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History unfolds as you enter the double mahogany doors to this refurbished vintage cabin; known in the early 40’s as the Topa Topa Hunting Lodge. Modern amenities & white oak oors complement the old-world details that include hand-hewn beams, natural stone replace & custom lead windows. Two other charming & fully appointed cabins in the same split log style will delight your guests, as will the oak-studded grounds with repit, tranquil natural pool, spa and a 20 X 40 garage with attached workshop and state-of-theart soundproof isolation recording booth. Exceptional location on private East End lane on .83 acres. Come experience the magic!!
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1641 Garst Lane
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EDITOR’S NOTE - 22
COVER STORY
Jeremy Corbell takes Congress to The Outer Limits - 26
WAR STORIES:
PAST AND PRESENT
Most Honorable Son - 40
Tent City Refugees 1975 - 60
West Bank Witness -76
ART & CULTURE
Dean Martin Golddigger
Suzy Cadham - 50
Ojai World Dance Festival - 86
OUTDOORS & SPORTS
Sky-Hiking - 70
VISA Soccer - 92
CALENDAR OF EVENTS - 97
FOOD & WINE
Vegan Holiday Eats - 100
ENVIRONMENT
Ojai Climate Whiplash - 106
HOME
Is Your Dream Home Factory-Built? - 114
OWN-YOUR-POWER
11 Acre Mountain Top Retreat | Offered at $3,995,000
Perched atop a prominent hill in the coveted East End of Ojai, California, this beautiful home was built and designed by daredevil pilot Mira Slovic. His love for aviation is reflective in the design elements in this architectural masterpiece. Mira, a stunt pilot and Hydroplane racing champion, designed this home as an epic mountain top retreat. Used to being in the clouds, this aptly named retreat ‘’Castillo Cielo’’ was a perfect reflection of his wild and uncompromising personality. Copias cool emanates from this Ladera Ranch castle compound! This compound is a mix of Mid Century and Spanish style. The one bedroom, three bath, three story, 3800 sq ft (est) home on almost 11 acres, has a three car garage, pool and hot tub, tennis court, and a completely separate one bedroom 800 sq ft guest house with a four car stackable garage. This is an entertainer’s dream with a professional Chef’s kitchen and unbelievable views of the Ojai Valley from the 20’ tall sunken living room. You can also see into the upper Ojai valley and the sparkling blue of lake Casitas o in the distance. The three story “lookout tower” provides a birds eye view of Ojai. Be the next custodian of this beautiful land!
EDITOR’S NOTE: WINTER 2024
Our magazine timely reflects on the thoughts, culture, history, and spirit of Ojai life in an un-engineered way. Each issue is created through an ensemble of labor and comes together uniquely, with stories arising as if by magic. The group of stories in this Winter’s issue speak volumes about this election-year moment from our local Ojai perspective. It’s a time of transition. Uncertainty. And the tumultuous subconscious concerns of our nation stream out in nearly every conversation in our small town.
As “only pawn in game of life,” some of us feel we’ve been worked over by our political parties and the powerful, whose die-hard loyalists stoked our fears and fed o of our division. Who benefits from decisions made behind closed doors, or from voters turned against each other? With honest politicians and independent media in short supply, the pursuit of facts leading to truth has become an arduous task.
Ojai has a long-held ethos of independent thinkers with a greater passion for truths — relational, health, intellectual, existential, spiritual — than the rewards of mass social harmony or congruence.
Which leads us to our cover story: Jeremy Corbell — “truth warrior” — a man who believes the public deserves answers from the U.S. government, has helped bring about bipartisan congressional hearings to discuss possible suppression of information on UFOs — Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP). Corbell, whistleblowers, and House legislators are taking big risks to shine light on institutional gatekeepers who they believe have over-classified documents for 50 years. The country is owed an explanation.
Following our groundbreaking story are three stories of three wars through our Ojai lens: First, in 1943, Ben Kuroki, Ojai Valley resident and Japanese American, enlisted in the U.S. Air Force to avenge Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and reclaim his family’s honor.
Thirty-two years later, parishioners of the Ojai Presbyterian Church sponsored 12 Vietnamese refugees stranded at Camp Pendleton’s “tent city.” Their story began after an Ojai Valley News headline, dated May 11, 1975: “Refugee family seeking home in Ojai.” Native Ojaian and photojournalist David LaBelle revisits the story behind his original images.
Finally, in 2024, two Ojai residents, Naimah Holmes and Cyrus Mayer, traveled to the West Bank to bear witness as volunteer human-rights observers in the midst of war in the region. This is the story of their visit to an old culture where they meet the generational farmers and shepherds who live on rural land under control of the Israeli military.
What do the themes of this Winter issue suggest about the zeitgeist of this period? The truth is rarely black or white, but with fact-based information and a huge helping of compassion and humility, we can get to well-reasoned answers.
Through story, we o er you some understanding to light your way, and some inspiration to get you there.
Cover photo: Jeremy Corbell poses for a portrait outside the Alien Research Center on Sept. 21, 2019 in Hiko, Nevada photo by Roger Kisby
Above: A screenshot from the Gimbal UAP video.
Inset: Jeremy Corbell in front of the Washington Monument in the U.S. capital.
“I lay traps for troubadours...But what puzzles you is the nature of my game.”
Photo provided
by GRANT PHILLIPS & MARIANNE RATCLIFF
takes Congress to The Outer Limits
‘You and I have a dead man’s switch.’
“I have been notified of very specific, and very direct and detailed threats against my life, as well as against anybody who may have information, assets, or contact with additional whistleblowers or individuals who are aware of this program, so much so that I’m taking action through law enforcement to make sure that they are aware.
“I will not mince words. We have had in place, for quite some time, unrelated to this story of ‘Immaculate Constellation,’ that if you or I are removed from the equation, that you have absolute, uncontrolled, catastrophic disclosure of information that would be dangerous to the United States of America, that would be dangerous to global policy, that would be dangerous in many ways; and it benefits everybody to not f k with journalists doing their job and sanitizing information for the good of public knowledge, with no harm to the United States of America, putting it out.”
These are the words of American investigative journalist Jeremy Corbell, who has dedicated much of his professional life to the disclosure of information related to UFOs. He’s speaking with fellow investigative journalist George Knapp on their popular podcast, WEAPONIZED, released Oct. 15, 2024.
The dead man’s switches are their “insurance policy” and there are many other people with their fingers on them.
The conversation takes place just weeks before the Nov. 13, 2024 official House
Committee hearing on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) — the new term for UFOs due to their ability to traverse various mediums, including space, sky, water, and possibly, dimensions. The hearing was a follow-up to a groundbreaking congressional hearing on July 26, 2023.
RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON D.C. (July 26, 2023) — David Grusch, U.S. Air Force officer and former intelligence official turned whistleblower, is testifying under oath that our government has retrieved non-human biologics from crashed crafts. He is seated in front of members of the House Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs.
Seated behind Grusch are Corbell to his left and Knapp to his right. Between Corbell and Knapp sits Grusch’s attorney, Charles McCullough III, the former first inspector general of the U.S. Intelligence Community.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina:
“If you believe we have crashed craft, stated earlier, do we have the bodies of the pilots who piloted this craft?”
Grusch: “Biologics came with some of these recoveries, yeah.”
Mace: “Were they, I guess, human or non-human biologics?”
Grusch: “Non-human, and that was the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the program I talked to that are currently still in the program.”
TAKE A MINUTE.
Grusch, a decorated Afghanistan combat veteran and intelligence official in the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, told members of Congress in a nationally televised hearing, while under oath, about the existence of non-human biologics recovered from a crashed craft.
That’s just a 10-second snippet from the explosive two-hour hearing on UAP.
HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?
Corbell is our modern-day Virgil in this story.
The hard-core investigative reporter, who fell deep into the nine layers of the UAP phenomena, will guide us through. He’s a multi-hyphenate Renaissance man: mixed-martial-arts athlete, visual artist, documentary filmmaker, podcaster, shamanistic storyteller, and self-described “motherf kin’ bulldog.”
Corbell was key to having Grusch, retired U.S. Navy Black Aces fighter pilot Cmdr. David Fravor, and former Lt. U.S. Navy and F/A-18F pilot Ryan Graves testify under oath at the July 26, 2023 hearing, which can be viewed in full here: youtube.com/live/Glw76YKuWCY
And how did Grusch find himself disclosing non-human biologics with members of Congress?
As Corbell tells it, it all began when “a guy leans over at the bar.”
Our story with Corbell begins the same way.
BAR AT AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA (Sept. 25, 2024)
Corbell pulls up in his signature Cybertruck. We order a beer and are bursting with questions: What are they? Where do they come from? Why are they here? Why is the government hiding it from us? Are they good? Bad? Evil? Neutral? And which of these is the most terrifying?
All these questions will be answered in the next two-hour conversation with Corbell, up to a point. Corbell, like our shared hero, gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, is always finding “the line.” And he knows when he crosses it. He notices, takes a step back, and gives us just a peek behind the curtain of what he knows to be true, teasing us with a leap over the edge, which, of course, we’re willing to jump off with him.
Corbell goes on the record for most of the conversation, but the rest, unfortunately, is “off the record completely.”
And even though we toasted to breaking the “f k barrier,” that word is partially redacted throughout as well.
Anything off the record, he explains, is for his and his source’s safety. However, just Corbell’s on-the-record conversation carries the risk of inducing ontological shock.
Corbell’s role in
the phenomena
Corbell became one of the dominant experts in the UAP field with the release of his 2018 documentary, Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers.
Those familiar with UFO lore know Lazar’s story by heart, but for those who don’t, it boils down to whether or not you believe Lazar worked on reverse-engineering non-human craft captured by the U.S.
government at the now-infamous Area 51, specifically in a secret zone labeled “S4.” As a propulsions expert, Lazar says his job was to assess the power and propulsion methods behind these craft.
When you ask Corbell if Lazar is telling the truth, the answer is “100-f king-percent,” and his documentary makes a compelling case. It’s what got Joe Rogan back into the UFO topic, and led to the monumental moment Corbell and Lazar appeared as guests on the show in 2019. This episode, as of press time, remains the most-watched episode of the Joe Rogan Experience on YouTube, with 62 million views. youtube.com/watch?v=BEWz4SXfyCQ
“He’s like the Yeti of UFOs, meaning not real; you could never get him on camera,” Corbell tells us about Lazar. “And I achieved the impossible with my Netflix documentary. I got him.”
Corbell’s work doesn’t stop there. He made another documentary, Hunt for the Skinwalker, about a program that aerospace tycoon Robert Bigelow ran out of his Utah ranch; a three-part television event called UFO Revolution — with a new season premiering in the coming months; and the most popular podcast on the UFO topic, WEAPONIZED, which he co-hosts with the man who originally broke the Lazar story in 1989, award-winning investigative journalist George Knapp.
Jeremy Corbell (left) sits next to Bob Lazar, whom he made a documentary about over many years, released in 2018, titled Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers. In 1989, Lazar spoke about Area 51, and this was the first official documentary film about his story. Photo provided
An image from a video of the Mosul Orb in Iraq in 2016. Photo released by American journalists
George Knapp and Jeremy Corbell
The next game changer is the Nov. 13, 2024 hearing, with Rep. Mace returning to ask groundbreaking questions to new witnesses: Tim Gallaudet, former U.S. Navy rear admiral; Luis Elizondo, former Department of Defense official; Michael Gold, former NASA associate administrator of Space Policy and Partnerships; and Michael Shellenberger, independent journalist and founder of the news site “Public.”
“I will tell you what I did at this last thing in D.C. People have put their physical lives in my hands, and I don’t know if I’m the most qualified person, but I’m what they’ve f kin’ got,” Corbell says. “I’m navigating something so heavy right now and, mark my words, this conversation will make a lot of sense when you see what goes down. There’s no doubt. I’m not one to over-exaggerate something like that. No doubt, you’ll see what I’m talking about. It’s going to be dramatic. … There’s literally no stopping it.”
But are we ready for all this to finally be unleashed into the public consciousness?
Why such secrecy?
“Ontologically, epistemologically, all these big f kin’ words, right, the nature of reality, human understanding of its own history, all of that changes once you talk about an advanced biologic or biological organism,” he says. “That concept endangers humanity’s understanding of its own history in relation to the rest of the universe. And it also might expand our concept of what it means to be human. Both are true at the exact same time.”
He thinks we’re ready.
“Oh, I’m f kin’ ready. The world is f kin’ ready, but it would be nice to give them context so they value that conversation,” Corbell says. “We are ready. It’s an easy conversation. It’s just that you need to bring people to one point before you say the next for an educational purpose. … Human beings are adaptable. They surprise you. They do the right thing if you give people the chance, and we find that. As a society, we find that. I have hope for humanity. And the thing is, is that if we don’t get ahead of this now, we will be surpassed. … And you’re going to have a real disadvantage as the U.S.”
