Category Archives: Uncategorized

The year I graduated from high school the country wrapped itself in the flag for the nation’s bicentennial. Everything turned red, white and blue in 1976. I turned 18 in July and began college after Labor Day. I voted for … Continue reading →

FROM THE NEW GLASS-WALLED STUDENT SERVICES BUILDING AT SACRAMENTO CITY COLLEGE, A JOURNALISM INSTRUCTOR EXPERIENCES CAMPUS GUNFIRE.  Sacramento Magazine | November 2015 By Jan Haag Four p.m., the second Thursday of a new school year, barely September on the campus … Continue reading →

love wins he and him she and her they and them ze and hir hand in hand lip to lip arm wrapped in arm they rejoice they celebrate all over a union the president says grown a bit more perfect … Continue reading →

I’m working on a series of short (you might say even micro) fiction pieces, 1,000 words or less, which is a challenge for me. This is one of the little pieces with fictional narrators, each in a different voice. This … Continue reading →

Dear P-26/T-3: Back near the end of the last century, when the journalism department moved out here, you were called P-26—“P” for “portable”—though you’d been on this spot for a long time by then. That confused Ginny McReynolds and me, … Continue reading →

(a love poem to precipitation) For two days the sky has slowly clouded, scrunched its face like a toddler winding up for a tantrum, finally spitting petulant drops at us, and the miracle of puddles and wipers beating a steady … Continue reading →

Because that’s what a new year does— offer the clean slate, present the fresh calendar, the new four-digit number that causes you to shake your head and say, how can it be…? The sense of time not so much passing … Continue reading →

I meet my maternal grandmother in antiques shops. Nearly every one that sucks me in—though I try to avoid them—holds pieces of her china (Desert Rose) or her silverware (Washingtonia) or cut glass bowls with sugar cubes and delicate silvery … Continue reading →

If I’m in Yosemite, it means it’s the end of May, and school’s out for summer (sing it with me!). This year it also means I’ve completed my 21st year as a full-time writing professor… and before Sacramento City College … Continue reading →

(for RDS) In my family December 7 was celebrated as my grandparents’ wedding anniversary, 1921, long before most Americans had heard of Pearl Harbor, before bombs whistled from the sky, unleashing unholy destruction upon far too many across the planet, … Continue reading →