Francis Parker Middle Schooler Excels
Plus: Cooking Classes in LV Community Park, LV Playwright's Play to be Performed, LV News Briefs, Empath Essentials at Farmers Market, and LVTC Monthly Meeting
Many adults look back on their middle school years as an awkward and anxious time that involved struggling with academics and navigating new social settings. However, we know of one middle school student in Linda Vista who is actually thriving in that environment—though only thirteen years old, he has strung together a list of impressive accomplishments that are worthy of someone much older. The list not only demonstrates his intelligence and creativity, but also his commitment to helping other people in need.
Arden Pala is an eighth grader at Francis Parker School (located at 6501 Linda Vista Road). Like many students his age, he enjoys spending his spare time shooting hoops on the basketball court, strumming his guitar, and playing video games with his friends. It’s what he does with the rest of his time that makes him a standout. For example, on that list of accomplishments is his success in starting a nonprofit organization called Sports4All that “provides opportunities for low-income youth to play sports, building physical and social skills that will serve them for a lifetime.” He started the nonprofit last year as a way to counter “budget cuts in public schools P.E. departments.” According to Pala’s Sports4All website, “a child’s involvement in sports is one of the most constructive outlets he or she can have during their childhood. In addition to skill-building, teamwork, and humility, it teaches valuable life lessons.” Sports4All is currently partnered with Perkins Elementary School in the San Diego Unified School District, and Pala hopes to eventually expand the program to other schools. He is looking for volunteers to help support his nonprofit’s efforts.
Also on this list is his unique literary accomplishment of writing and publishing three children’s book. The series of books—including the original The Adventures of Noah’s Flying Car through China, and the sequels The Adventures of Noah’s Flying Car through Turkey, and The Adventures of Noah’s Flying Car through Mexico—were started as a class project to raise money for the scholarship fund at Francis Parker School. All proceeds go to the Francis Parker Scholarship Fund. The three books are available on Amazon.
Finally, Pala’s list of accomplishments also includes his work as a documentary producer. He has produced an award winning short video titled A Second Chance, which addresses homelessness. The 10-minute video can be viewed here. Pala is especially concerned about the homeless situation in San Diego and what it will take to make the situation better. As he says “The next time you see someone homeless, try to think first about the person they are and then about the situation they are going through. I think if we all did this a bit more, we would create so much change and give people the hope they need to find help.”
Another of his videos focuses on the 50’s-60’s era Bracero program. As a child of immigrants, he was inspired to study the history of the government program that brought Mexican workers to the U.S. for employment.
Though he has plenty of time to prepare, the talented teen already sees himself following in the footsteps of his parents (founders of a bio tech company) and working in a business environment when he becomes an adult. And of course he sees himself continuing to assist others in need.
The Linda Vista Update salutes Arden Pala’s commitment to helping others and for being such a great role model for young people.
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Editor’s note: Last school year, the Linda Vista Update published a couple articles about Arden’s older brother—Kenan Pala—who proved himself as one of the country’s top high school cross country runners. Kenan is currently studying and running at Yale University.
By Means of Smoke Engages San Diego Residents
The well-known diversity of the Linda Vista community was on full display this past Saturday as one component of the City of San Diego’s Park Social program—the project titled By Means of Smoke—was conducted for numerous San Diego residents at Linda Vista Community Park. The Park Social program is a city-wide program that has been occurring over a six-month period in an attempt to offer socially-engaged artwork to all San Diego residents. The By Means of Smoke cooking classes were conceived by San Diego artist Brian Goeltzenleuchter ( a SDSU professor) and coordinated by New York City chef Tessa Liebman.
The level of social engagement definitely reached a high level this Saturday. The By Means of Smoke free cooking class sessions, held at the park’s Melinda Appling Memorial Pavilion, featured four local residents from different ethic backgrounds who shared recipes and cooking techniques with class attendees of all ages. Attendees who registered for the cooking classes were able to try their hand at using the recipes to make the dishes; and, best of all, they finished each class session by getting to taste their delicious creations. Ingredients and cooking utensils were provided for the attendees in order to facilitate the hands-on approach to the classes.
