They're creative, fun and easy to work with. Young. [creativeworkfund.org] which is a subset (part and parcel) of the Walter & Elise Haas Fund [haassr.org]

Most of my peers have retired including the director (Frances, my boss) about a year ago. The pandemic robbed me from enjoying, in person, her last couple of years. Also, my ace Jean who retired too. She's enjoying her retirement. She teaches Creative Writing as SF State though.


Frances is an amazingly accomplished woman and I feel fortunate to have been accommodated by her for 22 years (I think it's that). She even allowed me to contract instead of being salaried. I was already working for KQED, American Documentary and The San Francisco Study Center and I didn't want to stop at that time. I've shed those other jobs over time, though I'm still close with everybody. I'm back and forth between SF and LA often. I'm way too busy and have to calm things down to take on some more personal (property) tasks that only I can do.

The non-profit community in San Francisco is the most wonderful thing on earth. Well funded and bursting with opportunity. You can still suffer some burnout from time to time.

Spent a few hours the other day with Frances. We walked around The Excelsior District. One of my favorite parts of town. She's been doing a lot of walking and exploring now that she has time. I met her through her husband Stan who worked at The SF Study Center and connected us. It was great to see Stan. I always tell him his formal name is Stanuel. He loves soccer and he's my guide (I try).

Frances' office was the fifth one from the left. A great view of the entire bay. That's the historic One Lombard Building at Embarcadero/Battery/Lombard. I've spent many hours staring out of that window at the waterfront, watched them build the Cruise Terminal at Pier 27.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/21/2022 02:11PM by vision63.

What a wonderful glimpse into your life. Thanks for sharing!

Nice story - you're a lucky guy.

I had never heard of American Documentary, so I looked it up.

DAMN!!! They made some great movies/TV. The American Experience... and American Masters on PBS is must see tv.

Plus I see that they produced Minding the Gap - that's one of the best docs I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot!) [www.imdb.com] trailer: [www.youtube.com] A great document of coming of age in the current times... Just watching the trailer again gives me goosebumps

Happy you had those relationships.

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“There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in."

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Nice story - you're a lucky guy.

I had never heard of American Documentary, so I looked it up.

DAMN!!! They made some great movies/TV. The American Experience... and American Masters on PBS is must see tv.

Plus I see that they produced Minding the Gap - that's one of the best docs I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot!) [www.imdb.com] trailer: [www.youtube.com] A great document of coming of age in the current times... Just watching the trailer again gives me goosebumps

American Documentary is is definitely a fountain of incredible works. POV, POV Spark. One of the co-founders named Ellen was who I first worked with. POV west coast was housed in the KQED building next to my section. Here's why it's important to be around the people you work with. She saw me working on a KQED program called "Bay Window." Eventually and prematurely in my opinion, the producer Peter Stein, decided to quit that and focus on helping to evolve the Jewish Museum in SOMA, which is incredible.

POV was distributing a documentary and Ellen peeked at the work I was doing on Bay Window. I had already made friends with her staff, we'd go to Starbucks and lunch all the time. She breezed into my office to chit chat asked me if I had time to help her with her project. It was good for me because Bay Window was shutting down and I just simply lateral transferred into that job. I got keep my same desk in an office I shared with 3 others.

She was really hellbent on collaborating with teachers and school districts to leverage the documentaries as curriculum. All of that effort has coalesced into Active Voice Labs. [www.activevoice.net] I helped to create that but I'm no longer involved except for my thoughts occasionally.

Ellen could think of an idea, feverishly plan it and rapidly get it funded. Blew me away.

.....cool.....cool.....cool.....

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I reject your reality and substitute my own!

It's funny, sometimes I click on a thread here and start reading, forgetting that I skipped who posted it. About 3 lines in, it was obvious this is vision. That was an insightful and thoughtful post, thank you for sharing your experiences.