Tom Holmes

1 week ago | forestparkreview.com | Tom Holmes

This column first ran on July 3, 2024:Independence Day, the day in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress, our foundational document, reads like a petition for dissolution of marriage. Recently in this village we’ve had a string of events that, in one way or another, were celebrations of freedom. Juneteenth marks the day in 1865 when Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced that all enslaved people were free. Sort of.

3 weeks ago | forestparkreview.com | Tom Holmes

According to my calendar, June is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Pride Month. A more condensed title is LGBTQ+ Pride. The plus sign signifies to me that, nowadays, we have as many kinds of sexual identities as we have styles of running shoes. When I was a boy in the 1950s, it was simple (or that’s the way it seemed). If you had a vagina you were a girl, and if you had a penis, you were a boy.

1 month ago | forestparkreview.com | Tom Holmes

This is the second part of Tom Holmes’ interview with Mike Mohr. Part I ran last week:Michael “Mike” Mohr describes himself as old-fashioned, old-school. Nowadays, old fashioned often means stuck in your ways, atavistic, oldfangled, quaint, antique, retro, behind the times, antiquated, outdated, obsolete, outmoded. But that’s not what Mike means by old-fashioned. At the risk of putting words in his mouth, I looked up the Boy Scout Oath and Law, and I think he would say “amen” to both.

1 month ago | forestparkreview.com | Tom Holmes

If I organized a No Kings Rally demonstration in Constitution Court, would you participate? Would you help me organize it? Here’s why I ask: The framers of the Constitution had just fought a war to gain independence from Great Britain, and the last thing they wanted was a king as the executive, so they built checks and balances into the Constitution.

1 month ago | forestparkreview.com | Tom Holmes

Michael “Mike” Mohr will have mixed feelings this Memorial Day as he always does on the last Monday of May. On the one hand, the Vietnam vet will feel proud: proud that he served his country, proud that he did his duty, proud that he served with the storied 101st Airborne Division. But also in his emotional mix will be nightmarish memories. “I try not to think about my time there,” he said, “but if I watch a war movie, especially Vietnam war movies, it triggers something.