The Quake City Portal

QCP #033 | Christopher Renfro, Founder of the Two Eighty Project|The Way of Natural Winemaking and Re-imagining a Thriving Society

GUEST BIO
Christopher Renfro (instagram, additional links) is the founder of the Two Eighty Project, an organization "dedicated to building a sustainable food and wine community that nourishes every member of the local economy and ecosystem." It began with his love and curiosity for learning about wine and implementing his knowledge into a community farm visible from the Highway 280 Freeway heading out of San Francisco.
 
SHOW NOTES | MENTIONSSEG  1 - Castles and Finding True Freedom in the outdoors
 
Schweinfurt Military Base
"White Washed"
 
SEG 2 -  Financial Illiteracy, The Underlying Reality of Food Service, Ambitions for 280
 
the Food Service Industry and Humanity
Black Wallstreet
Tulsa Oaklahoma
Critical Race Theory
Think Tank
 
SEG 3 - Rethinking the Food Industry Models, Baselines of Comfort
 
Food Security in San Francisco
Feed the People Collective
Shared Cultures Miso
Co-op Businesses
Rethinking the Comfort Baseline
Homelessness, Youth, Elders
Episode Contains a clip from Contains a snippet from Good Morning America | Patagonia founder donates company to fight climate change, Sept. 15, 2022
 

QCP #032 | Pam Baker, Founder of the Women’s Coaching Alliance | How Women Can Mind the Gap in Leadership, and the Foundations of great Organizations

GUEST BIOPam Baker (womenscoachingalliance.org) is dedicated to empowering, encouraging, and developing more young women to become examples of leadership, rather than the exception, through coaching youth sports and giving back to the community.
With her own unique leadership, she founded the Women's Coaching Alliance, inspired and built upon the memory of her late husband Doug Friedman, who made his transition in 2020. 
Her aim for great leadership and work ethic brought her to places like Genentech and Johnson and Johnson, where she worked as district sales manager, project manager, and project director, as well as Vice President and CEO for several startups in the healthcare and investment sectors. She is a woman dedicated to "minding the gap," a British expression she likes to use that shows her willingness to explore the unfamiliar and help light the way for everyone, especially women and future leaders of the world. 
PART 1 - What is the Women's Coaching Alliance? | Exploring the Unfamiliar | Molding Leadership
Empowering women through leadership roles
Intentions
Personal History
Process | Corporate vs Startup
How coaching translates into the real world
PART 2 - The Power of Coaching and giving back to community
Conflict resolution
Career Paths as Jungle Gyms
Lou Holtz 3 Questions
PART 3 - Doug's Coaching Legacy  | What we learn from grief |
What we can learn from grief
What is the enviornment we're preparing for?
Pam's Favorite Leaders
Indra Nooyi, Pepsi Co.
Melinda Gates
Brene Brown
On aging
On happiness

QCP #031 | Karen Nani Apana, Ph.D. | The Questions We Live With, Higher Worlds, and How to Find Stillness in Biography Work

GUEST BIODr. Karen Apana is one of the founding members of the San Francisco Waldorf School – first founded in 1978. She has been a lifetime teacher, mentor, and student of Anthroposophy for over 40 years. For over 25 years, she has been teaching biography work and has a private practice for biography counseling in San Francisco. She also holds frequent biography workshops all over the Bay Area, and although she is now retired as a Waldorf teacher, she still mentors and advises teachers in the Bay Area and all over the globe.She was born and raised in San Francisco, and as you’ll find out in this conversation, she is a local, cosmic gem. In this conversation, you’ll learn about Anthroposophy and some of the philosophies behind Rudolph Steiner. She also offers a firsthand account of someone born into a generation of San Francisco coming into social consciousness during the 1960s, which eventually set the stage for many spiritual seekers, creators, activists, artists, and life enthusiasts today.
 
SHOW NOTES
Pt. 1 – Who is Karen Apana? and What is Anthroposophy? 
Rudolph Steiner
Waldorf Education – Youtube Link
Merchant Marine
Pt. 2 – What is Waldorf Education and Biography Work?
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
SF Waldorf School
SF State Student Strike
50 Year Anniversary Video
Roger Alvarado
Terry Collins
KPOO
Benny Stewart
Tom Ammiano
Education, connection and Biography work
Chengdu, China
Chinese Cultural Revolution
Thích Nhất Hạnh
Perception of Chaos
Pt. 3 – What Question are you living with?
The struggle of Western Mind
Individuation vs the tribe
Finding the baseline
Music Credit (Guitar): Katherine Delafkaran

