CONTRIBUTORS & THEIR WORKS -
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Tools of the Trade -
Photo by Weebly.com |
Charlene Anderson received an MA in English Literature from Purdue University and an MA in Research Psychology from San Francisco State University and spent most of her working life at the University of California San Francisco in grant administration. As a child, she always knew she would write, told stories to her friends, and even invented a pen name for herself, Charles Andrè. So, while working on budgets and submitting grant proposals at UCSF, she continued to write and, in 2001 published a novel, Berkeley’s Best Buddhist Bookstore. When Vistas & Byways was launched in 2015, she was pleased to be asked to chair the Editorial Board. She has served in that capacity ever since.
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Contributions to this issue:
V & B Editorial Board Chair Cover Photo: The Dawn of a New Day Photo Essay: Ironies and Incongruities - Natural and Designed Nonfiction: A New Day |
Barbara Applegate received a BA at UC Berkeley, with a major in Spanish, and an MS in Education at CSU, East Bay. As an administrator of Early Childhood Education, she developed a program to teach parents in non-English speaking families the value of helping their children retain the home language while learning English. She is the mother of 3 daughters, a traveler and a contemplative. She loves taking writing classes - not only because she learns from them, but because they give her structure for writing.
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Contributions to this issue:
Member of Editorial Board Photo Essay: Surprising City Scenes Nonfiction: Two Memories |
Jane Barrier is currently a retired computer programmer who has been living with MS for over 30 years. She enjoyed acting in local theaters until multiple sclerosis, diagnosed in 1990, curtailed her trodding the sidewalks, much less “the boards.” Thanks to OLLI instructors in poetry writing, and an offshoot group of students who formed to hear and comment on each others’ work, her feeling for poetry has been reinvigorated.
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Kathy Bruin, an experienced program manager, joined OLLI San Francisco State as Director in 2019. Prior to OLLI, she helped launch the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State. As Operations Manager at the Impact Hub between 2012-2015, Kathy supported more than 700 members and 500 guests annually. Over her career, Kathy has supervised magazine production, events, and conferences.
In 1995 Kathy founded About-Face, a media literacy campaign that educates about the impact of media on female body image and equips girls and young women with media literacy skills. In 2004 she was “punked” on a spoof debate show on Comedy Central called Crossballs. |
Joe Catalano practiced law for more than 30 years before he retired in 2018. He has since pursued his interests in photography, high performance driving, travel, and writing. He has enjoyed his first OLLI as SF State courses in the spring semester 2019 and thanks the members of the OLLI at SF State Poetry Writing interest group for their input and support. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Joan.
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Contributions to this issue:
Member of Editorial Board Photo Essay: Ironies and Incongruities in the Neighborhood Poetry: If I Tremble . . . |
Linda L. Day earned her PhD in urban policy from Syracuse University and her Masters in Architecture from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Dr. Day is emeritus Professor of City and Regional Planning, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. She teaches architectural and urban history for SFSU and UC Berkeley OLLI. As a San Francisco City Guide, she often goes on walks led by other guides. A recent walk in Golden Gate Park included seeing this statue of John McLaren. It had been hidden away under a blanket in the park's stables in keeping with Superintendent McLaren's distaste for cluttering his beloved parkscape with "stookies." She reports that walks in the park, walks in the neighborhood: taking pictures of houses, trees, people, and sidewalks with an iPhone was her best antidote to pandemic isolation.
Linda Day is a first-time contributor to Vistas & Byways.
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Mickey Eliason is a recently retired faculty member from San Francisco State University with a background in nursing, psychology, and public health. She harkens originally from Iowa and spent twenty-five years on faculty at the University of Iowa. She was propelled to San Francisco in 2005 by a midlife crisis, and transitioned from land-locked stoic midwestern to California beach bum. After a lifetime of academic writing, she is experimenting with different writing genres, but mostly to creative nonfiction. She has self-published two volumes of humor writing: a parody of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual outlining unique lesbian pathologies (The Dyke Dykignostic Manual) and short stories written recently (Pandemic Procrastination and Ponderings). Both are available on Amazon.
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Elsa Fernandez grew up in Asia. She has lived in San Francisco since 1970 and never gets tired of this lovely city. She has travelled the world and still gets excited flying back home and to finally land at SFO. Her family is scattered around the world—India, Australia, Dubai, England, Ireland and Argentina. She is a political junkie and majored in Journalism and Political Science. She loves music and plays the piano quite well (one of her dreams was to own a piano bar in upcountry Maui . . . she would probably call it the Maui Moon!). Writing poetry is an emotional outlet for her.
