Love Letters Live: Recent Episodes
Love Letters Live
Shulamit Sofia MSW is getting older. Well, we all are, and at exactly the same rate. But she has a head start on some of you and has learned a thing or two to pass on about how to live life best for the rest of the road.
Shulamit gives us a blessedly cheerful picture...
Janna Barkin had the good luck to knew she had a transgender child because that child made it so clear to her from the time he was little. She knew he was always her son despite what presented at his birth. But transgender can be confusion-filled and family members left sometimes fearful from lack of understanding.
...
When Irena Smith’s son was diagnosed with autism she got right to work calling on the same innate wizardry she detailed in her recent book The Golden Ticket showing college applicants how to find and express their best selves.
It is easy to expect our children to be, as Irena says, some variation of...
What does it take to get children into top universities without damaging families, without scandal, jail-time, debilitating tension and humiliation? What roles should parents play? What makes the best college essays? All good questions.
And here to talk about those issues is Irena Smith, a long time college admissions counselor and author of The...
Emilio Palame has turned his prodigious talents to the production of the upcoming movie Forty-Seven Days With Jesus.
Emilio is a musician with a stunning history of accomplishment as pianist, composer, arranger and many years as Peggy Lee’s musical director. He has a long history as a highly regarded actor, director and writer as...
Author Barbara Rose is the author of many books in which deeply held honesty is kind of a central character all its own. She has always been fearless in expressing herself with candor, wit, and a chummy indifference to whether people like what she says or not. She seems to delight in saying things that most people...
Michael is a third-generation psychic who has performed in 24 countries and 49 states. He was the magician for the Pittsburgh Steelers. One relative was Stalin’s mentalist, his psychic advisor. And, he performed for the Saudi royal family, the princess of Jordaqn and a few Russian oligarchs as well as members of the Secret Service and even...
Donnie Demers has had a charmed life with a loving family, childhood performing, and success after success until the multi-platinum record days in France. His began playing the piano at the age of four, but his first entry into performance was when he became the poster child for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and joining his aunt, a...
America’s first gay disco, a Los Angeles club that saw over a thousand gleeful men a night dancing at Studio One where gay men could feel safe being themselves.
Leaving this history to memory is risky; memory fades and when those carrying the clearest of impressions pass away, there is no on to turn to for...
Walking tours can reveal hidden mysteries and secrets. So does finding a staggering motherlode of information in 8,000 family letters she found all written in the early 1900s. More mysteries and secrets to share.
Nancy Botkin leads tours for WALK SAN FRANCISCO sometimes up lesser known paths sometimes up lesser trod paths. But, either...
It can change human existence for the better, but in the wrong hands has the potential to be deadly and could put an end to life on earth.
“The New Roaring Twenties,” by Paul Zane Pilzer and Stephen Jarchow, available now at book-stores, is a fascinating guide to surviving and prospering in our...
Actor Michael McHale faced and triumphed over two enormous challenges in his life; a T-cell count of 4 and finding out who his birth father was.
Michael’s life has been more complicated than most people could imagine. For some mysterious reason Michael recovered from AIDS. When he found out he had only 4 T-cells, he...
Reverend Steve Pieters has survived AIDS for decades. He was the first gay man with AIDS to be interviewed by Tammy Faye Bakker, and says that he has been amazed at how those 25 minutes he spent with Tammy Faye have reverberated through his life, more than almost anything else he has done. He says so many...
The Valley of the Moon Music Festival in Sonoma California is so unique that it is hard to know where to begin. Ditto regarding the president of its Board of Directors Kimberly Blattner who was not raised with classical music but whose passion for it now has guided much of what she does. She says that...
Love laundry? Christian Sanya turned it into a very lucrative business to fulfill her long standing dream of owning her own laundromat. She works in a science lab, but wanting to augment her income she thought of offering to fold laundry. People came running in droves, and soon enough she was doing the whole laundry load for...
Samantha Brenner has learned a lot about dating because she has been dating with her heart and her eyes open for many years now. Different in her 20s than now in her 30s? You bet.
She brings to her works in a business world the same strong focus on the human element that she brings...
Remember Roy Rogers and Dale Evans? Julie Rogers Pomilia does and is here to tell us their reality and what it was like growing up as their granddaughter. Roy and Dale were the biggest Western duo to hit the screen in days gone by. No one like them. Actually.
Their reach and...
When the Easter Seals Disability Film Challenge and Executive Producer Penni Wilson join forces with other major talents, this year’s result is Kryptonite, a very short movie with the feel of a full length feature. A movie that has left so many people wanting more, wanting a series, wanting to stay in touch with the two main characters...
Do we remember the bullies in our lives forever? Adam Sherman is back to talk about bullying and kindness and the lasting power each of those holds. To be living as a youth on the autism spectrum can pose conquerable challenges, but facing bullies should not be one of them. How Adam dealt with friends who turned against...
