CONTRIBUTORS & WORKS |
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Tools of the Trade
Photo by Weebly.com |
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Soon after she retired from UCSF, a friend told Charlene Anderson about OLLI at SF State and she began taking classes. In 2015, in one of those classes, Mike Lambert suggested starting a literary and photography magazine at OLLI. So, Mike, Charlene and a small group of OLLI members, founded Vistas & Byways. It has been publishing stories, poems and nonfiction pieces, as well as photography, ever since. Charlene is pleased to be part of V&B which provides OLLI members an opportunity to be published.
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Contributions to this issue:
V & B Chief Administrator; Publicity, Proofreader Fiction: The Grand Canyon Poetry: Pathways December Photo Essay: Mostly Full, More-or-Less, Carts |
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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:
Editorial Board: Fiction and Nonfiction Editor, Publicity, Launch Party Selection Committee Poetry: Ocean Beach Dead Leaf Inside OLLI: Interview with Ana Linder, Coordinator for the OLLI Hiking Group Photo Essay: Signs of San Francisco |
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Barbara Barer, MSW, retired as a Senior Research Associate in the Division of Medical Anthropology at UCSF where she did pioneering work in the field of Gerontology. Her early research career included work on a seminal study of prison life at the London School of Economics, a Stress and Coping study at UC Berkeley, and culminated with a focus on aging issues at UCSF. She is the author of numerous articles on life in later years, covering such topics as grandparenting, divorcing families, men and women aging differently, health care needs of the elderly, and a long-term study of Bay Area residents aged 85 and older.
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Contributions to this issue:
Editorial Board; Fiction and Nonfiction Editor, Publicity |
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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 Briccetti is a retired school psychologist and currently works as a photographer and writer. She is the author of Blood Strangers (Heyday 2010) and is at work on a novel (katherinebriccetti.wordpress.com). She runs a portrait business (kbriccettiphoto.com) and loves traveling for street photography.
Editor's Note: Kathy Bricetti is a first-time contributor to Vistas & Byways for Issue 17.
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Bree Brown completed a BA and MA in Creative Writing at SFSU. She has expressed herself through poetry since she was a young girl. Her favorite quote is, “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” (Muriel Rukeyser) Bree was born with words engraved on both hands and has loved words for as long as she can remember. And she remembers Grandma Rudin buying her first book of poems when she was 8. She believes poetry lives inside us all—it will connect us to the deepest parts of ourselves if we let it.
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Ed Brownson’s plays have been performed in California, New York and Italy, with many developmental and staged readings along the way. His latest, Tap, Tap Tap, about a woman confronting a horrible past, was selected for production as part of the Playwright Center of San Francisco’s Fall 2021 ‘Best of…’ series. He has studied playwriting at American Conservatory Theatre, Central Works Theater Company, Theater Artists’ Conspiracy and many informal venues. Recently, he has been working on essays and long and short fiction, ‘attending’ numerous pandemic-inspired Zoom classes and groups to help him along the way.
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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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Thomas O. Davenport is an independent writer and business advisor living in Pasadena, California. He has authored three business books and many serious articles and now writes commentary (both prose and poetry) on business practices and social phenomena that amuse and bemuse him. Check out his writings on his website: http://www.worklodes.com.
In addition to Vistas & Byways, his work has appeared in Bardball, Defenestration, Hobart, Lighten Up Online, WORK Literary Magazine, Workers Write! and in the anthology Love Affairs at the Villa Nelle (Kelsay Books, 2019. Also available on Amazon). If you find his verses amusing, you can read more in his book Get the Hell to Work: Humorous Verse about Work & Life (Kelsay Books, 2020 and Amazon). |
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Valentine Doyle likes to write songs, but this poem, “I Will Make You a Cake,” is a first. But she does like to cook, which helps in this case. She is retired from a company that funds sustainable agriculture and lives in Hartford, Connecticut with a very nice cat. She was connected with OLLI through a writing workshop, and really did make the cake in the poem for her mother’s birthday each year starting at age nine.
Editor's Note: Valentine Doyle is a first time contributor to Vistas & Byways for Issue 17. |
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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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Contributions to this issue:
Nonfiction: Breaking Tradition, Not Bread Did They Really Say That Out Loud? |
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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.
Editor's Note: Elsa was a member of the Vistas & Byways production staff for 5 years and a reporter for our Inside OLLL section. She passed away in January 2024. And we miss her! We are publishing a few of her creative writing pieces to help us and our readers remember her.
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Contributions to this issue:
Poetry: That Third Day of March Last Year Number 27 to Taco Nirvana The Better-Than-Sex Blueberry Cake Nonfiction: Back to Provence |
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Find your passion and follow it! - Oprah Winfrey
Cathy Fiorello’s passions are food, Paris, and writing. A morning at a farmers’ market is her idea of excitement and visiting Paris is her idea of heaven. And much of her writing is about food and Paris. She worked in publishing in New York, freelanced for magazines during her child-rearing years, then re-entered the work world as an editor. She moved to San Francisco in 2008 and published a memoir, Al Capone Had a Lovely Mother. In 2018, she published a second memoir, Standing at the Edge of the Pool. Cathy has two children and four grandchildren. Her mission is to make foodies and Francophiles of them all. |
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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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Contributions to this issue:
Editorial Board: Fiction and Nonfiction Editor; Publicity; Author of Preview Fiction: The Surprise Catch Nonfiction: Pamplona Sunrise Preview of this Issue |
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A native of San Francisco, Kathryn Santana Goldman’s interest in poetry began when she was working in ICU as a registered nurse. She used this practice to process the variety of stressful scenarios experienced. Over the years, she has continued to experiment with different types of writing such as short stories and plays. As an avid traveler, Kathryn has become skilled at capturing photographs about the diversity she encounters. Three years ago, she began to combine her love of photography with her writing by using the images she captures as seeds for her poems. She continues to explore new ways to use these two art forms to share her experience with family and friends.