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Contributions to this issue:
Inside OLLI Reporter Poetry: Two Poems: Playdate with Layla, and Unexpected Lessons Inside OLLI: The Inevitability of Destiny A Personal Education on the topic of Human Evolution |
Kathy Gilbert received her MFA from San Francisco State University in 2013 after a career in public transport. She received the Mark Linenthal Poetry Award in 2012 from SFSU and won the San Francisco Browning Society Gita Specker Award three times for her dramatic monologues. She was commissioned to write a play for the 2015 San Francisco Olympians Festival. Her one act Delphin and the Children of Amphitrite was performed at the Exit Theater. She also tutors third graders, studies tai chi, practices yoga and swims. Her new book Aprils Three: Poems and Photographs is now available locally at Bird & Beckett, West Portal Books, Green Apple on Clement and on Amazon.
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Matt Ginsburg received an MFA degree in Creative Writing with a concentration in playwriting at San Francisco State University. His work explores his interest in business, economics, and politics. His plays have been read or performed at numerous theaters in San Francisco. He has also had three short stories and three works of memoir published in previous editions of Vistas & Byways. He serves on the Editorial Board of our publication.
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A San Francisco native, Kathryn Santana Goldman has been writing poetry for over 30 years. Early in her nursing career, she began writing to process stressful clinical experiences. In 2013, Kathryn took her first OLLI poetry class, fell in love with the genre, and has honed her skill ever since. As an avid photographer, she enjoys capturing images of people and places and uses these as muses for writing. During the pandemic, she combined her nursing background with her passion for poetry and designed a guided wellness class, Your Write to Resilience, using poems as prompts. She retired in December of 2022 and is excited to have more time to explore contributing to her community through the magic of poetry!
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Roberta Greifer is a poet and a retired librarian with the city of San Francisco. Her most recent appearance has been in Rumors, Secrets & Lies, an anthology of poems about pregnancy, abortion and choice.
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Mary Heldman is retired from a career in medical school administration, computer programming, and business systems analysis. She grew up in Los Angeles, but lived in Palo Alto, Washington D.C., Cambridge, and Stony Brook, New York before settling in San Francisco in 1974. She tutors at a local high school, studies piano, and designs costume jewelry. From time to time she writes sardonic prose for her friends. Mary wishes she lived with a chocolate lab or a golden retriever, but she doesn’t.
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Contributions to this issue:
Member of Editorial Board Website Proofreader Nonfiction: The Many Next Days |
Vivian Imperiale has been viewing the world through a poet’s eye since she was six. She now writes to process her emotions around homelessness, mental health, connections with the spirit world, and the loss of the Light of her Life to AIDS long ago. Her poems and prose have been published online, in magazines, journals, newspapers and in books.
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Dr. Vera Jacobson was a teacher and administrator for 30 years. She is happily writing short stories, watercoloring, and doing pencil sketching. If she is not at home, you would probably find her sailing on the San Francisco Bay. She lives in Brisbane with her dog, Peter.
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Donna Kaulkin is an author of a novel, Brenda Corrigan Went Downtown, and has written plays, a musical and poetry. Since the onset of Covid-19, she has taken numerous Zoom writing workshops, developed a memoir; “My Lost Boy” being an excerpt from it. She is a freelance writer and editor, specializing in aviation and the arts, and was a managing editor at US Pharmacopoeia and an editorial director at McGraw-Hill. She has a BA in English from Georgetown University and served as president of the American News Women’s Club from1999 to 2000.
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Mike Lambert is a long-time resident of San Francisco and led the effort to start Vistas & Byways in the fall of 2015. In an earlier life, he worked in the telecommunications industry for 35 years and taught at San Francisco State University’s College of Business for 15 years. He refutes the adage about old dogs and new tricks. He took up creative writing as a hobby at age 75. He recently self-published two novels and a collection of his short stories. His main fictional character is Jessica Jones, a single working girl in contemporary San Francisco. See his Author page at Amazon under the name of M. L. Lambert for more details.
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Contributions to this issue:
Webmaster, Launch Party M.C. Fiction: Where Was the Benevolent God? Inside OLLI: Interview with Kathy Bruin about the OLLI Interest Groups Interview with Pete Tannen, OLLI Interest Group Leader Interview with Corey Weinstein - Poetry Interest Group |
Carol Langbort was a Professor of Education in Mathematics for 30+ years at SFSU, teaching teachers how to teach mathematics. She was Chair of the Department of Elementary Education, and for 15 years directed the SF Math Leadership Project, a professional development program for classroom teachers. She developed a master’s degree program in Mathematics Education. She is co-author of several books, including How to Encourage Girls in Math and Science and Building Success in Math. Recently, she was a volunteer for the de Young and Legion of Honor Museums. She is currently on the Board of Nicaragua Children’s Friendship Committee. She has studied Spanish for many years in language schools in Mexico and participates in the OLLI Spanish conversation group.
