By KAREN WILSON Palisadian-Post Intern Emeritus For Cindy Baer and Celeste Davis, it all started as a creative outlet. Family troubles had landed Davis, then 13, in a teen shelter, and Baer, who mentored her as part of the Big Sisters of Los Angeles program, suggested a fun project’crafting a short film about the girl’s struggles. ‘I wanted to give her something exciting in life… a reason to wake up every day,’ Baer says. ‘I believe creative outlets can save lives.’ Eventually, the project grew, culminating in the full-length feature ‘Purgatory House,’ which has screened at independent film fests around the country and, this Saturday, will land locally at the Pacific Palisades Film Festival. Featuring Jim Hanks (younger brother of Oscar-winning Palisadian Tom) and Disney Channel actor Johnny Pacar, ‘Purgatory’was penned entirely by Davis, now 14, who also headlines the film as a teen in crisis. Screening in the Palisades is a coming-home of sorts for the movie, which was filmed largely at Palisades Charter High School during the summer of 2001. ”Currently a resident of North Hollywood, the lively, vivacious Baer, speaking from home the day after her wedding, originally hails from Massachusetts, where at 14 she began acting and modeling. Those pursuits brought her to L.A., where she created Daizy the Clown and Company, a highly regarded children’s entertainment company; she is also a co-founder of the acclaimed Mosaic Theatre Company, with which she acts and directs. In 1997, Baer joined the Big Sisters of L.A., and was paired with young Davis. ‘Growing up I felt very alone, like there was no one there for me,’ she says.”And so when I got older I decided to find a little girl who needed someone, and be the support for her that I never had… Celeste liked to write, and I was an actress, and thus Big Sisters put us together.’ ”After convincing Davis to lengthen her ‘Purgatory’ script, Baer felt that, if produced, the movie could have a huge effect on teenage lives. ‘I felt like Celeste was speaking for a whole generation of kids who felt confused, lost and lonely in the same way she did,’ the director says. ‘Here was something about a teen’s life that was actually written by a teen.’I thought other kids would see this, and feel less alone. Also, I hoped that parents would see this, and have a better idea of what’s going on for teens today.” ”A labor of love, the film was made on a shoestring budget, with its novice writer/actress in the lead role. ‘I really wanted Celeste to be able to tell her own story,’ Baer says. ‘Meanwhile, we shot under the Screen Actors Guild’s limited exhibition agreement for low-budget films, and used Union actors for most of the main roles.’ Those actors included Hanks, Pacar and a gaggle of teenage newcomers. ‘It was really fun working with young actors who had not yet learned many bad habits,’ Baer laughs, adding that ‘most of our Union actors donated their pay back to the movie… and everything that wasn’t donated, I financed myself.’ ”In the end, ‘Purgatory’ was shot in 18 days at 26 locations, many of which were located at PaliHi. Initially, with the production’s start date nearing, Baer and her crew were having trouble finding a suitable school location. Associate producer Tracy Glodery, a PaliHi graduate, suggested her alma mater. ‘They came through for us,’ Baer says of the Pali administration. ‘I can’t imagine having used a different school. The place is just perfect.’ Cameras rolled on-campus in classrooms, bathrooms, stairwells’even the driveway. That footage was supplemented by over 200 visual effects, including, Baer says, blue and green screen composites, which took a year to complete. ‘Every single frame of the movie is digitally manipulated… it’s very exciting what you can do on home computers these days!’ ”Once finished, ‘Purgatory’ was released to independent film festivals across the country, and was recently nominated for a Prism Award, honoring films which accurately portray drug and alcohol use. National media outlets raved, including the Chicago Tribune, which said: ‘Like a passionately scribbled diary entry, this phantasmagoric tale brims with all the heartfelt spiritual bewilderment and deep thoughts that only a teenage girl would, or could, voice.’ Meanwhile, the levelheaded Davis is now a high school senior, and she and her mentor continue their friendship. ”Says Baer, ‘Film festivals are so much fun, and I hope everyone in the Palisades comes down to check out our movie… after screening at events around the country, and seeing how it’s touched people so deeply, I realized that this picture has more potential to heal people than I ever imagined. ‘Purgatory House’ is really about taking responsibility for our own attitudes towards life.’ ‘Purgatory House’ will screen at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 15 at the Pierson Playhouse, 941 Temescal Canyon Rd. Tickets are $7.