“I also know that this core secret has been kept back from general public information for a good reason at the beginning, which was to have a technological advantage and a psychological advantage upon other nations because the greatest thing you could do is f kin’ fake a UFO attack on another country,” he says. “And I do also know that people are fed up with that, and that those old reasons for ‘keeping sh safe’ are no longer pertinent. But just like the atomic weapons systems, you can know an atom bomb exists, you can know UFOs are real, your government already told you that. … They f kin’ done told you that, but they’re not going to give you the goddamn nuclear codes.”
News on the UAP topic seems to break daily.
UAP Disclosure Act and Senate Hearing
In June 2024, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence passed the Intelligence Authorization Act, which included a section on UAP. Then, in July, Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota proposed to Congress the UAP Disclosure Act of 2024. If passed, the Act would establish oversight, a review board, and a public disclosure plan for the next seven years. Sen. Rounds told congressional reporter Matt Laslo in October 2024 that his UAP Disclosure Act measure with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was still being negotiated. A Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on UAP was held on Nov. 19.
Dave Foley (left) sits next to Jeremy Corbell at the Contact in the Desert event on June 1, 2024.
Photo: Kimberly Rivers
Immaculate Constellation
In an Oct. 8, 2024 article, “Pentagon Is Illegally Hiding Secret UFO Program From Congress, Whistleblowers Allege,” journalist Michael Shellenberger reported on his substack, “Public,” a whistleblower revealed to him the existence of a U.S. Unacknowledged Special Access Program (USAP) called “Immaculate Constellation.”
The program, he reported, is considered a central or “parent” USAP that consolidates observations of UAP via “both tasked and untasked collection platforms.” Shellenberger wrote that the whistleblower warned, “Simply printing the name ‘Immaculate Constellation’ could trigger government surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of whoever publishes it.”
Shellenberger quoted the whistleblower: “They won’t comment on it, but talking about it will put you in the danger zone. They enforce the secrecy with a lot of vigor.”
Corbell takes potential threats to his life more seriously now than he did in September. When we asked him, before his Oct. 15, 2024 podcast, about his fears and safety concerns covering the topic, he radiated a wave of coolness.
“I’m the least paranoid person you’ll ever meet,” he said in September. “One, no, I do not feel that I fear for my life in any way at all shape or form. I’ve been assisted, never resisted. Maybe I’m ignorant, but I think I’m almost useful, because if they do have
a FISA, then they do hear a lot of what’s going on, you just can’t get around it.
“The second question you said, yes, I don’t fear, that’s not the word. … I have been very careful, in that I have not compromised national security or broken any law.”
Following the Shellenberger “Immaculate Constellation” revelation in October, Corbell clearly puts on the record in his Oct. 15 podcast: youtube.com/ watch?v=Z1L7xpE34TQ “That program was outed by an independent journalist who has nothing to do with me.”
Upon subsequently learning about the “very direct and detailed threats against my life,” he tells Knapp in that same podcast episode: “I did not take — put — a lot of stock in it. And then I called four different people to advise me and, to my shock and awe, with actual knowledge of this program prior to it being announced, was told for me to take it 100% deadly seriously.”
Corbell experiences a craft
There is one instance where the investigative observer became a participating witness.
Corbell was walking with his friend, comedic actor Dave Foley in January 2022, at about 8 p.m. Foley teased Corbell about how funny it would be to see a UFO. And sure enough, there it was.
“You know, the UFO guy sees a UFO. Come on! I always prided myself on being the guy that never saw anything. But just to be straight honest with you, oh yeah,” Corbell says of the incident. “This
was a craft unlike anything in our United States inventory or other technological nations’ inventory that I’m aware of. “There is absolutely zero doubt.”
Zero uncertainty.
“It was almost comical to me ’cause it looked like a 1940s rocket-man cartoon, with these huge, round f kin’ lights that were not shining but were illuminating, but that’s not the light; the light was the body of the craft. And it’s not a place where the sun could have been flickering off of it like a satellite spins. Every time, it did these impossible-without-sonic-booms slips, pfftpfft-pfft-pfft — four of them — the body would vroooom, like glow up. My astonishment was the amount of energy it must have taken to do that—without sound.”
As if compelled to fully experience the moment, the filmmaker didn’t reach for his phone, a decision Foley said he still isn’t entirely sure Corbell had control over. Foley described a conscious-hacking experience after seeing the wedge-shaped craft.
“I felt that our response was not under our control, that somehow we were led to just stay calm and pay attention,” Foley told Corbell on WEAPONIZED. “The next day, I went home and got out my iPad and I opened up an app I had never opened before, a drawing app, and immediately found basically every tool I needed to draw it, how to shade it. I was able to get the exact color I wanted. I was able to find an app that gave these lens flare lighting effects for the front lights immediately, everything immediately. It took about 15 minutes for me with no knowledge.”
Even though Corbell crossed the barrier between reporter and experiencer, he likes to stay in the realm of what he can prove.
“It’s not a matter of belief,” he says, emphatically. “I don’t need to believe anything. So, what do I know? Well, hopefully, you’ll see some of that soon. And it’s not what I know. I want to provide you evidence and proof. I want to show the world evidence and proof.
“My informed opinion is that I don’t have the luxury of disbelief that there is a non-human intelligence engaging humanity for a very long time and our government knows about it. Not only that, there is a
A digital drawing created by Dave Foley the day after they witnessed a wedge-shaped UAP in 2022.
physical, materialist aspect to it, and we have had the benefit of obtaining some of these physical materials from energy and propulsion sources to physical craft.
“And this is what I know, this is not what I think. This is what I know. I know for a fact that we have obtained physical hardware and that we have been trying to exploit and reverse-engineer it for derivative technologies to enhance our capabilities as a nation for decades. That is fact.”
For all the startling phenomena Corbell has investigated, “I don’t dive into the ‘woo,’” he says, “because I’m very comfortable where I sit, because there’s a lot of work to be done here.
“People get UFO disease. And it’s really contagious,” he cautions.
But after a beer or two, he’s willing to allow his technical, journalistic brain a chance to philosophize.
He calls his theory “TechnoTerrestrial.”
“There’s two options and both can be true at the same time. You could have a breakaway civilization, like my friend Richard Dolan talked about. He didn’t come up with that idea but he’s talked about it. He wrote a book about it, where you have people, and I call them people because if you’ve got a body, and you have a brain, it doesn’t matter what you look like, you’re a person, right?” Corbell says.
“So these people, whether they’re from another dimension, and popping in to where we are or they’ve been underground, under the water, maybe they got super advanced, did all this cool architecture at
some point that’s now just in stone, and said: ‘F k them, they’re f king crazy. We’re going to stay under the water, stay underground, we’re going to stay in f kin’ Antarctica,’ I don’t know. So that would be a terrestrial, that’s not extraterrestrial, that’s terrestrial. But is that their origin? Or were they directed here, and built here after time? I don’t know the answers to any of this. They’re all theories, possibilities, so it becomes so murky.”
But in the ’70s, we could have done some crazy sh , couldn’t we? So I just don’t know where to place that. If you’re talking about ancient history, the 1800s, 1910, 1920, 1930, definitely would have been NHI (Non-Human-Intelligence) technology. But now we can move into this realm. There’s f kery that occurred, where our government definitely loves that we know a little bit about UFOs.”
How could something like that happen?
That leads to the question: Are these things weapons?
“Maybe this is what happens over and over and over again, kind of like a cocoon, like a chrysalis — an idea my friend Joe Rogan introduced me to — the idea that the world has been expanding, and we have been part of that expansion by being seeded into a much larger concept of what it means to be living, and maybe the messengers of that life are cybernetic, meaning they’re biological, but they’re grown with an artificial intelligence,” he says. “This is sh I never talk about, but you started this.” When it comes to whether or not these things are malevolent or benevolent, it gets murky, too. Corbell cites a massive series of events that happened in Brazil in the 1970s, referred to as Colares. Former U.S. senior intelligence officer Luis Elizondo discusses in his book, Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UFOs, UAPs descended upon Colares, and people were struck by what they described as beams of light that not only put holes into metal, but also into people, allegedly causing some to lose blood and iron.
“George Knapp and I have documents about Colares,” Corbell says. “So Colares, sure, in the ’70s, probably non-human intelligence operating those vehicles, probably.
provided
“If you have any unknown object penetrating a nuclear facility and appearing to turn on and off nuclear codes, which there is plenty of open-source FOIA evidence of. … If you have one instance of that, then we have a national security issue that supersedes and is above just simply weapons of mass destruction,” Corbell says. “And that also has to do with the propulsion systems that are theorized that these craft use. By nature, they are weaponry. Just by the nature of how they function, it would be a weapons system as well.” What keeps them from landing on the White House lawn?
“The elephant in the room is that the true architects of this secrecy, if they exist, would be the visitors themselves,” he says. “It is true, meaning we can hold back anything about UFOs, UAP, reverse engineering. We’ve been hiding it. People have been murdered for it. No problem. We can hold all that back for good reason — national security, technological advantage, derivative technologies, basic operational security against other nations. But ultimately, whoever operates these vehicles — the people that operate these vehicles — they are the true architects of the secrecy. Because they could f king, as you say, land on the White House lawn and let everybody know.”
By this point in the interview, we’ve been approached by someone who claims to have seen a UFO, and he shows Corbell a video of the incident.
“Wicked brother, that is not a plane,” Corbell says, checking out the video. “Can you airdrop it to me and I’ll get your contact info and do a little analysis of it?” He’s always searching for the truth, wherever it presents itself.
American journalists George Knapp (left) and Jeremy Corbell talk during an episode of their podcast WEAPONIZED. Photo
We’re convinced this happens to him all the time. So we ask him: Are certain areas more prone to UAP activity? Places like Sedona, Skinwalker Ranch, the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii, even the spiritual vortex of Ojai? His answer, the Occam’s razor of his intellect, was much like the UAP themselves — hiding in plain sight.
“On one hand, I’d like to say yes, because I’d like to say to you there is something special, and we’d all love to decipher it. But when it comes to UAP, yeah, I’d say there’s a lot of sightings, but I also have to admit … I get reports from around the world every day. I think it’s a matter of observation,” he says. “People not just looking at the ground and grinding, military, wherever they are, there’s more sightings. Why is that? Likely because we have the best sensors, the best camera systems, the best platforms, so I think it is ever-present, and homogenous around the world throughout time.”
We wrapped up our conversation with rapid-fire questions:
What do you think about John Lear?
“John Lear was right about many things, and he was also grossly wrong about others, but he knew that.”
What private companies have the UFO technology?
“Lockheed, Battelle — Battelle, good you know that — Howard Hughes, EG&G, old TRW, all that, they got the contracts.”
A close-up of Jeremy Corbell’s tattoo of a rhino and a line from a poem for his dad that he shares with his brothers. He recited his version of the poem:
“One fine day in the Middle of the Night
Two dead men got up to fight.
Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other.
A deaf policeman heard the noise
And came and killed those two dead boys.
And if you think this tale is tall
Ask the blind man, he saw it all.”
Photo: Grant Phillips
He went through the stories of these different single-needle body constellations, all done by legendary artist Mark Mahoney from Shamrock Social Club, a Sunset Strip legend.
Some were allusions to memories with friends, others symbols of love for his wife, a few were life mottos and references to family.
But one stood out: a rhino on his forearm.
“And then, for my dad, I got the rhino, and my brothers also got it; it’s a Dürer, who is a 16th-century lithographer,” he explains.
“He (Albrecht Dürer) had never seen a rhinoceros. He heard about it as the first one came into Europe, and drew a picture, cut a lithograph, based on what he heard, and it’s like a super-armored rhinoceros, and then Dali made statues of it.”
Dürer never ended up seeing a rhinoceros in person before he died, but even if he had, we doubt it could have ever lived up to the expectations he’d created in his mind’s eye of a magical, mystical being that shouldn’t exist, but does.
That interpretation of the impossiblemade-possible is where we left the conversation. But as we drove home looking up at the sky, eyes wide toward the stars, we hoped we might see something, and find out for ourselves.
Corbell returns to Congress
RAYBURN HOUSE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C. (Nov. 13, 2024) — Jeremy Corbell makes his way to Capitol Hill for the Nov. 13 congressional hearing on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth.
The long road to get here has included threats to his life.
This is Corbell’s second hearing to watch Congress grill witnesses about alien crash retrievals, orbs, a secret arms race … Corbell was key to getting whistleblower David Grusch to testify under oath to Congress on July 26, 2023, about non-human biologics, which has set the stage for Round 2.
