Great story, Tom. The heat pops windshields out from the inside, so any little break or flaw will cause the whole thing to fail. Farming has always been a risky proposition, razor-thin at best. Now that the data centers are sucking up the Ogallala aquifer, farms in the Midwest will occupy the same space as buffalo hunts. Old days stuff before greed ruined everything.
People who have not experienced Midwest weather have no idea what it's like. Blizzards that get people lost in whiteout between the barn and the house, ice storms that lock your car to the ground and make it impossible to step onto the porch, the heat like a wet wool blanket falling from the sky, and those terrifying magnificent blue-black storms that bubble across the horizon, lit from within by fantastic flashes of unimaginable power.
I lived on a farm west of Iowa City for many years. In 2006 I was watching The Green Mile with my daughter, ignoring the phone ringing off the hook. The air had a stillness that was downright weird. We heard the wail of sirens from the town seven miles away and stepped out onto the porch. I saw a black cloud the shape of Nebraska looming across the entire western sky, a curling tail spinning off the corner. The metal porch roof popped in and out like a nervous fella with a coke can, pressure make my head feel odd. The cloud was heading right for us.
I took my daughter down to the basement, which was only partly finished. We sat on chairs while we listened to the wind roar, the hail spatter, and the continuous rumble and crash of thunder.
The 2006 tornado passed directly over us and dropped into Iowa City, carving a path of devastation through the historic downtown. The Dairy Queen, a sorority house, three blocks of brick buildings, St Patrick's church and an enormous array of trees were destroyed. It took weeks and months to clean up, and some of the buildings were unsalvageable and needed to be torn down.
After I moved to Cedar Rapids, I witnessed two 500-year floods and countless storms and tornadoes, but the 2020 derecho was the peach. Here's that story, if you're interested: https://jhardycarroll.substack.com/p/derecho
Now I live on the Olympic Peninsula, largely exempt from huge weather events but subject to earthquakes and volcanoes. We're also spared the heatwave engulfing most of the US right now. Somebody joked that it's hot because the gates of hell are yawning wide to receive Mitch McConnell. Here's hoping the stay open long enough to admit a heat-stroked dictator..
That was beautiful, Tom. Years from now, your essays will be the most heartfelt, clear eyed portrayal of how things are today. Unadorned language that hits the mark with stunning accuracy. This country was able to function year after year only because our presidents, regardless of their flaws, were generally good people who followed a moral compass. It only took one con man with no scruples to reveal the weakness of our democracy...it was built on trust.
Can we preorder? I want to buy it for my new grandson. I want him to understand the texture and context of the world he was born into. I doubt I’ll be around to tell him about it by the time he’s able to grasp it. His mother, my daughter, cherishes books. She’ll make sure he gets it.
Well done again, Mr Joad. One part I would like to comment on is the placing of 11 stars on the eagle. The Confederacy had 11 states. I think that was done on purpose.
I come from NE, grew up in IL, now have family in TX. Agriculture was in our bones. As a kid, coming back to school from lunch at home, we listened to the Farm Report at 1 pm every day. We toured the Chicago Board of Trade as a field trip. We were supposed to know what ran our economy literally ground up.
We were also taught about the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. Our parents and grandparents had lived it in NE. Taught me how to be poor. I know how to "put food by" and how to cook Hoover Stew. Then came the War and rationing, and I know how to do that, too. I can feed 8 on one pound of ground beef. Have my Mom's rationing cookbook. We lived out of that after the war.
I know that weather, the droughts, and the hail. Back in the 90s, I returned to NE to visit following a major hail storm with every car shop bragging, "Fix hail damage - NO Bondo!" I was not unimpressed. In the 50s we had a mini drought (Mom called it "drougth") and remember how scared she was. Well, here we go again. Only as in the 20s, years of bad planning let farmers and ranchers cut down the CCC shelter belts for a few more acres but with the inevitable outcome of less shade, more heat, less water. Trees help create rain. We don't have any. The drought line that ran north south has now moved 120 miles farther East, and that's not good. Naturally dry areas are worse off. Formerly "normal" areas are becoming naturally dry. It's killing off farm land faster than urban development.
