OjaiMag_Spring2025

IN THIS ISSUE:

Krishnamurti’s Way of Living Differently

Ojai Playhouse, the sequel

Grief Architect

Ojai Music Festival 2025

Carter BY Grace

Photojournalist Arthur Grace on his travels with President Jimmy Carter

PUBLISHED SINCE

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EDITOR’S NOTE - 22

COVER STORIES

Making History with Jimmy Carter - 26

By Marianne Ratcliff

A Flag for Jimmy Carter - 32

By Ilona Saari

MUSIC & THEATER

Ojai Playhouse Restored - 38

By Perry Van Houten

The Birdsong of Claire Chase

Ojai Music Festival - 72

By Agatha French

Crazy Mama - 64

By Mimi Walker

CALENDAR OF EVENTS - 80

CULTURE

A Fireman, a Councilwoman, and Three Writers Walk into a Bookstore: Why Everyone Loves Bart’s Books - 84

By Agatha French

FOOD & FARM

Weeding as Wellness Practice - 92

By John Fonteyn

From Ballet to Bread - 96

By Kerstin Kühn

Eating for Earth Day - 104

By Sharon Palmer

TRANSFORMATION & HEALING

Grief Architect, Alison Magallon - 48

By Erin LaBelle

Understanding Krishnamurti - 56

By Michael Mendizza

Unlocking Creativity - 118

By Gregg Stewart

SPORTS

Challenged Athletes - 110

By Holly Roberts

BUILDING PEACE OF MIND

OWN-YOUR-POWER

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william scott, flowers on a blue cloth, 1938

william scott, still life, 1957

Editor’s Note: Spring 2025

Translating onto pages a slice of the richness of Ojai’s life and times is our inspired mission each season. Ojai philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti said, “The word is not the thing;” rather, it is an instrument for realizing the thing itself. And so, we invite you to look beyond the words on these pages and to experience the vibrant world described.

This Spring issue is bursting with articulations of story in action from a dozen of Ojai’s best writers. It may just include the full gamut of the season: An insider’s lens on Jimmy Carter during his presidency; transformation of the mind as a way of living differently; gaining insight on the architecture of grief; challenged athletes overcoming obstacles; the rebirth of the Ojai Playhouse; weeding as a wellness practice; and then there’s bread … it’s all delicious, and we invite you to bite wholeheartedly into every piece.

You may come to Ojai escaping fire, city life, concrete, chaos, your past, your pain, or perhaps just out of curiosity and for the chance to say hello to a friendly face. Folks come here to leave behind and to find — usually (and hopefully) with a head full of intention. No matter from whence, or when you arrived, our big little dreams include gaining release from all the “Bigs” that seem to impede and encroach on our lives every day — Big Media, Big Business, Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Brother. As you tiptoe, hike, skip, travel, or traipse through town, show some love to the independent newspaper, shopkeepers, makers, teachers, parents, hoteliers, artists, entrepreneurs, and dreamers who live here. We are living both the struggle and the dream — and we are doing it together.

With affection,

EDITOR/PUBLISHER

Laura Rearwin Ward

ART DIRECTOR

Paul Stanton

ASSISTANT EDITOR

Karen Lindell WRITERS

Perry Van Houten

Marianne Ratcliff

Erin LaBelle

Mimi Walker

Sharon Palmer

Holly Roberts

John Fonteyn

Agatha French

Ilona Saari

Michael Mendizza

Kerstin Kühn

Gregg Stewart

PRODUCTION SUPPORT

Mimi Walker, Tori Behar

Georgia Schreiner

ADVERTISING

Dan Browne, director of sales

Ally Mills, Kim Klester

CONTACT

magazine@ojaivalleynews.com

advertising@ojaivalleynews.com ojaimag.com @ojaimag

Cover photo by Arthur Grace

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“Carter and I, we had quite a history together,” recalls Arthur Grace of Ojai. While Jimmy Carter was making history as the 39th U.S. president from 1977 to 1981 and even before, photojournalist Grace was capturing it all on film.

Grace was with the president throughout his time in office, from Carter’s first campaign for president to the publication of his presidential memoir.