Photographer Johanna Siegmann has documented the love between people and their pets in her beautiful, lavish, fun-filled book of incomparable images of notable people with their pets. And, February 20th was Love Your Pet Day. Well, really what day is not?
What do you know about a person with a pet. Lots! People with their...
Terri Jay, a medium, a medical intuitive, an animal communicator (yes, a horse-whisperer), author on the subject and so much more. She takes her ability as unremarkable, sees no real mystery in it, simply, as she says, picks up on higher vibrations or frequencies Her conviction is that everyone is born with the same capacity for...
The Middle East Peace Process is alive and well in the hands of School Principal Mohammad Kundos, his colleagues, students and their parents. While governments are sputtering along trying to bring an end to hatred among conflicting factions, Mohammad Kundos, a Muslim from a religious family spends his days at Hand In Hand school fostering understanding, love and...
Rescuing old, stray, abandoned and sometimes abused dogs is what Sherri Franklin does. She is on duty every day finding them loving homes, saving them from euthanasia, providing the most loving and tender hospice care to minimize their suffering. And, if she cannot find an adequate and compassionate foster home quickly, well, she takes them into her...
Living Beyond Normal An Autistic Autobiography is more than Adam Sherman’s life story. It is, as he says, a story bigger than he is. With honesty and candor he takes on the task of vanquishing the many misconceptions of autism.
What drove him to write this book was sudden connection of Black Lives Matter...
When a boy on the spectrum and his teacher were unable to understand each other, what should the teacher have done? Steve Spitz, the one neurodivergent boy in his class has some valuable thoughts on this. Granted, Steve was in grammar school decades ago when a student whose mind seemed to be wandering left teachers in a...
The LGTBQ community in good hands with Jill Baker as she focuses on gender, transgender and HIV wellness. A family nurse practitioner for 20+ years, Jill works as a primary care provider, which means she is authorized to prescribe medicines and take care of her own patients.
Pressure on doctors to see so many...
Times change, and language changes to reflect it. Janna Barkin, author of He Has Always Been My Son, talks about the importance of using the pronouns that people choose to reflect their gender identity that may differ significantly from the gender they were assigned at birth.
Janna tells us what it is...
Alison Hitchcock wrote over 100 letters to a man she barely knew. They met at a yoga retreat and did not really connect until they were next to each other in a headstand and, oops, a simultaneous bodily function took over. Friendship sealed.
Alison, not one to cook meals, wanted somehow to cheer up...
“It’s a girl!” came the proclamation at the birth of Janna Barkin’s second child. Her 5 year old daughter disagreed. Janna Barkin, author of He’s Always Been My Son, talks about raising her transgender son. Unconditional love for this beautiful child, of course, but more than that.
We live in a constantly changing world where gender...
Steve Spitz knew early in his life that he differed from the other children in school. He learned differently, he processed in atypical ways, his mind wandered in class. That he grew up with a devoted family who loved him unconditionally was a blessing that softened the edges of challenges, yet it was only a short time...
Gordon Goodwin is a Grammy winner, composer, arranger, pianist, saxophonist, actor, founder and bandleader of Big Phat Band, popular radio personality, 4 time Hollywood Bowl performer, conductor for Johnny Mathis, worked with Quincy Jones, Steven Spielberg, Christiana Aguilera, John Williams, Ray Charles. You may be tempted to ask “where does it end?” Don’t bother...
Before the days of matchmaking sites and online dating, there were personal ads in newspapers. Rose Taibbi, to keep her mind occupied while waiting to go to the wake of a dear friend, picked up a local newspaper and looked at the personals. She crossed off everyone but two and, baffled as she was at why she...
Receiving a heart that saved his life, Steven Taibbi lives every day in profound gratitude and wanted to include the donor’s family in his life. His donor David Jason Jocobo, a healthy 36 year old man, father of four, suffered a brain aneurysm and collapsed in front of the family, dying just three days later. The family...
Color one of the most important facets of our lives and sometimes our defining identification. The colors we wear, what does it say about us? What color gets our heart rate up and probably feels like love? Do parents still tell teen children what colors they may not wear? Lee Rosenberg, high-school art teacher is back with some...
Steven Taibbi was born with a hole in his heart and has earned a stunning distinction; one he never asked for. Operated on right after birth, by the age of six he became the first person to live through two open hearts for ASD repair. Throughout his life he was told repeatedly that he had maybe only a year...
Teaching art to high school students may be more than you think. If you add into the lesson plans some physics, chemistry, discovering new talents, patience, and triggered memories, well, you have just entered Lee Rosenberg’s art class.
Long ago and far away I had heard that good teaching is something like 90% entertainment. I believe that. Lee’s...
