San Francisco Senior Beat

Myra Krieger

Opera veteran helps wartime veterans with PTSD by guiding them to create their own music and poetry

May 31, 2023 All Posts 1 Comment

Richard Harrell has studied and thought about the power of music and the human singing voice for much of his 70 years. “There is nothing in life that fires up your brain as much as music—nothing!” he’s concluded. After decades of singing on the opera stage and directing professionally, that insight led him to found ...

Jan Robbins

An ‘open classroom’ spurred a young girl’s creativity. Now she’s offering a similar experience to older adults as head of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.

March 25, 2022 All Posts 2 Comments

When Don van Druten rumbled up to Kathy Bruin’s elementary school in his 1949 truck, she and some of the other fifth-graders piled into the truck’s bed, and off they’d go to his house on Lancaster Road in Walnut Creek. There, he would show them how to whittle wood and his wife, Gale, would teach ...

Blue Bear School of Music

Opera veteran helps wartime veterans with PTSD by guiding them to create their own music and poetry

An ‘open classroom’ spurred a young girl’s creativity. Now she’s offering a similar experience to older adults as head of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.