Ojai Quarterly - Summer 2022

NANCY SILVERTON’S FARMHOUSE NEW BOOK: THE BEATO GOES ON OJAI'S ’NOMADLAND’ ROLE COVID: THE RECKONING

DONNA SALLEN

805.798.0516

MARC WHITMAN DESIGNED

FOR FORSALE SALE

$1,650,000 $4,200,000

ABOUT THE PROPERTY

Gated and private, this beautiful Mediterranean-style estate is sitting perfectly on 2 acres in Rancho Matilija. Designed by renowned local architect, Marc Whitman, the special attention to detail can’t be overlooked. With a dramatic entry which leads you to the open spacious great room, you can’t help but notice the perfect mix of indoor/outdoor living where lightfilled rooms blend with the lush landscaping. Perfect for entertaining with two outdoor kitchens, saltwater pool and spa and a private pool house or art studio. Back inside you will love the gourmet kitchen with commercial grade appliances. Vaulted ceilings, three fireplaces, a media room. There is a gentlemen’s orchard, an oversized three-car garage along with lovely mountain views. This home is one-of-a-kind and a must see.

PROPERTY DETAIL

4 BEDROOMS

3-CAR GARAGE

3 BATHROOMS

ww w. d o n n a s a l l e n . co m

GATED PROPERTY

donna4remax@aol.com

There's no place like home. Let me find yours.

RANCHO MATILIJA GEM

FOR SALE

ABOUT THE PROPERTY

Welcome Home to this wonderful Ranch style VIEW home. Located behind the gates of Rancho Matilija, this home has some of the most magnificent views. Enter into the home and you enjoy the light-filled living room showcasing the mountains. The great room opens to the kitchen and leads out to the backyard. The views are breathtaking with pink sunsets and early morning sunrises. You won’t want to miss this home. Bring your creative touches and make this charmer your home for life. With the trail right outside your door, you can walk your dogs, take a hike or ride your horses.

Horses are welcome on this equestrian property. Private and gated.

PROPERTY DETAIL

4 BEDROOMS

3,042SF

www. donnasa llen.c om

3 BATHROOMS

GATED PROPERTY

donna4remax@aol.com

$3,500,000

NEW LISTING

Nestled into the oak-forested hills of the Ojai Valley, this three bedroom, two bath

9850 Old Creek Road

Mid-Century Modern home offers gorgeous views and immense privacy. The

3 BD | 2.BA | 2,539 SQFT

4.2 acre property includes a two story guest house or office, and a double sized

OFFERED AT $1,800,000

swimming pool. Large kitchen and adjacent bar. Lovely views from every window.

Tyler Brousseau and Clinton Haugan | Top Producing Ojai Natives “Tyler and Clint were able to find us the perfect house in a very difficult market with little inventory. We found that they were extremely knowledgeable about the market and were able to get us access to homes before they hit the market, including the home that we ultimately purchased. Tyler and Clint provided great service throughout the entire process. They were very detail oriented, incredibly responsive and dedicated to finding the perfect home for us. We highly recommend Tyler and Clint for buying or selling a home!” - The Quick Family

Visit OjaiForSale.com TYLER BROUSSEAU

CLINTON HAUGAN

805.760.2213 Cal DRE 01916136 tyler.brousseau@sothebysrealty.com

805.760.2092 Cal DRE 02019604 clinton.haugan@sothebysrealty.com

© 2022 LIV Sotheby’s International Realty. All rights reserved. All data, including all measurements and calculations are obtained from various sources and has not and will not be verified by Broker. All information shall be independently reviewed and verified for accuracy. LIV Sotheby’s International Realty is independently owned and operated and supports the principles of the Fair Housing Act.

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OQ / SUMMER 2022

GAB R I E LA C E S E Ñ A THE NEXT LEVEL OF REAL ESTATE SERVICES Realtor | Luxury Specialist Berkshire Hathaway

Unwavering commitment to my clients’ satisfaction.

Driven by passion for the work I do 805.236.3814 | gabrielacesena@bhhscal.com CAL DRE# 01983530 Gabrielacesena.bhhscalifornia.com

206 Topa Topa Drive | Offered at $1,675,000 | Pink Moment Views | Midtown Authentic Spanish Hacienda Enchanting Authentic Spanish Hacienda in Midtown Ojai, California!

Find your sophisticated haven in this thoughtfully-designed and lovingly maintained Spanish three bedrooms, two baths, just-under 1,800 sq ft. masterpiece infused with romance and beauty at every turn! A wall of floor-to-ceiling French doors opens to a lovely covered porch, creating seamless indoor-outdoor spaces. A spectacular grand room with an inviting fireplace and exposed wooden beams provides warmth and rustic

character; a chef ’s kitchen offers a welcome view of the sunny courtyard. Past the living area, down the hall, a cozy office awaits, with its own doorway to the courtyard. The luxurious primary suite, with a patio overlooking the Topa Topas, is simply a stunner. Your guests will be spoiled in a lovely, comfortable guest room with French doors opening to a terrasse.

A couple of steps down, enjoy gathering with friends or soaking in a hot tub while enjoying views of the famous Pink Moment!

OQ / SUMMER 2022

5

w ww ww w..772211B Baallffee--V Vttaa..ccoom m

Riki Strandfeldt

(805)

794-6474

Search all Ojai Valley & CA Regional MLS Listings in-real-time ( No sign-in required to search & see what's available today! )

www.Riki4RealEstate.com CA DRE Lic. # 01262026

Arbolada treasure on nearly a full acre with pool and private guesthouse.

Walk to downtown Ojai.

~ SOLD ~ Guesthouse

More Available Every Day.

Vivienne Moody

(805)

798-1099

Email: vmoody10@sbcglobal.net CA DRE Lic. # 00989700

SUMMER 2022

Adventures in Fashion

O P E N DA I LY 1 1 - 5 : 3 0 | 3 2 1 E AS T O J A I AV E N U E | 8 05 . 6 4 6 . 1 92 7 Fo l l ow M E O N I N S TA G R A M @ D A N S K I B L U E

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THE TRUSTED NAME IN REAL ESTATE FOR OVER 20 YEARS

SALE PENDING

Small Town Cutie Close to Downtown $1.425M

A Quiet Retreat Located in Ojai’s Scenic Mountains $3.65M

ILiveInOjai.com

Team@PeraltaTeam.com @PeraltaTeamOjai

DRE# 01862743

Authentic Spanish Beauty ~ A Piece of Ojai History $3.6M

Tonya Peralta BROKER ASSOCIATE 805.794.7458

Steven Sharp TEAM REALTOR 805.223.5315

Rachelle Guiliani TEAM REALTOR 805.746.5188

Paula Edmonds TEAM REALTOR 805.665.7382

Ashley Ramsey TEAM REALTOR 805.302.4175

Brooke Stancil OPERATIONS MANAGER 805.794.7262

OJAI QUARTERLY

p.38

THE FIRING LINE Mike Milano Film Takes '137 Shots' on Police Shooting Story by Peter Deneen

106 ALL IN A ROW Casitas Rowers & The Morning Crew

By G. Lev Baumel

p.46

p.64

DADA'S MAMA New Book Renews Interest in Ojai's Own Artist-Muse Story By Kit Stolz

12

supporting role in 'nomadland' Chloé Zhao on Ojai Coming Through For Her Story by Bret Bradigan

OQ / SUMMER 2022

FEATURES

p.118

OJAI & COVID Health Care Workers & Victims Has the Final Reckoning Begun?

Story By Mark Lewis

p.124

Cover

silly season

Nancy Silverton Photograph by Brandi Crockett, Fancy Free Photography

Travels to America's Most Bizarre Festivals Story By Jerry Camarillo Dunn Jr.

NANCY SILVERTON’S FARMHOUSE THE BEATO GOES ON IN NEW BOOK OJAI &’NOMADLAND’ THOSE WE’VE LEFT BEHIND

OQ / SUMMER 2022

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OQ / SUMMER 2022

23-ACRE SCENIC ESTATE Transport yourself to another world... a world of full moons and waterfalls, aromatic orange blossoms and papaya. Where every morning is a treat to the senses in a micro-climate that’s cooler than the valley, yet never freezes. This 23-acre biodynamic farm with 3,211 sq. ft. home is just 5 miles from the center of downtown Ojai but a world away from the city.

Come sense the magic. $4,300,000

Live The Ojai Dream.

OjaiDream.com

805-766-7889 OJAI

Each office is independently owned and operated.

Sharon MaHarry, Broker Associate BRE #01438966

FIRST AMERICANS MUSEUM

BYRON WINERY

OPUS ONE WINERY

OPUS ONE WINERY

WALL HOUSE www.johnsonfain.com info@johnsonfain.com | 323 224 6000

OQ | DEPARTMENTS p.29

Two Degrees

OJAI LIFE:

Mahatma Gandhi & Ojai

By Bret Bradigan

p.25 Editor’s Note

p.60

Ojai & 'Weirdo'

p.26 Contributors

Beckett McDowell Takes His Show on the Road

p.29

By Bret Bradigan

Ojai Notes

p.69

Artists & Galleries Where Ojai Finds Its Purpose

p.56 AMOC Runs the Ojai Music Festival

p.69 Artists & Galleries p.80

Food & Drink

p.71 Food & Drink Section

The Great Ojai Pizza Hunt

By Ilona Saari

p.74 Cindy Convery Goes 'PureWild'

p.142

Nocturnal Submissions

p.133 Healers of Ojai

Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Culture War

p.141

By Sami Zahringer

Calendar of Events

OJAI QUARTERLY Living the Ojai Life

SUMMER 2022 Editor & Publisher

Bret Bradigan Sales Manager David Taylor Director of Publications Ross Falvo Creative Director Uta Ritke Social Media Director Elizabeth Spiller Ojai Hub Administrator Jessie Rose Ryan Contributing Editors Mark Lewis Jerry Camarillo Dunn Jr. Jesse Phelps Columnists Chuck Graham Ilona Saari Kit Stolz Sami Zahringer Circulation Target Media Partners

CONTACT US: Editorial & Advertising, 805.798.0177 editor@ojaiquarterly.com David@ojaiquarterly.com The contents of the Ojai Quarterly may not be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written consent of the publisher.

SUBSCRIPTIONS: To subscribe to the OQ, visit ojaiquarterly.com or write to 1129 Maricopa Highway, B186 Ojai, CA 93023.

Subscriptions are $24.95 per year.

#OJAI IG #ojai.quarterly Photo by Joe Sohm/Visions of America

You can also e-mail us at editor@ojaiquarterly.com.

Please recycle this magazine when you are finished. © 2022 Bradigan Group LLC. All rights reserved.

The Ivy rst opened its doors on Ventura Blvd in Studio City in 1993 and closed in 2011 as so many corporate stores were opening, and it didn't feel right for The Ivy a nymore. But now we discovered the magical town of Ojai and thought that this would be the perfect place for The Ivy to re-open. Our wide range of items includes antiques, ne estate jewelry, sterling silver, European porcelains and pottery, linens, and exceptional antique furniture from around the world. As always at The Ivy, tabletop a ccessories abound in ne dishware, crystal, and silver to nish off your table in style. Come see our newly expanded showroom featuring exclusive, very modern, and unusual furniture, art, rugs, and accessories. If you need to nd the elusive "perfect" gift, The Ivy in Ojai is the one-stop-shop for all your needs.

Come join us, after all: 'Everyone shops at The Ivy.'

OQ / SUMMER 2022

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FINE JEWELRY - MEN'S - WEDDING - CUSTOM & REPURPOSED

453 E. Ojai Ave. 805-646-1997 susancummings.com

OQ | E D ITO R’ S N OTE

IDIOTS & THE PUBLIC SQUARE "Any idiot can face a crisis. It's day to day living that wears you out." — Anton Chekhov

The ancient Greeks were a fierce lot, and that fierceness was not confined to the battlefields. There was also the shouting and clamor of their public meetings in the agora, on the steps of the Parthenon and in their public squares. It was considered an essential duty of citizenship to put your shoulder to the wheel of civic affairs. In fact, the word "idiot" derives from the Greek for "one's own," for a person who was not in the public eye, who held no public office.

By that standard, Ojai has a low proportion of idiots. It is almost a sport to enter into the clamor of debate, to joust with our fellow residents on matters large and small. As the post-pandemic Ojai begins to take shape, we offer the Ojai Talk of the Town podcast as a place to learn about our community in a deeper way. A few of those conversations you'll find on the Ojai Notes on page 29. You will notice that there are few constants or themes in these typically one-hour long conversations; they could end up anywhere. That's the point. You can start in Ojai and end up in an unexpected, happy place.

You can view our Ojai magazine, the OQ, as an indispensable tool for that conversation. The incredible range of talents, resources and experiences of our residents is of incalculable value. Not just to us, but the world. Just check any of the 100+ episodes of our Ojai podcast. It was fascinating for me to discover that Annie Besant was a key figure in India's independence movement, inspiring Gandhi himself, and that Ruth Brandon's latest book shines a much-deserved light on Beatrice Wood, Ojai's patron saint, in Kit Stolz's feature story. In fact, those two women probably did more to shape the world's perception of Ojai as a thoughtful haven for the arts than anyone else. That they were also important actors on the world stage is entirely fitting. We may be small, but the "Little Orange" looms large in public perception.

That thoughtfulness extends to Mark Lewis' account of our Covid losses. We are all too eager to move past the dreadful moments of the pandemic, but sometimes the best way to find closure is to remember those we left behind. The same for the Thomas Fire story, which was vividly told by Mike Milano in his HBO documentary.

Now the Upper Ojai filmmaker has a new project, "137 Shots," about the consequences of a tragic police shooting in Cleveland, shared with Peter Deneen, and now available on Netflix. But a balanced media diet also requires humor, of which Jerry Dunn's "Silly Season" story about bizarre festivals provides a healthy dose.

His story about two brothers who have launched an acclaimed restaurant also reminds us of our community's achievements. That message extends to Cindy Convery's PureWild launch, Chloé Zhao's reliance on Ojai for her Oscar-winning success, and the Casitas Rowers, who try to not to make a splash.

Our in-the-field writers — Chuck Graham on the Sisquoc headwaters, Ilona Saari and her quest for the perfect pizza slice, Sami Zahringer's absurdist rendering of the Great Culture War — bring us dispatches from the front lines of our community. And the stories they tell are the ingredients of a boisterous, involved city. We may have our share of idiots, but they are not our intended audience. So please enjoy our humble offering. Even if you are a first-time visitor or long-time resident, we hope it makes you feel proud to be part of this place.

OQ / SUMMER 2022

25

OQ | C O N TRI BU TO R S G. LEV BAUMEL is a mother, writer, language and writing teacher, an MFA-candidate, potion maker and an avid doodler based in Ojai. She is happiest when she knows her next travel dates.

JERRY DUNN

worked with the National Geographic Society for 35 years and has won three Lowell Thomas Awards, the “Oscars” of the field, from the Society of American Travel Writers.

ABIGAIL NAPP

is a freelance writer with a fondness for Italian food, passionate people and investigative journalism. Follow her @abigailnapp on Instagram

KIT STOLZ is an award-winning journalist who has written for newspapers, magazines, literary journals, and online sites. He lives in Upper Ojai and blogs at achangeinthewind.com.

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BRANDI CROCKETT is an

PETER DENEEN

is an Ojai native, writer, educator, and veteran.

Follow his work at petedeneen.world

Ojai pixie tangerine peelin’ native and an editorial and destination wedding photographer.

Check out her work at fancyfreephotography. com

CHUCK GRAHAM’S work

MARK LEWIS

is a writer and editor based in Ojai. He can be contacted at mark lewis1898@gmail.com.

has appeared in Outdoor Photographer, Canoe & Kayak, Trail Runner, Men’s Journal, The Surfer’s Journal and Backpacker.

ILONA SAARI is

UTA CULEMANNRITKE

a writer who’s worked in TV/film, rock’n’roll and political press, and as an op-ed columnist, mystery novelist and consultant for HGTV. She blogs for food: mydinnerswithrichard. blogspot.com.

is an independent artist, designer and curator.

She is a member of Ojai Studio Artists and runs utaculemann.design.

JESSE PHELPS

SAMI ZAHRINGER is

grew up in Ojai and has written extensively for and about the town. He enjoys freelance projects and throwing things.

He can be reached at jessephelps@outlook. com

an Ojai writer and award-winning breeder of domestic American long-haired children.

She has more forcedmeat recipes than you.

OQ / SUMMER 2022

OQ / SUMMER 2022

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Real Estate Team ZabillaGroup.com

UPPER OJAI ESTATE 4BD | 3.5BA | 3,300 sf | 10 acres | $3,900,000 See More at 11400TopaVista.com The perfect marriage of strength and airy beauty is realized in this spectacular view home on 10 acres in the Upper Ojai Valley! Feel transported as you wind your way down the long and very private tree-lined driveway, imagining all you might do with the wide-open spaces that greet you. Prepare to be amazed as you come upon a oneof-a-kind architectural wonder - constructed of stone, steel posts and beams and reinforced concrete walls - a home offering unparalleled peace and protection. Step inside and feel inspired by the Great Room warmed by white maple floors and the light flooding in from the wall of trim-less French Doors and windows. Pause to take in the panoramic views of the Topa Topas, seemingly close enough to touch. The downstairs primary bedroom has built-in maple cabinets and Japanese tile in the sprawling ensuite primary bath. The kitchen, with maple cabinets and granite countertops, opens onto a family room/library with built-in bookshelves and a desk for working at home or homework. A full pantry and laundry area provide a wealth of storage for all the essentials. Upstairs are serene bedrooms, baths and an office, all with balconies to say good night to the day. The grounds of the property are beautifully landscaped with stone walls and terraces and are graced by over 150 mature shade trees and dozens of fruit and nut trees. For those looking for a premier haven, just minutes from downtown Ojai but a world away, look no more.

Rosalie Zabilla 805.455.3183

Rosalie@ZabillaGroup.com

DRE: 01493361

© Sotheby’s International Realty, Inc. All rights reserved. Sotheby’s International Realty® is a registered trademark. This material is based upon information which we consider reliable but because it has been supplied by third parties, we cannot represent that it is accurate or complete and it should not be relied upon as such. This offering is subject to errors, omissions, changes including price or withdrawal without notice. If your property is listed with a real estate broker, please disregard. It is not our intention to solicit the offerings of other real estate brokers. We are happy to work with them and cooperate fully. Operated by Sotheby’s International Realty, Inc. Real estate agents affiliated with Sotheby’s International Realty, Inc. are independent contractor sales associates and are not employees of Sotheby’s International Realty, Inc. Equal Housing Opportunity.

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OQ / SUMMER 2022

OQ | oja i n ot es PAUL OF PETER, PAUL & MARY The village of Ojai takes it name from the Chumash village of Ahwa’y, in Upper Ojai. It means “Moon,” according to Julie Tumamait-Stenslie, Chumash elder.

Remains of a village site in what is now Libbey Park date back 9,000 to 10,000 years.

Noah Paul Stookey's long and winding career has led him to Ojai, where he has spent half the year for the past two decades, trading back and forth from his retreat in coastal Maine. His latest album, "Fazz: Now & Then" has just been released and is available on Amazon and Spotify.

His rich baritone is instantly recognizable to millions of fans of Peter, Paul & Mary for such tunes as "Puff the Magic Dragon" and "If I Had a Hammer." He joins the podcast to talk about his early days in New York City, helping popularize a singer-songwriter from Minnesota named Robert Zimmerman, "The Wedding Song" and his Christian faith.

IN BRIEF: OJAI TALK OF THE TOWN PODCASTS Ikejime is a very specific method of humanely killing fish, which also has the benefit of keeping them fresh much longer. Ojai's Eric Hodge is one of the very few California fishermen trained in this technique, which took a year to master.

He talks on the podcast about the great abundance of marine life around the Channel Islands, the Thursday Farmers Market, training his daughters as crew, and bringing local chefs out to sea so they understand the value of a sustainable fishery.