Feeling blue, anxious, needing something to cheer you up? Heaven knows the world is pressing down on us all with glum news. Good news is the release of a movie that, admittedly, will not change the world, but it is sure to make you smile from way down deep. The Knights of Swing, about a teen swing-band of...
A 12 year old runaway girl, homeless and facing indescribable danger and misery is now in her 3rd year of law school. And, she is not the only one to have gone through the Jeffrey Sitcov’s Doors of Change and come out, yes, changed.
Too many children have had to flee home to save their lives; they have...
As Passover is around the corner, Rabbi Peretz Mochkin dives right into the complexities of shedding various kinds of slavery that keep us from being as much as we can be. He talks about leaving the mental constraints of slavery; can people leave limitations foisted upon them? Then there is relating instead of interacting and what that means personally...
Hint: he is the biological son of the sitcom mother of Ron Howard. Yes, Happy Days, and good for you and good for him as happy days there were.
Pleased to present Jim Meskimen, an exceptional man you probably know him from more places than I could count on the fingers of four hands. The truth is because Jim...
Has the internet damaged our ability to trust what we see before our very eyes. You think it is Tom Cruise chatting on a Youtube? Think again. Maybe it is. Maybe not. Peter Katcoff, president of the Marin Philosophical Society, talks about loss of trust caused by the internet. People in positions of authority are lying, and lying...
With a war going on right now that has the potential to threaten the entire world in myriad ways, I know that legions of us have sent donations to help the people of Ukraine now facing horror after horror. Not to minimize countless political atrocities against people taking place daily, it’s just that this one was a reminder to me...
How much damage has the internet caused humanity? Plenty in ways both personal and universal. Peter Katcoff, with a slew of degrees, teaching experience and as current president of the Marin Philosophical Society, has a solid feel for societal changes and what they mean for us. The news, of course, is not all bad even though it becomes clearer...
Judy Tenuta is kicking cancer’s stage 4 ass! You may know her as The Love Goddess, Aphrodite of the Accordion, Singer, Comedienne supreme, stage actress performing in the Vagina Monologues and Menopause The Musical. She has appeared in specials on HBO and a stint on General Hospital and is the first female stand-up comic to win “Best Female Comedian”...
The incomparable Noah Griffin (not a figure of speech here) has just been elected to the Tiburon Town Council. Although newly elected, he is no newcomer to Bay Area political life. He comes to this position with quite a history of accomplishment; a Harvard law degree, years of work with and for well-known and respected politicians including SF mayors...
What is the purpose of school administrators? Good question. Larry Strauss, teacher and well-known fiction author talks about what it takes to be a first-rate teacher, how and why teachers can fail, and the value of going above and beyond the basics – yes sometimes you have to break the rules to let your students know that, in...
Donna Russo is the lead actress and dancer of Donna On the Go, a web-series about a young woman with two non-related disabilities that cause some challenges, some difficulties and, yes, some laughter.
With a childhood diagnosis of two conditions that may have stopped most people from achieving goals that were dearly held dreams, Donna forged ahead on the...
Larry Strauss was born to an actress mother and composer father you likely know well from years of prime time television and music.
He took the blessing of his creative gifts in other directions first as an author of several fiction novels that have drawn on his personal experience. Then talent in another direction took him to teaching, a...
Snowball, Terri Wong’s 5 year old cockatiel, is as uncommon a creature as you could ever meet. If he has not seen Terri up and around by a certain morning hour she can hear him walking down the hall to her bedroom to wake her. Snowball is as satisfied as ever a bird can be with his own image....
Come meet beauty pageant queen dachshund Oops and her friend Dr. Feldman a combo long haired chihuahua and Pomeranian. I thought it would be fun to dedicate an episode of Love Letters Live to the wonder of man’s best friend. By the way these two dignified souls are good friends off the camera.
Oops has found a stable and...
Nothing quite like twins for grabbing your heart. And, in the world of twins there is nothing like the D’Ambrosio twins actresses Bianca and Chiara who have been acting since toddlerhood. Twins, yes, but two distinct people and together or individually you will have to look far and wide to fine any young women nicer, more adorable, outgoing, intelligent,...
Pure joy. The Brothers Four. Bob Flick and four fraternity brothers (yes, hence “Brothers Four”) started this group in 1957. If you are lucky enough to have been aware of folk music in the 50s or 60s, you remember them, right? American Folk music in general is a fascinating and interesting genre having spanned decades longer than we...
Vince Di Paolo, American born of Italian ancestry, was a teen in an Italian boarding school and one day cut school to go to a movie. That was it. He knew, as he said, at the ripe old age of 16 he belonged to that world. It seems that sometimes a little misbehavior, and the independence it may reflect....
Reverend Steve Pieters, one of the most charming and influential religious leaders of today, has many distinctive achievements to his credit. Understatement. He has been living with AIDS for 40 years, which by itself puts him in a unique category. This miracle caught the eye of Tammy Faye Baker who reached out to him years ago to ask him...