My hope is we can remember the past, do better when the next Dust Bowl comes. You can see it already in AZ with "Haboobs", the dust storms pretty much no one talks about. That's as much of a warning as you got from the sky - time to do something is NOW.
Might be wrong, but seems to me I remember better Ag concerns when NE elected Dems. Bob Kerrey in NE, others in the Dakotas and Iowa. They were ones to bring the issues of farming - not just AgBiz - to the table. Maybe I romanticize it, but it just seemed better. Came Reagan, we got Farm Aid concerts not policy. Financializing everything for bank profits not farm survival seems to have dug in then, not let go.
I don't really understand the issues anymore, but I do know the issues of survival not of finance. I liked, as someone now in truck farm land, that Pres. Obama included truck farms in the Ag Bill. I don't think they exist anymore. Our big growers don't rival commodity crop growers in political power, all to our detriment.
I also fear our young don't know how to make do, how to plant gardens, how to cook cheaply, how to share food with neighbors. Gone are the days of the "midnight zucchini deposits" when neighbors with oversupply - and it's always massive - dropped extra zucchini on one another's porches. Wasn't always appreciated, but it IS food. That in a little Bisquick with onion - you have dinner.
I know how to survive. Problem is - at the moment I'm supporting 8 people not my family who now live in my backyard. Homeless folks driven out of encampments for no clear reason but just because SCOTUS said cities could in the Grant's Pass decision. THAT is going to stretch the budget if we lose SNAP at the end of the year. We are also facing a major produce shortage soon because of no fertilizer and no farm labor. That's why we have a garden. It's all we have.
Not sure what will come, but I do know we need people who care about people back in office. The one guy treated as the only one who matters isn't going to get us through this. Golden Eagles aren't doing the trick. Back to basics - food, jobs, national planning for people, not a few rich guys. Constitution calls on our government to provide for the common defense and "promote the general welfare". Let's get that back. Good wishes to your nephew in a time of indifference to him and his needs. We can do better. Will we? Remains to be seen.
This hit me hard because it reminded me that survival used to be something we passed down like family recipes. Not because anyone wanted hard times, but because they'd lived through them and understood that prosperity isn't permanent.
Your point about the difference between agriculture and AgBiz is one we don't talk about nearly enough. Somewhere along the way we stopped asking what keeps farmers alive and started asking what keeps quarterly earnings growing. Those are not the same question.
The shelter belts, the gardens, the neighbors leaving zucchini on porches, stretching a pound of hamburger to feed eight people—those weren't quaint traditions. They were community resilience. They were insurance policies written in trust instead of contracts.
And what you're doing now, caring for eight people who have nowhere else to go, says more about the meaning of "general welfare" than most politicians ever will. Government can make policy, but people like you keep civilization from falling apart while we wait for better policy.
I hope your garden grows. I hope your neighbors help. And I hope we remember, before the next Dust Bowl teaches us again, that a nation is only as strong as its ability to feed its people and care for the ones who have the least.
This is the only hope for now - let us give the "least of these": the BASIC care of kindness and humanity. I just can't deal with the corruption of who we have become. Thank you for the affirmation. It helps.
My mother also called it "drouth"! Whaddya know? She was born and raised in Montana, in what is now its largest city, Billings. I had always thought "drouth" was unique to Montana, but apparently not. Must be in use in Wyoming, the western Dakotas and other (relatively) nearby parts as well.
I myself am in Maryland outside of DC now, where both parents' last stop happened to be. Lived in eight states ("lived in"=6 months or longer), been to 43 of them, plus lived in two Canadian provinces in middle-high school. But though a longtime transplant here, my Midwestern/Western roots and background remain strong. It never really leaves you.
