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WWW.LOCALUMBRELLANEWS.COM | VOLUME 6 | ISSUE 1
LOVE, LIFE, AND PURPOSE San Diego Resident and Oceanhouse Media CEO Michel Kripalani
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NEW DINING APP PROMISES TO HELP REVIVE SAN DIEGO’S FOOD SCENE The Savorite app is here to help restaurants get back to business in a post-pandemic world. These days, the vibrant pulse of our city’s dining scene feels like a thing of the past. Foodies Jason Cabildo and Cristina Romanillos founded Savorite, a revolutionary new app that is finding ways to help bring diners back to restaurants in a safe and exciting way. With Savorite, diners can quickly find last minute deals on the best local restaurants near them. Unlike other platforms, Savorite gives restaurants the ability to instantly upload offers of up to 50% off a customer’s total bill to help fill empty tables and increase takeout in real time. This encourages customers to dine out and enjoy great meals while helping restaurants bring in business when they need it most. So let’s say you’re heading out to eat, but you can’t decide where to go. Open up the Savorite app before you leave home and see what restaurants are offering live deals for the day, choose one that satisfies your craving, book yourselves a table and eat out for a fraction of the price! “The idea is to help drive traffic during quieter times of the day, when business is typically slow.
When a restaurant has empty tables, those tables are contributing $0 to their bottom-line, but with Savorite, restaurants can maximize their excess capacity and bring in additional income by re-
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warding diners who eat at those slow times with reduced prices,” Jason said. The shift to off-peak dining also allows diners to stay away from the crowds without giving up the experience of dining out. Savorite screens each restaurant added to the platform for safety measures advised by authorities to ensure each one of their users are able to enjoy great meals at great prices with comfort in mind. “The safety of our community comes first,” Jason said. “If dining out isn’t your thing right now, Savorite enables restaurants to share takeout only deals to keep customers coming even if they’d like a delicious night in.” Savorite has already teamed up with some of the best local businesses around downtown and has plans to expand to neighborhoods like Hillcrest and North Park to help bring more of its community to restaurants in need. Whether it’s a brunch of pancakes with friends or a much needed date night, take advantage of last minute offers to help restaurants revive their business.
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4 VOL. 6 ISSUE 1
Live Like You’re Dying
San Diego Resident and Oceanhouse Media CEO Michel Kripalani Talks About Love, Life and Purpose By Jeanne Rawdin
Michel Kripalani is President of Oceanhouse Media, Inc., a leading publisher of more than 650 mobile and desktop apps based in Encinitas. He’s built his entrepreneurial empire by sticking to the company’s mantra of “Creativity with a Purpose” and is a strong advocate for developing apps that uplift, educate and inspire. Oceanhouse Media, or OM, was founded in January 2009, less than a year after Google launched the App store. Kripalani became one of the pioneers of interactive apps back in the “Gold Rush” days, as Michel calls it. Being a veteran of the video gaming industry didn’t hurt either. Before that, Kripalani gained acclaim as a founder and the CEO of Presto Studios, creator of “The Journeyman Project” series and “Myst III: Exile” games that are still on the market. Today, the company has licensing agreements with Dr. Seuss Enterprises, HarperCollins, Random House Children’s Books, Hay House Publishers, Zondervan (a division of HarperCollins), Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt Publishing Company, Mercer Mayer, Soundprints, Andersen Press, Chronicle Books and others. In many cases, the company works directly with authors to bring their beloved books to the app market, always staying true to the original content and intent. Oceanhouse Media has created apps for all 44 of Ted Geisel’s Dr. Suess books as an interactive, educational experience. The Dr. Seuss apps have received critical acclaim and won numerous awards from various organizations, such as Parents’ Choice Awards and Children’s Technology Review. Twelve of the company’s children’s apps have reached the number-one spot on the App Store in the Top Paid Books category. In addition, OM has a diverse variety of other apps including games, music, photography, health and fitness, reference, productivity and finance. Google has selected the company as one of its Top Developers, a designation granted to only 150 groups worldwide. Michel is married to his wife, Kar-
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en, and they have two daughters, Tia who is 12 and Talia who is 10. Karen operates another imprint with the company called Beauty Everywhere, a digital publisher and community that creates inspirational products to help people live better lives. Umbrella Media caught up with Michel Kripalani recently to find out more about this fascinating local entrepreneur and how he approaches his business and his life. Let’s go back to 2009 when you created your very first app called Bowls. How did that idea come about? We were looking do something that would take advantage of IPhone technology, including the touch screen. We wanted to develop something that would do more than just tap or swipe, so we came up with the idea of swirling, which led us to the idea of Tibetan bowls. As a user, you swirl your finger around the edge of the bowls to create a sound, along with cymbals and other Eastern musical instruments. My wife and I are very much of Eastern religion and meditation,
so we already had the bowls. At the time, it was incredibly novel and got featured by Apple and rose to the top of the charts. That app is still available on the App store today and has been updated. What’s funny about it is that I was concerned we had already missed the boat. There were already 10,000 apps on the App store, which had been open for seven months, and I was thinking wow, that’s a lot of competition. Little did I know just how crazy and huge this thing would blow up. How did you come to secure the licenses to create apps for all 44 of Ted Geisel’s Dr. Suess books? Before Oceanhouse, I ran Presto Studios, a video game development company here in San Diego. Way back when, UCSD was the first university in California to sign on to Google’s big digitization program where Google was looking to digitize all of their books. They asked me as the CEO of Presto Studios to be on the advisory board for the libraries to help them understand digital technology because I had a
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background in video games and I was an alumni. So, for two years I sat on the advisory board for the libraries, which was kind of ironic because when I was in school, the library was not a place I went to very much. The main library at UCSD is the Geisel Library, so I asked the head librarian if I could have an introduction with Audrey Geisel. We met with her and the president of Dr. Suess who asked, ‘Why would we want to have Dr. Suess on an Iphone?’ We had done a full demo, a full prototype of Dr. Suess’s ABC book on an Iphone and were able to show it to her running, and that landed us the agreement in October 2009. Then we had a fire drill to get three apps out before that Christmas season, including How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Within a span of two and a half years, we were publishing apps for all 44 books that Ted Geisel had written and illustrated across all phones and tablets. We really tackled it from the perspective of if Ted were alive today and had access to an Ipad, what would he want to do with it? We went back to thinking through how he wrote his books and what he did, so we created a lot of playful interaction between the words and pictures. Our Read and Learn series of Dr. Suess titles is pretty world-class on the App store for how it helps early readers to engage with books and find little educational moments and things. Did your kids use the apps when they were younger? They did. My two daughters grew up with Ipads and used a lot of our content. They were that first generation, you know, two-year-olds having access to Ipads, so we got to see firsthand how children interacted with all of our products. How did your kids influence your busines decisions? My wife and I are very big into meditation and metaphysical and Eastern religion and then as the kids were born, that very much drove us
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VOL. 6 ISSUE 1 5 Street Olympics. The marathon was 26 loops around the house. We had little medals and everything. I was just always a bit of an organizer for anyone who was willing to follow. Why did you choose to live in Encinitas and what do you love about it? I went to UCSD and I fell in love with San Diego. I was fortunate enough to buy my first house in Cardiff, which was a great bachelor pad overlooking the ocean. Having traveled as much as I have, which is millions of miles, I realized there is no place in the world like San Diego -- from the weather, the culture and the opportunities our state and country provide. As much as we love traveling with the family, there’s nothing like coming home to Encinitas and taking a walk on the beach and just being able to go outside and jog all times of the year. We’re grateful to be able to live here. We have no interest in ever moving away or selling our Encinitas property.
into being interested in early childhood education. I have the blessing as an entrepreneur to go in directions that interest me. And I find that to be a lot easier when you’re running a business because there are times when things are going to get really, really tough and really bad. When you enter into those times, it’s a lot easier to be doing something that you love. Tell me about your childhood. Where did you grow up and what were your interests as a kid? I grew up traveling. My dad was an engineer so we ended up moving once every 12 months almost throughout my entire childhood. We lived a little bit on the east coast
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and then came out west to California by the time I was in fifth grade. By middle school, we were living in South Korea. In ninth grade, I lived in Australia. This was all pre-internet and pre-email, so we were pretty cut off at the time. My dad was from India, so by age 12 I had been around the world twice, because we’d been back to visit family numerous times. So I grew up with a very wordly view. I was a tinkerer; I used to build models and rather than doing crossword puzzles, I would make crossword puzzles. I was often the kid who would organize everyone else in the neighborhood. When the 1976 Summer Olympics were happening in Montreal, I organized the Campbell
I know that your wife, Karen, was diagnosed with a brain tumor nine years ago, and that really transformed the way both of you approach life. Tell me about that. When people say, “Live like you’re dying,” we really decided to do that (just like the country western song by Tim McGraw). We’ve come through this. Karen still has a tumor, we believe it to be benign and we’ve done everything we can do via Western medicine to treat it. Now it’s really just about being really careful how she lives her life. She has to be very thoughtful of what she eats and what thoughts she has. So we’re using a lot of Eastern metaphysical techniques to find the beauty in everything that happens to us. Karen’s using that as a foundation to explain to people or to teach people who are interested in listening alternative ways of looking at things that might otherwise be viewed as bad or harmful, and to try and help them to see the silver lining in everything. Your wife has her own imprint under Oceanhouse Media called
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6 VOL. 6 ISSUE 1 Beauty Everywhere. What’s that about? We realized that we needed to have two brands, or two imprints within the one company. We decided Oceanhouse Media was the brand appropriate for the kids’ media section of the business, so we rolled all of our metaphysical, spiritual content under this other brand, Beauty Everywhere, where Karen is very focused on helping people to see the beauty in everything. It offers inspirational apps and manifestation tools centered on finding gratitude for all the ups and downs
in life. What do you look at when you’re choosing a new product to offer? From a business standpoint, it certainly has to make financial sense. Over the past 12 years, we have probably reinvented the business model six or eight times, which is crazy. We just keep pivoting to find a way to make it work. Many of our early competitors are long out of business because they just couldn’t figure out a way to make it work. Along with the financial component, we always consider how interesting something is to us, knowing that once we get into it, it’s going to take a lot of time and energy. It’s going to become part of our psyche and our minds, and do we want that energy around us. Early on, there was an opportunity to do something with WWE, the wrestling company. We were like, it’s just not our thing, it doesn’t matter how much money we would make; it’s just not of interest to us. We want to work with really wonderful partners that are educating, uplifting and inspiring people. Author and marketer Joe Polish talks about when you’re in business, try to make decisions that are based on ELF, an acronym for Easy, Lucrative and Fun. When you hear people talking about dead-end jobs or projects they don’t like, it’s very often that they’re on the wrong side of that particular equation. What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve experienced in building your business? When you’re operating in a goldrush type of environment, it’s easy to get caught up in thinking, ‘This is just going to keep on going forever because the whole market is going super easy,’ which was really the first
two or three years. And then things got really challenging after that, as the App store got oversaturated. We really had to get down to the question of what’s making this business tick. So one of the biggest challenges was just being able to ride those macro-economic waves, trying to navigate those things properly. Plus, we have a very different way of running our business. A lot of people tend to go out and raise a lot of money and use that money to grow a business very fast and shoot for the moon. We have opted to run the business on a cash basis and not take investors. There are times when that’s tough because you see other people moving faster than you. And there are times when you’re really happy you made that decision when you see other people burning too much cash, then crashing and burning. The real challenge is making sure we have a long view on the business and that our short-term decisions won’t ultimately hurt us in the long run. How has COVID affected your life? When COVID hit, we bought an RV and we took off. It was our quarantine vehicle. We did 14, 000 miles across 36 states. We ran the business remotely. The kids went to school remotely. We adopted a little dog named Lorax that traveled with us. I know that a lot of people are hurting and have been really impacted by COVID, and I’m completely sensitive and empathetic to them, which is absolutely first and foremost. For us, we view challenges as an opportunity for change and growth. And that’s a reflection of what we went through when Karen was diagnosed with her brain tumor. We’ve come to the point with Karen and her brain tumor that she doesn’t have a black mass in her head; she has a gold nugget in her head. And the gold nugget has given us the ability to focus on what matters most and to make choices for our family in ways that we can live a more enriching life. Using that same mentality, that’s the way that we look at COVID. We said, what blessing could come out of this? It was as simple as, well now we can have a dog. We could never have a dog before because we used to travel so much. That’s a small thing, but the girls love it. Now we can buy an RV and we can travel for months on end because the girls can go to school remotely. We closed the office; we sent all the employees to work from home forever. We didn’t say this is temporary for COVID. We said, we’re going to make this work because this is going to be a healthier work/life balance for good. I’ve set up a home office, which I love. I find that I’m happier, I’m more productive. And I’m really focused on the things that matter the most to us. What else has happened for you during the pandemic?
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Our family got closer. We’re spending a lot of time together, it’s bonding us. Our employees are happier, our business is actually doing well during COVID, because families are home and they need at-home learning and education. Education apps, as a whole, are up and we are thankful for that. Personally, I’ve used COVID as a time for rebirth. I really focused a lot in 2020 on who I am, where I’m going and what I want to do. And I realized that it’s been a transition time for me to focus on giving back. I started coaching people. Karen and I have both been in life coaching and business coaching. We’re doing everything we can to help people during this time. My mom sold her house and moved closer, that’s a blessing. We are way more involved in our daughters’ education now. That’s a blessing. My elder daughter started tutoring on Fiver. She saw what tutoring was like, being on the receiving end, because we went heavy on the virtual tutoring when schools shut down. And then she said, I can do this. Just last weekend, she was tutoring a kid in math who lived in Turkey who was originally from South America. He was struggling in English and my daughter immediately just switched
over to Spanish and he got better. This kind of stuff wasn’t going to happen if it was just normal life. What lessons have you learned? I don’t know how to summarize it other than to say large challenges can turn in to really amazing opportunities for change when we are open to embracing that change. The unknown before us can actually be better than the known that’s behind us. It can be a little bit like a
pig sitting in slop and thinking that they’re happy sitting in slop, but the unknown of what could be may actually be better if we’re willing to give ourselves the opportunity to give it a shot. What makes you get out of bed in the morning? Knowing that I may not have the opportunity to get out of bed tomorrow. I realize that today there’s a lot of work to do and I’ve got to keep it going. I am very focused on legacy in the good sense, not the ego-driven sense. I’m focused on legacy in the sense that I want to leave bread crumbs for my daughters, for my family, for my friends, for my community, for anyone. So I write a lot. I write in a journal daily, it’s designed for my daughters to read when I’m gone. I’m in the process of working on a book that is inspirational in nature to get people moving. And I tackle each day with gratitude and the gifts that I’ve been given. I’m in my mid-fifties now. I’m getting to the point where my mentality is starting to shift and I’m really starting to figure out how I can help others more, whether it’s through writing or coaching or mentoring or advising or whatever it happens to be. And that’s what truly gets me
out of bed in the morning -- thinking what is my purpose at this stage in life, and how can I accelerate it? Sometimes people ask me what my life purpose is, and it’s to live an extraordinary life. But more importantly. It’s to inspire others to live extraordinary lives of their own by demonstrating what is possible. To learn more, go to www.oceanhousemedia.com and www.beautyeverywhere.com.