Tyler Chabot is not a man to take a commitment lightly, yet, after a two-year relationship with, alas, the wrong match, proposing marriage, wedding plans in place, he found the courage to brave the anguish and end the engagement. How he met her is worth hearing and their love grew until a feeling overtook Tyler that this was not...
Anabelle Bugatti, psychotherapist, author of Using Relentless Empathy in the Therapeutic Relationship, and a believer in romance, specializes in couples and individual therapy. Anabelle, or Dr Belle, as she is affectionately known, is accessible as can be, with her heart and mind open to what is troubling those who need her. With her vast experience and many faceted focus...
Ten years on Broadway in Miss Saigon, you cannot do that unless you are a major talent. That is exactly what Ray Santos is. Major talent. Actor, singer and dancer. He talks about his life and the journey from San Francisco to Broadway with what you would have to call a rickety start. He says when he heard himself...
David Friedman, composer, conductor and author you may already know has a new book out. Help Is On the Way, based on his song with the same title, is about help that comes to us in unexpected ways. David has learned from personal experience that help is on the way whether you are aware of it or not.
...
Cynthia Toussaint is back to talk about music. The ability of music to heal, and her latest CD. You may remember Cynthia as a cheerful, grounded and beautiful woman who knew as a girl she was meant to be on stage. She was twenty-one years old when she was struck by a disease now recognized as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome...
The Yellow Brick Road. That is pretty much all you have to say to evoke an incomparable world of adventure, terror, friendship, victory and mystery. Most of us have traveled that road with Dorothy, have longed to own magic slippers, have wished for a fairy god-mother. Have most of us sung “ding-dong the witch is dead” at some time or...
David Brower was born into a significantly important and creative theatrical family; Broadway theater and Hollywood movies. Yet, he says he spent a good part of his Beverly Hills young life looking for love. Spoiler, yes, yes, he found it. But until he was able to grab that love, the road was fraught with bumps, and yes challenges that...
The effects of childhood abuse can continue into adulthood in ruinous ways. Cynthia Toussaint is here to talk about generational trauma, the damage that continues down the generations often causing increasing harm and life-threatening disease to adults who have suffered the horror of abuse and vicious dysfunction.
Cynthia who was at one point in her young life a ballet...
Have you ever been tempted to write a hate letter? Should you do it? So often I hear people, in a fit of pique say, “I’m gonna write a letter!” This is usually in response to some company who has foisted a faulty product on us or to a politician who has disappointed us. But, we harbor anger to...
If you have ever felt that writing a thank you note is a burden, then Gina Hamadey Bergman is the person you may want to meet. Gina spent a year writing thank you notes, one a day. By category month by month. Seems like a daunting task, but Gina is a talented and diligent writer with a feel for organization...
Young and seeking bargain items that would go nicely in her new apartment, Wendy Drake took her chances on an estate sale. When a blue-topped box caught her eye, she got better than objects for her new digs. She took a peek to find the first of her Thousand Letters adventure and bought the box containing letters written between...
Anson Williams was part of our lives for years. For those of us who were teens in the 50s, we knew he was a devoted friend who visited weekly as Potsie Webber, an exuberant member of the Happy Days crowd. For those of us who missed that era, he brings us to the party. How did he get this...
MARTHA BOLTON is exceptional by any standards. With the mind of a comedienne and the soul of a historian, she brings us a book of delightful historical importance; Dear Bob…Bob Hope’s Wartime Correspondence with the G.Is of World War II
Martha was the first woman staff writer for Bob Hope, helping to write his television specials, personal appearances,...
It must be a sign of great acting that we, the audience, so often attribute the qualities of the role to the actor personally. Yes, Bernardo of West Side Story is such a specific personality that you have to wonder how identical to George Chakiris this personality is. Well, the spoiler answer is not identical. But there is an...
We are so often dependent on the mainstream news for information about life in other countries. But there is always more. Kian Beyzavi, born and raised in Iran, sheds a bright light on what it was like to grow up there. The details of growing up as a very smart young girl in Tehran may surprise you as it...
For Allen Klein, seeing actual people on a stage was a life changing moment. Two productions and this 7 year old knew what he was meant to do. When he asked his elementary school teacher if she would accept a diorama in place of a book report, she said yes and Allen was on the road. Seven. A set...
A love letter to the thief who stole his beautiful brand new titanium bicycle? Yes, and a brilliant one. Mickey Smith, dedicated to the sport he loved best, cycled for fun, for transportation, for giving to his community through Aids/LifeCycle. And just like that, in a flash of a cruel theft, so much of what his life was...
For Claire Dobie, clear thinking is paramount. She, like many women, can hardly keep track of the articles about what men want. This topic is an industry in its own right and a cash cow for popular magazines. Married, partnered or single, younger or older, it peaks women’s curiosity. Suggestions abound about what to do to attract a man...
