Contributors

​Charlene Anderson received a Master’s degree in English Literature from Purdue University, and after working at the Indianapolis Public Library, moved to San Francisco. She worked at UCSF for over 30 years, most recently as a grant analyst managing an NIH SCCOR grant. During that time, she returned to school at SFSU and received another Master’s degree, this time in Research Psychology. But before she had a chance to change careers using her shiny new MA, the writing bug bit as it had intermittently done throughout her life and she stayed at UCSF, plunged back into writing and in 2001 published a novel entitled, Berkeley’s Best Buddhist Bookstore. In 2008, she took up painting for the first time and loves it, not as much as writing, but a lot. She has served as Chair of the Editorial Board of Vistas & Byways since it launched in 2015.
Contributions to this issue:
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Writing the World  (Fiction)
Floral Medley  (Visual Arts)

​V&B staff member
​Kaaren Strauch Brown is a lifelong student, retired Professor of Social Work, post retirement museum docent.  She is a recent transplant to San Francisco from the Midwest. After annoying her fellow sixth graders with her fiction many, many years ago, she has returned to writing. Her science fiction book, The Abril Legacy, is available at Amazon E-Books.
Contributions to this issue:

​Reparation  (Fiction), 
​A San Francisco Masquerade  (Nonfiction)
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V&B staff member
​Rufus Browning taught political science and ran the Public Research Institute at SF State. He co-authored Protest Is Not Enough: The Struggle of Blacks and Hispanics for Equality in Urban Politics (UC Press, 1984) and co-edited and contributed to Racial Politics in American Cities. He has facilitated the Caring Community Study Group at OLLI at SF State since 2008. He sings and composes and loves to hike.
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​Calling the Cardinals  (Nonfiction)
​Bill Carpenter has a degree in Creative Arts with an emphasis in film. A San Francisco resident for over forty years his career has been as a CAD specialist in engineering and architecture. He has taken classes through OLLI at SF State off and on for the past ten years. About five years ago he began writing seriously and concentrating on the writing classes offered through OLLI at SF State.
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The Blank Page  (Nonfiction)
​Heather Saunders Estes has been writing all her life and recently left her long-term role as a non-profit CEO. Living in San Francisco, many of her poems include fog, politics, justice and family. She walks around the city, tends her bonsai and kale, observes ravens, and maps the best blackberry patches. She has a few poems published and is editing a chapbook.
Contributions to this issue:

​Scent of Wet Words​  (Poetry)
Struck by Lightning, Or Not  (Poetry)
​Rosemary: Shadow of Memory  (Visual Arts)
​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.
 Contributions to this issue:

​The Cigarette Case  (Fiction)
Number 27 to Taco Nirvana  (Poetry)
Cathy Fiorello
Find your passion and follow it!   -  Oprah Winfrey.
My passions are food, Paris, and writing. A morning at a farmers’ market is my idea of excitement. Visiting Paris is my idea of heaven. And much of my writing is about food and Paris. Oprah would be proud of me. I worked in book and magazine publishing in New York, freelanced for magazines during my child-rearing years, then re-entered the work world as an editor. I moved to San Francisco ten years ago and published a memoir, Al Capone Had a Lovely Mother. I have two children, one on each coast, and four grandchildren, two on each coast. My mission is to make foodies and Francophiles of them all.
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​Uneasy in My Easy Chair  (Nonfiction)
​Elinor Gale has been a writer, observer of human nature, and lover of the English language since childhood. An inveterate eavesdropper, she has woven her curiosity about human behavior into her work as writing teacher, editor and creator of humorous yet poignant fiction and poetry. She holds a B.A. in English from Smith College and an M.S. in Counseling from Northeastern University. Her essays, poetry and articles have been published in print and online. Elinor moved to the Bay Area from New England 20 years ago and still marvels at flowers and green grass in February.
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​Broken Connection​  (Nonfiction)
​Kathy Gilbert received her MFA from San Francisco State in 2013 after a career in public transport. She received the Marc Linenthal Poetry Award in 2012 from SFSU and won the SF Browning Society Gita Specker Award three times for her dramatic monologues. She was commissioned to write a play for the 2015 SF Olympians. 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.
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​Haiku  (Poetry)
Kathryn Goldman​
​A native of San Francisco, Kathryn’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.
Contributions to this issue:

​Dreamweaver  (Poetry)
​Flying  (Poetry)
​Jane Bell Goldstein has held a variety jobs in her life: salesperson, tour guide, accountant, middle school teacher, and half a dozen different positions during her 19 years with the Internal Revenue Service, all of which might fall under the general description of spirit guide to taxpayers through the fathomless bureaucracy. Since her retirement from government service in 2010, she has pursued interests in writing, bird-watching, genealogy, history and most recently website design, as chief architect of the Vistas & Byways online venue. Jane is a graduate of San Francisco State University (BA History, 1974). She has a grown son and daughter and two grandchildren. She and her husband, Mark, live in Oakland.
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​V&B staff member
​Michael Gordon grew up in East Los Angeles and after serving in the U.S. Army attended and graduated from the California State University at Los Angeles. He moved to Berkeley in 1965 to work with the Mayor, City Manager and City Council on issues of the day. He worked on Montgomery Street for E.F. Hutton and retired from Morgan Stanley forty years later. Married to Martha Hoover, he raised a daughter in the Russian Hill neighborhood. Post retirement, he discovered OLLI at SF State and San Francisco City Guides. He takes about ten OLLI at SF State classes every year.  San Francisco City Guides offers more than sixty walks a week and are free. He leads the Murals of Coit Tower, The Landmark Victorians of Alamo Square and Fort Mason to Aquatic Park. 
​Contributions to this issue:

​Rain or Shine​  (Nonfiction)
​Stuart Habley
I was born on Income Tax Day in Van Nuys, California, the youngest of a flock of four. Two years later we moved to Dayton, Ohio, then Atlanta, Georgia, San Diego, California and for the last time, when I was in sixth grade, to Palo Alto, California. I left to go to college at Oregon State, got a B.S. in Zoology and then went into art. After taking stock of myself and the world, I thought the best thing I could do was to become a carpenter. And I did, for 40 years. I did go to a couple of career counseling seminars thinking I should make better use of my education. But at the end of each, I thought, I like being a carpenter. I like making things and, when asked, to share what I know.
Contributions to this issue:

​Searching  (Poetry)
What a Dream  (Poetry)
​Fruits & Veggies  (Visual Arts)
​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.
Contributions to this issue:

​The Ocean Beach Sentry  (Poetry)
​Spring Beckons  (Poetry)
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​​V&B staff member
​Jane Hudson
A native San Franciscan, Jane has a BA in Psychology and a Master's in Library Science from UC Berkeley, as well as a 2nd BA in Art History from SFSU. She recently retired from a 27-year career as a librarian at the SF Public Library where she was a district manager. Prior to that, she was a government documents librarian, a children's librarian, and a branch manager. For the past two years, she has focused on writing, taking a variety of writing classes at OLLI at SF State. In addition, she enjoys making art, attending theater and opera, getting together with friends and family, and working as a volunteer with the Bay Area Book Festival.
​Contributions to this issue:

​The Writing Student  (Nonfiction)
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​V&B staff member
Mary Hunt worked at San Francisco State University for twenty years, first in the College of Business Graduate Office and then in the Office of Research as IRB Administrator. Previously, she worked in music and media production. During her tenure at SF State, she earned an MA in humanities. She has been an OLLI at SF State member and volunteer for five years. After taking an OLLI at SF State course in short article writing, she has had several articles published for neighborhood and online magazines. She is currently a volunteer on the Editorial Board of Vistas & Byways. Her interests include yoga, dance, travel, and photojournalism.
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​V&B staff member
​Vivian Imperiale has lived in San Francisco since 1957 but still takes pride that she retains a bit of a New York accent. When she was a little girl, unbeknownst to her, her father wrote down the original poems he overheard her reciting to her brother as they lay in bed. Ever since, she returns to poetry to help identify and process emotions to deal with life events. Vivian had two seemingly disparate career tracks with administrative functions at a real estate office and in rehabilitation for those with psychiatric disabilities; she quickly discovered that the skill sets necessary for each definitely overlapped.
Contributions to this issue:

​Every Day I Woke Up​  (Poetry)
​Memory of Richard​  (Poetry)
​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 SFSU’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. 
Contributions to this issue:

​Love on a Shelf  (Poetry)
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​V&B staff member
​Margaret Liddell
After retiring from teaching elementary school, Margaret decided to take classes at OLLI at SF State to try writing. Her memories of growing up in Chillicothe, Ohio turned into pages and pages of stories. Margaret has a great love of traveling to distant places with her family and also enjoys returning to her hometown to reminisce with lifelong friends. Her stories have appeared in Eleven Voices, The OLLI Journal, and a chapbook.
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​Eating a Hotdog in a Cocoon​  (Poetry)
​Marsha Michaels
I have been a student at OLLI at SF State for the past six or seven years. I took my first writing class with Barbara Rose Brooker. She helped me self-publish a memoir called, Pulling At Straws. I also took a class with Dave Casuto, and we developed a website, where many of my stories can be found, along with cooking recipes. One of the “aerobics” Barbara used to stimulate stories was to write about a dream. My story in a previous issue of Vistas & Byways came out of that exercise. I followed up with other writing classes at OLLI at SF State, along with other diversified subjects. I finally feel I’ve been educated where I missed out in my youth. I have OLLI at SF State to thank for the enormous difference it has made in my life.
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​Hard Choices  (Nonfiction)
​Hank Miller is a photographic artist who holds a BS in Business Administration from Auburn University, a Certificate from the New York Institute of Photography and Lifetime Teaching Credential, California Community Colleges, in Art and Design including Photography-U.C.S.D. Hank is a world traveler, instructor, and professional photographer for clients in Marin County, CA, and in Hawaii. He also instructs classes for the local community college and continuing education. Hank’s passion is photography. He has published a book on Digital Photography for Travelers available online. Hank was recently selected to be Artist in Residence, Hubbell Trading Post National Monument, Az, and Ghost Ranch, NM.
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​Vietnam, an Introspection  (Visual Arts)
​Pamela Pitt
Despite going to law school and becoming an attorney, Pamela always took photographs and made art, graduating with an MFA (1990) from the San Francisco Art Institute. She showed her work nationally in both group and solo shows. Seeking daylight after years in the dark room, she started doing collage with mixed media painting, still including photographs. Ideas from social issues became the basis of some of her collage series:
2014: She ripped pages from a law book on the controversial “Patriot Act” to use as collage elements in that series;
2016: Tissue dress "Patterns" were used as elements in a series about the place of women.
2017: She produced a collage series based on the concept of making land a commodity.
Photographs and scanner digital art are where her current focus is, trying to achieve peace through creativity and beauty.
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​Patterns  (Visual Arts)
​Don Plansky has participated in many OLLI at SF State writer workshops. In a former incarnation, he worked as a freelance journalist, contributing more than 200 articles to The Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, as well as book reviews for The Pacific World: Journal of the Institute of Buddhist Studies.
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​The Tortoise and the Eagle  (Nonfiction)
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​​V&B staff member
​Michèle Praeger was born in England and brought up in France. Now she resides in the USA. She wrote two essays on fiction and culture. Now she writes fiction herself. Michèle was published in 11 Voices and recently published a collection of flash fiction, Baby, You Can Drive My Car, Blue Light Press, 2015.
Contributions to this issue:

​Has Any Writer Ever Had a Happy Childhood  (Nonfiction)
​The ABC's of Writing Fiction  (Nonfiction)
​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 is a senior beat reporter working for ReServe, a non-profit, writing for The Sunset Beacon. Her two children and two grandchildren live in Thousand Oaks and Los Angeles. 
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​Dying Just Got a Whole Lot Harder  (Nonfiction)
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​​​V&B staff member
​​Judith Sandoval
My father was a tall, red Welsh dragon who gave me the Gift of War. My mother was a creative, but caged, blue-eyed raven who gave me the Gift of Magic. Then later in life, I received a third gift, the Gift of Story, from a camera respectfully, but joyfully dancing with the Storytellers, in the shadows between War and Magic.
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​Sharing Martin Luther King's Dream  (Visual Arts)
​Rodney J. Shapiro was born and raised in South Africa. After High School he worked as a journalist and published several short stories and articles. He also taught English Literature as a part-time school teacher, but ultimately decided on psychology as a career. He graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, with a Ph.D. in 1965. He immigrated to the USA in 1966. His professional career included faculty positions as Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester, NY, and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. While dedicated to his profession of clinical psychology, his recreational pursuits have included long distance running, travel, devotion to pets, and amateur photography. His primary reverence is for writing prose and poetry.
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​​Studmuffin Blues  (Poetry)
​Lost and Found  (Poetry)
​Richard Simmonds
After owning and operating a theater and a health food store in Kona, Hawaii for ten years, Richard moved with his family to San Francisco where he was the graphic designer for the San Francisco Marriott Hotel for 22 years. He retired in 2010 and has since been with OLLI at SF State. Earlier in his career he taught English at Verde Valley School in Sedona, at Ohio State University and at the University of California, San Diego.
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​What Is There to Say?  (Poetry)
​Pat Skala is a native San Franciscan (only 3 generations) and a graduate of SFSC. Note the "C". Had she waited a year longer to graduate it would be a "U". She is a retired City employee and she 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 all true and focus on what she thinks of as "angels": people who come into our lives ever so briefly, but who tell us or give us something we need or point us in a better direction.
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​Christmas Trees: A Love Story  (Nonfiction)
​Denize Springer’s plays have been presented in distinguished New York and San Francisco venues including the New York Theatre Workshop, the Public Theatre and The Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Her nonfiction and fiction have appeared in various publications and literary journals including the Marin IJ, East Bay Express, Pearl, Estero and Ocean Realm. She earned an MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University and has taught two courses for OLLI at SF State (Make a Scene – Summer 2014, Find Your Genre – Fall 2013).
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​Echoes in Stone  (Fiction)
Shears and Machetes  (Poetry)
​Steve Surryhne was an Associate Lecturer in English Literature at San Francisco State University 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 published in The Blue Moon Review and Interpretations. He is currently working on a project with a photographer friend on poem-texts and photos. 
Contributions to this issue:

​Matisse at SFMOMA​  (Poetry)
​The Floating World  (Poetry)
​Corey Weinstein is a retired physician.  He is a long time hobbyist musician, poet, songwriter and clarinet player.  He has published two vanity CDs of original music largely 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 regularly plays clarinet in the Or Shalom Jewish Community choir, for his neighborhood jazz band, The Jamberries and to assist at Shabbat services at Rhoda Goldman Plaza, as well as any chamber music group he can find. He lives in the Ingleside of San Francisco with his wife of 37 years, Pat Skala.
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​Comfort for the Dead (Poetry)
​Three Things that Make Life Worth Living  (Poetry)
Allen Wilson has, by turn, been a dishwasher, farm laborer, stock clerk, piano teacher, telephone salesman, court clerk, statistical typist, administrative assistant, construction estimator, grant writer, consultant to public and private non-profit organizations, executive director, and contract administrator. He’s a graduate of San Francisco State University (MA Humanities, 1970), married more than 50 years, has an adult daughter, is currently semi-retired trying to figure out what he wants to do when or if he grows up. He writes poetry because that’s what the voices in his head tell him to do.
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​If You're Lucky  (Poetry)

​The Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and visual arts by members of OLLI at SF State.
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​The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University​ provides material support to the Vistas & Byways volunteer staff.