At about 11 a.m., Corbell stands alone in a section of the wide, gray-marbled corridor. He is dressed in a green button-down shirt that traps his muscular arms, intent on continuing what he started, in spite of the risk. The mixed-martial-arts athlete inhales, ready for the world to hear what he knows and reports on every day. What started as one UFO-related YouTube video on March 15, 2010, has grown to hundreds of thousands of listeners on his and George Knapp’s podcast, WEAPONIZED.
Corbell has a document he plans to deliver to Congress. In a flash, his film crew swarms Corbell, following him as he rounds the corner where hundreds are lined up. Corbell gets a few steps into the scrum when people recognize him, calling out his name, requesting photos and autographs, which he freely gives, looking with his wide blue eyes at each person who reaches out to him. A man calls out from the crowd with a raised fist, “Truth warrior!”
“Don’t block the hallway!” hollers a House worker.
As Hearing Room 2154 fills up, Corbell finds his chair directly behind the witness table and reaches into his backpack to pull out a manila folder. He opens it and hands a document to a congressional aide, then watches him disappear into a back room.
Hearing Chair Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) opens the hearing: “UAPs remain a controversial topic. I’m not going to name names, but there are certain individuals who didn’t want this hearing
to happen, because they feared what might be disclosed. …”
She holds a document up to the cameras, announcing: “There is a document that will be entered into the congressional record today” about Immaculate Constellation. “Twelve pages about this unacknowledged special access program that your government says does not exist.”
Mace says the document was provided by journalist Michael Shellenberger, who is testifying.
But Corbell knows he brought the document and knows it’s the one Mace holds in her hand.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) also knows this to be true, telling Ojai Valley News/Ojai Magazine later that day, “Corbell brought it.”
Shellenberger did not correct the record during the hearing. Mace and her o ce sta continued to assert that Shellenberger brought the document. The record had not been corrected as of press time on Nov. 20.
Mace posted the document, which can be viewed at: mace.house.gov/immaculateconstellation But only 11 pages are included in her post. The missing cover page provides context and is signed by Corbell.
“I’m angry,” Corbell said two days after the hearing.
“I never thought or said our government was gonna WILLINGLY spill the beans. My fight is to force the next reveal. To make it safe to reveal. And I’m trying. I’m trying to make it safe and to protect those who have come to me and George [Knapp].
“They consider me a ‘National Security issue,’ as Rep. Burchett implied. I’m just an American Journalist — trying to tell the truth. And I love my country. … They tried to ERASE my name from the hearing with a small lie. Ask yourself, WHY?
“Right now I’m boiling. I’m boiling because those supposed to be on our side — they have lied. And the question is WHY?
“I didn’t help set up these hearings so that the government would tell you the truth. I set up these hearings with Congress to try to get firsthand whistleblowers to the American public. I did this so that we would encourage whistleblowers — and pave the way to people being ABLE to tell the truth. Without fear of reprisal.
“And it didn’t succeed. In fact, it likely made it more dangerous for them, sadly.
“I was supposed to testify. They found a way to stop that. Because if I was under oath — with no government a liation and no NDAs signed … people might have believed what I had to share.
“And maybe THAT would have been dangerous.”
Jeremy Corbell, right, confronts witness Michael Shellenberger, left, about the Immaculate Constellation document following the Nov. 13 congressional hearing. Rep. Nancy Mace is pictured to Shellenberger’s left. Photo: Donny Chiang
“Ben thought Tupelo Lass was doomed when a gasoline storage tank exploded in their path and the tank’s metal shell shot skyward like a tin can.”
‘Most Honorable
Circa 1931, Shosuke and Naka Kuroki with eight of their 10 children. Ben, who was 14 or 15, is standing second from left.
Ben Kuroki Collection/Smithsonian National Museum of American History
Ben Kuroki peered from the plexiglass top turret of his B-24 Liberator and sensed this would be the biggest moment of his life.
It was Aug. 1, 1943, and Operation Tidal Wave was underway, the daring, low-level surprise air raid on Hitler’s critically important oil fields in Ploiesti, Romania.
Many thought it would be a suicide mission.
For Ben, the mission was terrifying, but it was a long time coming. It had taken months of pleading to win a combat assignment with the U.S. Army Air Force’s 93rd Bomb Group, the first group of B-24s to join the Eighth Air Force in England in 1942.
His Japanese American heritage had never been a big deal in the tiny Nebraska farm town where he grew up, but after enlisting in the USAAF, Ben had to battle the racism, resentment, and suspicion resulting from the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
Ben’s story is told in Most Honorable Son: A Forgotten Hero’s Fight Against Fascism and Hate During World War II, a book by journalist and historian Gregg Jones.
Honorable Son’
by PERRY VAN HOUTEN
Ben and the flight crew of a B-24 Liberator, after he arrived in England in September 1942. Ben Kuroki Collection/Smithsonian National Museum of American History
The Aug. 1, 1943 lowlevel bombing raid on the Ploiesti, Romania oil refineries.
U.S Army Air Forces/ National Archives and Records Administration
Most Honorable Son: A Forgotten Hero’s Fight Against Fascism and Hate During World War II by Gregg Jones, published by Citadel Press/Kensington in August 2024.
Just days before Ben rejoined the 93rd Bomb Group in April 1943, the crew of a B-24 Liberator dons flight gear.
U.S Army Air Forces/ National Archives and Records Administration
Ben Kuroki peered from the plexiglass top turret of his B-24 Liberator and sensed this would be the biggest moment of his life.
Ben poses with his gun turret, shattered by enemy fire during his 30th mission, on Münster, Germany.
U.S Army Air Forces/National Archives and Records Administration
“As a storyteller you’re always looking to see, ‘Does this story have legs?’” Jones says. “Does it have this epic quality, the arc that is just so powerful and sweeping?”
It was precisely Pearl Harbor that decided Ben’s enlistment. Born one of 10 children to Japanese American immigrants, he wanted to avenge the bombing, prove his patriotism, and reclaim his family honor by putting his life on the line in combat for America. As anti-Japanese sentiment surged at home, especially on the West Coast, Ben had to fight to be allowed to fight for his country, but he finally convinced senior o cers to let him join a combat crew as a B-24 gunner. The nephew of a radio operator who fought and died with the 93rd, Jones was researching his uncle’s story when he was reminded of Ben. He first saw him in a 1962 book he inherited from his grandmother that contains a photo of the gunner sticking his head out of a shattered gun turret from a raid over Münster, Germany. It was nearly his last mission.
“I was aware of Ben, but I wasn’t aware of how epic the story was,” Jones says. “The more I read, the more I tracked down sources, the more I was excited about what an extraordinary story it was.”
Then Jones saw in a blog post that Ben had bequeathed the bulk of his collection of correspondence, military records, and photographs to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Prior to Jones, no outside scholars had ever set eyes on the collection.
“I couldn’t wait to sit down with it. It was incredible,” says Jones. “But it was really the scrapbooks of photographs that told his story from start to finish. To see images of these moments was just thrilling beyond words.”
Among the dozens of historic photos in Most Honorable Son is one from Aug. 1, 1943, that shows a B-24 Liberator flying low while bombing the Axis oil refineries in Ploiesti. The day became known as “Black Sunday” due to the devastating loss of more than 300 American flyers.
Ben and his crewmates aboard Tupelo Lass were nearly among the casualties, flying as low as 20 feet to avoid German air defenses firing at point-blank range.
“Ben thought Tupelo Lass was doomed when a gasoline storage tank exploded in their path and the tank’s metal shell shot skyward like a tin can.”
Emerging from the hellhole of fire, flame, and smoke, Tupelo Lass headed for an assembly point to rendezvous with comrades. None were waiting for Ben and his crew.
“It was the strangest feeling because we couldn’t see any of the planes we were supposed to be flying with,” Ben said. “We were all alone.”
In early 1943, Ben was held prisoner in Spanish Morocco, a colony of neutral Spain, after his plane’s pilot made an emergency landing. Wanting to get back to the war, he tried to escape to French Morocco but was captured again and spent about two months in captivity before his release.
Ben returned home a decorated war hero in December 1943, and while awaiting his next assignment became the focus of national news coverage when he was ordered by the War Department to visit the Heart Mountain detention camp where Japanese people were incarcerated, in Wyoming, to recruit residents of Japanese descent for service with the American armed forces.
“Being sent to the camps for recruiting was a very raw and searing experience for Ben,” Jones says.
In a February 1944 speech before San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, Ben denounced anti-Japanese racism and pressed the Roosevelt administration to consider releasing more than 110,000 prisoners of Japanese heritage being held in the detention camps.
Ben then received the personal approval of Secretary of War Henry Stimson to fly 28 combat missions in the Pacific as a tail gunner in a B-29 Superfortress, including the pivotal firebombing campaign against Japan that culminated in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“He had come to view his Pacific tour as the ultimate statement of his patriotism and his loyalty to America,” Jones says.
In the fall of 1945, Ben came home to more acclaim, launching a 17-month nationwide speaking tour he called his 59th Mission Tour, in which he challenged Americans to “win the peace” by addressing socioeconomic and racial injustices at home. Jones believed, “He was the most prominent Japanese American for a couple of years after the war.”
Jones and Ben never met. “That’s a great regret,” the author says. “You always feel a pang of anguish when you don’t get to talk to an important character or, in this case, the central character.”
Ben was done with the limelight, according to Jones. “He didn’t attend 93rd Bomb Group reunions, until the one in the early 2000s at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs where they dedicated a plaque to the group,” he says.
Ben signs autographs during his visit to one of three incarceration camps in the spring of 1944. Ben Kuroki Collection/Smithsonian National Museum of American History
And Jones got the impression that he shouldn’t try to seek out this war hero who was quickly becoming forgotten. “He was keeping a low profile and I just got this vibe that he didn’t want to be disturbed. Some guys just still weren’t ready to talk about the experience,” he says.
After the war, Ben earned a journalism degree from the University of Nebraska and published, edited, and owned newspapers in Nebraska, Idaho, and Michigan before going to work as an editor for the Ventura County Star-Free Press in 1966.
“What got him to California was the pull of the extraordinary diversity,” Jones says “He’d seen California and really liked it. California was really the place to be in post-war America. It just had this incredible allure.”
Besides, Ben and his wife, Shige, were concerned that their three daughters, Julie, Kristin, and Kerry, were not growing up around any other Asian Americans. “They wanted them to have more of a connection with their ancestry,” Jones says.
For many years, Ben kept his incredible story from the girls, according to Jones. “He didn’t talk about all of this with his children. It was Julie who finally pried open the door a little bit when she was in college. The girls knew that he served in the war but they didn’t know much more,” he says.
The family moved to Oak View in 1969, and Ben, who loved golf, played regularly at Soule Park Golf Course. “By his own account he wasn’t a great golfer,” says Jones. Youngest daughter Julie was a 1974 graduate of Nordhoff High School and worked as a trail guide and stable hand at the Ojai Valley Inn.
Ben left the Star-Free Press in 1982 and retired, but made what he called his “last hurrah” by opening the Nebraska Historical Society’s World War II 50th anniversary exhibition in December 1991. “Ben viewed that as the capstone of his public life and thought it was a great farewell,” Jones says.
A longtime foreign correspondent, investigative journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Jones currently teaches journalism at a prep school in the suburbs of Dallas. “For me, being a reporter was such a thrilling opportunity to channel my passion for history, which was deeply rooted in my childhood,” he says.
In Most Honorable Son, Jones has written the first comprehensive, accurate biography of an unjustly forgotten American war hero. “I feel such a tremendous responsibility to readers,” he says. “I am the reader’s advocate and it’s my responsibility to stand on the shoulders of those who have come before me, who have done the first drafts of history, and to create something fuller, more comprehensive, and more accurate.”
In 2015, Ben died in Camarillo at age 98. During his 59th Mission Tour, after having to “fight like hell for the right to fight for my own country,” he said he felt vindicated. “All the men who had mocked him and made snide comments about the color of his skin or shape of his eyes; the men who had questioned his loyalties, his trustworthiness, his courage; the bigoted 93rd sergeants who had twice tried to force him from the group, first in Louisiana and then Florida. He had proven them all wrong.”
Above: President George W. Bush honors Ben during part of the 2008 celebration of Asian/ Pacific Islander Heritage Month at the White House.
Below left: In the fall of 1945, Ben was interviewed by Ed Sullivan, then an entertainment journalist for the New York Daily News
Below center: In February 1946, Ben speaks during his 59th Mission Tour, addressing racial intolerance and prejudice.
Below right: Ben speaks to men of Japanese descent at the Heart Mountain internment camp in Wyoming.
Photos courtesy Ben Kuroki Collection/Smithsonian National Museum of American History
margaret mellis william scott keith vaughan
dec 12 – feb 2
located in a classic california bungalow a short walk from the arcade, canvas and paper is a small art museum with a focus on 20th century modernism. exhibits change every two months. admission is free.
