See Mark Peel

By Suzan Filipek

The pandemic closed the kid-friendly arts and music café Snooknuk after eight years of joy and song at 506 N. Larchmont Blvd.

But its founder Cheri Jacobs is still in the neighborhood and around town, taking her music-and-puppet show to parks, libraries and neighbors’ backyards and online.

You can also hear a recording of hers on a new album, “All One Tribe,” where she is among 24 Black artists featured from around the country.

Released on Juneteenth, the 1 Tribe Collectives album cel-

ALBUM, “All One Tribe,” was released on Juneteenth.

ebrates the culture and diversity of Black voices through family music.

Jacobs’ three-minute track, “We’re All the Same,” tells of “our differences as people but also how we are all alike in many ways. We can make the planet better by working together. …

“It’s a fantastic message for everyone,” Jacobs told us.

Her three children inspired the mom — who has a pop music background and created jingles for TV and commercials — into channeling her talents toward young children. She named Snooknuk after a term of endearment for her own children.

“My mission has always been about kids’ life lessons and mindfulness … about promoting positivity” and the basics, such as hygiene. Her audience includes toddlers up to early school grades, and she has performed and taught at local schools including Page and Larchmont Charter and with the Bob Baker Marionettes.

Every childhood should be magical, she says.

To find out more about the album, visit 1tribecollective. com.

To keep track of Snooknuk’s performances and to arrange a visit, contact Jacobs at 323498-5258 and snooknukplay@ gmail.com.

PERFORMANCES ENTER-

TAIN before and after the pandemic. Above, Cheri “Snooknuk” Jacobs with the Bob Baker Marionettes.

Mark Peel

(Continued from page 1) the Larchmont Family Fair pie contest, raise funds for Larchmont Charter School and St. Vincent Meals on Wheels and man the grill at his Longwood neighborhood block parties.

“Acts of service was Mark’s love language,” his widow Daphne Brogdon told us. “Not only for friends and family, but for people he didn’t know. I had to ask him to do fewer charity events because it was taking away from family time. It was hard for him to say no.”

Last month, Peel was diagnosed with an aggressive form of germ cell cancer and died nine days later, on June 20. He was 66.

Among the friends and family who came to pay their last respects was fellow culinary pioneer Wolfgang Puck.

“He was never one of these crazy guys who threw pans,” Puck said of the kind and wellbalanced Peel.

Peel was among the crème de la crème of revolutionary chefs who cooked with the freshest ingredients served in a casual atmosphere that put California cuisine on the world map.

He opened his signature restaurant, Campanile, and the legendary La Brea Bakery next door on La Brea Avenue in 1989 with local resident Nancy Silverton, his wife at the time, and Manfred Krankl.

Peel, a fourth generation Angeleno, had grown up with a single mom who was a terrible cook, and so he took on the task. He supported himself through school working as a dishwasher and fry cook, including at a Denny’s-style truck stop coffee shop in El Monte. (Although he quit school to work full time, he later was granted a degree from Cal Poly Pomona in 2010.)

When he called the owner of Ma Maison, a top Los Ange-

PAWS/LA celebrates 30 years of pets’ ‘unconditional love’

Pets and people, they’re better together, says the nonprofit PAWS/LA (Pets Are Wonderful Support). The group celebrates 30 years of keeping low-income people with life-threatening illnesses, plus seniors and veterans, with their beloved companion pets.

“The need remains so great, and the value of pets to the quality of a person’s life is inestimable,” said PAWS/LA development consultant Jonathan Weedman.

The program, which provides pet food, veterinary care, grooming and more, is free to clients. “We believe that the unconditional love of a companion animal is a precious gift to a senior living in isolation or an individual debilitated by a life-threatening illness.”

One man featured on the group’s website tells of his cat. “She would not let me be alone.

“I’d gone through a lot of loss, … family, and then the AIDS crisis hit. Almost everyone I knew died. …

“One night I hear this horrible, horrible cat cry, and I go outside and I see this little tiny thing above the garage. I picked her up and cleaned her, gave her a good flea bath, and said, ‘I’ll take care of you until I can find a home for you.’

“That night she crawled onto my chest and purred me back to sleep, and from that moment forward, for the next 21 years, she was the light in my life … she kept me from suicide many, many times.”

Hearing her purr and seeing her precious soul, “It’s like she was telling me someone loves you.”

