Interesting People
Telling Tales
There is an oracle in our midst. In the 40 years Mary McGrath has called Sacramento her home, the seasoned storyteller has brought relief to abused women, entertainment to classroom-weary youngsters, and self-esteem and confidence to adults yearning to perfect their oratorical skills. This summer, she received a prestigious award from the National Storytelling Network honoring her four decades of distinguished and passionate work.
Doing what comes naturally
Janice Kelley is one of those rare people who can point to an actual epiphany that led her to her current career as a naturalist, storyteller and founder of Nature Detectives, a program that brings hands-on, object-based field studies to local schools.
“I was driving to Point Reyes with the windows down,” recalls Kelley, who originally hails from LA County but moved to Sacramento in 1995 just before the birth of her son.
The Doctor Is In
As a teenager in Richmond, Letitia Bradford knew she wanted to go into medicine. During a summer program for high school students at UC San Francisco, she decided she would study there—not realizing it was the most competitive public medical school in the country. She got in.
Lab Findings
Dr. Kellie Whited is the kind of cool teacher you always wanted as a kid. She’s trained exotic animals and appeared on “The Tonight Show.” She’s worked on a language project with chimpanzees. She loves “Star Wars,” and she created a summer-school class called The Science of “Star Wars.”
Funnier Than Fiction
When I ask Jeff Gephart what made him move from Maryland to Sacramento, he chuckles and says, “I like to tell people I killed a guy.”
Gephart has a wicked sense of humor (he used to perform in a weekly sketch-comedy TV show), and he knows how to spin a yarn. The Pittsburgh transplant is a prolific writer of poetry, short fiction, screenplays and novels. His third book, “Accidental Adulthood: One Man’s Adventures With Dating and Other Friggin’ Nonsense,” was published last year. And no, it’s not quite an autobiography.
Starring Sacramento
By some magical quirk of karma, the very day this interview with Lucy Steffens was scheduled in her modest Midtown office near 16th and I streets was the same day that Clint Eastwood’s prestigious film company, Malpaso Productions, announced plans to film “The 15:17 to Paris
