Connect Every Kid.
By Joe Broadmeadow Rhode Islanders know how this story goes, because we lived it. In 2010, the state guaranteed a 75-million-dollar loan to lure Curt Schilling’s video game company, 38 Studios, from Massachusetts to Providence. Two years later the company…
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The Efficiency Commission
The morning Marcus Preel was appointed to eliminate government waste, he requisitioned a leather chair that cost eleven thousand dollars. He explained this to no one, because explaining things to people was itself a form of waste. Preel’s official title…