View Edward Guthmann's profile

Good Morning, Mrs. Shaffer by
25
(30 Stories)

Prompted By Favorite Teacher

/ Stories

It takes a long time to learn gratitude. When I look back and recall some of my schoolteachers, I’m sorry I never took the time to thank them — to let them know their hard work made a positive impact that still reverberates in my life. I wish, sometime before she died, I had located…
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Falling in Love at the Theater by
25
(30 Stories)

/ Stories

In 1964 our family drove cross-country to see the World’s Fair in New York. On our last day in town, my mom and I took the subway to 51st and Broadway to see Funny Girl starring Barbra Streisand. I was 13, starstruck, and thrilled to be in New York. But when we entered the Winter…
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“And now, right here on our stage…” by
25
(30 Stories)

Prompted By Variety Shows

/ Stories

In the years when I was growing up, which were the early years of television, my family watched a lot of TV together. My dad had his recliner, just like Archie Bunker, which no one else was allowed to sit in. My mom sat on one end of the sofa to his right, crocheting. The…
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My Mom Was a Wonderful Mother, But Her Cooking…? by
25
(30 Stories)

Prompted By Mealtime

/ Stories

My mom was a wonderful mother in many ways – patient, modest, innately kind — but she was not a particularly good cook. “Oh, I was a boring cook,” she admitted once when she was in her 70s and taking her meals in the dining room at Leisure World, the retirement facility where she and…
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That Summer in Europe by
25
(30 Stories)

Prompted By That Summer

/ Stories

It seemed reasonable to me. I was about to go to Europe for three months, and if I budgeted myself correctly the trip would cost $450 for the entire summer. So that’s what I did. It was 1971 and I was 20, the summer between my junior and senior years of college. I’d saved money…
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Dad’s Las Vegas, My Las Vegas by
25
(30 Stories)

Prompted By Family Trips

/ Stories

Vegas was totally different in the early ’60s. With 100,000 residents it had one twentieth the population of today, and while it had a certain tacky sheen it hadn’t approached the aggressively grotesque grandiosity you see today. It was quieter, more modest, less inclined to force itself down your throat.
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Watching Whoopi Get Famous by
25
(30 Stories)

Prompted By Interviews

/ Stories

The first time I encountered Whoopi Goldberg, she was doing her act at a tiny performance space in San Francisco’s South of Market district. The proprietor at 544 Natoma, a friendly madman named Peter Hartman, invited me to drop by and catch a new solo performer. The name sounded like an old-school Borscht Belt comic.…
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My Journey to Rwanda by
25
(30 Stories)

Prompted By Volunteering

/ Stories

Monday, June 9, 2008. Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. I awake early and hear my hostess Shirley Randell swimming in her pool. The goat outside my window bleats. A bit later Shirley, dressed in the sari that’s her daily costume, is rushing off to work. I arrived yesterday, bleary and beat. Shirley was on the…
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Confessions of a Recovering Film Critic by
25
(30 Stories)

Prompted By Fame

/ Stories

I never asked to be a movie critic. And yet it happened. People don’t believe me when I say this; they assume movie reviewing is such a plum job that I must have scrambled and hustled to get there. Not really. In 1991 I’d been working at the San Francisco Chronicle seven years when the…
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The Day I Met Lucille Ball by
25
(30 Stories)

Prompted By Fame

/ Stories

I’d heard how tough and intimidating Lucille Ball could be, but on the day I interviewed her at her home in Beverly Hills she was warm, unguarded and down-to-earth. It felt like hanging out with a favorite aunt. Lucy picked up quickly on the fact that I was a fan, and since I was young…
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