We decided to add a bonus episode this season by turning the microphone inward (so to speak) and, so, I am going to interview my lovely co-host Phoebe Rubin today, since Phoebe checks the boxes of being a working woman over seventy. 

Phoebe Rubin is a film producer and director. She began making movies in 1999. Her first film, Women Who Cry In Restaurants, was part of the LA Shorts Festival. In 2004, Phoebe began making documentary films with Erica Tanamachi for non-profit organizations. 

Their short documentary, A Perfect Note, was included in the 2018 Napa Valley Film Festival. Phoebe holds an MA in Psychology with a concentration in Drama Therapy. She taught and directed autobiographical performance to at risk youth in San Francisco. 

Phoebe worked for the Los Angeles Theatre Council, coordinating conferences and events. She was assistant to a vice president at CBS records and an assistant to a Los Angeles film producer.  She built and ran a recording studio in Sausalito, Ca. Before moving to California, Phoebe opened and managed a French restaurant by the University of Cincinnati called Cafe Lautrec.

At 51, Phoebe received full custody of her 10 week old grandson. He is now 24. It was a profound period of adjustment being a new mommy at 51, as well as another opportunity for re- imagining and re-inventing herself.

Last year Phoebe began treatment for Multiple Myeloma. Phoebe is 75.

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Pat Welsh is an Emmy-award winning garden writer and author of books including Pat Welsh’s Southern California Gardening: A Month by Month Guide--which is the bible for all Southern California gardeners. 

She was the first Garden Editor of San Diego Home/Garden Magazine in 1979 and hosted a TV news garden segment on Channel 39 on the San Diego evening news. She also hosted multiple garden videos and infomercials for Better Home and Gardens and the H/GTV network. 

Pat has received countless awards for her work, notably the San Diego Emmy, Three Quill and Trowel Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award from Quail Botanical Gardens, and Horticulturist of the Year from San Diego Horticultural Society. 

Pat has two daughters, 5 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren and I am one of the lucky grandchildren who get to call her “Nana”. She still writes and paints from her home in Del Mar, California. Pat Welsh is 92 years old. Welcome to “Work While You Have the Light”, Nana. 

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Today we get the great pleasure to interview Cheri King. Cheri was born and raised in Berkeley, California. She is the Executive Director of the Berkeley National Junior Tennis league. Since the league's inception, they have coached thousands of youth from ages 5 through 12. Cheri has over 30 years experience as a recreational tennis player and 15 years as a coach, manager and tennis league commissioner. She also is Executive Director of her family non-profit Operation/Pride where she runs the tennis tournaments and programs through the Berkeley National Junior Tennis League. 

Cheri holds a BA from Sonoma State University with an  emphasis in elementary education, a vocational certificate from UC Berkeley, a Paralegal Certificate from St. Mary’s College and an Advanced Project Management Certification from Stanford University. In addition to tennis, Cheri’s career varies from being a flight attendant to a paralegal to a teacher to an IT project manager at Kaiser Permanente. 

Cheri is a natural born leader who has lived a life of service to her community. She is truly an inspiration for us all. We are so grateful to have her with us today to talk about her life and work. 

Cheri is 73 years old.  

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Lana Wilson is a studio potter who lives in Berkeley, California. Lana was recently introduced to us by a family member and we were immediately compelled by her extraordinary ceramics. Each piece expresses her unique vision of the world--they are organic, personal and beautiful.  

She has given more than 150 workshops on the ancient pottery technique of handbuilding that involves creating forms without a pottery wheel at institutions including Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Penland School of Crafts, Mendocino Art Center, and Metchosin International Summer School of the Arts. She has taught workshops in Mexico, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. 

Lana has been featured in Ceramics Monthly and Pottery Making Illustrated magazines, and for twenty years she wrote a column for Clay Times magazine. Her work has been in more than 185 exhibitions and appears in over fourteen books. 

She is the author of Ceramics: Shape and Surface, which includes extensive instruction on the electric glazes she has developed. 

Lana is eighty years old. 

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Marlene Caldes is a lifelong Metaphysician who recently gave Phoebe a terrific tarot reading. She was so impressed with her work, she wanted to include her on this show. Marlene is internationally known for her Intuitive Forecasting, and integrating the practical with the mystical. Marlene is a speaker and seminar leader, tarot reader, coach and mentor. 

Marlene was one of the first female radio hosts on the popular SF’s KEST personal growth ‘HotLine to the HIghSelf” morning radio program launched in 1994. She went on to produce another radio show called, Conversations of the Quantum Age with the foremost writers and personal growth experts of our time–including Marianne Williamson. 

Marlene later joined KISS FM’s R&B station joining ‘Renel in the Morning’ as Renel’s Psychic Friend ‘ for more than a decade taking calls during the morning commute. Marlene is passionate about demystifying the metaphysical with individuals who are interested in raising the quality of their life. 