QCP #030 | Chefs Matt Levin + Michael Greuel of The Refuge Restaurants | The Pathos of Pastrami, Survival Mode in the Food Service Industry

 
GUEST BIO
 
In 2008 Matt Levin, his wife Melanie, and his good friend Michael Greuel opened The Refuge Restaurant, home of some of the best pastrami sandwiches and burgers. At the time, The Refuge was a small restaurant focused on french wines, Belgian beers, and house-made, hand-sliced pastrami sandwiches. Since 2008 their popularity has exploded. Customers have waited up to four hours to sit and dine with them. Fifteen years later, they streamlined the process and opened up two more locations along the way, one in Menlo Park, and the other in San Mateo. They both have over 25 years of experience in the food service industry.
 
They both share their experiences running three restaurants during the pandemic and what they've learned from it.
 
NOTES | MENTIONS
 
Seg 1  - Catching up with Old Friends, Survival Mode in the Food Service Industry
Gastrosexual
15 years in business
Progress of the Restaurant and Food Service Economy
The Refuge Menu
Fine Dining vs Fast Food
Problems of maintaining consistency
The Bear
Standards of Skilled Food Labor
Food Truck Business Effects on Restaurants
Effects of Silicon Valley Work From Home on Surrounding Businesses
Raising Children in the Restaurant business
Seg 2 - Spiritual Growth after Pastrami
Matt's daily routine - first 3 steps of Recovery
Tellefin
Universal Trauma
Life in Recovery and Spirituality
Effects of Economy on the Food Business
Rising Food Costs
Marco Pierre White
Decision making processes
How to manage labor
Initial Vision of Success
Barcelona Teleferic
The Science of Popcorn
Seg 3 - Aging and Folly
Going to restaurants as a guest
The Egg
Doors of Perception William Blake
guided psychedelic retreats
The Funeral Industry
Funerals and weddings
Judaism Burial
The Funeral Industry Today
Terrence McKenna
How to Control Deja Vu
Rule 62
How to make more fun
Coco Melon
Seg 4 - Kids Will Save the World
Dumpling Pickups
Gao Viet Kitchen
Observations on human behavior from restaurant service experience
the industry of evil
Charcuterie
The Fatted Calf
Restaurant workers vs Yelp
Seg 5 -
What success means now
Modern Restaurant Ticket Machines
Matt's AA Recovery Wisdom
 
 
 

QCP #029 | Dan Griffiths, founder of The Church of Clown | Praising Folly, A Peek into the Toolshed and The Life of a Performance Artist

SAY HELLO TO DAN!Website: http://www.dangriffiths.us/Kapoot Clown Theatre Skit VideoHow Much - Created and Performed by Dan GriffithsDonut Goat at the Barber Shop
GUEST BIO
Dan Griffiths is a multi-talented, experimental performance artist, award-winning theatre director, teacher, and founder of the first Church of Clown in San Francisco. He founded the Clown Workshop, Clown Zero, and KAPOOT Clown theatre. Some of his recent gigs include teaching clown at The Wu Qiao International Circus Festival in Shijiazhuang, China. He also did work as a clown doctor and trainer for the Big Apple Circus and a director of CLOWN ZERO, a Medical Clowning Unit residence at the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital.
For almost 35 years, since 1988, he has performed original theatrical works across the country and around the world. He studied at the Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre and has served on the faculty Clown Conservatory San Francisco, The School for Mime Theater, Columbia College Chicago, Roosevelt University, Indiana University Northwest, and Academy of Art University. Dan holds an M.A. in Experimental Performance from New College of California and an M.F.A in Interdisciplinary Art from the California Institute of Integral Studies.
NOTES | MENTIONS
SEG 1
Church of Clown
How to start a church
Holy Fools Parade
St. Stupid's Day
Praise Folly
What is Folly?
What is the mission of the Church of Clown?
Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Satanic Church
Kenyan College
Marcel Marceau
Mime
Lon Chaney
Free Masons
Meyers Briggs Test
Clown Lab
Hopi Indians - Clown Culture
Kapoot
Sacha Baron Cohen
SEG 2
What type of people does clown/ theatre attract?
Teacher Compensation
Humanities
Observations on Waldorf Education
What is the mimetic realm
Why do people hate mime performance?
How to be more comfortable in performance?
Gastro Absurdo
Clown Conservatory
How to deal with a performance gone bad?
Taking the temperature of the room
SEG 3
Humor and Play as Tools
Soldiers in your cup 1:12:10
Teaching clowns in China
Role of Jesters in Medieval Times
The Joker, Dark Knight
The King of Comedy
Charles Dickens, First Scary Clown
Harlequin Clown
The Flow State of Clown Performance
Laughter - Henri Bergson
SEG 4
Kettle Chips
How to evaluate an experimental performance
Overcoming a failed performance
Accepting Foibles
Dan's follies
Being Inflexible
Difference between a lifelong  vs a day one performer
Times to be serious
Frederico Fellini
Greatest Joke Ever
SEG 5
The Multiverse
Waldorf Education, Why?
What is the purpose of clown college?
Cosmophilia
Maplethorpe Exhibit
Be easy on yourself

