money, politics, and a nation in crisis
Nice People Everywhere We spent a month in California and pulled out last Saturday. One of the days we drove Route One, a winding two-lane highway along California's rocky, terrifying, spectacular coast. It runs across WPA bridges built by
Essays, reporting, arguments, and observations from the archive.
By Rachael There is a piece of paper in the back of a drawer in my house, behind the passports and the warranty for a stove I no
The Road Under the Road Summary for the Time-Constrained Reader Route 66 got a birthday and a death certificate. The federal board numbered it on November 11,
Prepared remarks of Wendell Pryor, Chairman of the Presidential Commission on Electoral Continuity, before the Joint Committee on Rules and Administration. I did not seek this assignment. I
By Rachael There is a video I have been thinking about, which I have not seen and which almost no one has seen, though it has now been
I learned to program on machines that made you wait. You submitted your code and you sat with a printout and a pencil, sometimes for an hour, sometimes
They pledged nothing, risked nothing, and lost nothing — the fathers could have learned from them. by Rachael Somebody has to defend the patriots of January 6, and it
You were trained to laugh at the word. That was the first move. Say conspiracy out loud and you become the crank in the tinfoil hat, the man
it's about racism Frederick Douglass spent the years after the Civil War selling the country a hopeful story. He called it the Composite Nation. Immigrants were
Joe Zeigler Burnt Ground · 08 July 2026 The 1945 Great Seal was wood, lacquer, and a passive resonator hidden in the beak of a carved eagle. The 2026
Smoke and Fire The United States turned 250 on Saturday, and the celebration went exactly as planned, if the plan was written by god, lowercase, who apparently did
Independence was voted on July second. John Adams bet the second would be the day we celebrated forever. He lost by two days. My house in Florida sits
You know I write a lot. Burnt Ground. Books. More manuscripts than sense. All of it means copying and pasting the same things all day — boilerplate, addresses, passages
a coat of paint Rachael There is a kind of water that was never meant to be looked at for its own sake. It was poured long and
The government switched off the AI model that refused to build autonomous weapons. It handed the kill list to the one that calls itself MechaHitler. The real story
She was sixteen the year everyone handed her a map of a country she was already standing in, and not one of the people drawing it had ever
the President and I are the same age. only one of us threw a party We are the same age, Trump and I. Eighty this year. He spent
I notice, when the season for it comes around again, that the word we have for the evening is only a word for a crowd, celebrare, the verb
I met Carl Jung 65 years ago in a classroom, and I left him there. I want to be fair about it. He didn’t make much of
Burnt Ground turned a year old, and a year leaves numbers. Faith and Rachael have been reading them while I wasn't looking, and the numbers said
I was raised on a simple deal. A correct answer gets an A. A wrong answer gets an F. There is no third grade, no partial credit for
The machine needs people who can look at the engine without flinching. The United States does not lack for opinion. It lacks for sight. Every platform is a
of a shameful system Start with the shame, because you must understand the floor before you understand the basement. The United States spends more on medicine than any