Another great article Tom, thanks again for the view from the center of the country, where attention to detail can mean survival. The little things, like a shift in the breeze or stars on an ego logo that reveal the true nature of what is happening or about to happen.
I am an old guy who has seen the hail, floods, drought and disease take what you think is yours. I've learned to expect it, deal with it when it comes and rejoice when it doesn't. What I never expected, like so many others, is a government that turns it back on it's people. Government so blatantly corrupt, it braggs out loud revealing it no longer is about building a nation but extracting it's wealth for the ruling class.
Thank you. I think that's exactly what so many of us are struggling to understand. We learned to prepare for drought, hail, floods, bad markets, even war. Those are the risks that come with living on the land. But we were raised believing our government, however imperfect, would at least try to help people get back on their feet.
What's so unsettling now isn't that disaster exists, it's that indifference has become policy. When those with power see suffering as collateral damage or even a political advantage, something fundamental has changed.
The country has survived hard years before because people looked out for one another. That's still our greatest strength. I just hope we remember it before too much more is lost.
I like your writing and respect your point of view. I will not be clapping today and any USA flag I have on display is upside down. We are a country in distress. In my mind, my actions mean I am a man who feels a deep kinship with my country, and that I recognize we are in dire straits. I fully understand, respect, and applaud your decision to drive on as usual through these fraught times. Happy birthday to us all.
Thank you for this. An upside-down flag has meant distress signal longer than it's meant anything political, and choosing not to clap today while still calling this country yours isn't a contradiction, it's honesty. Feeling deep kinship with a place and recognizing it's in dire straits can be the same feeling, not opposite ones. I appreciate you sharing that here. Happy birthday to us all.
I also lived in the Midwest and western states. The weather is dreadful and beautiful in a powerful way. When I lived in Scottsbluff I saw dramatic thunderstorms race across the prairie. I’ve watched twisters form in the clouds and, luckily, none reached the ground where I stood. I remember many abandoned farmhouses, no longer able to support a family, giving way to larger and larger farms. It seemed the only way to farm was get bigger or die. Good luck to your son, farming is a hard life.
You know exactly what I'm talking about. There is nothing quite like watching a thunderstorm roll across the prairie. It's beautiful right up until it isn't. Out here, the sky is always reminding you who's really in charge.
You're right about the abandoned farmhouses, too. Every empty place tells a story. They weren't abandoned because people stopped loving the land. Most were pushed off it by economics that favored getting bigger instead of making a decent living.
My nephew is the one farming now, and I worry about him every day. He works harder than just about anyone I know, yet so much of his future depends on forces completely outside his control. The weather, the markets, input costs, and now politics all have a say in whether he makes it another year. Farmers deserve better than that. Thanks for sharing your memories. They brought back a few of my own.
Tom, since early this anniversary year and more and more as the day approaches (tomorrow as I write this), I've been contrasting 250 with 200, and since we were both around then and old enough to have some idea, I don't doubt you have, too.
I don't know if you remember, I think it was the same network Walter Cronkite anchored, but they did an individual state by state narrative, and reading you has brought to mind a song they played when they got to Nebraska. I'm thinking you know the one. Looking back, it was poignant - but real; that and the narrative had an undertone I'd describe as defiantly optimistic. It comes through in all your writing.
In fact, as I'm writing this, I seem to remember the state by state narrative started the year *before*, 1975, not 1976!
By contrast, I have found ZERO enthusiasm for 250. None. Not from the illegitimate one's supporters. Certainly not from his opponents. Not from those who can't quite commit to either camp. Not from those with one foot in both, if such exist. Black, white, hispanic, East Coast, Midwest, Far West, New England, South. No-one!!
At least in '75-'76 there was some mostly sincere observation. Just not happening.
Despite this, in the same spirit in which you and family will observe the best of this quarter-millenium occasion, or what remains, we will too. And I'll continue writing - that's where I've been lately, just a lot less writing on Substack, seeing where these literary efforts are heading next. Hopefully have something soon for friends and allies here. In observation and/or in spite of the damage done to it, in ways you so graphically describe, contrasting the avoidable with unavoidable battles to survive that face us all, often in contrasting ways.