QCP #028 | Sophia Cassella, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Athlete | The Inner Game of Training, How to Optimize Mat Time, and Life as a Student-Athlete

GUEST BIO
Instagram | @sophiacassellabjj
Sophia Cassella is a 22-year-old brown belt from New Jersey, under Jason Rau. She's trained with some of the greatest minds that helped change the sport today in what some people call the renaissance of Jiu Jitsu.
She commutes hours and hours every day from New Jersey to New York to train with some coaches and grapplers in the sport who are considered to be the best to ever coach and compete - John Danaher, Gordon Ryan, Gary Tonon, Renzo Gracie, and all of the greats that drop in there to train.
 
To account for the amount of travel she had to do, she home-schooled herself throughout high school. She is currently studying in college while working and still finding the time to train and improve her game.
That is inspiring dedication to the art! And going back to truth, it is interesting that this path she took, even though unconventional, is happening during a time when many of our long-established institutions and conventional ways of thinking are being questioned and re-tooled.
Her competitive drive and work ethic have propelled her to be one of the rising stars in no-gi Jiu Jitsu. Best known for one of the fastest submissions in a women's match on Who's Number One. She is currently the Medusa EBI Strawweight Champion, a seasoned competitor, and a student of the game. She is determined to be the best, and how can you not be inspired by that kind of spirit?
Sophia has such a busy schedule. This conversation was recorded a few months ago as she had just finished up a whole day of working, studying, driving, and training and still was gracious enough to sit for a chat with us.
Training out of Vanguard Academy Jiu Jitsu in New York by way of New Jersey, please enjoy this episode about the mental game of training, the remarkable Sophia Cassella!

QCP 027 | Souhad A. Zaki, Food Economist | Understanding the State of Global Food Security

GUEST BIOSouhad Abou Zaki is a Curious Economist and a Rural Development Enthusiast. She is currently a Senior Admissions officer residing in Lebanon at Notre Dame University, Louaize. Souhad works as a Lecturer in Economics, teaching undergrad courses in Microeconomics, Managerial Economics, and International Economics. She is also a Research Consultant and Proposal Writer for Rural Entrepreneurs, helping conduct research on rural development-related topics, which include women's economic empowerment, food security, and social entrepreneurship. She holds a Degree in Economics from the American University of Beirut and a master's in Agricultural Economics and Development. She is currently pursuing another degree in food security.
SHOW NOTES
SEG 1
Lebanese Civil War
Food Crisis of 2007 - 2008
Food Security
World Food Waste Statistics
Intervention from other countries
SEG 2
Successes of her intervention work
Sri Lanka Food Security Crisis
Causes and Outlook of Increasing Food Security Crisis
What is food security?
How to create more food security as individual households
Hospitality as it leads to over abundance
Community Supportive Agriculture
Incompetence vs Optimism
Cronyism
SEG 3
How to encourage the youth to pursue agricultural entrepreneurship?
The state of the banking sector in Lebanon
Subsidies for Agriculture Sectors (Pros and Cons)
What is resilience?
Localism
Lebanese vs Filipino food
SEG 4
Food Policy
Poverty and Famines
The downside of over specialization
essential soft skills for the 21st century
Effective stress management techniques (snippet)
Essential Technical skills
cloud computing

QCP #026| Julie Rodgers, Buddhist Practitioner and Founder of TLC | Preparing for the End of Life, Working with Grief, and Dharma