Contacting sweethearts from our past can be a challenge; locating them, gathering the courage it takes to call someone who was once an intimate part of your life, knowing that a suspicious gate-keeper wife may be the one to answer the phone and finding just the right tone of voice.
That challenge pails next to the task of contacting...
Ever been called out by someone for talking to yourself? Ever catch yourself talking to yourself or, worse, laughing out as you amble down the street all by your little lonesome? What do you do? Personally, I just struggle to stifle the laughter (makes me laugh harder) and hope that no one with a cell-phone is dialing an emergency...
Allen Klein has made it his life’s mission to bring laughter and comfort to people who range from mild to severe stress, who have suffered devastating loss, or just need a smile or some wisdom on an ordinary day. He helps people lighten up; he is permission to laugh.
He was a boy who loved Broadway, attended Yale...
You most likely know Hank Garrett in the role of Officer Ed Nicholson of the popular 60’s sit-com Car 54 Where Are you?” It would be hard to conceive a fictional character that even comes close to Hank’s actual life.He has traveled such a labyrinthine path from childhood to film-stardom you might wonder how he ever stayed on the...
Actor, playwright and producer Terry Ray got where he is by joyfully jumping right in where he wanted to be. You may know him from his movie roles. Or you may know him from Electricity, his original play that tells the story of a romance between 2 men who met at a 10 year high school reunion (one...
Sellassie Blackwell is devoted to creating changes in this world through his work as an independent hip-hop artist pioneer with an eye toward bringing independent artists together and as a seriously committed community activist intent on giving rise to social changes. His music is a vehicle for inspiration, and he is very clear that it is more important...
Ruthie Darling. And, that is the word that would describe her best. Her mother, in countless moments of extreme affection and appreciation for her daughter, always called her Ruthie, darling.
After years as a grade school teacher, Ruthie turned to writing children’s books (yes, for all ages). She knew herself best as Ruthie Darling, so just took that name...
Michele Musy is one of the truly blessed women of the world with an enormous capacity to enjoy life to its fullest. She knows when romance is in the air, and she has the spirit to seize the moment with all it has to offer.
She shares her romantic life with remarkable openness and courage starting from her...
Rob Karlovich is an inventor. Always was. As the third youngest in a family of nine children, he could not always have the toys he wanted, so he searched the basement for cast-off materials from which he could make those toys. He was the little boy who knew how to take the things apart and put them back together...
Sterling Mire knew by the time she was three years old that she had questions that would be answerable only by her own insights. This was the first step she took onto the path that led her from a successful acting and music career to guiding others onto their most constructive paths because she learned early in her life...
Mermaids? For real? Now we know the answer is a joyful yes and the sightings have been confirmed. Mahogany Mermaids, a swim team that personifies the same qualities of charm, glamour and beauty that have been attributed to mermaids for thousands of years.
The Mahogany Mermaids was formed years ago to bring Black women (well, there is now one...
Popular author and founder of Age March, Barbara Rose Brooker is fearless in what she is willing to say out-loud. Or put to paper as she does in her novels, to name just a few Should I Sleep in His Dead Wife’s Bed, The Rise and Fall of a Jewish American Princess , The Viagra Diaries ,...
When 450 love letters written by her father to her mother during WWII made their way from storage into her hands, Jenny did not, at first, know what to do. These were not, after all, letters written to her, and she was a little nervous about what would she might find.
What she found was not only a...
Myrna is back because we had more to say about the worldwide obsession with hair. Turns out there is never enough time to exhaust the topic because in addition to everything else about hair, there is the entertainment world in which hair takes, yes, starring roles. You remember the rock opera Hair, one of the all-time greats with hair...
Danielle DiSalvo’s love-tree is in full bloom, laden with messages from those hopeful for a better world and who want to encourage the power of love. Danielle has been tending this tree in front of her house for some time, and she invites all who want to add their voices; she has pens and tags on site ready for...
Roslyn Kind, even with her incomparable talent, exquisite voice and beauty to match, never puts herself in the center of the universe even though she hopes to reach every corner of it with light and love.
Roslyn grew up singing; the whole family sang. Singing was more or less a standard way of communicating, and her grandfather was a...
Eubie Blake was a most forgiving man who functioned amid horrible racism that showed its ugly face everywhere he turned. But, genius as he was and devoted to the music, he plugged right on with full knowledge that he was a professional. Eubie Blake, son of former slaves, was born in 1887 and by the time he was about...
Hair? It isn’t just hair. It is at best our crowning glory. At worst it has been the battleground for some of the most gut-wrenching racial battles. Hair has been the focal point of generational skirmishes that pitted parents and children against each other. Hair has served for political stances where victory has been often declared and...
