Author Archives: janishaag

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 →

I often stop myself when I start to write about my BFF because… it’s complicated. Not our adoration of each other—that’s simple. We have been best friends ever since, way back in the last century (the 1980s!), we met when … Continue reading →

wall/here was all you left behind on one bookshelf— two tiny magnetized words with no place to stick though, really, there was more: a handful of stray pills that got away and hid under the bed, under the rose rug … Continue reading →