GUEST BIOJulie Rogers is the Founder and Director of TLC Transitional Life Care, a Vajrayana Buddhist non-profit organization dedicated to the education and support of individuals and their families during the end-of-life transition. This program is centered in the SF Bay Area and southern Oregon, and is available online and via Zoom. She is a writer, author, mother, educator, and administrator, and has been a caregiver and hospice volunteer, as well as a Vajrayana (Tibetan) Buddhist for almost 40 years. 
Over twenty-five years ago, Julie was surrounded by a string of deaths. These were the deaths of her friends, many only in their thirties at the time. Years later, she experienced the death of her husband. The close succession of some of these deaths compelled her to ask why there wasn’t much information available to address the needs of families and individuals dealing with death.
With encouragement from her Buddhist teacher, Venerable Gyatrul Rinpoche, Julie Rogers later founded TLC Transitional Life Care in 2014. Years earlier, she had written a concise instructional manual about preparing for the moment that will eventually come for all of us – Instructions for the Transitional State, published by Vimala Treasures. To summarize, it aims to offer guidance through the dying process from a Buddhist perspective, but is intended for those of any persuasion. It also includes information about working with the secular aspects of documentation and paperwork, things that families are too often burdened with while in the process of grieving, but it’s focus is on how to offer compassionate care to the person dying. A checklist showing how to properly care for those who are dying is provided, as well as supportive material about how to hold space during the transition of a loved one, or anyone. In other words, the manual is condensed with valuable information that we often overlook until it’s too late.
So, since death is an inevitable part of life that causes us to picture the worst of our fears to the point we bottle them up until the very last moment, is there not anything we can do to help prepare ourselves for when that time does come? Is there anything we can do better to help each other grieve and process loss rather than avoid it altogether?     
We hope that conversations like this bring us closer to acceptance, and encourage us to feel less resistance when we do eventually transition out of our bodies and into whatever you believe is waiting to greet us in the afterlife. 
In speaking with Julie, she helped impart in me an affirmation of a belief that we can never be grateful enough. And to show that gratitude by giving and giving truthfully in alignment with our beliefs. 
I suggest listening to this episode with a loved one and encourage you to have conversations around the topic of death so that grief becomes less taboo, less of a thing to avoid in each other. And in doing so, we can help each other, in the words of the late Ram Dass, “walk each other home.”
Please enjoy this conversation with Julie Rogers. 
ESSENTIAL LINKS
TLC Transitional Life Care Website
TLC MANUAL
Vajrayana Buddhism
NOTES FROM THE SHOW
SEG 1
inner work
Tashi Choling Center
Friends Passed of Cancer in their 30s in span of 2 years
ORGYEN DORJE DEN
Gaytrul Rinpoche
Elizabeth Kubler Ross
Instructions for the Transitional state
Alternative Interment
green burial
Ed Bixby
Green Burial Council
Seth Vidal
Catholicism and Buddhism
Bodhicitta
SEG 2
How do we allow space for others to grow, while spreading awareness and raising consciousness
Meeting a Guru
Mount Shasta
https://www.npr.org/2015/06/07/412098380/a-mountain-of-many-legends-draws-spiritual-seekers-from-around-the-globe
Phowa
Natural Liberation – Book by Padmasambhava
SEG 3
Ritual Burial
Rosek and Ka
Youth Centric Culture
Ageism
Different Forms of Self Care
helping others through grief
SEG 4
Managing Relationships
David Meltzer
Marriage as a path to spiritual work
Differences between a meditator and someone that studies Buddhism with A guru
Practicing with intent to serve others
What is a dignified death?

QCP #025 | Jairus Ferrer, Agricultural Entrepreneur | How the Youth are Taking on the Food Crisis in the Philippines