Ken Bloom has done so much in the world of theater and music that it is hard to believe he is not twice his age. But, done it all he has. He is a theater historian, playwright, director, record producer, and author. He has co-produced and directed a series of musicals and musical revues including Sirocco, Bride of Sirocco (which transferred to...
David Zimmerman is an excellent and experienced actor, a fabulous singer who can steal a scene and, watch out, will steal your heart. He is overloaded with talent, charm, stage presence, and two other qualities that tip the balance on how he spends his professional time. Those two qualities are love and generosity in heaping amounts. With all he...
Mark Anthony is an Oxford educated trial attorney licensed to practice before the Supreme Court and well known fourth generation evidential psychic medium who communicates with spirits. He brings science-based theories of energy to his work. Complicated? You bet. You may know him from his regular appearances on television and radio shows.
And, you may know his books, the latest...
Liz Maguire was raised as a regular at flea markets, and one in particular led to her Flea Market Love Letters. As a teen-ager Liz found a box of turn of the (last) century letters. She had already spent the first $20 her mother gave her to keep her flea market occupied, but when she saw these she pleaded...
Emperor Joshua Norton came to San Francisco at the age of 30 from Capetown where he was raised. He arrived with what would be today a fortune of $1,000,000. He had known great business success in San Francisco until he made one wrong move and lost everything. He disappeared for a couple of years; no one knew where he...
Anita Hollander, Broadway star, first took to the stage at the age of 4. Unstoppable; she was not even on the program but walked right up on to the stage and gave the audience a performance from “Guys and Dolls”. Yes, she walked up as if she belonged there. Which, of course, she did.
She always knew she was meant...
Terri Dora Wong looks like a work of art on any given day. As a fashion desinger and restorer of vintage items, for Terri, it is never even the chicest of jeans; it is always the most glamorous of Chinese fashion whether she has created it from scratch or redisgned something existing.
The miracle is not just her artistic genius...
Nic Novicki is known on six continents for his work as an actor, comedian and producer of several feature films, television pilots and web series, and through Armed Forces Entertainment has toured for the US troops. A few of his television roles include Boardwalk Empire, The Sopranos, The Good Doctor (give a click you’ll be happy you did)...
Yes, that is what they called us at the station for years when Love Letters Live was on the radio. The two of us, the Love Letter Squad. We are together again, Tresa and I, for this conversation about writing love letters to the dying and to those people we love who have left this earth and sometimes left us...
If you have not told your mother how much you love her while she was here on earth with you, is it too late to tell her after she is gone? Not at all. Karen Moss Hale of Newclevelandradio talks about her love letter written after her mother died. This was not an easy task for her, but she...
The US Post Office has been working for us, has been our servant, our bond and our consoler since the colonists establishment it in 1639, needing help as they did sending letters back to England. Messengers have always been critical to the survival of any society.
Century after century, decade after decade, day after day through wars, depressions, pandemics,...
William May has spent 34 years as the head doorman at the Fairmont Hotel, and with the hotel closed due to coronavirus, his life has changed drastucaly. He has always been a man with his heart, mind and eyes open to possibilities, so as each presented itself when he least expexted it, he dove right in.
William is, at his...
Something awful has happened in America. Factions of the left and the right seem to be at a low-level tribal war. Hatred runs high and it does not take much to trigger it. Too may people are frightened and seeing threats where they do not really exist, and it is letting that senseless hatred run rampant that is the...
You may know Joey Travolta as a singer, actor and director, but being a teacher of special needs children was where his passion was. A kinder man you would not find, but he credits his own father with having given the gift of kindness to his children. This is a gift that Joey took to heart and let it...
The history of the US Post Office is a history of facing danger, of staring it right in the eyes from up close and being daunted not for a minute. The history of the US Post Office is a history of taking care of the American people. Find out what the post office was looking for in its mail...
Those of us who have reached a certain age were taught in elementary school that voting is the underlying power of a democracy, that it was both a privilege and a duty never to be ignored. We understood the seriousness of voting for our elected officials, that we were, each of us, guaranteed the right to cast our ballot....
Mother’s Day is almost here. With you in coronavirus isolation unable to spend a nice leisurely day shopping in her favorite stores for the perfect gift.
Yes, you can do what the news stories are telling you can do; go online and send flowers, send her a gift certificate for her favorite restaurant, if and only if they are...
Is there anything quite like the jolt of happiness that comes with getting a new pet? Is there anything quite like the unconditional love that a pet can bring us? Probably not. When the day has gone not so well, when we are grieving, when we have been dumped by romance, when the job we wanted went to someone...
We are warned to wash our hands for 20 seconds and often. We are told to stay 6′ from all other human beings. We must wear protective masks when out of the house. We have a new vocabulary that includes “sheltering at home” “social distancing” “rising numbers” and “essential businesses” “spiking” “ventilators” “home-made masks” and a host of other...
