Author Archives: janishaag

Six days a week, between about 1 and 4 p.m., I head to my city’s oldest college campus that has taught students for going on 105 years, now quiet, seemingly abandoned. It’s not, of course, though nowadays students and teachers … Continue reading →

Two years ago today Dick Schmidt felt dizzy and collapsed as we stood in line in Honolulu to board a plane home after our annual winter trip to Hawaii. Without warning, he died in that moment. But two men immediately … Continue reading →

For Dani, whose help this year has made all the difference On the last day of the no-good-very-bad yearwe get to work. You come to my house—a near-weekly stint for the past ninemonths—take stock of the living room,the boxes, empty … Continue reading →

Never have we neededto hear it more as Mary, terrified, must havereceived the angel’s tidings. Or the same words deliveredto others whose faith was slipping or perhaps had vanished entirely—how did it sound to them? In these days of trial … Continue reading →

All is calm; all is brightat the North Pole,where Santa,it has been reported,is immune to the virusand ready for takeoff. The big man and elfin teamare working in earnest,getting ready to load the sleigh,hitch up the reindeerand make their worldly … Continue reading →

81-year-old William Shakespeare was the second person to get the firstCOVID vaccines at University Hospital in Coventry, England, Dec. 8, 2020. In the winter of our discontent‘tis not a dagger I see before me but a needleto begin the Taming … Continue reading →

SereeeeenaI just met a cat named SerenaAnd suddenly the namewill never be the same to me. I’ve known more than a few kitties in my life, falling hard for them as a kid when my family acquired our first sweet … Continue reading →

Zooming through poetry class onlinefor the 11th week—still not used to students’faces in little rectangles onscreen, wishing the oneswho elect not to show their faces would— weeks of discussing imagery and metaphor,sonnets and villanelles, syntax and sound,putting them into virtual … Continue reading →

Few things soothe me when I’m busy or anxious as well as time spent by the ocean. That’s why, mid-semester in this crazy world of Zoom teaching, Dick and I had arranged a different kind of oceanside getaway—one that involved … Continue reading →

I was out watering the plants in my front yard a couple months ago, trying to give them a good drink before the heat of a Sacramento August day, when Robert Gordon walked by. He was moving at his usual … Continue reading →