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VOL. 6 ISSUE 1
7
THE COVID-19 VACCINE IS HERE Older Adults Still Need to Take Precautions
By Sharp Health News Team and Simona Valanciute President & CEO, San Diego Oasis
Less than a year after the novel coronavirus appeared in the U.S., we now have two safe vaccines against COVID-19 approved by the FDA for emergency use—the fastest major vaccine development ever seen. The previous record-holder was the mumps vaccine, which still took four years to create. While this is an amazing accomplishment, the pandemic is far from over. Even though older adults are in the first priority group to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, they still need to take precautions to keep themselves and their families safe. Here are some answers to the top questions seniors may have as states begin to distribute the COVID-19 vaccine. How do the COVID-19 vaccines work? Are they safe? Both the vaccines currently being given, from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, are mRNA vaccines, which mean they contain genetic material from the novel coronavirus. When someone gets an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, their body’s cells basically get instructions on how to create the proteins unique to the virus—and because those cells recognize that the virus shouldn’t be there, they produce antibodies that help them fight off infection if they’re ever exposed to the virus again. Both vaccines were tested in clinical trials according to rigorous safety standards established by the FDA. The makers of both vaccines have reported a 94-95 percent efficacy rate in preventing severe illness. Learn more about the COVID-19 vaccine in this article by Sharp HealthCare. To find out how, when and where you can get the vaccine please visit the San Diego County COVID-19 Web page. What can I do if I’m vaccinated? If you’re older than 75, or older than 65 with certain health conditions, you will likely be vaccinated before many of your family members and even some friends. This means that until most of the population is vaccinated, your lives probably shouldn’t change much. Certain things will be safer for you to do, though, such as going to the grocery store and running other errands. However, you will still need to take precautions against COVID-19 until most of the U.S. population is vaccinated. This includes wearing a mask around others, physically distancing from others, avoiding crowded indoor gatherings, frequently washing your hands and refraining from touching your face. The CDC has more detailed guidelines for how to protect yourself and your family. How long will I need to wear a mask and physically distance? Vaccinated people should still wear masks around others, and avoid crowded indoor gatherings, for at least the next several months. This is because scientists are still trying to figure out whether people who have been vaccinated can still spread the virus to others, even if their risk of getting sick is now much lower. When can I visit my family and friends? You should wait until at least two weeks after your last shot with either vaccine. However, most
Simona Valanciute, President and CEO, San Diego Oasis.
public health experts strongly advise against resuming visits with family and friends until all of them are vaccinated. Will we ever go back to “normal”? The novel coronavirus will likely continue to spread until a large majority of the population (at least 70 percent) is vaccinated or has developed natural immunity after surviving infection. The vaccines will not be an immediate ticket back to the way life was in 2019. Many experts agree that it’s better to think about how we “move forward” instead of “getting back to normal.” In the meantime, it’s important for all of us, but especially older adults, to continue taking care of ourselves and staying safely engaged with the world around us, even if we’re isolating at home. Seek out virtual volunteer opportunities, such as tutoring or phone banking, and stay in contact with family members through phone calls and video chats. Additionally, learning new skills and meeting new people keeps you cognitively sharp and is good for your mental health. Many organizations, including San Diego Oasis, offer free or low-cost online classes in a variety of topics, from dance and fitness to art and technology. We’ve all been challenged in 2020. Continuing
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to take all necessary precautions as we wait for most of the population to get vaccinated will take more patience, but it’s how we will move forward to the other side of this pandemic—and hopefully, to healthier, more balanced lives in the years ahead. Simona Valanciute is the President and CEO of San Diego Oasis, an award-winning nonprofit organization serving people age 50 and better, who pursue healthy aging through lifelong learning, active lifestyles, and community service. Learn more at www.sandiegooasis.org. About Sharp HealthCare Sharp HealthCare, San Diego's most comprehensive health care delivery system, is recognized for clinical excellence in cardiac, cancer, multi-organ transplantation, orthopedics, rehabilitation, behavioral health, women's health, home health and hospice services. Sharp HealthCare has been widely acclaimed for its commitment to transform the health care experience for patients, physicians and staff through an organization-wide performance improvement initiative called The Sharp Experience. The Sharp HealthCare system includes four acute-care hospitals, three specialty hospitals, three affiliated medical groups, a health plan, and numerous outpatient facilities and programs. To learn more about Sharp, visit Sharp Health News.
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8 VOL. 6 ISSUE 1
HOW YOUR FAMILY CAN ADOPT HEALTHIER DIGITAL HABITS IN 2021
MOM’S TIPS FOR DISTANCE LEARNING FROM HOME
By Sharon Sardina
(StatePoint) As we head into 2021, adults and kids alike may still be enjoying the excitement of digital devices received as gifts. The new year is a great time for a reset, so with those new devices, consider adopting some digital habits. Here are some great ideas for helping your family build healthier relationships with their digital devices: • Get healthy: Not all screen time is wasted time. You can use your device in positive, productive ways that help your family work toward improved physical health. For example, a steps counter might encourage your family to move more or even take up running, while a yoga app can help guide your family through quick routines you can practice from the comfort of home. • Get smart: Likewise, the members of your family can use their devices to exercise their minds. Encourage everyone to let their smartphones and tablets double function as e-readers, and to download apps that teach new skills and build knowledge. You can even try setting a goal as a family, such as learning a new language using the same app. • Schedule digital downtime: Too much screen time is associated with poor quality sleep, increased anxiety and a range of other health concerns, so be sure each day includes digital downtime. This is important if your family is working and learning from home. Make the most of these screen-free blocks by engaging in active play, moving, getting fresh air or spending quality time together. • Get assistance: Making sure every member of the family is using their device only in safe and healthy ways is easier said than done, however, a parental guidance app can help. Using OurPact for example, you can remotely establish automated schedules for when internet, apps and the device itself are unavailable. Features include URL whitelisting and blacklisting, daily screen time allowances and iMessage/SMS blocking, helping ensure device usage passes your approval. Available at the iOS App Store and Google Play Store, parents can also sign up for an account at www.ourpact.com. PHOTO SOURCE: (c) nd3000 / iStock via Getty Images Plus
Well, here we are, finally in the year 2021. The year everyone couldn’t wait to arrive. The year we all started counting down to in March and anxiously waited for the calendar to say-- January 1.2021. Many of us moms could have bet all the back-seat goldfish we found while we had all this time on our hands cleaning our car during the lockdown, that we would be back in school in October, then we thought November, ok maybe December? Come on!!! School has to go back in person, right?? We can’t possibly be online forever?? Or can we? Cue the dramatic music. We have been exclusively doing distance learning now since March. Our school has never returned to on-campus learning. We bought desks, chromebooks, put our Pinterest worthy organization skills to good use, made sure to set up a quiet space for our kids to kill this distance learning and set a billion alarms on our phone to remind us to log in and take a lunch. Some of us may be working from home alongside our children and some of us have become full-time teachers now whether it be lesson planning, to editing, to writing assignments, to doing art projects with our children all while making 32,167 breakfasts, lunches and snacks a week. Boy do these kids eat all the time! We literally have become the school teacher, the librarian, the attendance clerk, the lunch lady, the custodian and maybe for some the principal. Many of us are left wondering whether our kids will ever return to school like it used to be back in 2019. Ahhh what a great year that was. I really didn’t imagine we would be starting our 2nd semester of the 20/21 school year online. I keep reminding myself that nothing is forever...goodness I really hope this holds true. Here are a few tips that have helped me navigate three boys doing distance learning from home. Give them GRACE! Remember they are adjusting to the new normal like we are. Lower expectations. I don’t mean to give up on their good grades, I mean remember that learning online is not for everyone and if a A falls to a B, everything will still be ok. As long as they are moving forward, it is all good! No distractions. Set them up a space where they can focus and are free from distractions like the TV or siblings. Wi-Fi availability. We had to buy a 2nd router to maintain 3 kids online at the same time. There is nothing more frustrating for kids
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Sharon poses with her husband Brian.
when they lose connection. Give them praise and encouragement! No matter what school looks like, remind them that they, and we, are doing the best we can, and their effort and hard work does not go unnoticed. Have fun and laugh! Remember Mamas, we are all in this together, although some of our distance learning from home looks
different, but we shall conquer this together as one. Our kids are not so behind academically, they have learned to be resilient learners and that is gold. Sharon Sardina is a stay-at-home mom with three active active boys. She loves baking, decorating, exercise and motivating other moms to be their best. Stay tuned for more from this energetic lady!
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By Andy Hinds
VOL. 6 ISSUE 1 9
MIDDLE SCHOOL IN THE TIME OF COVID-19
If you aren’t chilled to the bone by memories of your own middle school experience, just imagine going through it while sequestered at home, relying on a finicky internet signal as your only connection to your teachers and peers. That’s what many American students in 2020 are currently facing during the COVID-19 pandemic, including those in San Diego Unified school district. Halfway through the second quarter at Roosevelt International Middle School, the reviews are coming in from students, teachers, and families; and the consensus is that, relative to the general hellscape that is 2020, pandemic school is going pretty well. With the caveat that the COVID era has been personally tragic, economically devastating, and at the very least majorly disruptive to millions of people, it is clear that bright spots and glimmers of hope abound at Roosevelt. In the case of academic classes at Roosevelt, the content varies little from in-person curriculum, even as the format is a drastic departure from traditional school. Google Classroom, Zoom, and other learning platforms comprise the classroom and texts, and students communicate with their teachers via email, chat, or virtual office hours. The schedule has been modified to prevent burnout and confusion from too many Zoom meetings: instead of the usual six classes per day in a semester system, students take three intensive classes per day (four if they take an elective), and follow a quarter system. With decreased time in the (virtual) classroom, kids are expected to complete more work independently than they normally would. Despite the obvious drawbacks of isolation from their peers, some students recognize upsides to online school. Eighth grader Toby Newlin and Seventh grader Rivka Alaya both sited the lack of social “drama” as an unexpected bonus that decreases stress and allows them to focus on their work. However, Newlin notes, “I now have added drama at home, like my mom looking over my shoulder.” Still, missing their friends—and the inability to make new ones—was the most frequent complaint from students interviewed for this story. While parents tend to struggle
Vice Principal Reyes and Principal Steinberger greet new students at Roosevelt International Middle School’s Drive-Through Welcome Day
with the amount of screen time required of their children—and how they can help keep them focused on “school” internet despite the siren song of “fun” internet—they are largely impressed with efforts of the school district, the administration, and Roosevelt teachers in developing an entirely new teaching model since the country was blindsided by the virus last spring. Geena Pearson, whose son is in sixth grade, singles out “consistent communication” as a major aspect of Roosevelt’s success in dealing with the hardships inflicted by the pandemic, noting that Principal Steinberger and RooFriends (the school foundation) have “exceeded expectations” in this regard. Ms. Pearson added that the online classes have been “working out pretty seamlessly for [her] son,” and that “he’s loving all his teachers.” She was especially surprised at how “engaging and challenging virtual PE was.” PE and Music classes are perhaps the most unrecognizable from last year, relying on exercise challenges, workout videos, and in the case of Music, online music production and composition platforms where kids make and share their own music in addition to practicing their actual instruments. Roosevelt serves families from the uptown area of San Diego and beyond, and is located adjacent to the world famous San Diego Zoo. But in some ways, its physical attributes are currently irrelevant, since most students haven’t been on campus at all this year. Nonetheless, the sense of community transcends the limitations of fully
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online classes, as teachers, administrators, and staff use their expertise and passion to keep students engaged and families connected. Principal Bernard Steinberger, who started working at Roosevelt this spring, just three weeks before in-person school was shut down, says that the most surprising aspect of this strange era has been the kindness and understanding that the school community has shown toward one another. “I miss that energy of interacting with kids in person,” he says, adding that he is “proud and grateful” for the effort that the students and staff are putting into making this a meaningful school year. Steinberger says an unexpected positive aspect of moving almost every aspect of school online has been higher than usual parental involvement. Back-toschool nights and “town hall” meetings have had record turnout, Mr. Steinberger reports, “presumably because it’s much easier for families to log into a Zoom meeting than to drive to school on a weeknight.” Obviously, everyone is yearning for a return to “normal” school, but Mr. Steinberger appreciates the lessons of this crisis, including the effective use of online learning and communication platforms. “Education in this country will change forever because of this,” he predicts. For History and Social Studies teacher Francisco Garcia, the struggle is a matter of social conscience. “Truly one of the biggest challenges is maintaining a sense/of normalcy while I teach—when in fact we are living through a period of societal uncertainty. I feel a responsibility
as a teacher to make my students feel safe and hopeful; staying positive is crucial.” Mr. Garcia is concerned that internet connectivity issues continue to be a hindrance to learning; but reports that his class attendance and student engagement is solid despite technology glitches. English teacher Jennifer Peterson says that the biggest challenge for her this year has been the additional class preparation. “I knew I would have to totally transform the way I teach in order to successfully connect with and challenge my students in an online platform,” she says, “so I spent a lot of my summer doing so, and I continue to plan into the evenings many days despite the fact that I am part time this year (for the first time in my career) due to [budget] cuts.” This workload is in addition to the increasingly complicated parenting demands of her own children, who are going to school online while she works from home. Ms. Peterson has been pleasantly surprised by the extent to which she has been able to connect with students in the virtual classroom, and how much she can differentiate and personalize instruction using online learning platforms like Flocabulary, Nearpod, Screencastify, Newsela, and Flipgrid. Perhaps confirming what parents have long suspected, Ms. Peterson admits that the “mute” button can be an effective classroom management tool that offsets some of the additional stress of online teaching. The current plan with San Diego Unified schools is to increase in-person instruction to the students who need the most help, and ramp up to a “Phase 2” reopening in late January. Of course, all of that depends on the trajectory of infection rates, which is currently far from ideal. Although it seems like there is not much we can do to affect this trend, Ms. Peterson has a homework assignment for us all that definitely can’t hurt: “Wear your mask! Teachers want to be back in the classroom with our students. A lot of us have our own children we are caring for at home while trying to continue to teach other people’s children. We love our jobs and understand the struggle working parents are going through. Let’s all commit to one another’s health and wear our masks so we can ALL go back to school.”
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Happy New Year, San Diego!
10 VOL. 6 ISSUE 1
WYATT EARP
The following is a work of historical fiction based on real life events and places frequented by Wyatt Earp in the late 1800’s in California.
