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For the Moment

On December 16, 2017

POETRY

This December marked five years since the shooting nightmare at Newtown, the one that marked a candid realization that–regardless of where one stands politically on the issue of gun control–our society has been rendered helpless to respond and react to absurdly common emergencies involving access to high-powered weapons and mental illness.

Regardless of where one stands politically it ought to hurt your soul, burn your heart, wrench your guts to stare into the wonderfully innocent lights extinguished that day, when a disturbed 20 year-old murdered his mother and went on that rampage and invoked carnage so disturbing it reduced the President of the United States to tears.

Regardless of where one stands politically, we have to admit we’ve accomplished virtually nothing to prevent such an act from occurring once more, abandoning our American, Can-Do spirit and retreating to the defeated post of nothing can stop things like this. Only God, perhaps.

Gone West

By James D. Hogan

On November 14, 2017

In writing

AMBER WAVES OF GRAIN

I am sitting in the Las Vegas airport in an airy, glass and steel alcove overlooking the tarmac. The sun is several degrees above the mountain range, and jets rocket down the runway. I watch as their sleek bodies realize their weightlessness, and the landing gear suspension pops out as if surprised at such a sudden, newfound capacity, and then they’re off.

We’ve been in the southwest for a long weekend vacation, and I’ve been trying to play it slow, to soak it all in: the glass wall, the aluminum struts that support it, the cabling design that connects down to the terrazzo floor, the small brass plaque dedicating this sunlit area to someone named Maria. The plaque is hidden down at the bottom of the windows, square with the floor. There’s a little brown bird trapped in here with us. She’s found some popcorn spilled over in a corner.

Perhaps it was the time change, or the constant movement of our itinerary, but this has been the kind of weekend that’s stretched out in time. Breakfast this morning seems like a long time ago, but it was barely two hours ago. Still, the setting seems otherworldly. We ate in a one of the many hotel restaurants in front of a different bank of windows, this time overlooking the pool deck, where men busied themselves with staging the area for another day in Las Vegas.

What if we treated guns like cars?

By James D. Hogan

On October 3, 2017

In writing

OP-ED

Another mass shooting, another missed opportunity to talk about common-sense gun control. But humor me if you will.

The argument about guns in America has continually devolved into two diametrically opposed camps: those armed to the teeth and those attempting to destroy liberty.

What a tragedy in itself.

It’s important for both sides to be honest. Every time our country experiences a mass-casualty shooting, it doesn’t take long for talking heads on either side to begin spinning off statistics–and fear. Someone inevitably will decide that “now” is “not the time” to talk about regulation, gun ownership, etc. in the wake of the tragedy.

We always seem to forget when the “right” time to talk about it is.

Category: writing Page 21 of 34