By just surmounting the challenges of her meager childhood and persistent economic duress, Lia Margolis would have won an honored place in Mujeres de Conciencia (‘Women of Conscience’), author Victoria Alvarado’s celebration of 70 Latinas in California. But Margolis, a 39-year Pacific Palisades resident, rose beyond her difficult circumstances to become a leader in the delivery of healthcare in Los Angeles and a mentor for young Latinas who are pursuing their place in the community.   Alvarado’s elegant coffee-table book pairs a black-and-white photograph of each woman with a one-page biography. From novelist Isabel Allende to community physician Aliza Lifshitz, the author honors women whose common denominator is the impact of their collective work on the communities they serve.   A native Californian whose parents emigrated from Mexico and Central America, Alvarado focuses on Latinas whose knowledge and efforts have affected the well-being of communities in need. These women mirror the rich and varied ethnic backgrounds of the populace of Latin America. Some are the great great-grand-daughters of Mexicans who lived in the Southwest; others have roots in Central and South America and in the Caribbean. Many of these women forged their social conscience and values from personal and family experiences.   Such was the case for Lia Ordaz, who spent her early years living with her family at the Simons Brickyard in East L.A., the point of entry for many Latino immigrants. The brickyard, founded in 1905 by Walter Simons, was a self-contained immigrant community equipped with company stores, a church, school and even a post office, until it was closed in 1934.   It was there that Margolis attended school and church until her parents bought a small home in the City of Commerce. When she was nine, Margolis’s father moved to Arizona for health reasons, having suffered from silicosis, but leaving her mother and nine siblings to support the family.   ’All the kids went to work; there was no welfare in those days,’ Margolis recalls in an interview with the Palisadian-Post. ‘My mother continued her work with entertainer Gis’le MacKenzie, who had employed her first as a maid and nanny and eventually as her seamstress. My sisters and I would wake up early before school and make tortillas, which we sold in the neighborhood. We also crocheted and took in ironing.’ At 13, Margolis went to work, and it wasn’t until she was 21 that she completed her GED at night and applied to college, recalling her father’s belief in the value of education, even for women.   No doubt her recollections about the lack of healthcare for poor families like hers influenced Margolis’s chosen field. ‘When I was a child, there was no healthcare, we went to County General or the Ferris Clinic in East L.A.’ In 1973, while attending the University of Redlands, Margolis started working at a clerical job at the Los Angeles Health Department. It wasn’t long before the physician she was working for noticed her intelligence and willingness to learn. Soon she expanded her duties to full-charge bookkeeping and grant-writing, skills that have proved vital in her work today consulting with nonprofit organizations.   Margolis continued to earn a series of promotions from staff assistant in the emergency room to becoming the first female associate executive director of the L.A. County and USC Medical Center, one of the largest healthcare networks in the nation.   Twenty years of experience in the L.A. County Health Department provided an important component of Margolis’s successful work with nonprofit health clinics. In 1998, she started her own consulting business focusing on the most underserved as her clients. The Southside Coalition of Community Health Centers in South L.A. offers a prime example of her philosophy in working with nonprofits. ‘I wanted to help these seven clinics come together so they would make more of an impact and at the same time help them generate more interest in what they were doing,’ Margolis says. ‘Over the years, I worked almost for free. I remember receiving seven little checks, but eventually I helped them raise $2.8 million.’   For the California Medical Association Foundation, Margolis helped launch the group’s first big project’removing tobacco from the front counters in local pharmacies. The effort was a success, resulting in 85-percent participation throughout the state. Today, the foundation funds major programs in combating obesity and cervical cancer, as well as ongoing health and nutrition education.   Margolis believes that behavior changes when people from diverse populations with differing perspectives on a problem work together. ‘That’s how things happen, getting people talking together.’   Currently, Margolis is working on such an endeavor, designing a program to assist doctors in addressing women’s health issues. She is interviewing more than 50 women in positions of leadership in the health field to build a broad consensus”women such as Kim Belshe, Secretary, California Health and Human Services and Carmen Nevarez, M.D., a longtime champion of the public’s health and president of the American Public Health Association.   While she hasn’t finished her interviews, Margolis has discovered some major components to providing healthcare to underprivileged communities: overcoming difficulties in transportation, the lack of the patient’s educational understanding, and the central role women play in health decision-making. ‘There is also the distressing disconnection between physical and mental health,’ she says. ‘This is especially troubling in times of stress.’   The roots of Margolis’s altruism are easily traced to her parents. ‘My mother was a giving person. She’d give a pot of beans to another if they were in need. She sewed all our clothes, painted and instilled in us a sense of community: ‘Pay it forward.”   Ironically, Margolis lives in a family of men. Her husband, Ben, whom she calls ‘the most phenomenal man I’ve ever met,’ teaches law and ethics at the USC School of Pharmacy and serves as a judge pro tem for the Los Angeles County Superior Courts. Their son, Jonathan, graduated summa cum laude from USC, earned a law school scholarship, and is currently an aspiring screenwriter.   ’Women of Conscience,’ published by Floricanto Press, is available at Village Books on Swarthmore.

