Invited guests and dignitaries were given a preview of the new Howard Keck Center at the Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica on July 28.   Described as state-of-the-art and the ‘home of breakthrough medicine and inspired healing,’ the building, located on the site of the existing hospital between Santa Monica Boulevard and Arizona Avenue, will open in September.   The Keck Center and the Chan Soon-Shiong Center for Life Sciences building, which opened in 2005, replace the old St. John’s Hospital, which was badly damaged by the 1994 Northridge earthquake.   The ribbon-cutting ceremony was held in the Tarble Atrium, an entry point to the Keck building, which resembles a first-class hotel more than a traditional hospital.   The south side of the four-story building is flanked in windows, allowing sunlight to flood the first floor and the second floor balcony, where the food court is located.   The balcony space features a 16-ft. by 16-ft. digital media art wall that displays artwork from local and national artists and exhibits from local museums. The same images appear on large flat-screen monitors in outpatient waiting areas. On July 23, differing scenes filled the art wall, including one of flowers that provided a calm, meditative feeling.   On the fourth floor of the atrium, the stained-glass windows of the multi-faith Sister Marie Madeleine Shonka Chapel provide a colorful contrast to the neutral surrounding walls. The stained glass reflects the historical mission of the hospital, which has been a Santa Monica landmark for over 65 years.   A great deal of thought was given to positioning of medical services in the new hospital.   For example, the emergency room entrance (now located off Arizona Avenue) is adjacent to the diagnostic unit, and 13 state-of-the-art surgical suites are located directly above.   Each unit (e.g., orthopedic, (Continued on Page 3) surgery, oncology) has been designed for efficiency and patient convenience. Those services most needed by those patients have been clustered together so that patients won’t have to be transported to far points of the hospital.   Another noticeable difference from from many hospitals is the location of the nurses’ stations, which are located in the middle of each ward. Patients and nurses have immediate visual contact, which eliminates the inconvenience of hunting for a nurses station.   Each patient’s room has a TV system that features video-on-demand, e-mail, Internet and educational videos. In building the Keck addition, more than four feet of empty space was preserved between floors in order to accommodate an expanded technology system while also allowing easy access for repairs and future upgrades.   Many of the rooms resemble hotel guest rooms rather than hospital rooms. The birthing suites, for example, have windows with great views of the Santa Monica Mountains, and below the glass are built-in window seats that can double as a bed for a spouse. The philosophy was to provide a healing environment while offering comfortable accommodations.   On the birthing floor are two small operating rooms for Caesarean sections, a nursery and the postpartum unit.   Saint John’s opened on October 25, 1942 with 89 beds; the hospital’s two new buildings provide 236 private beds with the capability to expand to 268 beds. After the Northridge earthquake in 1994, Sister Marie Madeleine Shonka, co-chair of the legacy endowment at Saint John’s Health Center, received a call from the late businessman Howard Keck, who asked her what officials planned to do. He subsequently donated $5 million to start the planning process to rebuild the hospital. A year later, he gave an additional $5 million.   ’At that time there were some who questioned if we should rebuild,’ said William M. Murray, president and CEO of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health System. ‘They said there were already too many hospital beds [in the area].’ But St. John’s decided to forge ahead because of its commitment to a continuing partnership with the community.   On the 13th anniversary of the Northridge earthquake, billionaire biopharmaceutical executive Patrick Soon-Shiong and his wife Michele Chan donated $35 million to the rebuilding effort. Ultimately, more than $499 million was raised towards construction of the Howard Keck Center and the Chan Soon-Shiong Center.   The hospital’s foundation rests on 21 earthquake-absorbing base isolators, which will allow it to withstand large-scale earthquakes. The numerous windows, which allow light to flow into all of the rooms, are coated with special reflective coatings that offer UV protection.   Lou Lazatin, president and CEO of Saint John’s Health Center, told assembled guests, ‘This remarkable facility is a testament of triumph over adversity.’   Once the Keck Center opens in September, the south tower of St. John’s will be demolished and replaced with a garden. Sitting in the second-floor cafeteria during the reception following the ceremony, with sunlight streaming in, this reporter thought that keynote speaker Rick Caruso’s comment that the center will provide ‘inspired healing’ seemed exactly right.