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Contributions to this issue:
Online Proofreader |
Dan Liberthson was born in Rochester, New York and attended Northwestern University and SUNY at Buffalo (PhD, English). He has retired from a career as a medical writer, and lives in San Francisco and Cottage Grove, Oregon. He has published five books of poetry and has published individual poems in anthologies and journals, including The Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, South Coast Poetry Journal, Elysian Fields Quarterly, Chaminade Literary Review and Triggerfish. He was Secretary of the Oregon Poetry Association (2019-2022), and took second place in the William Stafford Memorial Award Poetry Contest (2020) and the Maine Poets Society Contest (2022). He also published The Bluejay Contrivance, a spy novel, and The Golden Spider, a middle-grade fantasy novel. For more information, visit liberthson.com.
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Linda Zamora Lucero’s short stories are set in San Francisco’s multicultural Mission District. Among her published stories are: “Piano,” Somos en escrito, 2023; “ZigZag,” LatineLit Magazine, 2022; “Speak to Me of Love,” first prize, DeMarinis Short Story Contest, Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts, 2021; “When It Rains,” Yellow Medicine Review, 2020 Pushcart nominee; “Mexican Hat,” Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century, 2020; “Balmy Alley Forever,” Yellow Medicine Review, 2016; “Take the Money and Run–1968,” Bilingual Review, 2015. Lucero is the Executive/Artistic Director of Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, an admission-free outdoor performing arts series in San Francisco.
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Charles Mayes is a mostly retired architect and exhibit designer who lives in Seattle and San Francisco
Charles Mayes is a first-time contributor to Vistas & Byways.
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Richard Marino has lived in San Francisco since 1983. He moved to San Francisco from New York where he lived in the East Village. He has worked in the San Francisco Public Library (Main) for the past 28 years. He has been with the Gay Gray Writers since its inception in 2014. He joined the queer elders’ group four years ago which led to their having writings published in a one-time journal in November 2019. His pieces tend to be memoir, and he has written many of them. This opportunity with OLLI is an incredible blessing to him and he would like to participate in the future.
Richard Marino is a first-time contributor to Vistas & Byways.
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Karen Marker is an Oakland-based poet and memoirist whose work draws on her family roots and branches in places that include New Orleans, Sweden, New England, Ohio and Vilna. She also turns to her studies in psychology, classical mythology and religion for inspiration. Her work has recently been published in The MacGuffin, won awards through the Ina Coolbrith Circle and been included in the Kent State University May 4th Archives. A chapbook will be coming out in the next year with Finishing Line Press.
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Kathryn Miller works in poetry and visual arts. She was trained as a tapestry weaver and has been engaged in collage, iPad painting, along with the woven world. She often returns to her love of poetry. Kathryn is an avid explorer of words and images. Her home is New Mexico and has worked in the Bay Area for the past 18 years. Her PhD explored women’s narrative and what women do with their stories from their lives. Her poetry books include Tango Dancer and Triologue, which was written with two friends through email. Both were self-published. Her professional work has been as an executive coach with private and public organizations.
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MJ Moore lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her various incarnations have included technical writer and editor, farm apprentice, environmental activist, teacher, poet, wife, and mother. As a bicoastal being, she thrives on salt air, wind and waves, but also loves mountains, deserts, forests and streams. Writing for her is a source of vision and joy. Her book of poems, Topography of Dreams, was published by Blue Light Press in 2021.
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Contributions to this issue:
Member of Editorial Board Poetry: Fallow Season Magpie Photo Essay: Interesting Garden Scenes |
Mary Noel Pepys is a senior attorney with a specialization in the rule of law, specifically international legal and judicial reform, and corruption within the judiciary. Since 1993 she has helped emerging democracies develop justice systems that ensure the protection of citizens’ human rights, equal treatment of all individuals before the law, and a predictable legal structure with fair, transparent and effective government institutions. Mary Noel has worked in over 45 countries, lived five years in six former communist countries, and 20 months in Afghanistan as the Justice Advisor for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement of the U.S. Department of State. While in Afghanistan, Mary Noel focused on strengthening the criminal justice system and the correctional system.
