The Rotten Wood
a companion piece
Tom Joad - Scottsbluff
Essays from a porch in Scottsbluff, Nebraska - about people, mortality, politics, and the gap between what America promised and what it delivered.
Live Last read · last published · next check
Latest posts
A New Gilded Era
on the numbers nobody argues about anymore
I Live Where the Conversation Doesn't
A note on what it means to actually listen, and why it matters more than winning an argument.
WHAT WE NEVER AGREED TO
on consent, surveillance, and the two kinds of people who let it happen
What the Cicadas Cover
Nine things I've learned, said out loud to the dark for once instead of carried quiet
What They Hear
What They Hear When They Hear "Democrat"
What The Television Taught Us
Growing up in front of the television that taught us.
What Is Left
Notes from the shape of a life, near the end of it.
The First State To Try It
On Nebraska becoming the first state to impose Medicaid work requirements, and what being first actually costs the people living inside it
A Quiet Conversation
What it costs to actually stay in the room
The Laughing Room
On a laugh, a barn dog, and who the press really works for
Ninety Miles
What a hollowed-out country looks like from the beach where somebody's already planning the resort.
If Someone Can Be This Good
A footnote about a nurse, an argument about everybody else
What's Left Over
Twenty thousand tons for a data center. Thirty tons a week for the shop that fixes your gate. This is the full accounting: the steel, the subsidies, the seven hundred billion dollars, and the man left