TERE KARABATOS OF ATHLETES IN RECOVERY AIR Pizza is taking over Ojai with its secret sourdough recipe, but it has a larger purpose. Tere Karabatos, a former baseball and skating standout, heads up with skater legend Tony Alva a nonprofit called Athletes in Recovery. He talks about the personal journey that led him to form the group.

ROE V. WADE'S END: JUDITH HALE NORRIS ON WHAT COMES NEXT With Roe v. Wade likely to become an artifact of a different era, people are wondering what's next? Few people are better placed to talk about this issue than Judith Hall Norris, former chief staff counsel for the U.S

MAHATMA GANDHI & OJAI

Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where she personally got to know many of the current Supreme Court Justices, especially our newest, Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Norris believes that the 50-year

2of

conservative project to install Federalist Society-approved judges has borne fruit, and will continue to do so for decades.

She also talks about the Ojai Women's Fund and other community topics.

TWO DEGREES SEPARATION

BETWEEN

OJAI

ONE: Mahatma (Mohandas K.) Gandhi's decades-long campaign of nonviolent resistance to British rule led to the subcontinent being freed of its colonial status in 1947 and inspired resistance movements around the world, including America's Civil Rights struggles. He was assassinated in 1948 at the age of 78.

him "a saint, not a politician." But he acknowledged her influence, saying Besant "awakened the Indian people from their deep slumber."

TWO: Besant's involvement with Ojai began when she took over leadership of the Theosophical Society in 1907. In the 1920s she traveled to Ojai with her protegé Jiddhu Krishnamurti, and raised money to buy 520 acres in Upper Ojai for the Happy Valley Foundation, which, in turn, founded Happy Valley School in 1946. Though, in total, Besant only spent several months in Ojai, she left an indelible mark on our founding ideals. She called Ojai "this smiling vale."

Gandhi was an admirer of Annie Besant, who preceded him in the anti-colonial resistance. In fact, he kept pictures of Annie Besant on the walls of his law office. Besant admired Gandhi in return but thought him naive, believing that violence against non-violent protestors will inevitably lead to violence. She called OQ / SUMMER 2022

29

What does it mean to be Educated?

30

oakgroveschool.org/begin OQ / SUMMER 2022

DOWN HOME

Furnishings

Custom Window Coverings Design Services Lighting Unique Home Furnishings Custom Upholstery + Pillows

250 E Ojai Ave 805 640 7225

Product or Project Inquiries? info@downhome furnishings.com OQ / SUMMER 2022

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an Ojai tradition since 1964

Open Every Day 9:30 - Sunset

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302 W. Matilija Street | 805-646-3755 OQ / SUMMER 2022

OQ | A RTS & L I TERAT U RE

44

56 AMOC RUNS THE FESTIVAL

60 beato goes on

American Modern Opera Company Helms Ojai Music Festival

By Bret Bradigan

Ojai Potter Gets New Lease With Ruth Brandon Book

By Kit Stolz

38 Filmmakers of the people

64 ojai's supporting role Chloé Zhao Talks About Ojai's Part in 'Nomadland'

By Bret Bradigan

Ojai Documentarian Journeys from Thomas Fire to "137 Shots"

By Peter Deneen

69 artists & galleries The People, Places That Make Ojai an Arts Destination

OQ / SUMMER 2022

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Saving Fundamentals:

BENEFITS OF SAVING & INVESTING EARLY

by DOUG ECKER Retirement Plan Specialist / CRPS® with Integrity Wealth Advisors April 2022

S

tarting your retirement savings early, being consistent year after year, and investing what you save are some of the keys to a successful retirement, due to the power of long-term compounding.

It is never too early to start saving for retirement, but don’t be discouraged if you haven’t yet begun!

Benefit of saving and investing early As this chart shows, it is also never too late to begin consistently saving and investing for retirement.

Creating a Financial Independence Plan can bring clarity when answering that important question, Account growth of $200 invested/saved monthly “Can I achieve my retirement goals?”

Saving

People always ask us, “How much do I need to have saved when I reach retirement?” There is no one-size-fits-all answer, as your individual financial situation is distinct. A unique personal Independence Plan will give you a clear answer.

ACCOUNT GROWTH OF $200 INVESTED/ SAVED MONTHLY

$450,000

E ndi ng po rt fo l i o

Consistent Chloe invests from ages 25 to 65 earning 6.25% ($96,000 total)

$400,000

$420,300 77%

Late Lyla invests from ages 35 to 65 earning 6.25% ($72,000 total)

$350,000

$250,000

66%

Nervous Noah saves from ages 25 to 65 in cash earning 2.0% ($96,000 total)

$200,000

Sav inv som suc the com

$210,700

Quitter Quincy invests from ages 25 to 35 earning 6.25% ($24,000 total)

$300,000

Sa

$209,600 89%

$147,900

$150,000

35% $100,000 $50,000

Investment return Savings

$0 25

30

35

40

45 Age

50

55

60

65

The example above is for illustrative purposes only and not indicative of any investment. Compounding is the increasing value of assets due toinvestment return earned on both principal and prior investment gains.

The above example is for illustrative purposes only and not indicative of any investment.

Source: J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions. Compounding is the increasing value of assets due to investment return earned on both principal and prior investment gains.

OFFICES IN DOWNTOWN OJAI & VENTURA

(805) 947-0202 iwaplan.com

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Integrity Wealth Advisors, Inc. is a Registered Investment Adviser. This material is solely for informational purposes. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Integrity Wealth Advisors, Inc. and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure.

OQ / SUMMER 2022

INTENTIONALLY

SMALL 4:1 STUDENT TEACHER RATIO 100% COLLEGE ACCEPTANCE RATE EPORTFOLIO INTEGRATED EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING GLOBAL STUDENT BODY ROBUST EXTRACURRICULAR CALENDAR INSTRUCTIONAL SUPPORT PROGRAM

BESANT HILL SCHOOL www.BesantHill.org OQ / SUMMER 2022

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SUSTAINABLE FASHION & WARES We carry your favorite designers including Johnny Was, Free People, CP Shades, Denim & Supply by Ralph Lauren, Prana, Doen, Mother Jeans, Menswear and much more.

MON - SAT 11-5 SUN 10-5 TUESDAYS CLOSED

307 E Matilija Street, Ojai Ca 93023, 805-646-6331

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OJAI RESIDENT AND CREATOR OF THE MUST-SEE NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY ‘137 SHOTS’ HOLDS UP A POWERFUL MIRROR TO AMERICAN SOCIETY, IF WE ARE WILLING TO LOOK. On the evening of November 29, 2012, as the blue 1979 Chevy Malibu accelerated past police headquarters in downtown Cleveland, its rattletrap engine backfired, sending a sonic clap that echoed off of the buildings, frightening police officers standing 38

outside. The officers ducked, covered, and called it in.

“Old Chevy just capped a round off as he blew by the Justice Center,” the initiating officer radioed, setting off a chaotic 23-minute, 23-mile chase that involved 62 police cars and more OQ / SUMMER 2022

ichael FILM DIRECTOR FOR THE PEOPLE STORY BY PETER DENEEN

MICHAEL MILANO SURVEYS POST-THOMAS FIRE DEVASTATION.

than 100 Cleveland police officers; culminating in one of the most egregious incidents of deadly police violence in American history.

Thirteen officers fired an astounding 137 shots at the victims, 49 of them coming from a single officer who unloaded his final 15 shots through the windshield from a standing position atop the vehicle’s hood. By the end of it, all that was left was the shot-out carcass of the Malibu, and the bullet-riddled Black bodies of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, who were unarmed.

Five years later, Michael Milano was editing footage from the 137 shots incident, in the Upper Ojai home he’d just moved his young family into, when a dry breeze began to blow. Just as one of the strongest Santa Ana wind events on record was building, utility equipment upwind of Milano’s home malfunctioned, igniting the dry grass. The cheatgrass caught everything else aflame and the Thomas Fire burned on to briefly become the largest fire in California history. It forced the evacuation of more than 100,000 people, destroying more than 1,000 structures, and killing 23 people, including victims of the fire-precipitated debris flow that raged out of the posh Montecito slopes before the

OQ / SUMMER 2022

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ground had even cooled.

The Milanos' house survived the initial firestorm, but the subsequent days remained perilous. The wind would reawaken embers, igniting anything left unburned. In rural Upper Ojai, most of the 100 structures lost — many of them homes of new neighbors Milano had yet to meet — were destroyed in the hellish hours after the main fire front had already passed, when most emergency resources had already departed to keep pace with the flames galloping toward urban areas.

But little fires were still burning everywhere.

With the documentarian’s instinct for preservation and the awareness that he was witnessing an epochal event, Milano began recording the Thomas Fire disaster. His film, "Burning Ojai: Our Fire Story," premiered on HBO in the fall of 2020 and remains the defining account of the Thomas Fire.

out as a running back for the Wolverines’ football team, a roster that boasted at least 20 future professional players at the time. Not only did Milano make the team, but he also received a full athletic scholarship in a second sport — an exceedingly rare feat.

After graduating in 2009, Milano taught abroad and at an inner-city elementary school in post-Katrina New Orleans with Teach for America. On and off the field experiences at Michigan led Milano to write his first book, which was published shortly before his acceptance to the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism — where Milano intended to hone his skills into a career of long-form narrative writing.

The 137 shots story changed that plan.

If you knew Mike Milano was in film, you would assume he was an actor — possessing a rugged Hemingway handsomeness and Midwestern congeniality — a presence made for on-camera rather than behind. But of all Milano’s convivial traits, his voice stands out. He speaks with the full-throated, captivating confidence of a storyteller, and listens with the attentive ear of someone who assumes he has everything to learn. Milano isn’t an actor, he is an observer, whose motivation for storytelling could broadly be described as hellbent on doing the deep work to tell stories that bend the world evermore toward justice.

Milano was raised in the Cleveland suburb of Rocky River, Ohio, the third of four high-achieving siblings, whose upbringing was practically within the walls of the criminal justice system. Their father is the Cleveland attorney who led the courageous exposure of corruption within the Catholic Church that set off the ongoing global reckoning of abuse.

The incident occurred just before Milano entered journalism school and the case was talked about a lot back in Cleveland.

When it came time for his thesis at Berkeley, Milano naturally gravitated toward the grave injustice in his hometown.

“My earliest memories are going downtown to the courthouse,” Milano recalled during an interview at his Upper Ojai studio this spring. “We’d go get lunch, say hi to the cops, the prosecutors, the bailiffs and the judges. I was raised within that world, speaking that language, and immersed in that lore.”

“'137 Shots' was initially going to be a book,” Milano told me, but as he developed the story he realized the audio and visual components of the story could be expressed more impactfully as a film. That and the multi-dimensional nature of directing and producing appealed to Milano’s hard-working, strategic mind.

In 2005, Milano received a scholarship to wrestle at the University of Michigan, where he majored in political science.

After two years of wrestling, the 5'6" Milano decided to try

“It’s a million little battles,” he says about making films, which appeals to his “grind-loving” wrestler’s psyche. He

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THOMAS FIRE FILMING

wrote about that in his book nearly 15 years ago. “That doesn’t go away,” he laughed.

While at Berkeley, Milano met his wife, Noémie, a French-Senegalese-Vietnamese business student, who would become Milano’s partner in all things at Make It Plain — Milano’s production banner — where together they specialize in premium, feature documentaries, and strategic nonfiction storytelling. Noémie produces, edits, and shoots on all of their projects. “Mike doesn’t want to be famous,” Noémie told me. “He wants the stories to be famous. He’s passionate about his work and wants to do his bit of good in the world.”

Milano eschews projects about the rich and famous, bemoaning their prominent positioning in the Hollywood commercial zeitgeist.

“I do stories about real people,” Milano said. “As inequality soars, it’s the artist’s job to paint pictures that speak for the rest of us.”

When Milano screened a cut of his "137 Shots" film for me in

the summer of 2020, I spent all 105 minutes vacillating between chills-with-goosebumps and outright fury. At that moment, America’s streets were a cauldron of inchoate rage over the spate of police killings and 400 years of cumulative oppression. Milano’s documentary masterfully threaded them all together and laid bare the injustice of the system that permits it to continue.

The film employs a seamless stitchwork of intimate, first-person accounts, police depositions, surveillance and dashcam footage to break down a series of outrageous policing errors, a culture of misconduct, communications breakdowns, systemic flaws, and the imperfect people in positions of power that led to the 137 shots tragedy — carefully balancing it all with the real and omnipresent danger of doing police work in a country whose citizens possess 400 million firearms.

Milano had been working with Netflix on the original film — shot, edited, produced, and directed primarily, by Mike himself — for nearly five years, before it was finally released on Decem-

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ber 15, 2021. It has since exceeded expectations, making extended stays in the Netflix Top 10, top documentaries, "Trending Now" category, and outperforming similar films.

In a glowing review published in February, The New York Times wrote: “Michael Milano’s riveting documentary investigates not only the night in question (via powerfully intercut testimony, dashcam videos and expert witnesses) but the department’s attempt to cover up their mistakes as part of the city’s powder-keg history of racial inequality and the pattern of “unreasonable and unnecessary use of force” by its police.

The Times’ review continued: “Milano keeps peeling back layers of bias and corruption before folding in the near-concurrent murder of Tamir Rice, ultimately amounting to much more than the story he sets out to tell; it becomes less a true-crime documentary than an in-depth exploration of the psychic divide that has split this country in two.”

On social media, "137 Shots" resonated, too.

One tweet read, “'137 Shots' on Netflix is the most gut-wrenching documentary I’ve seen thus far in this life.

Brilliant, unbiased, and legitimately factual storytelling of Cleveland’s catalytic nightmare that sparked the fire for change. You’ll be sick and sad, then mad… but all should see it.” Another Tweeted, “'137 Shots' is why we need to DEmilitarize the police, NOT defund,” — a position Milano’s film makes clear that he agrees with.

Milano doesn’t narrate "137 Shots;" his sources do. The film frequently turns to the late Cleveland journalist, Mansfield Frazier, who was the fiery host of a popular radio show on WTAM 1100 Cleveland. Frazier is a powerful narrator and provides insightful commentary on the case. Milano says his decision to make Frazier the narratorial backbone of "137 Shots" was foundational.

“Mansfield is the conscience of our film, the Greek Chorus, providing our moral clapback,” Milano explained. “He says things I could never say.”

Milano’s intimate access and arrangement of the subjects, who 42

tell their stories in the first person, makes it feel more like a cinematic novel than a stodgy documentary. There are many instances where the naked vulnerability of Milano’s sources caused me to wonder how he could possibly have been allowed to record.

The answer lies in the years of effort Milano put into building relationships with the people involved — they trust him, and in return, he is fair to them. At one point, the officer who stood the best chance of being held accountable — the one who fired 49 shots — is playing the video game "Call of Duty" in his living room, virtually gunning people down while seemingly unaware, or unconcerned, with the optics of the moment as Milano sits beside him, camera rolling.

Milano, who lost a best friend in Iraq at the age of 20, lends us empathy for everyone involved, including the police. That the story takes place in Milano’s hometown — within the justice system he was raised in — adds an extra air of care and attention to detail to his film. He knows the people, personally. "137 Shots" is a searingly honest and unfiltered account of what happened that tragic night and how accountability was denied by imperfect people running a system unjust by design.

Despite the damning footage of backroom depositions of police officers, a Cuyahoga County judge acquitted every police officer involved — including the former Marine who fired more than a third of the shots that night.

As Milano was making the film, the riotous summers of Ferguson and Minneapolis fueled the movement to reign in policing in America. But the pendulum has since swung away from the energy of those movements and police reform legislation has stalled.

“The institution of policing is so strong, so resilient, because it represents the essential class divide in America,” Milano asserted.

“The film takes a shot at that. It’s a reality check. "137 Shots," and all that we now know that incident encompasses, is representative of so much more. It’s a metaphor for how far off the rails these aspects of American culture have gone."

The independent research collaborative Mapping Police Violence reported that 30,000 people were killed by police in the U.S. between 1980 and 2018. Over the past decade, 98 percent of police killings have resulted in no criminal charges.

“How do we, as Americans, define strength?” Milano asked me. “What are our basic moral virtues as a society? What is our relationship with violence? That is what this film is OQ / SUMMER 2022

ultimately about.”

Just six months before the 137 shots case was to go to trial — in another uncoordinated response by the Cleveland police to a report of a child playing with a toy gun — officers killed 12-yearold Tamir Rice. The officers in that case employed the same practiced spiel in court and the grand jury would decline to hold any officers responsible. Evidence unearthed by Milano’s film has prompted Rice’s family attorneys to lobby the Department of Justice to reopen Tamir’s case.

Milano said that even though action on police reform has mostly stalled, the film brought closure and some semblance of justice for the Russell and Williams families, who have praised Milano’s 137 shots account.

Milano’s motivation to pursue the 137 shots story is rooted in the final lines of his film, “to seek our own advancement, in search of the advancement for all.” Robert F. Kennedy opens and closes the movie with a famous speech he gave in Cleveland the day after MLK Jr. was killed. Speeches from Martin Luther King Jr., Cornel West, and RFK serve as moral lighthouses throughout. Milano often quotes artists, writers, and philosophers — he says he’s on a Krishnamurti kick at the moment.

Milano doesn’t like interviews. He says that it gives the author too much power over your own story. Full disclosure: Mike and I are friends and neighbors. We met when I rushed to his home as part of a civilian Upper Ojai fire brigade to put out flames threatening his house in the days immediately following the Thomas Fire.

He’s an interesting paradox of the millennial generation. His work has been seen by tens of millions of people around the world, but he craves privacy — a generational throwback to when, he says, “mystery was cooler.”

Milano says everything he wants to say is in the work.

In the film, Cornel West — with his usual power and poignance — referencing W.E.B. Du Bois, says, “Every generation has to attempt to meet the standards of integrity, honesty, decency and courage.” In our final interview, I asked Mike if he feels a sense of generational leadership — if he sees himself as one of the defining millennial storytellers.

“That’s not up to me, and I don’t have a choice — and I don’t particularly care about that external approval,” he replied quickly.

Then he took a breath. “I think an artist is someone who’s highly attuned to the world around them — and sensitive — and all that stimulus churns up inside you, and you need a release for all that emotion or you’ll go crazy. Essentially, I have to paint. I’d

' MIKE AND NOEMIE paint if I didn’t get paid and no one ever saw it.”

By showing us at our most unjust, his deep longing for us to be better to each other than we are shines unstoppably through.

The 137 shots story is infuriating, and also maddeningly, tragically, preventable.

During one interlude with Mansfield Frazier, the WTAM Cleveland radio host, Frazier says, “The 137 shots case goes back to who runs the country. In a totalitarian state, men with guns run countries. This is about power. Policing is still a reflection of society, and we have a society that doesn’t want a mirror held up to it.” With "137 Shots," Michael Milano holds that mirror up for us, if we are willing to look. And if we are going to do the work to be better, we must.

‘137 Shots’ is currently streaming on Netflix.

The author of this article, Ojai native and environmental writer Peter Deneen, is a former officer in the U.S. Coast Guard, and served 12 years on active duty. Follow his work at www.petedeneen.world.

OQ / SUMMER 2022

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OQ | OF F T HE S HEL F

OQ | OF F T HE S HEL F

STORY BY KIT STOLZ

eatrice Wood, the artist and icon, still lives on in the hearts and minds of Ojai residents, despite passing away nearly 25 years ago.

B

By contrast the larger world — in this case, London, New York and Hollywood — seems to forget about and then rediscover Wood’s extraordinary life and work every quarter-century or so, and then, almost invariably, tries to put her into the movies.

Last time around, in 1997, it was a prominent Hollywood writer and director, James Cameron, who, while casting about for an appealing female lead for a grand love story, encountered Wood’s 1985 autobiography — “I Shock Myself ” — and loved it. Cameron ingeniously rewrote Wood’s impetuous artistic rebellion in Paris in the pursuit of love into an epochal trans-Atlantic journey that, despite its tragic conclusion, won young Kate Winslet an Oscar. Cameron made Beatrice Wood’s character arc in effect the star of one of Hollywood’s most successful movies, “Titanic.”

