San Diego, CA
The best things to do in Poway, Rancho Bernardo and 4S Ranch: Week of Oct. 16-29
Editor’s Note: Send event details (who, what, where, when, cost and contact information) in an email to ehimchak@pomeradonews.com. The deadline is noon Friday. Items run on a space available basis. Questions? Call 619-806-7305.
Thursday, Oct. 16
Early bird networking: The Poway Chamber of Commerce hosts speed networking at 7:30 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 16 at Cully’s Restaurant, 13252 Poway Road. Non-member guests can attend free of charge for their first event. For details, visit Poway.com.
Worldly topics: Abel Julio Gonzalez will talk about protecting people from radiation during the 10 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 16 World Affairs Council North County meeting. It will be at The Remington Club, 16916 Hierba Drive in Rancho Bernardo. For details, visit northcountyworldaffairs.org.
Save a life: The Community Church of Poway is hosting an American Red Cross blood drive from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 16 at church, 13501 Community Road. To schedule an appointment or for details visit RedCrossBlood.org and enter “Poway” for the sponsor code.
Silver Screeniacs: Adults age 50-plus are invited to watch the free movie, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” from 1 to 3:45 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 16 at the Mickey Cafagna Community Center – Oak Hall East, 13094 Civic Center Drive. Complimentary popcorn will be provided. For details, call 858-668-4671.
Planners to meet: The Rancho Bernardo Planning Board will meet at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 16 in the Bernardo Heights Community Center, 16150 Bernardo Heights Parkway in RB. For the agenda, visit RBPlanningBoard.com.
Friday, Oct. 17
Textile treasures: Make a pumpkin pillow while exploring natural and synthetic fibers during a class for adults age 50-plus from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. Friday, Oct. 17 at the Mickey Cafagna Community Center – Willow Room 306 in Community Park, 13094 Civic Center Drive. Cost is $15 per participant; registration is required. For details, call 858-668-4671.
Help the blind: The Rancho Bernardo Lions Club will be holding its annual White Cane Fund Drive from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 17 outside the Rancho Bernardo Albertson’s, 12475 Rancho Bernardo Road.
Teen party: Teens ages 11 to 17 years old can play laser tag and enjoy pizza at a free after-hours party at 6 p.m. Friday, Oct. 17 at the Poway Library, 13137 Poway Road. Registration is required. For details, call 858-513-2900.
Bingo: San Rafael Catholic Church Women’s Fellowship is hosting a bingo night on Friday, Oct. 17 in the Parish Hall, 17252 Bernardo Center Drive in Rancho Bernardo. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. Play starts at 7 p.m. Cost: $10 to play eight games with three chances to win each game. Cash prizes and light snacks. Proceeds go to charity. Men and women ages 18 and up welcome.
Saturday, Oct. 18
Like poodles? The annual Poodle Palooza Extravaganza benefitting 4 Paws of Love pet therapy organization will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18 in Webb Park, 16826 Bernardo Center Drive in Rancho Bernardo. Viewing is free and open to the public. There will be a poodle parade around the park (9:30 a.m.), dog and non-dog related vendors, a silent auction, swag bags for poodle participants, contests, games and more. Cost: $25 per poodle. For details, visit 4pawsoflove.org.
Tool sharpening: The Seven Oaks Woodworking Club will sharpen knives, serrated knives, scissors and garden and hand tools. Drop off items between 9:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18 at the Seven Oaks Community Center, 16789 Bernardo Oaks Drive in Rancho Bernardo. Pick up late Saturday or Monday. Cash or check. No chainsaws, power tools or saws. For details, call 858-487-4058.
Help the blind: The Rancho Bernardo Lions Club will be holding its annual White Cane Fund Drive from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18 outside the Rancho Bernardo Albertson’s, 12475 Rancho Bernardo Road.
Pumpkin craft: Adults are invited to make a succulent pumpkin craft from 2 to 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18 at the Poway Library, 13137 Poway Road. Sign-up is required. For details, call 858-513-2900.
Diwali: The Rancho Bernardo Library will hold its free celebration of Diwali, the Festival of Lights, from 3 to 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18. Participants will make and decorate Diyas (traditional oil lamps) and enjoy light refreshments. This is for all ages. The library is at 17110 Bernardo Center Drive. For details, call 858-538-8163.
Teen science: Teens in grades 6 to 9 are invited to unearth nature’s wonders with experiments and encounters with animals during a Teen Program Series from 5 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18 at the Mickey Cafagna Community Center – Oak Hall in Community Park, 13094 Civic Center Drive. Cost is $6 participant; registration is required. For details, call 858-668-4671.