We are living through days of extreme challenge, extreme sadness and a horrible death toll. Rules for living have changed right before our eyes. There is more a need than ever for the human race to pull together to defeat this virus that has assaulted us with such brutality and speed. And, pull together it has in ways both...
That is because telling the truth is her driving force. It comes naturally to her. You can see this in her novels, The Rise and Fall of a Jewish American Princess a wrenching personal story, The Viagra Diaries (don’t even ask!) and her latest, Love, Sometimes: A Novel About Risk, Hollywood and Controversial Love , a more than...
Linda Nacif shares a personal story so complex that only listening to her tell it will do it justice. Suffice it to say that she was born into one culture and, for reasons of love having grabbed a hold of her when she was 17 and on a trip to Mexico, she switched. Yes, redefined herself totally, married the best...
Our Bodies Ouselves, the book that millions of women turn to for information they could not get elsewhere. With 4,000,000+copies in print in 29 languages worldwide, it has become the saving grace for countless women across the globe. This book made women safe through the power of information.
It was the 1960s, and hard as it is to...
How often do we hear as the first response on hearing that someone has died, “Was it expected?” What?! Maybe that is fear talking or a stalling for time until we can figure out what we really want to say when someone we know has died. But given that life comes with a guarantee of death, how can we not...
I have discovered a whole new world of reliable truth about those birds we all see around town. Yes, more about pigeons, but now so much more than what I learned lately about these heroes of the skies (and in one case thought I learned, but wrong I was so now have to correct my all too public blunder)....
Pigeons are much more than those birds that hang around urban centers hoping for a handout. Do we do an injustice to them, those of us who denigrate them, who insist on signs prohibiting feeding them, who grimace and try to avoid them? I was one of those people. Until I learned the truth about these devoted messengers, these...
Takiyah Smith, San Franciscan native and author of the about to be released book Single Mom and the City, talks about what it takes to be a single mother while maintaining not only your own strength but flourishing as well. How easy it can be to fall into the doldrums of single motherhood with all the physical,...
Sunni Malek, always ebullient and eager to take whatever next step presented itself for her, as outgoing and welcoming a woman as you could imagine, had every reason to think her life would proceed uncomplicated by crisis of any particular kind. When she was struck by breast cancer and finished with her treatment, she had reason to look to the...
Jeanne Gnuse is a fan of personal change, and her history of accepting challenge is a model for us all. Decade after decade, no such thing as status quo for her. Her husband was an introspective man with an engineering degree, quiet, steady. She has the sparkle of a Broadway musical performer.
At age 55 she and her husband...
In a world too often plagued by fear, mistrust, and a general sense of disgust for American politics, there is a bright light of hope shining through a rather bright light herself. When Pamela Ward suggested to me not long ago that I write a love letter to U.S. Representative for New York’s 14thcongressional district Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, I realized that...
Good news! Marshall Mend is back. You remember Marshall Mend who, in the late 50s, dropped out of high school because of a philosophical difference with the principal and then went to work with his father in the butcher store. Marshall who soon went out on his own, and, thanks to his ability to listen carefully to his...
From fleeing the Soviet Union to a successful life Israel and then to San Francisco with equal success as a mortgage broker and founder of Pacific Bay Financial Company, Manny Kagan has not missed a beat of his own life. Rather, he has directed it step by step and had the courage to follow his instincts all the while...
Ever wondered who dresses those men who look so perfect in their suits and ties? I never did until I met the woman whose career (and mission) is to do just that. She is Andrea Valo-Espina, a designer, and, although she can sew a man’s suit herself, she relies on her talented cadre of 35 workers to do the tailoring of the finest European...
Mike Lambert’s recently written letters to his father are remarkable for their candor, insight, affection, and most of all for the fact that Mike, born in 1934 in Chicago, grew up fatherless. He was 18 months old when his father was killed in a truck/train accident. He talks about growing up with his mother and grandmother and seeing it all...
Here is a story that you would bet could not have happened in any universe, but it did. Meredith May’s newest work, I Who Did Not Die, is the true story of two soldiers on opposite sides of one of the bloodiest wars of the twentieth century. An Iranian child soldier, who understood the meaning of mercy, refused the ordered...
Renee McKenna, when asked how she likes to be introduced, was momentarily bollixed and for good reason. She is not just busy, she is industrious, creatively productive at every turn and defined by constant personal growth. She is a spiritual teacher, teaches art to kindergarten and 5th grade, is a painter and a public artist (sometimes midnight stealth to...
Pamela Holm, author of the hit play Lovesick, the Cat Allergy Musical, did not start writing until she was almost 30 and saw Postcards From the Edge. It was what she calls a Carrie Fisher moment, the first time she had seen “a smart-ass woman being funny and not being a bitch.” Pamela knew she could do this....
