IN THIS ISSUE
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Featured Writing Topic for This
​Spring 2022 Issue:
Lucky/Unlucky?

See our creative writers' views on this topic in the 
Fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry Departments below.
EDITORIAL NOTE
Focus
by charlene Anderson
editorial Board Chairperson
This is our 13th issue, which made us think about the number 13 generally being considered unlucky, which made us further think we might capitalize on that concurrence by making the question of lucky vs. unlucky this issue’s literary theme.
 
In Issue 13 of Vistas & Byways, we have 11 pieces focusing on our special theme of Lucky/Unlucky? Interestingly, the question mark in the theme name resonates in many of these pieces. Luck and the lack of it seem to be mixed and muddied. Maybe that’s how life and luck are too.
 
Sometimes luck throws us a curve ball, figurative or actual. In Steve Surryhne’s poem, “Happy Hour (1962),” a poor sap living in Nevada joins the Navy to see and sail the world, only to end up stationed on land, right back in Nevada—what will he do about that? In “Bring the Runners Home,” new contributor Rick Homan’s protagonist, recently released from a hospital and cautioned to take it easy, attends a baseball game where he is hassled by fans and ushers; still, his team hits a grand slam. So, was he lucky or unlucky?
 
We wonder about our backgrounds and how lucky or unlucky they were. In “Growing up on a Farm in Wisconsin: Lucky or Unlucky?” Charlene Anderson muses on whether her unique experiences, including attending a one-room school for eight grades, were lucky or unlucky. Although she never settles the issue, she realizes it gave her a different perspective and is “glad for it and feel[s] lucky in it.” But the question remains.
 
Sometimes we experience unexpected adventures in our routine daily travels that make us wonder if we were lucky to get through relatively unscathed or unlucky to have had the experience at all. In “A Day in the Life,” Marsha Michaels recounts taking her motorized scooter on MUNI to a medical appointment, which proves so adventurous that afterwards she sits down to at least one glass of wine to “review the ups and downs of the day.” In “A Lucky Escape,” Vivien Zielin is hit by a car while crossing a London street, and though not seriously hurt, she ponders how that could have happened since she did look in the direction of traffic.
 
A situation where luck seems to be responsible for events may allow us to learn something, although sometimes not what we would have wanted. In Edward Lebowitz’s story, “Rodger Learns a Lesson,” after a close call with near-catastrophic bad luck, partly caused by his own actions, a slacker high school student reassesses the status of his intelligence and comes to an unexpected and maybe questionable conclusion. In her hilarious nonfiction piece, “Saved Again,” Vera Jacobson hopes she’s found her “third and final partner.” Enter the would-be partner’s goofy dad, grabbing her pinky and proclaiming, “’I REALLY LIKE YOU, Vera,’" definitely not referring to liking her as a prospective daughter-in-law. What did she learn?

Two poems take a somewhat more profound look at luck. Heather Saunders Estes postulates being asked the question “What’s Next for You?” and answers:
 
Thanks for asking. Ok . . . if I am lucky,
I’ve got 20-30 years left.
But the question seems odd to me now. Strange,
planning was my career.
 
So, are we lucky or not lucky in not knowing what comes next?
 
In “Frogs,” MJ Moore hears a frog sending its “’Ribbit’” over a dark pond, as hope for an answer ripples “. . . out into the universe.” Hearing that call, the poet values her 38 years with her partner:
 
Each moment a signal sent,
and, when we’re lucky--
answered.
 
Again, the question—will we be lucky enough to be answered and is such an answer lucky?
 
In her brief sardonic poem, “LUCK i, ” Carla Pasion doubts that her luck comes from a “random cosmic hand” but rather because of her place in society—or does it? In the even briefer “LUCK ii,” she takes a slant-view at Germans in WWII.
 
Don’t forget to check out our other sections. In Fiction, we have three pieces, all imaginative and intriguing. In “A Curious Tale of the Holy Grail,” Charlene Anderson creates a character who is half English and half Irish and, judging by his hairy feet, “might be part Hobbit.” How will such a person react when he thinks he’s found the Holy Grail? In Matt Ginsburg’s ironic story “Chicken Hearts,” set in 2008, a bank’s Equity Sales Team Manager takes his team out to eat at a restaurant where they “could pig out and feel cultured at the same time,” and mayhem ensues when team members have a chicken hearts eating contest. Joe Catalano’s atmospheric piece, “Bel Momento—Epilogue” revisits the fictional (or was it?) moment that “. . .ended more than 50 years ago, as dawn began to light the sky,” and we see what happened when the protagonist attempts to contact the women who shared that moment “. . . when time went away.” 
 
