Author Archives: janishaag

That song, a big hit in 1963-64, just cracked you up and cracked up your daughters, too: Hello, Muddah, Hello, Faddah, Here I am at Camp Granada, Camp is very entertaining, And they say we’ll have some fun if it … Continue reading →

I am awed by people who do what seem to me impossible feats. My friend Ed Cole, for example, who, bit by bit, is hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, which runs 2,650 miles from the Mexican border to Canada through … Continue reading →

Sue Lester was (luckily for me) the girl next door when my parents moved my sister and me in 1966 to this out-of-the-way place next to a lake named Folsom. Sue and I were 8 years old, though she would … Continue reading →

We went to serve, as thousands of people have done, the patients of Kalaupapa. Though there are only ten Hansen’s Disease patients left of the 7,600 banished to this isolated peninsula on the island of Moloka’i, we went as kokua … Continue reading →

Every year about this time I go to my college’s graduation ceremony—sometimes in cap and gown as a “perfesser,” but more often lately in a maroon Sacramento City College shirt that says “staff” on it. Staff at my college are … Continue reading →

One of the things I’m often asked by people who read my posts is, “How’s Annie?” And the answer is pretty much always, “Her usual happy self.” My friend Nikki traveled to China to adopt Annie two summers ago and … Continue reading →

Sometimes life hands you rocks. Sometimes they’re pretty rocks. Sometimes they’re art pieces made by a kind soul so that their heft in the hand is downright healing. That’s what Laurie Aboudara-Robertson sent me. She’s the women I met while … Continue reading →

I play you for my college students whose parents might have boogied to your songs in their teen years, but these kids, Stevie, they don’t recognize the funky sounds of your keyboard, their bodies don’t automatically start to groove when … Continue reading →