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
Those First Few Weeks Were Murder ​(Nonfiction-1968)
​An Evolutionary Whimsy (Fiction)

​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:
A Book Report ​(Poetry)
A Profile of Diane Frank (Nonfiction-OLLI)
​
​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.
 Contributions to this issue:
​‘Lighten Up’—A Documentary  (Fiction)
Juanita Callejas
As a universal traveler in both mind and body, Juanita has explored a variety of destinations to get to her current “port” of creative writer. Her passport has been stamped as a Mexican-Nicaraguan First-Generation native-born San Franciscan mother of three, amazing visual artist, Alumna of SFSU (BA in Spanish; BS in International Business and Accounting) and UC Berkeley (MBA), Finance and HR professional (banking, shipping and apparel industries), and grandmother of one amazing grandson. She continues to add pages to her passport for trips to all continents and more visual art and creative writing projects!

​Contributions to this issue: 
​Maui Nights (Visual Arts)
​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.
Contributions to this issue: 
​Choices (Fiction-1968)
Berlin: A Photo Essay (Visual Arts-1968)
​Thomas O. Davenport is an independent writer and business advisor living in San Francisco. He spent 32 years as a human resource consultant for a global consulting organization. He has written three business books and many serious articles and now writes sardonic verse, much of it commenting on business practices he observed (and helped create) and on social phenomena that amuse and bemuse him. You can read his writings (verse and other) at http://www.worklodes.com.
Contributions to this issue:
Ode to the Slash ​(Poetry)
​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:
Piano Lessons (Nonfiction)
Kamaaina in Hawaii (Nonfiction)
Confessions of a Pigeon Hater (Poetry)
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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. In 2018, I published a second memoir, Standing at the Edge of the Pool. 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.

​Contributions to this issue:
​Rose (Nonfiction)
​
​Janice Fuhrman 
As a journalist, Janice has been published in major newspapers around the world, and from 1987 to 1992, she was a foreign correspondent in Tokyo, Japan. As a wine writer, her stories and columns have been published in magazines and newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle. She is the author of several wine books. She has a travel website, Fuhrmantations.com. In her briefer career as a lawyer, she practiced in the area of Elder Law.
Contributions to this issue:
​​The Body (Poetry)
Waiting (Poetry)
​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.
Contributions to this issue:
​I Fed Her Blueberries ​(Poetry)
Daydream ​(Poetry)
Judy Goddess 
I’ve taken many classes since I joined OLLI at SF State about 10 years ago. I particularly enjoyed Carey Pepper’s journalism class which propelled me into a new career writing for several San Francisco neighborhood papers.  In my earlier life, I was a grant writer. That career supported my passion--defending families whose children were suspended or expelled, or who faced other problems in the public schools. I have two sons, both of whom live in the Bay Area, and four grandchildren, three of whom live in the Bay Area. The fourth grandchild attends college in Southern California, and seems to be building a home there. ​
You can read more of Judy's writing at sfseniorbeat.com.

​Contributions to this issue:
​Review of Standing at the Edge of the Pool by Cathy Fiorello (Nonfiction-OLLI)
​
Kathryn Santana Goldman​
​A native of San Francisco, Kathryn’s interest in poetry began when she was working in the 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:
Binding Belief ​(Poetry)
Labyrinth Whispers ​(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.
Contributions to this issue:
​​Under the Sun (Nonfiction)
​
​V&B staff member
​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:
Drawings and Watercolors (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:
Haibun 1 (Poetry)
​Haibun 2 ​(Poetry)
Interview with Sarah Broderick (Nonfiction-OLLI)
​
​​V&B staff member
​Harry (Hari) Huberman is a retired high school teacher who worked nearly 30 years mostly here in San Francisco. He is married and has two grown children. He enjoys painting, swimming, tennis, travel, baking bread, rock ’n roll, and has even self-published a book on travel. Most recently for the last two years he has volunteered at an adult education class for beginning English learners who are adults from 18-70 from all over the world.
​Contributions to this issue:
James Brown (Visual Arts-1968)
Acrylics and Oil Paintings (Visual Arts)
​
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. Her interests include yoga, dance, travel, and photojournalism.
Contributions to this issue:
​A Conversation with Linda Ronstadt (Nonfiction)
​Vivian Imperiale has a B.A. in Psychology and an M.A. in Special Education. She is the former program director at a non-profit vocational training program for clients with psychiatric disabilities and later set up and ran the vocational rehabilitation program at Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco.
Contributions to this issue:
On the Disappearance of My Best Friend (Poetry)
What It Really is About (Poetry)
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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 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:
A Sidewalk Tale (Poetry)
​
​​V&B staff member
​Linda Zamora Lucero is the Executive/Artistic Director of Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, a performing arts series that is Free! Outdoors! & Fresh! She received SF Mayor Lee’s 2014 Hispanic Heritage Award in Arts & Culture. A graduate of SFSU, Linda’s artwork has been shown in multiple venues, including The Smithsonian and SFMOMA. Linda is writing a series of short stories set in San Francisco’s Mission District, including “Balmy Alley Forever” (Santa Clara Review, 2016; Yellow Medicine Review, 2016) and “Take the Money and Run–1968” (Bilingual Review, 2015). 
Contributions to this issue:
​
​Take the Money and Run—1968 (Fiction-1968)
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​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.

​Contributions to this issue:
​Simone, Pot, and OLLI (Nonfiction-1968)
​
Angie Minkin retired from a long career as an administrative law judge with the State of California and now spends her time rehabilitating her right brain. She practices yoga, takes dance classes several times a week, and loves to write poetry.  She volunteers with a local non-profit that serves low-income immigrant families. Angie has two adult children and lives in San Francisco with her husband and two cats, all of whom provide inspiration. She escapes to the sun whenever possible.
Contributions to this issue:
​Arc of Falling Leaves ​(Poetry)
Flower Power 2018 (Poetry)
​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.
Contributions to this issue:
​Homage to Psychedelic Art (Visual Arts-1968)
​
​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.
Contributions to this issue:
The Suburban Yogi (Fiction)
The Death of Pierre ​(Nonfiction)
​
​​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:
Mai '68 (Nonfiction-1968)
​
​Joan Selen grew up in southern California, moved to Oregon after high school and graduated from Southern Oregon College in Ashland (now part of the University of Oregon) with a Liberal Arts degree. After working in theatre in both Ashland and San Francisco, she found her profession in publishing as a freelance designer, production artist and typesetter. Currently living in Petaluma, she spent 25 memorable years in San Francisco, from 1975 until 2000, and would return in a heartbeat if that were ever possible.
Contributions to this issue:
​1968 - An Episodic Memoir (Nonfiction-1968)
​​
​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.
Contributions to this issue:
​Going Home (Poetry)
Leaving (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.
Contributions to this issue:
​Angels and Cranky Old Ladies (Nonfiction)
​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:
Bits, Riffs, Scenes ​(Poetry)
People's Park (Poetry-1968)
​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.
Contributions to this issue:
​Bad Crowd (Poetry-1968)
​
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.
Contributions to this issue:
​Shaving Oedipus’ Reflection (Poetry)
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​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.