311 n. montgomery street
thursday – sunday noon – 5 pm
canvasandpaper.org
william scott, still life, 1955 – 56
One of Dean Martin’s “Golddiggers” takes her act to Ojai
A Life AS Good AS
Gold
Suzy Cadham, one of the 12 original “Golddiggers” on The Dean Martin Show, has hobnobbed with many heavyweights of Hollywood’s Golden Age on TV sets and stages across the globe. After many years of performing with the best of the best, Suzy now calls the Ojai Valley home; here, she’s using her skills as a seasoned artiste to support our community of entertainers and unsung heroes.
A self-described “prairie girl” who grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Suzy grew up in a home teeming with the tunes of opera and musical theater.
Once Suzy’s father took her to see The Desert Song with Kathryn Grayson in 1953, her destiny was determined.
“As a little girl, I just couldn’t believe how wonderful it was to see people up on the screen singing and talking, and I fell in love with it,” she said. “By the time I was about 8 years old, I was singing at weddings.” After getting paid $25 — so that’s when I became a professional,” she mused, reflecting on singing “O Perfect Love” at weddings and “The Lord’s Prayer” at funerals.
Despite living in a region where the temperature “can be 60 below,” Suzy noted: “Winnipeg was a very culturally alive city, and in the summertime, they had this wonderful outdoor theater called Rainbow Stage. And the city of Winnipeg worked an arrangement with a New York production company to bring in musicals in the summertime — the stars, the directors, the choreographers, the musical directors — but they … had to agree to provide a percentage of local talent.”
Beginning at age 13 as a choir girl and working her way up, Suzy became a star on the local stage.
“I got to work with really, really top-notch professional people,” Suzy said, “and instead of sitting in the dressing room and jiving with everybody, I would be backstage, on stage, watching the stars work. That was such a dream … to sit and watch the real pros work.”
Suzy applies (actual) greasepaint makeup at age 16 as a chorus girl on Winnipeg’s Rainbow Stage.
Below: Bob Hope is head of the Christmas Tree with the Golddiggers’ heads in bulbs in a promo for The Bob Hope Christmas Special: Around the World with the USO headed to Vietnam , 1969
Right: Dean Martin with Suzy Cadham, Michelle Della Fave, Paula Cinko, Jackie Chidsey and Debi McFarland, 1968
Her big break came when she was cast as Ensign Nellie Forbush in South Pacific on the Rainbow Stage around the age of 20.
“It was a huge, huge break for me, because now I’m ‘starring in’ at this theater,” she said. “All the people that I worked with said, ‘Susie, you have got to go to New York.’ … And so I went, much to the chagrin of my family, because they knew nobody in show business, and I was like the black sheep of the family. They were all doctors and nurses, and I was supposed to follow along in that path, but I didn’t. So I headed off to New York by myself.”
A few years in New York didn’t generate any success, and her father wrote to remind her that the clock was ticking for her family’s financial support to continue. “‘It’s time. … We’d like you to come home and be a secretary,’” Suzy said, recalling her family’s entreaty. Thinking fast in order to avoid a housebound fate, Suzy made a spur-of-the-moment, sharp-left turn to find last-minute success in the city — trying out to be a Playboy Bunny.
“Back then, Playboy Bunnies were a big deal,” she said. “They were supposed to be educated, which I was … and they were paid very well. So I went to the Bunny Building, I got on the Bunny Elevator, and I went to the Bunny Floor and I met the Bunny Mother, and she said, ‘Strip!’ And I was a very naive, innocent Canadian girl.”
The Playboy Bunny costume was fitted, fluffed, and stuffed to her shape, and she was given the bunny green light, but “the next day, I had one more audition, and it happened to be with 12-time Tony Award winner Tommy Tune, and he hired me.”
After that, she found steady work touring with major stars in summer stock theater productions, though she was often typecast as a dumb blonde. But “I always think it’s funny, because I do think blondes have to be kind of smart, like Marilyn Monroe,” Suzy commented.
Her shrewdness in playing up the blonde role was her ticket to Dean Martin’s universe in the late ’60s.
“I was under contract at the Houston music theater and they hired me to play Ado Annie in Oklahoma!” Suzy recalled. A guest director from Hollywood encouraged her to move to the West Coast, telling her: “‘Suzy, you have to come to Hollywood.
‘We are putting together a group of 12 girls for the Dean Martin television variety show. His ratings are starting to sag.’”
The “powers that be” christened the group of women “The Golddiggers,” and Martin’s ratings steadily improved once The Golddiggers started performing alongside him at 10 p.m. every Thursday.
“And not only that, during the week, sometimes we got more fan mail than Dean — we were now individuals,” Suzy said. “And they spun us o into our own television show that we had for five seasons (Dean Martin Presents The Golddiggers and Chevrolet Presents The Golddiggers).”
In press coverage at the time, they were often touted as “the envy of every American girl and the dream of every red-blooded American boy.” In the early ’70s, Suzy got to be a Playboy centerfold after all, alongside the 11 other Golddiggers — albeit with plenty of clothing on.
Amidst all the glitz and glamour of The Golddiggers, Suzy said: “I made my very best friend there at the time (Holly Smith), and we have reunions every five years. … It was because we went to war
“Hope
together, we worked together, we lived together, we fought together, and we were kind of bonded in blood, and so you kind of can’t get rid of them. For me, being a Golddigger is a title, it’s followed me my whole life — probably end up being on my gravestone.”
She also worked on The Jim Nabors Hour as a “Nabors’ Kid,” and performed with greats on their eponymous shows, such as Carol Burnett, Red Skelton, Jonathan Winters, and Johnny Carson. Other stage partners included Jimmy Stewart, Lucille Ball, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Tony Bennett, AnnMargret, and Albert Brooks.
“I used to say, there’s nobody in Hollywood I didn’t work with, other than … Elizabeth Taylor, and I would like to have done that,” Suzy remarked.
“But the highlight of it all was being asked by Bob Hope to go to Vietnam,” which she did from 1969 to 1971.
The Golddiggers were brought on tour to bring the feeling of “the girl back home” for the troops, which, Suzy shared, “ended up being, for all of us, probably one of the most significant, if (not) the most
wears supp-hose!” Suzy and Bob Hope at a show in Da Nang, Vietnam, near Freedom Hill, 1970
significant — other than having a kid — moment for us. I mean, every Christmas that comes, I stop and I think — and we all do — about what it was like to be there at Christmastime in the middle of the war, in terrible circumstances. And Bob closed every single show with ‘Silent Night.’”
Bob Hope always included The Golddiggers when he was invited to special gatherings, such as dinner with the king and queen of Thailand, lunch in Saigon with Gen. Creighton Abrams, and dinner with President Richard Nixon in the White House — in fact, when they were all to be seated, Nixon pulled out Suzy’s chair first.
Touring in a windowless, Christmas-decorated military aircraft that carried —
literally — two tons of cue cards, Suzy got to appear alongside Les Brown, Connie Stevens, and Neil Armstrong throughout the world tour. But in Vietnam, with audiences of up to 50,000 soldiers, “the front rows were always filled with the wounded from the hospitals, which was pretty awful, on gurneys with their IVs. … Everybody would be crying, not just us on stage. … All the soldiers were crying, and they would have their guns and their ammunition on,” she recalled, her eyes misting.
Suzy, who has called Ojai home for only about a year, had her first full-circle Ojai moment this summer with the Vietnam Veterans of Ventura County: “I’m a big
Bob Hope introduces Suzy to President Richard Nixon at The White House, 1969
Suzy autographs hats after a show in Cu Chi, Vietnam, 1969
walker, and I was walking one morning, and it happened to be July the Fourth, and they were marshaling. I turned a corner, and all of a sudden there’s a jeep and all these guys and soldiers in uniform saying ‘Vietnam.’
“And I said, ‘Hey, you guys? Anybody been to Cu Chi? Anybody seen a Bob Hope show in Cu Chi, or Da Nang, or Lai Khe?’ And up went a hand … and that started my relationship with them.”
On living in Ojai, Suzy stated: “I moved here to be closer to my daughter, Regan, who was born here and has traveled all around the world, but always returns to Ojai because it’s like a magnet. … And when I moved here,
I had been in several long-running shows, and I was not coming for creativity. But what’s happened is … it’s so culturally alive, and there’s so much going on … And the creative people have been very welcoming, and they’re also very credentialed, and I’m finding a lot of delight. … I’m so surprised to find my tribe in Ojai, which I was not expecting, and old show-business gypsies love to find their tribes!”
After undergoing a particularly clumsy audition in New York City’s Winter Garden Theatre in the ’60s, trying to find her footing as a fledgling starlet, Suzy discovered another calling from that experience that she’s still cultivating today: “My heart is very fond of teach-
ing kids. I’ve done some classes at high schools, master classes for auditioning, because you’ve got to know how to audition.”
She also is taking full advantage of opportunities to raise money for veterans — “Anytime I can help raise any money or awareness, I’m right there” — and for the Ojai Art Center Theater. There, she will perform a one-woman show, A Golddigger: Not That Kind! in 2025. “It basically tells the story of a wee girl from the Canadian Prairies ending up as a starlet in Hollywood, and all the bumps and bruises and everything along the way. But it’s very fun and upbeat, and I do not take myself seriously,” she effervesced.
Another cause near to Suzy’s heart is breast cancer awareness. As a survivor herself, she said: “When I was sick with chemo and radiation, I hung my dress, my performing dress, up on a hook. And when I was feeling really bad, I would look at it and say, ‘Someday I’m going to be back on stage and I’m going to be in that dress.’”
Here in Ojai, she continues to do just that.
“I have lots of love in my life,” Suzy said, and ’tis the season now to “give back as much as I can, because a lot of what happened to me was through other people, and I’m very appreciative of that.”
Right: Suzy Cadham as the Wicked Stepmother in Ojai Performing Arts Theater’s Into the Woods, 2024, with Laura Dekkers, Denise Heller and Amanda Benjamin
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“Refugee family seeking home in Ojai,” read the front-page headline from the Ojai Valley News, dated May 11, 1975.
Below the two printed photographs from Camp Pendleton’s burgeoning “tent city,” the subhead of a story written by Polly Bee added, “Presbyterian church sponsors family of 12.”
In 2022 I received an email from professor Minh-Ha T. Pham asking if I was the photojournalist who took the photographs that appeared on that front page. Pham, an academic exploring her family’s history, said she was 2 years old with her refugee parents at Camp Pendleton when the photographs were made. Hearing from someone I photographed as a toddler, 47 years later, stirred my interest and carried me back to that time when I made several trips to Camp Pendleton photographing families who had escaped war-torn Vietnam.
A NEW LIFE
When Saigon, the city capital of South Vietnam, fell to the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong in late April of 1975, tens of thousands fled for their lives, many coming to America. Refugee centers in California, Arkansas, Florida, and Pennsylvania were set up almost overnight. As many as 50,000 refugees eventually arrived at Southern California’s Camp Pendleton Marine base in Oceanside. By early May, the base became a tent city teeming with displaced people thankful to be alive but anxious about their country, friends and relatives back home, and becoming dependent on a new country. Resettled refugees were sponsored by churches and volunteer families who provided food, clothing, shelter, and help assimilating and finding jobs in their new country. It is estimated that more than a million people who fled Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia after the fall of Saigon came to the United States to start new lives.
Of the thousands who arrived at Camp Pendleton, some waiting months for sponsorship and resettlement, an extended family of 12 were brought to Ojai, sponsored by members of the Ojai Presbyterian
Church, led in part by their pastor, Walter Robie. Phil and Marilee Sherman felt compelled to sponsor some of the displaced who were still languishing in tents at the Marine base. Marilee Sherman, now 82, said: “We knew we had to help get the family out. There was a baby due at any moment, and there they were in a tent at Camp Pendleton. And we didn’t have any adequate situation; we just had a little guesthouse, basically one big room with a little kitchenette and a shower and a ¾ bath.”
After navigating a few hurdles, the Pham family — Trinh Quang Pham, 35, wife Mai, 29, their two children, Trung, 4, and Quynh, 12, and grandmother, Thao, 73 — joined the Sherman family, Phil, Marilee, Chris, Paul, and Natasha, in Oak View. (The Shermans later had another daughter, Janette.)
“And so, we just did it. We brought them out. I am a nurse, so we felt like we could be helpful,” Marilee remembers a ectionately. “So, we got them out before the baby was born. It was like a month or six weeks and the whole community came forward. I went to Dr. Robert Skankey and he immediately took over with Mai and took care of the delivery at the Ojai Hospital. He was wonderful; everything was free. We didn’t have time to get medical help; it just all happened.”