The four sessions ran consecutively from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm and consisted of:
Timtimo with Aster: This session explored Berbere Timtimo, a delicious staple in many Ethiopian and Eritrean home kitchens. Attendees learned how to integrate berbere into timtimo, a vegan dish of red lentils, caramelized onions, ginger and garlic.
Chicken Inasal with Amelia: In this session, attendees learned how to cook a popular marinated and grilled chicken dish from the Philippines.
Sumac Dusted Kabob with Maysaa: This dish, consisting of delicious ground beef and lamb, lamb fat, and citrusy red sumac, is a Middle Eastern favorite.
Michoacán Style Mole with Carmen: This traditional Mexican dish consists of a dark, thick sauce that includes a complex combination of dried chiles, spices, and nuts.
In preparing for this past Saturday, Goelzenleuchter solicited Linda Vista residents to volunteer their cooking skills and recipes. It was meant to be “a sensory-based socially engaged artwork that attempts to raise awareness and stimulate dialogue around cultural differences using olfactory traditions.” He elaborated on the success of the day’s activities by commenting, “I was pleased at how the day unfolded. My start as an artist was as a painter, and with a painting all this organization and action happens inside the four edges of the canvas. With the socially engaged artwork that took place at the Melinda Appling Memorial Pavilion, the Pavilion itself was the canvas under which all this action took place. It was a mix of choreography and chaos, listening and learning, meeting strangers and working as a group. And everyone co-created an object — a dish made from a recipe — that literally nourished them then and will hopefully do so on into the future.
This was one of 18 different Park Social projects being conducted throughout San Diego and sponsored by the City’s Arts and Culture Commission. This city-wide initiative was designed to “introduce social-specific public art into San Diego's vast and varied park system. Held for six months in 2022, Park Social engaged with a broad and constantly shifting audience of park goers, intervening and interacting in the social spheres of public parks and exploring topics ranging from environmental justice to belonging and social cohesion through responsive artistic projects.”
LV Resident’s Play Performed Next Week
Readers might grow a bit concerned to learn there is a lot of “drama” going on in Linda Vista these days, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Especially when the drama is associated with the theatre stage.
As we recently discovered, there is a Linda Vista resident who enjoys creating drama in Linda Vista and eventually bringing it to the stage here in San Diego and throughout the world. LV resident Janet Tiger, who has written over a hundred plays and had them performed in various theatres, will have her latest one-act play performed on October 29 (Saturday) and October 30 (Sunday) during the annual North Park Playwright Festival. The Festival will be held at the nearby North Park Vaudeville Theatre. The play is titled Yahrzeit. According to Tiger, the play is about a man who just lit the one-year Yartzheit candle for his mother, only to find a big surprise one morning (Yahrzeit means anniversary in the Yiddish language and is the anniversary date of someone's passing in the Jewish calendar). The play is one of 15 plays that will be performed as part of the Festival, which is currently running over three weekends in October.
Tiger is a veteran of the playwright world. A graduate of San Diego State University (majoring in Comparative Literature), she has written numerous plays, screenplays, and monologues and has spent time in Hollywood writing scripts. She wrote her first play in 1980, and has proven herself a prolific author ever since. In addition to many small local theatres, her plays have been performed in a wide variety of places, to include San Diego’s own Old Globe Theatre, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., and off-Broadway, as well as outside the U.S. in countries such as Canada, South Korea, South Africa, and Japan. Some of her plays have run continuously for a number of years.
Though she has written several full-length plays, she especially enjoys one-act plays because of their emphasis on dialogue. “I much prefer writing dialogue over describing the setting,” she says.
Regarding where she acquires inspiration for her many plays, Tiger explained that she draws her “inspiration from everywhere,” making her point by commenting that she wrote one play “after hearing about a dream someone told me.” She added that “You have to live” and “experience different things at different ages.” In terms of productions and writers who she has received inspiration from, she mentioned classic names and titles like Tennessee Williams and Raisin in the Sun, and current ones like Hamilton, and author David Seidler who won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (2010) for the movie The King’s Speech.
If you are interested in viewing Tiger’s latest one-act play production, instructions for purchasing tickets for either the October 29 or 30 shows at the North Park Playwright Festival can be obtained by clicking here.
