Articles Posted in the Human Interest Category

  • A Fitting Tribute to Warren Hellman,
    “The Prince of Humanity”

    Guests in attendance included Rep. Nancy Pelosi; Mayor Ed Lee; Supervisors Sean Elsbernd, Mark Farrell, Malia Cohen and Carmen Chu; labor leader Tim Paulson; Chamber of Commerce director, Jim Lazarus; Police Chief Greg Suhr; United Way CEO Anne Wilson; conductor Michael Tilson Thomas; City Attorney Dennis Herrera; District Attorney George Gascon; Giants president, Larry Baer; and a huge contingent of musicians from all over the country. Filmmaker George Lucas was spotted in the upper side balcony.

  • Tenderloin Tessie Holiday Dinners Needs Our Help

    This amazing act of charity started with one person 37 years ago. Perry Spink was a bartender and drag queen performer in the Tenderloin. In 1974, someone gave Perry a bunch of turkeys and he decided to share them with his neediest neighbors. He donned his “Tessie” costume and played hostess along with several of his not-so-sober bar buddies and made Thanksgiving memorable for many down-and-out elderly in the Tenderloin. Tessie also started giving gift bags along with the meals, a tradition that lives on today. These bags contain donated items such as toiletries, socks, gloves and an assortment of non-perishable food.

  • Happy Birthday Nelson Mandela

    Since his retirement in 1999, one of Mandela’s primary commitments has been the fight against AIDS. His son, Makgatho Mandela, died of AIDS on January 6, 2005. AIDS continues to be a major problem in South Africa and indeed, in all of Africa. An estimated 5.6 million people were living with HIV and AIDS in South Africa in 2009, more than in any other country. It is believed that in 2009, an estimated 310,000 South Africans died of AIDS.

  • Retirement – It’s Not for Sissies Anymore

    What gives? We baby boomers remember all too well what retirement meant to our elders. It meant taking up knitting and updating wills. We saw a slightly bent, slower version of the vibrant people who used to inhabit those bodies.

  • This is currently a hot topic

    The Burka: A Taliban Imposed Canvas Prison

    Why do Iran and other Muslim countries require a woman to hide her hair or her entire body?

  • Next Stop Wonderland

    Next Stop Wonderland

    By Adrian L. Jenkins April 28, 2010 Dante Alighieri famously wrote of the three principal stations at which a soul that had been cleanly shorn of this mortal coil might find itself – Inferno, Purgatorio…

  • New Orleans Five Years After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

    By Ralph E. Stone April 24, 2010 My wife and I just returned from a visit to New Orleans.  While there, we toured some of the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005,…