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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Last Thoughts
Author’s note: This is not predicated on any particular awareness of a pending expedited change in my mortality. It is not something of any urgency compelling me to write this. But as I near the 70 mark in a few…
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I Spent Twenty Years Chasing Real Conspiracies. Trump’s Election “Bombshell” Wouldn’t Survive a Preliminary Hearing.
By Joe Broadmeadow In two decades carrying a badge—working narcotics and a stint on an FBI task force—I learned a lesson that outlasted the pension: suspicion is not evidence. A hunch gets you a look. It does not get you…
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The Turing Exemption
The first time I shot a man who wasn’t a man, I threw up behind the evidence van and then wrote the cleanest report of my thirty-year career. That was eighteen months ago. Since then, the department gave me twelve…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…