Our Nonfiction section has four interesting selections. In “El Camino de Santiago,” Barbara Applegate uses an unexpectedly successful list-format to chronicle her interest in, trip to and remembrance of her pilgrimage in Spain. In “Identity Crisis,” Cathy Fiorello wrestles with the concept of how to identify herself, once as mother, now as writer—or not.  Mary Noel Pepys’s fascinating narrative of election observation, “Unexpected Adventures of an Election Observer in Mongolia and Ukraine,” brings U.S. election issues to the forefront again but in a very different context as she recounts how two other countries, new to elections, had vastly differing results. Barbara Applegate’s “A Historical Perspective” portrays a very different method of refuse removal in a small Northern California town in the 50s that today we find shocking—but will future generations find our methods equally unacceptable?
 
In the Poetry Section this issue we have a particularly good selection. Vivian Imperiale’s “The Colors of War” tells us that, in the narrator’s father’s case, PTSD came in the form of an aversion to the color, Army Green; and in, “My Poem Delayed,” the poet postulates how, after she is gone, someone will come across her poem, not yet read, and:
 
reading echoes of my soul.
You will read it--
and try to imagine my voice.
 
In “Garbage Day,” Carla Pasion muses that, rather than achievements or children, what really is “the lasting legacy” of a life “goes out weekly in the grey landfill can.”
 
In “The In-Between,” Kathryn Santana Goldman describes the time between sleep and wakefulness when:
 
there is pause,
breath,
holy space.
………………
A slice of time when the nourishing song
of ancestors cradles me “in-between”
 
And in her beautiful tour de force, “Dancing Naked,” Kathryn describes dancing in her mother’s womb, her mother as choreographer, and how the dance is very different now.
 
In “Spirit,” new contributor David A. Scott reveals that Spirit, “Enables us to look beyond life’s shadows/To that which joins us.” Heather Saunders Estes catches a glimpse of “Summer in Winter” in Meyer lemons, seeing them as “a promise of brightness/in darkness.” In “Moments of My Past” Vivian Imperiale portrays a warm remembrance of a childhood where the poet’s elders built a life “full of smiles,” and in “A House Stays a Home,” she demonstrates that a house "is the accumulation/of all the living within its walls.”
 
Bay Area Stew has three pieces. MJ Moore’s poem, “Sunday Afternoon in Dolores Park,” a park where disparate groups—from black mutts to local Buddhists—gather, the composite of which she describes as San Francisco’s “Ode to Joy.” Linda Zamora Lucero’s story, “Balmy Alley Forever,” recounts Chuy Rosales’s desperation to pay the back rent on the home where generations of his family have lived, leading him to employ extreme measures. Charlene Anderson’s poem postulates that, after long-awaited rain returns, as a brooding soul in a “Brooding City,” she writes what the rain brings her.
 
We have three Vista Treasure Hunts in our Photo Essay section, “Crystal Springs Rest Area” (Mike Lambert}, “Searching for the Treasure of Signs of Time Passing” (Pamela Pitt), and “An Unlikely Vista Treasure Hunt” (Charlene Anderson). They all find treasure in unexpected places.
 
In Inside OLLI, we have an informative and timely photo essay by Kathy Bruin (OLLI Director), “A Tour of the New OLLI Classroom Downtown.” And don’t miss the three interviews: “An Interview with Jane Hudson” and “An Interview with David Perper” (both by Mike lambert}, and “An Interview with Maureen O’Brien DeGeller, OLLI Art and History Instructor” (Dina Martin)
 
We’re pleased to introduce two new contributors this issue: Rick Homan and David A. Scott. Thanks for thinking of us; please do so again!
 
We hope you can join us for our Launch Party on Wednesday, May 4 from 12:30 PM-2:30 PM. We don’t know yet if it will be in person or on Zoom. That information will be provided in the OLLI Newsletter the Friday before.
 
The submission window for Issue 14 is August 2022. Please keep us in mind as you write and snap pictures over the next few months.  
​The Vistas & Byways Editorial Board

Literary Departments

Fiction
Including 2 Works on Lucky/Unlucky?

Nonfiction
​Including 4 Works on Lucky/Unlucky?​

Poetry
​Including 5 works on Lucky/Unlucky?

​Bay Area Stew
Tributes to Our Region

​Photo Essays:
Vista Treasure Hunts

The Cover Photo - 
"Diamond View" by Joe Catalano

OLLI Member Joe Catalano took this photo from the westward facing deck on his Diamond Street home in San Francisco on Feb. 13, 2022 using his hand-held iPhone 13 Pro. The camera has a wide angle 26mm f1.5 lens, and in this shot the light fill feature, set at 0.5 sec., created an ISO film speed equivalent of 1000. This shot illustrates why Joe is no longer anxious about leaving his Canon SX620 on a shelf of respect at home when he travels. 