GUEST BIO
Jairus Ferrer is a agricultural entreprenuer from Philippines. With family roots in Mindanao, the southernmost region of the Philippines, he decided to leave the congested, fast-paced city after thirteen years in favor of a more steady-paced, semi-rural, widely untapped area to get in touch with nature and get involved in economic development in rural communities.
When Jairus was a boy, his family's shrimp farm was affected by red tide. It was a devastating blow from which it could never recover. Feeling insecure about not knowing what to take up as a career, Jairus decided to take what he called a gap year after high school.
During this gap year, he and his father (my dad's twin brother) enrolled in a local organization that offered entrepreneurship intensives in the agricultural industry. There, Jairus learned the necessary skills, both on the farm and the business side, that led him to what he eventually aspires to do for Mindanao and all over the country. To bring back food security, develop infrastructure, and inject a youthful spirit into the once-mighty agriculture industry of the Philippines.
What was only supposed to be a four-month entrepreneurship education program turned into a five-year position with the same institution that taught him. After completing the course, Jai began working for the same institution to help train batches of the enrolling students. Then, with moral and extra financial support from the program, he traveled around the Philippines. A few years later, Jai co-founded Pronic Foods, a short-lived organic distribution start-up and later founded iFarms, Inc., an agri-tech corporation, a company which he is currently leading.
In this conversation, you'll find out about agricultural entrepreneurship in the Philippines, and what is currently in place to improve food security and distribution for a country in crisis that is in dire need to re-establish its once-independent reliance on the abundant farmers and farmlands that once comprised nearly 40% of the workforce of the philippines.
I invite you all to listen in on this conversation with one of the many people that is helping improve the food systems in the Philippines, who I am very grateful gave his time to share his experience, his enthusiasm, and his curious drive to push the boundaries of our agricultural heritage. - please enjoy this conversation with my cousin, my genetic half brother all the way from the Philippines in Mindanao - Jai Ferrer
SHOW NOTES
Segment 1
Getting your product to market
Growing  Chickens in the Philippines
"I started to realize that knowledge has evolved " - nature (SNIPS)]
Modernization vs nature (snip)
Life back in the province
Hustle Life in the US
Permaculture in the Philippines (snippets Here)
Bamboo Architecture
Food Security in the Philippines Outlook
The decline of farm life in the Philippines
Development in Rural Communities
Seg 2
Is there an agricultural youth movement in the Philippines?
Ticktock (ask to keep?)
Sparking agricultural activities
Reforesting the countryside (replenishing and replacing snippet)
Challenges of Rural Businesses
Typical day for an Agricultural Entrepreneur
Supporting Local (snip)
Agricultural Subsidies
Acceptance and Boundaries
Seg 3
Ancestry
Napoleon Hill
International Rice Research institute
Helping Communities that need more talent
Asking for help and advice
Waste Management
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
ARTICLES | Media ABOUT JAI
Manila Times Article | iFarms Brings Technology to Farming
The Agricultural Revolution in the Philippines
Youtube Video of Bamboo Agriculture Intensive
ADDITIONAL LINKS
Philippine Agriculture is Dying - Rappler Opinion Article
Biodynamic Farming
Israel's Innovative Agriculture
The State of Philippine Agriculture | Video Essay
What Happened to the Philippine Agriculture Industry? | Video Essay
Philippine Agriculture Facts
 

QCP #024 | Martin Jay Ruiz | Roll, Fall, Get Up: The Way of Wrestling and Skating

GUEST BIOMartin Jay Ruiz is someone that found his way on a skateboard and later on to the wrestling mat as a troubled youth. At an early age, he found the blank canvases of the skate deck and the wrestling mat to be the wide-open spaces that allowed his soul the room for infinite expansion. To this day, his heart never lost its passion for the two mediums.
He came from the streets of Santa Maria, California, pulled to the magnetic energy of San Francisco – a pilgrimage for skaters because of its steep, long, concrete hills that can send one bombing down a dance between weightlessness and death.
As a former collegiate wrestler for SF State, he became the wrestling coach for Lowell High School, one of the most prestigious public high schools in the United States. Under his tutelage, he’s coached both boys and girls to multiple state championships. Martin also coaches wrestling to adults at Fight Culture Gym in Daly City; he earned his Blue Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and is still an active competitor at thirty-three.
 
EPISODE NOTES
Segment 1
brush with a murderer
benefits of learning self-defense | Combat sports
working with a moving company
what you find inside other people’s homes
biggest takeaways from working at a moving company
Martin Bio + Background
Injury stories (ankle + leg)
boneless skate move
Bones Brigade
mental and physical recovery from injuries
Segment 2
Dealing with anxiety and depression through wrestling and skating
mental and physical support during injury
Injury Stories (shoulder)
Dolores Park Hill Bombing
GX 1000
High School Wrestling
Santa Maria Gangland
How Martin developed mental toughness
Chasing the flow state
Segment 3
undefeated as a senior
tournament stories
handling losses
Coach Lars Jensen, SF State Wrestling
Moving to SF | College Wrestling Career Experience
Mauricio Wright
Collegiate Wrestling Practice Structure
Segment 4
Collegiate vs High School Wrestling
How skateboarding helped mentally for wrestling
the power of repetition
the prototypical wrestling personality
Depletion in relation to stress and trauma
“cleansing yourself”
How to hold attention in the practice room
coaching high schoolers
Goal Structuring
Coaching a state champ
Segment 5
where did you learn how to restructure goals?
7 habits of highly effective people
the joys of coaching
anxiety and depression from childhood trauma
finding a therapist
Where does your work ethic come from?
intrinsic value, motivation
What is your coaching philosophy?
Differences between coaching boys and girls
How to coach someone who is unmotivated
Segment 6
how do you deal with when your best is not enough?
coaching strategy/ practice structure
Jiu Jitsu vs Wrestling Training
West Coast Wrestling
Evolution of wrestling
Fight Culture, Daly City
what is it like to bomb a hill in sf