Three Palisadians were among the 16 students, out of 65,000 initial entries from California, whose work in the arts was sent to the PTA National Reflections contest. Students entered the PTA’s Reflections in four categories’literature, musical composition, photography, and visual arts’in four grade divisions, primary (preschool-grade 2), intermediate (grades 3-5), middle/junior (grades 6-8) and senior (grades 9-12). Sixteen exceptional California students not only received Awards of Excellence on the state level, but were sent on to the National Reflections program for judging in May. The three Palisadians are Zoe Arrastia-Prince, a third grader from Palisades Elementary; Taylor Savage, an eighth grader at Paul Revere Middle School; and Lucy Schwartz, a freshman at Palisades Charter High School. Their work was inspired by the 2004-2005 theme, ‘A Different Kind of Hero.’ All three were honored at the State PTA Convention in Sacramento on April 30. Zoe’s work, entitled ‘Breeze,’ won in the intermediate division, visual arts section. She took pictures of trees from New Zealand and the Palisades and cut them, then put them back together to form a collage tree. Zoe has participated every year in Reflections. Not only did she receive the award of excellence, which is the highest rating possible, but she was surprised when principal Tami Weiser announced to the entire student body during assembly that her work had been judged as one of the best on the state level and was being forwarded onto national judging. ”Taking the award of excellence in the middle/junior level in musical composition was Taylor Savage. He wrote a four-minute orchestral composition: a semi-patriotic piece titled ‘Eagle.’ He feels that an eagle would be a ‘Different Kind of Hero’ because it represents noble values. When he started to compose he was looking for instrumentation that would begin quietly and then get louder and more soaring and heroic. Taylor started playing the piano when he was 5 years old and took up the trumpet when he was 9. Currently, he’s in the Advanced Band at Paul Revere. Orchestra and band teachers Lara Jacques and Kristina Gee were so enthusiastic about Taylor’s entry that they had the school’s symphony orchestra rehearse and perform it, so it could be recorded for the National PTA Convention. ‘I wished to express and write my own music, not just play that of other composers,’ said Taylor, who added that when he sat down, he simply started writing and the piece came together. ”When Lucy Schwartz was in fourth grade at Palisades Elementary, her musical composition won the national Reflections contest. As a ninth grader at Palisades High School, she once again finds herself in the position where that might be possible. Lucy’s song ‘On Our Way’ was inspired by the characters in the movie ‘Chocolat.’ The wandering spirits and gypsies are searching and creating new beginnings, which embody human longing. It seemed to Lucy as if they were a ‘Different Kind of Hero.’ Lucy started piano lessons when she was 5 or 6, and credits her music teacher Kia Colton for teaching her to improvise on the piano. At a recital two years ago several of Kia’s students played the songs with lyrics they had written, and Lucy was so inspired that she went home and wrote her first song with lyrics. She hopes to pursue the arts after high school, either in music or theater. ”This isn’t the first time that students from the Palisades were recognized on a national level. In 2003, Sean Friar from Palisades High School was recognized as one of the top four in the nation for his musical composition ‘Signs of Courage: Departing Home.’

”As with all good scientists, archaeologist Dr. Virginia Popper’s stock and trade is asking questions. Even when she is showing schoolchildren though her lab in the basement of the Fowler Museum at UCLA, she asks the simple question that is always her baseline. What did you have to do with plants today? ”Popper’s specialization is paleoethnobotany, which means she’s fascinated by how prehistoric people used plants. Were they used for foods, fuel, medicine, exchange or fibers? Did certain plants mark status, such as chocolate among the elite in Aztec culture? How did the diets vary among distinct workers in Peru, where the fisherman, weavers and farmers consumed different foods. ”’Every aspect of life required plants,’ the Palisades resident says. ‘Ancient people spent a lot of time collecting plants.’ ”Popper is director of the paleoethnobotany lab at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, which is a research unit that promotes the comprehensive and interdisciplinary study of the human past. Established in 1973, the Institute houses laboratories for regional field research projects, presents public lecture programs, publications, and research seminars as well as field research grants to its members. The Institute also trains professional archaeologists through an interdisciplinary graduate degree program. ”Dr. Popper specializes mainly in the Americas. For her doctorate project she examined the development of the floating gardens of Xochimilco, or chinampas, the intricate agricultural system that fed Mexico’s ancient capital city. ”In California, she has studied the Presidio system, which not only served a defensive function to protect Spanish towns, ranches and friendly Indians, but also became a place where Native Americans came to settle, receive protection and get gifts of clothing, food and other items. ”In this project, contracted by the State of California, Popper examined plant material mostly from trash pits and hearths to learn more about the way of life at the time. Were the officers, for instance, eating different foods from the enlisted men? What sorts of foods were available, and what did the Native Americans eat? ”’We know that when the Presidios were established in the late 18th century, the soldiers imported beans, corn, peas, wheat and barley seeds, which they later cultivated in the area,’ Popper says. ‘They also planted vines, figs and peaches. The Natives Americans, who lived outside the presidio walls, continued with their traditional methods of collecting seeds and acorns in order to supplement their diets.’ ”When addressing these myriad questions, archaeologists collect, study and organize huge amounts of data which they then analyze in the lab. ”Under normal conditions of weathering and erosion, plant materials will decay, unless they have been ‘fixed’ by removing degradable organic compounds during the process of charring by wildfire. ”So pay dirt for Popper is found literally in the dirt. She calls her lab ‘the dirtiest of all.’ Indeed, much of the plant material she finds is hidden in dirt from excavations of one sort or another. Plant seeds have been discovered in storage pits, middens or burial sites. ”The day I visited, Palisadian Carolyn Perry, a volunteer with the Friends of Archaeology, was studying a small pile of charcoal under the microscope, and removing extraneous materials from the charred seeds’dirt, chaff and even a small white worm that had wiggled its way into the sample. Other days, she and other volunteers sort archaeological samples, enter data on the computer or help with the comparative collection. ”Popper’s lab is simple. A long work shelf runs along one wall with several microscopes in place. On the opposite wall, cabinets with long, shallow drawers store what appear to be different sizes and shapes of charcoal. Upon closer examination, recognizable items such as charred corncobs, corn kernels or juniper berries appear. ”Part of her process of identifying archaeological plant material involves comparing it with modern specimens. And she has collected several thousands of comparative types of seed and woods. To help with comparisons Popper used a low-tech method. She takes a modern sample’a corncob for example, wraps it in foil and roasts it on her home barbecue until it is charred. ”These comparisons help her to determine if the seed or grass is the same as the archeological plant, and thus assist in establishing moisture patterns, migrations, and trade. ”’The more specifically I can identify seeds, the more information I can glean. For example, I might find seeds in a desert that used to grow in a wet environment. What other clues can I discover about the site? I did some work on Santa Cruz Island and found evidence of California lilac, which a botanist had told me just doesn’t grow there, but it must have at one time because I had evidence.’ ”Popper’s enthusiasm for archaeology came early. Her father was a diplomat, which resulted in the family living overseas for a time. ”’I lived in Cyprus and went on a number of digs, but mostly studied ceramics and lithics (stone tools and projectiles),’ she says. While at Harvard University, she took a year off in Chile, where her parents were then posted. She worked on a project in the Atacama (the driest desert in the world) in Chile that excited her and focused her interest on plant remains. ‘I saw mummies, wrapped in fabric with corn cob adornments, and surrounded by baskets filled with mesquite pods, corn cobs and squash seeds. I was amazed, and went back to college and took an economic botany class called plants and human affairs. I realized that by studying plants I could learn how a culture existed, and how they marked cultural events such as contact with foreigners, or how people had to change through time as populations grew and were forced to come up with innovative ideas. I liked the questions I could ask.’ ”Graduating with a degree in anthropology, Popper went on to the University of Michigan for her Ph.D. She and her husband Greg Morgan came out to California in the early 1990s, and in 1992, she became a research associate at UCLA. She also teaches a lecture/lab seminar for the Institute where she covers theoretical issues and methodology. ”’Every archaeologist has things they like looking at,’ Popper says. ‘I like looking at different seeds. Micro remains like pollen are too small, I have to be able to turn something over.’ ”While she loves wrestling with the more complex questions, such as those presented by her work with the California missions, Popper says that the biggest challenge these days is finding research projects. The National Science Foundation has a very tight budget. ”’Archeologists are always scrounging for grants; it’s a fairly expensive kind of work and quite labor intensive. After all, there is really no faster way to study things than with a microscope.’ ”Currently she is working on a burial site dating from about 700 to 1400 A.D. in Palmdale, where she is trying to figure out what the plants were used for. ”When not burning plants, Popper enjoys growing them in her backyard in the Palisades. She and her husband have two children, Emily, a sophomore at Harvard, and Peter, a sophomore at New Roads. ”For those who are interested in the The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, the Friends of Archaeology is hosting an open house on Thursday, May 26 from 4 to 7:30 p.m. in the Fowler Building at UCLA. A lecture on the archaeology of music by Dr. Julia Sanchez will follow at 7:30 p.m. ”Guests will be able to see ongoing research in the labs from ceramics and paleoethnobotany to rock art and zooarchaeology and learn about the volunteer opportunities in all the labs.