As he puts it, “Noticing photo opportunities, deciding which to take, and then choosing which to keep and which to share make photography a fascinating recreation.”

Editor's Note:  The photo below has been cropped laterally due to space limitations on this page.  
Picture
"WITH A LITTLE LUCK, WE SHOULD HAVE SWEET DREAMS TONIGHT." - Photo by Joe Catalano
Picture
"WITH A LITTLE LUCK, FROM UP HERE, HE SHOULD BE ABLE TO SEE ME IF HE FLIES BY AGAIN." - Photo by Barbara Applegate

Focus
by Charlene Anderson
Editorial Board Chairperson

EDITORIAL NOTE
  This is our 13th issue, which made us think about the number 13 generally being considered unlucky, which made us further think we might capitalize on that concurrence by making the question of lucky vs. unlucky this issue’s literary theme.
 
In Issue 13 of Vistas & Byways, we have 11 pieces focusing on our special theme of Lucky/Unlucky? Interestingly, the question mark in the theme name resonates in many of these pieces. Luck and the lack of it seem to be mixed and muddied. Maybe that’s how life and luck are too.
 
Sometimes luck throws us a curve ball, figurative or actual. In Steve Surryhne’s poem, “Happy Hour (1962),” a poor sap living in Nevada joins the Navy to see and sail the world, only to end up stationed on land, right back in Nevada—what will he do about that? In “Bring the Runners Home,” new contributor Rick Homan’s protagonist, recently released from a hospital and needing to take it easy, attends a baseball game where he is hassled by fans and ushers; still, his team hits a grand slam. So, was he lucky or unlucky?
 
We wonder about our backgrounds and how lucky or unlucky they were. In “Growing up on a Farm in Wisconsin: Lucky or Unlucky?” Charlene Anderson muses on whether her unique experiences, including attending a one-room school for eight grades, were lucky or unlucky. Although she never settles the issue, she realizes it gave her a different perspective and is “glad for it and feel[s] lucky in it.” But the question remains.
 
Sometimes we experience unexpected adventures in our routine daily travels that make us wonder if we were lucky to get through relatively unscathed or unlucky to have had the experience at all. In “A Day in the Life,” Marsha Michaels recounts taking her motorized scooter on MUNI to a medical appointment, which proves so adventurous that afterwards she sits down to at least one glass of wine to “review the ups and downs of the day.” In “A Lucky Escape,” Vivien Zielin is hit by a car while crossing a London street, and though not seriously hurt, she ponders how that could have happened since she did look in the direction of traffic.
 
A situation where luck seems to be responsible for events may allow us to learn something, although sometimes not what we would have wanted. In Edward Lebowitz’s story, “Rodger Learns a Lesson,” after a close call with near-catastrophic bad luck, partly caused by his own actions, a slacker high school student reassesses the status of his intelligence and comes to an unexpected and maybe questionable conclusion. In her hilarious nonfiction piece, “Saved Again,” Vera Jacobson hopes she’s found her “third and final partner.” Enter the would-be partner’s goofy dad, grabbing her pinky and proclaiming, “’I REALLY LIKE YOU, Vera,’" definitely not referring to liking her as a prospective daughter-in-law. What did she learn?

Two poems take a somewhat more profound look at luck. Heather Saunders Estes postulates being asked the question “What’s Next for You?” and answers:
 
    Thanks for asking. Ok . . . if I am lucky,
    I’ve got 20-30 years left.
    But the question seems odd to me now. Strange,
    planning was my career.
 
So, are we lucky or not lucky in not knowing what comes next?
 
In “Frogs,” MJ Moore hears a frog sending its “’Ribbit’” over a dark pond, as hope for an answer ripples “. . . out into the universe.” Hearing that call, the poet values her 38 years with her partner:
 
    Each moment a signal sent,
    and, when we’re lucky--
    answered.
 
Again, the question—will we be lucky enough to be answered and is such an answer lucky?
 
In her brief sardonic poem, “LUCK i, ” Carla Pasion doubts that her luck comes from a “random cosmic hand” but rather because of her place in society—or does it? In the even briefer “LUCK ii,” she takes a slant-view at Germans in WWII.
 
Don’t forget to check out our other sections.