Twenty years later, an English novelist and historian,

Ruth Brandon, while pursuing a different story — involving the brilliant but confounding French conceptual artist Marcel Duchamp — came across the unpublished diaries of Wood and that of her first lover Henri-Pierre Roché. Brandon, a prolific author whose work often has a feminist edge, could not resist the emotional, outspoken Wood. In a book published this year and originally intended to focus on the charismatic Marcel Duchamp and his circle, called “Spellbound by Marcel: Duchamp, Art, and Love,” she wrote mostly about Beatrice Wood.

“I was drawn to her story because it’s a good story,” Brandon said, on a Zoom call from London. “We were planning to OQ / SUMMER 2022

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tell the story of Duchamp and I came across these diaries, of Wood’s and of Roché’s, and it’s just fantastic. It turned out to be a story, in her case, of someone who refused to accept what she was supposed to be like, which was a respectable young lady of the middle class.”

Brandon first wrote the idea into a screenplay with a director friend for a film project about the charismatic Duchamp and the 2017 centennial of

“FOUNTAIN

”

first lover. She ran away to Canada, where she had been offered a part in a play, and where she hoped to find a future as an actress after Roché, a seducer — or “sex addict” in today’s terms, as Brandon convincingly argues — broke her heart.

To Roché, deflowering the virginal Wood counted as a sort of exotic treat. After he seduced her in 1917, he continued to bed many other women, even while sleeping with 0TH

E2 F A RT I N T H O K R O W L ES IA HT THE LIV T I N F LU E N T G S U O O M H T E H N T O D AND S D EC L A R E X P E RTS, B R E 0 AND THE 0 5 S T F S I N 2 0 0 4 WA I O T L R E A N L A E YAP OF THE REB C E N T U RY B

WOMEN WHO LOVED THEM, SUCH THAN

AS WOOD, FAR MORE COMPELLING

THEIR ABSTRACT ART.

his infamous conceptual art piece, “Fountain,” a urinal which he scandalously displayed as a “readymade” sculpture. But although “Fountain” in 2004 was declared the most influential work of art in the 20th century by a panel of 500 experts, Brandon thought the lives of the rebel artists and the women who loved them, such as Wood, far more compelling than their abstract art. Wood in her youth was a romantic, trapped in between two divergent but equally cold-hearted worlds: The wealthy high society of New York, and the startling and sometimes sexual provocations of Duchamp and the Dada movement. When the movie project about “Fountain” fell through, Brandon wrote a story of lives on the artistic edge into a book that has made a considerable splash.

her. When one paramour, Alissa Franc, a journalist friend who had introduced Wood to Duchamp’s circle months before, warned Wood about him, and finally told Wood of Roché’s own dalliance with her, a shocked Wood fled. She described the scene to her diary in a few teary lines. After a last embrace, she kissed Roché goodbye and went home shattered, writing in her diary that “I never suspected the world could be like this.”

In her 1985 autobiography, “I Shock Myself,” Wood mentions that years later she reacted artistically by creating clever and often amusing little bordellos out of clay. She wrote:

“When I read her diaries, alongside Roché’s, I realized that this was going to be a book about three intertwined lives, and also that it was going to be an essentially feminist book, with her at its center,” Brandon said. “The men had total freedom to live as they pleased and make careers, or fail to make them, and the women, even the most emancipated, had really very little.”

I love to do bordellos. I realize the reason I do is that they are a release from my shock over discovering Roché had slept with so many women. Even though I’d read Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, I never dreamed such a thing existed in the world. It was a great shock. I still haven’t gotten over it.

Brandon’s film project concluded at a deeply unhappy moment in Wood’s life, after the betrayal she suffered at the hands of her

Wood married twice, and divorced twice, and never found romantic fulfillment. “I never made love to the man I married,

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OQ | OF F T HE S HEL F

RUTH BRANDON'S BOOK HIGHLIGHTS THE KEY ROLE BEATRICE WOOD'S PLAYED IN MARCEL DUCHAMP'S LIFE.

cared for the gardens around Beato’s home and studio — now the Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts — for many years in Upper Ojai, and came to know her well. Looking back, he treasures that time in her company.

“She was always gracious and friendly, with a lively, salacious wit,” he said, adding that “Beato said she would have hired me even if I was a lousy gardener because of how I looked without a shirt on.”

and I never married the men I loved,” she bluntly admitted in her autobiography. But after finding steady work as a potter in midcentury Los Angeles, and then settling in bucolic Ojai, Beatrice Wood found a different life in art and spirituality, and her work — and her sly, provocative character — emerged and flourished. When asked in her nineties the secret of her longevity by a reporter in San Francisco, Wood declared that she had “two great joys in life — chocolate and young men,” a line that she often repeated, with variations.

In Ojai today, her past among the artists of the Dada movement in Paris and New York is little known or remarked on, but her bold, provocative character remains as beloved and as celebrated as ever.

Alasdair Coyne, the organic gardener and wilderness activist,

His admiration and affection for Wood was echoed wholeheartedly by her many caregivers and studio assistants still present in Ojai and Upper Ojai, including caregivers such as Karin Dron, Adriana Goddard, and Liz Otterbein, and studio assistants Lola Long and Nanci Martinez.

Otterbein, who grew up in France and spoke French with Wood when she helped take care of the older woman late in her life, considered Wood “a teacher.” Otterbein, who cared for her mostly at night, would rise with her in the morning, and remembers fondly her morning routine.

“She was always considerate of other people and always asked me how I was in the morning,” Otterbein said. “And the second thing she would do, was to go to the window, and look out. “‘Oh, look, the dogs are out, or something like that,” she would say.

“And then she would say “Good morning, cactus,” to the cactus that stood outside the window. That was a practice of appreciation, of consideration, that I tried to bring into my life.”

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BEATRICE WOOD IN HER OJAI YEARS

BEATRICE WOOD AT 15

Karin Dron, who also worked as a caregiver for Wood, recalls how Wood’s “salacious wit” could startle people.

Her late husband Boyd Dron met Wood at a young age, she said.

“One time Boyd was at a party when he was seventeen,” she said. “And Beatrice came up to him and said, “I like young men.” Boyd was very very shy at that point, but I think he made a decision at that moment to get over his shyness!”

Dron links Wood’s “sense of play” in her life and in her art to her great success late in life. She says, as did Otterbein, that Wood was astonished at how successful she became. Otterbein recalls Wood looking at one of her famous pieces of “luster ware” pottery, and turning it over to see the price tag, and making a face at the high price. Dron recalls Wood describing herself, despite acclaim and many museum shows, as a “naive craftsman.”

BEATRICE WOOD ART

50

Nanci Martinez, who worked closely with Wood for five years, archiving her collections and curating exhibitions as an art dealer and gallery owner, sees Wood’s self-declared naivete as a conscious choice. She added that Wood’s humor, although great fun, could OQ / SUMMER 2022

OQ | OF F T HE S HEL F PHOTO ON THE RIGHT: BEATRICE WOOD, UNTITLED 1989, GRAPHITE, PASTEL AND WATERCOLOR, 17 X 11 INCHES

mislead people into overlooking her spirituality and her generosity.

She points out that Wood came to Ojai in large part because of her interest in the philosopher Krishnamurti and the Theosophical movement founded in part by his supporter Annie Besant.

“Beatrice came from a very affluent family, and stepped out on her own very bravely when that was not what young ladies did,” Martinez said. “She struggled through a great deal of her life living very modestly, and when her work started selling, she shared very generously, always giving to the Red Cross and many others. One of my jobs was to let her know how all the people who worked for her were doing, and to let her know if they needed help. She paid dentist’s bills and for education, and if she wasn’t able to give cash, she would give a gift of her pottery, which could be sold for $5,000. Those kinds of things were foremost in her mind, not how can I get more attention for me.”

Martinez looks back on her time working with Wood with fondness and great respect.

“The best thing about working for Beatrice was that there was only one way to do things, and that was the right way,” she said.

“She faced this moral question a lot, such as: are we going to cheat a little bit on the taxes? She and I would face this question together, and she would often ask when we had an issue with this or that or in the studio, okay, let’s play 'the highest good game.' What is the highest good here? For everyone involved?”

Martinez added that after Wood died, her work — which had been carefully managed by a Los Angeles gallery owner and art historian named Garth Clark — flooded the market.

“She gained a lot of recognition and was highly collectible up until the end of her life, but after she passed away, a deluge came on to the market,” Martinez said. “eBay was hitting and the whole art market was changing and at that point supply and demand came into play, and with a lot of supply the value of her work went down a bit.”

This commercial fact was noted, surprisingly, in a remarkably appreciative review of “Spellbound by Marcel” by perhaps the

premier art critic in the country, Peter Schjeldahl of The New Yorker. Although he complained that the book was “gossipy,” he raved about Beatrice Wood herself, describing her “élan as legendary,” adding that “Wood seems to me a singular, wildcard creative personality of the twentieth century.”

He even declared — startlingly for an admired critic — that he thought the market for her luster-ware ceramics was underpriced, declaring that “the present market … though active, is less than robust …This signals a lingering, blinkered bias of art collectors against craft mediums. These things are terrific.”

Kevin Wallace, who manages the artistic and cultural legacy of Beatrice Wood at her Center for the Arts in Upper Ojai, said that the review may have sparked a revival of interest in her work.

“The day after that review came out, I had a woman from New York City call me,” he said. “She had read the review and fallen

OQ / SUMMER 2022

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OQ | OF F T HE S HEL F

in love with Beatrice Wood and bought a $3,000 piece before I’d even had a chance to read the review. We’ve had people coming up saying “I read the review and I wanted to come see for myself.” I do think this will create some resurgence of interest, but Beatrice Wood was not just an artist but a personality. So many people come to visit the center and say she’s their hero.”

Wallace has lived and worked with Wood’s legacy for years, and has some ideas about why she appeals.

“From the time she was a young girl she knew she would run away from home,” he said. “Her entire journey was a search for herself, and that includes Theosophy, Krishnamurti, and her great loves. It’s all part of her search for true happiness and a true becoming. When she came to Ojai she found who she was meant to be in the world, and the last years of her life, from her 80s onward, were the happiest years of her life, and I think that is remarkable. I think she and Ojai were meant to be together — call it destiny, call it cosmic, call it what you will, but it seems to have been written in the stars.”

Wallace, who read “Spellbound by Marcel” shortly after its release, notes that the book has been criticized by art historians, primarily for flubbing certain details about secondary characters such as Duchamp’s close friend Man Ray. He suspects that Beatrice Wood herself would consider it an invasion of her privacy, but he still sees its value.

“I think the book was written not to be a documentary of 20th century art. It’s not really about the facts, it’s closer to historical fiction, and I think it’s written in such a way to make it clear this would be a really great movie,” he said. “I’m surprised no one has done that yet.”

For Ruth Brandon in London, Wood was the great survivor of

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BEATRICE WOOD, UNTITLED CHALICE 10 X 6.5 INCHES

the charismatic but cerebral Marcel Duchamp’s artistic rebellion, the rare American woman artist of the era who became “not just financially independent, but famous in her own right.”

Nancy Martinez sees Beatrice Wood as irresistible, and thinks it fitting that Wood, although known in art history as a secondary figure in the highbrow world of Dada, would go on to become famous around the world, among millions of people who have never heard of Marcel Duchamp, as a character in her own right.

“My little soundbite is that it wasn’t her work, it was her life that was her greatest masterpiece,” she said, and then added a little story from Ojai to illustrate the point.

“Beatrice originally thought James Cameron was writing a story about Duchamp,” she said. “She gave her permission for him to use her story in his movie, and after 'Titanic' was released he came back to visit and give her a boxset of the movie. I showed him and Gloria Stuart [the actress who portrayed Wood’s character in the film] around the studio. It was a wonderful visit, but Beatrice was in the next room and didn’t hear everything, and when she had a minute she grabbed me and took me aside and said, 'You have to clean this up! I wasn’t on the Titanic! He’s written me into this story, and how am I going to burst his bubble? Oh my goodness what am I going to tell this poor man?'”

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ing a much deeper commitment to relationships that endure, of building up a vocabulary to deepen the work and lead to surprises … where all the disciplines of telling stories collide in order to transform each other.”

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STORY BY BRET BRADIGAN

AMOC

AMOC

is well suited to create those collisions. They are a multi-disciplinary collective of some of America’s keenest talents in the fields of music, dance, theater, writing, producing and composing. While many of its members have played at Ojai in the past, this is the first time such a group had led the Ojai Music Festival as collective music directors.

With co-founders and artistic directors Matthew Aucoin and Winokur, this AMOC-directed Festival will take place June 9 to 12. Winokur and Davóne Tines, baritone-bass singer, joined the Ojai podcast “Talk of OQ / SUMMER 2022

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the Town” to share their ambitious plans for this year’s festival.

“What’s great about Ojai is you’ll see that (deeper relationships) at play from many angles,” Winokur said. “Ara (Festival Artistic Director Guzelimian) reached out to us, I think it was in a back alley of Carnegie Hall, about two years ago — we all have a really long relationship with Ara. It’s exciting on a personal level to be working with him in this way. “ Guzelimian was dean of Julliard when many AMOC members were enrolled in the exclusive art school. Tines said of his years at Julliard leading up to this moment: “As a contemporary music lover and creator, to have someone in administration recognize that, and be very nurturing and to introduce me to new colleagues who we are still friends and collaborators with to this day? Ara was definitely that breath of fresh air.”

Soprano Julia Bullock will, with Tines, stage a full production of festival favorite Olivier Messaien’s song cycle “Harawi.”

AMOC will also introduce new artists to the Festival, including Julius Eastman, whose gifts for composing, vocals, piano and dance have often been neglected. Eastman was proudly gay and provocative at a time when the classical world culture was especially conservative. AMOC is also programming works this year by another neglected artist, Connie Converse, often credited with pioneering a modern singer-songwriter tradition in the 1950s, before vanishing mysteriously.

performed the festival. Both Tines and Winokur mentioned the influence of early Black Mountain College teachers Josef Albers and Walter Gropius on their own educations.

“It was a huge influence on me; my high school had a similar vibe,” Winokur said. “It’s not about the greatness of the artists, but really about the radical experimentation of it, the thinking of education as a perpetual kindergarten, a collective democracy, of creating a space for learning.”

Tines agreed. “The parts of the programming that I’m involved in, there’s … the democratic process in the company, of thinking about what it means to honor perspectives, and it has meant that certain people lead certain projects and other people are on hand to support that.”

He particularly wanted to bring attention to the innovative Eastman, who was himself a one-man AMOC — a composer, singer, dancer and pianist — who combined minimalism with pop music, and who died tragically at age 49. “I was looking for a broader engagement and honoring of his context and life,” Tines said.

Tines and Winokur talked about how truly outstanding artists are often neglected and forgotten in their own time, and the festival’s role in bringing them back into the spotlight.

AMOC has just won a $750,000 grant from the Andrew K. Mellon Foundation, which was an affirming moment for the collective, founded in 2017. They’ve been gathering up each summer on a farm with barns that become rehearsal rooms. The money means a lot to this nonprofit group, Winokur said, as much for the affirmation as for what they can do with it.

Another line of conversation was AMOC’s similarities in spirit to Black Mountain College, which included composer John Cage, modern dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham and visual artists Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns among many other key figures. The college was founded in 1933 and it closed in 1957. In its 24 years of hand-to-mouth existence it transformed the meaning of art in America, an experiment in learning by doing. As Louis Menand wrote in The New Yorker, “The goal was not to produce painters, poets and architects. It was to produce citizens.” The Ojai Music Festival contains many strands of its cultural DNA; Pierre Boulez studied there, as did Cage, who also composed in Ojai, and whose works are frequently

This year’s festival comes only nine months after last year’s pandemic-delayed event. The 76th year of the festival will begin Thursday with an opening night performance of compositions

by Eastman, modern composer Iannis Xenakis and Kate Soper and Aucoin’s “It’s all different from what you think” and “Shaker Dance.” Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War” is also part of the lineup.

It concludes Sunday at 5:30 p.m. with Ruckus, an early music band, joining AMOC for works by classics by Vivaldi and modern work by festival favorite Philip Glass. The program includes “Inflict Didone,” a rarely performed work by Sigismondo D’India. The concert includes choreography from AMOC’s dancers and Anthony Roth Costanzo singing Glass’ “Liquid Days” and

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' DAVONE TINES “The Encounter.”

Tines compared Ojai to AMOC’s summer residency, where each day they spend long hard hours creating, then gather up “summer-camp style for three-hour dinners, music and a campfire,” he said. “This time when we can be together in a working context and a nonworking context, it makes the work of the company possible. It’s an overused word, community, but meaning you go through so much together, always with this level of care, and it breeds vulnerability in the best kind of way.

“We’re excited to come together in Ojai because of the musical context in which we perform. Maybe that’s closest to our ethos of being together.”

Winokur singled out the Friday’s Messiaen “Harawi” performance: "It’s just piano and singer, but what it’s talking about is so vast. What it’s like to say goodbye to someone you love who is losing their mind … it’s trying to describe tectonic plate shifting, adding a layer of dance, focusing attention on what’s inside your body which is trying to get out. It feels like a perfect thing for Ojai."

Winokur added, “This moment has been kind of scary, and it’s really important to be back together in the flesh. To drop the pretense and barriers and meet people as people. That’s another special thing about the culture of Ojai.”

(CHECK OUT THE OJAI TALK OF THE TOWN PODCAST OR OPEN YOUR BROWSER TO RUNNINGAMOC.ORG.)

OQ / SUMMER 2022

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OQ | h o m e grow n ojai

STORY BY BRET BRADIGAN

B

eckett McDowell, 18, used his downtime during the pandemic to great effect. The Ojai singer-songwriter wrote and recorded an eight-song EP, and his first two singles, “Weirdo,” and “Pale Blue Eyes” were released in recent weeks. He’s now been taking his act on the road with shows in the Bay Area and closer to home in Ventura, opening for Dave Mason.

McDowell, once described as "Ed Sheeran's handsomer little brother," began performing with friends at the Monday night “Young Ones” open mic at The Vine, where he would often play for audiences as small as one, with that one person being his mom. He’s since taken the stage before thousands of fans at Mason and Eric Burdon concerts. McDowell opened a slate of shows in May and June for Rock Hall of Fame inductee Mason, Traffic co-founder, who is best known for classic songs “We Just Disagree,” and “Feeling Alright.”

Another rock star, Pierre Bouvier of the pop-punk Canadian group Simple Plan, also came on board to help McDowell produce “Weirdo,” a song written by Bouvier and other Simple Plan bandmates. Bouvier, a neighbor and golf partner of Beckett’s younger brother Finn (“my manager,” Beckett said,) listened to Beckett’s album of original songs and thought he heard promise. Given Simple Plan’s representations of youthful angst with early 2000s hit songs “Perfect” and “Welcome to My Life,” McDowell’s version feels like a passing of the baton.

and play, about his burgeoning career, rare guitar collection (“They’re all I think about … well, not quite all,”) his encyclopedic knowledge of music, and especially about growing up in Ojai and how it fosters artistic creativity and talent.

McDowell’s career carries traces of Ojai influence at every step. He sang his five-year-old heart out on Libbey Bowl stage with Elvis’ “Jailhouse Rock.” He’s been a regular with the Young Ones, the Monday open-mic night at The Vine since he was 11, he’s produced songs with Jason Mariani at Carbonite Records and Mike Dirnt of Green Day. “Mike really is in a way my mentor,” he said. “He set up my whole recording situation with his assistant Denny … he really deserves a producing credit.” Ojai’s Carbonite Records, McDowell said, “... is a world-class studio. I get excited every time I go in there.”

