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. ...
If you told 12-year-old Denise Larson that she was going to be the Mama of Les Nickelettes, a feminist experimental theater group with an anything-goes, throw-out-the-rules attitude, she would have stared at you like you had two heads. “I knew I wanted to be a stage actress at 12, but I was painfully shy with ...
Beverly Ann Johnson Taylor, or Miss Taylor as she’s known to the many organizations for whom she volunteers, celebrates her 89th birthday this August. For 40 years, she has taught in the public schools, deriving both personal satisfaction and numerous accolades for her service. Retirement only opened new opportunities to serve her church and community. ...
Rasa Gustaitis was among 900 other displaced persons who arrived in America in September 1947 on the SS Ernie Pyle. With her own long career in journalism, it now appears serendipitous that she entered the country on a ship named for a Pulitzer-winning war correspondent. Gustaitis touched all the bases in her journalism career —she ...
It was not Allie Light’s first brush with an Academy Award. But the first one without her husband, a noted filmmaker and her mentor. In 1991, Light and Irving Saraf won best documentary for “In the Shadow of the Stars,” which explored the lives of the San Francisco Opera chorus. This year, 28 years later, ...
A suburban yogi signs up for a spiritual experience, but gets a little more spirit than he’d bargained for. A young man hitches a ride from an older Texan in 1968 and prepares himself for the inevitable clash of viewpoints. A young woman from Indiana who settled in San Francisco in 1968 remembers her precarious ...