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You know my name. Legendary lawman, O.K. Corral, big mustache, friends with Doc Holiday. No, no I’m not Kurt Russell (who is that by the way, it’s 1887), it’s really me, Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp. Just Wyatt Earp is fine, you ain’t my momma don’t use my middle name. I’ve had a lot of adventures in my day, I left Tombstone, Arizona some time ago. Tombstone left a bad taste in my mouth, I lost my brothers Morgan and Virgil, and the gunfight at the O.K. Corral has defined my life. Josephine (my current wife) and I didn’t feel right, so we headed for greener pastures as the saying goes. We stopped in Idaho for a mining venture but that died out after some time, which is why we ended up in California. San Diego looked to be a profitable place to settle down, California was ripe for expansion. The railroad is being developed and a massive real estate boom is underway. That’s where we find ourselves today… I awoke with a start and the cold sweats as I got out of bed at the Brooklyn Hotel in San Diego, California. I had been up all night at the Oyster Bar, one of several properties that I own where I offer a variety of games, blackjack, poker, keno, and prostitutes. The Golden Poppy brothel is upstairs at the Oyster Bar, owned by my acquaintance Madam Cora. Each room painted a different color, Madam Cora requires the ladies to match their garments to the room color, making for an elegant experience (all true). My mustache sizzled from the countless cigars I smoked last night but I made close to $1000 ($25,000 in today’s money). I slipped my boots on, brand new alligator skin (they cost a pretty penny and I know a guy) and sat my hat on my head. I walked out of the Brooklyn Hotel onto the streets. With
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the sun at my back, I strolled down main street, it was dusty but lively. The area was known as the Stingaree (later adopted to The Gaslamp Quarter) ; we are the area of undesirables. Plenty of gambling halls, brothels, and a number of drug peddlers. As a former lawman, I believe in upholding the law but I do enjoy a lady of the night (very true). My life was very busy with managing gambling halls, boxing matches, horse racing, so every once and awhile, yes I might need a prostitute to relieve some stress. Keep pushing my buttons so we can settle it in a gunfight and surprise, I don’t lose those. Today was going to be a quiet day, busy night. I decided to walk down to my favorite breakfast joint in town and order some eggs. It was a small place, somewhat run-down but the food was excellent. It was run by Mexicans that had come to California from Tijuana where I often referee boxing matches. Maria came to my table to take my order, she was in her 30’s, dark hair and skin, she was the sweetest. “What can I get for you today hun”, she said with a slight accent. “Just some eggs and coffee darling, thanks.” I replied back. (Do all waitresses call their customers hun?) I crossed my boots over one another and opened up the newspaper as I waited for breakfast. Sadly most of the stories were the same; President Grover Cleveland Corrupt, West is the Best, Gold Gold Gold. So much fake news today, I hope in the future we have some clarity. At this moment, a man walked into the restaurant. He looked weathered, dusty, like he’d been traveling for some time. He took a seat opposite the room from me and gave me a nod. “You new in these parts my good man” I asked the worn wanderer. “Yes, indeed I am Wyatt… and I have a proposition for you” he replied with a hand on his gun. To be continued…
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Stay Safe, Friends!
VOL. 6 ISSUE 1 11
FOSTER FAMILIES PROVIDE SAFETY AND DEPENDABILITY FOR CHILDREN
The Landis home is a busy place. It’s pizza night and six young children are all very excited about decorating sugar cookies for dessert. A basketball bounces across the family room, nearly missing a puzzle under construction. A light-up ball flashes. A toddler needs a snuggle. This is a typical Monday evening. Angela and Nate have three children of their own: Russell, 10, Rocco, 8, and Allegra, 6, and three pet dogs. Added to the mix are three foster children, a sibling set of girls with the nicknames “Braveheart,” “Wheels,” and “Boom Boom,” who range from two to six years old. The couple hadn’t planned on fostering siblings, but when their first placement’s sister needed a safe, loving home, they were asked to consider taking her. They liked the idea of keeping the girls together so they rose to the challenge – then did it again a few months later when they welcomed the third sister into their home. The first sister arrived in late 2017; all three have been with the Landis family since last June. The couple says that fostering is hard work, but worth doing because they’re helping children in a way that’s very intentional and organized. “Angels has supported us beyond our expectations by providing training, a clinical case manager, and hooked us up with other foster parents,” says An-
Angels Foster Family Network is a non-profit dedicated to providing safe, stable, loving homes for children in San Diego County. You can reach them at (619) 283-8100. gela. They say they were also pleasantly surprised by how much fostering gave them as a couple and as a family. “There’s so much that’s terrifying, you’d think it would tear a couple apart, but it’s brought us closer together,” says Angela. She says her admiration for her husband has grown as she’s watched him keep his promises and step up to meet the needs of six children. Nate smiles and adds, “Six is more than a crowd. We had to band together.” As if on cue, Nate responds to a scuffle going on behind him. He doesn’t need to turn his head to know who it is, the two older girls, Allegra and Braveheart. “Try to be big girls with
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that conflict resolution,” he tells them. “You’re smart girls with a lot of words.” Not missing a beat, Nate continues. “This is a challenge we are blessed to make. We have to make every moment count because we have fewer moments to waste.” Angela says that every evening after the children are all tucked in to bed, she and Nate sit together in a rare moment of quiet, and give thanks that they made it through another day. Angela adds that not only has the couple’s relationship been enhanced by fostering young children, their three children have benefited as well. “It’s been hard and it’s an adjustment, but we also have built-in playdates and have had some incredible talks with our children about domestic violence and drug use,” she says. “They’ve also grown to really appreciate what we provide,” noting that things like consistency, safety, and food are often things children can take for granted. Fostering is something the Landis family highly recommends to people who have room in their hearts and homes for children who need stability while their biological parents are given the time to get their lives back on track. “You just have to want to help,” says Nate. “You’re not saving anyone, you are providing safety and dependability for the season they are in.”
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Happy New Year, San Diego!
12 VOL. 6 ISSUE 1
MEET MACKENSIE STRUBLE:
PERSONAL CHEF, CANINE CHEF AND FAITH AND WELLNESS COACH
A personal journey to health and wellness that became her life’s passion and career Introduction by Mia Bertelsen
The following story is written by MacKensie and shows us a very personal look into her journey. Her reasons for being so open and honest with the world are to let us know that we are not alone and there are so many people out there who are experiencing the same ups and downs in life. At different points in her life she found herself at a very low place struggling to make a living, 100 pounds overweight, suicidal and addicted to pain medication. Through her faith in God, being super organized and goal driven and meeting the love of her life, she turned her life around. Today she is so proud to have created her own business cooking healthy meals for her clients. Her financé Shawn has been at her side making this dream become a reality together. MacKensie shared with me that writing is one of her talents. “We really paint a picture with our words,” she said. “It is so powerful when we get together to share our own accounts and testimonies. The statement ‘me too’ is that moment when we realize that the struggle we are going through is something that someone else is experiencing and we know that we are not alone. That can trigger healing in and of itself.” MacKensie’s personal weight loss is a huge achievement and especially because she has maintained it. “I just hit four years of maintenance,” she shared. “I lost 108 pounds in 9 months.” Her journey to be a personal chef started with a nice couple who were both approaching 500 pounds each and were in serious danger with their health. “After almost three years of cooking for them and coaching them, they have lost almost 400 pounds combined,” she boasted. Her business based in Joplin, Missouri almost didn’t happen. The plan was to drive around the US in their RV and promote their faith and healthy meals. Wisconsin was their next stop. “When we were ready to take off, our RV just shut down,” she laughed. With some help they pushed the RV into the closest parking spot and worked to fix her for over a week. They decided to stay in Joplin. “I had my old job as a recruiter all lined up, and then a friend of mine told me about a couple who was looking for a Keto chef to assist them with major weight loss,” she explained. “We only had one car at the time so I had to truck over there with the whole family. Wherever I went, the RV went. I had the organ-
ic Keto pound cake in hand. They hired me on the spot. They offered me a position that paid me more than my old job. I was scheduled to start my recruiter job on Monday and I saw them on Sunday. So, God was really quick to come in between of what could have been.” People really struggle to have a healthy diet. “A lot of it has do with our mind set and our knowledge,” she shared. “Do we know what substitutions we need to make in order to enjoy some of our favorite foods that we used to have? Once we have a game plan established, it makes the execution a lot easier. If we are failing to plan, we are planning to fail.” She prepares the meals for her clients according to their individual dietary needs and goals, vacuum seals it and delivers the meals to them. She cooks for about ten people and she covers all meals for the week. MacKensie is a self- taught cook. “I grew up in a household of four kids and my mom and my granny were very passionate about cooking,” she said. “I only prepare food with organic, non-GMO ingredients and I’ve expanded services as a canine chef as well,” she added. “Many people are serious about improving food quality
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for their pets.” Not all of us can afford to have a personal chef and wellness coach to help us improve our health and diet. But we can learn from MacKensie’s positive, can-do attitude, based on her strong faith. Our hope is that you will be inspired to take the next step to improve your health too! By MacKensie Struble Let’s flashback to January 7th, 2011, when my entire world changed. It was a typical Friday night. I got off work at my second job and was headed into my third at McGraths. I was waitressing in the bar that night, and people were already parked outside when I arrived. I rushed in, waved to everyone on the line, secured my apron, took a glance in the mirror to ensure my hair and makeup were up to par, and headed out to the floor. One by one my tables began filling up. I headed back to the waitress station to submit my orders and prepare salads. Naturally, Shawn was working with me that night, too. Fridays always called for all hands on deck. I delivered to my first two tables and then I heard the phone ring, which was normal on a Friday night, but this time, it was for me. My boss hurriedly motioned for me to take
the call so I could get back to work, and I rushed over. It was my Mom. I grabbed the phone and very quickly said, “hello?” There was silence for a moment, and then suddenly, without hesitation, my mother belted out, “Adam is gone!” I dropped the phone. My boss quickly picked it up with a puzzled look on her face, unaware of the news I’d just been provided. My body began to cave. My mouth was agape, though I lacked the ability to produce any words. A coworker grabbed me in the midst of my lament, and proceeded to drag me behind closed doors. Once there, another coworker pulled me into a hug for what seemed like forever. The world around me ceased to exist. I had fallen deep into a pool of debilitating emotion and I couldn’t breathe. The sound of my mother’s grief-stricken voice just kept playing over and over in my head, “Adam is gone!” I briefly snapped back to reality and released myself from his hug. I wouldn’t discover the irony of this person’s placement in my life that night until later when I learned the cause of my brother’s death and how, he, too, had attempted the same thing, but survived. It is funny how God is always in the details. The next two and a half years of my life felt like a prison sentence, waking up every day in my own personal hell only to be reminded of the same heartbreaking news I had cried myself to sleep over the night before. When the desire to join my brother exceeded my will to live, I found myself abusing OxyContin and Percocet. My life slowly started crumbling before me a little at a time. On the outside, I still held down three jobs and “acted” like an adult, but behind closed doors, I had lost all vitality. My once jovial life ceased to exist. There was no zeal or purpose left, just a mere existence of going through the motions. It wasn’t until 1/5/14, just a few days before the anniversary of my brother’s death, that I finally surrendered and gave my life back to God. I dropped to my knees after contemplating my own suicide attempt and told the Lord that if He still had purpose for me, I would live the rest of my life serving Him. With each passing day, I felt myself growing stronger and stronger. I stayed with my sister and her family for support the next few weeks, and then relocated to Joplin to begin rebuilding my life. I took my first job at a local flower
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Stay Safe, Friends! shop on Valentine’s Day, and then transitioned into a better-paying position within a month’s time. It wasn’t long after that the Lord blessed me with Marcus. Words can’t describe the amount of joy I possessed in my heart. At five months pregnant, I unexpectedly lost my position. I had no idea how I was going to make ends meet. I came home that night and decided to draw a bath for myself. I remember being so fearful of what was to come and just asking God for the strength to trust in Him. I thought to myself, “who would hire me now? I’m five months pregnant!” To make matters worse, I was also without a vehicle. The thought of finding another place of employment that was within walking distance immediately made me feel overwhelmed, but I took a few deep breaths, and handed it over. In the meantime, I decided to take advantage of the time off by going to see my Mom. I was standing in the kitchen when I received the call. There was a new position available for me and I could return to work the following week. God had successfully come through for me again. I celebrated one year of sobriety on 1/5/15 — just a month before naturally giving birth to my healthy, 9 lb 13 oz baby boy on 2/10/15. We had just moved into our new apartment, breastfeeding was going great, AND I was able to take a decent amount of time off work to bond with him. Not long after I returned, God blessed me, yet again, with a better-paying position as a recruiter for the same company. Everything had fallen into place. I conquered sobriety. My job was secure. The next order of business was self-care. After giving birth to Marcus, I had reached a weight of 232 lbs. I can still remember the day I stepped on the scale at my Dad’s house and the numbers “2-3-2” reflected back at me. It was in this moment I made the harsh realization that I needed to start making myself more of a priority. I began researching the science behind Lowcarb/Keto and how it would affect my body. My primary focus was finding a regimen that would allow for me to focus solely on my nutrition to produce results. This was the perfect fit. In March of 2016, I began my journey. I configured my macros and dove right in. Most nights, I would stay up late after Marcus went to sleep and prep all of my food. I planned out exactly what I was going to eat the following day, logged it, and tweaked it accordingly so I could stay as close to my allotments as possible. I was steadily losing weight every week, and my energy levels had increased. Around August, God introduced me to Young Living essential oils. It is then that I began combining the use of Lowcarb/Keto + therapeutic grade essential oils to properly support my body. By November of 2016, I had hit goal and lost over 100 lbs.
Throughout the course of my weight loss journey, I was also preparing to relocate Marcus and myself closer to family. Every night after I finished prepping my food, I would go and count our money, anticipating the moment we would reach our goal. Anyone who truly knows me will tell you that I never intended on returning to Sedalia. In fact, I fought against it, but, God was persistent. Once I’d saved up $854 to cover all of our costs, I put in my two weeks. My last day was 1/6/17, and we moved the following day on Saturday, 1/7/17, the anniversary of my brother’s death. As if it wasn’t clear enough that God had His hand in this entire move, that confirmed it. Everything had officially come full circle, down to the date and time. It wasn’t even two months after Marcus and I were settled in that God reconnected me with Shawn. What initially began as two friends hiking at Bothwell quickly blossomed into so much more. It all suddenly made sense why God was so persistent about Marcus and me moving to Sedalia. Shawn was our missing piece. Just a few months later, we made the decision as a family to downsize and pursue our dream of RVing fulltime. We moved to Yuma, AZ and soon after started our first business, ChefGirlRV. What initially started as a temporary side hustle in our toy hauler to help others achieve success, has turned into a growing business reaching clients all over the US. We’ve invested over 30,000+ hours into our trade (and counting), became personal chefs, started catering, provided meal prep and coaching services to thousands, and, most importantly, we’ve kept God at the forefront of it all. The magnitude of ONE decision to pursue, in faith, the desire God so
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strongly planted in our hearts resulted in waves of success that spanned much wider than just our family. Here are some success stories we are proud to share: A woman was able to release 85 pounds and carry a healthy pregnancy. A busy Mom was able to take control of her health and feel more comfortable in her skin. An elderly woman who was too weak to cook for herself was able to release weight, drastically improve her quality of life, and begin weaning off of prescriptions. A middle-aged woman was able to successfully regenerate hair growth where she was experiencing major loss and improved her overall wellness. A breastfeeding mother was able to invest in herself to lose weight without sacrificing her supply. An officer was able to release weight to pass his physical for a long-awaited promotion, and fit perfectly in his tuxedo on his wedding day. A mother was able to come home after working a long shift and spend what little time she had with her children without having to worry about how dinner was going to be prepared because we cooked the healthy food for her. Another woman was able to regulate her hormones, release weight, and restore her sex life with her husband. Despite late nights, breastfeeding, insane workweeks, and raising a child, I succeeded. I had completely transformed my life with small, consistent action steps every single day. Instead of focusing on all of the reasons why I couldn’t, I pressed forward and created my own conditions to support the reality I was determined to create. If I hadn’t taken the action needed on 1/5/14 to pursue sobriety, or that
VOL. 6 ISSUE 1 13 leap of faith in 2017 to fulfill the purpose God had for me, EVERYONE would’ve missed out on all of this. The fulfillment of your purpose doesn’t just affect you, it affects everyone who is meant to cross your path. It doesn’t matter what you’re going through in life or decisions you’ve made, God still has purpose for you. He will take all of your broken pieces and intricately place them back together for the fulfillment of something greater than yourself. Don’t fear the fire, embrace it. Trust in Him. Allow yourself to be refined by His hand, and once He’s done, you’ll come out stronger than ever before. There’s nothing I can do to change the past, but I can find peace in the woman that I’ve become and the purpose that God has for me. It is through God’s healing hand that I’m even here to share my testimony with you today, and I do so in the hopes of sparing even just ONE person from having to travel the roads I did. On 1/5/21, I’ll be celebrating the obvious, but it represents so much more than that. This isn’t just a celebration commemorating seven years of sobriety, but, rather, life, and God’s continued openings for me to make a difference in this world. Now I’m the one in the position to love on others and assist them in reaching their full potential. He turned my tragedies into triumphs, one by one, and He’ll do it for you, too, if you’ll let Him. Every single day that we wake up is an opportunity to embrace our purpose and change someone’s life. I pray you never forget how valuable your contribution is to the world, and that you’re always eager to fulfill it. In this new year, it’s time to release everything that’s no longer serving us, and take a clean step into the abundance that’s to come. Forgive those who have wronged you and free yourself of all negativity. Don’t deny yourself the blessings He has for you. If you’re not in love with your life, start creating a different one. Satan will tell you it’s too late to make a change, or you’re unqualified, but God reminds us every day how faith the size of a mustard seed moves mountains. The only thing standing between you and the life you want is doubt. If there’s only one thing you take away from my testimony today, please understand that you can ALWAYS start over. Seasons aren’t permanent. Winter NEVER follows winter. There’s ALWAYS time for you to make a change. For anyone who is struggling with self-worth or thoughts of suicide, please reach out. Believe me when I say that the world would not be a better place without you. I’d give anything to have my brother here today. Check on your family and friends, and do it often. We’re all fighting silent battles that no one knows about. A kind gesture truly can make all the difference. God bless #ChefGirlRV
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Happy New Year, San Diego!