The general philosophy in Hollywood”a dog-eat-dog business”is that if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen. Well, David Latt can take the heat ‘ and he loves the kitchen! The TV producer, who has won an Emmy for ‘Hill Street Blues’ and was nominated as a producer of the pilot for ‘Twin Peaks,’ recently fell in love with writing. Not screenwriting, but writing a blog about food, of all things. At his official Web site”MenWhoLiketoCook.blogspot.com” (also as the URL guyswholiketocook.com) Latt has shared dozens of simple, gourmet recipes for everything from garlic-parsley chicken breasts and chicken soup to Italian sausage with tomatoes. He has also provided reviews of ‘fine dining, southern Rhode Island style,’ a round-up of the restaurants he tried in Providence. Latt”who lives in Pacific Palisades and is married to Michelle Satter, founding director of the feature film program at the Sundance Institute”is even a pioneer in the foodie blogosphere. He broke through the gender barrier when he became the first male embraced by TravelingMom.com. ‘I made the exception to what is otherwise an all-female network because David is a parent,’ Kim Orlando, who founded the popular Web site, tells the Palisadian-Post. ‘He understands a family’s palate, writes in a way that moms can relate to and creates recipes that are tasty and easy to prepare.’ The road to food blogging was a rambling one that began three years ago. ‘What I wanted to do is write a cookbook,’ Latt says over coffee at the local Starbucks. The cookbook deal didn’t come together, he says, ‘because I didn’t focus on one cuisine and I’m not a chef.’ Latt not only relishes fine ingredients, he delights in stretching said food across a few nights to make for tasty and healthy multiple meals. Latt explains how one can cook up a storm of roasted vegetables and roast chicken and reconfigure them to create a chicken-and- vegetables entree, a spaghetti topping, and a hearty soup with some ramen added to it. But wait, there’s more! Put those same chicken-and-vegetable bits into a bowl with whole-wheat couscous, add boiling water and olive oil, cover it, add the chopped veggies, toss it around, then add avocado and grilled shrimp, and ‘you have the most delicious salad,’ he says. ‘The trick is you have four different meals and you just cut down your budget by 80 percent.’ Latt also recycles liquid from tomatoes roasted at 350 degrees as a salad dressing. ‘One of the things my mother did was doggy-bag food,’ he says. ‘This was the basis of a next dish. [As a result] I never leave food at a restaurant. I bring home the leftover bread and I’ll make croutons or bread pudding.’ During the 2007-08 Writers Guild of America contract dispute, Latt not only became active on the picket line as a strike captain but he also began blogging his thoughts on UnitedHollywood.com. ‘We would not be reporters as much as opinion-gatherers,’ says Latt, who became smitten with the immediacy of writing online. ‘What I discovered is if you don’t like it, you can rewrite it. I now know the truth about blogs: once you start one, you can’t stop. Knock on wood, you have an audience. So I look for opportunities to write for other sites and drive traffic back to my own site.’ Among the sites he’s contributed to: PeterGreenberg.com, NYDailyNews.com, Zesterdaily.com, and Mark Bittman’s New York Times blog. But MenWhoLiketoCook.com is his bread and butter, so to speak. So what does Latt enjoy most about airing his epicurean opinions online? ‘This is going to sound sappy, but you become part of a community,’ he says. As for his physical community, ‘L.A. is a great place to learn about food and culture. My style is more Italian than anything else.’ But as a consumer, he adores Asian food, particularly Vietnamese ‘ thanks to his Jewish mother. Edna Latt had lived in what is now Laguna Woods Village for 20 years. ‘When I would visit her, I would fill her freezer with food I’d cooked so she’d have home-cooked meals,’ Latt recalled. ‘We’d also bring her to Westminster or Little Saigon and have Vietnamese food. She loved the salt-and-pepper lobster, the barbecue pork with vermicelli, and the lemon-grass chicken. Even though she was 4’10’ and weighed 100 pounds, she could out-eat all of us.’ Edna passed away in 2006. ‘Now,’ Latt says, ‘I fill the freezer for my 25-year-old son, who works long hours [as an assistant to an agent at Creative Artists Agency] and doesn’t have time to cook.’ Latt shops for fresh ingredients at the local Gelson’s and the farmers’ markets in the Palisades and Santa Monica. Among his favorite restaurants on the Westside are Il Fornaio in Santa Monica, and the Mitsuwa Marketplace on Centinela. He also digs Koreatown. As far as cities for fine dining, San Francisco is home to his favorite hamburger (Red’s Java House) and the Vietnamese eatery The Slanted Door at the Ferry Building. He finds that ‘Houston is interesting,’ but his favorite is Seattle (‘They’ve got some really good chefs there’). ‘My mother started me cooking,’ Latt continues. ‘She gave me the job of peeling the tongue. It was a Jewish home in the ’50s. You know, making chopped liver, brisket. That East Coast, Eastern European Jewish cooking.’ Born in Beverly Hills, David Latt grew up in Westwood and Baldwin Hills. His father worked in the garment business. Latt attended UCLA, where he did his undergrad work and earned his Ph.d in English. In addition to his Emmy-heralded work, Latt has produced ‘EZ Streets’ with Paul Haggis (director of ‘Crash’) and ‘Citizen Baines” with John Wells (the ‘ER’ showrunner currently producing the critically acclaimed ‘Southland’). He’s currently developing a series with director Dean Parisot (‘Galaxy Quest’). Latt’s introduction to working in the entertainment industry came courtesy of Roger Corman. ‘It was just chaos, but it was great,’ Latt says. ‘Roger was the Sundance before there was a Sundance. He gave you the shot. ‘I was teaching English and Film classes at Rhode Island College in Providence when I got a grant to come back to Los Angeles to do research at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library on the co-founder of the Quaker movement, Margaret Fell Fox. Teaching film classes, I knew about film theory, but I didn’t know anything about how films were actually made so when I was in Los Angeles, I set up a meeting with Roger Corman (king of the B-movies). My question to Roger was very simple: ‘How are movies made?” ‘Two days later, he called to say I could be the location manager on a feature being shot in southern Oklahoma, a period piece about a disaffected World War I veteran who makes his living competing in motorcycle races. The movie stared David Carradine and Brenda Vaccaro. I had no idea what a location manager did. Roger said, ‘They don’t do much.’ ‘So after getting my pick up truck serviced, off I went to Oklahoma, except the mechanic apparently hadn’t put back all the hoses and the engine blew up going up the Grapevine. A call to Roger to tell him that I couldn’t go to Oklahoma got a quick response that I was to take the next plane to Oklahoma City and meet up with the film commissioner and get started finding locations. Later, I found out that Roger had hired me because of my pick-up truck. ‘At some point in our first conversation, I had mentioned that I had a truck and Roger figured that he was paying me so little, it was cheaper to hire me and my pick up than it was to rent a truck on the location. ‘The experience was terrific although the production was a nightmare,’ Latt continues. ‘The tensions on the set were horrible. The director hated everyone. The director of photography warned the director that if he caught him outside after dark, he’d shoot him. Carradine’s dog wreaked havoc in the motel. The producer disappeared because he only took the job because he wanted to buy horses for his ranch. For me, the dysfunction was the best possible teacher. I learned how to produce on that shoot.’ A few years later, Latt got his first job in television because he was a waiter at a catered dinner for Bruce Dern’s wife. ‘The dinner was Moroccan themed so I was dressed in funny pants,’ Latt recalls. ‘I overheard one guest say he was a producer so I asked him if I could call the next day to get advice about how to become a producer. He was nice enough to introduce me to the head of personnel at Tandem Productions (Norman Lear’s company).’ When the executive learned that Latt typed 100 words per minute, she hired him to be a writer’s assistant to Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskopf, two writers on ‘All in the Family.’ A TV career was born. For 30 years, Latt has lived in Pacific Palisades. With Satter, he has two children, both graduates of Palisades High: Franklin, at CAA’s motion picture talent department, and son Michael, a UC Davis sophomore. ‘Women like men who like to cook,’ he says, ‘and that went over well while dating.’ And in his marriage, too. Michelle lets David dominate the kitchen. ‘The truth is,’ Latt says, ‘if you have someone do it for you, why wouldn’t you?’

