Radio Free Omaha

Welcome to Radio Free Omaha. Expatriate writer occasionally broadcasts a message to the free world. Late nights mostly. I am an introvert in a noisy world. I write about the things that might otherwise keep me up at night.

I moved to Nebraska after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley in 1972, and I am a native of the San Francisco Bay Area. I am thoroughly adapted to the Midwest. In 1984, in Louisiana, I was accused of having a Midwestern accent, whatever that means. But I remain at heart a Northern Californian. Late nights mostly.

Funny things people said to me when I moved here from Berkeley: “You must go to Lincoln. It’s the Berkeley of Nebraska”. Or, “You must go to Lawrence, Kansas It’s the Berkeley of the Great Plains”. So Berkeley is to Lincoln as California is to…. Mars? Sorry, there is no good conclusion to that sentence.

I’ve been posting my work on Open Salon for the last five years or so but recently, they folded like a cheap card table, giving no notice. So I am moving my work to WordPress.

With my high school friend from Livermore, California, Julie Winkelstein, I also founded a project called Livermore Stories, about growing up in the shadow of nuclear warfare. Check it out if you’re in the mood for some doomsday musings.

Barbara Jessing