“The community came forward and we didn’t know what to do. She was just a little gift to Ojai and everybody took care of her. And they named the baby Rose Mary, for me being Marilee and a close neighbor that did a lot for them named Rowina.
“That was like a big deal in our lives, even though it was only a few months. … It was a wonderful experience for our children to get to have grandma Thao, for a little while.
story and photos by DAVID LABELLE
Right: The tent city created at Camp Pendleton Marine Base near Oceanside, CA in early May of 1975.
Some of the refugee children who fled Saigon in late April 1975, and were being temporarily housed in tents at Camp Pendleton Marine Base in Oceanside, California. The photograph was made by Dave LaBelle in early May during a visit with Ojai Presbyterian pastor Walter Robie.
“We ate a lot of meals together. The kitchen was pretty small and inadequate for them. We would prepare dinner together and we’d all have dinner together. That’s where we met fish oil. Life will never be the same once you meet fish oil.
“Trinh and Mai were pretty excited that their children would learn English. Trinh and Mai’s English was very good; they had excellent English.” The Shermans’ son, Paul, ended up speaking Vietnamese.
“He wasn’t teaching English; they were teaching him Vietnamese. It was quite funny,” Marilee giggled.
SON PAUL’S MEMORIES
Paul Sherman, now 56, is a professor of music at Glendale College and has enjoyed a varied career as a conductor, oboist, and musicologist while running the youth music history music program, conducting the orchestra, and the world music program. He fondly remembers the weeks the families lived together in 1975.
“I think I was 8 or 9,” he said, his smile widening when he thinks about the grandmother, Thao.
Oaks home. “Such phenomenal love for the people. And we felt so compelled to do something as they were going down.
“I don’t know what happened to me,” Marilee said, referring to her change in world view through the years.
“She was very kind, and she was always cooking. There were always new dishes. She made this one dish that I still make today; it was chicken soup with bean, the clear thread in it. We put fish sauce in it now, but I think she couldn’t get that. A lot of green onions and bean threads. If we are not feeling well, we make that. She was the family cook.”
The second-oldest of the two Sherman boys, Paul immediately hit it o with the Phams’ son, who was about his age.
“Trung Loy was the son, so he and I had a good bond,” Paul remembers. “We played around a lot. His dad was a fighter pilot and he taught us little martial arts things. We were always down in that lower property goofing around.”
Sadly, Paul said he has never heard from his young friend since. “I want to find him,” he said. “At least say hi and see what he is up to and how his family is. I would love to have a conversation with him.”
COMPELLED TO HELP
“It was an absolutely awful, wonderful year,” Marilee said from her Meiners
“I was born in this little conservative family on a farm in Wisconsin. In 1964, I married Philip. He was in the military, and we moved to Georgia. I saw the unbelievable way they were treated while working in a Catholic hospital. I would go down in the lunch line that was for the [Black people], and I had a stack of write-ups telling me I was on the edge of being fired for my relationships going down the wrong line. It’s unbelievable — two drinking fountains, three bathrooms at the filling station.”
Then she adds, her eyes pooling: “But I am not good. I did not march at Selma because I was afraid. I knew I would lose my job. And now I will always regret that.”
HER HUSBAND’S LOVE OF THE VIETNAMESE PEOPLE
Because of Phil’s experience during his time in the military from August 1965 through September 1966, his life was also changed. “He loved the Vietnamese people,” Marilee assured. She shares photographs of her husband in Vietnam and photographs he took of people during his time there. “I have hundreds of half-frame color slides,” she laughs. “He was an avid photographer.” She shows a worn English-Vietnamese translation book her husband kept until his death in 2020. “This was a huge deal,” she assured. “He always had that handy his whole life. That was important to him. He learned to speak some; he worked at it.”
“And I don’t know why it happened to Phil and I, we weren’t really raised that way,” she explains about their inclusionary life view. “But somehow, we got it.”
PAUL REMEMBERS HIS FATHER HAD A GIVING HEART FOR OTHERS DIFFERENT FROM HIMSELF
“He was always involved with a lot of social causes,” he shared. “In that guesthouse, there were always a lot of people in and out of that space, who needed something, who were down on their luck. Or, he felt he needed to help them in some way and they would come and live there for a chunk of time before they moved on to something else.”
He added: “There was always di erent people there; it made us very accepting, but it’s not like we ever thought about it. It’s not like we say, ‘Oh, I have to be accepting of this person who is not a white American.’ It wasn’t like, ‘Sit down now; we are going to have a lesson.’ It was just the way things are.”
The Shermans’ oldest daughter, Natasha Sherman, 51, a professor in North Carolina, also has a heart for helping others, and is quick to admit her parents greatly shaped her inclusionary heart. “It was important to my parents to respect other cultures. I wish Dad was still alive to talk to him about it. There is no reason for
Mai, 29, holds one of her children on her knee in the Shermans’ guest house, where they stayed about six weeks before moving to Washington State.
Phil’s English to Vietnamese translation book he kept until his death.
my parents to have a liberal perspective; looking at their history, he’s an engineer, he went to Vietnam.” (Her dad designed a mile stretch of the California Aqueduct.)
“But that’s who he is and it really impacted all of us kids. You care about the environment, you care about people, no matter where they are from. And you are curious about life and di erent foods. I miss him dearly; he was a special guy.”
HOW MÏNH-HA T SEES AND FEELS ABOUT THE EXPERIENCE
“Ojai and Oak View are such a tight-knit community and I think there is a lot of feeling of gratitude and appreciation for … what the members of the Ojai Presbyterian Church did. There were a number of families. When we were younger we would visit Easter and Christmas … have lunch,” said Mïnh-Ha.” My parents, my mom, especially, still keeps in touch.”
“My dad and uncle were Air Force pilots. They would have trained in Houston, Texas, for maybe a year in 1968,” Mïnh-Ha explained. “The South Vietnamese air force trained in Texas. So both my dad and my uncle, who spoke some English, lived in Texas a while. As a 2-year-old I have no memories of Camp Pendleton at all. I have kind of developed a memory because I have looked at these pictures so much. I feel [as] though I remember it but I know I can’t.
“Those are the first pictures we have of our life in the United States. We didn’t have a camera, we could not take our own picture, and that wouldn’t have been a priority for us, obviously. And in an odd way, you, Walter Robie — the pictures from the media, from our sponsors, the people who might have been trespassing in our life at the time — have now provided … this family archive that we wouldn’t otherwise would have had, so it’s a complicated situation. I have a Ph.D. in ethnic studies but also a minor in visual studies. The visual analysis is part of my training.”
Though her parents were grateful, starting over wasn’t easy.
“My dad also thought he would be a commercial airline pilot given all his hours. It didn’t count here. So, he would have to start all over again … with young children. It was insulting. He was trained in Texas. He fought alongside Americans, or the Americans fought alongside the South Vietnamese. He went to night school and became an engineer.
“I think desperate people, poor people, are some of the hardest-working people ever. They will take any job, they will do anything, and they will take two, three jobs to feed their families.”
CHILDHOOD FRIENDSHIP RENEWED
Even though Mïnh-Ha was just 2 years old when her family resettled in the Ojai Valley, she and Natasha quickly became best friends, though their friendship lasted only about a year. Mïnh-Ha, now an associate professor in the graduate program in media studies at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, said Natasha was her “first friend in Ojai.”
Like her animated mother, Natasha laughs easily and often, overflowing with positive energy when she remembers growing up in Oak View. Like her childhood friend, she also earned a Ph.D. After starting out as a field biologist, she earned her doctorate in evolutionary biology. Natasha has also taught high school, and is now a biologist and writer who focuses on diversity, equity, and inclusion in education.
The pair were neighbors and attended kindergarten together at Arnaz Elementary (now Sunset) in Oak View. But when the Pham family moved to Ventura in 1978, three years after arriving in the Ojai Valley, Natasha said she lost touch with her childhood friend and neighbor.
“Mïnh-Ha lived a half a block from our house. I was crushed when she left,” Natasha said. “I felt a real loss in that.”
Mïnh-Ha explains, “I grew up in Ventura, so we stayed in Ventura until I graduated high school.”
(Her parents still live in the county, and Mïnh-Ha and her son make annual trips to visit her aging parents.) But “40-plus years later she reached out and found me,” Mïnh-Ha said of Natasha. Then the two became friends on Facebook.
Natasha said when she was teaching high school, they talked a couple of times. MïnhHa is the author of two books: Asians Wear Clothes on the Internet: Race, Gender, and the Work of Personal Style Blogging and Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Social Media’s Influence on Fashion, Ethics, and Property. Natasha said they still contact each other once in a while.
Though Mïnh-Ha lives in Brooklyn, New York, and Natasha in Charlotte, North Carolina, the pair soon learned just how much they
had in common. The parallels are striking. Two intelligent, passionate women, both with hardworking, intelligent, educated parents who raised their children to accept others and achieve. Both daughters earned Ph.Ds, and were teaching and writing about diversity and inclusion. Each has one child, a son. Mïnh-Ha’s father was a pilot who became an engineer. Natasha’s father was an engineer and her husband became a pilot.
Now, approaching 50 years since the Shermans decided to reach out and help a family in need, Marilee still cherishes the “wonderful six weeks” when her family’s lives were enriched by the Pham family and the “unbelievable” caring of the community.
“And there were neighbors that accepted and neighbors that didn’t. Some of that is very tragic; people just don’t get it. They still don’t. I recently broke o some of my relationships with some of their closest neighbors. I just can’t do it anymore,” she sighs.
At 82, without her husband Phil, who passed away in 2020, just shy of their 56th anniversary, Marilee remains a caring, positive, humble, articulate activist with a self-deprecating sense of humor. She has four grown children — Paul, Chris, Natasha, and Janette. She has dedicated her life to going in the “wrong line,” and continues walking down it.
“That prejudice is still there. We still have a war to win,” she coos. “With loving kindness.”
Ojai, Aug 31,2024 - Eighty-four-year old Marilee Sherman with oldest son, Paul, in her Meiners Oaks home.
Reporting for the Ojai Valley News on the Ventura County Sheri ’s Search and Rescue All-Teams training Aug. 17 in Rose Valley provided this hiker a rare opportunity to see the Ojai backcountry from the air.
While the training exercise was winding down at Rancho Grande, I was treated by Upper Ojai Search and Rescue to a flyalong aboard Copter 9 with the Ventura County Aviation Unit.
The 20-minute flight gave me a bird’s-eye view of a rappelling operation on 300foot Rose Valley Falls. From there, the copter proceeded north, flying over the Piedra Blanca Trailhead and Sespe River, on a tour of the Piedra Blanca watershed and Sespe Wilderness.
I can feel a few of these photos in my
knees, especially the image of the Gene Marshall-Piedra Blanca Trail heading relentlessly uphill toward Pine Mountain Lodge Camp from Twin Forks Camp, an elevation gain of nearly 2,400 feet in just 3 miles.
Eighty years ago, a flight over Pine Mountain Lodge Camp might have revealed through the trees a cabin built by outdoorsmen in the 1890s, had it not been accidentally destroyed by a U.S. Forest Service crew removing hazard trees in 1945.
The sight of this trail from the air brought back memories of a hike in February 2013 with Ojai sawyer and mountaineer Bardley Smith. “You do know it’s 13 degrees in Rose Valley, right?” he asked, when we met at his home for the drive up the mountain, me dressed in short pants and a windbreaker.
The roughly 6-mile hike to the old camp is extremely steep, but our hard work was rewarded with lunch and a nap. The trail continues another 12 miles, climbing Pine Mountain, the major mountain ridge to the north. Your hike ends at the Reyes Creek Campground in Lockwood Valley.
The western portion of the Piedra Blanca formation, with the Gene Marshall-Piedra Blanca Trail visible on the right.
Flying directly east along a ridge, a unique and living part of Los Padres history came into view. The abandoned Thorn Point Lookout, built in 1933, stood guard over a huge chunk of the Sespe and beyond. In addition to fire-spotting, the tower was used to detect enemy aircraft during World War II.
Completing a loop, Copter 9 headed west toward Rose Valley, flying over the Piedra Blanca formation, a bizarre outcrop of eroded sandstone that runs for a mile, east to west, and is believed to be the remnants of an ancient beach relocated over the eons by global tectonics.
Copter 9, a $14.5 million Bell 412EPX twin-engine, single-pilot, medium-lift helicopter joined the Aviation Unit in 2022, o ering advantages such as reduced maintenance and parts costs, increased operational availability, and enhanced search-and-rescue capabilities.
Additionally, the Bell 412EPX improves aircrew and passenger safety, and is capable of flying in weather conditions that keep other aircraft grounded.
My thanks to Upper Ojai Search and Rescue Captain Emeritus Bill Slaughter for facilitating the fly-along in Copter 9, along with pilot Alex Keller and crew chief Kristopher Doepking for providing an unforgettable experience and views of the backcountry seldom seen by earthbound souls.