My dad used to shake his head and wonder how my generation would survive, I now wonder how we will survive. I hope this is just the way old men think and all will be well once this over.
We have had some rough times but this feels different, hope I am wrong.
"What I want is smaller than that. Thirty seconds, that’s all, somewhere in the coverage of the tall ships and the fireworks over the Mall, given to a farmer standing in a field that got hailed on the week of the anniversary..."
Sir, we both know that the above is not about to happen from the one(s) it should. However, I have thought about this now for well over 30 seconds. And I know that surely does not help your son Scot's financial burden... but maybe...maybe it is another thread that keeps one's foot moving in front of the other in a somewhat lighter way. From a stranger.
Superb! A spot-on assessment of the divisive, self-serving villain who, along with his illegitimate, criminally corrupt regime, have twisted our formerly-great and respected country into a hollowed-out shell and an international pariah.
I'm sorry you won't get your wish. That man has never loved another soul, only loves the reflection he sees. So sad that he sits in our house and noone defies him.
Tom, thank you for this. A much needed reminder that it's possible to hold both well earned pride and heart wrenching grief within our hearts, within the soul of this nation. This moment. Bittersweet, haunting perhaps. Held within community. Let us never stop reaching, while honoring each other. 250 reasons to never surrender our spirit.
Tom, your writing touches me immeasurably and I share your essays with everyone I know. You are a gifted writer and I’m grateful you share that gift with us. Thank you.
This line pretty well sums up the past 10 years. "The norm that used to be so obvious nobody had to write it into law, because who would ever need a law telling a president not to do that."
Great story, Tom. The heat pops windshields out from the inside, so any little break or flaw will cause the whole thing to fail. Farming has always been a risky proposition, razor-thin at best. Now that the data centers are sucking up the Ogallala aquifer, farms in the Midwest will occupy the same space as buffalo hunts. Old days stuff before greed ruined everything.
People who have not experienced Midwest weather have no idea what it's like. Blizzards that get people lost in whiteout between the barn and the house, ice storms that lock your car to the ground and make it impossible to step onto the porch, the heat like a wet wool blanket falling from the sky, and those terrifying magnificent blue-black storms that bubble across the horizon, lit from within by fantastic flashes of unimaginable power.
I lived on a farm west of Iowa City for many years. In 2006 I was watching The Green Mile with my daughter, ignoring the phone ringing off the hook. The air had a stillness that was downright weird. We heard the wail of sirens from the town seven miles away and stepped out onto the porch. I saw a black cloud the shape of Nebraska looming across the entire western sky, a curling tail spinning off the corner. The metal porch roof popped in and out like a nervous fella with a coke can, pressure make my head feel odd. The cloud was heading right for us.
I took my daughter down to the basement, which was only partly finished. We sat on chairs while we listened to the wind roar, the hail spatter, and the continuous rumble and crash of thunder.
The 2006 tornado passed directly over us and dropped into Iowa City, carving a path of devastation through the historic downtown. The Dairy Queen, a sorority house, three blocks of brick buildings, St Patrick's church and an enormous array of trees were destroyed. It took weeks and months to clean up, and some of the buildings were unsalvageable and needed to be torn down.
After I moved to Cedar Rapids, I witnessed two 500-year floods and countless storms and tornadoes, but the 2020 derecho was the peach. Here's that story, if you're interested: https://jhardycarroll.substack.com/p/derecho
Now I live on the Olympic Peninsula, largely exempt from huge weather events but subject to earthquakes and volcanoes. We're also spared the heatwave engulfing most of the US right now. Somebody joked that it's hot because the gates of hell are yawning wide to receive Mitch McConnell. Here's hoping the stay open long enough to admit a heat-stroked dictator..
