James D. Hogan

This is a real human being writing to you.

On September 30, 2026

Granted, I’m typing on a computer, beaming these words from the kitchen bar where I’m drinking coffee over the wifi to my website, which dutifully records and posts them somewhere, and presumably you are out there somewhere, reading this on a device of your choosing, probably a laptop or phone, reading line after line against the glare of an LED screen.

But I am a human, and so are you.

At least, dear readers, that’s true for most of you, or hopefully much of you. There’s an analytics plugin installed on my website that suggests at least a handful of you are bots. Not actual robots, of course, just a thing that scrapes my site, which I think means makes a copy, tucking it away somewhere. It conjures up a funny idea that out in the electron cloud that is this website and all the websites in existence, I have a little devoted following of robot readers. A robot fan club, perhaps. And that they occasionally stop by to see what I’ve been up to.

After

By James D. Hogan

On September 11, 2026

In writing

I was a junior in college on September 11. Coming back to work at the university where I completed my undergraduate degree has brought plenty of déjà vu moments—not to mention the surreal feeling of seeing my children walk the sidewalks I once walked as a student—but today, twenty-five years after the attacks, I became aware that there was a lot of time and space between then and now.

All of it can be classified as after.

Just as there were on the fifth and tenth and twentieth anniversaries of that clear-blue Tuesday, today’s news has featured a parade of recollections, photos and videos just as fresh in my mind as they were a quarter century ago. There have been a few stories I hadn’t heard, new chapters to consider.

For the first time, there is a focus on the generation that was born and has come of age in the span of days since our national frame was shattered.

Between the Ditches

By James D. Hogan

On July 13, 2026

In diary

It happened faster than I thought.

After a long stint of what I can only describe as indifference toward completing driver’s ed classes, Julia suddenly lit a fire under herself, accumulated the requisite number of hours required to finish the online class, and found herself on the driving portion of the schedule. Then, she drove, and within three days’ time, she was holding a certificate declaring her eligible to earn her permit.

Which she did, hours after completing the driving portion of driver’s ed. Kelly let her drive home.