If you had asked him at the age of 3 what he wanted to be when he grew up, he would have said an actor. He was transformed by an understandable confusion when his mom took him to see Mary Poppins. Somehow he picked up on the possibility that he could be anything.
Ugly duckling in a school play when...
Sister Roma is a handsome, svelte, intelligent and educated man who, as a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, transforms, like Superman or Wonder Woman, dramatically into someone visibly valiant when on duty. His mission as a Sister is to feed the hungry, be caregiver to the sick, take a role as community leader and civil rights...
Caley Versfelt is in charge, in demand and incomparable. She grew up loved for who she is and aware of her outstanding, world-changing abilities. Out of curiosity I looked up the very overworked word “special” and found that the actual definition, “better, greater of otherwise different from what is the usual, and exceptionally good”, is Caley to a T....
Cissy Wellman fits very nicely into the category of “you don’t get credit for the beauty or talent you are born with, you get credit for what you do with it.” Her significant Hollywood family history begins with the stunning work of her father William Wellman, pioneer film director of the first Academy Award winning 1927 film...
Carole Ita White was 6 months old when her father Jesse White brought the family to LA to join James Stewart and others for a role in the movie Harvey. And, despite the Hollywood of wealth, recognition, privilege, and glamor she was born into, it was, for her, just a normal kid’s life of school, friends,...
Be there or be square. Sunday, March 19th at the Catalina Jazz Club in Los Angeles for a fabulous roster of performers – Roslyn Kind , Mary Wilson (you know her on her own and from her days as a vocalist with the Supremes), Chris Hendricks , Kathy Buckley, Geri Jewell and others including a surprise...
It was more than just a hello. It was a guarantee of a good time with a friend who sauntered through the door as regularly as a good heartbeat always at the wrong moment and always with good will.
David says it was set up as a way to get Squiggy in the door and into the apartment where he...
Flash, a sudden burst of light. Dictionary says so. Flash Hopkins, is more an ongoing blaze than a flash with his endless shifts and success in creative direction. You may know him as co-founder of the Burning Man, the world’s largest art festival that ends each year with a now-famous flash of its own light. That accomplishment alone would be...
Maybe it was Kevin Smokler’s culture-enamored parents and academic environment that planted the seeds of love for his own societal milieu of the 80s, the movies that took perceptions of teenagers into a new realm. Brat Pack America as a love letter to those 80’s teen movies tells the story of over 55 films in an entire decade of American...
How many of us have hit the send button without realizing the wrong name is in the “to” box, or hit “reply all” when we meant to send a private message to the sender? Wrenching for sure. But when a love letter meant for a new wife goes to the mother and the mother’s letter goes to that new wife, well,...
Maura Berman says she was jealous of her best friend’s piano. So her mother bought her a one and found her a teacher through Julliard. Maura was 7 years old and she was on her way to a lifetime of music. By the 10th grade, it was clear that Maura had gotten all she could from her first teacher...
Laurent Fourgo, born and raised in Paris, is a musician you may know as the leader of five well-loved bands that play throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Yes, five of them that run from music of the eighties, jazz, retro, and Flashback, his classics dance band for rock’n roll, Motown, Soul, Funk, Blues and Country. There is...
Lizzi Smith is, pardon the understatement, a swimmer. Silver and bronze medal winner at this years Paralympics in Rio. She was 4 or 5 when she first took to the water and saw the “fun taking on the challenge” and wanted to be the first to put her face in the water and blow bubbles. In those two phrases,...
You thought handkerchiefs were for blowing noses? Okay, they did eventually devolve into that position but only after having enjoyed a centuries-long and glorious role in society as the elegant way to communicate. They were carriers of important messages of love, lust, flirtation, status, social history, and more. Ann Mahony is, by profession, a hand-writing analyst and an...
Robin Katsaros would never have believed that someone you met at a bar could be, in a flash, the love of your life. But, that is just what happened. She is a romantic soul, so even with both feet firmly on the ground, she knew the first time she saw her husband at a bar that she had met the...
Samantha Grier who was, by her own description and memory, “always a God conscious little kid” who did not get a lot of parental attention from her parents who were busy earning a living. She remembers being at their children’s clothing store often, and as they were naturally busy, she read a lot. As years went on, she found not...
Lee Gordon and Amin Khalaf, Israeli friends, one Jew and one Arab joined forces in 1997 to do something that placed the Mideast peace process into the right hands. Theirs. They opened Hand in Hand, a school to educated Jews and Muslims together from kindergarten through high school, to raise them together as devoted friends.
They began with one...
Is it ever too late in life to redefine yourself or take on a new challenge? Short answer. No. Marshall Mend is living proof that there is no age limit to new triumphs. He was headed for victory from the time he dropped out of high school because of a philosophical difference, he says, with the principal. The principal thought...