LV News Update:
—Farmers Market: The Love, Linda Vista Farmers Market will be held today from 2:00 pm to 7:00 pm at the Linda Vista Plaza Shopping Center. More and more people are showing up for the market to buy their fresh fruits and veggies. They have also been coming to check out the numerous vendors selling delicious food and other products. The Farmers Market is a great place to meet and greet your fellow Linda Vista residents.
—Ulric Street Lights Back On: A stretch of 18 lights on Ulric Street (between Tait Street and Linda Vista Road) that had been out for an extended length of time were finally repaired last week. Local residents reporting this maintenance/safety issue on the City’s “Get It Done” app had grown frustrated with the length of time projected to resolve this problem. The Linda Vista Update first reported on this situation back in August. The lights were more recently the focus of a CBS8 news piece about the City’s “Get It Done” app. We extend a Linda Vista thanks to the City of San Diego “powers that be” for intervening and taking care of this issue.
—Time to Vote: Absentee ballots for the November 8 general statewide election were mailed last week to registered voters. The San Diego County’s Registrar of Voting Office has provided instructions for absentee voting, which you can read here. Additional voting instructions can be found at https://www.sdvote.com
Farmers Market Vendor
EMPATH ESSENTIALS
We’ve have done a fair amount of articles about Love, Linda Vista Farmers Market. We have showcased purveyors of fruits and veggies, and food vendors offering appetizers, main courses, salads, desserts, tea and coffee. I hope you have tried all of them. This past Thursday as I was walking around the Market I came across a booth called Empath Essentials. The name intrigued because I didn’t have a clue what an Empath is or what is essential to it. So I decided to speak with Rachel, the owner of Empath Essentials and got an education about both.
Rachel told me she is a fifth generation San Diegan and comes from a long line of “witchy women”. That really piqued my curiosity. Among the things she grew up with were smudging, crystal healing and candle magic which were normal practice. She also told me she was an empath. For those of you who do not know what an empath is, the definition of an empath is a person highly attuned to the feelings and emotions of those around them—they are people who have empathy for others and good intuition. Someone you might describe as a sensitive person. I am sure you know people like this in your life and maybe even would like to be more like them. According to my web search, empaths sometimes have trouble setting boundaries, so not only do they empathize with someone’s feelings, but go a step further and even sense and feel that person’s pain.
As Rachel identifies herself as an empath, she has developed a powerful group of products using organic ingredients and loaded with good energy to help protect empaths and their abilities – in other words, essentials.
Her booth is beautiful both to the eyes and other senses. It smells wonderful and Rachel and her miniature labradoodle Rosey, are sure to make you stop and spend some time absorbing all the sights and smells. Her products include essential oils that she creates herself and contain crystals infused into them. These come in sprays and rollers. She also has anxiety energy cleansing kits, and self-love cleansing oil products. The anti-anxiety products contain lavender and the self-love is jasmine and rose. They all smell wonderful. I bought the lavender and used it in my infuser. Lavender is very calming and using it in an infuser spreads the aroma around the house. She also creates very unusual and beautiful candles. She can talk with you and help you decide which products would produce the best energy for you, whether you are an empath or not. She also has a knowledge of astrology, so ask her about your astrological sign.
Stop by and see Rachel and Rosey. Tell Rachel you read about her in the Linda Vista Update. You will feel calmer and more relaxed after spending time in her booth. Also check out her website at www.empathessentials.com for all her products.
Sushi Yorimichi Featured at LVTC Monthly Meeting
The owners of Linda Vista’s popular Sushi Yorimichi—Sera and Fernando—served as the guest speakers at last night’s Linda Vista Town Council (LVTC) monthly general meeting. The meeting was held at the Baha’i Center, located in the Alcala Knolls neighborhood. At this meeting, Sera and Fernando detailed Sushi Yorimichi’s origins here in Linda Vista (opened in June 2021) and entertained meeting attendees with information regarding some of the restaurant’s most popular menu items.
Sushi Yorimichi is located at 2405 Ulric Street.
During the meeting, Linda Vista resident Victor Tocco was elected LVTC board president for the upcoming year.
The next LVTC general meeting will be held November 17.
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