Sunday, Oct. 19
Diwali: The Poway Library will hold its free celebration of Diwali, the Festival of Lights, at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 19 at the library, 13137 Poway Road. The event features dance performances and crafts for kids. For details, call 858-513-2900.
Free concert: Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church will present a free concert at 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 19 in the church sanctuary, 17010 Pomerado Road. Organist Christoph Bull will perform rock music and other genres on the organ. He is a university organist and organ professor at UCLA as well as organist-in-residence at First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, which houses one of the largest pipe organs in the world. All are welcome. For details, email liz@rbcommunity.org.
Monday, Oct. 20
STEAM for kids: A science, technology, engineering, arts and math activity will feature slime at 3:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 20 at the Poway Library, 13137 Poway Road. For details, call 858-513-2900.
Tuesday, Oct. 21
RB safety: A representative from Navy Federal Credit Union and an expert in fire prevention-home hardening will speak at the 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 21 Rancho Bernardo Neighborhood Watch community meeting. It will be at the Seven Oaks Community Center, 16789 Bernardo Oaks Drive in Rancho Bernardo. For details, visit RBNW.org.
Council meeting: The Poway City Council will meet at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 21 in the City Council Chambers, 13325 Civic Center Drive.
Wednesday, Oct. 22
Aloha ukulele: Adults aged 50-plus are invited to learn tablature, sheet music, chords and lyrics through ukulele strum-and-sing sessions from 10 to 11 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 22 at the Mickey Cafagna Community Center – Willow Room 306 in Community Park, 13094 Civic Center Drive. Sheet music is provided and limited ukuleles are available for class use.
Canasta: Adults aged 50-plus are invited to play the popular Canasta card game that combines elements of Bridge and Rummy from 1 to 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 22 at the Mickey Cafagna Community Center – Willow Room 301 in Community Park, 13094 Civic Center Drive.
Thursday, Oct. 23
Teen craft: Teens ages 11 to 17 years old are invited to make Halloween candles at 4 p.m. Thursday, Oct 23 at the Poway Library, 13137 Poway Road. For details, call 858-513-2900.
Bocce: Adults ages 50-plus are invited to play bocce ball from 5 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 23 at Poway Community Park’s Bocce Ball Courts, 13094 Civic Center Drive. Playing is free and instruction is provided during the first hour.
Chamber mixer: The Poway Chamber of Commerce invites community members, organizations and businesses to meet, network and collaborate with food, drinks and drawing prizes at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 23 at The Hop Stop, 14055 Midland Road. Free for chamber members and first-time guests; $25 for returning guests. For details, visit Poway.com.
Saturday, Oct. 25
Band tourney: The 48th annual Mt. Carmel Tournament of Bands will be held on Saturday, Oct. 25 at Mt. Carmel High School, 9550 Carmel Mountain Road in Rancho Peñasquitos. It will feature 38 bands from across Southern California and feature parade and field show competitions. Field shows start at 8 a.m. and continue into the evening in Sundevil Stadium. The parade review starts at 11:45 a.m. in the school’s parking lot. Field show general admission tickets are $20 for adults; $15 for students, seniors and military; and free for children 5 and under. Reserved seating is $35. Watching the parade is free. For the schedule and to buy tickets visit tinyurl.com/MCHS-band25.
Dog adoption: Coldwell Banker Realty will host a Homes for Dogs Project from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, Oct. 25 at its office, 16787 Bernardo Center Drive, Suite 6 in The Plaza at Rancho Bernardo. Its adoption partner will be A New Life Rescue. In the days leading up to the event it will also accept donations of pet items for A New Life Rescue and Love Your Feral Felines. For details, call 858-676-6138.
Halloween carnival: The National Charity League will present the annual Halloween carnival with games, candy and a haunted hallway at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 25 at the Poway Library, 13137 Poway Road. For details, call 858-513-2900.
Sunday, Oct. 26
Choir performers: The Haneen Choir will sign traditional Syrian songs at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 26 at the Poway Library, 13137 Poway Road. For details, call 858-513-2900.
Trunk-or-treat: The Community Church of Poway is hosting its free Trunk-or-Treat from 4 to 5 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 26 in the church’s parking lot, 13501 Community Road. There will be games, prizes, hot dogs and snacks along with decorated vehicles and lots of candy. For details, call 858-748-3304.
