Paha Review

I graduated from Mount Mercy College (now a university) with a English major, secondary education minor. One of the activities I was involved with was the literary magazine that published short stories, poetry, and art. I was the editor for the 1992 edition. It was called Reflections and I really enjoyed working on it, so much so that I didn't turn in my hours that I worked on it in order to get $ since it was my work study job. Call me crazy to not turn that in.

I bring this up not because I want to return to the world of poetry or even editing literary magazines. I bring this up because I received the 2012 version of Reflections this week. It is called "PAHA review." Paha is a ridge and Mount Mercy University is located on a Paha.

Like it was 20 years ago, there are a lot of contributions from the arts people. I read the bios in the back and there were no business or accounting or nursing or computer science or social work students that had their work published. How unfortunate that they were not recruited to contribute. I remember that is what I did. I know there was at least one nursing major and at least one business major, through I can't say their name at the moment.

The content of the Paha Review is good. I liked some of it while other parts I just shrugged and thought, "That's good poetry? Really?" It's not my place to go through each poem and short story.

I will say this. A lot has changed for me in the last 20 years. I am actually coming up on 18 years as a Technical Writer and that is exciting for me, considering that 20 years ago, I didn't know there was a career for writing technical documentation.