Talent runs deep and wide in the family. Older brother Charlie is a film director who recently shot “Windfall” in Ojai with Jason Segel, Jesse Plemmons and Lilly Collins. Sister Lilly McDowell Walton is an actress and owns a well-regarded design store in Los Angeles. Mother Kelley is a busy interior designer and photographer. Father Malcolm is known to turn up in the odd film from time to time.

He’s been singing ever since age 2. When watching an Elvis impersonator, he asked his mom, “Who’s Elvis?” She said, “The King of Rock and Roll,” she said. “It’s a good thing he’s dead because I want to be the King.”

You never got a seat at the cool kids table / Cause you got a thing that they just can’t label You’re like a wild flower / Under the power lines Maybe you’re too far out there / Maybe you’re just my type Hey O — I don’t care if you’re a Weirdo

The young McDowell’s next song was released through People magazine’s website in May. The video for “Pale Blue Eyes,” filmed at the Ojai Art Center, features Beckett’s tuneful longing and haunting lyrics.

McDowell joined the Ojai podcast, “Talk of the Town,” to talk

The lyrics open with this line: “Something told me it was over

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OJAI SINGER-SONGWRITER TAKES SHOW ON THE ROAD, OPENING FOR DAVE MASON

/ when you didn’t even call me / Now I’m out and alone forever / And I’m tired. Won’t you tell me what you’re feeling? / Instead of walking out and leaving.”

That he and his father share the same pale blue eyes echoes and amplifies the minor-key longing. Malcolm McDowell’s tearful silence speaks eloquently of a father’s pride and pain. He told People, “It was easy for me to react because all I had to do was listen to the song and I teared up ever time.”

Would McDowell rather have a deeply dedicated fan base or be more like Elvis, a cultural phenomenon? He’s cer-

tainly put in the hours either way. “I’ve played over 300 shows at The Vine. I’ve been playing since age 11,” he said. “Ever since I was a kid I’ve wanted to play stadiums, I dream about it, rocking it,” he said. “Both are great, one goes with the other. (If you’re playing stadiums,) at least 1,000 people will listen to all your songs. I’d be grateful for either.”

Guitars are another key source of pleasure. “I bought my first guitar in Times Square. I brought it to Tokyo, learned a couple chords. I was locked in a hotel room for three weeks while dad was filming. I learned A D and E … that’s all you need to get started. It is a passion, I love collecting guitars. I OQ / SUMMER 2022

see a guitar I want to play it.” Though he’s happy with either electric or classical guitars, “The Dave Mason shows are definitely acoustic. It’s such a heartbeat kind of tone, the classic guitars.”

McDowell’s first two songs from the EP are available on Youtube and racking up views by the thousands. He also has videos from appearances at Norman's Rare Guitars in Los Angeles.

Check out Episode 107: Ojai Talk of the Town for more. For his videos, go to Youtube. For show dates, times and location, check out McDowell’s instagram @ beckettrex.

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CHLOE ZHAO, COOPED UP PHOTO BY TIERNEY GEARON

ZHAO & ‘NOMADLAND’ STAR FRANCES MCDORMAND, POST-OSCAR JOY

STORY BY BRET BRADIGAN

Ojai played an important supporting role in Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland.” Frances McDormand slept in Zhao’s driveway in the white van named “Vanguard,” preparing for her role as a widow on the move in the wake of the Great Recession, based on Jessica Bruder’s book of that name. Ojai’s thrift stores also supplied her clothes, which in turn helped inform McDormand’s Oscar-winning portrayal of the character Fern.

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PHOTO RIGHT: ZHAO AND MCDORMAND ON THE SET OF ‘NOMADLAND

It worked. With 34 total awards for “Nomadland,” Chloe Zhao surpassed Alexander Payne as “the most awarded person in a single awards seasons in the modern era,” as reported by Variety. She was only the second woman, after Kathryn Bigelow for “Hurt Locker,” to win top director at the Academy Awards, and the first woman of color to do so.

Zhao is now at work on her “Dracula” project — reimagining the familiar monster through the lens of a science-fiction western.

If there were a thread to weave together the strands of her busy career of intimate and intimate independent films like “Nomadland,” followed by the blockbuster “Eternals,” it would her poignant portrayals of outsiders and people on the fringe. Dracula — the blood-lusting undead — is an ultimate outsider.

“In the book, Dracula is a plain, straightforward monster, which represents a lot of the fear Victorians had, that Bram Stoker had,” she said. “It was really written in a significant time in Western culture — shifting from the old way to the new way — religion ver-

sus science.” Zhao mentioned that the book also contained other elements on which to develop the character. “Immigration, fear of the other coming from the East. Fear of viruses and a fascination with, of changing our bodies, that comes from the fear of getting vaccinated, the fear of a foreign body entering our body. Of society’s control on a woman’s body.”

Zhao’s training at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts was excellent preparation for making independent films. It was not only the mentorship of teachers, including Spike Lee, but learning the process of funding projects through grants and organizations which support independent filmmakers, Sundance Labs among them.

But her first career goal as a young girl in China “was to become a manga artist. My early imagination was filled with spaceships, “Dragonball,” “Sailor Moon” — these incredible characters and

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studios,” she said. However, “I wasn’t very good at drawing. But this love for sci-fi and fantasy in general was always been with me.”

Her first two feature-length films were “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” and “The Rider,” both shot on location in South Dakota, “Songs” on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The third, “Nomadland,” also used the vast landscapes of the American West almost as a character in itself. “Making my first three films, that was the story that I was interested in telling — and independent film was the way to tell them.” “‘Eternals’” was a different matter altogether. “‘Eternals’ required different tools and bigger tools.” But being immersed in the world of manga, where bold graphic stories resonate with visual dynamism, gave her plenty of insight into the Marvel Cinematic Universe characters and how they would move and grow through the telling of the story.

explore the great unknown,” she said. “That’s human nature. The instincts our current society is built on … it comes from a fear of death, which is deeply rooted in us. Religion isn’t what it used to be in providing that comfort.”

Other aspects of human nature are well suited to exploring through the medium of film, she said. “To feel belonging and roots. That’s why you see these nomads go around the country, and their get-togethers (such as Arizona’s encampment at Quartzite) can be so very intimate. There’s a feeling you can survive on expansion and movement.

It’s a comfort to keep chasing the horizon so it doesn’t end.”

Back to Ojai. Zhao had not at the time of the podcast seen “Salt of the Earth,” the 1954 film which incorporates actors with non-actors much as Zhao is known for, and which was written and produced by Ojai residents Michael Wilson and Paul ZHAO’S INSTAGRAM POST OF A SCI-FI Jarrico, who were blacklisted by the House WESTERN DRACULA SPREAD QUICKLY Un-American Affairs Committee. “But on the panels and conferences at festivals, it comes up a lot,” she said.

Another outsider story she’s been trying to tell is that of lawman Bass Reeves, who was born into slavery and became the first McDormand and Zhao met at the Toronto International Film black U.S. marshal west of the Mississippi. In his legendary caFestival when McDormand played hooky from her promotional reer, he arrested more than 3,000 dangerous criminals, including duties for “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” to watch his own son for the murder of Reeves’ daughter-in-law. The proj“The Rider.” McDormand, who had purchased the rights to ect was picked up by Amazon Studios in 2018 but later shelved.

Bruder’s book, thought she had found the person to bring the project to light. She was right.

“I’m still working on it,” Zhao said. “It touches on these different time periods (slavery, the frontier West, and Oklahoma’s statehood) so to tell such a biography you have to choose, to see how As the factory where “Nomadland’s” Fern worked had closed, and to contain that in a movie. It’s hard to make a great western. This she took to the road, as the Great Recession cast adrift so much is a revisionist version. A lot of people have wanted to tell this humanity, Zhao acknowledged that the world coming out of the story, and I do feel my focus has shifted a bit because of everyCovid-19 pandemic has many similarities. “It’s happening again. thing that has happened.”

Everything has a light and a shadow side. The shadow side is a lot of suffering and losing everything they have,” she said. “It’s like Fern, again, at the end of the film, how she learned to shed some of that enmity, that deep inside “Who am I anyway?’ There’s an opportunity for a lot of that right now, to question the work culture and the economy. The way we work ourselves to death.”

Before her version makes it to the screen, she’d like “to see that story from an African-American filmmaker’s perspective,” she said.

Westerns, as a storytelling frame, continue to fascinate her. They are as varied as the people telling them. “A story about going to space, that to me is vertical travel rather than horizontal travel,” she said. “Man’s desire to see what’s beyond the horizon, to 66

And so McDormand’s Fern, wardrobe courtesy of Ojai’s thrift stores, shunned love and a roof over her head, to return to the factory town where she and her husband Bo lived. She decides to take the advice from the nomad philosopher Bob, an actual nomad, who pointed out that death is cyclical, that it isn’t final, that “I’ll see you down the road.”

OQ / SUMMER 2022

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Congratulations

Nora Davis Recipient of the Carla Bard Award, recognizing outstanding character and community service

Nora Davis perfectly illustrates what it means to truly give of yourself strictly for the benefit of others. Her love for her hometown of Ojai, and those around her, human or animal, has continuously been shown by her extraordinary actions and selflessness over the decades. The Carla Bard Award commemorates a woman who was known as a citizen warrior; one who always stepped up to help those in need. Our company is honored to recognize Nora Davis as an outstanding human, Realtor®, and recipient of the Carla Bard Award.

Congratulations from the LIV Sotheby’s International Realty family!

© 2022 LIV Sotheby’s International Realty. All rights reserved. All data, including all measurements and calculations are obtained from various sources and has not and will not be verified by Broker. All information shall be independently reviewed and verified for accuracy. LIV Sotheby’s International Realty is independently owned and operated and supports the principals of the Fair Housing Act.

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OQ / SUMMER 2022

OQ | A RT i sts & GA L L ERIES Perhaps it was potter and “the Mama of Dada” Beatrice Wood’s influence, going back nearly 90 years. Maybe it even goes back further, to the Chumash people’s ingenious and astounding artistry with basketry.

It’s clear that Ojai has long been a haven for artists. The natural beauty

FIRESTICK GALLERY

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Open from 10 am to 6 pm every day. Gallery Open to the Public.

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NUTMEG’S OJAI HOUSE

Featuring local artists, including William Prosser and Ted Campos.

American-made gifts and cards, crystals, and metaphysical goods.

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OVA ARTS

40+ LOCAL artists with a unique selection of contemporary fine arts, jewelry and crafts.

238 East Ojai Ave 805-646-5682 Daily 10 am – 6 pm OjaiValleyArtists.com

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Intuitive, visionary artist, inspired by her dreams and meditations. It is “all about the Light.” Her work may be seen at Frameworks of Ojai, 236 West Ojai Ave, where she has her studio. 805-6403601 JoyceHuntingtonArt.com

framed so well by the long arc and lush light of an east-west valley lends itself to artistic pursuits, as does the leisurely pace of life, the sturdy social fabric of a vibrant community and the abundant affection and respect for artists and their acts of creation.

PORCH GALLERY

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310 East Matilija Avenue PorchGalleryOjai.com 805-620-7589 IG: PorchGalleryOjai

CANVAS AND PAPER paintings & drawings 20th century & earlier Thursday – Sunday noon – 5pm 311 North Montgomery Street canvasandpaper.org

KAREN K. LEWIS

On a road trip to our new home in 1964, my children kept asking, “Are we there yet?” Our new town was integrating its schools. Reviewing these diverse faces in 2021, I ask myself, “Are we there yet?”

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Plein air landscapes, figures and portraits in oil by nationally-acclaimed artist Dan Schultz.

106 North Signal Street | 805-317-9634 DanSchultzFineArt.com

MARC WHITMAN

Original Landscape, Figure & Portrait Paintings in Oil. Ojai Design Center Gallery.

111 W Topa Topa Street. marc@whitman-architect. com. Open weekdays 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

TOM HARDCASTLE

Rich oils and lush pastel paintings from Nationally awarded local artist.

805-895-9642

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OQ | W I NE & DIN E

80 74

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purewild

Ojai's by the slice

Ojai Entrepreneur's Road to Wellville

By Bret Bradigan

Our Intrepid Pizza Trail Traveler

By Ilona Saari

90 Silverton at the Farmhouse Celebrity Chef & Her Ojai Adventure OQ / SUMMER 2022

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22 ACRE UPPER OJAI LOT This 22 acre lot on Koenigstein Road presents a rare opportunity to build a fabulous estate or a private mountain getaway. With multiple buildings sites and ample usable land, the lot has unsurpassed, panoramic views of the Topa Topa Bluffs, the Santa Ynez mountains, and the entire Upper Ojai Valley. Graced with three seasonal streams, moss-covered, sculptural native boulders and a variety of majestic oaks, the land has a wild, magical quality that is immediately palpable. There is an existing private well and an additional one-third interest in a shared well. It has a paved driveway, easily accessed from highway 150 halfway bet ween Ojai and Santa Paula, and lies within the Ojai Valley Unified School district.

UpperOjai22AcreLot.com

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THE OJAI ALISAL ESTATE This private, gated, 20-acre vineyard estate features a luxurious 2br/2½ba Italian farmhouse with amazing 360-degree views. Downstairs is a large great room comprising kitchen, dining, and living spaces. The great room has high ceilings and is centered on a carved 1920’s fireplace. The chef’s kitchen includes Subzero, Wolf and Miele appliances. French doors lead out to a large, covered patio with a fireplace.

There are also a separate mudroom/pantry, a cozy office/library and a powder room. Upstairs has a guest suite with a private bath, and an expansive primary bedroom suite with a walk-in closet. The beautifully manicured grounds include California peppers, sycamores and oaks as well as a garden of California-native plants.

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OQ | h o m e grow n oja i

OJAI ENTREPRENEUR GONE PUREWILD

STORY BY BRET BRADIGAN

CINDY CONVERY’S

road to wellness led through Ojai and to her new product, PureWild, a beverage infused with collagen, the protein involved in many metabolic functions. For Cindy, it healed a chronic knee injury. “Gone, just gone,” she said.

When Convery was developing the formula for PureWild, she was hosting an unemployed actress in her Ojai home, who took one taste and said, “‘You have to bottle this and sell it!’ That was my focus group.”

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Convery, owner of Foothill Productions, has created more than 300 commercials and film trailers, including for “Lord of the Rings” and “Harry Potter.” She got her start in the entertaiment industry working for George Lucas at Industrial Light & Magic. But she’s always had a curiosity about health and wellness products.

Her first hurdle was finding a steady, reliable supplier, one that met Convery’s standards for purity and sustainability. Most collagen is extracted from beef hides. “That’s not sustainable,” she OQ / SUMMER 2022

said. And she did not like the taste.

“I found this family-owned company in Nova Scotia. They’ve been making marine collagen since 1947 — for pharmaceuticals and hospitals, patches for burn victims,” she said. “So I bought 15 kilos, and have used that to make my own little recipes. I figure if I like it, there’s a lot of other people who will like it, too.”

Her actress friend’s recommendation set Convery in motion.

The next step was then to find a “formulator,” who would take her recipe and help her scale it up for commercial quantities. The formulator, a Simi Valley resident, has also helped build other Ojai products, and it was her connections to the community that opened doors for her.

“When you’re in a small town and you can make connections and make things happen more easily, it’s easier to launch a brand,” she said. This was pre-covid days but the pandemic actually gave her the space and time to work through the inevitable issues.

She credits David and Mary Trudeau, along with Ernest Niglio, with helping her get the first batch on the shelves at Rainbow Bridge in June 2020 “right during the heart of Covid,” she said.

She also credits Bill Moses, who helped found KeVita and Flying Embers in Ojai, for providing her with contacts and guidance. Lisa Casoni and Heather Stobo at Porch Gallery put her in touch with a designer to create the packaging. “There’s a welltrod path for entrepreneurs in Ojai. Brands have been coming out of Ojai going back to Garlic Gold,” she said. “And lynda.com … it’s not just products.”

She also got help from a source well outside Ojai: The Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma. Convery, through her grandmother, is a registered tribal member, and they provided crucial financial aid.

Now PureWild is in 500 stores as well as at top resorts (including the Ojai Valley Inn) where it is featured as a spa product.

It joins the ranks of Kelley D’Angelo’s Lark Ellen Farms, and Moses’ KeVita probiotic drink and Flying Embers hard kombucha as recent Ojai success stories. Medicine Mamas is another

product line which got its start in Ojai.

PureWild hit the market at a propitious time. “It’s the frontier of knowledge,” she said. Collagen was named a megatrend in the food and beverage industry and the global market is expected to reach $6.6 billion by 2025, according to Grand View Research.

“The Japanese have been making collagen peptides, slicing them diagonally to make it more easily absorbable,” she said, and studies show that ingesting collagen for several months can improve skin elasticity, signs of aging as well as joint, back and knee pain.

Though collagen first came to renown in the 1980s as a cosmetic surgery staple for fillers, Convery said, “I don’t consider collagen a beauty product.”

Her experience in the food business also played a part. Convery worked at Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse in her undergraduate years while at Berkeley, where “Churchill pixie tangerines are still on the menu.” She attended Le Cordon Bleu as well. “I experimented with monk fruit and stevia for sweeteners, also used a little bit of honey and organic agave.” She settled on two flavors: blueberry holy basil and mango turmeric. But it doesn’t end there: she has a margarita mix coming. And a collagen-infused wine.

“I have the only certified non-GMO product, only certified kosher,” she said. “I’m producing collagen supplements for women with breast cancer, lupus and auto-immune diseases.

I did that because of Ojai. In my book club , even of the 10 women have had cancer. That’s my market research. This is what’s happening in our country. (When you are) building a new company, it has to grow. The existing market? Who cares? It’s all about the future."

That unemployed actress, Convery said, was reassessing her career during her Ojai stay. After contemplating leaving the entertainment business behind, she subsequently found work on Broadway. In “Hamilton.” As the female lead, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton. What part did this Ojai-born collagen drink have in her landing that role? Convery declined to speculate.

(For further discussion with Cindy Convery on PureWild, Ojai and much more, check out episode 104 of the Ojai Talk of the Town podcast.)

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Sea Fresh Seafood Restaurant - Sushi Bar Fresh Fish Market Heated Patios & Full Bar

805-646-7747 533 E. Ojai Avenue

Open Daily at 11 a.m.

Breakfast Saturday & Sunday, 9 to 11 a.m.

Happy Hour — Monday to Friday, 2 to 5 p.m.

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STORY BY ILONA SAARI

I

GREW UP IN NEW YORK CITY, ARGUABLY THE PIZZA CAPITAL OF AMERICA. THE FIRST PIZZA EVER MADE AND SOLD ON THIS SIDE OF THE POND WAS IN 1905 AT LOMBARDI’S, LOCATED IN THE “NOLITA” NEIGHBORHOOD OF LOWER MANHATTAN, A FAVORITE DINING SPOT FOR ENRICO CARUSO. I HAVE DELICIOUS MEMORIES OF ROCKY LEE CHU-CHO BIANCA ON 2ND & 52ND, FAMOUS FOR ITS PAPER-THIN CRUST PIZZAS WITH SPECIAL OLIVE OIL THAT MADE ITS SLICES A GIFT FROM THE GOD/DESSES. OQ / SUMMER 2022

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Then there’s Ray’s Original Pizza parlor. Well, parlors, plural, since there are a zillion Ray’s around Manhattan — east side, west side, all around the town. My favorite was on First around 58th, just a few blocks from my apartment, where I could walk over and get a slice, even in a blizzard. Go to any pizza joint in NYC and you’ll understand our devotion to these pies.

However, pizza styles and sizes have since evolved, becoming more “gourmet” as pizza purveyors entered Margherita-ville making individual pies (not slices) such as barbecue chicken, white pizzas, or ones with arugula and salmon. Sadly, my days of eating pizza whenever I want are waning as the nation and I have become increasingly conscious of more healthful food choices. Lots of us are eating fewer carbs and many people are going gluten free. The burger, yes — the bun, no. We’re designing more and more salads with protein and veggies, and we’re exercising more. Baby boomers are fighting the bulge, cholesterol, and encroaching old age with a vengeance. But we lapse. So, it’s distressing that I have found pizzas in Ojai too good to resist, but was thankful that I, at least, didn’t have the temptation of running out for a slice.