14 VOL. 6 ISSUE 1
success stories we are proud to share: A woman was able to release 85 pounds and carry a healthy pregnancy. A busy Mom was able to take control of her health and feel more comfortable in her skin. An elderly woman who was too weak to cook for herself was able to release weight, drastically improve her quality of life, and begin weaning off of prescriptions. A middle-aged woman was able to successfully regenerate hair growth where she was experiencing major loss and improved her overall wellness. A breastfeeding mother was able to invest in herself to lose weight without sacrificing her supply. An officer was able to release weight to pass his physical for a long-awaited promotion, and fit perfectly in his tuxedo on his wedding day. A mother was able to come home after working a long shift and spend what little time she had with her children without having to worry about how dinner was going to be prepared because we cooked the healthy food for her. Another woman was able to regulate her hormones, release weight, and restore her sex life with her husband. Despite late nights, breastfeeding, insane workweeks, and raising a child, I succeeded. I had completely transformed my life with small, consistent action steps every single day. Instead of focusing on all of the reasons why I couldn’t, I pressed forward and created my own conditions to support the reality I was determined to create. If I hadn’t taken the action needed on 1/5/14 to pursue sobriety, or that leap of faith in 2017 to fulfill the purpose God had for me, EVERYONE would’ve missed out on all of this. The fulfillment of your purpose doesn’t just affect you, it affects everyone who is meant to cross your path. It doesn’t matter what you’re going through in life or decisions you’ve made, God still has purpose for you. He will take all of your broken pieces and intricately place them back together for the fulfillment of something greater than yourself. Don’t fear the fire, embrace it. Trust in Him. Allow yourself to be refined by His hand, and once He’s done, you’ll come out stronger than ever before. There’s nothing I can do to change the past, but I can find peace in the woman that I’ve become and the purpose that God has for me. It is through God’s healing hand that I’m even here to share my testimony with you today, and I do so in the hopes of sparing even just ONE person from having to travel the roads I did.
On 1/5/21, I’ll be celebrating the obvious, but it represents so much more than that. This isn’t just a celebration commemorating seven years of sobriety, but, rather, life, and God’s continued openings for me to make a difference in this world. Now I’m the one in the position to love on others and assist them in reaching their full
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potential. He turned my tragedies into triumphs, one by one, and He’ll do it for you, too, if you’ll let Him. Every single day that we wake up is an opportunity to embrace our purpose and change someone’s life. I pray you never forget how valuable your contribution is to the world, and that you’re always eager to fulfill it. In this new year, it’s time to release everything that’s no longer serving us, and take a clean step into the abundance that’s to come. Forgive those who have wronged you and free yourself of all negativity. Don’t deny yourself the blessings He has for you. If you’re not in love with your life, start creating a different one. Satan will tell you it’s too late to make a change, or you’re unqualified, but God reminds us every day how faith the size of a mustard seed moves mountains. The only thing standing between you and the life you want is doubt. If there’s only one thing you take away from my testimony today, please understand that you can ALWAYS start over. Seasons aren’t permanent. Winter NEVER follows winter. There’s ALWAYS time for you to make a change. For anyone who is struggling with self-worth or thoughts of suicide, please reach out. Believe me when I say that the world would not be a better place without you. I’d give anything to have my brother here today. Check on your family and friends, and do it often. We’re all fighting silent battles that no one knows about. A kind gesture truly can make all the difference. God bless #ChefGirlRV
Recipes and tips from MacKensie: ORGANIC LOW CARB/KETO STUFFED MUSHROOMS 1 oz Young Living Thieves Fruit & Veggie Soak 20 Organic Mushrooms 1 Tb Organic EVOO 3 tsp Organic Garlic (minced) 4 oz Organic Cream Cheese 6 Tb Organic Grated Parmesan 1/8 t Organic Pepper 1 TS (Toothpick Swirl) Young Living Oregano Vitality 1 - Preheat the oven to 350. 2 - Pour Young Living Thieves Fruit & Veggie Soak (1 oz for every gallon of water) into a bowl, making sure to completely cover the mushrooms. Soak for 1-2 minutes. Rinse with clean water. Pat dry with paper towel. 3 - Remove stems from mushrooms and chop until finely diced. 4 - Heat 1 tbsp of EVOO over medium heat, and sauté stems 5-10 minutes. 5 - Add minced garlic. Cook for thirty seconds, or until fragrant. 6 - Reduce heat to low and add parmesan,
cream cheese, black pepper, and oregano. ***For anyone who is new to cooking with YL vitality oils, a toothpick swirl is a simple method for incorporating tiny amounts of very potent essential oils into your creations! To measure out a toothpick swirl, simply dip the tip of your unflavored toothpick into your essential oil, and then stir into food. The deeper you dip the toothpick, the more essential oil you’ll absorb. I advise starting small and building. A little goes a long way! 7 - Transfer mushrooms to lined cookie sheet. Spoon mixture into caps, and bake for 20-25 minutes. 8 - Enjoy! Macros per Mushroom Fat: 2.5 g Carbs: 1 g Fiber: .3 g Net Carbs: .7 g Sugars: .4 g Protein: 1.6 g
MY TOP PRODUCT RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ASSISTING WITH KETO FLU •Mineral Essence — balanced, full-spectrum ionic mineral complex. According to two-time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling: “You can trace every sickness, every disease, and every ailment to a mineral deficiency.” •Alkalime — natural alkalinizing supplement that is formulated with nine biochemical mineral cell salts, the refreshing taste of Lemon and Lime essential oils, and organic lemon powder to help your body transition more easily
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during this lifestyle change. •Citrus Fresh Vitality — drop it in your water to help you stay hydrated and get an internal boost with its antioxidants and cleansing properties! This is awesome for detox! Use it in the kitchen, too! I love adding this to salmon, chicken, and salads! To order these products, visit my website at www. chefgirlrv.online, or send me a message at chefgirlrv@gmail.com
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VOL. 6 ISSUE 1 15
CANNABIS DEMONSTRATES IMPROVEMENT IN OPIOID ADDICTION OUTCOMES
By Michael Patterson NHA, OTR/L, CEAS
Cannabis demonstrates improved treatment outcomes for people suffering from opioid addiction and reduced risk from accidental fentanyl exposure, according to research published in the December 2020 issue of the Drug and Alcoholic Dependence Journal. The link to the article is below. Cannabis use is associated with reduced risk of exposure to fentanyl among people on opioid agonist therapy during a community-wide overdose crisis - ScienceDirect The study was performed by University of British Columbia and BC Center on Substance Abuse (BCCSU). The study included 819 participants, with 53 percent either intentionally or accidentally using fentanyl despite being treated for opioid addiction with treatments like methadone or buprenorphine/ naloxone. The researchers found that participants who had urine tests positive for THC were about 10% less likely to have fentanyl-positive urine which puts them at a lower risk for overdoing on the opioid. Dr. Eugenia Socías, the study’s lead author and clinician-scientist at BCCSU, said the “findings suggest that cannabis could have a stabilizing impact for many patients on treatment, while also reducing the risk of overdose.”
Cannabis use is associated with reduced risk of exposure to fentanyl among people on opioid agonist therapy during a community-wide overdose crisis -- SCIENCEDIRECT
Previous BCCSU research found that individuals on opioid agonist treatments, such as methadone, who reported using cannabis on a daily basis were 21% more likely to continue addiction treatment at six months than non-cannabis users, the report says. BCCSU is set to work with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research on further evaluating the role of cannabis as a potential adjunct therapy to opioid agonist treatments. Canadian researchers have found
that without access to and rapid expansion of take-home naloxone, overdose prevention services, and opioid analog treatments, the number of overdose deaths in B.C. would be 2.5 times higher than current levels; but patient retention on these medications remains a challenge despite more individuals with opioid-use disorder being connected to treatments, the report says. Analysis This study provides positive data linking cannabis use with decreased effect of opiates. It helps validate cannabis as a viable treatment for opiate dependence. This is extremely important because the US opioid crisis has picked up momentum under the distraction of the Coronavirus pandemic. Eighteen states and Washington, D.C. have reported a 10% increase in opioid related deaths from 2019 to 2020. According to Addictioncenter. com, drug overdoses rose 4.6% in 2020 to 70,890 cases in the USA. In the US, more individual states are adding qualifying conditions for medical cannabis related to opiate dependency. Cannabis has never killed anyone in human history, and therefore safer than many prescription medications, including opiates. The more data we collect on the benefits of cannabis for opiate addiction, the more momentum is gained to push to recognize cannabis as a legal medicine under US federal law.
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16 VOL. 6 ISSUE 1
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By Daniel Allen
January historically maintains the highest rate of divorce filings every year (with the Monday children return to school after winter break consistently marking the single highest day annually). This increase in divorce filings tends to stay at a steady climb until March. It’s unfortunate, but frequently individuals are walking away from exactly what they desire. The issue isn’t usually with an intimate partner, but the partnership itself. You see, a funny thing happens after you fall in love: things get really shaken up, and not always in a good way. It may be after a few days or several years, but being in an intimate relationship brings up everything within you that needs healing. That means that you could start thinking you’ve made a giant mistake even though you’re with the person who is very right for you. Most people cite a number of reasons for why a relationship didn’t work out. Do any of these sound familiar? “We see things differently.” “He wasn’t trustworthy.” “We fought all the time.” “We didn’t communicate.” “She was too possessive.” “She was too needy.” “We were incompatible.” “We just grew apart.” After working with individuals and couples I’ve heard all these. Even within in my own former relationship (with a woman I consider virtuous and wise) such statements were made. In my experience, the majority of these people go on to be unhappy in their next relationship.
If you are in a relationship now and things have gotten to a place where you think you might be better off with someone else, please stay open to the remainder of the article. The statistics are pretty grim: about 41% of first marriages end in divorce. So do 60% of second marriages and 73% of third marriages. Why? Shouldn’t people get more effective at choosing someone who is better for them? The answer is that it’s not about the partner you choose. It’s about the person you take with you. You bring your issues from relationship to relationship, which means you’ll likely go on to recreate unhappy circumstances with someone else. Even if you don’t notice it in the beginning, with time it will rear its head. The biggest issue we all carry—and the one that can and will bring a relationship down—is self-abandonment. Self-abandonment is what happens when you make someone else responsible for your feelings and sense of self-worth. You’re essentially looking to someone outside you to take away your uncomfortable feelings, accept and validate you. We are all prone to this, and it starts in childhood. See, you came into life expecting to be loved, but if your parents or caregivers didn’t know how to love, or see who you are in your beautiful essence, then one of two things happened: You realized these people didn’t know how to love you. You under-
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stood that they were just limited in their ability, but you knew this didn’t mean anything about you. You were aware that whether or not someone loved you and cared for you was no reflection of your worth. You were confident in yourself, even in the face of rejection. More than likely, however, this didn’t happen. Instead, like most of us, this happened: You concluded that there must be something wrong with you. Even if you had very loving parents, you would have experienced some amount of pain. We all have because no human being can meet all of our needs and wants all the time. And if, when you didn’t experience being loved, you decided there was something wrong with you, then you most likely started leaning towards depression, anxiety, emptiness, and anger. These are big feelings and experiences your little body didn’t know how to handle. Back then, you coped by doing what kids and teenagers do: either rebelling or but probably conforming as a way to get attention and love. Then you grew up and discovered something amazing called romantic love. “Aha!” the little child inside you thought, “THIS person will give me the love I didn’t get.” In searching for the perfect partner, what you’re really doing is looking for someone to give you the perfect love your parent never could. You think that if you can just get your partner to give
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you this perfect love, you’ll always feel okay. This belief causes you to behave in destructive ways. Because you’ve self-abandoned and abdicated personal responsibility for your feelings, you feel an urgency to make sure your partner gives you what you’re not giving yourself. So you go into control, and not always in the ways you might think. Control can show up in the form of being overly nice and accommodating, or in being possessive and hyper vigilant. You can control by being overly compliant and by caretaking. Essentially, either overtly or covertly. In each of these cases, you’re trying to make sure the other person doesn’t reject you. You think that by doing all these things, you won’t experience all the feelings that go along with believing you’re not lovable. You attract others according to your level of self-abandonment and self-love. Therefore, in a troubled relationship both people likely have unhealed self-abandonment, and their problems stem out of control—on both sides. In trying to get love and avoid pain, both partners will engage in a variety of controlling behaviors that can inevitably lead to fighting, disconnection, and/or infidelity. As each partner tries to get love from the other, they end up pushing each other away, creating even more anxiety, emptiness, and hurt.
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So, it’s very important to learn how to create our own sense of worth rather than giving that power to your partner. When you attempt to make your partner responsible for yourself, you’re going to “pull” on your partner. You will place an impossible burden on them to take away all your uncomfortable feelings. As a result, they will experience being pressured, smothered, and controlled. And even if your partner does try to love you, there’s nowhere for that love to land. Because if you don’t (healthfully) love yourself first, you will not be able to fully receive someone else’s love. You (unconsciously) won’t believe you’re worthy of the love you so desperately want. As I often state in both my Conscious Dating and Conscious Separation programs, “we don’t get the love we want, we get the love we believe we deserve.” These are two very different beliefs, and the latter is stronger because it’s generally an unconscious conviction. Your love for yourself provides the foundation for their love to land in your soul. We cannot connect with others when we’re disconnected from ourselves. We cannot share love with others when we’re not loving ourselves. I don’t mean having preferences or standards, but loving ourselves (including the parts we hide thinking they are unlovable). When you realize that you’re
VOL. 6 ISSUE 1 17 the only person who can truly source your value and love, you welcome the opportunity to take responsibility for your feelings, thoughts and actions. You make it your personal intention to discover self-knowledge, self-worth, and self-confidence, which in turn takes the pressure off your partner to make everything right. As if by magic, even long-standing problems melt away as your need for (overt or covert) control disappears. This is my life’s work, and it’s the work that has helped individuals, couples, and families in crisis completely transform their relationships where traditional therapy has failed. When you learn to fill yourself up with love and you create your own sense of worth, something magical happens—you naturally want to share this love with your partner. No longer in a state of neediness, you just want to give. When two people come to a relationship like this, it’s the greatest joy in life. Leaving your relationship—other than an abusive relationship— before discovering the inner fears and beliefs that led you to the relationship in the first place, is essentially a waste of time. You will continue to choose the same kind of person over and over—even if that is not apparent at first—until you heal the underlying issues that led you to choose this person in the first place.