‘We all have an opportunity to make a change for a healthier planet,’ Philippe Cousteau, chief ocean correspondent for Discovery’s Planet Green, told a crowd of reporters at a press conference last Wednesday at Will Rogers State Beach in Pacific Palisades.   ’Cigarette butts are the number-one debris on ocean beaches and second is plastic bags,’ said Cousteau, the grandson of legendary explorer Jacques Yves Cousteau.   That’s why Planet Green, a 24-hour eco-lifestyle television network, is launching a month-long campaign called Blue August to draw attention to the health of the world’s waters.   The network is kicking off a ‘Ban the Bags, Butts and Bottles Challenge!’ to encourage people to stop litter before it pollutes beaches. This weekend, reusable eco-tote bags will be distributed at the Santa Monica Pier.   Cousteau and his sister Alexandra are also hosting a month of television and online programming about every aspect of the world’s waters.   Online, people cannot only submit photos of ‘Beach Don’ts,’ capturing litter offenders, but also great beach moments. They can also enter a sweepstakes to win a solar backpack made from recycled soda bottles that collect energy throughout the day to power a laptop or other electronic gadget.   Cousteau, who founded EarthEcho International with his sister to provide ocean education, thinks it’s important that people become better stewards, especially in light of the dismal findings in the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)’s 19th annual beach report, which looks at water quality at beaches across the nation.   Planet Green has partnered with NRDC, and Noah Garrison and Michelle Mehta, attorneys with the NRDC’s water program based in Santa Monica, shared the report’s findings last Wednesday.   The report, ‘Testing the Waters: A Guide to Water Quality at Vacation Beaches,’ ranked California 22nd out of 30 coastal states for clean beach water quality and found that nine of the most polluted beaches are in Southern California.   To arrive at this conclusion, the NRDC used data submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency and collected by county health agencies in coastal counties, publicly owned sewage treatment plants, other dischargers along the coastal zone, environmental groups and numerous citizen-monitoring groups.   The NRDC looked at the percentage of samples that exceeded the state’s daily maximum bacterial standards. Santa Monica Beach at the Pier and Malibu Beach at Paradise Cove are among the worst, exceeding bacterial standards by 43 percent and 42 percent, respectively. The beach at Santa Monica Canyon also rated poorly, exceeding the standards by 31 percent.   ’That means that people need to research particular beaches before going [into the water],’ Garrison said, noting they can visit NRDC’s Web site at www.nrdc.org. Pollution can cause serious health problems such as pinkeye, nose and throat problems, stomach flu, hepatitis, respiratory ailments, skin rashes and neurological disorders.    ‘Will Rogers State Beach does pretty well over the year; there is not a lot of pollution in the water,’ NRDC Senior Press Secretary Jessica Lass told the Palisadian-Post, noting that it is one of the cleaner beaches.   Most of California’s beaches are monitored year-round, but some of the beaches in San Diego, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties were not monitored regularly this past year because of state budget cuts, Garrison said.   California had 4,133 beach closures or advisory days in 2008, a 13-percent decrease from 2007 and mostly the result of dry weather, Mehta said. Eighty-one percent of the closures and advisory days were from unknown sources of contamination, 3 percent from stormwater runoff, 9 percent from sewage spills and 6 percent from other sources of contamination. In general, the majority of pollution comes from overflowing sewage plants and septic systems and stormwater carrying trash and animal waste, Garrison said.   For the first time, the report examined how climate change affects beach water quality. ‘Climate change will make it more difficult to keep beaches clean,’ said Cara Horowitz, executive director of the Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA School of Law.   Temperature increases, perhaps accompanied by more frequent rainstorms, will lead to more stormwater runoff, sewer pollution and disease-causing pathogens in the waterways, said Horowitz, who encouraged people to support legislation that reduces greenhouse-gas emissions.   ’I grew up going to beaches like this one,’ she said, gesturing at Will Rogers. ‘A day at the beach should be carefree today and tomorrow.’   For more information about Blue August, visit planetgreen.discovery.com.