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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:
Editorial Board: Fiction and Nonfiction Editor, Publicity, Online Link Testing Nonfiction: A Bird Refuge in the City |
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Jennifer Hobart’s professional work focused on providing data and analytics to support healthcare delivery. Since retiring, she has worked in a variety of public service activities, including pro bono projects for over 55 nonprofits around the world, a fellowship with the Los Angeles Department of Public Health, and an appointment with the Singapore Office for Healthcare Transformation. Outside of work, she enjoys walking vacations, seeing her grandchildren, and life in San Francisco and Maui.
Editor's Note: Jennifer Hobart is a first-time contributor to Vistas & Byways for Issue 17.
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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. She worked in real estate office administration and later in vocational rehabilitation with people facing mental health challenges.
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Donna Kaulkin is the author of a novel, Brenda Corrigan Went Downtown. She has written stories, plays, a musical and poetry and is developing a memoir. A Georgetown University graduate, Donna currently is a freelance writer and editor specializing in aviation and the arts. She formerly was Managing Editor of U.S. Pharmacopoeia Consumer Publications and an editorial director in McGraw-Hill’s aviation group. In 1999 and 2000, she served as president of the American News Women’s Club.
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Contributions to this issue:
Fiction: You Belong With Us Poetry: 2 poems: Heirloom Tomatoes, and O Those Cheeks |
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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 Fiction: Breaking Bread With The Mob Inside OLLI: Interview with Kathy Bruin Interview with Ruth Weinberg |
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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:
Website Proofreader |
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Ed Lebowitz is a frequent participant in OLLI events and classes. This is his second photo essay in V&B, and he has also published short stories in V&B and The Hudson Valley Writers Guild. After retiring from full-time medical practice twelve years ago, Ed moved from the South Bay to San Francisco. He regards OLLI S.F. State as one of San Francisco’s greatest assets and is thankful for it providing him with companionship, creative, and educational opportunities that keep him connected, learning and inspired.
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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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Wayne Lin is a member of OLLI at SF State, an Associate Member of the Academy of American Poets, as well as a member of the California State Poetry Society. His poetry has recently appeared in The Lyric, Poetry Quarterly, Ibbetson Street, California Quarterly, (California State Poetry Society), Wisconsin Review, Main Street Rag, Rosebud Literary Magazine, Loch Raven Review, Time of Singing poetry journal and Chronogram Magazine. Wayne currently lives in California with his wife.
Editor's Note: Wayne Lin is a first-time contributor to Vistas & Byways for Issue 17. |
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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.
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Karen Marker is a retired school psychologist who turns to her studies in psychology, classical mythology, family ancestry and nature for her inspiration as a poet and memoirist. Her work has been published in various anthologies, won awards through the Ina Coolbrith Circle and the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, and been included in the Kent State University May 4th Archives. Her first book of poetry Beneath the Blue Umbrella will be coming out with Finishing Line Press Beneath at the end of 2024.
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Jackie Davis Martin’s stories have been published in anthologies, including Modern Shorts, Love on the Road, and Road Stories, as well as in print and online journals; A memoir, Surviving Susan, was released in 2012 and her novel, Stopgaps, came out in May of 2021. She recently completed a new memoir. Martin has been a teacher all of her adult life, most recently at City College of San Francisco and at OLLI. When she is not writing or teaching, Martin has enjoyed, along with her late husband, Bruce, full seasons of San Francisco’s Opera, its Ballet, and its Symphony as well as performances at many of Bay Area’s many theatres.
Editor's Note: Jackie Davis Martin is a first-time contributor to Vistas & Byways for Issue 17. |
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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 2020.
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Daniel Raskin is a retired preschool teacher. He lives in Bernal Heights. Daniel writes with The Older Writers Laboratory at the Bernal library, The MERI Center at UCSF and Laguna Writers.
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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 Poems, 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.
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David A. Scott is a retired psychotherapist living with his wife, Ann, one dog, and two cats in Fresno, California. He has written poetry for most of his life and had a few poems published, including in the Spring and Fall Issues of Vistas & Byways in 2023. He has three books on Amazon: Love, Spirit, and Mental Health; Counseling Psychology and A Course in Miracles, Jesus's Teachings about Love, Forgiveness, and Relationships in the Christian Bible and A Course in Miracles, and Spirit, Love, and Oneness—A Poetic Journey.
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Amee Shah (PoetessDrAmeeShah) is a university professor and research scientist. She finds poetry and art to not only be personal expressions and medium to process her connection with the natural world, but also a powerful way to plug into the spiritual realm and receive gifts of wonder and awe, gratitude, a sense of abundance, and profound insights and creativity that further allow her to bring back into her work of teaching, coaching, and counseling. She has her first book of poetry published and received with wide interest. Her book is titled, Becoming the Light: From Angst to Awakening, available on Amazon.
Editor's Note: Amee Shah is a first-time contributor to Vistas & Byways for Issue 17.
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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 14 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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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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