It was a privilege talking to San Francisco's illustrious former mayor Willie Brown about the public-service fellowship program he started at San Francisco State's College of Health and Social Sciences. But meeting some of the program's actual participants was equally impressive. The public sector will be in good hands when this crop of newcomers takes the reins.
With its gilded dome, grand staircase and formally dressed wedding couples posing for photos that will last a lifetime, San Francisco City Hall is a character in every story that plays out there. Jared Walker remembers when it entered his life: on the first day of his internship with the Office of the City Administrator as a Willie Brown Fellow. “When I first walked in there I was like…” — he takes a deep breath and exhales with a whoa — “I felt like this was a big chapter coming up.” Read more Got a big assist from SF State Magazine Editor Adrianne Bee on getting a 45-minute interview down to this 500-word Ten Questions for Willie Brown feature. The celebrated former San Francisco mayor and former Speaker of the House is passionate about his alma mater and his eponymous fellowship and archives there. I wish I could have shared more of his lively rhetoric and great yarns about the old days at San Francisco State. I produced a separate Web article on the fellowship for the College of Health & Social Sciences. "By my sophomore year I was already heavily involved in politicking, getting students elected to student government. Also, I lived in housing that the school rented in Potrero Hill. I paid $14 a month rent, but the food program we had to organize ourselves. We had a treasurer, a secretary, someone responsible for buying the food. We ran our complex." Continue I absolutely loved interviewing bonafide San Francisco character Ray Bandar for SF State Magazine. I'll never forget visiting his home — partly because of getting to ogle his extraordinary bone collection, which is periodically on view at the California Academy of Sciences, and partly because of the lingering smell of formaldehyde.
“Call me Bones.” Ray Bandar (A.B., ’55; Cred., ’58) invites the use of his nickname at first meetings, and it’s a convenient shortcut to the topic that has dominated his life. The San Francisco native’s extreme exploits in bone collecting have been documented in numerous media outlets including National Geographic and NPR, and last year he curated a 10-case display for “Skulls,” the major California Academy of Sciences exhibit, which featured more than 700 titular specimens from his collection. Read more. The goal of Inventing the Future of Mobility, a gi-normous UC Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies decadal report, was to “tell the Institute’s story.” The four-color, trade-bound publication was initially used as part of a ten-year academic review, and has since been used as part of ongoing development and outreach efforts. To keep it engaging, I mixed up narrative, Q&A, journalistic articles and profiles, and loads of images. The client’s overarching message for the designer, Betsy Joyce, and I: data, data, data. We obliged — the final product crackles with maps, technology, and data-driven images. Production editing work included structuring the content, developing stories, and managing images. I organized and oversaw several full days of content-specific photo shoots, which yielded some stunning photographs by Paul Kirchner Studios, some of which have already been leveraged by the client for other projects. I arranged the 68-page book into three main parts, with a Preface and Last Word from external validators Congressman Mark DeSaulnier and Congresswoman Barbara Lee respectively, corralled by campus's Government Relations office. Here are a few samples from each section, along with the full-spread, full-bleed images used for pacing. Three California Magazine stories on the science beat this spring focused on the environment. All's Well That Tends Wells, an online feature, unpacked California's new water law. Two briefs covered recent research: a long-term study on how pesticides are impacting an agricultural community, and the challenges of (and solutions for) measuring chemicals in personal products.
The drought gets a lot of undeserved blame for California’s water crisis. Naturally, four dry years have exacerbated the problem, but the real culprit is the state’s Gold Rush–era water law, which has allowed landowners to sink wells that suck ever deeper and drier — unfettered by any accountability to their neighbors, their region, or the state. Historically low groundwater levels have resulted, spawning all kinds of Wild West drama. The Central Valley is sinking! A thousand Tulare County wells go dry! Fishermen, farmers, conservationists and tribes duke it out over depleted fisheries in the Scotts River. Journalistic treatises compare the political machinations to filmmaker Roman Polanski’s classic California water wars noir Chinatown. But now that the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act—a trio of three bills that Gov. Jerry Brown signed in 2014—has been rolling out for a full year, all that drama is behind us, right? The sheriff’s in town now. The state’s big, contentious mess of a water crisis finally is regulated. Not so fast. Continue |
Fresh Ink! is a blog showcasing recent work by Ann Brody Guy, an Oakland-based freelance writer-editor covering science, health, and higher educationCategories |