The Palisades Charter High School Board decided to cut another $116,000 from the school’s $22-million budget, adding to the $1.1 million already eliminated.   To meet state deadlines, the board passed a 2009-10 budget on June 9 that called for dipping into its $5.3-million reserve by about $840,000 and cutting consulting services, textbooks, professional development and facilities and technology expenditures, for a total of $1.1 million.   The board then asked PaliHi’s Budget and Finance Committee to find an additional $340,000 in savings because it did not want to dip into the $5.3-million reserve by more than $500,000.   In response, the committee proposed freezing field trips, cutting back on faculty conferences and reducing instructional materials for a total of $116,000, and the board approved those recommendations at a meeting on June 16, said Chief Business Officer Greg Wood.   ’We might be cutting back the extras, but we are not cutting into the staffing,’ Wood told the Palisadian-Post. Unlike the Los Angeles Unified School District, the independent charter school will not have to lay off any teachers or clerical staff.   The board also agreed to follow the committee’s suggestion to increase enrollment this fall in order to receive more money from the state. Schools are paid a certain amount per student based on their attendance rate.   If PaliHi can increase its average daily attendance (ADA) by 43 students from 2,587 students to 2,630, Wood estimates the school would receive an additional $196,058. PaliHi’s capacity is 2,760 students.   Executive Director Amy Dresser-Held told the Post that an increase of 43 students in ADA is not significant enough to have an impact on class size.   The combination of cuts and increased enrollment will mean that the school will not have to dip into the reserve by more than $500,000, Wood said. Since the June 9 board meeting, anticipated expenditures were not as high as expected, which resulted in about $28,000 worth of savings.   Wood estimates that the school will receive $6,119 per student from the state in 2009-10. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the state’s budget on July 28, but Wood had not yet heard what that means for PaliHi.   ’I am not expecting it to be worse than what is budgeted,’ Wood said, noting that the budget was built conservatively.   PaliHi’s board decided to increase ADA to generate more revenue for the school last year, and Wood said the administrators’ efforts were successful. The school ended the school year with 32 more students than in the 2007-08 year.   Director of Student Services Monica Iannessa said she has admitted more than 900 new students in all grades, including all those on the wait list, but not all of them have accepted their seats. Iannessa is also enrolling residents who recently moved into the area, which adds about 30 students.   The school is currently over capacity in projected enrollment, but Iannessa said not all the students accepted will attend and the numbers will also drop throughout the school year.

When she was a development executive for The Ladd Company (‘Braveheart’) and Lynda Obst Productions (‘Sleepless in Seattle’), Lisa Fielding got used to the long gestation period required to get movies made. Now, Fielding is applying the same tenacity and meticulousness that she exhibited in Hollywood to her new Pacific Palisades-based catering business, Secret Ingredients. ‘With cooking, it’s like falling in love with a story,’ Fielding says. ‘It’s an organic narrative. A great meal really is like the escape one gets going to a movie. Food has that potential.’ Four months into catering, Fielding is building a clientele devoted to her prowess in the kitchen.   ’Lisa cooks like an artist,’ says producer Wallis Nicita (‘Mermaids,’ ‘Six Days, Seven Nights’).   Laura Clark, a Mandeville Canyon resident, notes Fielding’s grilled shrimp pasta with roasted cherry tomato and orange confit: ‘I don’t even know what a ‘confit’ is, but it’s other-wordly.’ ‘I cook everything, from traditional American, authentic Mexican, country French and Italian, and East Indian,’ Fielding says. ‘But I am partial to Mediterranean flavors: halibut fillet, fragrant olive oil, sal de mer, heirloom tomatoes, burrata, and home-baked pissaladi’re.’ Professionally, Secret Ingredients represents Fielding’s second take at a food-related venture. From 2005’07, she intended to open Picnic, a Palisades gourmet food store. Fielding was no stranger to the waiting game, having attempted to produce a film based on the book ‘The Villa Golitsyn’ by Piers Paul Read for over two decades. Attached to Annette Bening and Jeremy Irons, the project ultimately fell part. Similarly, complications arose with Picnic. Fielding, fellow Palisadian Nancy Sanders, and Daniel Nolinger intended to open the shop at 1017 Swarthmore (now occupied by Madison). But Fielding had a falling out with Sanders, and a succession of new partners failed to bring Picnic to fruition. After upgrading the storefront and acquiring the necessary permits and trademarks, Fielding says she lost $170,000 in the ill-fated investment. ‘The store was supposed to be fun and exciting, but what a nightmare!’ she told the Palisadian-Post in 2007. Fortunately, Secret Ingredients is off to a smoother start. Fielding told the Post half-jokingly that she has already envisioned a reality show emerging from her adventures in catering. As she says, ‘Food is drama!’ On Monday evening this week, Fielding catered a dinner party for eight at a Paseo Miramar home with a breathtaking view of the Pacific, clear out to Catalina. As dusk filled the Palisades sky with an ice cream-swirl of orange and lavender, guests gathered at the dinner table, including Wendy Plumb, owner of the Cottage on Swarthmore; Palisades-based trainer J. J. Janda; Brentwood resident Lisa Chadwick; and Suzanne Barzman, daughter of screenwriter Ben Barzman (‘El Cid’). ‘When I was six years old, I pulled a step stool up to the counter where my grandmother was baking pies and rolled out my first pie crust!’ Fielding says. ‘My grandma Rodriguez, on my mother’s side, is Mexican, and there was always a fresh warm stack of homemade flour tortillas and chili on the kitchen table. But it was my mom who really set the bar for great meals. I would follow her around as she cooked while listening to Frank Sinatra and Chet Baker.’ ‘Her food is par excellence,’ says Fielding’s mother, Helen. ‘She also does the flower arrangements. And she bakes!’ Fielding’s peripatetic childhood exposed her to international cuisine as her late father’s job (in banking) meant growing up in Germany, Lebanon, and southern France before the family returned to her birthplace, San Francisco. She attended UCLA, where she double majored in sociology and pre-law before entering entertainment. Currently working on TV projects, Fielding believes that catering complements her screenwriting: ‘I finally have the time to pursue both of my passions.’ As Fielding served a tray of bruschetta on Monday, Barzman took partial credit for Secret Ingredients, recalling that ‘Lisa was at a crossroads in her life and I said, ‘You’re such a good cook, you need to do this professionally.” That crossroads included the breakup of a long-term relationship, which helped encourage Fielding to blaze a new path. ‘My cooking is organic,’ says Fielding, who frequents farmers’ market for fresh ingredients. Catering a recent West Hollywood party, she paired salmon in a honey glaze with roasted asparagus and a summer salad. Her repertoire of baked goods includes cupcakes and pumpkin cheesecake with a praline bottom crust. ‘I’m really lucky I get to bring so much joy to people through great food and companionship,’ Fielding says. ‘Life without either is rather colorless, don’t you think?’ Fielding opened Monday’s meal with a green salad with pancetta and lemon vinaigrette, accompanied by California ros’, before serving lasagna with a chicken rag’ and a white B’chamel sauce. By 9 p.m., the guests gathered around a table on the deck. As dessert was presented”peach-and-blueberry cobbler ‘ la mode, accompanied by mint tea and French-press chicory coffee”the full moon illuminated the ocean view, partly obscured by a middle-ground silhouette of palms and busy hillsides, that could have passed for Casablanca. A big believer in karma, Fielding places her faith in life’s ecosystem of positive energy. She has not given up on her retail dream and still holds the storefront’s lease: ‘If Picnic has a second chance, it will come through this.’