UNTIL NOW. PINYON - OWNER TONY MONT

A few years ago, Tere Karabatos, wife Kristen McGuiness, and their two young children moved to Ojai. Mentored in Los Angeles by Salman Agah, the founder of Pizzanista pizzerias that specialize in New York style thin-crust pizzas, Tere turned his 82

newfound culinary expertise and a gift of a 200-year-old sourdough starter into a new Ojai pizza joint … Air Pizza.

As in New York pizzerias, you can walk in just for a slice, maybe OQ / SUMMER 2022

two or three. This is where I get into trouble. I can pretend I’m not

fame), Pinyon opened its doors and fired up its ovens. The dough

eating a whole pie, even though I buy one, two, three slices in one

is made in-house, using tried and true fermenting processes and

sitting. Tere’s traditional, hand-tossed pizzas include the classic

serves as the crusts for Pinyon’s traditional Sicilian square pizza

New York-style cheese with house-made tomato sauce, mozzarel-

(not a deep-dish pie, but one that has a thicker, and slightly raised

la and Grana Padano cheeses. He also serves up a “punk rock” piz-

crust … a tasty tribute to Claud’s bread), as well as its thin-crust

za, dubbed Meat Puppet, a shoutout to the rock group of the same

New York-style round pizza. Veggie toppings change with the lo-

name, topped with pepperoni, sausage, bacon and grilled chicken,

cal farming seasons. As pizza is one of my favorite food groups,

and the Mira Monte pizza with wild mushrooms, yellow peppers,

Pinyon is dangerous for people like moi, because you can buy ei-

Kalamata olives, ricotta, garlic, basil and Grana Padano cheese.

ther style by the slice … keto be damned! Pinyon’s breads are also

Air Pizza also serves a gluten-free crust with dough from Venice

made daily using the same fermenting process. And, all produce

Bakery. A lifelong athlete who dreamed of making the “Majors”

for the pizza selections, hoagies, salads and dinner entrees are sin-

(baseball) as a young boy, Tere works with the non-profit “Athletes

gularly from farmers in the Ojai Valley.

in Recovery” and hopes to host 12-Step meetings in his pizzeria in the near future.

Many showbiz folks say they were “born in a trunk,” but Tony

So, in my opinion if you’re looking for a taste of New Jersey or New York, stop by Pinyon and grab a slice.

Montagnaro a/k/a Mont, a New Jersey/Philadelphia “boy,” was born in a pizzeria … his father’s.

Along with experienced culinary friends, Chef Jeremy Alben and beverage/wine director Sally Slade, the three moved to Ojai, pooled their expertise after years of working in the restaurant/ food business, and recently opened the second new pizza palace in Ojai … Pinyon. As soon as you walk in the door, Pinyon screams New Jersey, Philadelphia and Manhattan, not only because of its pizzas, but its hoagies, soft pretzels, and bagels. This former New Yorker felt right at home. With a sourdough starter given to him by nearby Claud Mann (of Ojai Rotie and sourdough bread OQ / SUMMER 2022

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AIR PIZZA AND PINYON ARE THE NEWBIES IN TOWN, BUT OJAI’S PIZZA TRAIL IS A LONG AND WINDING ROAD. IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER — CONTINUE DOWN THE TRAIL TO:

OJAI PIZZA, either in town or in Oak View, if you’re still in a New York state of mind. This pizzeria/restaurant offers X-small to X-large NYstyle pies, regular crust or thin crust. Don’t want a traditional cheese pie? Build your own. Vegetarian? Choose your toppings from a bushel of veggie choices, such as zucchini, spinach or marinated artichokes. For carnivores, there’s Canadian bacon, ground beef, meatball and, of course, sausage, pepperoni and more — perhaps add a few anchovies. Or make it a balanced pizza meal with veggies and meat.

BOCCALI’S offers its own hand-tossed pies at their East and West End locations. Here, too, you can forego the “ordinary” pizza choices and construct your own from toppings that include prosciutto, green chili, eggplant, shrimp or crab, then pick a sauce — a traditional tomato sauce from a family recipe, or a pesto sauce, or just plain olive oil.

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BLANCA MIGUEL’S CA MARCO menu is always full of tasty morsels, be it the Italian entrees such as chicken parm, or fresh salmon filet in a cream sauce or terrific pasta dishes, paninis and salads found on the menu, or her selection of gourmet thin-crust pizzas. Besides the traditional Margherita pie, other choices include a pesto pie and “Papa’s Favorite,” a five-cheese pizza. I can’t forget to mention the restaurant chef ’s tribute to her … the Bianca (Italian for Blanca) smothered with ricotta, mozzarella, sautéed garlic, spinach and artichokes. Want to spice it up? Add a few jalapeño peppers if you like. Blanca does.

PAPA LENNON’S in Meiners Oaks offers a variety of pies, including the now classics Margherita and barbecue chicken, but it, too, has a “Papa’s Favorite” – a delectable white sauce pie with three cheeses, blackened chicken, mushrooms, artichokes, and topped with fresh cilantro.

OJAI’S LEGENDARY RANCH HOUSE is now hosting “Music Under The Stars” every Wednesday night with a happy hour menu that includes three choices of individual pizzas — a three-cheese pie, a Margherita pie, and a Mediterranean pie with tomatoes, onion, olives, greens and crumbled cheeses.

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OSTERIA MONTE GRAPPA in the Arcade boasts some unusual gourmet pizzas — try the Pizza Valvecia topped with shredded mozzarella, organic arugula, roasted duck & torpedo onions (the long, red Italian ones), with balsamic reduction drizzled on top.

PIZZA NIGHT AT FARMER & THE COOK where the dough can be sour or gluten free, and the cheese can be dairy or cashew … your choice.

SOON, CAFÉ BOKU’S plant-based kitchen will join the trail with a mushroom crust and cashew cheese pizza. Having tasted their delicious vegan mac & cheese (gluten-free macaroni smothered with delicious vegan melty cheese), it will be a healthy choice to savor.

Pizza lovers, Ojai’s got you covered, no matter how you slice it. Here in the valley…

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie… that’s amore!

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NANCY SILVERTON

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STORY BY ABIGAIL NAPP

playing phone tag with Chef Nancy Silverton on a weekday evening.

When Silverton answers the phone, she says there’s something in the oven.

(It’s the perfect tease.) Can I call back in 20 minutes?

I tell her I’m frying pork chops, there’s no rush. Let’s speak in 45 minutes.

For the rest of the hour, I’m dying to know what she’s baking.

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FARMHOUSE TICKETED EVENTS QUICKLY SELL OUT, WITH MANY WINES AND INGREDIENTS SELECTED LOCALLY.

At 67, Nancy Silverton’s culinary career has grown well beyond her native Los Angeles, and it now includes Ojai, a place she has been coming to since childhood. Four years ago, Silverton became the culinary ambassador of the Farmhouse at the Ojai Valley Inn and Spa, and in many respects, she now embodies the place. As leader of the guest chef residency program, Silverton recruits friends and colleagues from the food and restaurant world as far away as Tuscany, and as close as the Central Coast, to prepare elaborate dinners. (Many keep coming back.) On Sunday mornings, she’s been known to select ingredients at the farmer’s market, her sunglasses and golden hair pins shining in the sun. The ticketed events range in price from $295 to $500.

This year’s popular program sold out in 48 hours.

“It’s been great to bring the chefs out,” said Silverton. “It feels like such a special and lucky experience, because of the meals. It’s a getaway, and it’s everything I love.”

Silverton was raised in Sherman Oaks. Her family often took day-trips to Ojai. As a girl, she relished the open-air shelves of Bart’s Books and took pride in knowing how to pronounce "Matilija Canyon" like a local. (There was a street with the same name where she grew up.) Over the years, many people from her community ended up in Ojai. Her former co-founder of La Brea Bakery and Campanile, Manfred Krankl, started Sine Qua Non Vineyard.

And despite a demanding calendar of kitchen-hopping, cookbook writing and travel, Silverton has already left an impression on local taste –– something she loathes to impose. Jimmy’s menu at the Ojai Valley Inn now serves her pizza recipe.

“It’s super important when you move into a community — especially when you’re an outsider — to partner with a local, and to not come in and say, ‘I’m going to show people how to eat and 92

show them what good food is,’ " she said. “You have to embrace them and say we’ll offer something else.”

On the phone, Silverton reveals what was in the oven: angel food cake. She ate 3,000 calories that day, because she’s writing a new cookbook devoted to her first love: baking.

“Once you start scrutinizing these things, you can get so picky,” she says.

Her exacting mind and detailed imagination will not accept a recipe without “at least 50 attempts.” And she requires a support team of photographers, testers and editors to achieve publication. (Silverton once compared the cookbook-writing process to childbirth; she has three children.) By her telling, this cookbook — her 11th — will be more like a quest in pursuit of the perfect peanut butter cookie.

“I’m not very specific about what I like in anything, but I’m super specific about desserts. For the peanut butter cookie, it’s about the rise and fall and the cracked, soft, chewy and peanut-buttery textures and flavor,” she said. “But obviously, I wanted this to be different and personal, so I made a very large indentation on top of the cookie and filled it with peanut butter.”

From there, the cookie goes back into the oven for another three minutes, and gets topped with oily and salty Spanish peanuts.

Silverton’s classic recipe has added the oomph of a peanut butter cup.

“That is clearly the best peanut butter cookie I’ve ever had,” she said.

Four decades into her profession, Silverton has earned the highest accolades for a chef, restaurateur, and baker, as well as criticism over some business decisions. The James Beard FounOQ / SUMMER 2022

THE FARMHOUSE AT THE OJAI VALLEY INN WAS BUILT BY ARCHITECT HOWARD BRACKEN AND OPENED IN 2019

dation, Food & Wine magazine and the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) have all recognized her talent and given awards. Recently, she starred in Netflix’s Chef ’s Table and shared her culinary life in Umbria, Italy, where she has wintered and summered for decades. But for Silverton fans, her best moment on screen happened decades ago when she served Julia Child a slice of the fluffy creme-fráiche custard brioche pie.

The larger-than-life TV-chef took a bite, fell silent and began to cry — It was simply too delicious.

Silverton joined several hot restaurants and later co-founded several establishments that launched her career. Young, curious, and ambitious, Silverton left Sonoma State University to study at Le Cordon Bleu in London. On her return to Los Angeles in 1979, she became a pastry chef at Michael’s and Chef Wolfgang Puck’s Spago. Witnessing the rise of the mostly all-male “rockstar chef ” phenomenon, she was part of the generation that designed floor plans with open kitchens, invented a new energized atmosphere of casual fine dining, and created the illusion that the backbreaking work of cooking was a glamorous spectacle. There in her 20s,

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NANCY SILVERTON'S TEAM AT THE FARMHOUSE

Silverton honed her palate and gift for hospitality, watching California Cuisine take off. She learned from Chef Jonathan Waxman, who taught her “simplicity, integrity and freshness,” as well as Wolfgang Puck, Alice Waters and Steve Sullivan.

Her first businesses, La Brea Bakery and Campanile restaurant, were founded with her then-husband, the late Chef Mark Peel.

Today, her roster of mostly Italian and meat-focused restaurants include Michelin-starred Mozza Osteria, Pizzeria Mozza, Pizzette, Chi SPACCA and more recently, The Barish in the historic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and others.

Along the way, Silverton has received some heat for her business affairs and survived immense challenges. After the Black Lives Matter protests in Los Angeles led to looting and a fire at her Mozza complex in the middle of the pandemic during the summer of 2020, Silverton and her romantic partner Michael Krikorian were criticized for writing a controversial op-ed in the Los Angeles Times. Silverton’s former business partner, chef-restaurateur Mario Batali from B&B Hospitality, divested himself after people and employees from his New York City and Boston restaurants made allegations of sexual misconduct, sexual discrimination and retaliation, resulting in legal action. When asked about Batali’s behavior, Silverton told Los Angeles Magazine, “What I’ve tolerated at my restaurants has never changed, and people who work for me know that.” She remains business partners with restaurateur Joe Bastianich, (also of B&B Hospitality,) who, with Batali, paid $600,000 in damages to former employees in New York. After the sale of La Brea Bakery and a divorce, Silverton lost millions of dollars to the Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernie Madoff. With these lessons and setbacks, Silverton’s passion for her craft still seems limitless.

When Silverton first visited the Farmhouse, it was just a construction site. She put on a hardhat and work boots to tour the area with an iPad. She knew the work of architect Howard 94

Backen from the Napa Valley, but had no idea just how spectacular the facility and grounds would turn out.

“I was hoping she could see the vision,” said Chris Kandziora, the senior vice president, sales & marketing and facility operations at the Inn. “I told her, ‘I’d love for you to be the culinary ambassador. Bring friends and family, and come and show what you love. Do events with us, bring your people and team. Stay here, and we’ll pay for them.’ I was delighted and surprised that she was so willing and interested.”

Silverton told Kandziora to look no further and provided some guidance on the build.

“I made sure they had a good-sized pizza oven and really supported them in their grill selection,” she said. “They really have everything to make a great dinner.”

On the grounds of the contemporary barn of the Farmhouse with its 4,000-square-foot kitchen space and library area, Silverton moves with ease.

“She’s very approachable. She walks around and talks to everybody,” said Kandziora.

A former backwaiter now Michelin-starred chef-restaurateur in New York City, Stefano Secchi, described her cool like this: “She worked behind the mozzarella bar and made everything look so effortless, when plating cheese or simple salad … it was a thing of beauty.”

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BY DESIGN: THE ORGANIZATION OF CHEFS, KITCHEN AND SERVICE TEAMS. THE FARMHOUSE OPENED IN 2019

food. They’re so easy to work with and give us a support team.”

While the residency was impacted by waves of COVID-19, forcing programming changes and creating a backlog of special events and wedding bookings, Silverton has been a constant throughout it all. She enjoys spending time outside of her typical kitchens and experiencing the dynamism.

“I kinda like getting the curve balls, because it gives me a challenge. For one event, maybe the only stipulation is no garlic. How do we make it taste good with no garlic?

We can’t always accommodate everybody’s palate and sometimes we need advance warning when somebody wants this and that off,” she said. “But I like and welcome those challenges — it makes us think and it makes us do.”

The events often feature five-course meals, prepared by the staff of the visiting executive chef and the culinary team led by Farmhouse Chef Paul Osborne. Artisans, farmers and food producers all contribute to the final meal. Nonetheless, some chefs bring their ingredients already prepared, while others prefer to buy in Ojai. Michelin-starred dinners are typically for 40-45 people, but others have been as intimate as six guests or more than 100.

Most experiences replicate the menu of the guest chef ’s restaurant, but without the formality.

“What’s great is you have a whole different clientele, and hopefully, you meet people and they come and eat at your restaurants, because it’s so close,” said Silverton. “And what I like about it and the cooks like about it is that it’s still work but different four walls. The Inn puts us up for three nights, and takes care of our

Farmhouse General Manager Ben Kephart said this way of organizing the chefs, the kitchen and service teams, and the attendees was by design.

“When you see big chef dinners and wine dinners, they can feel overly produced, inauthentic and very often sponsored,” said Kephart. “We intentionally avoided that path. That’s not Ojai, we want this to feel soulful and connected.”

In June, Silverton will host a BBQ Festival at the Farmhouse.

The event will celebrate what Silverton calls “the variety” of grilling techniques, flavors and cultures. So far, the line-up has James Beard Award winner Nancy Oaks from Boulevard and Bruce Aidells the ‘original sausage artist’ from San Francisco as well as several greats from Los Angeles, Neil Fraser from Redbird, Korean BBQ legend Jenee Kim from Parks BBQ, Netflix’s American BBQ Showdown Judge Kevin Bludso from Bludso’s Bar & Cue, Jeffrey Lunak from Sumo Dog, the favorite Coachella hotdog, and the regional pitmaster, Nick Priedete from Priedete Barbecue at Bell’s in Los Alamos.

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CRAFTED IN OJAI SPROUTED SNACKS, SPREADS & GRANOLA

www.larkellenfarm.com

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OWNERS OF MODEL CITIZEN, DEREK AND BLAKE ULRICH

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STORY BY JERRY CAMARILLO DUNN, JR. PHOTOS BY GRAHAM DUNN

“In a restaurant, there’s a major element of theater,” explains Ojai’s Derek Ulrich, who with his brother Blake recently opened Model Citizen in Ventura. The show begins backstage, with months of training and rehearsal. The hours right before opening night are a bustle and blur: last-minute details, coordinating the cast of players, the anticipation of finally welcoming an audience.

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“You open the front door,” says Derek, “and it’s very similar to the curtain coming up.”

A diner’s experience at Model Citizen unfolds in acts. “It’s definitely not your typical appetizer-entrée model,” Derek observes.

“It’s mostly small plates designed to be shared among everyone at the table. Part of the fun is that you can try more of the menu that way. You get a much more active read on what the restaurant is trying to do.” At Model Citizen, this means elevated culinary technique applied to the best ingredients to create an ever-changing menu of fresh vegetables and (mostly) seafood.

The theatrical side shines in how these plates are presented, how the food and cocktails look, how the servers play their parts with knowledge and genuine warmth.

“There were a lot of details to be worked out,” says Blake, “from the interior design to our whole approach to hospitality. Our goal is to be a neighborhood restaurant, friendly and welcoming.

It works as a date night or a place to go on your birthday, but also a spot for regulars.” The menu changes frequently, so there are always new tastes to try. “We already have people coming back night after night.”

ITALIAN HONEYMOON COCKTAIL SCALLOP CRUDO WITH PICKLED GREEN STRAWBERRIES

Of course it’s the chef backstage who creates these experiences. That would be Gabriel Lindsay, a tousle-haired, easygoing guy from Florida. Incredibly, he is only 27 — but he has been honing his craft since age 15 in high-caliber restaurants in New York City and Nashville.

When Model Citizen was in the planning stages, Blake and Derek ran an ad in the food industry version of Craigslist.

After interviewing Gabriel, they arranged a tasting, a standard procedure before hiring a chef. It was held at the house of one of their hospitality consultants in Los Angeles. Gabriel cooked six or seven dishes by himself in the home kitchen, and the audition turned into a dinner party. “Our consultants said it was the best tasting they’d ever had,” recalls Blake, “including chefs from Michelin-starred restaurants. They were absolutely blown away.

Gabe has worked with us ever since, developing the menu.”

The small plates are surprising and original. Few people love beets, but Model Citizen’s take — beet, satsuma, ricotta, pistachio, and mint — earns rave reviews. Dishes often combine fresh ingredients with things preserved by the chef, such as the Broccoli di Ciccio with fermented green garlic, horseradish, and Tillamook cheddar. Large plates might range from “Whole Sea Bream, Kelp BBQ, Sea Bean Mignonette” to “30-Day DryAged Flannery Ribeye.”

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BABY GEMS SALAD

naud). Blake went on to graduate business school, specializing in entrepreneurship, while Derek got a law degree and worked for a firm in the Bay Area.

But how did these two young guys from Ojai, a place not exactly known for elevated restaurant experiences, develop refined, educated tastes in food and drink?

I think a lot of restaurants put one too many ingredients in their dishes,” Derek observes. “Our food is relatively simple and straightforward, just highlighting good quality ingredients.” Adds Gabriel: “I don’t like to over-flavor things or make fussy tweezer food. Keep it simple!”

Dishes are accompanied by light-bodied wines from around the world, and preceded by cocktails that offer interesting spins on classic drinks. “The margarita has Italian amaro in it,” notes Blake, “which you wouldn’t expect to work but somehow it still has that classic margarita profile.” He also points out a few curveballs on the cocktail menu such as the Italian Honeymoon, made with two rums, infusions of herbs and aromatic botanicals, and lots of fruit juice, served over pebble ice. “It’s like an Italian tiki drink,” he says. The tall glass almost glows pink, a dramatic effect.