Scaled down but still offering cinematic sizzle, the 7th Annual Pacific Palisades’Film Festival’returns to town for two nights next week. On Thursday, May 13, at 6:30 p.m., Friends Of Film (FOF) kicks off the festival with’an ocean-view, backyard cocktail party/ screening at the Corona del Mar home of Nora and Harvey Lerer, where actress Frances Fisher (‘Titanic’) will be presented with the FOF Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to Fisher (a former Palisadian), Lifetime Achievement Award winners have included Dom DeLuise, Robert Guillaume, Seymour Cassel, and Stacy Keach in years past. The opening night film is the humorous documentary ‘Greenlit,’ directed by’Miranda Bailey, executive producer of ‘The Squid and the Whale.’ ‘Greenlit’ tests Hollywood’s commitment to the environment as Bailey follows the production of ‘The River Why’ as the movie’s crew attempts to keep an environmentally friendly set. On Saturday, May 15, a cocktail party at the Toyopa home of Paul and Irene Gigg begins at 6:30 p.m. with a screening of ‘The Chris Montez Story’ by local filmmakers Burt Kearns and Brett Hudson. The documentary, their follow-up to ‘The Seventh Python’ [last year’s festival opener], centers on the musician born Ezekiel Montanez, who, as a teen, recorded the international hit ‘Let’s Dance.’ His tunes, which include ‘Call Me’ and ‘The More I See You,’ were covered by Frank Sinatra and the Ramones, and Montez famously got into a fistfight with John Lennon. Last week, FOF founder Bob Sharka rapped with the Palisadian-Post about this year’s festival. POST: How did you decide on this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award recipient? SHARKA: Frances Fisher is truly one of the classiest actresses working today. She has (and still enjoys) a wonderful career, having worked with some of Hollywood’s biggest names: Ben Kingsley, Tommy Lee Jones, Leonardo DiCaprio, Paul Haggis, James Cameron, Clint Eastwood [with whom Fisher was once romantically linked]. She’s also quite an activist, donating her time and resources to numerous local and national issues. She is the epitome of what our Lifetime Achievement Award represents. We’re so proud of her accomplishments, both on and off screen. POST: Any highlights or challenges particular to this year’s festival? SHARKA: It’s no secret that times are tough, particularly for nonprofits, so we had to scale back on the quantity of films this year, as we really couldn’t get the [Pierson Playhouse] other than Oscar weekend. So we had to get creative and reinvent ourselves, if you will. Just as I was about to put the festival on a year’s hiatus, I figured we’d try something different. We asked local families to offer their own private homes. Nora and Harvey Lerer and Irene and Paul Gigg stepped up. Most people enjoy a great party. We’re offering a couple of great films, too! POST: How do you feel about the myriad film festivals in California? SHARKA: It’s a mixed bag. On one hand, there’s more opportunities for filmmakers to get into festivals and show their work. On the other, the festival circuit is a victim of its own success. There’s just so many festivals competing for the same sponsors, sometimes the same films, and the festivals simply don’t last. That’s why local support is so important. It’s our lifeline. We are still working on bringing a screening room to the Palisades for year-round programming, to bring some more culture to this wonderful town. POST: How important are our local festivals to the health and survival of filmmaking as a craft, given the current climate in Hollywood (big-budget 3-D blockbusters, the shuttering of independent film distributors, etc.)? SHARKA: The small guy has always had a tough time. The festivals still remain one of the few avenues for an independent film to break out, to take the message to the masses. And they are still doing that. Any decent town with educated people knows the importance of the arts in general. The Palisades is no exception. People are looking to FOF”and its unique programming”to fill the void. We’re remaking progress.   Tickets: $100 (includes both nights of outdoor screenings/parties). Visit FriendsOfFilm.com.