Stay cool buddy
That was beautiful, Tom. Years from now, your essays will be the most heartfelt, clear eyed portrayal of how things are today. Unadorned language that hits the mark with stunning accuracy. This country was able to function year after year only because our presidents, regardless of their flaws, were generally good people who followed a moral compass. It only took one con man with no scruples to reveal the weakness of our democracy...it was built on trust.
That is why I was talked into putting some of my stories in a new book. It will be available the 8th.
Can we preorder? I want to buy it for my new grandson. I want him to understand the texture and context of the world he was born into. I doubt I’ll be around to tell him about it by the time he’s able to grasp it. His mother, my daughter, cherishes books. She’ll make sure he gets it.
Yes eventually. The book is still under review from Amazon. It should be ready for preorder in the next day or so.
and your novel is ?????????
Well done again, Mr Joad. One part I would like to comment on is the placing of 11 stars on the eagle. The Confederacy had 11 states. I think that was done on purpose.
I come from NE, grew up in IL, now have family in TX. Agriculture was in our bones. As a kid, coming back to school from lunch at home, we listened to the Farm Report at 1 pm every day. We toured the Chicago Board of Trade as a field trip. We were supposed to know what ran our economy literally ground up.
We were also taught about the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. Our parents and grandparents had lived it in NE. Taught me how to be poor. I know how to "put food by" and how to cook Hoover Stew. Then came the War and rationing, and I know how to do that, too. I can feed 8 on one pound of ground beef. Have my Mom's rationing cookbook. We lived out of that after the war.
I know that weather, the droughts, and the hail. Back in the 90s, I returned to NE to visit following a major hail storm with every car shop bragging, "Fix hail damage - NO Bondo!" I was not unimpressed. In the 50s we had a mini drought (Mom called it "drougth") and remember how scared she was. Well, here we go again. Only as in the 20s, years of bad planning let farmers and ranchers cut down the CCC shelter belts for a few more acres but with the inevitable outcome of less shade, more heat, less water. Trees help create rain. We don't have any. The drought line that ran north south has now moved 120 miles farther East, and that's not good. Naturally dry areas are worse off. Formerly "normal" areas are becoming naturally dry. It's killing off farm land faster than urban development.
My hope is we can remember the past, do better when the next Dust Bowl comes. You can see it already in AZ with "Haboobs", the dust storms pretty much no one talks about. That's as much of a warning as you got from the sky - time to do something is NOW.
Might be wrong, but seems to me I remember better Ag concerns when NE elected Dems. Bob Kerrey in NE, others in the Dakotas and Iowa. They were ones to bring the issues of farming - not just AgBiz - to the table. Maybe I romanticize it, but it just seemed better. Came Reagan, we got Farm Aid concerts not policy. Financializing everything for bank profits not farm survival seems to have dug in then, not let go.
I don't really understand the issues anymore, but I do know the issues of survival not of finance. I liked, as someone now in truck farm land, that Pres. Obama included truck farms in the Ag Bill. I don't think they exist anymore. Our big growers don't rival commodity crop growers in political power, all to our detriment.
I also fear our young don't know how to make do, how to plant gardens, how to cook cheaply, how to share food with neighbors. Gone are the days of the "midnight zucchini deposits" when neighbors with oversupply - and it's always massive - dropped extra zucchini on one another's porches. Wasn't always appreciated, but it IS food. That in a little Bisquick with onion - you have dinner.
I know how to survive. Problem is - at the moment I'm supporting 8 people not my family who now live in my backyard. Homeless folks driven out of encampments for no clear reason but just because SCOTUS said cities could in the Grant's Pass decision. THAT is going to stretch the budget if we lose SNAP at the end of the year. We are also facing a major produce shortage soon because of no fertilizer and no farm labor. That's why we have a garden. It's all we have.
Not sure what will come, but I do know we need people who care about people back in office. The one guy treated as the only one who matters isn't going to get us through this. Golden Eagles aren't doing the trick. Back to basics - food, jobs, national planning for people, not a few rich guys. Constitution calls on our government to provide for the common defense and "promote the general welfare". Let's get that back. Good wishes to your nephew in a time of indifference to him and his needs. We can do better. Will we? Remains to be seen.
