A SENIOR BEAT GUEST COLUMN – My correspondence with Jutta Mengersen (now Brockhaus), the “World’s Ideal Pen Pal,” began in 1963, when we were both in high school. She was in Detmold, Germany, and I was in Columbia, South Carolina. Since then, we’ve met in my home in San Francisco and in her home in ...
Jeff Weston, who has been teaching photography part-time at City College of San Francisco since 1988, said people can learn photography easily by watching a video on YouTube. But that, he said can be lonely. Especially for seniors. As for what to photograph, he suggested just walking around the neighborhood. “We all like to think ...
“Bali Ha’i” the ballad from “South Pacific,” one of Tina Martin’s favorite Broadway musicals, beckoned her to “come away, come away … to me … your special island.” She followed that lure – of everything foreign – to live in Mexico in her junior year of college and after college, in Tonga, Spain and Algeria. ...
When forty-five-year-old Felipe Martinez suffered a massive stroke that left him unable to stand, walk, swallow or handle any of the activities of daily living, the one thing he was certain of was that Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center wasn’t for him. “That’s for the elderly, that’s not me,” he thought at the time. ...
Guess Elba Balderramos’s job, a gig where grateful clients paid for her to cruise to Mexico, Alaska, Hawaii and the Panama Canal, and one promised to leave her $50,000 in her will. Trusted family lawyer? Investment Advisor? Nope. Balderramos, now 79, is a bank teller at the Bank of America in San Francisco, where she’s ...
Juan Gonzales doesn’t discourage easily. His high school guidance counselor didn’t think he was a candidate for college. The faculty at San Francisco State University didn’t think he had what it takes to teach journalism. And the Spanish language press in San Francisco’s Mission District didn’t think publishing a bilingual newspaper would be a success. ...