Tuesday, Oct. 28
For women: The Rancho Belles women’s social organization will discuss the benefits of participatory arts during its 10 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 28 gathering in the Eastview Community Center, 17520 Drayton Hall Way in Rancho Bernardo. Participatory arts are forms of artistic expression that enable shared ownership of decision-making processes that aim to generate dialogue, social activism and community mobilization. For details, email Ranchobelles@gmail.com.
Open house: The Poway Chamber of Commerce is hosting an open house to give the public the chance to meet the staff, board members, local business owners and city officials from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 28 at 13029 Danielson St., Suite 120. For details, visit Poway.com.
Concert: The Kensington Baroque Orchestra will perform at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 28 in the Rancho Bernardo Library’s community room, 17110 Bernardo Center Drive. Admission is free, but donations are welcome to support the Friends of the Rancho Bernardo Library concert series. For details, call 858-538-8163.
Wednesday, Oct. 29
Learn more: San Diego Oasis will hold its catalog pick up party from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 29 at its Rancho Bernardo location, 17170 Bernardo Center Drive. Learn what classes and other activities it has to offer to adults 50 and older in coming months. There will be free refreshments and opportunity drawings for Oasis gift cards. For details, call 858-240-2880 or visit san-diego.oasisnet.org.
The Jewish community in Southern California is sharing their fears and hopes following the weekend’s strikes on Iran and retaliatory attacks on Israel, U.S. military bases and other targets in the Middle East.
The exchange of missiles in the Middle East is having a devasting effect on Iran’s defense capability, but retaliatory strikes in the region are taking a toll.
“Weapons of enormous capacity that are targeting civilian areas,” said Elan Carr, CEO of Los Angeles-based Israeli American Council.
Carr says toppling the Iranian regime, taking out its nuclear capabilities and freeing the Iranian people from this oppressive rule should have been done decades ago.
“This is about seeing the most evil regime, the world chief state sponsored terrorism to no longer have the ability to do what it’s been doing,” Carr said.
Sara Brown, regional director of the American Jewish Committee, said the U.S. and Israel are concentrating strikes on Iran’s missile sites and military industrial complex. Iran’s retaliatory strikes are focused on many civilian targets.
“We are hearing from our partners from around the region, who are terrified,” Brown said. “Across the Middle East right now, I think there is a tremendous amount of fear, but also hope and also resolve.”
AJC is the advocacy arm for Jewish people globally. Many members and partner groups are in harm’s way. Brown says the risk is great, but the potential reward is world changing.
“That Iranian people will get to choose leadership for themselves, that we will finally see a pathway forward for peace across the Middle East,” Brown said.
If wars of the past hadn’t produced lasting peace, then why now? Carr says Iran’s nuclear capabilities are destroyed and Iran’s military and proxies are weakened after Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas ambush.
“No more terrorist network throughout the Middle East. Think of what that could mean. Think of the normalization we could see,” Carr said.
President Donald Trump expects fighting to last several weeks. Some critics are concerned about a drawn-out conflict that could spread.
Carr is not convinced.
“Who is going to enter a war against the U.S. and Israel? Russia is plenty busy. China has no interest in jeopardizing itself this way,” Carr said.
Besides the six Americans killed as of Monday night, government officials say 11 people were killed in retaliatory strikes in Israel.
San Diego — Before we see elephants at Elephant Valley in the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, we come face to face with destruction, only the wreckage is beautiful. A long, winding path takes guests around and under felled trees. Aged gray tree hunks form arches, for instance, over bridges that tower over clay-colored paths with hoof prints.
The design is meant to reorient us, to take us on a trail walked not by humans but traversed and carved by elephants, a creature still misunderstood, vilified and hunted for its cataclysmic-like ability to reshape land, and sometimes communities.
“It starts,” says Kristi Burtis, vice president of wildlife care for the Safari Park, “by telling the story that elephants are ecosystem engineers.”
Elephant Valley will open March 5 as the newest experience at the Escondido park, its aim to bring guests closer than ever to the zoo’s eight elephants, which range in age from 7 to 36, while more heavily focusing on conservation. The centerpiece of the 13-acre-plus parkland is a curved bridge overlooking a savanna, allowing elephants to walk under guests. But there are also nooks such as a cave that, while not previewed at a recent media event, will allow visitors to view elephants on their level.
In a shift from, say, the Safari Park’s popular tram tour, there are no fences and visible enclosures. Captive elephants remain a sometimes controversial topic, and the zoo’s herd is a mix of rescues and births, but the goal was to create a space where humans are at once removed and don’t impede on the relative free-roaming ability of the animals by keeping guests largely elevated. As an example of just how close people can get to the herd, there was a moment of levity at the event when one of the elephants began flinging what was believed to be a mixture of dirt and feces up onto the bridge.