Top right: From Copter 9, the view of the Piedra Blanca formation, Rose Valley, Nordhoff Ridge (with the north side of Chief Peak visible) and out to the coast.
Right: The abandoned Thorn Point Lookout remains remarkably intact and provides 360-degree views of the backcountry.
Below: Copter 9’s crew chief Kristopher Doepking with the Ventura County Air Unit boards passengers for a tour of the backcountry.
Eroded sandstone formations on the ridge just south of Pine Mountain.
The Gene Marshall-Piedra Blanca Trail climbs steeply toward Pine Mountain Lodge Camp from Twin Forks Camp.
ADA, Medicare Card Holders, and Seniors 65-74 are 1/2 price. Seniors 75 and over, children under 45” tall and all students are FREE riders on the Trolley
The Ojai Trolley Service Continues to Run Serving the Needs of the Ojai Valley
e Ojai Trolley Service, established in 1989, is owned and operated by the City of Ojai. e Trolley provides daily xed-route transportation to approximately 9,000 riders per month throughout Ojai, Meiners Oaks and Mira Monte.
e Trolley is a well-known feature in the Ojai Valley, and in addition to the daily xed-route services, participates in many local community events, fund raising activities, community service, and educational functions. 408 South Signal Street, Ojai, CA 93024
Cyrus Mayer and a Palestinian resident of Bethlehem stand next to the West Bank Wall that separates Israel from the West Bank. The wall is 30 feet tall and stretches over 440 miles.
Photo: Naimah Holmes
Witness
by KIMBERLY RIVERS
Ojai’s Naimah Holmes and Cyrus Mayer travel to the West Bank to witness the lives of Palestinian families.
Two Meiners Oaks, Ojai Valley residents are planning to return to the West Bank this winter after spending two weeks in the Palestinian village of At-Tuwani, in the Masafer Yatta region. In April, Naimah Holmes and Cyrus Mayer traveled to the West Bank as volunteer humanrights observers with the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement.
The West Bank is a 2,180-square-mile region within the boundaries of Israel, bordered on the east by Jordan. Control of the region has been in dispute since well before Israel was formed in 1948. At-Tuwani, located in the southern area of the West Bank, is home to about 200 people, according to a 2021 report from the United Nations.
Mayer said, “The region we went to is a farming and shepherding area — a very dry land.” The people there mainly grow olives and raise goats. “This is old shepherding cultures and traditions, mostly rural, farmer, peasant.”
Today, Mayer said, the area they were in is under the control of the Israeli military.
While there, they lived with farmers, shepherds, and their families, and witnessed what they describe as harassment and attacks by Israeli military and settlers who, according to the Palestinians, are colonizing their land.
“You think you understand it when you see it on the news feeds, but unless you’re in an apartheid state, you don’t realize all the ways their humanity is stripped from them,” said Holmes, explaining why she felt compelled to travel to the West Bank and what she experienced.
Below: While sheparding in Al-Tuwani, Naimah Holmes (on donkey) and Miad, a Palestinian boy, watch Israeli settlers approach.
Photo: Cyrus Mayer
Holmes and Mayer sat with an Ojai Valley News reporter in Paul Herzog Park next to Farmer and the Cook in Meiners Oaks. Children were playing, crews were working nearby in a backyard, and people were enjoying cool smoothies on a hot day.
Holmes said Palestinians experience restrictions every day: “No, you can’t go into that city. No, you have to go through all these checkpoints and, depending on the checkpoint, you can get detained. You can get shot and killed. You’re going to the grocery store or you’re trying to go to work. It is an extremely dangerous apartheid state.”
Volunteers from around the world, but mainly the United States, Europe, and Mexico, volunteer through International Solidarity Movement to live with families who request a witness for the harassment and disruptions from Israeli soldiers and settlers. Volunteers receive training on documenting the interactions. According to the ISM website, the “main objective” of the organization is to “support … the Palestinian resistance to the apartheid and their demand for freedom.” Part of that e ort is bringing volunteers to document the daily life and experiences of the Palestinian people in the occupied areas. More information about ISM is online at palsolidarity.org.
Holmes and Mayer were in AtTuwani from April 8 to 24. They are in the planning and fundraising stage for a return trip.
“I went because there’s really a direct connection to the harm that we’re doing by just paying taxes, struggling to pay our taxes, struggling to live our lives, we’re
Above: Cyrus Mayer is being held and questioned by Israeli soldiers in At-Tuwani in the West Bank in April when he was observing the soldiers.
Photo: Naimah Holmes
Above: Palestinian children who live in At-Tuwani. Photo: Naimah Holmes
‘They’re literally just trying to live their lives.
Khalil, a resident of At-Tuwani, with his children. Photo: Naimah Holmes
They’re not organizers, they’re not activists.’
feeding this machine,” said Holmes. “Even though I’m not holding that gun myself, as an American standing on this land, we are complicit and so how do you unpack that? … You try to build a bridge ... How can we work together? That was my main goal, meeting family, meeting community.”
Mayer said what is happening in the West Bank is “an example today of colonization and settlement of the area. When we look at the land that we’re living on here, we see repercussions of that, generations
of colonization, of genocide. How have Indigenous people on these lands been treated historically?”
Both Holmes and Mayer said the use of American taxpayer dollars to fund the war contributes to their desire to do more than advocate locally.
Mayer said: “We see where our tax dollars are going. I think that’s such a crucial point for people living in this country, let alone Ojai, or any of these western
nations. … Billions and billions of dollars of our taxpayer money is going to support a war that is destroying lives … in settling and stealing the land.”
BEARING WITNESS
During their stay in At-Tuwani, they lived, ate meals, played, and worked with the families. “Sometimes there will be disruptions in the middle of the night, sometimes it will be during shepherding,” said Holmes.
She and Mayer said they witnessed Israeli soldiers and settlers harassing the farming families, which can lead to school closures, and prevent the farmers from harvesting their olives or grazing goats on land their families have been living on for generations. Mayer said, “Since October many areas have been claimed as military zones. … Now those militarized zones are supposed to be no-go zones, except for the military.” The Palestinian farming families are prevented from being on their land, which allows the land to be settled, Mayer said. “The military allows settlers to go in, and graze, and be on Palestinian land, and then they claim it.”
Mayer said one of the farmers they stayed with had this happen to him. The settlers disconnected his water line and electricity on a hilltop and set up their camp.
Iman, a Palestinian resident of At-Tuwani and mother to seven children, hosted Holmes and Mayer in her home. Photo: Naimah Holmes
Left: Art by Banksy on the West Bank Wall. Banksy is a known longtime defender of the right of Palestinians to resist Israeli encroachment and occupation. Photo: Cyrus Mayer
“Since October many areas have been claimed as military zones.”
“He’s completely surrounded by hilltops that are his land, that have been settled now, and he can’t leave. They’ve burnt his vehicle twice,” said Mayer. “He’s been assaulted multiple times, they’ve arrested his sons, and (he’s) just trying to farm. They’re not organizers, they’re not activists. They’re literally just trying to live their lives and their land is actively being preyed upon.”
Holmes said, “Farmers and shepherds are just trying to hold o , and keep land they’ve had in their family for generation to generation.”
A local shepherd’s truck is burned with the help of Israeli Occupation Forces.
Photo by Cyrus Mayer
Shepherds with their herds and foreign volunteers are confronted by members of the Israeli army, and settlers in At-Tuwani.
Photo by Cyrus Mayer
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DanceOjai
Isha Ferraz builds bridges between cultures through
Left: Ojai World Dance Festival April 20, 2024
Flamenco Santa Barbara Dance Troupe.
Photo: Stephen Adams
Ojai &
Isha Ferraz’s determination has created an abundance of dance opportunities in the Ojai Valley through the nonprofit Dance Ojai, which operates out of Ojai Art Center. Isha teaches the art of movement in a way that is both affordable and accessible — people in the dance classes range in age from teenagers to septuagenarians. “I love that wide range of people,” she said. “It’s not limited to just a certain kind of person or dancer.”
“We’re always completely open. Every class is super beginner-friendly. Anyone, coming from walking on the street, could come into class and feel welcomed,” she continued.
“Some people come and … if they can’t pick something up, I usually tell them, ‘It doesn’t matter, make up your own move,’ you know? You’re just here to have fun … to be amongst women who have that kind of really high-vibe, good energy.”
The evolution into leading Dance Ojai was a natural shift for Isha, because dancing and music are in her blood. “I’ve been teaching dance for most of my life, and dance is such a huge part of my culture,” she said. “Puerto Ricans are big into their dance, big into their music, big into their food, big into their celebrations.”
the art of dance
She first learned salsa and merengue around the age of 4, “the basis of dance as
THE OJAI WORLD DANCE FESTIVAL
by MIMI WALKER
a Latin person … every party, every birthday celebration, every holiday … you’re dancing. It’s such a big part of you.”
She added: “My mom was very, very passionate about the arts, so she would take us to these shows where we would see flamenco” and all kinds of dance. Summering in Brazil with her stepfather and living overseas in Malaysia for a time also enhanced Isha’s artistic lens.
“So I grew up being exposed to these things, and I realized how much that added to me as a person, and how much appreciation that gave me for everyone else and their kind of expressions in their cultures,” Isha stated. “Dance, music, food — that’s like the most positive aspects of someone’s culture, right? It’s the way in which they celebrate life.”
Saturday dance class at the Ojai Art Center, May 2024. The Ojai Dance Community. Kelly Hollis, Emma Loustaunou, Dana Dwire, Pucci Honeyman-Coker, Erika Elizondo, Bonnie Berkow, Paulina Carey, Isha Ferraz, Carrie Sanders, Nitaña Rey, Jill Warner, Meghan Van Alstine, Ixchel Gladsone, Meredy Benson, Carolyn Fox, Joyce Robinson, Theraysa Holiman.
Photo: Brian Nager
Isha Ferraz
Photo: Brian Nager
Eventually, Isha discovered a deeper passion for dance instruction while studying classical voice at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. She also fell in love with the yogic arts and through that, Indian classical dance, as it is “very much a yogic dance form, which was very interesting to me, like using dance as a way to evolve spiritually.”
After relocating from Austin, Texas, in 2013, Isha dipped her toes into teaching dance intermittently at the Art Center in 2015. Austin had a “really, really lively dance community,” and she wanted to fill the void of an adult-focused dance studio here in Ojai. “At that time, I had already been studying Indian classical dance and Bollywood for a number of years, so I just (started) teaching it. … And somehow it just took off, it was just amazing. … Slowly but surely, a community built from that. And then it just made sense to have our own space,” Isha remarked.
In 2016, she established Hamsa Studio in Meiners Oaks. “I just feel like, when you’re super in your passion and your element, the universe will support it in some way. And it was an amazing four years,” she said. Although she had to sell Hamsa during the COVID-19 pandemic, she said, “We all went through such huge life transitions during COVID, and for me, that just looked like putting a little bit less of my time and energy into the business aspects of dance, and wanting to get back to just dance, and building community,” so she returned to
teaching classes at the Art Center. “By that time, I was pretty grounded in Ojai.”
Discovering another course of action as one dream dies is universally challenging. But Isha’s principles are similar to that of groundbreaking dance pioneer Alvin Ailey, who said: “Dance is for everybody. I believe that dance came from the people and that it should always be delivered back to the people.”
Hamsa laid the groundwork for Dance Ojai’s newest spin-off: the World Dance Festival, which debuted at Libbey Bowl in April.
Isha explained: “I have an amazing team of women around me who have always been so supportive … and who are also very passionate about dance and community and positivity … just spreading all that goodness. And I had always thought that Ojai would be a great place for a dance festival; it’s just so picturesque. … It just became obvious, like, in order to do bigger projects, we needed a more serious platform, you know, and something that can facilitate support for bigger projects, which is why we ended up creating Dance Ojai.”
Isha and her team built the World Dance Festival from soup to nuts in just three months, which was a “flippin’ miracle,”
Isha said. Comprising 40 volunteers, 165 dancers, and 900 attendees, the World Dance Festival opened the stage to a wide spectrum of dances performed by multicultural troupes from Ojai, Ventura, Oxnard,
even into Goleta and Santa Barbara.
“Even though we do have tap, jazz, and contemporary and all of that in the festival … there’s so, so much color in the world, you know, why not bring all of them?” Isha said of her approach to creating the festival. “There’s so much beauty. … Let’s not keep ourselves limited.”
She added, “It’s just such a wonderful way to also unify people, because you get to just see how wonderful the world is.”
The second World Dance Festival returns to Libbey Bowl on May 3, 2025. “We’re actually expanding to a full-day festival,” Isha said, “and our goal is to … have an afternoon stage set up at Libbey Park where we can feature more amateur troupes during the day to give them a platform.”