This hit me hard because it reminded me that survival used to be something we passed down like family recipes. Not because anyone wanted hard times, but because they'd lived through them and understood that prosperity isn't permanent.
Your point about the difference between agriculture and AgBiz is one we don't talk about nearly enough. Somewhere along the way we stopped asking what keeps farmers alive and started asking what keeps quarterly earnings growing. Those are not the same question.
The shelter belts, the gardens, the neighbors leaving zucchini on porches, stretching a pound of hamburger to feed eight people—those weren't quaint traditions. They were community resilience. They were insurance policies written in trust instead of contracts.
And what you're doing now, caring for eight people who have nowhere else to go, says more about the meaning of "general welfare" than most politicians ever will. Government can make policy, but people like you keep civilization from falling apart while we wait for better policy.
I hope your garden grows. I hope your neighbors help. And I hope we remember, before the next Dust Bowl teaches us again, that a nation is only as strong as its ability to feed its people and care for the ones who have the least.
This is the only hope for now - let us give the "least of these": the BASIC care of kindness and humanity. I just can't deal with the corruption of who we have become. Thank you for the affirmation. It helps.
My mother also called it "drouth"! Whaddya know? She was born and raised in Montana, in what is now its largest city, Billings. I had always thought "drouth" was unique to Montana, but apparently not. Must be in use in Wyoming, the western Dakotas and other (relatively) nearby parts as well.
I myself am in Maryland outside of DC now, where both parents' last stop happened to be. Lived in eight states ("lived in"=6 months or longer), been to 43 of them, plus lived in two Canadian provinces in middle-high school. But though a longtime transplant here, my Midwestern/Western roots and background remain strong. It never really leaves you.
Another great article Tom, thanks again for the view from the center of the country, where attention to detail can mean survival. The little things, like a shift in the breeze or stars on an ego logo that reveal the true nature of what is happening or about to happen.
I am an old guy who has seen the hail, floods, drought and disease take what you think is yours. I've learned to expect it, deal with it when it comes and rejoice when it doesn't. What I never expected, like so many others, is a government that turns it back on it's people. Government so blatantly corrupt, it braggs out loud revealing it no longer is about building a nation but extracting it's wealth for the ruling class.
Thank you. I think that's exactly what so many of us are struggling to understand. We learned to prepare for drought, hail, floods, bad markets, even war. Those are the risks that come with living on the land. But we were raised believing our government, however imperfect, would at least try to help people get back on their feet.
What's so unsettling now isn't that disaster exists, it's that indifference has become policy. When those with power see suffering as collateral damage or even a political advantage, something fundamental has changed.
The country has survived hard years before because people looked out for one another. That's still our greatest strength. I just hope we remember it before too much more is lost.
I like your writing and respect your point of view. I will not be clapping today and any USA flag I have on display is upside down. We are a country in distress. In my mind, my actions mean I am a man who feels a deep kinship with my country, and that I recognize we are in dire straits. I fully understand, respect, and applaud your decision to drive on as usual through these fraught times. Happy birthday to us all.
Thank you for this. An upside-down flag has meant distress signal longer than it's meant anything political, and choosing not to clap today while still calling this country yours isn't a contradiction, it's honesty. Feeling deep kinship with a place and recognizing it's in dire straits can be the same feeling, not opposite ones. I appreciate you sharing that here. Happy birthday to us all.
I also lived in the Midwest and western states. The weather is dreadful and beautiful in a powerful way. When I lived in Scottsbluff I saw dramatic thunderstorms race across the prairie. I’ve watched twisters form in the clouds and, luckily, none reached the ground where I stood. I remember many abandoned farmhouses, no longer able to support a family, giving way to larger and larger farms. It seemed the only way to farm was get bigger or die. Good luck to your son, farming is a hard life.