The artistic look of everything at Model Citizen is no accident.

Derek explains that in building the restaurant from scratch, in an empty shell of a building, they had a definite vision for the interior design, inspired by many varied sources. “We wanted elements of a mid-century steakhouse, to have it feel kind of Palm-Springsy.

But we also wanted some Northern European minimalism, and something like a 1950s Italian Amalfi Coast kind of thing. I think we got subtle elements of all those, but also a contemporary look.

The booths are like you see in old Italian steak restaurants, really comfortable, while the lighting is very mid-century Italian.” A section of original brick wall adds charm, creating an interior that’s modern and yet surprisingly warm and comfortable.

BOTH BLAKE AND DEREK were born in the Ojai hospital, attended Villanova for high school, and graduated from Pitzer College in Claremont (also attended by a third brother, Reid, and their mom, Suzette Re-

For Derek, living in San Francisco introduced him to the art of food. “I was in my mid-twenties, and my biggest hobby was going out to restaurants with my friends. In the back of my mind, I thought I’d love to do something like this one day.” His law training is now of limited use, he says, basically for deciphering the legalese in contracts. “Most helpful is that law school trains people to look at all the different ways a scenario can go wrong – so you guard against all those possible outcomes.” It’s a useful mindset when advance-planning a restaurant.

For Blake, living for a while in China and on the East Coast showed him that there are unlimited options in the bigger world, and also that urban competition makes you up your game. The brothers complement each other nicely. “Derek is a lot more extroverted than I am,” says Blake, “which is great; he does the parts of the business that are customer facing, like greeting people as they come in the door. My business school training helps with the operational stuff. Our skill sets work really well together.”

The two partners started their business with Prospect Coffee, a roasting company launched in their mother’s garage and now supplying both wholesale customers and their flagship Prospect Coffee shop in Ventura. Like Model Citizen, it’s a neighborhood spot. “We have a huge base of regulars,” says Blake. “Most of the people coming in the door are there five days a week.”

Their new venture, Model Citizen, with its small-town warmth and big-city professionalism, is now having a star turn. The audience takes its seats and really enjoys the play. At the end of the evening, when the curtain falls and the lights go down, a happy crowd goes home – planning their next night out and thinking “Encore!”

Model Citizen 70 S. Oak Street, Ventura www.modelcitizenvta.com Open Thurs.-Mon., 5-10 p.m.

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Joan Roberts 805 -223 -1811

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1122 FOREST AVENUE “What’s not to love! Enter into a world of artistic expression. Roam the large yard and dream creatively of the three additional structures. Pick your own fruit. 3+2, living and family rooms, fireplace and mountain views. Opportunities abound. . .

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Roberts4Homes@gmail.com 727 W. Ojai Avenue Ojai, California, 93023 © 2022 various sources and has not and will not be verified by Broker. All 102 LIV Sotheby’s International Realty. All rights reserved. All data, including all measurements and calculations are obtained fromOQ / SUMMER 2022 information shall be independently reviewed and verified for accuracy. LIV Sotheby’s International Realty is inde- pendently owned and operated and supports the principals of the Fair Housing Act.

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STORY BY G LEV BAUMEL

PHOTOS BY LOGAN HALL

CAS ITAS ROWERS & THE MORNING CREW Casitas rowers are the hardworking underdogs who look like they drag their training equipment out of storage sheds and onto a basketball court every day — which they do.

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CASITAS ROWERS SYNCHRONIZED

2008, when Casitas Rowing co-founders, husband-and-wife-team Eric and Wendy Gillett, were figuring out where to start a rowing club, it was history that decided it for them. “We had never been to Ojai or Ventura, but when we looked at a map, and I saw Lake Casitas, I said that’s it, that’s the place,” Eric says.

The site of the 1984 Olympics, Lake Casitas is legendary in the rowing community.

Eric, who is also the head coach of the club, advises his young team members to always include rowing on their resumes. “Rowing is more than a sport, it is a lifestyle,” he explains. “It tells

prospective employers that you are disciplined, a hard worker, and a team player. Also, I can pretty much guarantee that is what you will talk about in any job interview.” Eric and Wendy wholeheartedly believe in the transformative power of rowing.

For starters, it changed both their lives: It gave Eric community, purpose, a life path; for Wendy, rowing allows her to work with kids — her lifelong dream — and a way to build something with her husband. Rowing is also how they met, when she was 18, and he was 19. This year, they will celebrate their 33rd anniversary.

It is a chilly early morning in February on Lake Casitas. The mountains are shrouded in mist, the sun has started to rise. Middle and high school students from Ojai, Ventura, Santa Paula and as far as Santa Barbara are converging along a chain link fence. The Gilletts’ two large labs — one black, one white — observe the arrivals. Nobody is complaining about having to be up

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PHOTO LEFT: WENDY GILLETT, PHOTO TOP: CASITAS ROWERS

with the sun on a Saturday. They joke with each other and call out the continuation of a previous day’s conversation, while they make their way to where shells, oars and instructions await.

Each young rower heads to a large board attached to the inside of the fence where they will locate their name on a popsicle stick and find out which boat they will be rowing in this morning.

“Don’t forget to move your name to the side so we know you’re here!” Wendy calls out.

Wendy’s voice is what got her into rowing in the first place when a friend advised, “you’re short, you’re loud, you’d make a perfect coxswain.”

She laughs, “I was a freshman in college, and the team consisted of me and 99 guys. ” This morning, on Lake Casitas, the gender balance is about fifty-fifty. Each rower takes their cue. The teens grab their oars, they lift the shells and head to the water, the coaches to their launches.

There is nothing fancy about Casitas Rowing. For starters, there is no boathouse yet. Instead, Wendy, Eric and their board of directors invest in their rowers and equipment. Casitas Rowing is a 501(c)3 non-profit. The reason for this is simple: Early on Wendy and Eric agreed that whatever they created would have to be bigger than the two of them. Their goal is for the rowing club to outlast them.

“Rowing is for everyone,” Eric explains.

When they look for new members, their focus is on young people who either haven’t yet found their sport, or those who have had adverse experiences in other sports.

No one is turned away for lack of funds, and Wendy, who functions as both executive director and coach, is proud to have raised enough money from within the community to be able to offer free rowing camps throughout the summer.

In the last 14 years, they have also purchased new shells. Now they have enough of them to be able to quarantine for the requisite 35 days after every regatta while allowing the team to continue training on the lake. The quarantine is due to the prevalence of the Quagga mussel, an invasive species that would, if brought in, possibly decimate the lake. Over the years, Eric has worked closely with Lake Casitas Water District to maintain a balance between the needs of the rowing team, and the preservation of their surroundings.

Where most rowing clubs are private and affluent, during regattas, parents joke that they can easily pick out their kids: Casitas rowers are the hardworking underdogs who look like they drag their training equipment out of storage sheds and onto a basketball court every day — which they do.

Instead of prestige, for both Wendy and Eric the concept of family serves as the cornerstone for what they are creating.

In their twenties, they moved to Princeton, New Jersey so Eric could train for the U.S. National Team. “I hit a rough patch,” he says. “I was smaller than the rest of the team, I thought I couldn’t do it and I was seriously thinking of quitting.” He sought counsel from the team’s spiritual advisor, Father Tom, who counseled

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PHOTO RIGHT: CASITAS ROWING CREWS AMID THE MORNING MIST

CASITAS ROWERS CREW PREPARES TO LAUNCH

Eric not to give up. “He told me every member adds something unique to the collective, that I should figure out what I bring, and hold on to that.” As a result, Wendy and Eric started a tradition of weekly potluck dinners. That is how the U.S. National Team ultimately came to feel like family, and how Eric found the courage to keep going despite his initial hesitation. That year, they went on to win a silver medal in the World Championships in Cologne, Germany.

The same applies to the Casitas rowers: “Our goal isn’t to push our kids to the brink or overtrain them,” Wendy explains. “We want it to be fun and to feel like family.” At home, their walls are covered with letters from graduates who feel compelled to write and let them know about the impact rowing has had on their lives.

During Covid, despite pressure to close their doors, Wendy and Eric did everything in their power to stay open, while also keeping their rowers safe. They moved their desks side-by-side so they could compare CDC guidelines and county rules as they came in.

“Sometimes within minutes of each other, and sometimes they contradicted each other,” Wendy laughs.

Closing, they both insist, would have made it a lot harder — if not impossible — to reopen. Also, Wendy 110

CREWS PULLING TOGETHER OQ / SUMMER 2022

points out, “you don’t close the doors on family.”

During the worst of the pandemic, they worked 20-hour days to keep Casitas Rowing going, and their members in shape. Eric delivered rowing machines all around town and, other than a few weeklong pauses due to Covid exposures, the teams kept training. “It was important to give the kids a place to come,” Wendy laughs, “they needed to leave the house for everybody’s

sanity.” Of course, the fact that rowing is an outdoor sport helped, and ironically, not having a boathouse meant there was literally nowhere to go indoors.

However, a boathouse is part of their future plans, though post-Covid. Both Eric and Wendy are currently focused on ensuring that Casitas Rowing is accessible to young people from every background, kids with disabilities, and kids whose parents work full-time.

Ideally there would be buses running to and from Ojai, Santa Paula, Ventura, and Santa Barbara at the beginning and end of training. Ultimately, Wendy is working toward making the whole program free for all young people.

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CASITAS ROWING CREWS GETTING INTO CONDITION

Rowing is unique in that it is a combination of team and individual sports. Each rower has to work on their own skill and speed: There is a specific and direct correlation between their effort and their results. The harder they train, the better they get, but the boat is only as fast as the slowest person on it.

“Rowing is like scaling a huge wall,” Wendy says, “you have to do it alone, but you have a whole team of people cheering you on. They all have your back because they also have to scale that wall.”

The camaraderie between the rowers is clear, along with friendly competition. Over the years, the Casitas Rowing team has competed on both regional and national levels, and many high school seniors factor their rowing scores into their college plans. This year, for example, one rower was recruited by Columbia University. Another is being scouted by Yale. However, the impact starts much earlier, when young rowers become passionate about the sport. The knock-on-effect is almost immediately noticeable to both parents and rowers who see an improvement in grades as well as confidence.

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Once the boats are in the water, the banter between the rowers quiets as they ready themselves. The coaches, in their launches, raise their megaphones to instruct the coxswains. Multiple shells gracefully pull further into the lake; eight sets of oars, eight strong bodies synchronized and in unison, surrounded by mountains, and the stunning beauty of the landscape. Not that the rowers have time to focus on it. That will be for later, after they have pushed themselves and their teammates to the limits of their physical capacities. The coaches call out instructions and pointers, to individuals and the boat as a whole. They stop from time to time to regroup and discuss, give feedback and strategize on how to improve, get faster. Two-and-a-half hours go by very quickly. Rowing is the kind of sport that makes it easy to lose track of time.

At the end of practice, the rowers carry their gear up the shore, back to the chain link fence. They resettle the shells and grab a snack provided by one of the parents. The banter starts up again, only now everyone is happily exhausted, many are still pondering techniques they are perfecting, or deciding what they will do better next practice. By now, the sun is hot, the mist has dissipated, and yet the day is only beginning.

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STORY BY MARK LEWIS

WITH THE PANDEMIC SEEMINGLY RECEDING, OJAI MOURNS ITS LOSSES WHILE LOCAL HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS REFLECT ON THE HARDEST TWO YEARS OF THEIR CAREERS.

Too soon? Or can we really say we’re approaching a point where we begin to put the Covid-19 crisis behind us? Highly contagious Omicron subvariants continue to spread, and case rates were rising again across America as this article went to press.

But hospitalizations were growing much more slowly, and deaths were still trending downward. The availability of effective vaccines and therapeutic drugs, plus the natural immunity conferred (at least temporarily) upon those who are infected, seemed to be rendering the pandemic far more manageable.

“I haven’t treated a Covid patient in two or three months,” says Dr. Gordon Clawson, an emergency medicine physician at the Ojai Valley Community Hospital. “We still screen everybody, but the level of tension is 1000 percent better than at the height of it.”

Even if the worst truly is behind us, there is no minimizing the epic scale of the catastrophe. The World Health Organization estimates a worldwide death toll approaching 15 million, based on excess deaths recorded in 2020 and 2021. In America, Covid has claimed a million lives. In California, the toll has passed 90,000; in Ventura County, 1,500. And here in the Ojai Valley, at least 44 people have succumbed to the disease. That’s a lot of death for a small community to handle.

THE CRISIS

first hit home in March 2020 when Gov. Gavin Newsom issued his “shelter at home” order, effectively shutting down the state. In Ojai, the hospital emergency room adopted strict Covid-screen118

ing protocols. The disease was very contagious and often fatal, and no one was sure exactly how it was transmitted. There were no vaccines and no therapeutics. People were terrified.

“Early on in Covid, it often felt like a death sentence,” Clawson says. “And nobody knew exactly how you were going to get it.

People were very afraid.”

“We were afraid, too,” says nurse Kari Worden, clinical supervisor of Ojai’s six-bed emergency room.

“My husband didn’t `want me to work at all,” says Carol McCormick, a longtime hospice nurse with Livingston Memorial Visiting Nurses Association. “But I was like, ‘Why did I become a nurse? To help patients.’ ” The Ojai hospital prepared for an onslaught that did not come, at least not in the first five or six months of the pandemic. People were so fearful of catching Covid in group settings that they mostly stayed home, even if they were sick.

“Nothing happened,” Clawson said. “People just stopped going to the ER.” He recalls one woman who became ill but delayed visiting the emergency room: “She finally died, and came in as a dead person.”

Everything changed in the fall of 2020 when flu season arrived.

Emergency rooms are usually busy during the winter months, OQ / SUMMER 2022

HAADY LASHKARI OPENS THE NEW SKILLED NURSING FACILITY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PANDEMIC.

NORDHOFF GYM VACCINATION CENTER

but in the winter of 2020-2021 there was no flu — just lots and lots of Covid.

“We got hit pretty hard,” Worden says.

Strict protocols were adopted to prevent the disease from spreading inside the hospital. No visitors were allowed in, not even family members who brought their loved ones in to be treated.

They had to wait outside. This was hard on everyone involved, including the nurses and doctors.

“We want families here,” Worden says. “We kind of depend on family members to help us out.”

Covid patients only were treated in the ER on an outpatient basis. Sicker patients who needed to be admitted were transferred via ambulance to Ojai’s sister hospital, Community Memorial in Ventura.

“I treated some people that did die,” Clawson says. “I was afraid of dying myself.”

(Clawson never tested positive. Worden did, and she underwent what she describes as a mild case.)

A major concern was keeping Covid out of the hospital’s new Continuing Care Center (CCC), a skilled-nursing facility that opened in the middle of the pandemic. Ironically, a building designed to be especially welcoming to families and visitors had to be retooled into a forbidding fortress to keep out the virus.

“We designed and built this state-of-the-art CCC to be open and inviting,” says Haady Lashkari, the Ojai hospital's chief

administrative officer. But, due to Covid protocols that isolated patients from potential infections, “We haven’t had the chance to utilize the new building the way it was designed.”

They did succeed in keeping Covid out of the CCC, which recorded no cases of the disease during the height of the pandemic, and no deaths at all. Some other Ojai facilities have been less fortunate. Many Covid cases, and at least 19 deaths, have been recorded in various Ojai Valley long-term-care facilities, according to Ventura County officials.

Even those nursing-home residents who avoided Covid, or survived their bouts with it, still suffered psychologically from the enforced isolation in these institutional settings. Patients with dementia were particularly affected.

“In the beginning of the pandemic, I wasn’t allowed in the hospital,” says McCormick, some of whose hospice patients were CCC residents. During this period, she was unable to visit them except virtually, via computer screens.

“I think it made the dementia worse,” she says. “It was really hard on them and their families. It’s horrible to be scared and dying and alone.”

AS A HOSPICE NURSE,

McCormick deals with death all the time, so she was more prepared than most to take the many Covid losses in stride.

Whereas her good friend (and fellow Nordhoff High grad) Lis Blackwell only had one Covid death to deal with -- but for her, that loss was a shattering one.

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When she hugged her mother goodbye on St. Patrick’s Day in 2020, Lis did not realize that it was the last embrace they would ever share.

SUSAN BLACKWELL WITH LULUBELLE

“My last day was March 17,” she says. “The last time I hugged her physically.”

Two days later the state went into lockdown, which meant that Lis could no longer be in the same room with her mother, Susan Muzzal Blackwell, in the Ojai assisted-living facility where Susan lived. For the next year, Lis had to content herself with phone calls and a few socially isolated visits, with Susan on her porch and Lis on the lawn.

“I could take her grandkids there, but she couldn’t touch them,” Lis says.

Susan was born in 1930 in Zamboanga in the Philippines, which at the time was an American possession. She passed most of her early years in Shanghai, until World War II erupted and the Japanese interned her family as enemy aliens. They were freed in 1942 as part of a prisoner exchange, and the family eventually landed in Los Angeles, where Susan graduated from University High School and married Cecil Blackwell. By 1954 they were living on Drown Street in Ojai, where they raised their four children. Susan worked for many years as a cook and a nutritionist at local elementary schools.

In 2019, long since widowed and retired, Susan moved from her Drown Street house to the assisted-living place. Lis was a frequent visitor.

“I’d take her shopping,” Lis says. “She loved going to the Farmer’s Market, or to the library or Bart’s to look for books.”

Then came Covid, and the socially distanced visits. The last one they enjoyed together was on Jan. 6, 2021. Susan was feeling ill, which alarmed Lis. She called her daughter Lexsea and told her to call Susan for a video chat, just in case this turned out to be the last goodbye.

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“I want you to pretend that this is the last time you’re going to see each other,” Lis told Lexsea. Later, Lis herself said a tender goodbye and went home, hoping that her premonition would turn out to be wrong. “I did get to say, ‘Mom, I’m so sorry you’re sick. I love you.’ ” The next morning at 6 a.m., Lis got the phone she was dreading.

Her 90-year-old mother was gone.

“It just broke my heart,” Lis says.

It’s never easy to lose a parent, but Covid made the process especially grueling. When Lis tried to make funeral arrangements for her mother, she discovered that all the local crematoriums were full up with bodies waiting to be incinerated. She found a facility that would do the job, but they said they were all out of urns. After locating a suitable burial container, she called Santa Barbara Cemetery to see about interring Susan in the family plot, only to find that the cemetery too was under lockdown.

“Oh, we’re closed,” they told her.

Eventually she was allowed to leave the urn at the cemetery’s front door, after which an employee came out to collect it. There was no service. The cemetery later sent Lis a photo of the urn on the ground next to the open grave.

“So, I didn’t get to be at the interment,” she says.

Then, when she tried to order a grave marker for Susan, she found that granite headstones were as scarce as urns.

“That took months to get done,” she says.

Lis urges other folks with elderly, vulnerable parents to take a lesson from her situation and make funeral arrangements well in advance. But of course, all those pandemic-related logistical hassles paled when compared to the loss of her mother to Covid.

“I feel like I was gypped,” she says, “because I lost out on being with my mother for two years.”

WHILE LIS BLACKWELL

struggled in the winter of 2021 to have her mother properly buried, noted Ojai wine and beverage impresario Bill Moses was fighting to keep himself above ground.

“I got the Delta variant, pre-vaccine,” he says.

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Moses is the proprietor of Ojai’s Casa Barranca Organic Winery; the entrepreneur behind Flying Embers hard kombucha and hard seltzer; and the co-founder of KeVita, the sparkling probiotic beverage maker that he sold to PepsiCo in 2016 for a reported $250 million. When he came down with Covid in January 2021, he was only 56, and in good shape, and practicing a healthy lifestyle. He took Vitamin D and zinc. In short, he was not a man to panic in the face of a positive coronavirus test. Big mistake.

