“Riverdance,” the phenomenal stage performance of floor-pounding Irish stepdance hit American shores in 1996. But Irish dance had been in Mary Jo Murphy-Feeney’s bones for half a century. “My mother taught me to step dance as soon as I could walk,” she said. For the Irish, step-dancing has been as much a part of life ...
A SENIOR BEAT COLUMN My cousin’s daughter had a baby last week, just a few days before I turned 80. My thoughts exalted, I riffed on baby Zoey’s beautiful new life in London with her American mother and French father. She’ll be bilingual and will be so adored as the first grandchild on both sides. ...
When Karen Rhodes retired from a career in communications in 2017, she began walking to get to know San Francisco. She walked for exercise. She walked as meditation, to gather her thoughts. While walking, she noticed the many stairways that made it easier to navigate her hilly Bernal Heights neighborhood. Rhodes made a game of ...
Starting college is one of those life-changing events. For Paul Gross, the transformation began three months before he arrived at Kent State University. In May 1970, Ohio National Guardsmen, called in to remove thousands of anti-war protesters at a banned anti-war demonstration, fired into a crowd, killing four students and wounding nine. “I was immediately ...
Wine and orchids have long played a starring role in Paul Bourbin’s life. When he was just seven, his grandfather would serve him a heavily diluted glass of wine with meals, a custom carried on by the Frenchman who made wine in the old country and later in California.” Eventually, Bourbin, too, became a wine expert, ...
As a teenager in the ‘50s, Juanita Rusev dreamed of becoming an actress in the mold of Marilyn Monroe or Audrey Hepburn. But she didn’t think she had what it takes. “I thought actresses had to be beautiful,” she said, “and I was average looking, big, gangly, and unconfident. So, she put aside that dream ...