Although the World Dance Festival takes place in the spring, Dance Ojai has plenty of fun to spare throughout all four seasons.
“We do holiday flash mobs for Halloween and for Christmas every year,” Isha shared.
“It’s like an open invitation; anyone from classes can jump in and learn the flash mob, and we all get dressed up in costumes, and we just walk around town, put our speaker down, turn on the music, and we dance.”
Dance Ojai organizes a flash mob each February in support of One Billion Rising, an international campaign aimed at empowering citizens to rise up against physical and sexual violence toward all women. Isha
Below Left: Flamenco Santa Barbara Dance Troupe
Photo: Amanda Peacock
Below Center: Dance Ojai Bollywood Dance Troupe
Photo: Stephen Adams
also hopes to celebrate a diverse range of holidays through dance in the future, such as Diwali and Navaratri.
At Dance Ojai, Isha teaches with Paulina Carey, a virtuosa of belly dancing who also taught alongside her at Hamsa Studio.
“She’s one of my favorite teachers and dancers,” Isha said, adding that when Paulina dances, it is “just so joyful and so theatrical; it’s just a joy to watch her.”
Even apart from dance, Isha’s plate is full. She also finds time to nourish her other love, singing and music, with her husband, Brian Nager. Together, they developed a platform, ParaNadam, producing mantra-style music for yogic settings.
In September, Isha was honored as an inaugural Community Bridge Builder by the Ojai Interfaith Council, which she called “super humbling.”
Isha is also involved with the Adhyatmik Foundation; its website, adhyatmik.org, states: “‘Adhyatmik’ means all enhancement and advancement of body, mind and self; opening in all directions, universal.”
“That’s also another huge influence in my work. Everything that we do in our lives, it’s advancing and enhancing all aspects of us as people,” Isha said. This includes dance, music, meditation, healthy diets, and socializing. They host retreats in India every year, as well as in Europe.
According to Ted Shawn, founder of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and trailblazer for modern dance in the early 20th century, “Dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made.”
The goal of Dance Ojai is, ultimately, to help people find their joy and their innermost capabilities through their bodies’ expressions.
“We keep it very light. … (It’s) not a highly disciplined thing. It’s just something that hopefully adds more joy and well-being to your life experience,” Isha said. “All artistic pursuits really have that magic, right?”
For more information danceojai.org or paranadam.org
Left: Ori Tahiti Ventura County Dance Troupe
Photo: Amanda Peacock
Below: Grupo Folklorico Fusion Mexicana Dance Troupe. Photo: Stephen Adams
Serra Benson of Ojai Aerial Troupe. Photo: Amanda Peacock
From the Topatopa Mountains to the sea, a unique gathering of women occurs weekly when women from around Ventura County converge with families and friends, strap on cleats, and meet each other on the pitch for the Ventura Independent Soccer Association (VISA) weekly games.
Forty years ago, friends Cheryl Donswyk, Beth Cohen, and Dottie Orrock established VISA to give women a place to play and learn the great game of soccer. At the time, the only place for women to play was a men’s pickup game on Sunday mornings at Balboa Middle School. Since its humble beginnings in the early 1980s with just five women and four teams, the league has grown into a vibrant community of six competitive teams. Thanks to player/ board member Dana Miller, and other dedicated volunteers, VISA’s impact has expanded beyond Ventura with Soccer by
Getting their
the Sea, a summer weekend tournament with participating teams from California, Arizona, and Nevada.
“We always wanted VISA to be a recreational league to learn and improve your soccer skills and have fun playing,” said Cheryl Donswyk, VISA co-founder. These three women helped revolutionize and open up the game of soccer to women in Ventura. In the ’80s, women had few opportunities to play the game. Cheryl and Dottie were at the forefront both as founders of the longest-standing women’s league in Ventura and as owners of a local soccer store called Soccer Plus. They provided opportunities for women to both learn and play the game, including bringing in volunteer trainers to help with player development.
VISA was founded almost a decade before women’s soccer was recognized on the international stage at the first FIFA
Women’s World Cup held in China in 1991. Popularity of professional women’s teams didn’t fully emerge until the 1999 World Cup, when the USA and China played to a sold-out Rose Bowl stadium of more than 90,000 people. After 90 intense minutes of battle, the deciding moment came in the 90th minute of extra time when Brandi Chastain scored the winning penalty kick for the United States. Her iconic celebration, when she removed her jersey and knelt in victory, was shown on media channels across the world, driving the women’s soccer movement into the mainstream.
The first U.S. women’s professional soccer league, Women’s United Soccer Association (WUSA), was formed in 2001 and closed by 2003. It took almost another decade for momentum to pick up again with the formation of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL).
by ANDREA NEAL & NIKKI CAPUTO
Mothers and daughters, Jennaye Swires, Marcia Swires, Kym Vortuba and Shelby Vortuba
kicks
Above: ennaye Swires and Ashley Warmuth
The popularity of women’s soccer today and opportunities to play professionally and recreationally is in part due to visionaries like Beth, Cheryl, and Dottie, and leagues like VISA.
VISA builds community, providing space for generations of soccer-loving women and their families to come together and enjoy the sport. Weekly VISA games are 90 minutes of soccer fun on a full field, with children playing on the sidelines, and families and friends sitting on blankets and chairs, all cheering on these dedicated athletes who range from 18 to 60-plus years old.
The league is supported by a small group of dedicated referees with over 75 years of experience, who take their time to get to know every player in the league and are unparalleled referees. Many games feature mothers and daughters playing together on the same team and sometimes on opposing teams.
Every season the players are reshu ed into new teams, o ering opportunities to play with di erent teammates, create new friendships, and strengthen the VISA community. Over the years this group of women has become a close-knit community, supporting each other through the joys of life, such as welcoming small humans to this world,
and sorrows like the death of teammates Norma Casimiro, Jordana Ybarra-Telias, and Linda Arthur. Every season we dedicate a Sportswoman Award, not for soccer prowess but for someone who embodies the VISA Spirit. This quote by player Rustie Beal about Norma Casimiro says it all: “Congratulations Norma on winning the Sportswoman award! You are always smiling, have such a positive attitude and will play any position that you are asked! That is the true definition of SportsWoman!” We all miss Norma deeply.
VISA is women empowering women in Ojai and throughout the county. We all know what a special league this is and cherish our time together both on and o the pitch. This league, this group of women and the people who support them, is one of the greatest communities in Ventura. We are truly blessed to have these women our lives, and we know that joy and sentiment is shared by the women of VISA and their families.
For more information or if you are interested in playing, email Visasoccer@gmail.com
Above: The VISA Fall 2024 Purple Team
Left: Ref, Matt Marshall
DECEMBER
Camp Arnaz’s Winter Wonderland Presented by Girl Scouts of the Central Coast Weekends: Dec. 6 - Dec. 28
155 Sulphur Mountain Road Ventura, CA 93001
Tickets: girlscoutsccc.ticketspice.com
“It’s a Wonderful Life: The Radio Play”
Dec. 6 – Dec. 22
Ojai Art Center Theater
113 S. Montgomery St. Tickets: ojaiact.org
Ojai Art Center: The Annual Photography Exhibit
Dec. 6 - to Jan. 2
113 S. Montgomery St. ojaiartcenter.org
Ojai Historical Walking Tours
Dec. 7, 10:30 a.m.
Ojai Valley Museum
130 W. Ojai Ave.
805-640-1390
ojaivalleymuseum.org
Tickets: Adult $10; Family $25. Learn about Ojai’s unique history on a 90-minute tour led by docent Connie Campbell.
Ojai Valley Chamber of Commerce Presents Downtown Holiday Lighting Ceremony
Dec. 8, 5 p.m.
Downtown Fountain - Libbey Park 210 S. Signal St.
Featuring Holiday Music, Santa Claus, The Grinch
Nordhoff Jr. High and High School Music Department Presents: Winter Concert (Strings & Choir)
Chamber On The Mountain Presents Junwen Liang, Pianist
March 2, 3 p.m.
Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts
8585 Ojai-Santa Paula Rd.
Tickets: beatricewood.com
8585 Ojai-Santa Paula Rd. beatricewood.com W I N T ER 2 O 2 4
Noon – 5 p.m. Free admission canvasandpaper.org W I N T ER 2 O 2 4
Left: Brianna Tam
Photo: John Hooper Decoro Images
Elixir Piano Trio. Photo supplied
Pianist Junwen Liang Photo supplied
list who avoid animal foods to some degree. Whether your guest avoids only meat or they exclude animal foods altogether, it’s a nice touch to provide a few completely plant-based options to suit all palates and preferences as part of your updated holiday food tradition. But before the stress of menu-planning descends upon you, tune in to these easy tips for fuss-free, vegan holiday cooking that will satisfy every palate, carnivores and herbivores alike!
Recipes
and photos
courtesy Sharon Palmer, the plant-powered dietitian, an Ojai-based plant-based sustainability nutrition expert and author.
Vegan Holiday Eats
Dishing up a plant-based holiday table
Cranberry Apple Leek Whole Grain Stuffi ng
This simple, rustic Cranberry Apple Leek Whole Grain Stu ng is the perfect flavorful side dish for holiday meals, dinners, and potlucks.
2. Place cubed bread on a baking dish and place in oven, baking for 15 minutes. Remove and transfer to a large mixing bowl.
3. Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a large skillet or sauté pan and sauté leek, celery, garlic, apple, and cranberries for 8 minutes. Add sage, pecans, cloves, Italian seasoning, salt (optional), and pepper, and cook for an additional minute.
4. Add vegetable-cranberry mixture to the dish with bread cubes. Toss together. Add enough broth to moisten the mixture, and mix well.
5. Pour stuffing mixture into a large casserole or baking dish and bake uncovered for 40-45 minutes until golden brown.
NOTES
Serve with a vegan savory sauce or gravy. Make this recipe gluten-free by using gluten-free bread.
Nutrition Information per Serving: Calories: 217 Sugar: 11g Sodium: 65mg Fat: 4g
Saturated Fat: 0.5g Carbohydrates: 36g
Fiber: 6g Protein: 7g
Top: Roasted Vegetables Smothered in Tahini Sauce Above: Cranberry Apple Leek Whole Grain Stuffing
Stuff ed butternut squash with savory lentil fi lling
Earthy butternut squash creates the ideal edible vessel for this savory lentil quinoa filling, providing a gorgeous holiday main dish and meal in one.
Total Time: 1 hour
Yield: 8 servings (½ squash per serving)
INGREDIENTS
Squash:
2 medium butternut squash*
2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper, as desired
Savory Lentil Filling:
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
½ medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup quinoa (white, red, or multicolored), uncooked
1 cup brown lentils, uncooked
4 cups vegetable broth
2 teaspoons dried sage
¼ teaspoon black pepper
¼ cup chopped walnuts
¼ cup dried cranberries
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
Garnish (optional):
Fresh sage leaves
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 375 F.
2. Split each squash in half lengthwise, and scoop out seeds, exposing center cavity. Trim flesh of butternut squash to create larger cavity for filling (each squash half should hold about 1 ¼ cups filling). Reserve trimmed squash flesh for soups or stews.
3. Place squash halves in a large (9 x 13-inch) baking dish, with cavity facing up. Add water to the bottom of the baking dish or pan.
4. Drizzle squash with 1 tablespoon olive oil and season with salt and pepper as desired.
5. Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes.
6. Meanwhile, make filling by heating olive oil in a large sauté pan. Sauté onion and garlic for 7 minutes. Add quinoa and lentils and sauté for an additional 2 minutes to toast. Add broth, sage, and black pepper and sauté, stirring frequently, for 15-20 minutes, until quinoa and lentils are just tender.
7. Remove filling from stove, and drain off any additional liquid left in mixture that has not been absorbed. Stir in walnuts, cranberries, and lemon juice.
8. Remove squash from oven and fill each cavity with filling, packing it with a spoon and mounding it over the top (makes about 5 cups of filling, 1 ¼ cups filling per squash half). Use any leftover filling as a side dish with your next meal.
9. Place the stuffed squash back in the oven (do not cover with foil) and cook for an additional 15 minutes, until squash is tender when pierced with a fork, and filling is browned.
10. Remove from oven and garnish with sage leaves, if desired.
Note:
*If you are able to find mini-butternut squash, substitute 4 mini squash for 2 medium butternut squash, using about ½ cup filling per squash half.
decade, with longer, more intense heat waves occurring over a wider season.
The fastest warming, however, has been taking place while we are sleeping.
A study by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography published in 2012 found that California heat waves were becoming more humid and intense at night, quietly impacting human health, ecosystems, agriculture, water resources, energy demand, and infrastructure — each with economic consequences, too.