You know exactly what I'm talking about. There is nothing quite like watching a thunderstorm roll across the prairie. It's beautiful right up until it isn't. Out here, the sky is always reminding you who's really in charge.
You're right about the abandoned farmhouses, too. Every empty place tells a story. They weren't abandoned because people stopped loving the land. Most were pushed off it by economics that favored getting bigger instead of making a decent living.
My nephew is the one farming now, and I worry about him every day. He works harder than just about anyone I know, yet so much of his future depends on forces completely outside his control. The weather, the markets, input costs, and now politics all have a say in whether he makes it another year. Farmers deserve better than that. Thanks for sharing your memories. They brought back a few of my own.
Tom, since early this anniversary year and more and more as the day approaches (tomorrow as I write this), I've been contrasting 250 with 200, and since we were both around then and old enough to have some idea, I don't doubt you have, too.
I don't know if you remember, I think it was the same network Walter Cronkite anchored, but they did an individual state by state narrative, and reading you has brought to mind a song they played when they got to Nebraska. I'm thinking you know the one. Looking back, it was poignant - but real; that and the narrative had an undertone I'd describe as defiantly optimistic. It comes through in all your writing.
In fact, as I'm writing this, I seem to remember the state by state narrative started the year *before*, 1975, not 1976!
By contrast, I have found ZERO enthusiasm for 250. None. Not from the illegitimate one's supporters. Certainly not from his opponents. Not from those who can't quite commit to either camp. Not from those with one foot in both, if such exist. Black, white, hispanic, East Coast, Midwest, Far West, New England, South. No-one!!
At least in '75-'76 there was some mostly sincere observation. Just not happening.
Despite this, in the same spirit in which you and family will observe the best of this quarter-millenium occasion, or what remains, we will too. And I'll continue writing - that's where I've been lately, just a lot less writing on Substack, seeing where these literary efforts are heading next. Hopefully have something soon for friends and allies here. In observation and/or in spite of the damage done to it, in ways you so graphically describe, contrasting the avoidable with unavoidable battles to survive that face us all, often in contrasting ways.
Happy 250th Anniversary anyway, my friend!👍✍️🙏
My dad used to shake his head and wonder how my generation would survive, I now wonder how we will survive. I hope this is just the way old men think and all will be well once this over.
We have had some rough times but this feels different, hope I am wrong.
"What I want is smaller than that. Thirty seconds, that’s all, somewhere in the coverage of the tall ships and the fireworks over the Mall, given to a farmer standing in a field that got hailed on the week of the anniversary..."
Sir, we both know that the above is not about to happen from the one(s) it should. However, I have thought about this now for well over 30 seconds. And I know that surely does not help your son Scot's financial burden... but maybe...maybe it is another thread that keeps one's foot moving in front of the other in a somewhat lighter way. From a stranger.
I respect this piece immensely. Thank you.
Thank you Sheila!!
Superb! A spot-on assessment of the divisive, self-serving villain who, along with his illegitimate, criminally corrupt regime, have twisted our formerly-great and respected country into a hollowed-out shell and an international pariah.
Beautiful Tom.
I'm sorry you won't get your wish. That man has never loved another soul, only loves the reflection he sees. So sad that he sits in our house and noone defies him.
That’s true!!
Tom, thank you for this. A much needed reminder that it's possible to hold both well earned pride and heart wrenching grief within our hearts, within the soul of this nation. This moment. Bittersweet, haunting perhaps. Held within community. Let us never stop reaching, while honoring each other. 250 reasons to never surrender our spirit.
Tom, your writing touches me immeasurably and I share your essays with everyone I know. You are a gifted writer and I’m grateful you share that gift with us. Thank you.
Thank you Susan!!
I love this land. I hate this country. The nation is lovely. The state is horrible. Happy firework day.
Same to you!!
This line pretty well sums up the past 10 years. "The norm that used to be so obvious nobody had to write it into law, because who would ever need a law telling a president not to do that."