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Happy New Year, San Diego!
18 VOL. 6 ISSUE 1
NFL GREAT DONNIE EDWARDS’ BEST DEFENSE FOUNDATION HOSTED AN HONOR WALK Donnie Edwards, a two-time All-Pro and a 2002 Pro Bowl selection who played 13 seasons with the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs and San Diego Chargers, and the Best Defense Foundation have teamed up with Events.com to host an Honor Walk on Sunday, Dec. 20, to commemorate the 76th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge. The Honor Walk is an opportunity for people to remember the sacrifices and valor exhibited by U.S. troops during the Battle of the Bulge, the battle that turned the tide of World War II and halted Germany’s final offensive push, leading to victory for Allied Forces. Anyone was welcome to participate in the Honor Walk and participants could walk as long (or short) as they chose. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, those who chose to participate were encouraged to practice social distancing. For more information, visit www.bestdefensefoundation.org. There was no cost to simply get out and participate in the Honor Walk, however there were a number of options to sign up and make a straight donation to the Foundation, or make a contribution to participate in the Walk and receive some great commemorative items. Commemorative items include WWII history books autographed by WWII veterans, T-shirts, experiential opportunities with Edwards, and
much more. There also were options to walk as a team in honor of a family member or military unit of your choice. Re-established in 2018 as a 501c3 nonprofit foundation, the Best Defense Foundation’s mission is to help military veterans and their families. A cornerstone of the program is Edwards’ commitment to bring WWII Veterans back to foreign battlefields to help them find closure and camaraderie with their brothers in arms. In 2019, the Best Defense Foundation brought WWII veterans to six former battle sites: Iwo Jima, Normandy, Battle of the Bulge, the Eagle’s Nest, Holland and Pearl Harbor. Proceeds raised will help the Best Defense Foundation cover costs associated with helping
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veterans travel around the world to visit historical battle sites, the ones where they fought for and defended Western freedom. The Battle of the Bulge was waged over a sixweek period that began on Dec. 16, 1944 in the Ardennes region of Belgium. It was Adolf Hitler’s last major offensive of WWII as he attempted to split the Allied Forces. Hitler’s German forces largely outnumbered the Allied Troops. All told, the United States lost more than 100,000 men during the Battle of the Bulge. The final major stand of the Battle of the Bulge took place in Bastogne, Belgium, where the United States’ famed 101st Airborne Division rescued thousands of Allied Forces that had been surrounded by the Germans. Ultimately on May 7, Germany surrendered, bringing an end to WWII, the deadliest war in world history. Edwards was the recipient of the NFL’s prestigious Salute to Service Award in 2020 for his commitment to America’s WWII veterans. During his playing career, Edwards participated in 10 USO Tours, and in 2003, he was part of a special delegation invited aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln when President George Bush delivered his famous Mission Accomplished speech signifying an end to major combat operations in Iraq.
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VOL. 6 ISSUE 1 19
I’M LOCAL! with BORMANN CONSULTING JILL E. BORMANN, PHD, RN, FAAN - CONSULTANT, EDUCATOR, CLINICAL PROFESSOR AT UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO SCHOOL OF NURSING Profiles of Local People by Local Umbrella Media
Describe your business: I provide consultation related to “Mantram Repetition Program” for research, education, presentations and mentoring. Where are you originally from? Parker, South Dakota What made you decide to open this business? To assist others in learning simple, practical, and evidenced-based mind-body-spiritual strategies for wellbeing and symptom management. How did you get started? Over 30 years ago, I learned a form of meditation by Eknath Easwaran from the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation (www.bmcm.org) and began teaching these tools to persons living with living with HIV back at a time when it was considered a terminal disease, before medications. From there, I began a program of research on the Mantram Repetition Program (MRP) in 2000 at the VA San Diego Healthcare System. For an 8 minuyte overview see: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=vZbOOTVJDZs Why did you choose this profession? I love psychiatric/mental health nursing and just want to help people live life to its fullest. What drives you to do what you do? What motivates you? I see success stories and Mantram Repetition is “portable, practical, inexpensive, simple to learn, and has no toxic side effects.” What is something most people don’t know about the business? Owned by a nurse scientist with over 20 years of research experience on Mantram Repetition. What would your customers say they love most about your business? “The program works and its easy to learn.” What are your goals over the next year? Continue to be of service on a one-to-one, situation specific manner. What are your greatest challenges? It is difficult to explain why we use the term “mantram” instead of “mantra” – and that this program promotes spiritual wellbeing, calm-
ness, and quality of life. It can be applied to everything in one’s life.
tomed to a “drummer girl” versus a “drummer boy”.
How long have you lived in the neighborhood? Moved to Normal Heights in 2000 (20 years).
What’s your current family situation? I live with my wife, Evelyn, and our 2 dogs, Rocco and Lola.
What were the factors that made you choose this neighborhood? At the time I could afford to buy a home here and I loved the “small town” feel of our neighborhood.
What does the future hold for you? Self-growth, deeper spirituality, adventures.
What do you love most about the neighborhood? I love the “walk-ability” to everything I need (grocery, pharmacy, restaurants, work-outs, entertainment, and great neighbors). What are your favorite restaurants in the neighborhood? Jyoti-Bahanga vegetarian and Kensington Café. Have you witnessed any significant changes since moving here? There are more great restaurants and people continue to improve their homes and appearances. What do you want to see improve the most in this neighborhood? Renew the off-leash dog-park. Part of it is closed now. What is something most people don’t know about you? I love dogs, play guitar and write songs, love being outdoors and gardening. Why do you think it’s important for people to shop local? It is absolutely IMPERATIVE that we support our local businesses! Otherwise, they will disappear and we will lose that “home-town” feeling. What are some of the highest highs you’ve had in life so far? I’ve obtained national and international recognition for my nursing research. I become a “Fellow” in the American Academy of Nursing and my program was recognized as an “EdgeRunner” for nursing innovation! http://www.aannet.org/ initiatives/edge-runners/profiles/ edge-runners--mantram-repetition-program27 What are some of the lowest lows you’ve had in life so far? Every member of my nuclear family has passed away. And what got you through it? Friends and my faith. What’s the most memorable experience you’ve had working with a
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customer? People who report nearly miraculous results in only one week of practice (for example, decreases in insomnia, anxiety, or symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Where are your favorite places to go in the neighborhood? Up and down Adams Avenue and walking the entire street of Mountain View (west, north, east). What are your favorite things to do in the neighborhood? Walk and walk and walk … and meet friends at my favorite restaurants. What else do you do besides work? I stay in touch with friends and family. Anything exciting going on that customers should know about? I am creating free webinars through the non-profit, Psych Armor Institute, which will be available in January or February 2021. There are other educational resources that can be found on YouTube (search terms: Bormann and/or “mantram”). What is the best way for customers to contact you? My website: https://www.jillbormann.com/ Who from your childhood had the biggest impact on you? And what did that person teach you? My mother … she was an example of generosity, kindness, perseverance, and loyalty. What’s one memory from your childhood that stands out to you? I played the drums in high school band which generated a lot of curiosity because people were not accus-
If a young person asked you for advice on how to live their life, what would you tell them? “Listen to your gut, pursue your passion and be true to yourself. Visualize what you want in life and go after it, with persistence and gratitude.” When your life is over, how do you want to be remembered? “She took the road less traveled by” and was a pioneer in advancing the scientific study of complementary and integrative health (particularly, Mantram Repetition). Business Contact Information Phone Number: 619-301-8921 Website / Blog: https://www.jillbormann.com/ Email: jillbormannphd@gmail.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/JillEBormann@JillEBormann LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/ in/jill-bormann-1b45a02/ Youtube Channel: Search “Jill Bormann” or “mantram” Links to scientific papers recently published about Mantram Repetition. This paper simply describes “howto” choose and use a mantram as a portable, practical, evidenced based strategy for self-regulation and symptom management. Bormann, J. E., Kane, J. J., & Oman, D. (2020). Mantram repetition: A portable practice for being mindful. Mindfulness, 11(8), 2031–2033. doi:10.1007/s12671020-01440-4 (freely downloadable) This paper provides an overview of the scientific research, including randomized clinical trials, that has investigated the health-related benefits of the Mantram Repetition Program. Such evidence supports its application for managing COVID-19 pandemic-related stress and symptoms. Oman, D., Bormann, J. E., & Kane, J. J. (2020). Mantram repetition as a portable mindfulness practice: Applications during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mindfulness. Online before print, 16 November 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671020-01545-w(freely downloadable) Radio interview with Dr. Bormann April 5, 2018 “In the Moment” South Dakota Public Radio, April 5, 2018 http://listen.sdpb.org/post/jill-bormann-offers-mantram-research-update
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20 VOL. 6 ISSUE 1
BALANCING MOTHERHOOD AND CAREER—THE CHALLENGE THAT SO MANY WOMEN FACE
By Lulú Acosta
I remember one day waking up to my Chula Vista residence and thinking… How can I generate an income without missing out on the growth of my children? Being a Latina makes it hard for moms to choose a career because in our culture being a mom and a wife is the biggest thing and the moment that you have a career you can feel people judging you. Choosing a career with Mary Kay as an Independent Beauty Consultant was the best decision for me because I am able to take care of my family while generating an income from the comfort of my home.
There were a lot of companies that tried to get my attention to sell for them. I didn’t want to get caught up with some company that didn’t have quality products nor the best interests of moms at heart. Mary Kay has been around since 1963 and is a multi-billion dollar company. I knew it was the best choice for me, and I fit right into their selling model. My Mary Kay life is so simple, yet it is so fun, and it works for me! It all started when I attended a Mary Kay leadership brunch and a national sales director gave her speech. After that, I literally got on the phone and texted my husband to give him
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the great news about me becoming an Independent Beauty Consultant! #MyMKlife started with the support of my beautiful Chula Vista community as I was booking skincare parties, spa parties and color confident parties. I love meeting new people and teaching them about our quality and affordable products. Some women think that you need to go to an expensive store in the mall to get the best skin care products. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Mary Kay has the best team of scientists who create products based on science and extensive testing. “Developing a formula is one
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Stay Safe, Friends! part of our process. We also have to prove that it will deliver real results, and we do that by validating claims through clinical and consumer testing. If a claim doesn’t meet our high standards, we won’t use it.”– Dr. Michelle Hines, Director, Global Cosmetic R&I. Next thing you know, I was increasing my sales, building a strong business and then I decided to invite
my girlfriends to join my team. I also learned money management, goal setting and how to be a better mom, wife and how to become a better person. The most satisfying and rewarding feeling is helping women look and feel more beautiful as well as be more confident. Balance is so important for mothers who never find the time to finish all the things we need to do every day. I have found that if I spend about 2 hours a day working on Mary Kay or about 10 hours per week, it is perfect for me to meet my goals and still be present for my family. So many people have seen that during this time of COVID-19 we need to be creative in the ways we can generate an income and well as support the local ladies in our neighborhoods who can give us personalized service. Mary Kay does this and more! I offer bilingual service to my clients in English or Spanish. Mary Kay is a global company and our consultants speak so many languages. We offer product information in English or Spanish depending on the first language of the client. Mary Kay has a proven business model that helps women discover extra income, make empowered choices and find true beauty from the inside out. If you would like some skincare tips, help with innovative serums and/or join my team please contact me at 619-647-6282. You can even download a free Mary Kay Skin Analyzer App (for iphones). Once you have the results, I can guide you through each product
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recommendation and explain all the benefits. Please find me at: www.
