Articles by Janet Rechtman

Guest Comment

Guest Comment: Gun culture

The other day I woke up with a Carpenters moldy-oldy ear-worming through my brain: We’ve only just begun … Except the words were something like “we only just be guns” because it was the day […]

Guest Comment

Guest Comment: Bully on the trail

“Would you please restrain your dog?” my husband asks. “My dog just wants to play with your dog! Leave him alone, you geezer!” is her response. Red-faced with seeming rage, she grabs her dog’s collar, […]

Guest Comment

Guest Comment: ‘Me-and-you-ing’

Mendocino Headlands State Park. We walk a curvy trail alongside the estuary as the Big River winds its way to the ocean. The word that comes to mind is “meandering,” which brings me to “me-and-you-enduring,” […]

Guest Comment

Guest comment: Democracy and déjà vu

In the fall of 1991, my mom and I went on a Friendship Force trip to Moscow. It was six years after glasnost—the unfreezing of the USSR as an authoritarian state—and shortly before the “Union” […]

Guest Comment

Guest comment: Much in a name

Grady we hail thee and we sing thy praiseFaithful o thee dear all through endless days That was the alma mater of Henry Grady High School in Atlanta, Ga., where I was a proud member […]

Community Essays

Guest comment: Tomato time and other discoveries

Spring has sprung here in the valley. Each morning we walk the dog along neighborhood sidewalks that feature wildflowers, blossoming trees and brilliant birdsong. Clearly, if it’s so beautiful in town, it must be fabuloso […]