Life in the Later Lane
Playwright Lynne Kaufman, the author of two dozen plays and five novels, is still going strong, despite some hiccups
The day after Lynne Kaufman retired in 2005, she woke up in tears. “What had I done?”...
A win for people power: Supervisors and mayor restore millions of dollars in cut to services for city’s most vulnerable
A months-long campaign by advocates for seniors, the disabled and other vulnerable populations has convinced San Francisco's...
Following in the footsteps of heroes: My visit to the cradles of Civil Rights
SF SENIORBEAT COLUMN – March 17, 1886. A date you probably never considered. Carroll County, Mississippi. A...
Couple’s script for their own movie? Shared creative passions and a bent for banter
“I'm Chiquita Banana, and I'm here to say, bananas have to ripen in a certain way,” Margot...
Social justice lawyer and activist infusing others with her love of SF’s Great Blue Herons and dedication to conservation
One day in 1993, on her daily walk from her Richmond District home to Golden Gate Park’s...
Nonprofit director is happy to bug you, whether you’re 2 or 92, about saving the wild
If you grow up in Los Angeles, where do you find the wild? Norm Gershenz is not...
Bass playing lawyer takes on the landlords when seniors call for help
During the day, you’ll find Thomas Drohan in court or at his law office on Mission Street....
Former SFSU teacher shifts to helping union workers build leadership abilities
Like some people need coffee, Joan Wong needs to walk – and talk. Mornings, she puts in...
Joe Edley, a three-time national champion, has been racking up great Scrabble scores for decades
Joe Edley tucks his co-authored book, “Everything Scrabble,” under his arm and surveys the room. Around him,...
Robert Wachter, the doctor who is pioneering the use of artificial intelligence to treat patients
Robert Wachter is the doctor who oversees all the other doctors at the University of California, San...
Couple beat ‘fast furniture,’ pandemic and other challenges to keep upholstery shop going for nearly 50 years
J & G Upholstery stretches back farther than it looks from the sidewalk on Balboa Street. Stacks...
As the city’s older population swells, seniors who can no longer live at home face high costs, limited choices
EDITOR'S NOTE: See full profiles of the seniors interviewed by clicking links within the story. A panoply...
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What do you find in nature? All I wanted was a little peace.
I wanted spiritual feelings, but I didn’t know what they felt like. I just knew that people said feeling spiritual gives one a sense of peace and I badly wanted that. I was a stressful, anxious person in need of rehabilitation. Religion didn’t move me. Meditation, acupuncture and massage helped me physically, even mentally and ...
Sculptor & jeweler who finds inspiration in the sea, land and found objects discovers art in her own baldness
Ann Hedges began losing her hair when she was just nine years old. She started drawing to cope, “creating a world that was mine, and one I belonged in,” she said. “Along with having alopecia areata, I was short for my age and painfully shy.” With both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Fine Arts ...
Starting over in the U.S. at 62: Her family was exiled by the Nazis then the Russians. Eventually, she followed other family members to America.
It didn’t bother Shulamis Koyfman that her family thought she’d probably fail the California Board of Nursing licensing exam; she thought so, too. After all, she was 65, she’d only lived in the United States for three years and her English was, she recalls, not so hot. “Honestly, I was 100 percent sure I would ...
Living through the worst: A personal story of one woman’s quest to regain hope and the genesis of ‘Senior Power’
We asked Senior Power! founder Margaret Graf to tell us about the biggest challenge she has faced and what helped her move through it. Margaret Graf saved herself by helping her neighbors. She was inconsolable after the deaths of her daughter and her husband. Finding little support in her Parkside neighborhood, where she had lived ...
Filipino author who helped spread the culture and history of his country still building community in S.F. and advocating for Asian Americans
When you don’t know the “other,” it’s easy to stereotype. If you want to learn about another culture, said Oscar Peñaranda, Filipino educator, author, and activist, “you need to read their literature, look at their artists.” Education, learning about others, enlarges your world and challenges your biases, and by education he refers to much more ...
WHAT TREATS SWEETEN YOUR DAY? For myself, I find it’s hard to be monogamous
“Sweetmeat” is an archaic term for confectionaries. But it rhymes with treats, and that’s what I’m talking about. Cookies and cakes, custards and ice cream, pastries and pies, puddings, and tarts. Oh my! Throughout this pandemic, one thing that kept me sane, was knowing that after lunch and dinner I would have my sweetmeat with ...
