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...