Harlan Hague's Writings
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Article
Nov.17.2011
http://softadventure.net
I opened my eyes and saw nothing. I closed them and pulled at the fringes until the jagged edges came together and I knew where I was. I got out of bed, trying not to disturb Carol. I gathered my clothes from the top of the dresser, shivering almost audibly, and felt my way into the hall.
I tiptoed to the bathroom at the end of the hall and shut the door. I...
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Poem
Oct.24.2011
Unpublished
Sun-splashed western porch,
The old man tends his bonsai.
Still. His golden hour.
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Oct.24.2011
Circulating
My screenplays are a reflection of my interests and my experience. They have been read and are being read. All are copyrighted and registered with WGAw. Here are the expanded loglines.
Butterfly's Child This is the story of Tom Pinkerton, the child of Madame Butterfly and U.S. Navy Lt. Pinkerton, conceived during their contract marriage in Nagasaki in the...
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Article
Oct.22.2011
Educational Travel Review
It was dusk by the time we reached Bayeux, on a tour of Normandy some years ago. My wife and I had put our tour group on the plane to return home, and we were now enjoying a few days of travel on our own.
I drove slowly through the narrow streets of old Bayeux to the local tourist office. Shadows were long, and the streets were nearly deserted. It was almost...
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Article
Oct.21.2011
Westerners International
The title of this piece could be questioned by anyone who had heard what Thomas O. Larkin said in 1831 about California and Californios. He was anything but gentle. He despised Mexicans. He called California "the jumping off place of the world." Of all the options open to him--he was then 28 years old and living in North Carolina--going...
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Article
Sep.14.2011
American Way (American Airlines)
For 15 years, I have taught a course in the history of the American West. There is in my file of lectures a folder titled “California Dream.” The folder is empty. The lecture title has appeared every year in my syllabus, but I have never delivered it.
It is not that I have decided, year after year, that the topic is unworthy. Some historians believe that...
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Article
Sep.14.2011
The American West magazine
In O. E.Rölvaag's Giants in the Earth, a small caravan of Norwegian immigrants stopped on the prairie, and the riders got down from their wagons. They scanned the landscape in all directions and liked what they saw. It was beautiful, all good plowland and clean of any sign of human habitation all the way to the horizon. After so much hoping and planning, they had...
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Essay
Sep.14.2011
Roundup Magazine, Western Writers of America
Different people get their kicks in different ways. Writers dream of holding in their hands materials that they have discovered, documents that have not been seen by other researchers, documents that the discoverer may now use for the first time to reveal the past.
One writer finds nuggets in an old cabinet buried under garage debris, another in a library...
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I have yet to write the book of which I can say:
This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved, and hated, like another: my life was as the vapor, and is not; but this I saw and knew; this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory.”
—John Ruskin (Of Kings' Treasuries)
About Harlan
I am a compulsive writer. History, biography, screenplays, fiction, including some sci-fi/alternate history, travel. Also a little poetry. Wish I could write music. You'll find more about me than you want to know at http://softadventure.net.
Causes Harlan Hague Supports
Oxfam, Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity, Central Asia Institute