Bruce Neuburger was never an armchair radical. Organizing against the Vietnam War while in the Coast Guard earned him an early, though honorable, discharge from the service. He helped organize GIs at Fort Ord and spent nearly a decade as a lettuce worker in California’s fields, supporting efforts to improve the miserable working conditions endured ...
If you think dollhouses are just for children, you haven’t met the artisans and collectors, like Margaret Lew, who play in the Lilliputian world of miniature furnishings and accoutrements. Lew’s passion for miniatures surfaced in childhood – she “always liked the little things for my dollhouse” – and reignited in 2003, when at 60, she ...
Lauren McNamara makes sure to remember where the regular clientele at Sam’s Grill like to sit. She Googles them to learn their interests so she can “engage in good conversation.” That’s just a sample of the people skills she’s employed over a long career in the competitive world of merchandising, sales, and interior design. She’s ...
When Mary Jue, 59, handled a pickleball paddle for the first time eight years ago, it handed back the excitement she remembered as a kid growing up in the Richmond District. “It instantly brought up all those rewarding competitive feelings,” said Jue, who was the youngest daughter and seventh of nine children. “I couldn’t wait ...
A cross-country train trip when she was 9 is a joyful memory for Jane Merschen, one of the few from a difficult childhood. While her mother, made sleepy by medicine prescribed for mental illness, dozed on the trip from Los Angeles to St. Louis, Merschen happily “ran around the train, getting kicked out of the ...
Jim Herlihy spent years managing investments for major banks in South America. While stationed in hotspots like Chile and Ecuador, he used his insider knowledge to write about the region as a freelance reporter for the BBC and other news services. Years later and pushed into retirement, the 75-year-old New York native leveraged his time ...