“Our guests are going to be able to see the hairs on an elephant,” Burtis says. “They can see their eyes. They can see the eyelashes. They can see how muscular their trunks are. It’s really going to be a different experience.”
Elephant Valley, complete with a multistory lodge with open-air restaurants and bars, boasts a natural design that isn’t influenced by the elephant’s African home so much as it is in conversation with it. The goal isn’t to displace us, but to import communal artistry — Kenyan wood and beadwork can be found in the pathways, resting spaces and more — as a show of admiration rather than imitation.
“We’re not going to pretend that we’re taking people to Africa,” says Fri Forjindam, now a creative executive with Universal’s theme parks but previously a lead designer on Elephant Valley via her role as a chief development officer at Mycotoo, a Pasadena-based experiential design firm.
“That is a slippery slope of theming that can go wrong really fast,” she adds. “How do we recognize where we are right now, which is near San Diego? How do we populate this plane with plants that are indigenous to the region? The story of coexistence is important. We’re not extracting from Africa, we’re learning. We’re not extracting from elephants, we’re sharing information.”
But designing a space that is elephant-first yet also built for humans presented multiple challenges, especially when the collaborating teams were aiming to construct multiple narratives around the animals. Since meetings about Elephant Valley began around 2019, the staff worked to touch on themes related to migration and conservation. And there was also a desire to personalize the elephants.
“Where can we also highlight each of the elephants by name, so they aren’t just this huge herd of random gray creatures?” Forjindam says. “You see that in the lodge.”
That lodge, the Mkutano House — a phrase that means “gathering” in Swahili — should provide opportunities for guests to linger, although zoo representatives say reservations are recommended for those who wish to dine in the space (there will also be a walk-up, to-go window). Menus have yet to be released, but the ground floor of the structure, boasting hut-like roofing designed to blend into the environment, features close views of the elephant grazing pool as well as an indoor space with a centerpiece tree beneath constellation-like lighting to mimic sunrises and sunsets.
Throughout there are animal wood carvings and beadwork, the latter often hung from sculptures made of tree branches. The ceiling, outfitted with colorful, cloth tapestries designed to move with the wind, aims to create less friction between indoor and outdoor environments.
There are, of course, research and educational goals of the space as well. The Safari Park works, for instance, with the Northern Rangelands Trust and Loisaba Conservancy in Kenya, with an emphasis on studying human-elephant conflict and finding no-kill resolutions. Nonprofits and conservation groups estimate that there are today around 415,000 elephants in Africa, and the African savanna elephant is listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Studies of the zoo’s young elephants is shared with the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in the hopes of delivering care to elephant youth to prevent orphanage. Additionally, the Safari Park has done extensive examination into the endotheliotropic herpes virus. “The data that we collect from elephants here, you can’t simply get from elephants in the wild,” Burtis says.
One of the two entrances to Elephant Valley is outfitted with bee boxes; bees are known to be a natural elephant deterrent and can help in preventing the animals from disrupting crops or communities. To encourage more natural behavior, the plane is outfitted with timed feeders in an attempt to encourage movement throughout the acreage and establish a level of real-life unpredictability in hunting for resources. Water areas have been redesigned with ramps and steps to make it easier for the elephants to navigate.
With Elephant Valley, Forjindam says the goal was to allow visitors to “observe safely in luxury — whatever that is — but not from a position of power, more as a cohabitor of the Earth, with as much natural elements as possible. It’s not to impose dominance. Ultimately, it needed to feel natural. It couldn’t feel like a man-made structure, which is an antiquated approach to any sort of safari experience where animals are the product, a prize. In this experience, this is the elephant’s home.”
And the resulting feel of Elephant Valley is that we, the paying customers, are simply their house guests.
A man in the Mission Bay Park community of San Diego was fatally struck Sunday morning by a hit-and run vehicle, authorities said.
The victim was also struck by a second vehicle and that motorist stayed at the scene to cooperate with officers, the San Diego Police Department reported.
The initial crash occurred at about 2:20 a.m. Sunday in the area of West Mission Bay and Sea World drives.
The pedestrian was in the southbound lanes of the 2000 block of West Mission Bay Drive when he was struck by a silver vehicle also in the southbound lanes. That vehicle fled the scene, continuing southbound, police said.
A 28-year-old man driving his vehicle southbound ran over the downed pedestrian.
“That driver remained at the scene and is not DUI,” according to a police statement. “The pedestrian was pronounced deceased at the scene.”
Anyone with information regarding the initial crash was urged to call Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477.
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