UCLA’s Swain said warming has extended the dry season and widened the window of opportunity for wind-driven fires. Although Santa Ana winds are projected to decrease an average of 18% in frequency by the end of the century, that decrease is primarily in the early fall and late spring, sharpening their seasonality.
Nothing frays nerves in Southern California coastal mountain communities, like Ojai, than late-arriving rain overlapping with the December peak of Santa Ana wind season.
I was home visiting my parents in the fall of 2017, after three more years of punishing drought. Thanksgiving came and went, but it simply would not rain. Just .04 inches had fallen by December 4, when strong winds caused power lines near Thomas Aquinas College to slap and spark, igniting a fire. Driven by back-to-back intense Santa Ana wind events, the Thomas Fire blew up into a 282,000-acre mega fire — the largest in California’s history at the time (it has since been surpassed in size seven times) — and set o a cascade of ongoing impacts.
CLIMATE EXTREMES IN OJAI A
BRIEF OVERVIEW
Hydrogeologist Menso de Jong with Rincon Consultants measures water turbidity in one of four settling ponds at the San Antonio Creek Spreading Grounds on Jan. 16, 2023.
Photo: Perry Van Houten
She was right, and so were the oak trees. The o cial Ojai rain gauge at Soule Park recorded more than 44 inches that winter — the wettest La Niña ever recorded in Ojai, and the fifth wettest winter of all time. On Jan. 9, 2023, I collected 11 inches of rain in one 24-hour period in my Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) o cial gauge, a total remarkable enough that the director of the program contacted me to verify my data. He said my gauge was the most rain collected on the continent that day. My neighbors reported even higher totals on their home gauges. The reservoir rebounded to 70% capacity by spring 2023, Casitas lifted all drought restrictions, and California was declared drought-free. The 72% surge from the winter of 2022 to spring 2024 was the largest and fastest turnaround in lake level in the reservoir’s history.
Casitas Lake reached 100% capacity and spilled in April 2024. In an Ojai Valley News report, Casitas Municipal Water District board member Richard Hajas said the dam was doing exactly what it was designed to— provide a reliable source of water during prolonged droughts: “There are 20-year cycles and some of them are extended a little longer and some of them are shorter, but if
you look at the history it has pretty much done what it’s supposed to do. We have a 20-year supply of water here now, even if it doesn’t rain. It feels good to be back to that.”
Ojai’s aquifer was so full that wells in the Ojai Valley went artesian — groundwater burst from wherever it could.
An interesting feature of the past two winters has been the convection of winter storms. Sea-surface temperatures o the Ventura County coast were several degrees warmer than usual in 2023. One storm after the other outperformed the average forecast model, enhanced by additional water vapor on their final approach to land.
There is a fair argument to be made that Water Year 2023 was the most consequential winter since the colonization of California. Although it was mostly beneficial — 94% of the state entered the winter in at least severe drought conditions and emerged drought-free — it was also damaging.
From December 2023 - January 2024, nine back-to-back atmospheric rivers dumped an estimated 31 trillion gallons of rain on California, damaging or destroying more than 400 homes in Ventura County. Infrastructure, agriculture, and private property
losses reached tens of millions of dollars.
In winter 2024, Ventura County once again declared disaster as storms caused damage to public infrastructure totaling well over $35 million. Patrick Maynard, Ventura County director of emergency services, said, “The succession of significant storm systems experienced in 2023 and 2024 provided little time or opportunity to complete repairs between events, exacerbating damage caused by the higher-than-normal rainfall.”
In the context of the heat, drought, fire, and precipitation extremes we experienced over the past 10 years in Ojai, Swain’s atmospheric sponge analogy makes a lot of sense — our atmosphere is a sensitive, expanding sponge increasing its absorbent ability.
OJAI’S CLIMATE FUTURE 2024
Ojai’s phenomenal average rate of warming up to 2018 has leveled o from its zenith, even though the region broke temperature records and experienced some of its most severe heat waves in those six years. We should expect warming to happen unevenly, according to Park Williams, a UCLA paleoclimatologist.
California’s climate record indicates a high sensitivity to global climate shifts, especially hydroclimate. Williams said we should expect a lengthening of the fall and delayed onset of rain, resulting in ecosystem stress; increasingly dry soils, droughts, and heat waves longer and more severe than anything we have seen; and wet periods with the potential to remake society. “Flexible and proactive interventions will be the key,” Williams said.
“Capturing shower water” may be a metaphor for how we mitigate and adapt to our new climate reality. Solutions to flood, drought, wildfire, and heat hazards overlap and can be addressed simultaneously with interventions at the level of public policy, or very local and small in scale. Opportunities to capture shower water are everywhere, if we choose to see them. By slowing, spreading, and sinking water into the ground, we can bu er ourselves from the climate extremes to come.
Peter Deneen holds a Masters degree in Climate + Society from Columbia University. He is an Ojai native and the chief executive and conservation director of Keep the Sespe Wild. Find image charts at: www.meteoblue.com/en/climate-change/ ventura_united-states_5405878
Ventura County Public Works Agency’s Bill Carey works atop the water intake structure at the San Antonio Creek Spreading Grounds, which can be seen at left beside the fast-flowing creek.
Photo: Perry Van Houten
Is your dream home factory-built?
That was the solution for Travis Collings, who happily bought one: a three-bedroom, twobathroom, 1,500-square foot contemporary home. He even joined the sales team. “Happy I went this route,” he says. “So cool, now I’m educating other people about the benefits.”
From contemporary to Craftsman to midcentury modern, Malibu-based The Home Gallery (THG) is one provider. With a second showroom coming to Agoura Hills, THG offers a collection of factory-built homes.
“These homes are changing the homeowning landscape,” says Or Michaelo, founder and CEO of The Home Gallery. “People can become a homeowner and choose a home that looks and feels like a traditional new-build construction ... the homes of their dreams in locations they want, at price points they can afford.
“When you walk the factory floor, it’s incredible to see how we can build an entire home with everything inside, from appliances to counters to floors, totally turnkey, in less than 10 days. Yes, there will always be people who want custom construction, but this is how homes should be built for the masses — and have been built for over 30 years. Massive factories are building homes in a very streamlined approach. What was missing was higher-end finishes and designs people are seeking.”
Or has spent the last five-plus years working with these factories to greatly upgrade their designs and finishes. “We now have over 70 floor plans that are stunning, ranging from 450 to 4,500 square feet,” says Corey McGuire, the chief operating officer of THG.
by TIFFANY PAIGE
For some fi rsttime Ojai homebuyers facing soaring prices, high interest rates, infl ation, and construction costs, answers are found in highend factory-built homes.
Photos supplied by The Home Gallery
A lot of thought has gone into the design and feel to make it all very appealing to Californians’ lifestyles.
These manufactured homes have all the luxury details: high ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows, soaking tubs, pools … even walk-in closets. “There’s huge interest in the larger homes, especially on ag lands and larger properties,” Corey says. “We do everything from main residences to ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units). We have three projects in Ojai right now. Our first one wrapping up is a 1,200-square-foot ADU and it’s beautiful.”
On larger agriculture properties, farmers are adding ADUs as a second income stream, or moving in and renting their main residence. Family compounds are also growing. CEO Or has worked in both traditional high-end construction and renovation as well as off-grid living. THG’s Malibu office has an example of what the company does.
A 900-square-foot model showroom is what THG calls a single section. Floor-toceiling glass sliding doors peek out to an ocean view with a large deck, made from recycled materials. Inside are high ceilings
with an open-concept kitchen. It’s bright, airy, all new, and 100% off-grid.
The homes arrive on-site 100% turnkey. Once placed on a permanent foundation they are appraised like a stick-built home. THG now offers up to seven section homes, all single story, ranging from $195K to more than $1.5M.
Another part of THG’s business is “No Land Days,” for people who love the homes, but don’t yet own any land. The company help these clients find a piece of property within their budget to put a home in an area where they want to live.
The first step after finding the land is a feasibility study.
People can then buy a house and combine it with the same loan for the property, which previously was not an option. “Because we’re part of the federal code, it gives us really great lending programs for people,” Corey says, which allows many families to afford a home when they thought they couldn’t. “We’re helping people build their very first home at all ages,” Corey says, “from young first-time buyers to [people in their] 60s, 80s, and
even a client who’s 92. He wants to update but doesn’t want to take on a renovation.”
The Home Gallery was formerly known as Orbit Homes, and the name change showcases all the company offers now, including additional teams to help with land, loans, and permits — a one-stop shop from start to finish. The company is growing, with homes being built all over Southern California.
One of Or’s journeys has been recoining the language for these homes, because the terms “mobile” and “manufactured” historically connote homes of lower quality and budget. THG uses the term “factory-built.”
“The quality of our construction and luxury finishes are what set us apart and exceed any on-site stick-built (traditional design-build) construction,” Or says. “For example, our exterior walls are 2-by-6, and all of our cabinets are hand-built wood cabinetry. We use all the same high-quality drywall, plumbing, luxury vinyl plank flooring, and our homes have beautiful waterfall edge quartz countertop islands, floor-to-ceiling tile work, and stainless-steel appliances. It has been a challenge to change the public perception and to use terminology that offers a better value to what we provide.” The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) regulates the federal code to ensure homes are build to a specific standard, allowing them to be inspected, certified, and stamped right in the factory, so they’re pre-approved for all locations and zoning. This way, homes can be delivered quickly and efficiently. Corey adds, “This also means that cities and counties cannot reject or impose any additional construction standards on our homes.”
Could this be the future of housing? A new generation is entering the market that will be more open to this approach, and some say it’s a more intelligent way to build a house. “It was a hassle until this point,” Or tells me. “Nobody was willing to collaborate on this, because the manufactured homes and trailerhome factories have been doing the same thing for the last 50 years. We found the right partner who said, ‘Let’s convert. Let’s create something no one has done before.’”
To design a house in two hours, Or says, is unheard of in the world of new construction.
Although some design features are standard, like the floors and windows, to meet code requirements, customers can choose a variety of design elements, from appliances to hardware and finishes.
THG says it can build a “mega house” in just two weeks. Permitting takes longer than building the actual home. “In most situations, we’re seeing permits reviewed, corrections, and approved within a three-to-nine-month window,” Corey says. Factory efficiency means little waste is created.
The majority of materials are U.S.sourced. The homes also come “solarready,” engineered for the weight of roof panels, and pre-wired in the factory. This type of construction might also help with the local housing crisis. In the five years after the Malibu-Woolsey fires, THG worked with the community through
tragedy to rebuild a few dozen homes, while some stick constructions are still underway. The homes are all Wildland Urban Interface approved, meaning they follow California fire codes.
A THG client who happens to be a builder himself spent three years renovating his family’s home. Just as it was completed, the fire took it. He decided he wasn’t going to do that again and went with a factory-built home.
Next for THG is a project to design a small community to place in cities and counties as transitional housing. “We are working on creating something cool that you can drop in any parking lot, basically, and just plug and play with the utilities in that area,” Or says. “And this won’t be an eyesore, it will be beautiful.”
The goal is to make cool houses accessible to everyone. “Home is where the heart is,” goes the famed saying. But according to The Home Gallery, “Home is where you place it.”
MEDITERRANEAN ESTATE
35 Alto Drive, Oak View
4 BED | 3.5 BA | 2,921 SQFT. | $2,395,000
Perfectly positioned on a quiet street, sits this 1 of 1 type of mediterranean estate featuring an exceptionally redefined Main residence with 2 primary suites, a custom built kitchen unlike any other, dining room, an entertainers dream of a backyard with a new pool offering a Baja pad, waterfall feature, fire pit, built in BBQ area with a pizza oven, beer tap, outdoor island and gazebo taking in those spectacular mountain views, all while sitting on an acre of land. One can also enjoy a spacious oversized 6 car garage with epoxy flooring. Pick endless fruit and citrus offering figs, oranges, grapefruit, Mexican key limes, avocados, peaches, apples, apricots and plums. This home is spectacular in the evenings, offering the perfect combination of outdoor lighting and sunset views.
CLINTON HAUGAN
Realtor® | Cal DRE 02019604
805.760.2092
clinton.haugan@sothebysrealty.com
clintonhaugan.sothebysrealty.com
Over 25 years of experience matching people and property in the Ojai Valley
ULTRA LUXURIOUS EAST END ESTATE
Everything about this private estate has been refined and perfected to create one of the most magnificent properties in Ojai. On 9+ lush acres, the entire property has awesome western views of the valley and mountains. The compound includes a main house with cathedral ceilings, 2 guest houses, a pool, 2 greenhouses, a pool house, a new tennis court, solar and a high-flow well. Every location takes full advantage of the natural beauty and each detail has been finished with the utmost care to make it beautiful, warm and luxuriously livable.