​In Fiction, we have three pieces, all imaginative and intriguing. In “A Curious Tale of the Holy Grail,” Charlene Anderson creates a character who is half English and half Irish and, judging by his inordinately large feet, “might be part Hobbit.” How will such a person react when he thinks he’s found the Holy Grail? In Matt Ginsburg’s ironic story “Chicken Hearts,” set in 2008, a bank’s Equity Sales Team Manager takes his team out to a restaurant where they “could pig out and feel cultured at the same time,” and mayhem ensues when team members have a chicken hearts eating contest. Joe Catalano’s atmospheric piece, “Bel Momento—Epilogue” revisits the fictional (or was it?) moment that “. . .ended more than 50 years ago, as dawn began to light the sky,” and we see what happened when the protagonist attempts to contact the women who shared that moment “. . . when time went away.” 
 
Our Nonfiction Section has four interesting selections. In “El Camino de Santiago,” Barbara Applegate uses an unexpectedly successful list-format to chronicle her interest in, trip to and remembrance of her pilgrimage in Spain. In “Identity Crisis,” Cathy Fiorello wrestles with the concept of how to identify herself, once as mother, now as writer—or not.  Mary Noel Pepys’s fascinating narrative of election observation, “Unexpected Adventures of an Election Observer in Mongolia and Ukraine,” brings U.S. election issues to the forefront again but in a very different context as she recounts how two other countries, new to elections, had vastly differing results. Barbara Applegate’s “A Historical Perspective” portrays a very different method of refuse removal in a small Northern California town in the 50s that today we find shocking—but will future generations find our methods equally unacceptable?
 
In the Poetry Section this issue we have a particularly good selection. Vivian Imperiale’s “The Colors of War” tells us that, in the narrator’s father’s case, PTSD came in the form of an aversion to the color, Army Green; and in, “My Poem Delayed,” the poet postulates how, after she is gone, someone will come across her poem, not yet read, and:
 
    reading echoes of my soul.
    You will read it--
    and try to imagine my voice.
 
In “Garbage Day,” Carla Pasion muses that, rather than achievements or children, what really is “the lasting legacy” of a life “goes out weekly in the grey landfill can.”
 
In “The In-Between,” Kathryn Santana Goldman describes the time between sleep and wakefulness when:
 
    there is pause,
    breath,
    holy space.
    ………………
    A slice of time when the nourishing song
    of ancestors cradles me “in-between”
 
And in her beautiful tour de force, “Dancing Naked,” Kathryn describes dancing in her mother’s womb, her mother as choreographer, and how the dance is very different now.
 
In “Spirit,” new contributor David A. Scott reveals that Spirit, “Enables us to look beyond life’s shadows/To that which joins us.” Heather Saunders Estes catches a glimpse of “Summer in Winter” in Meyer lemons, seeing them as “a promise of brightness/in darkness.” In “Moments of My Past” Vivian Imperiale portrays a warm remembrance of a childhood where the poet’s elders built a life “full of smiles,” and in “A House Stays a Home,” she demonstrates that a house "is the accumulation/of all the living within its walls.”
 
Bay Area Stew has three pieces. MJ Moore’s poem, “Sunday Afternoon in Dolores Park,” a park where disparate groups—from black mutts to local Buddhists—gather, the composite of which she describes as San Francisco’s “Ode to Joy.” Linda Zamora Lucero’s story, “Balmy Alley Forever,” recounts Chuy Rosales’s desperation to pay the back rent on the home where generations of his family have lived, leading him to employ extreme measures. Charlene Anderson’s poem postulates that, after long-awaited rain returns, as a brooding soul in a “Brooding City,” she writes what the rain brings her.
 
We have three Vista Treasure Hunts in our Photo Essay Section, “Crystal Springs Rest Area” (Mike Lambert}, “Searching for the Treasure of Signs of Time Passing” (Pamela Pitt), and “An Unlikely Vista Treasure Hunt” (Charlene Anderson). They all find treasure in unexpected places.
 
In Inside OLLI, we have an informative and timely photo essay by Kathy Bruin (OLLI Director), “A Tour of the New OLLI Classroom Downtown.” And don’t miss the three interviews: “An Interview with Jane Hudson” and “An Interview with David Perper” (both by Mike lambert}, and “An Interview with Maureen O’Brien DeGeller, OLLI Art and History Instructor” (Dina Martin)
 
We’re pleased to introduce two new contributors this issue: Rick Homan and David A. Scott. Thanks for thinking of us; please do so again!
 
We hope you can join us for our Zoom Launch Party on Wednesday, May 4 from 12:30 PM-2:30 PM. The link will be provided in the OLLI Newsletter the Friday before.
 
The submission window for Issue 14 is August 2022. Please keep us in mind as you write and snap pictures over the next few months.
​The Vistas & Byways Editorial Board
Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of fiction, nonfiction and poetry by members of Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at San Francisco State University​.​
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​Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University (OLLI at SF State) provides communal and material support to theVistas & Byways  ​volunteer staff.