VOL. 6 ISSUE 1 21 marykay.com/lacosta1722
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22 VOL. 6 ISSUE 1
Assemblymember Shirley Weber gives a press conference in the capitol following the passage of her bill AB 392 which would limit the use of deadly force by police in California on July 8, 2019. Photo by Anne Wernikoff for CalMatters
NEXT SECRETARY OF STATE AIMS TO TEACH CALIFORNIANS “HOW FRAGILE THE DEMOCRACY IS”
By Ben Christopher ben@calmatters.org
Seventy years ago, sharecroppers David and Mildred Nash refused to back down in a dispute with a white farmer, and fled from a lynch mob in Hope, Arkansas. With their 2-year-old daughter in tow, they found a new home out west in a place so different her grandfather, who would die without ever being able to vote, called it a “foreign land.” This year that toddler, Shirley Weber, is slated to become the first Black Californian to become the state’s top election official. It’s easy to imagine that poignant bit of historical symmetry was on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s mind when he announced Weber’s nomination late last month. With Joe Biden and California Sen. Kamala Harris on their way to
different wings of the White House, Newsom was given the opportunity — or the headache — of picking Harris’ replacement. Three days before Christmas, the governor finally brought the California-wide guessing game to a close: Secretary of State Alex Padilla would sit out the remainder of Harris’ term and become California’s first Latino U.S. Senator. Padilla’s appointment opened up its own vacancy. A few hours later, Newsom made another announcement: Weber, a Democratic assemblywoman from San Diego. The rollout of the one-two appointment was almost certainly meant to appease different constituencies of the state electorate. Latino activists had spent weeks reminding the governor that the state’s largest ethnic group had never been demographically represented the state in
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the U.S. Senate. Many Black Democrats and other progressives — Weber among them — urged the governor not to allow Harris’ departure from the Senate to leave the nation’s most esteemed legislative body without a single Black woman. Weber’s appointment was not widely anticipated like Padilla’s. But her biography indicates life experience relevant to the job of California’s top election administrator. Voting, denied to the Webers in the South, became a precious, fiercely guarded and unfailingly exercised right for the whole family. Support nonprofit journalism in California We rely on your generous support to cover the stories that matter most to you. If you find our work valuable in these difficult times, please support our journalism. A university professor and a
school board member before joining the Legislature in 2012, Weber’s most notable legislative achievements have focused on education policy — where she’s often ticked off the state’s teachers unions — new regulations on when police can use lethal force and racial justice. Last year, she carried bills to place a repeal of California’s ban on affirmative action on the ballot (it failed) and to create a committee to study possible reparations for California’s descendants of slaves. Here’s a conversation with her, condensed and edited for clarity: Assemblymember Shirley Weber gives a press conference in the capitol following the passage of her bill AB 392 which would limit the use of deadly force by police in California on July 8, 2019. Photo by Anne Wernikoff for CalMatters Assemblymember Shirley Weber
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Stay Safe, Friends! gives a press conference in the capitol following the passage of her bill AB 392 which would limit the use of deadly force by police in California on July 8, 2019. Photo by Anne Wernikoff for CalMatters Q: We all saw the video of the call in which the governor offered Secretary Padilla the job. I’m curious, did you receive a phone call? Was it an email? What was that ask like for you? A: I didn’t have the same experience that Padilla had with the tears and so forth and so on. I had gotten a phone call I think the night before when the governor made his decision as to what he was going to do. Q: Was this something that you were pushing for? Were you seeking out the position? A: No, no. It was not even on my radar, initially. It was not something I was pushing for, not something that I had asked for. I know others had….I knew there were others who had been called in to discuss the position…I was approached in a very general way — a “what do you want to do with your life?” sort of conversation. But I didn’t connect the dots that it was about the secretary of state position until it became more apparent. Q: You’ve accomplished a lot in the Legislature. When you were offered the position was there a voice in the back of your mind saying, “I don’t necessarily want to leave this behind”? Or were you ready to jump on it? A: You know, whether you’re in the Assembly or at a university or any of the various other things I’ve done, you kind of come to the realization of your own mortality, that this won’t last forever. And I only have another term (in the Legislature) to go…then I’m termed down. But I always recognized the fact that you have to do what you can while you’re there, and you have to make it count. But equally important, at least in my world, is that you have to empower other people to do the work. Because most folks are afraid to take on the challenges that I took on, OK? What I have always tried to teach, to demonstrate to others, is that you can be a change agent, you can be the voice, you can be that strongback, you can be that person and still have the respect of everybody in the room…So if I can spark that in the (legislative) members that are there now, and they’re doing some of it and if I can even support them in some of their efforts — you know, because I’ll be just across the street — that would be worth it. Q: Do you remember who that was? A: (Thinking) Who wanted to be
a badass…? Oh, it was (Assemblymember Kevin) McCarty (a Democrat from Sacramento). That was early on in the game. He’s a badass now. A: So how do you plan to be a badass at the secretary of state’s office then? What are your priorities? I’m hoping that we will continue this change to make sure that voting is accessible to everyone and that there are various ways that people can vote. I also want to focus on civic education. I look at what kids know and even what adults know about the elected positions and voting and the balance of power. All of those things have really become civic lessons in the last four years!…So I’m looking at ways in which we can, in addition to all the stuff we normally do, help people have a good, strong civic lesson about voting, about democracy, about the relationship between the states and federal government. You know, I had one member come to me and say, “I want to be a badass like you.” I said, “I didn’t know I was! I’m just a little old lady.” I’m not sure if our folks truly understand it. Because if you did, you would be vigilant about voting, you would understand how fragile the democracy is, and you would understand what tyranny is. I had a worker on my campaign in 2012. He was probably in his 40s or 50s. He worked really hard on my campaign. He was on corners every morning waving signs. And one day, after working on the campaign so long, he said to me, “this is the first time in my life I really wish I could vote.” I said, “Why can’t you vote?” He whispered and said, “I’m an ex-felon.” And I said, “You can vote!” He was shocked. So we registered him to vote and he voted. And I realized that there were just an awful lot of people in our district who didn’t know that once you have done your time, you have the right to vote. Not like some of the southern states. So I said when I get to Sacramento, I’m going to deal with that. And that was one of the first bills I did (legislation requiring state and county officials to inform those released from jail or prison of their voting rights). And as I was walking around Sacramento, I would mention it to people and very, very important lobbyists would say, “People who are ex-felons can vote?” Q: Maybe it’s not surprising given your background, but you seem to view this job as another opportunity to be a teacher — this time for 40 million people. A: Education is in my soul. I’ve been a teacher since I was 5 years old on my mother’s back porch in
the projects. I did everybody’s homework because I was stupid (laughing) and I love doing homework! Q: When you were growing up, when your family came to California from Arkansas, was voting a big part of your family tradition? A: Oh, definitely. My dad came in ‘51. That was before the Voting Rights Act. People knew very clearly in the South that you didn’t try to register to vote because you could be killed. So my father was not a registered voter. Neither was my grandfather. And after my father had to flee the South, when he came to California, among some of the first things he did was to register to vote. He and my mom voted in every election there ever was. My mother volunteered at the polls when we were in elementary school. She became one of the poll workers and eventually she became a supervisor at the polls. When my elementary school could no longer allow folks to vote in the auditorium because of the free and reduced lunch programs (which required the school to make) space for the kids to eat, my mother said, ‘Well, you guys can vote at our house.’ So our house became the polling place at 351 West 45th Street…We all knew as kids that on those days when voting took place, you leave through the backdoor and you come in through the backdoor because the people in the living room were doing important business — like voting. Q: You were pretty vocal in pushing the governor to select a Black woman for Senator Harris’ soon-to-be-vacant seat. You told Erika Smith at the L.A. Times that you would be “very, very, very upset” if Newsom did not — A: And I am. I’m still upset and I’m still concerned…I met with the (Legislative) Black Caucus and one of the things I insisted that we do was send another letter to the governor saying that we still want a seat. If a seat becomes available, we want a Black woman’s voice in it because there are none in the Senate. California may have another opportunity, depending on (Democratic Sen. Dianne) Feinstein. If she runs again or if she resigns or whatever she does — if there’s a change, we still want a Black woman. But in addition to that, it’s also the responsibility of the 48 other states. Only one other state here in America, Illinois, has also had a female African American (U.S. senator). But the governor knows I’m still very, very, very upset. Alex Padilla has done amazing work. But I still want to emphasize the fact that representation does matter. You know, having been on God, I can’t tell you how many boards and commissions
VOL. 6 ISSUE 1 23 where I was the only (Black woman) in the room, I think I made a difference. Because when issues came up, I had an experience that none of the others had and that is being a Black woman who has been the victim of the system being supported. Assemblymember Shirly Weber has been named California Secretary of State after current Secretary Alex Padilla was named to the U.S. Senate this morning. Photo by Anne Wernikoff, CalMatters; Wikimedia Commons Newsom’s two big picks make history for California by advancing Latino and Black Democrats In choosing a new U.S. senator and a new secretary of state, Gov. Gavin Newsom could shape Democratic politics for years to come. Q: Among those playing the guessing game about the open Senate seat, I think there was a view that if the governor was to pick Padilla — which he did — he had to then offer the secretary of state position to a Black woman. As if one were a kind of compensation for the other. A: Yeah, it’s not at all. These are totally different realities…(I’ve had people say) ‘Congratulations, Shirley, you’re gonna do a great, great job, blah blah blah. But we still want a Senate seat.” And I say, “Amen. We do.”…(Because U.S. Senators are not subjected to term limits unlike state constitutional offices) the long term effect of having a Senate seat is extremely important and it’s a voice in that arena. They’re not interchangeable. Q: Your daughter (Akila Weber, who sits on the La Mesa city council) announced that she’ll be running for your Assembly seat once you leave it. Did you encourage her to get into politics? A: I would never try to get anybody to go into politics because that’s something you have to want to do…I never stopped going to meetings because I had children. So my kids learned to take their coloring books and sit in the corner while we had board meetings. (Akila ran for student body president of her elementary school). Her principal, who I knew, called me and says, “Girl, I am shocked…I have never had a sixth grade president come into my office and say, ‘Here is the agenda. Could you make copies for the meeting?’” … She’s always been a leader type. Q: Have you given her any campaign advice? A: The only advice that I’d ever give my daughter is: Don’t lose your sense of integrity; never become so angry that you become ineffective. There’s always a way to get things done.
Ben Christopher Ben covers California politics and elections. Prior to that, he was a contributing writer for CalMatters reporting on the state's economy and budget. Based out of the San Francisco Bay Area, he has written for San Francisco magazine, California magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Priceonomics. Ben also has a past life as an aspiring beancounter: He has worked as a summer associate at the Congressional Budget Office and has a Master’s in Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley.
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Happy New Year, San Diego!
24 VOL. 6 ISSUE 1
newsbriefs
MAPPED: FACEBOOK’S PATH TO SOCIAL NETWORK DOMINATION (2008-2020) By Kellie Woodhouse | SDSU
Facebook’s Path to Global Social Network Domination From just a few thousand users in 2004 to 2.7 billion monthly active users (MAUs) in 2020, Facebook is by far the world’s largest social network. But its massive global footprint didn’t grow overnight. While Facebook is the most popular social network in many countries, this traction didn’t happen overnight. And in other places, it still hasn’t quite taken off. To see Facebook’s path to domination, we mapped each country’s most popular social network from 2008-2020. The data was tabulated by Vincenzo Cosenza at Vincos.it by examining annual traffic data from Alexa and SimilarWeb. Facebook Grows From the Americas to Southeast Asia What famously started as Mark Zuckerberg’s late-night intoxicated project called Facemash—a “hot or not” type website for students at Harvard University—soon evolved into the world’s predominant social network. Before 2008, the social network landscape was populated by social network pioneers such as Myspace and Hi5. Google’s Orkut was the most popular network in Brazil and India, and Friendster found a foothold in Southeast Asia. But the Facebook wave came in earnest. By 2009, the social media giant took the title of most popular network for the bulk of the Americas, Europe, South Asia, and Oceania, with Orkut in Brazil being the sole holdout until 2011. The story was similar in Africa, as increasing internet traffic data pointed to Facebook dominating the social network landscape across the
continent (minus a temporary LinkedIn surge in 2017 for Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Cameroon). By the beginning of 2020, Facebook was measured as the leading social network site in 151 out of 167 measured countries, or over 90%. China and Russia Resist Facebook’s Pull The social giant’s growth, however, didn’t come without resistance. China’s most popular social networking website has been Tencent’s Qzone since the mid-2000s. WeChat—a popular all-in-one messaging platform—does not technically qualify for the above map as a “social networking website”, but the app now has more than 1.2 billion MAUs. Facebook had attempted to gain ground in the country but was banned in 2009. Similarly in Iran, Facebook was also blocked first in 2009 and then intermittently since. Instead, Iran’s most popular social networks have been Persian sites Cloob and Facenama between 2009-2016. Facebook did manage to capture the #1 spot briefly in 2011, but since then, they’ve been displaced by Facebook-owned Instagram. The other countries that Facebook has had trouble capturing, despite not being blocked, are Russia and many former Soviet republics. There, social network dominance has switched regularly between the networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, both owned by Mail.ru, a Russian internet giant. Facebook’s Monopoly Over Mobile Social Networks As big of a footprint as Facebook has on social networking, the tech giant’s reach is magnified when factoring in mobile apps that it also owns. In 2020, the company saw 1.3 billion MAUs on Facebook’s Messenger app, 2 billion MAUs on the world’s most popular messaging app WhatsApp, and just under 1.2 billion MAUs on photo sharing network Instagram. By Facebook’s own estimates in its Q3 2020 reporting, its core products are used by more than 3.2 billion
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people every month. That means that 40% of Earth’s population (7.8 billion in December 2020) uses Facebook-owned social media. The question now is if Facebook’s domination will grow further, or if it’ll begin to subside. With increasing scrutiny of tech giants, the company is facing massive antitrust lawsuits in the U.S. by federal and state authorities, and other countries are stepping up potential regulation as well. At the same time, Facebook is struggling to reach younger audiences in developed countries, which have increasingly turned to Snap and TikTok instead for social media. Did 2020 mark the height of Facebook’s global empire, or is it just another milestone on the path towards further domination? To view the interactive map, visit https://www.visualcapitalist. com/map-facebook-path-social-network-domination/
CARLSBAD AUTHOR RELEASES HIGHLY ANTICIPATED BOOK ON AMAZON AND GOOGLE PLAY
“Don’t wait for your daughters to come to you with questions about puberty because that day may never come,” states Carlsbad’s Toyna Chin, author of the newly released book “The Big P: A Girl's Journey Through Puberty.” This is the author’s second book in a five-part series focusing on the changes a girl’s body will go through as she grows. “Ideally, as a parent, you’ve already begun having conversations with your daughter about the changes she will go through as she matures. Before girls hit puberty they are already begun asking questions about their bodies and this is the perfect opportunity to start those conversations, have healthy dialogues and build trust,” says Chin. For additional information, visit www.toynachin.com
CONSTRUCTION COMPLETED ON ONE PASEO IN SAN DIEGO Design firm Ware Malcomb announced that construction is complete on One Paseo located on
the southwest corner of Del Mar Heights Road and El Camino Real in San Diego. Ware Malcomb provided master planning and architectural design services for the retail project component. Located in the Del Mar Heights community, One Paseo is a mixeduse master-planned project incorporating office, residential and retail space. In addition to providing master planning services for the project, Ware Malcomb designed the 12 single-story restaurant and highend retail buildings totaling approximately 96,000 square feet located within the new development. Ware Malcomb has completed additional tenant improvement projects within One Paseo including The Butchery and ColorCounter as well as Architect of Record services for Pigment and Alcheme. Additional amenities incorporated within the retail landscape design include a children’s play area with a climbing art log, a relaxing fire pit area, community workout area and a lawn area for events adjacent to the residences and offices. The restaurants in One Paseo feature a mix of first-to-market locations like Blue Bottle and locally owned Parakeet Cafe with outdoor dining and plazas. Ware Malcomb also designed a three-level parking structure accommodating 548 parking stalls with a top level shade structure.
PORT WELCOMES SANDY NARANJO AS NEW PORT COMMISSIONER
The Port of San Diego welcomes Sandy Naranjo as the newest commissioner to represent National City. On Jan. 3, Naranjo was sworn in at a virtual ceremony by her sister, Susan Naranjo, who was deputized by Port Clerk Donna Morales to administer the oath of office. Naranjo, a South Bay native, is a political economist, environmental justice advocate, labor advocate, and community organizer who has been involved in numerous regional and statewide boards and commissions.
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Stay Safe, Friends!
newsbriefs In 2019, she was appointed by National City Mayor Alejandra Sotelo-Solis to the Sweetwater Authority Citizen Advisory Committee, selected for the AB 617 steering committee to advise the San Diego Air Pollution Control District, and selected by Commissioner Patty Monahan for the California Energy Commission’s Advisory Committee for the Clean Transportation Program Investment Plan. She was most recently the California organizing manager for Mothers Out Front, a national climate justice organization, and the National City Land Use Policy Advocate for the Environmental Health Coalition. Prior to her work with the environmental non-profits, she was with the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council and the United Food and Commercial Workers. Naranjo earned three bachelor's degrees in political science, economics, and political economy with a minor in women’s studies at California State University, San Bernardino.
GENERAL ATOMICS SELECTED FOR SKYBORG VANGUARD PROGRAM
General Atomics Aeronautical SystemsInc. (GA-ASI) has been selected by the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center to support the Skyborg Vanguard Program. Skyborg will become the foundation of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning autonomous capabilities for a family of future USAF unmanned combat aerial vehicles. GA-ASI will modify two of its company-owned Avenger Remotely Piloted Aircraft with upgraded datalinks and the core Skyborg System Design Agent software, as well as other payloads. These Avengers will then be used as part of various experimentation events in 2021 and 2022, which will enable manned aircraft to control Avengers while in flight and relay specific information between the manned and unmanned aircraft. Flights will be conducted from GA-ASI flight centers in Southern California.ments.
ALASKA AIRLINES ADDS TWO NEW ROUTES FROM SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Alaska Airlines announced two new routes from its key hubs in San Diego and Los Anfgeles that will begin flying this spring. The airline will launch daily, nonstop service between Los Angeles (LAX) and
Austin on March 18, with an increase to three daily departures on May 20. Daily, nonstop service between San Diego and New York JFK starts on April 4. “Southern California is an integral part of Alaska’s network and continues to offer valuable opportunities for selective expansion,” said Brett Catlin, Alaska Airlines vice president of network and alliances.
ANTARCTIC ICE PIEDMONT NAMED FOR SCRIPPS SCIENTIST
Scripps Institution of Oceanography glaciologist Helen Amanda Fricker is being honored by the UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee with an Antarctic ice piedmont in her name. The Fricker Ice Piedmont is located on the eastern side of Adelaide Island, a mainly ice-covered island off the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. The pioneering scientist is being recognized for her work using satellites, including NASA’s ICESat-2, to study the evolution of ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. Antarctic place-names honor British individuals who've made exceptional contributions to advancing science in the polar regions. This year, 28 polar scientists were honored as part of a larger celebration to mark the 200th anniversary of the discovery of Antarctica. Fricker is the co-leader of the Scripps Polar Center.
