Where in the World is Josie Tomkow?
Or The Ghost of Polk City and the Great Tampa Gamble South Tampa and Downtown are built on a foundation
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Featured
This is for those posts that we wish to feature here at Deep Sand. It implies that these are a bit extra special.
Wisdom: The Organizing Virtue
What happens when leadership confuses force with wisdom?
Learn a 3-step pause to outthink panic and regain control over decision-making. We are living in a moment when reactivity often masquerades as strength. Foreign policy escalates without proportion. Economic decisions shift with the winds of applause. Dissent is treated as disloyalty. But courage without wisdom becomes recklessness. Justice without wisdom becomes punishment. Temperance without wisdom becomes denial. Something essential is missing when judgment fails at scale.
In this new essay, I reflect on what Stoic wisdom actually looks like — not as abstraction, but as disciplined judgment under pressure. From sleepless nights of personal uncertainty to watching national decisions unfold, I explore why wisdom is the organizing virtue that keeps both a life and a nation from unraveling.
Read more in Wisdom: The Organizing Virtue.
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Choosing Enough
We live in a world that is very good at convincing us that more is always better. More food, more comfort, more information, more outrage, more things. Our phones are built to keep our attention just a little longer. Our culture treats abundance as harmless and excess as normal. But when everything is available all the time, the real question is no longer what we can have. It is what we should choose to take in, and what it is quietly costing us.
Temperance offers an unfashionable answer. Not denial. Not purity. Enough. It asks us to notice our appetites, not just for food, but for attention, certainty, comfort, and stimulation. It invites us to consider whether what we consume is actually nourishing us, or simply keeping us busy and restless. In an age engineered to keep us reaching, choosing enough becomes a quiet act of freedom, one that clears space for presence, joy, and a life that feels more truly our own.
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Looking Back at 2025: A Year of Loss, Resolve, and Reckoning
At 66, I did not expect 2025 to take as much as it did. My mother died. I lost my job. Certain illusions about stability quietly disappeared. It was not a year of fireworks or easy victories. It was a year of subtraction. And yet, beneath the loss, something steadier emerged: clarity. About health. About purpose. About what still matters when titles and timelines fall away.
If 2025 was the year of endurance, 2026 must be the year of intention. Fewer illusions. More intention. The road continues. In this year-end reflection, I write honestly about grief, layoffs, aging, civic resolve, and the discipline of choosing steadiness anyway. I hope you’ll read the full piece and walk a little of that road with me.
When Elected Officials Skip the Phone Call and Go Straight to the Pitchfork
Apparently, in Florida politics, the due-diligence phase has been replaced by vibes, outrage, and a quick dash to social media. Two Hillsborough County Republican legislators worked themselves into a moral panic over students protesting ICE at a local high school — and then skipped the most basic step of governance: checking the facts. Instead of making a phone call, they fired off a letter demanding an investigation and the permanent revocation of a principal’s educator license. Because when you hear something alarming, why verify it when you can threaten someone’s career instead?
Here’s the inconvenient truth they missed: the protest happened after instructional time. Not during class. Not instead of math or English. After. That small detail didn’t stop Florida’s education commissioner — a hand-picked appointee of the governor — from piling on with a scolding warning about “diverting students from instruction.” Strong language, zero curiosity. What followed wasn’t leadership or oversight. It was performative outrage, public intimidation, and a clear message to educators and students alike: civic engagement is welcome only when it stays quiet, invisible, and politically convenient.
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The Ideological Tourist: Why Josie Tomkow is the Wrong Prescription for Tampa
Josie Tomkow is a career politician currently engaged in an audacious act of “ideological tourism.” Having spent years in rural Polk County, she is now attempting to transplant her record of institutionalized cruelty into the heart of South Tampa and Downtown. As the Chair of the House Health and Human Services Committee, she hasn’t just been a witness to the state’s “campaign of terror” against marginalized communities—she has been its gatekeeper. From overseeing draconian abortion bans to weaponizing healthcare against the LGBTQ+ community, Tomkow has treated the law as a tool for “othering” rather than a safeguard for the public.
For a district that serves as the engine of Florida’s medical and research sector, Tomkow’s record is a fundamental mismatch. While Tampa’s doctors and researchers rely on scientific consensus, Tomkow has been the primary legislative enabler for a reckless anti-science agenda that threatens our schools and retirees. She is a “carpetbagger” who views our community as a political fallback, yet she brings with her a “patrimonial” system that prioritizes extremist loyalty over the actual health of our citizens. It is time to tell this opportunist that Tampa’s values—and our healthcare—are not for sale.
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Nothing Says “This Season of Life” Like a Cremation Luncheon Invite
Yesterday’s mail brought me a milestone. Not a birthday card or a Medicare handbook, but a glossy luncheon invitation from the National Cremation Society. Apparently, once Medicare enters your life, the end-of-life marketing ecosystem wakes up and decides it’s time to talk.
The flyer promised “Personalized Affordable Options” and a “Professional Service Guarantee”—phrases that raise more questions than they answer. Since I grew up in the funeral business, I had to laugh. But underneath the humor is something real. Planning for death isn’t really about logistics; it’s about caring for the people who are left behind.
This essay starts with jokes, but it ends with what matters most: grief, love, and why the way we leave matters more to the living than to the dead.
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Civic Duty as Lived Responsibility
Where will someone sleep in your city tonight? Civic duty rarely announces itself. It does not arrive as a moment of clarity or a flood of inspiration. More often, it looks like routine. Mats laid out across a facility space. Meals delivered and set out. Volunteers arriving in shifts through the night so others can sleep indoors when the temperature drops.
We talk about civic duty as an idea, but it is better understood as a practice. It begins when concern becomes action. Not because the work feels noble, but because shared life demands it. When a community faces need, and some people have the capacity to respond, responsibility follows. Not as heroism. As participation.
This essay reflects on civic duty as lived responsibility. Drawing on Stoic philosophy, Wesleyan theology, and a wider moral consensus across traditions, it asks what it really means to show up for others when the work is repetitive, incomplete, and often unseen.
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The Constitutional Squatter: Is Jay Collins Even Eligible to Lead?
For months, we’ve watched Tallahassee treat Senate District 14 like a “GOP Arrivals Lounge”—a place where political tourists drop a carpetbag just long enough to get their voter registration stamped.
Our latest investigation into Jay Collins pulls back the curtain on a system where residency is a shell game and public service is a family business.
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Steel-Toed Integrity
When something breaks in the real world, you don’t call a politician to give a speech; you call someone with a toolbox to fix it. That is the leadership Brian Nathan offers Senate District 14. A Navy veteran and IBEW electrician who chose Tampa as his home during the Great Recession, Brian brings a craftsman’s perspective to a political system that is deeply broken.
Read about Brian’s vision for “steel-toed integrity”—a philosophy born on the job site that prioritizes practical solutions for working families over political theater. He is running to fight for affordable housing, good-paying local jobs, and quality education.
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The Price of Loyalty
While South Tampa homeowners struggle with skyrocketing premiums, Josie Tomkow voted for insurance bailouts that stripped away consumer rights without guaranteeing a single cent in rate reductions. In this special election, we have a choice between an IBEW electrician who pays his own bills and a career politician funded by the insurance lobby.
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