We cordially invite you to enter our second issue of Vistas & Byways. Should you accept our invitation, you will discover new authors among familiar voices from the Fall 2015 V&B. (If you wish to visit, or revisit, our inaugural issue, click on the nearby link.)
We hope your journey into our Spring 2016 edition will be enhanced by our new Visual Arts section. This issue we offer a photo essay of a recent visit to Cuba as well as several works by two OLLI artists employing the media of watercolor, acrylic and pencil.
But, first, we are a literary review, offering a wide variety of nonfiction, poetry and fiction. Here are some stories you might want to check out in this issue:
Wail of Sirens--Who murdered Lee Campbell in the early morning hours of Friday the 13th in the southern Ohio town of Chillicothe? The town is abuzz with rumors of the slaying. Listen in on the townspeople’s wild speculations with Margaret Liddell as your guide.
My Life as an Ant--The life of an ant is not easy. It’s about time someone explored the downside of insect life from an insider’s perspective, as Evalyn Baron does here.
Lot’s Wife--Why did Lot’s wife glance backwards and turn into salt? Laurie Taylor offers an unexpected—and touching—answer in her retelling of one of the oldest stories from our biblical heritage.
You may find your own favorites in this issue and, as always, we encourage you to comment in the spaces provided after each piece.
Poets new to our magazine, including Roberta Greifer and Steve Surryhne, join others you’ve already met in Issue #1, such as Richard Simmonds and Alan Brewer. Roberta’s poems range from a slightly racy “reverie” in Men at Peet’s to a profound investigation of the sorrow, and occasional reward, of caring for an aging parent; while in Electricity, 1969, Steve takes us on a search for that lost current of “unearthly music” that flowed through the sixties and that he fleetingly retrieves in the desert.
All our special sections, V&B Forum (a tribute to the late Kent Haruf), Inside OLLI (Michèle Praeger’s interview with OLLI instructor, poet and novelist Diane Frank) and Bay Area Stew, have returned in this issue.
Bay Area Stew is a strange concoction indeed, one in which any and all literary genres may appear with their common thread being the unmistakable local flavor and accent of the San Francisco Bay Area.
In Umbrellas, Denize Springer—one of five OLLI instructors contributing to this issue—tells the story of Stella, a feisty 68-year-old woman who is determined to open a dollar store in the heart of an upscale town square of an unnamed Marin County city where even the dogs are “freshly coiffed and well bred.”
On the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge, Don Plansky visits The Pin Shop on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish liturgical year. He begins to suspect that the little junk shop tucked away in San Francisco’s Inner Sunset District may possess magical properties.
In her prose poem, Finding San Francisco, Charlene Anderson imagines an ecstatic afterlife wrapped up in the magic and mystery of old San Francisco.
We hope you will continue to send us your submissions, including artwork, photos and the written word. We regret that we’re not able to accept all submissions for each issue. Remember that you can fine tune your work in OLLI writers’ workshops offered during each new session of classes. Thanks so much for your continued interest and support!
