March 2022 - The Quake City Portal

QCP #018 | Franco Soriano, Ultra Runner | The Hundred Mile High and Lucky Survival Stories

LISTEN HERE
Spotify
Apple Podcasts
Amazon Music
Google Podcasts
And most major platforms

GUEST BIO

Franco Soriano is a Filipino American ultra runner. He started running ten years ago at the age of 40 and gravitated towards the adventure of ultra running. He runs for the love of it. As much as I wanted to uncover a story about grit and willpower, this conversation showed me that sometimes it just takes a stoic mindset, careful planning, and taking it easy to develop mental toughness. It’s all about the enjoyment and high you get when you cross the finish line. And then it’s on to the next.

I first met Franco searching for a community of Filipino Runners. As someone that loves to get out and run on the trail, I quickly saw that most trail runners are not people of color. For something so simple that brought beauty and self-actualization into my life, I couldn’t help but ask myself, why is that? Is it because we just haven’t been exposed? Is it conditioning to prioritize other things?

SOME OF FRANCO’S NOTABLE RACES

Tahoe Rim Trail 100
Hurt 100
Western States 100
Bad Water 135 miler
Leadville
Mt Whitney Summit (14k Elevation)
SF Northface Endurance Challenge – 50 miles

QCP #017 | Tom Brown III | How Reconnecting with Nature Teaches Resilience, Self-Reliance, and Awareness

LISTEN HERE
Spotify
Apple Podcasts
Amazon Music
Google Podcasts
And most major platforms

YOUTUBE STREAM here.

GUEST BIO

Tom Brown III is the founder of FutureNature and T3Photography. He is a lifelong practitioner and living guide of ancestral skills, a frequent contributor, and a consultant to the Anchored Outdoors network. He is a lifelong practitioner of ancestral skills under his father Tom Brown Jr. – prolific author and Founder of Tracker Wilderness Survival School.

Tom has devoted his life to passing on his knowledge of these skills. He works diligently as an educator, a steward of the land, to help return the connection to the natural world and awareness back to our wild selves.

He joins us from his homestead in Oregon by Mount Hood – his home base for sharing his knowledge and experience through teaching, writing, and photography. He hopes to, in his words, “help people see Nature through his eyes, leading them to understand that spectacular natural beauty can be found anywhere, no matter where you may be.”

I believe that our ability to be resilient is not gone; it’s simply re-awakening what we already have innately in us through the examples of how our ancestors lived and what people like Tom bring to light. To recognize our abundance, that we do have it all, and that there is always much to learn about our home here on earth and how to undo our distractions, even if only a little bit, to become better stewards of the land.

It was an honor to sit with Tom III and listen intently as he shared his passion for learning and sharing some of the knowledge passed on to him by his father, Tom Brown Jr., and his grandfather, Stalking Wolf, who taught his father. And it was also great to hear some perspective from someone who, through his lifetime devotion to a life outdoors and educating others to find their own way in life, figures out ways of balancing both modern and primitive aspects of our human experience.

NOTES | MENTIONS

TOM BROWN III LINKS AND MORE INFORMATION

Find Tom’s work and class schedules here https://www.tombrown3.com/
Tom demos the Proper way to walk in Nature
The Tracker School
Tom’s Trusted Organizations for Further Education

QCP #16| Stephanie Balon, MA, AMFT |Decoding The Filipino American Experience

Listen Here
Apple Podcasts
Amazon Music
Google Podcasts

“No history, no self.
Know history, know self.”
-Jose Rizal

Many of us don’t know about the trauma that our parents harbor. As children of parents that immigrated to the United States, the same trauma they harbor could be passed on to us, and manifested in different ways.

Some of us might have these questions like –

Who am I?

Why do we speak this way?

Why do I not know anything about you, our grandparents, or relatives?

Why is it hard to approach my parents with these questions?

GUEST BIO

Our next guest, Stephanie Balon has taken the first giant steps to help answer these questions, and the countless others we have faced for generations. The idea of providing space, even if only for conversation, might provide a way to heal our forgotten, indigenous, colonialized ways of living – of being together in community. Or as we say in our native language – in Kapwa.

Stephanie Balon is a mental health clinician, an expressive arts therapist with a focus on trauma-informed care, narrative and cultural therapeutic approaches. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from the University of Washington and a Master’s in Counseling Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.

With over 15 years in the non-profit sector, and her work as an activist, she helped raise awareness for the Filipina/o/x Community. As a co-chair for the Filipino Mental Health Initiative of San Mateo County, she has received recognition for her community activism from District 5 supervisor, David Canepa. For congresswoman Jackie Speier, she served on the Asian American Advisory Committee to devise strategies for community engagement. Stephanie also helped raise over two and a half million dollars with the intention to co-found the first Filipino Cultural Center in San Mateo county that aims to provide mental health and wellness services for the Filipino Community.

NOTES | MENTIONS | ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

QCP #015 | The New Filipino American Folk Tales of Daly City Vol. 2 | Tudor Atienza

Listen on:
Apple Podcasts
Amazon Music
Google Podcasts
And most major podcast platforms

A mushroom cloud – like the ones we would hopefully never have to see from a distance after a volcanic eruption or a nuclear explosion, is caused by the process scientifically described in the Rayleigh-Taylor Instability (RTI).

I don’t intend and am highly unqualified to describe in scientific detail what happens during an RTI. But my understanding (based on what I’ve found on the interwebs) uses the everyday example of what you see when trying to mix oil and water.

QCP #014 | Ivan C Lopez – Artist, Ceramicist + Muralist | Healing Through Creativity, Plant Medicine, And Listening To The Universe

Apple Podcasts
Amazon Music
Google Podcasts

GUEST BIO
Ivan C Lopez is an artist from San Francisco by way of Columbia. He co-founded and helped build Artillery Art Gallery – a creative community space in the heart of the Mission. His passion to provide space for community inspires others to find what has been explorative and healing for him. Through ceramics and painting, Ivan hopes to bring balance; within a connection to the natural world alongside the concrete walls of the city.

I wanted to speak with Ivan because he connects this idea of the modern human being returning to our wild selves by communing with our indigenous selves. Not only through embracing creativity, but through encouraging and teaching others to pick up a brush to play with colors. Or taking a lump of clay and sitting at a table to be creative together. In this way, we embrace our childlike curiosity to explore and meditate upon the infinite ways of knowing ourselves, just in the same way we were created from virtually nothing.

In this conversation, Ivan shares his creative process, his journey in his lifetime exploration of art, self-discovery, and community.

Please enjoy this stream of consciousness conversation beneath a canopy of redwood trees in McClaren Park San Francisco, on Ohlone Rammaytus land – with the artist, the wild human, the mindfully grounded, Ivan Camilo Lopez.

Ivan’s Instagram: @ivanclopez
Artillery Art Gallery
Ivan’s Art here.

SHOW NOTES

QCP #012 | Why do we collect things? | Chino, The Sneaker King of the North

LINKS TO COMPLETE EPISODE

Amazon
Apple Podcasts
Stitcher

GUEST BIO

What is it about our collections that take up spaces in our lives?

Meet Chino – The owner of the largest sneaker collection I’ve ever seen.

He comes all the way to us from Edmonton, Canada by way of the Philippines. He’s a loving husband, father of two boys, a working man who does whatever it takes to make an honest living to care for his family.

A few years ago, I had the chance to see in person an entire storage basement full of sneakers, jerseys, and sports memorabilia. And after having this conversation, it reminded me of the importance of culture, no matter what form it takes, in helping us come together, and integrate with the world around us.

Check out our smoked brisket Youtube Episode.

NOTES | MENTIONS