“I thought I was prepared for it,” he says. “I waited too long. I thought I would get better.”

Instead, he got worse.

“I was stunned. You never think you’re going to be the one that has the cytokine storm,” Moses says.

This storm occurs when the body’s immune system overreacts to a virus infection and floods the system with too many cytokine proteins, which can damage the lungs and kidneys and other organs.

“I was texting him every day. I said, ‘Ron, you’ve got to get this experimental drug!' But it was too late.”

Polito’s death, on March 14, 2021, stunned the Ojai community. He was the most prominent valley resident thus far to succumb to Covid.

Moreover, at 68, he had exuded ruddy good health.

RON POLITO

“He was in shape, he was healthy, he had a lot of vitality,” Moses says.

“The next thing you know, you’re fighting for your life.”

People were disheartened that someone as vigorous as Polito could fall victim to the pandemic. His peers — a cohort that included Moses — could not help thinking something along the lines of, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

After 12 days at home, he finally was transported to Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura, where he was diagnosed with severe Covid pneumonia.

“That hit me harder than my parents’ death,” Moses says. “Because his fight was my fight.”

“I was there for five days, and I was getting worse,” he says.

Moses’s miraculous deliverance has given him a new perspective. “My life has changed forever.

I live in the moment, and right now it’s a good moment, but …

I’m still concerned that something may happen.

The subvariants have me concerned. The prospect of another coronavirus hitting this winter has me thinking about my mortality.

From there it was on to UCLA Medical Center, which looked like it would be his last stop.

“I struggled for four additional days there. Everything was just shutting down.” He signed his will and told his sons goodbye.

Cue the miracle. UCLA’S Dr. Otto Yang thought Moses might be helped by leronlimab, an experimental, unapproved monoclonal antibody designed to help the body’s immune system when it overreacts to an infection (the dreaded “cytokine storm” effect). Dr. Yang said it appeared to help only one in four people who took it. He secured FDA emergency use authorization and quickly administered it, and Moses turned out to be one of the lucky ones.

“A week later, I was out of the hospital,” he says. “I think it was divine intervention.” During his two-month convalescence at home, Moses involved himself in another Covid fight, this one on behalf of the stricken Ojai developer Ron Polito.

BILL MOSES

“But right now,” he says, “it feels good to be alive.”

THE ARRIVAL

of effective vaccines early in 2021 began to turn the tide against the virus. Carol McCormick had treated patients throughout the

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first year of the virus without ever testing positive, but she had been afraid that her luck might run out. She was thrilled to get her first jab: “I started sobbing, I was so happy.”

At first, getting vaccinated was not very easy, especially for Ojai folks who had to drive down to Ventura and line up at the fairgrounds.

“We began to get a lot of feedback from the community that people wanted to have a vaccination center in the Ojai Valley,” Haady Lashkari says.

Nordhoff High School had switched to remote learning, so its big gymnasium was available. Lashkari worked with Ojai Unified School District Superintendent Tiffany Morse and Ojai City Manager James Vega to have the gym converted into a temporary vaccination site. But who would staff it?

“We reached out to Ventura County Public Health, but their resources were spread too thin,” Lashkari says. “They couldn’t staff a site up here.”

The Community Memorial Health System stepped into the breach. The Nordhoff site “was fully staffed and run by hospital employees,” Lashkari says. During the several months it was open in the spring of 2021, just shy of 16,000 shots were administered.

“That was a very rewarding experience,” he says.

Despite the vaccines, the winter of 2021-2022 would turn out to be harder on Ojai’s emergency room personnel than the previous winter. Lockdowns were now largely a thing of the past, and people were shedding their masks and taking more chances with potential infections. Also, to the immense frustration of healthcare professionals, many people were refusing to be vaccinated.

As a result, cases rose precipitously after the super-contagious Omicron variant emerged in November.

“There were days that were awful,” Dr. Gordon Clawson says.

“We were seeing, per shift, at least one or two people with Covid.”

Worden says one nurse postponed her wedding so as not to leave her colleagues in the lurch.

erybody was here to serve.”

The crush of Covid patients led to periodic logjams that slowed the regional system to a crawl.

“At one point all the hospitals were full, and we were really full,” Worden says. “They couldn’t move them [from Ojai] because there weren’t enough ambulances available. It was really tough for us because we are a small community hospital.”

Actually, Ojai Valley Community Hospital in some ways is not as small as it once was, thanks to its 2005 merger with Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura. That was due to the foresight of Ojai civic leaders.

"The foresight of Alan Rains, Joan Kemper, Marty Pops, John Russell, I could go on and on," Lashkari says.

When the pandemic struck, Ojai could leverage its relationship with its much larger sister hospital 15 miles down the road, allowing Ojai Covid patients ready access to big-city specialists and facilities that rarely if ever are available in a typical smalltown rural hospital.

“I can’t imagine going through the pandemic as a stand-alone hospital,” Lashkari says.

So, is the worst of Covid really behind us? For now, at least, the word from Ojai’s ER unit is “all quiet on the western front.”

“So far so good,” Worden says. “We occasionally see a person who has Covid, but it’s nothing like it was.”

Clawson says Ojai actually was lucky not to have had a worse experience with the deadly virus.

“I don’t think it was as bad as it could have been,” he says.

But even if this particular pandemic may be subsiding into a manageable situation, we may not be completely out of the woods: “There will be another one," Clawson says. "It’s inevitable.”

“It was a stressful time,” she says. “Nobody took vacations. Ev122

OQ / SUMMER 2022

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STORY BY JERRY CAMARILLO DUNN, JR

Summer’s Screwball Festivals

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UNDERWATER MUSIC FESTIVAL

COULD

tions follow a tradition that began when pioneers raised barns or brought in crops together, then held a hoedown with food and music under the open sky.

any beauty pageant be more moving than the one held each August in Ocean City, New Jersey – for hermit crabs? The winner sashays down a flower-strewn runway, its shell gaily decorated with sequins and beads. In salute a chorus of singers belts out “Here It Comes, Miss Crustacean!”

Welcome to the Silly Season, when people across the land grab any excuse to hold a summer festival. Warm-weather celebra-

My favorite events, though, are designed to reap a harvest of whimsy. Some highlight a community’s most important product, but nothing so predictable as corn in Kansas.

We’re talking bologna. Swamp cabbage. Duct tape.

The Great Texas Mosquito Festival in Clute celebrates what a local official calls “the only natural resource we could come up with.” The festival mascot is a blow-up mosquito that stands twenty-five feet tall, and event staffers are known as the Swat Team.

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125

UGLY DOG

Also popular are battles of the titans. In the watermelon-growing country of Luling, Texas, contenders clash in an epic match of seed spitting. At a competition in Anchorage, Alaska, locals pull decorated outhouses across the snow. (“Don’t be number two in this race to the finish!” urges the sponsor.) On International Pillow Fight Day in New York’s Washington Square Park, participants work off their grown-up stresses as they (gently) pummel strangers.

In Beaver, Oklahoma, offbeat Olympians vie at the World Championship Cow Chip Throwing Contest. These bull-chip artists can really sling it: The record toss is 188 feet, 6 inches.

Although we might turn up our noses at this event, its origins are ennobled in American history. Pioneer families on the plains once gathered sunbaked buffalo poops to burn for cooking and heat. They tossed these organic Frisbees into their wagons and had a friendly competition for distance.

Americans like to celebrate the arrival of warm weather, shake off the winter blahs together, and for a moment forget the serious concerns that keep the workaday world working. Over the years I’ve attended all kinds of Silly Season events. Here are some I hope you’ll visit too: 126

THE WORLD’S UGLIEST DOG CONTEST: PETALUMA, CALIFORNIA It was probably the world’s only beauty pageant that the contestants hoped to lose.

A competitor named Curley — a Chinese Shar-Pei with no fur — was being paraded past the grandstand to roars of delight and approval. His head looked like a basketball with half the air let out. His bald black hide hung in folds. Asked to describe this young pageant hopeful, an official whistled softly: “Five miles of bad road.”

Which meant that Curley had a good chance for the winner’s circle in the World’s Ugliest Dog Contest. But his competitors weren’t to be trifled with. Yawning and scratching at the Petaluma fairgrounds were Boston terriers with major underbites, mystery breeds that looked like baggy pantyhose, and a toy poodle with a sign around its neck that said: And I Have Bad Breath, Too. One bulldog was led into the arena with eyes that popped out OQ / SUMMER 2022

UGLY DOG

TWINS DAYS

like hard-boiled eggs. A little girl took one look at him and burst into tears. “That dog,” she wailed, “is a hundred times as ugly as mine!”

One year a “porkshire terrier” was disqualified from the beauty contest when judges surmised that it was actually a baby pig.

Other pageant entrants have included a “chihuahua-terrier possibility,” a “police dog in plain clothes,” and Phred, an Italian greyhound with ears that resembled potato chips. Friends of Phred’s owner clamored, “Tell them what you do for a living, Debby!” “I’m a dog groomer,” she moaned.

But what becomes of an ugly dog when the ugly dog contest is over? The owner of Pretty Boy Floyd, a low-slung English bulldog with eyes that don’t match, patted her pet. “I love him and couldn’t live without him,” she said, scratching his lop ears. “It’s just Floyd and me.”

TWINS DAYS

burg. The civic motto: “To Pair Is Human.”

At the festival’s big parade, everyone does a double take as the twins pass by. And twins themselves love to stare at each other, a big reason why some 2,400 pairs attend this world’s largest confab of clones.

Held during the Sonoma-Marin Fair, Petaluma, CA; June 24, 2022; 707-283-3247; www.sonoma-marinfair.org. Petaluma is located 40 miles north of San Francisco.

Attendees also find new meaning in the term “double dating.”

Twin Pennsylvania farmers of late middle age, resplendent in identical shirts of hot pink and turquoise, said they’d like to marry a set of twins to take back home. Luckily, the brothers had similar taste:

TWINS DAYS: TWINSBURG, OHIO

“We don’t want painted women . . .” “. . . with false eyelashes. They can’t be . . .” “. . . divorced. And they have to be . . . " “. . . young.”

“Fay and Ray, meet Cody and Dodie.”

“Eldon and Feldon, this is Marilyn and Carolyn.”

Putting two and two together is the whole point of Twins Days, which takes place in an Ohio town called (what else?) Twins-

Underlying the festival’s “most identical” contests and other fun events is a serious theme: the deep bond that exists between twins. “Everyone else has to look for a best friend,” one twin

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BATS IN FLIGHT

explained. “But we’re born with one.” A mother of triplets said the most amazing thing about her little girls is their ESP: “One falls down, and another cries first.”

RAYNE FROG FESTIVAL

This special connection goes to the very founding of Twinsburg, which was named to honor its two most remarkable citizens, identical twins Moses and Aaron Wilcox. According to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!, the brothers “married sisters, were lifelong business partners, were stricken with the same ailment on the same day. Both died on Sept. 24, 1827, and were buried in the same grave!”

One summer day during the festival, Sherry (of Sherry and Terry) was overheard accepting a date for that night with Rick (of Dick and Rick). As a twin, she knew all the tricks. “Don’t you dare send your brother, now!” she warned. “Don’t you switch on me!” Rick smiled and offered his arm. “How do you know,” he said with a wink, “that I already haven’t?”

Held in Twinsburg, OH; August 5-7, 2022; 330-425-3652; https://twinsdays.org. The world’s largest annual gathering of twins. Twinsburg is located 25 miles southeast of Cleveland.

DAWN OF THE BATS: CARLSBAD CAVERNS, NEW MEXICO There’s not much going on in the middle of summer in the middle of the desert. Maybe this explains why hundreds of people had gotten out of bed before dawn for a close encounter with bats — hundreds of thousands of them. Stars still twinkled as folks took seats in a rock amphitheater near the entrance to 128

RAYNE FROG FESTIVAL, LA HERMIT CRAB RACE

Carlsbad Caverns. In the inky blackness they felt around in their backpacks for breakfast snacks. “I can’t see,” said a voice in the dark. “I don’t like to eat what I can’t see.”

A colony of 400,000 Brazilian free-tailed bats calls the caverns home in summer. “Bats are our friends,” a park ranger told the crowd. Each night a huge cloud of them flies off to nearby river valleys and eats tons of insect pests, including mosquitoes and black flies. (“It’s not a pretty job,” he said, “but somebody has to do it.”)

The ranger announced that the bats were about to return to the cave from their nightly romp. Did he seem to cast a nervous glance at the sky right above his head? (You never know what bats are guano do.)

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UNDERWATER MUSIC FESTIVAL

TWINS DAYS

As the sun began to rise above the desert, it silhouetted cactuses and rocks. The dark symbols of night were arriving home!

Black shapes fluttered in the air, tucked their rubbery wings, and dive-bombed down through the cave entrance. People in the amphitheater heard soft whooshing and whizzing sounds. They sat listening, both hands cupped behind their ears and looking just like . . . well, bats.

UNDERWATER MUSIC FESTIVAL

Held at Carlsbad Caverns National Park; July 16, 2022; 575-785-2232; www.nps.gov/cave/planyourvisit/dawn-ofthe-bats.htm. From May to October, visitors can view the returning bats any morning, and also during a sunset ranger program as bats swarm out of the cave. The park is located 20 miles southwest of Carlsbad.

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CALENDAR OF THE SILLY SEASON

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 130

SWAMP CABBAGE FESTIVAL: LaBelle, FL. February; www.labelleswampcabbagefestival.org Swamp cabbage is actually the heart of the sabal palm, Florida’s state tree. Armadillo races, classic car show.

OUTHOUSE RACES: Anchorage, AK. February; www.furrondy.net/events/outhouse-races

INTERNATIONAL PILLOW FIGHT DAY: Washington Square, New York, NY. April; www.rove.me/to/new-york/international-pillow-fight-day

WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP COW CHIP THROWING CONTEST: Beaver, OK. April; 580-625-4726; www.beaverchamber.com/events

FROG FESTIVAL: Rayne, LA. May; 337-334-2332; www.raynefrogfestival.com.

Races, jumping contests, frogs costumed as Elvis, etc. Frogless visitors can rent amphibians for the competitions.

WATERMELON THUMP: Luling, TX. June 23-26, 2022; www.newsite.watermelonthump.com.

Watermelon-eating and seed-spitting contests, Thump Queen pageant.

UNDERWATER MUSIC FESTIVAL: Looe Key Reef, FL. July 8-9, 2022; 800-872-3722; www.rove.me/to/florida/underwater-music-festival. Submerged songfest, divers and mermaids play whimsical instruments such as the “Trombonefish” and “Fluke-a-Lele.”

GREAT TEXAS MOSQUITO FESTIVAL: Clute, TX. July 28-30, 2022; 800-371-2971; www.mosquitofestival.com.

Includes mosquito-calling contest and Mosquito Legs Contest for men, women, kids.

MISS CRUSTACEAN BEAUTY PAGEANT AND HERMIT CRAB RACES: Ocean City, NJ. August 17, 2022; 800-232-2465; www.oceancityvacation.com.

Pageant contestants vie for the coveted Cucumber Rind Cup.

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Comprehensive Cancer Care.

Close to Home.

Ridley-Tree Cancer Center delivers multidisciplinary cancer care using the most advanced treatments and technology. Experienced physicians trained at top institutions and a compassionate staff are why we’re the leading provider of cancer care on the central coast.

ridleytreecc.org • 540 W. Pueblo Street

Your Community Cancer Center OQ / SUMMER 2022

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OQ | HEA L I NG A RTS JACALYN BOOTH Certified Colon Hydrotherapist Ojai Digestive Health With more than 30 years of experience in healing modalities, Jacalyn brings a deep level of caring to the art of colon hydrotherapy.

Professional, nurturing, experienced.

OjaiDigestiveHealth.com 805-901-3000

MICHELLE BYRNES Elemental Nutrition Nutrition & Wellness counseling focused on anti-aging, detoxification, personalized nutrition, & weight loss.

For more information, visit elementalnutritioncoach.com 805-218-8550

AUBRIE WOODS A graduate of USM's Master’s Program in Spiritual Psychology, a Certified SafeSpace trauma facilitator, and certified Theta Healer. Trained in pre-natal support, transformational parenting, pleasure mastery, relationship and intimacy coaching, chakra clearing, and Inquiry Method.

AubrieWoodsCoaching.com

NUTMEG’S OJAI HOUSE Functional Art for Heart & Home - American Made Fair Trade - Psychic Tarot and Astrology Readers, Energy and Crystal Healings daily by appt.

Walk-ins welcomed: Open daily 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

304 N. Montgomery Street OjaiHouse.com | 805-640-1656

TO ADVERTISE HERE:

please call or

LESLIE BOUCHÉ, C.HT. Cert. Hypnotherapist Find your calm center. Release negative thinking, emotional reactivity, anxiety, fear and unhelpful behaviors. Improve sleep and comfort. Safe, loving, rapid change. It’s time to feel better! leslie@lesliebouche.com LeslieBouche.com | 805-796-1616

ALAN CHANG, L.Ac 2nd generation Acupuncturist who brings 15 years of Meditation, Tai Chi and Kyudo Zen Archery experience to his healing practice of Functional Medicine and TCM. AmaraOjai.com | 805-486-3494

LAURIE EDGCOMB Lic. Acupuncturist since 1986, voted best in Ojai! Natural medicine including Microcurrent, nutritional and herbal consultation, Facial Rejuvenation.

LaurieEdgcomb.com 805-798-4148

LAUREL FELICE, LMT Offers Swedish, deep tissue, reflexology, reiki, cranialsacral and pre and post natal massage with a reverent and joyous balance of hands and heart. laurelfelice54@gmail.com 805-886-3674

DR. JOHN R. GALASKA Dr. John R. Galaska, PsyD, BCN, Cht, university professor of Psychology, Neurofeedback, biofeedback, hypnosis for past troubling experiences and enhancing subjective life experience.

BeCalmOfOjai.com facebook.com/BeCalmofOjai 805-705-5175

NATHAN KAEHLER, MA, LAC Nathan Kaehler (Best of Ojai 2014). Licensed Acupuncturist, MA Psychology. Gentle acupuncture, 14 years experience Personalized herb preparations Large onsite herb dispensary OjaiHerbs.com | 805-640-8700

SOMATIC SANCTUARY Welcome to Somatic Sanctuary — a somatic-based healing and movement arts center. Explore healing treatments, group movement sessions, workshops and community events.

410 W. Ojai Avenue 805-633-9230 SomaticSanctuary.com

ALARRA SARESS Gong Meditation and Acutonics Sound Alchemist. Master Bodyworker. Founder of Harmonic Earth — sacred space for healing arts and performance. Call or text.

107 W. Aliso Street HarmonicEarth.org | 720-5303415

JULIE TUMAMAITSTENSLIE Chumash Elder Consultant • Storyteller • Spiritual Advisor • Workshops Weddings & Ceremonies JTumamait@hotmail.com 805-701-6152

NAN TOLBERT NURTURING CENTER Pre-birth to 3; pre/post-natal wellbeing; infant/toddler development; parent education/support.

BirthResource.org info@birthresource.org 805-646-7559

email bret bradigan at

editor@ojaiquarterly.com or

805-798-0177

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STORY AND PHOTOS BY CHUCK GRAHAM

trail and chaparral surrounding Big Pine Mountain were still cloaked in knee deep snow. It was a chilly remnant of December storms that had recently soaked the backcountry and left a decent snowpack in the Los Padres 134

National Forest, the only winter rains of 2021.

Myself and three others were backpacking our way to the Sisquoc River via Bluff Camp. As the day wore on from warm to frigid in a matter of just a few miles, microclimates swirled around Big Pine, the eastern fringe of the San Rafael Range, and the highest summits in Santa Barbara County and the Dick Smith Wilderness at 6,320 feet.

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TO BE AT THE HEADWATERS OF A RIVER IS A SPECIAL MOMENT. IT’S WHERE ITS ESSENCE BEGINS AND GIVES LIFE TO THE CREATURES AROUND IT.