CALIFORNIA BANK & TRUST PROMOTES ERIC ELLINGSEN
California Bank & Trustannounced the promotion of Eric Ellingsen, a banking industry leader and company veteran of over 20 years, from president and COO to CEO, effective immediately. Ellingsen will continue his role as president with new leadership responsibilities as CEO. He will continue to oversee the growth of
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the bank across the state, including direct oversight of its commercial banking division. David E. Blackford will transition from his role as prior CEO to executive chairman, with continuing responsibility for the bank’s commercial real estate portfolio. Ellingsen began his impressive career trajectory at CB&T in a fourmonth temporary role as a junior accountant that led to a permanent position within the company. From there, this led to more senior roles handling risk management, regulatory compliance, international banking and asset/liability management. In 2012, he was promoted to CFO where he was responsible for the overall financial management of the company and then in 2016, rose to the position of president and COO. In this role, he oversaw business and branch banking, SBA lending, private banking, corporate services, and the bank’s finance and planning functions.
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mation solutions for government agencies. Cognitive Medical Systems helps large public and private organizations make the most of their comprehensive healthcare IT investments. “The formation of CivitasDX is a purpose-driven, strategic move by both organizations,” said Robert Rasmussen, co-founder and CEO of Agile Six, who will also serve as CivitasDX’s managing director. “This joint venture combines our companies’ collective expertise to help a wide array of federal, state, and local government organizations better serve their constituents. We will do so through a robust and modern, yet practical and responsive, approach to technology development. Together we will maximize project outcomes.”
SAN DIEGO COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT’S ANNUAL ECONOMIC IMPACT $4.1 BILLION
The San Diego Community College District (SDCCD) annually generates $4.1 billion in economic activity, according to the latest report from a labor market analytics firm that lauds the SDCCD for playing a pivotal role in reducing economic inequities. According to Idaho-based Emsi, the $4.1 billion generated by the SDCCD is enough to support nearly 42,000 jobs, or 1 out of every 52 jobs in the region. Among other highlights of the report: • 98 percent of SDCCD students remain in the region after graduation and their impact alone amounted to $3.5 billion in added income in fiscal year 2019-20. • Students will see a return of $6.20 in higher future earnings for every $1 they invest in their education. • For every dollar of public money invested in the SDCCD, taxpayers will receive $1.40 in return over the course of students’ working lives.
AGILE SIX AND COGNITIVE MEDICAL SYSTEMS LAUNCH JOINT VENTURE
Two San Diego-based veteran-owned firms -- Agile Six and Cognitive Medical Systems -- announced the launch of CivitasDX, a joint venture to help federal, state and local government organizations better serve their constituents. Agile Six creates custom, digital transfor-
CRISTIANO AMON TAKING TOP SPOT AT QUALCOMM
Qualcomm’s Board of Directors unanimously selected company President Cristiano Amon to take over the CEO position from Steve Mollenkopf effective June 30, the company announced. Amon started working at Qualcomm in 1995. Mollenkopf has been with the company for 26 years and has served as CEO since March 2014. The company said in a press release that Mollenkopf will stay on “as a strategic advisor for a period of time.” Amon became company president in January 2018. He has overseen the company’s successful and rapid expansion into the RF front-end space as well as continuing growth in connectivity and networking. He said in a statement: “We have been at the forefront of innovation for decades and I look forward to maintaining this position going forward. In addition to driving the expansion of 5G into mainstream devices and beyond mobile, Qualcomm is set to play a key role in the digital transformation of numerous industries as our technologies become essential to connecting everything to the cloud.”
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Happy New Year, San Diego!
26 VOL. 6 ISSUE 1
GEORGEANNE IRVINE
DIRECTOR OF PUBLISHING AND AUTHOR, SAN DIEGO ZOO GLOBAL When San Diego native Georgeanne “George” Irvine was a child, she slept with a dozen stuffed animals on her bed— a lion, two teddy bears, a tiger, a monkey, an elephant, and more. It was most certainly indicative of what was to come: a lifelong career at the San Diego Zoo as a spokesperson and champion for wildlife and conservation as well as an award-winning author of children’s books about animals. George has devoted more than 40 years of her colorful career to the San Diego Zoo and Safari Park. She is the director of corporate publishing and an author, but has also worked in the public relations/marketing and development divisions of the organization. We had a chance to sit down with George and talk to her about her wild life and career! Staying with one employer throughout your career is unusual these days. What has kept you there? When I started at the San Diego Zoo as a public relations assistant in March 1978, I thought I would stay with the organization for a few years and then move onward and upward. After a few weeks on the job, I realized that working for the Zoo was not only fun, exciting, and fascinating but also meaningful. I quickly learned that wildlife and their habitats are in danger of disappearing and I could help make a difference in their future by becoming a voice for the animals and a champion for wildlife conservation. Plus I got to work with extraordinary colleagues and I fell in love with the animals. I never wanted to go anywhere else. How did the idea for the publishing division for the zoo come to be? Our now-retired CEO Doug Myers has always loved books and storytelling, and in late 2016 at the end of our Centennial celebration, he decided to act on a dream he had been considering for several years: to create a book publishing division for the Zoo. The book industry was having a growth spurt and Doug thought that by telling our stories through books, we could inspire children and adults to care about wildlife and become involved in efforts to protect and save Earth’s precious animals and their habitats. Are there any central themes you like to explore in your books for children? I write our non-fiction Hope and Inspiration books, which feature stories about real animals that have overcome challenges in their lives. If children can connect with a specific animal, such as Floyd the flamingo,
Mosi Musa the vervet monkey, or Moka the tiger, I feel they will be inspired to care about that individual animal, its species, and wildlife in general. What I didn’t realize until I received feedback from teachers and parents is that the books also teach children life lessons, such as the importance of friendship, believing in their dreams, and never giving up. How do you decide which animals will have their stories told? The most important thing about any animal featured in these books is that we are able to document every aspect of its story with photographs because the books are illustrated with photos. I keep in close contact with our wildlife care and behavior staff and if they come across an animal that might be a good story, we start following that animal’s life by shooting photos. I’m currently working on a book about Omeo, a koala joey, who lost his mother to cancer before he was even out of the pouch. In the beginning we didn’t even know whether he would survive but we started shooting photos anyway. Because of his resilience and the dedication of our wildlife care specialists—and the fact that we have documented Omeo’s entire life with photos—his story will become a future Hope and Inspiration book.
the most? All of the stories inspire me for different reasons. Friendship and miracles are themes that particularly move me, though, so the Ruuxa & Raina book holds a special place in my heart. Ruuxa is a cheetah, who had crooked legs as a cub and wasn’t supposed to be able to run, even with surgery. But no one told him that and he ran anyway—and as an adult at the Safari Park, he is now running 70 miles per hour. Raina, Ruuxa’s Rhodesian ridgeback companion, was diagnosed with terminal cancer but survived against all odds. And the friendship between the two
of them is heartwarming—they were always at each other’s side through their challenges. Do your young readers ever write to share their thoughts about your books? I receive feedback and photos from children as well as their parents. Many write to me about Karen’s Heart, which is the story of a baby orangutan at the Zoo who survived open heart surgery. I receive many comments similar to this one, which touched my heart. “I just have to tell you how much my daughter and I have enjoyed your book, “Karen’s
Which animal stories inspire you
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Stay Safe, Friends! Heart.” I bought her the book and plush last week and we’ve read it every night!!! My daughter has had two open heart surgeries. She was an infant when the surgeries were performed but she is aware she had them. Your book has given my daughter a perspective of her surgeries that I have had difficulty explaining to her.” One grandmother sent me a detailed story about her newborn grandson, who had a heart attack when he was 10 weeks old. Thankfully, the boy survived after several open heart surgeries and is now in grade school. The grandma explained how meaningful the Karen book is to her “miracle grandson.” You’ve provided tours for many celebrities. Whose off-stage personality surprised you the most? I especially loved taking Julie Andrews and her family around the Zoo because I’m a huge fan of Julie as well as Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. As I shared fun Zoo stories with them, Julie kept saying, “Damn, that’s a great idea for a TV show,” to her husband, Blake Edwards, who later produced a short-lived show about a TV show host (Julie) who quits and moves to Iowa where she marries a veterinarian. A highlight of the day was when we visited our new rhino, who had just arrived from Sumatra and liked to wallow in the mud. As we stood in front of the rhino habitat, Julie said, in her lovely British accent, “Why, I know a song about a rhino. As a matter of fact, it’s about a rhino who likes to wallow in the mud. As a matter of fact it goes like this!” And there in the middle of the Zoo, Julie Andrews sang me the song about the rhino. I felt like I was in the middle of one of her movies! It was truly exhilarating! What have been some of your career highlights? I feel like a kid in a candy shop because I’ve had so many incredible opportunities throughout my career. My Zoo job has enabled me to travel the world—from leading tours to the wilds of India, Australia, and China as well as several African countries to lecturing on two around-the-world private jet expeditions to traveling to Indonesia to help bring a critically endangered Sumatran rhinoceros back to the United States. I loved accompanying our goodwill ambassador Joan Embery to the different talk shows, including to the Tonight Show when Johnny Carson reigned. For some of the shows, we stayed in hotel rooms with animals—I’ve bunked with lots of animals, including a harbor seal, baby tiger, emu, clouded leopard, kangaroo, and tarantula. Another major highlight was becoming personal friends with two great and beloved women who were also mentors to me: Dr. Jane Goodall and the late Shari Lewis (Lamb Chop’s mom). And, one of the most exciting 200 days of my public relations career was when Basi and
Yuan Yuan, two giant pandas from China’s Fuzhou Zoo, visited the San Diego Zoo in 1987-88. I became very close friends with their caretakers and visited them in China several times. I also got to meet Basi upclose and pose with her for a photo.
VOL. 6 ISSUE 1 27
just gotten yourself killed!” My next thought was “Well, if you’re going to die, you may as well take photos.” In those split seconds I even wondered if they would be able to retrieve my
backed away from the elephant.
camera from the river. Plus I hoped that my film wouldn’t be ruined so they could develop it because I knew my photos would be spectacular! The elephant stopped a couple yards from us, shook his head and splashed water at us. I was a clearly shaken as was the guide, and when I looked back at him, he nervously said, “It’s OK. I don’t think he will come any closer.” And then we slowly
you get any photos of that?” They were so scared—and worried about how they were going to tell my mother what happened to me—that they couldn’t remember. A month later, one of my friends developed his film and realized he had shot one photo as we were backing away from the elephant and already 25 feet away.
When I realized I wasn’t going to die at that moment, I called out to my friends in another canoe, “Did
What are you looking forward to in the next few years at the zoo? I’m very excited about the opening of our new Sanford Children’s Zoo as well as our new hummingbird aviary later this year. I’m also following at least a half dozen animals and can’t wait to write books about them. Included in the wildlife roster are Xanan, a California condor that we photographed from the time she hatched out of her egg to her recent return to the wild and Tornero, a precious two-toed sloth, who is an animal ambassador. What are your hobbies and passions? Besides my family, friends, and three Boston terriers, I am passionate about photographing wildlife in their natural habitats, traveling to Earth’s wildest places such as the jungles of Borneo and the forests of India, storytelling, and Broadway musicals! I love going to New York, where I will see seven shows in five days. I’m also passionate about the San Diego Zoo and Safari Park, our animals, and the work we are doing to save and protect wildlife. What is your most exciting travel adventure? It was during my first trip to Africa in 1989 on a month-long expedition to Kenya, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Rwanda with friends. Every day was incredible but our three-day canoe adventure down the Zambezi River tops my all-time “most exciting” list. Everything that could happen did happen: We had to hide in the reeds from poachers, who came after us after our guide yelled at them. One of our canoes ran into a crocodile. I had to hunker down in a wilderness bathroom to wait for hyenas to pass by before walking back to my tent. We were confronted by angry hippos and at one point, my canoe got stuck on a submerged tree trunk, nearly dumping my friends and me into a river teeming with crocodiles. We were also left by ourselves on a dirt airstrip (with no protection), waiting a few hours for a small plane to pick us up to take us back to a small town. But, the most hair-raising thing happened when I was canoeing with our guide. I sat in the front of the canoe so I could take photos as we followed four young bull elephants that were slowly walking along the shore in the reeds, grazing on water plants. When they stopped, we stopped to watch them making sure we kept a safe distance from them. Suddenly, one of the elephants charged us! He ran straight toward me—I was closest to him! My initial thought was “Now you’ve finally done it—you’ve
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Happy New Year, San Diego!
28 VOL. 6 ISSUE 1
BY BART MENDOZA © MUSICSCENESD // MUSICSCENESD.COM
JANUARY 2020
Gregory Page One Hell Of A Memory
Singer-songwriter Gregory Page’s most recent album, One Hell Of A Memory, is the latest in a string of aural gems that mix acoustic guitar based tunes with earworm melodies. Under normal circumstances Page would be in the midst of a year of promotional appearances and globe trotting to promote it, however the past twelve months have been anything but normal. Several proposed tours to date have been cancelled, but there are still hopes Page can make it to Europe before summer.