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After becoming an attorney, Pamela Pitt graduated with an MFA (1990) from the San Francisco Art Institute. She showed her photography work nationally in group and solo shows. Seeking daylight after years in the dark room, she worked on collage with mixed media painting and photography. Ideas from social issues became the basis of certain collage series:
2014: ripped pages from a law book on the “Patriot Act” to use as collage elements. 2016: used tissue dress "Patterns" in a series about the place of women. 2017: produced a collage series based on the concept of making land a commodity. With her current focus on photography and scanner digital art, Pam works on achieving peace through creativity and beauty. |
Daniel Raskin is a retired preschool teacher. He lives in Bernal Heights in San Francisco. Daniel writes with The Older Writers Laboratory at the Bernal library, The MERI Center at UCSF and Laguna Writers.
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Jan Robbins felt like a native the minute she landed in California from New York in the early 70s. She helped start the first rape crisis center in Marin County. Then she went on to found one of the first on-site corporate chair massage companies in 1985 and was recognized in Time Magazine. With degrees in Sociology and Psychology, she remains ever- fascinated by the complexities in the human condition. She has been a reporter for the past six years for San Francisco Senior Beat, an online magazine showcasing the lives of older adults who live or work in San Francisco.
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Jane Russell lives in Pittsburg, California with her partner and two beautiful cats. She is a retired teacher, counselor and university instructor. She started writing poetry in high school. She belongs to a creative writing critique circle and is a member of the Bay Area Ina Coolbrith Poetry Circle. She especially enjoys writing poetry about nature and her extensive travels. Several of her poems have been published in the Avocet, a Journal of Nature Poetry, and a poem was recently published in the Suisun Valley Review, quarterly printed edition. She enjoys taking a variety of classes through OLLI, especially creative writing and also singing in a local women’s a capella choral group.
Jane Russell is a first-time contributor to Vistas & Byways.
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David Scott is a retired psychotherapist living with his wife, two dogs, and a cat in Fresno, California. He has written poetry for most of his life and had a few poems published.
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Dennis Sides has been a software developer, book editor, professional musician, construction project manager, tech writer, and world traveler. He's hung up his traveling shoes during covid, but hopes to get back out on the road soon. He's lived in the Fillmore long enough to qualify for "San Francisco native" status.
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Pat Skala is a native San Franciscan (only 3 generations) and a graduate of San Francisco State College. (Note the "C". Had she waited a year longer to graduate it would be a "U.") A retired City employee, Pat and her husband live in the house that her grandparents built in 1927. She is a gardener, a quilter and an avid jigsaw puzzle person. Although she would love to be a star on Moth Radio, she limits her storytelling to friends and family. Her stories are true and focus on what she thinks of as "angels:" people who come into our lives ever so briefly, but who give us something we need or point us in a better direction.
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Steve Surryhne was an Associate Lecturer in English Literature at SFSU from 1993-2012. He is currently semi-retired and has recently returned to writing poetry. A native of San Francisco, he was a baby-beat in the sixties, knew some of the beat poets and is now a neo-beat. In his alternate career, he worked in Community Mental Health in San Francisco from 1979-2012. He took first place in the Jack Kerouac Poetry contest in 2015 and has been published in The Blue Moon Review, Interpretations and San Francisco Magazine. He is currently working on a project with a photographer friend on poem-texts and photos.
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In the early 1980s, Monika Trobits, a New York native, moved west, contentedly settling into the City by the Bay. For several decades, she held various positions in the corporate world, mainly to pay the bills, contemplate the views and accrue vacation days. She was inspired by her personal interests, including arts and culture, especially literature and film, along with politics, current events and, particularly, local history. About 13 years ago, Monika earnestly began writing, developing several ideas that had long been rolling around in her head into nonfiction articles and books; each was published. Her transition to the creative world of historic fiction is underway. Monika earned a BA in Political Science/History from SFSU and has never stopped learning.
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Robert Weiner claims that he is mostly retired from a career helping universities and nonprofits make decisions about and manage their fundraising infrastructure (people, policies, processes, and systems). He lives in Bernal Heights in San Francisco with his wife, Karen Rhodes (who is also an OLLI member and V&B contributor), and their cat.
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A retired physician, Corey Weinstein is a musician, poet, songwriter and clarinet player. He has published two CDs of original music inspired by the Klezmer and Yiddish stage musical traditions and led Umzist, a Klezmer band playing benefits for Jewish elders for more than a decade. He wrote and performed at various venues a singspiel, Erased: Babi Yar, the SS and Me to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the massacre at Babi Yar. He plays clarinet in the Or Shalom Jewish Community choir, with The Jamberries Jazz Band at Shabbat services at Rhoda Goldman Plaza, and with any chamber music group he can find. He lives in the Ingleside District of San Francisco with his wife of 37 years, Pat Skala.
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