Marlene is known as “Radio’s Urban Mystic.” With a great sense of humor and practical strategies, Marlene addresses the challenges we face in today’s rapidly changing world. 

Marlene is seventy years of age. 

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Barbara Lavine is a Licensed Professional Counselor. She attended Michigan State University for her undergraduate degree, then moved to the Washington DC metro area where she worked in the field of Hospital Personnel Management. 

While raising her sons she completed her graduate work in Counseling at George Washington University and worked part- time doing executive search. She then worked as a professional school counselor for 27 years. 

For the last five years she has been working as a Licensed Professional Counselor doing mental health counseling for young children, teens, and adults. Her areas of specialty include anxiety, depression and adjustment disorders. Barbara is 72. 

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Today we get the pleasure to interview Amy Utsunomia Honjiyo. Before our conversations, we ask all of our guests to send us a biography or resume that we can use to write their introduction for the show. And upon request for Amy’s biography, she sent us her life resume that was so delightful that we are simply going to read it. 

Amy Honjiyo, 71 years of living.

Before ‘Pencil-pushing’
Happy-go-lucky, roller skating hula-hooper who loved Girl Scouts and almost made it into Woodstock.

20   Years of ‘Pencil-pushing’ Highlights

-   Student Clerk:  LA Coroners’ Office, LA General Hospital Emergency Dept.

-   Clerk:  Charlie’s Taxi and Tours, Honolulu, HI, California State Univ. Testing Office.

-   Big Clerk:  Team Approach to Rehabilitation, Midwife Education Development including “Pregnant Patty”.

-   Designer Clerk:  Financial management systems, HMO + Insurance health plans, Kaiser.

20 years of Homeschooling Insights

-   Learned that ‘teaching’ was taking the lead from the student.

-    Every activity is an opportunity to explore and appreciate;

for example, counting Halloween candies, self-discovery on how to make bread, perfumes and origami, visiting your local trash haulers’ drop off station, why the coach yells when you don’t run fast enough.

-   Traveling abroad made excellent ‘field trips’.

-   Be an example of resourcefulness and accounting for oneself.

-   Reminded every day that your child is not you.

And now ‘recycling’ for Sustainability

Cycle of Food Coordinator, Sustainable Little Tokyo

-   Little Tokyo organic garbage collector.

-   Conducts Bokashi*/Mottainai** Workshops.

-   Supports Food Rescue efforts.

Practicing to be a Zen Buddhist. 

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Manuelita Brown, is a former teacher of mathematics and currently a professional artist and sculptor who lives in a small beach town in San Diego, CA. 

Manuelita specializes in bronze figurative and portrait sculpture and has completed private, corporate and public commissions that live in museums, on college campuses and public arenas throughout the United States. Her work is expansive and includes, but not limited to, eight life-sized dolphins called Alamas del Mar, a bust of Matthew A. Henson, Triton, an 8-foot rendering of the “messenger of the sea”, a bust of Justice Thurgood Marshall, and one of our favorites, a life size statue of Sojourner Truth. 

Manuelita is endowed with an exceptional understanding of universal human experiences. In Sojourner Truth, Manuelita demonstrates her preference for life-sized   monumental sculptures of remarkable people, to effectively help viewers relate to the humanity of that individual. Her primary goals are to contribute sculpture works to the American public which edify and give expression to the human spirit, and to convey the strength, character, and beauty of her own people, the descendants of African survivors in the Americas.

Trained by veteran sculptors, including Bruno Lucchesi, Nigel Konstam, and Simon Kogan, Manuelita has been honored with numerous awards accompanying her participation in juried shows and exhibitions throughout the country. Manuelia is also a wife, mother, and grandmother and is 81 years old.  

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Today we get the pleasure to speak with Sharen Butrum. Sharen is the Fund Development Manager for Rural Community Assistance Corporation, a non-profit agency based in Sacramento that helps disadvantaged communities overcome economic challenges. She is a grant writer and fund developer, responsible for helping the organization meet its $20 million annual fundraising goal.  

 Sharen began her career as a journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in South Australia in 1966. She was the first female to be trained as a journalist by the ​

ABC and subsequently became the first woman TV journalist in Australia. On moving to Los Angeles in 1970, she transitioned into PR and marketing as V.P for advertising and media companies where she created and developed new PR divisions. When her husband’s career took the family to New York, Sharen opened her own Marketing Communications consultancy. 

 Sharen and her husband were residents of downtown Manhattan on September 11, 2001. In the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center, they joined with their neighbors to create a nonprofit organization known as Ground Hero Kids. Motivated by this experience to continue working in the nonprofit arena, she began serving as consultant grant writer.  

 She now supervises two other fund developers and continues to write numerous grant proposals. Sharen is 73.

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Conversations with working women over seventy who refuse to be stopped by outdated assumptions of the roles of older women in society today. In this podcast, we discuss gender, equity, ageism, race and relationships in both the workplace and society. Work While You Have the Light features a different working woman every episode. 

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