Page arrived in San Diego from England in 1976 and began performing music soon after. “I am a local musician here in this city, I play all sorts of gigs around town which keep me busy and inspired,” he said. “But I’m also an international Artist representing San Diego when I’m on stage at The Paradiso in Amsterdam or performing at the Woodford Folk Festival in Australia.” Page’s music is popular the world over, but seems to have special resonance in the Netherlands, where his concerts are sold out events. He credits a fellow musician for help with his breakthrough there. “The Dutch people and I have a fondness and appreciation for nostalgia and history,” he remarked. “Fifteen years ago I released an album, Love Made Me Drunk, on AJ Croce’s record company. It was a collection of original songs I wrote while I lived in Paris with my family. It’s drenched in nostalgia. AJ sent the album to a Dutch radio program and the rest is history,” Page Local News > LocalUmbrellaNews.com
proud of the work put in to making this recording. “The engineers, Robbie Robinson and Jeff Berkley labored over each special microphone, it’s placement on the instrument,” he said. “Whether it be a Mandocello from 1905 played by Steve Peavy or a set of Uillieann Pipes played by Eric Rigler, each instrument, with its unique tone, requires much thought and a strategy to record. For me the recording is the icing on the cake in the creation of the songs.”
said. Plans are underway for a tour there later this year to promote the new album. “My label in Holland, V2 Records, whom I’ve released seven albums with, is hopeful I will be there in the Spring,” Page said. “In this new found reality I am optimistic that touring will resume (then) for me. I am already a mild germaphobe, so not much is different other than wearing a mask, which I’m ok with. For me, it depends on the timing of the vaccine. I will be standing in line with Personal Trainers and Hairstylists to get the jab in the arm.” Page notes One Hell Of A Memory, is meant to be more than a collection of tunes. “I don’t write songs I write albums,” he said good naturedly. “In a world of singles and compilations the art of deep listening to an album from start to finish is becoming lost.” He’s
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Asked to cite a favorite from his vast catalog of tunes, Page is quick to name “Ballad Of Bridget Healy” from the new album. “It’s one of my most recent songs. I had been trying for ages to write a song about my Irish Grandmother Bridget Healy who grew up in Dublin during the 1916 Easter Rising. I lived with my granny and she would tell stories of what that war was like for her and her family,” he said. While being a musician seems to get harder by the day, Page’s motivation remains strong. “There are many extraordinary adventures yet to experience,” he remarked. Page considers his guitar a traveling companion. “What keeps me going is always the hope that I travel more and experience cultures and places beyond my backyard,” he continued “Travel is one of the most important ways to find empathy and understanding with my fellow humans. Music for me is my language.” www.gregorypage.com
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Lis Viegas
Cymbal of SucCess
Stay Safe, Friends! meetings with great intention and together we co-designed an innovative sound, what is known as the ‘Glow Series’. I am so proud of how these cymbals turned out, they are absolutely stunning!” Viegas is hopeful she’ll be able to resume touring later this year, but in the meantime is proceeding full speed on new projects. “Tour-
VOL. 6 ISSUE 1 29 ing and performing is what I live for as an artist so I always prioritize those opportunities. With the shutdown, I’ve learned to DJ, edit videos, and produce music which I hope to release sometime in 2021.” She notes the difficulty uncertainty adds to each project. “Each day is different during this unique shift and at times it’s extremely hard to find the inspiration to create when we have no idea when we will be able to
For a musician there is no doubt that the highest honor is to have a signature instrument. Most often the domain of guitarists, the most recent area musician to partner with a manufacturer is drummer / percussionist Lis Viegas, who co-designed a series of cymbals called “Glow,” for Red Cymbals, based in Australia Viegas has toured internationally, performing with a long list of performers from Vokab Kompany to Balkan Bump, but the initial contact with Dylan Redman, the owner of Red Cymbals, was via a random post on social media. “Sometime in 2019, Dylan commented on one of my outdoor drum videos at Sunset Cliffs and I started checking out their videos about their marvelous sounding cymbals,” Viegas said. The pair met in person at the NAMM Show 2020, with Viegas joining the Red Artist family soon after. Viegas is happy with the amount of input she had into the cymbals design. “I researched sounds, materials and vibe that matched my playing and a sound that wasn’t quite out there already,” she said. “Dylan and I nerded out over a few zoom
play an in person concert again.” For her part Viegas remains positive about making music. “I just allow each day to ride out as it wants to,” she said. “I’ll take the inspiration when it comes and try not to force creating music when the drive isn’t quite there. If that’s the case, I’ll focus on something else and revisit music at a time when the creation path and energy is more clear.” www.redcymbals.com www.lisonthedrums.com
Be Mine Phantom Valentine End State
Be Mine Phantom Valentine release their debut album, End State, this month. Co-produced and mixed by James Doviak, guitarist and keyboard player in British music legend Johnny Marr’s Band, “guitars are a main element of the album but there are some tracks that are predominantly synths,” said guitarist Dean Primicias. The chance to work with Doviak came through an initial meeting as an audience member. “It was one of those shows, during Johnny Marr’s Call The Comet tour, in Los Angeles,” Primicias recalled. “My brother, Wes, and I didn’t have a ticket so we went up early in hopes to get overflow tickets at the box office. We ended up meeting Johnny and I also struck up a nice conversation with James. I later had a chance to meet up again with James when they played the House of Blues in San Diego. This time I spent more time asking him questions in preparation to record this album. I don’t think he knew what I was up to at the time, but he was very encouraging and shared some valuable information.” The album’s first single is “I Never Dream.” beminephantomvalentine.bandcamp.com
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Happy New Year, San Diego!
30 VOL. 6 ISSUE 1
The San Diego Music Awards have extended their deadline for submission until January 31, 2021. All albums must have been issued between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2020 for consideration. More details, including the event date are tba. www.sandiegomusicawards.
San Diego Music Notes sengers, aka Randy Hodge, Paul McGee, and Jef Kmak, guests will include keyboardist Scott Gorham (Richard Marx Band). “I’m attempting to bring more healing to the world with this album,” Larsen said. “There will be certain Solfeggio (ancient healing) tones integrated into the music, and all the lyrics will be spiritually centered. It’s not going to be rock, but it won’t put you to sleep either!” she said
each tune, quoting vocal melodies, orchestra parts and solos,” Riker said. “There is a short pause between the tracks of about 1 1/2 seconds to separate the tracks but give the feel of a medley.”
ney, Sheryl Crow, Lenny Kravitz, Joe Walsh, Steve Lukather and more. The song has been issued in advance of Starr’s upcoming EP, Zoom In.
com Jack Habegger’s Celebrity Telethon has a new E.P., “Ov Yey!” out on January 15. Label Bud Tapes of Portland will be putting it out on a limited lathe cut vinyl 7” along with a mini comic produced by Habegger and Bailey Bast. “I feel very honored to have collaborated with so many of my talented friends on my first ‘solo’ release,” Habegger said. “Combining my comic art and my music into one package has been very special and I can’t thank Bud enough for believing in it!” Baritone saxophonist Gabriel Sundy has a new project, Invisible Sky People, with a debut album, Human Like An Animal, out this month. In lieu of a live band, the album was composed using software instruments along with the addition of a live saxophone. “(The band) could be described as a “progressive punk-jazz-noiserock” power trio,” Sundy said. The ensemble is comprised of baritone saxophone, bass, and drums. “The bass on the album was eventually re-recorded by Mackenzie Leighton, and the album was mixed, mastered and co-produced by Rafter Roberts.” Singer/ Guitarist Donna Larsen is working on a new album, Songs of Light, at Track Star Studios with Josquin Des Pres . Backed by her band, The Mes-
Fans of the blues or early rock ‘n’ roll will want to pick up S. Mathias & The Honeycombs new album, appropriately titled, authentic sounding, Nothin’ But The Blues. Already available digitally, the album makes it’s CD debut this month. New film Promising Young Woman, directed by Emerald Fennell and starring Carey Mulligan, includes North County based singer, Juice Newton’s version of “Angel of the Morning.” Fun Fact: Juice Newton sings harmony on Bob Welch’s (Fleetwood Mac) hit “Ebony Eyes” (#14 / 1978)
Acclaimed guitarist Wayne Riker is working on his next album at Studio West. Titled A Beatles Overture from A to Z, the album is essentially a medley of 21 Beatles tracks. Details: “It’s just me, with overdubbed high voltage electric guitar parts entering after opening chord melodies of
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Power pop singer-songwriter Steve Rosenbaum is the latest artist to have his music archive raided for gold. A collection of his demos, both home and studio recordings made between 1979 – 1989, is being released by Dead Media Tapes later this year, available as a digital download or 8-track tape
New Singles due soon include;
The Sea Monks are working with Alan Sanderson at Pacific Beat Studios on a new album due this spring The trailer for the new Marvel Cinematic Universe television / Disney + series, WandaVision, features a new take on The Monkees version of “Daydream Believer” as it’s soundtrack. The song was written by long time San Diegan John Stewart who passed away in 2008. Stewart is perhaps best known for his work with 1960’s era folk icons Kingston Trio, and the hit, “Gold” (#5 / 1979), which featured Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks. Early 90’s ska favorites, Spy Kids have finally gotten around to recording and releasing their debut album, Covert Action on Chicago based label, Jump Up. Featuring and produced by Matt Hensley (later of Flogging Molly), the nine tracks include covers of Jimmy Cliff and Judge Dredd classics. Ringo Starr’s latest song and video, “Here’s to the Nights,” feature Nathan East on bass - Plus vocals from Paul McCart-
Lauren Leigh Martin “Trust Fall,” Suzanne Gladstone “Aphrodite’s Kiss,” Thea the Band with “The Worm,” The Strawberry Moons “Love in the Time of Virus,” New EP’s include Dave Preston’s Americana opus, Lost & Found, Paige Koehler “Sorry, I’m Late”, The Naked I They Got Thomas, Dapoolparty Hot Sands New albums include: A.J. Croce By Request, an all-covers album; the first single is “Ooh Child” originally a hit by the Five Stairsteps in 1970, Tom Geck and the After Party Trip West, The Go Heads The Suspect, Steve Nichols with The Guitar Sounds of…, Sometimes Julie with Where Are You New Videos include: Lele Rose – “Nothing Lasts Forever,” Kevin Begin & Tori Roze “All You’ve Known,”
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Stay Safe, Friends!
90
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VOL. 6 ISSUE 1 31
OF INTERESTED P R O S P E C TS
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52,000,000+ closed in 2020
$
When COVID hit in late winter, we prepared for a dramatic slowdown, when in reality the opposite happened. Do to the stay at home orders, and work from home people had to rethink their living situation. We quickly adjusted our focus and began repositioning our clients property holdings to cater to the new normal. Every day is still a challenge for so many people and we are here to help and council you through all your options. Give us a call today and let us put our knowledge and transaction experience to work for you.
Here are some of our closed sales in metro San Diego in 2020.
air, attached 2 car garage, side access for an RV/boat and a huge backyard for entertaining. The same family has owned the home since it was built and they have maintained and lovingly cared for it.
4155 Maryland St. San Diego, CA 92103 Sold 930,000 Msix; the latest & possibly most lasting word in Urban Mastery! Conceived in contemporary sensibilities, Msix is anchored in efficiencies for modern everyday living. Six detached homes offer inviting elements that have merged to create a seamless indoor outdoor experience. Msix is LEED certified and includes individually installed 3KW SOLAR power systems! Each home features an office alcove, 2 car garage w/ direct entry & spacious outdoor terrace.
4579 49th St. San Diego, CA 92115 Sold 765,000 Welcome to this absolute treasure in the gates of Talmadge with stunning luxury updates. This charming home features the original character combined with recently remodeled custom kitchen and bathrooms. This rare treasure features striking design elements like triple crown molding, marble counter tops, new dual pane windows, stainless steel appliances, modern high end hardware and finishes, tank-less water heater, smart thermostat, earthquake foundation supports & smart sprinkler system,
3970 Boone St. San Diego, CA 92117 Sold: 667,500 fall in love with this charming, single story home on an over-sized corner lot. Located in a quiet, low traffic BayHo neighborhood between Stevenson and Tecolote Canyon trails. Features include; freshly painted inside/out, custom built cabinets, original hardwood floors, newer roof and water heater, forced
2455 Dulzura Ave. San Diego, CA 92104 Sold: 1,050,000 located in the lovely quiet and charming neighborhood of Burlingame, North Park, this Craftsman style single story home is one of a kind. New renovations while still paying homage to this homes originality done throughout. Kitchen cabinetry upgrades, new interior/exterior paint, and carpet.
3553 Landis St. San Diego, CA 92104 Sold: 1,319,927 Can you say Cash Cow in the perfect pasture of North Park?! Excellent bread & butter units on huge lot w great off street parking (9), right in the heart of ever improving Cherokee Point (formerly known as North Park Wineglass). Two units just recently vacated so great opportunity to move to market rent. However, the projected listed here is based on current CA rent caps! Seller is NOT doing 1031 so no strings attached & can act quickly! Neighborhood is central & in solid mixed rental & Owner Occ market!
2019 “B” St. San Diego, CA 2102 Sold: 620,840 A beautiful 3 bed, 2 bath, steps to downtown & ready for immediate occupancy! Home comes complete from start to finish, fully equipped as a short term rental. Yup - even the dishes, TV, towels, & soap. So when the shutdown
is over, all you need to do is put up the open for business sign! OR it’s an ideal first starter home with perfect location access to everything, as all 4 directions lead you to great spots!
4855 39th St. San Diego, CA 92116 Sold: 810,000 Come home and experience the art of urban living! This residence has been upgraded throughout with exceptional thought & design invested in even the smallest details. The craftsman bungalow architecture immediately warms your heart as the curb appeal is off the charts. Located far north of Adams Ave, the home sits near the end of the street by a cul-de-sac. The floorplan offers excellent flexibility with open concept kitchen & dining, plus it features the grand master suite on the entry level
4624 Max Dr. San Diego, CA 92115 SOLD: 698,000 It truly is amazing to live in the heart of an exciting big city! However, what’s even better is when you can escape home each day, into an oasis hideaway, perched high above a canyon. Welcome home to Talmadge, an eclectic mix of architectural styles & connected community feel. This home’s understated entrance opens into an open concept warm & inviting interior. Remodeled & refined, the colors are whimsical, and the space intelligently laid out. The backyard terraces invite you to lounge & relax
3364 Boundary St. San Diego, CA 92104 Sold: 677,000 Don’t blink or this moment will pass you by! Storybook Spanish in the heart of
vibrant North Park. This home is ready for you to come in & expand on the wonderful potential. It features replaced windows, central heating system, refinished bathroom, installed closet organizers, alarm system installed & wired, replaced patio cover, landscaped irrigation system w controller and upgraded electrical panel & wiring. It’s now ready for ur design touches to bring it alive. Large backyard is perfect for expansion.
4004 Lark St. San Diego, CA 92103 Sold: 1,385,000 Exquisite and captivating; Community and gathering. This residence is desirable on so many different levels. The rich textures, the curb appeal, a sensational modern open concept floor plan, neighborhood unobstructed vistas over Mission Hills favorite park, newer construction and multiple entertainment verandas just begin to tell the story. The location is next to highly regarded Grant Elementary, Tennis courts a skip away, neighborhood dining a short stroll & summer concerts in sit down view
3687 Madison Ave, San Diego, CA 92116 Sold: 720,000 Welcome home to Normal Heights, a true jewel in San Diego’s central metroplex. Storybook drive up charm, exceptional location and fantastic floorplan makes this home one you will not want to miss out on. The residence is a perfect mixture of period details & charm, as well as excellent form and function. Enter and you get a wonderful feel of openness as the living & dining flow in and out of each other. The bedrooms are spacious, complete with walk in closets and ceiling fans (living room also).
3535 Madison Ave #217, San Diego, CA 92116 Sold: 350,000 Located in the heart of Normal Heights! Fully upgraded open concept, corner unit. New BOSCH appliances including washer/dryer, Cali Bamboo vinyl luxury flooring, recessed lighting, custom shutters, designer light fixtures, double pane sliding glass door, granite counters, ELFA shelves and much more! Big bedroom with 2 closets: walk-in + linen. Large covered patio with a huge storage closet. Complex features gated entry, exercise room, pool, spa & lush landscaped grounds
3930 Centre St. #303, San Diego, CA 92103 Sold: 542,000 Centre Park Terrace is a quiet, well-kept building amid all that Hillcrest has to offer - shopping, entertainment, eateries, bars and cafes, steps away from Hillcrest Farmers Market, close to SD Zoo & Balboa Park. Laminate floors throughout, Spacious Master with updated on-suite and sitting area with access to balcony. Generously sized guest bedroom. Updated guest bath. Large living area with balcony. Washer/ Dryer in unit. 2 Tandem parking spots with additional storage.
4572 Kansas St. #4, San Diego, CA 92116 Sold: 575,000 A seriously amazing townhome just steps to famed Adams Ave Antique Row & all the collections of bistros, pubs and shops of yesteryear...this floorplan rarely exists in this market segment. The 3 beds & 2 and a half baths provide amazing options for kids, guests, office or craft room. PLUS, parking, AC & w/d! The home is urban sophisticated: stylish & hip, offering function & a swagger of coolness
If you would like to learn more about different San Diego neighborhoods, listings, or our team, check out our brand new website www.KenPecusGroup.com.
Ken Pecus Realtor®
Metro Mission Hills Resident
(619) 977-8419
ken@kenpecus.com DRE# 01056969
Your Real Estate Experts in Kensington!
Kevin Eads Realtor®
Kensington Resident and Homeowner
(619) 512-7700
kevin@kevineads.com DRE# 01211241