Mark Bittner was the author of the book The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, and the subject of a documentary film by the same name. While at the Mesa Refuge, he worked on a new memoir called Street Song, about the series of ideas and events that took him from a comfortable middle-class existence in the suburbs to a life on the streets of San Francisco as a seeker.

Mark was a 2015 Recipient of the Marion Weber Healing Arts Fellowship. He passed away in 2026.