BUSHWHACKED To get to that lofty point, the day before was spent bushwhacking our way mightily through overgrown chaparral for a solid 7 miles. Some of the growth was well over our heads, as we thrashed and ascended upwards. There was no water source, and the route had been long since closed, the old, shrouded 4x4 track not found on the map.

By nightfall we had reached Buckhorn Road, and we were grateful for the patches of snow found on the dirt road, just enough moisture to push us forward to Bluff Camp. Once at Bluff Camp, all was quiet. No one was around and water was an immediate priority. We found the creek behind the camp, hidden beyond the well. As much rain that the forest received in December 2021, some water sources were still barely flowing or not at all just a couple weeks after the last rains.

However, our water bottles and bladders were brimming, and sleep was easy to come by beneath towering pines, the forev-

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UPPER SISQUOC RIVER LANDSCAPE

er hoots of a great horned owl and a cool, crisp starry night.

Camped where the Dick Smith and the San Rafael Wildernesses converge, Bluff Camp is a major junction of the National Forest. Early the next morning we walked upward toward Big Pine with hazy views of the Channel Islands National Park in our rearview mirrors. A significant, year-round runnel beckoned, its headwaters tucked away in shady shale and sandstone of the Transverse Ranges. And still, the winding Sisquoc River feeds another river that flows out to the Pacific Ocean on the Central California Coast.

QUAIL RUN The Sisquoc is one of 16 rivers in California designated as Wild and Scenic, and part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System. The rivulet originates on the north slope of Big Pine Mountain, and the runnel is entirely free flowing. The Sisquoc runs for 57 miles and is a tributary of the Santa Maria River.

It first converges with the Cuyama River before it merges with the Santa Maria River, where it reaches the sweeping coastal sand dunes near the Guadalupe Sand Dunes National Wildlife Refuge, north of Point Conception.

In the Chumash language Sisquoc means “Quail.” It is one of the last bastions for steelhead trout, western pond turtles and

arroyo toads, occupants still clinging to natural freshwater arroyos.

To be at the headwaters of a river is a special moment. It’s where its essence begins and gives life to the creatures around it. It may start with a mere trickle percolating out of a crack in a rock, but soon that trickle begins to flow, and the cubic inches increase as the trail crisscrosses downslope over the serpentine ebb.

SISQUOC RIVER 136

After trudging through persistent knee-high snowpack rounding Big Pine Mountain, the gradual descent through pine and OQ / SUMMER 2022

oak forests eventually brought us to the soft, forgiving scree at Alamar Saddle. We said so long to our last views of the coast and Channel Islands, and quickly descended beneath the dense canopy of towering Douglas fir, sturdy oak groves, bay, cedar and sycamore trees to the Sisquoc.

Once beneath the canopy, we parted ways with the arid chaparral, and immediately felt cool moisture hanging in the air. Leaf litter too was still soddened from December rains, the low-lying sun on the western horizon never warming the upper reaches of the Sisquoc during the winter. Patches of snow persisted, and tributaries gushed, feeding the lifeblood of the San Rafael Wilderness.

UPPER SISQUOC The first several camps along the Upper Sisquoc River were our favorites. It was cold day and night, that cool, shaded canopy nearly blocked out all sunlight, except for a few long shafts of sunrays that penetrated the forest floor. A warm fire was the solution to thermoregulating and drying out soggy, crusty socks.

Black bear sign was evident too. Although we never saw any of Ursus Americanus, their mark was everywhere scratched on trees, their fresh mounds of scat piled atop the leaf litter, and their impressive spoor found along the open trail. The Upper Sisquoc looked and felt very much like great black bear habi-

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SNOW STILL BLANKETING THE NORTH SIDE OF BIG PINE

FINAL LOOK FROM THE DICK SMITH WILDERNESS NEAR THE ALAMAR SADDLE

tat. It’s their home.

Maybe that’s why Upper and Lower Bear Camps are called as such in the Upper Sisquoc? It has always appeared like great foraging potential within their remote backcountry biome.

THUNDERBIRDS It’s been off limits for decades, a sanctuary for Pleistocene remnants hidden within the forest. Endangered California condors will always need the protection of such environments, but the Sisquoc Condor Sanctuary is a gem hidden away in a backcountry wilderness that possesses many.

Created in 1937 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the sanctuary was the first of its kind for these incredible raptors.

It encompasses 1,200 acres of backcountry wilderness, hugging the southwest fringe of the Sisquoc River. Remote and choked off with overgrown brush and fallen trees, the Sisquoc Condor Sanctuary is the kind of ideal habitat condors need to thrive.

Currently there are no condors nesting on the towering, sheer cliffs of the sanctuary, but that doesn’t mean they don’t soar over for a pit stop. Condors reared in captivity and released into the wild are fitted with tracking devices. Some of that data has revealed random visitation by reintroduced condors that on average soar 150 miles a day.

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BACKCOUNTRY JUNCTION As we approached the South Fork of the Sisquoc, there was a great divide in the river, a meeting place, a convergence of trails OQ / SUMMER 2022

veering off in all directions. White Ledge and the San Rafael Mountains loomed on the western fringe. The Sweetwater Trail, steep and seemingly never-ending, traversed northeastward into the Sierra Madre Range. The Sisquoc continued over its boulder-strewn self, wild and scenic to the end.

Resting at the South Fork of the Sisquoc River, the sounds of a crackling fire were a welcomed respite after another stellar day traipsing down from the headwaters of the Sisquoc between the San Rafael and Sierra Madre Mountains.

The South Fork cabin was also a welcomed site as a wisp of smoke billowed from the woodburning stove within. Still, I elected for my tent pitched beneath burly oak trees, and where I drifted off to sleep, serenaded by croaking tree frogs and the unfettered flow of the Sisquoc.

LOS PADRES NATIONAL FOREST IS ONE OF THE LAST BASTIONS FOR THIS ENDANGERED PLEISTOCENE RAPTOR

SOUTH FORK LANDSCAPE WITH SAN RAFAEL MOUNTAINS IN THE BACKGROUND

PIT STOP, SOUTH FORK CABIN, SISQUOC RIVER

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OQ | EV ENTS CA L ENDA R j u n e - j u ly - a u g u s t wine festival

OJAI WINE FESTIVAL | JUNE 18 | ojaiwinefestival.org

Parade

OJAI INDEPENDENCE DAY | JULY 4 | OJAI AVENUE & NORDHOFF H.S.

JUNE 4 Ojai Playwrights Conference's Gala "Caring and Daring" Times: 5:30 p.m.

Location: Kirk Douglas Theater 9820 Washington Blvd, Culver City Contact: 805-633-1170 info@ojaiplays.org Luis Alfaro, Dr. Kerry English and Olga Garay-English will be honored in a star-studded show produced by artistic director Robert Egan who is stepping down after more than two decades at the helm.

11093 Santa Ana Road Contact: 805-654-1564 OjaiWineFestival.com The Ojai Wine Festival returns after a two-year hiatus. For 34 years, the festival has served as the primary non-profit fundraising effort of the Rotary Club of Ojai West Foundation and its numerous philanthropic endeavors. This year, proceeds from the Ojai Wine Festival will benefit local charities including HELP of Ojai, Secure Beginnings, Ojai Unified School District, and support the free Ojai Community Band concerts in Libbey Bowl in July and August.

JUNE 9 to 12

JUNE 24 - JULY 24 "Music Man" at the Ojai Art Center Times: Thursday - Saturday, 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.

Ojai Art Center Theater 109 South Montgomery Street Contact: OjaiAct.org, 805-640-8797 Meredith Willson's classic, directed by Tracey Williams Sutton

Ojai Music Festival Times: Varies Locations: Varies, most in Libbey Bowl.

Contact: ojaifestivals.org 805-646-2094 This year, the artistic directors are the ensemble group AMOC, the American Modern Opera Company, performing six world premieres, plus an exciting program of classical contemporary music.

JUNE 18 Ojai Wine Festival Times: 12 to 4 p.m.

Lake Casitas Recreation Area

JULY 3-4 Ojai Independence Day Celebration - Concert, Parade & Fireworks Times: Free Concert at 6 p.m.

Parade: 10 a.m.

Fireworks: Gates open at 5:30 p.m.

Locations: Concert at Libbey Bowl OQ / SUMMER 2022

playwrights

OJAI PLAYWRIGHTS CONFERENCE | AUGUST 7-14 | ZALK THEATER Parade: Ojai Avenue Fireworks: Nordhoff High School Contact: OjaiIndependenceDay@yahoo.com This all-volunteer, non-city-funded parade is considered one of the finest small-town parades in the country.

JULY 22 Zombies in Concert Time: 7 to 9 p.m.

Location: 210 South Signal Street Contact: libbeybowl.org The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame group will be coming to Ojai with such hits as "Time of the Season" and "She's Not There."

AUGUST 7 TO 14 Ojai Playwrights Conference's New Works Festival Times: 12 to 4 p.m.

Zalk Theater at Besant Hill School 8585 Ojai-Santa Paula Road 11093 Santa Ana Road Contact: 805-633-1170 info@ojaiplays.org The Ojai Playwrights Conference returns for its 25th season, with workshops on selected plays. More than 186 plays have been developed at the OPC and many have gone to regional theaters, Off-Broadway and Broadway. Several have been named Pulitzer Prize finalists.

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DISPATCHES FROM THE FRONTLINES OF THE CULTURE WAR. A Housewife’s Log

BY SAMI ZAHRINGER

CORPORAL RYKER S. FLEMING OF THE COALITION FOR FREEDOM, NOAM CHOMSKY BRIGADE: My Darling, morale is low following the Battle of Bullshit Run. It was bloody indeed. I fear very much the toll this culture war is taking on our men (and women and non-binary people and Jerry who identifies as a pony.) We are running out of hemp casual-wear at an alarming rate and the troops are having to get by on half a bottle of Pellegrino, and a small avocado ’n’ quinoa salad a day. Ronan was caught hiding chickpeas in his beard to eat later and is up on a disciplinary charge. I’m very worried about Nina.

She has developed a fast food problem.

She denies it but this morning I caught her rubbing Dorito dust into her gums.

But why would she listen to me? She gets all her medical advice from her Uber Eats driver. Weed rations remain steady but are interfering with soldier discipline. Luca is now so high most of the time he can’t stop walking like a hemorrhoidal cowboy.

Your ever-loving Ryker.

P.S.: Please can you send more clipboards?

PRIVATE BODEAN “PORKCHOP” ELLS142

WORTH OF THE AMERICAN PATRIOTS, 2ND OR “COLD, DEAD HANDS” DIVISION. Dear Momma, the war is heating up. Today a crack commando team of me, Braylon, Orville and Scooter blew up a wind turbine. We risked almost certain cancer to get up real close to the base with the bomb but it was worth it to solve civilian cancer for miles around. ( Just think, Momma, without the Dear Orange Leader we might never have known what a menace clean, sustainable energy is to decent, tumor-fearin’ folks! And what do these socialist wackos think is going to happen to our pleasant American summer breezes when we use all the wind up, huh? Them Liberals so dumb they could throw themselves on the ground and miss!)

The boom was exhilarating and our blood was up as we crawled on our bellies back to the tank. Bits of flaming windmill were falling all around us but we were happier’n a tornado in a trailer park! Scooter started ripping up chunks of grass with his teeth by way of battle-crazed celebration and we were each allowed one whoop and a “Hell, yeah!” And Momma, for a somber moment I could feel the wise, approving eyes of our Confederate ancestors looking down on me from Heaven so, while still belly-crawlin,’ I raised my head and saluted them sons-a-guns with a victory wink.

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We retreated to our headquarters at Chick-Fil-A to burn our contaminated fatigues and check for sudden cancers. Praise Jesus, we all seem fine so far but I promise I am keeping a close eye on that mole. Orville wants to call this victory the “Assault of Tumor Hill” but Braylon likes “The Battle to Reclaim The Wind” and Braylon’s got more education ’n Orville. He’s a science student at Bob Jones University so he can learn to search the human genome for hidden messages from God. He says that the DNA for that bit where your earlobe is still earlobe but a little bit neck too, or the place where inside of your nostrils start to become the outer nose — the liminal places, that’s where God hides hides his codes. I know about the moving in mysterious ways stuff an’ all, Momma, but it’s difficult to know why God has chosen Braylon to be his special messenger on this.

He scratches a lot and is weird about peas in the same way ‘50s housewives were weird about aspic.

All his meals are pea-based. I don’t like to see a man eat that many peas. T’aint natural.

Well, whatever we call it, tomorrow we will be back out there, raining some more fury down on them damn Libtards right after breakfast at Denny’s and you can take that to the bank and cash it!

Your Loving Son, Bodean. P.S. Can you make my truck payment for me again this week?

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Darling Emilia, Sweet light of my life, what you civilians don’t understand about war is that it’s not all excitement and attractive, bleeding people.

There is a lot of sitting around and time for reflection. The bored mind can take you some strange, even dark places. Today I sat alone and wondered things in this order:

What would it be like if nipples could click in and out like pens?

Is an angry owl a scowl?

Is a wet owl a towel?

Where exactly are the microplastics inside me right now?

Is a small pigeon a smidgeon?

Am I more impressed or horrified by Elon Musk and why does his name sound like a Southern gym teacher’s cologne? Can people tell that I am wearing this beard ponytail in a Lynchian, utilitarian, absurdist, Lovecraftian, Kafkaesque post-modern, Lars Von Trier way or do they just think I’m a dick?

Dearest, do I grow mad? You must tell me at the first sign of an unhinged text.

Also, I think the enemy are feeding seagulls curry and deploying them over our positions. The Priuses have been shat on so much they’re beginning to pockmark and I have taken 4 direct hits today. Vindaloo is my guess. Goddamn seagulls are Mitch McConnell in bird form!

Dear Momma, today we marched on a feminist bookstore. It was two miles away from camp and it turns out really quite a lot of us have bonespurs so we took the tanks. They let me have a go of steering! Well, pretty soon I was doing donuts and wheelies and runnin’ that thing all over hell’s half acre like I was back in my rally car! I smashed right through an organic farmer’s market and took out a Starbucks. Scooter was hanging out of the turret spraying bullets and screaming “Freedom” and “Crooked Hillary!!!” and “Burn, Baby, Burn!”(We use a lot more exclamation marks than them America-Last Libs because we’re more patriotic.)

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It was a bit OTT, is the truth, but Scooter’s mind ain’t been straight since getting hit in the head at the Battle of the Bagels. His cornbread ain’t quite done in the middle, if you see what I’m sayin’.

We had to stop for gas twice but, when we finally got there, it was plain that the feminazis had been tipped off that we were coming. They had put out folding chairs and a table with scones and steaming cups of herbal tea and they had a big sign saying “Stop The Madness! Together We Can Work It Out!” Well, by then, we had been on campaign for nearly an hour and were starving so we thought that if the libs wanted to parley we would go along with their little game, and just eat their delicious scones before burning the place to the ground. Before long we were all sitting around with tea and got to talking about school book-burnings and how we need to root out the demonic forces of liberalism that are making our boys girly and our girls boy-y, and stop perpetuating the woke war on the long-sufferin’ white man.

But then a strange thing happened. Dammit, Mommy, them libs are nuttier than a squirrel turd! One of the feminists, (Who was a man! Men are allowed to be feminists! I expect they need them to handle the money or keep things calm and rational) said that actually he too thought some books should not be taught in universities because they could be triggering to sensitive students. There was a long tense pause, and then one feminist took off her glasses and suddenly they all started talking at once. It was interesting to watch people being so polite and yet so furious at the same time but then somebody said

“5th Wave feminism isn’t really feminism at all!” and all hell broke loose!

Before long it was feminist on feminist and stay-at-home mom on working-mom and it was just a huge tumble of scones and hair. Somehow, without knowing it, we had divided and conquered! I am making careful notes on this for future enemy engagements but boy, we totally owned them libs, Momma! We burnt the store down but I don’t think they even noticed.

Your loving son, Bodean. P.S. Can you renew my subscription to Hair Club for Men? OQ / SUMMER 2022

Dearest!

Great news from the Western Front! Today we took the whole 4th infantry unit! We came upon them all of a sudden while on routine maneuvers. They were sitting off-trail amongst the weeds in the Ojai Meadow Preserve all in camouflage and we might have missed them entirely but for their bright red hats. There followed a brief skirmish dubbed The Battle of Woke Ridge but soon their battalion was in disarray from being confronted with a literate and freshly frappuccinoed foe!

We now have them imprisoned within high artisanal woven willow walls in an ecological imprisonment model first outlined by the Outer Hebrideans in their attempt to contain their mad.

It’s refreshing to know that the modern world can still learn from such primitive cultures.

We made the captives eat organic quiche and ethically-sourced frogs' legs in a white wine reduction, and now many of them are in the fetal position weeping in the belief that this has made them irretrievably gay.

The weeping is admittedly hard to bear — we are not monsters — but we are drowning it out by playing Susan Sontag lectures on a loop over the loudspeaker. Edifying for us, unspeakable for them. It won’t be long now before one of them cracks and reveals the whereabouts of Unit Commander Alex Jones.

(4 minutes later) One of them is definitely starting to crack! I think his name is Scooter. He got up from his meal, flung his açai bowl asunder and appeared to dance a sort of gurning hoedown.

Either that or he was commanding my presence in the fifth dimension. It is hard to know if this was an act of surrender, lunacy, or outrageous subordination so I have put him in isolation in a cell papered over with New Yorker articles and only a few sheets of Guns & Ammo magazine for toilet paper. It won’t be long now.

I can almost smell Alex Jones’s putrid breath … When I find him we are going to strap him to a chair under a tap dripping soy latte slowly onto his conspiracy theorizing cranium while a series of scholars patiently explain every known modern example of Brandolini’s Law around the clock until his head explodes:

”The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it.”

Flat Earth Society, chemtrails, Birthers, The Protocols of the

Elders of Zion, the lot — we have several months worth of nonstop refutation with citations. He won’t last a week.

Dearest Emilia, I grow weary of this war. Today, armed with our pointiest facts, our convoy of Priuses arrived fresh and early for what was supposed to be a battle about Covid vaccinations but there was a whole other war already happening on the same field! It was hard to make out over the earsplitting din but it seemed to be the War on Christmas.

People from PETA were trying to symbolically release a herd of reindeer while belligerently yelling “Happy Holidays!,” and their combatants were lobbing flaming yule logs at them and screaming “Arm Santa!!” Pretty soon both wars started breaking off into sub-battles “My body, my choice!” chanters got muddled about who was being pro-choice and who just didn’t want to wear their masks. The “I can’t breathe!” people no longer knew if they meant George Floyd or merely wanted the freedom to infect people with deadly viruses. Campaigners against the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline were aggressively playing war accordions at a small party of swivel-eyed anti-LGBTQs who were demanding it be renamed the Cis-Alaskan Pipeline.

It was swirling, heavily pamphleted chaos. I saw grown men weep, especially this one guy called, I think, Bodean who was fetal in the mud and reindeer shit calling for his mommy. Darling, in the fog of war I am ashamed to say I flattened an elderly lady carrying a Hobby Lobby bag, believing her to be the anti-Semitic, homophobic, illegal smuggler of ancient Iraqi artifacts that her shopping habits suggested, when in fact she had just wandered over from the mall to see what all the noise was. All I can say was the red mist fell and I became a barely recognizable savage. I just hope Betty-Ann finds her teeth again.

Dear Momma.

I woke early to pace in the grey dawn having acquitted myself nobly and with absolutely no crying yesterday. The situation is getting desperate. Today we fight the Battle for Dolly Parton. It might be the final battle of this war for she is the only institution left in the country owned equally by the Patriot Heroes and the Mincing Snowflakes and whoever wins her will win the whole damn thing. Wish us Godspeed, Momma!

Your loving son, Bodean. P.S. Please send me the fungal cream that’s beside my Batman mug in the bathroom?

Some of the desperate situation involves my toes.

OQ / SUMMER 2022

145

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