The world premiere of Wendy Graf’s newest work, ‘Behind the Gates,’ directed by David Gautreaux, opens on May 15 at the Lee Strasberg Creative Center, 7936 Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood.   In Graf’s mystery, 17-year old Bethany (Annika Marks) disappears while on a school trip to Israel.’As her parents (Keliher Walsh and James Eckhouse) feverishly search throughout Jerusalem for their daughter, they find themselves lost in an alien world where ancient and modern collide, conflicting cultures and politics clash, and extreme orthodoxies and passionate feelings of nationalism try to coexist while growing more volatile with each passing day.   ’My play asks questions about orthodoxy, whether it be Muslim, Catholic, Evangelical or Jewish,’ explains Graf, a Pacific Palisades resident. ‘This is a story we’re reading in the news every day.’Religious fundamentalism provides a sense of community that can prove powerfully attractive to young people.’   Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben of Kehillat Israel notes, ‘The play asks questions, but isn’t Jewish tradition based on questions? ‘The beauty of Wendy’s work is that she presents both sides, then asks the audience to open up a dialogue and think.’   The Levantine Cultural Center, whose mission is to promote a greater understanding of the Middle East and North Africa by presenting artistic and educational programs that bridge political and religious divides, will sponsor two discussions about the issues explored in ‘Behind the Gates’ as part of its ‘Identity Politics and the Middle East’ series.   Immediately following the matinee on Sunday, May 23, a panel of scholars will discuss the role of women in conservative religion.’   A second panel, on Sunday, June 6, will explore the many faces of Israel, the country of constant contradictions revealed in Graf’s play: both old and new, orthodox and liberal, uncompromising and transcendent, a haven for some and occupation for others.   Graf is a multi-award-winning playwright whose most recent plays include ‘Lessons’ (directed by Gordon Davidson), ‘Leipzig’ and ‘The Book of Esther.’   Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m., through July 3.’There will be three low-priced previews on May 12, 13 and 14, all at 8 p.m.’General admission is $25, except opening night (May 15), which is $30 and includes a gala reception following the performance, and previews ($12.50). Contact: 323-960-5772 or go to www.Plays411.com/Gates.

Tag Galley presents new works by Diane Rudnick Mann, Valerie Nielsen Mendez and Joan Vaupen through May 22. The opening reception is set for May 8 at the gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave., D3, at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. ‘ Mann offers meticulously rendered still-life paintings of pencils, jellybeans, pimiento-stuffed olives and rusty old keys. ‘I like to paint everyday objects, something you would walk by and never notice,’ she explains.’ Painter and innovative artist Mendez worked in mixed media, producing images that are both obscured and revealing. The Pacific Palisades resident passed away on March 15 at the age of 62 while finishing her last pieces for this exhibit. The show features two forms of’Mendez’s artistic interpretation of contemplative communication. One is her traditional use of Plexiglas, and the other is her recent exploration of layers on canvas sans Plexi.’Her piece ‘Clear Signs of Life’ maintains the visual idea of layers through the use of circles.   In Vaupen’s new experimental work,’the Palisadian continues pouring and’dropping watercolor and acrylic paint in and around the surface of paper, moving it with her hands and fingers.   Contact: 310-829-9556.