The organization was founded in 1989 in response to the HIV/ AIDS crisis when well-intended friends and family members often removed pets from a patient’s household at a time when they were needed most.

A social media fundraising campaign is being launched this month to help ease the challenges of caring for a companion animal. To learn more visit pawsla.org, or call 213-741-1950.

NEIGHBORHOOD CHEF Mark Peel often made his famous grilled cheeses at Longwood Area Neighborhood Association block parties. He is shown here with daughter Vivien. les restaurant at the time, he was hired over the phone, and he soon found himself working under Puck, who ran the kitchen. Peel later co-opened Michael’s in Santa Monica before leaving for Chez Panisse in Berkeley, from which he returned to become opening chef at Puck’s celebrated Spago.

Married for a few years to artist Reine River before he met Silverton, Peel met

‘How did you meet your pup?’

(Continued from page 2)

“We had another dog, Sadie, before Bella. When my fatherin-law passed away, we gave Sadie to my mother-in-law to keep her company. Before we even got home from dropping her off, we located Bella and brought her home so the kids wouldn’t miss their dog. We’ve had her since she was four months old and now she’s nine years old and my kids are completely grown.”

Todd and “Bella” Harris Brogdon in 2004 at Campanile, his and Silverton’s restaurant housed in the airy building built by Charlie Chaplin on La Brea Avenue in 1928.

“We had a whirlwind romance,” Brogdon tells us. “We quickly knew we would be together. But, the two things that were very clear to Mark, he had to be within a mile of his son Oliver, then 10, and Campanile. So the Hancock Park area was the center of his universe.”

Another story she tells is about a single mom with two children who, every school day, took two buses to get to Larchmont Charter School.

“I knew they transferred at Third and Rossmore. That bus is always late. I asked her to let me take her son, who was in class with our son, Rex, to school. She demurred. I didn’t push it. I told Mark. He said, ‘oh, no,’ and he told her, ‘I’m picking your son up every morning at Third and Rossmore.’ He did so for a year until they were able to get a car. He also took our son and this boy on the boy’s first-ever camping trip.”

As probably is well-known in finance circles as well as the world of fine cuisine, the chef and his wife were forced to sell their home on Lucerne Boulevard “because we were unwittingly invested with Bernie Madoff,” says Brogdon. But fortune smiled again, and the couple and their children resettled in the Longwood Highlands neighborhood, adjoining Brookside.

“It was so similar to the home we had to sell we thought it a corrective emotional experience,” Brogdon says.

What set the new home apart was a long, deep back yard with an enormous pine tree with a tire swing that Peel hung. “That swing has made many people happy over the 10-plus years in this home,” said Brogdon, who is president of the Longwood Area Neighborhood Association.

“We joked that he was the First Gentleman of Longwood Highlands. He made his famous grilled cheeses at our block parties, or just made hot dogs on his Webers.”

Movies

(Continued from page 20) Moreno eating dinner in her home while watching Christine Blasey Ford spewing her venomous unsubstantiated accusations against Brett Kavanaugh that were denied not only by Kavanaugh, but by everyone who knew anything about the party where Ford alleges the attack occurred. Lear would have you believe that Rita had cameras filming her as she watched this live. Why would cameras be in Rita Moreno’s home to film her watching a Senate hearing in 2019? And what does this have to do with the story of Rita Moreno? The point of all this is to just reinforce the political POV of Lear, Moreno, and all of Hollywood. It’s irrelevant and dishonest if not worse, and it greatly detracts from the film. The scenes reek of manipulation. Moreno also says extremely unflattering things about her (Please turn to page 23)

deceased husband that any caring person would keep private, which says a lot about her character. This film diminished my previous positive opinion of Moreno. In theaters. 12 Mighty Orphans (5/10): 117 minutes. PG-13. I wanted to like this movie. But aside from it being 30 minutes too long, the true story is ruined by a lot of Hollywood folderol that has no basis in fact. In theaters.

On the Menu

(Continued from page 18) of the typical side-dish. Mac ‘n’ cheese was a surprise hit. The super-creamy cheesiness was a cut above the usual macaroni afterthought. Beans were the biggest disappointment. Not quite sweet enough, not quite soft enough, I wanted to substitute that old standby, a can of Bush’s beans.

Slab, 8136 W. 3rd St., 310855-7184.