Grace’s career spanned three decades as a photographer for United Press International, The New York Times, TIME magazine, and Newsweek, with his photos published worldwide.

Following Carter’s death on Dec. 29 at 100 years old, Grace shared remembrances of his years covering the president.

“It’s like the end of an era,” Grace says of Carter’s passing. “Carter brought decency, a commitment to human rights, and a quest for peace to the Oval Office and in his post-presidency. On a personal level, it’s the uncomfortable realization that 50 years have passed since I first began covering him. It was a great ride early in my career, so there’s great memories as well as a wake-up call that I’m way old.”

Grace was with Carter:

Carter

— On the campaign trail “first in New Hampshire and then in Florida, and then at the convention, the election, the inauguration. Then, when his administration started, I moved to Washington and I covered him for the next four years, among other assignments abroad. I’m not clairvoyant, but in late 1975 when I got back to the TIME bureau in Boston after spending a few days with this peanut farmer from Georgia, the bureau chief asked me what I thought of him. I answered: ‘This guy’s different. He’s saying something that seems to be resonating with the people up there. … His line was, ‘We can be as good, as kind, and as decent as the American people.’ You gotta watch this guy. Something’s going on with him.’”

— In Egypt, with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat “when they did the motorcade through Alexandria,” where an estimated 1 million people greeted Carter.

Ojai photojournalist Arthur Grace recalls his years covering President Jimmy Carter by

story by MARIANNE RATCLIFF

photos courtesy of ARTHUR GRACE

Grace

— At the pyramids in Egypt, Sadat “decided to do a photo op in front of the pyramids.” First, just with Carter, first lady Rosalynn Carter, and Sadat. “We shot that and then they invited the press to get in a picture.” Grace and correspondent Sam Donaldson decided they wanted to be photographed next to Carter and Sadat, “so we both ran around the back of the pack and my head is between Sadat and Carter, and Sam is on the other side.”

— At the White House in September 1978 during negotiations of the Camp David Accords for the historic peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, negotiated by Carter, Sadat and Israel Prime Minister Menachem Begin. “I was there on the South Lawn of the White House that night when they all came back from Camp David smiling and embracing.”

— In Vienna, when Carter signed the SALT II Treaty with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in June 1979.

— On the steamboat Delta Queen down the Mississippi in August 1979 during Carter’s re-election campaign in 1980. “We spent three days … with him on the boat like regular tourists on vacation, although he got off the boat every day for a shoreside campaign rally.”

— On the trail. “He was a physically fit guy. I photographed him a few times running in the early morning with his Secret Service detail.”

Photojournalist Arthur Grace of Ojai on the campaign plane with President Jimmy Carter in February 1976.

— On Carter’s Champagne-popping flight home to Plains, Georgia, on Ronald Reagan’s Inauguration Day. “Carter and some aides were celebrating the news of the release of 52 American hostages in Iran on Jan. 20, 1981. They wouldn’t let me go to the front of the plane to take pictures because they thought it would send the wrong message. I strongly disagreed.”

— On a flight with Carter and other members of the press to Wiesbaden, Germany, to visit the former hostages who were held captive in Iran for 444 days.

— In Plains, Georgia, in 1982 for three days to photograph Carter for an article on Carter’s book Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President.

Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev kisses President Jimmy Carter after both sign the SALT II agreement in Vienna in 1979.

— At the president and first lady’s home in Plains. “I had pictures of him at home, at church, his woodshop, riding his bike, the whole thing. So, anyway, I reconnected with him. I actually never saw him again after that.”

‘One of the biggest pictures I ever took’ Grace remembers that during the Iran Hostage Crisis, “no press was allowed to interview Carter for weeks and Carter was not publicly available. So, I kept asking Jody [Powell, press secretary]: ‘Let me into the Oval. The public needs to see what he’s doing.’”

Grace was living on a 30-foot boat, and his office was in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House. “So, one night, I’m there like at 7:30 in jeans and whatever. … And the phone rang and it was Jody. He said: ‘Come on over right

now. The old man will see you.’ And so I got dressed, you know, I didn’t go over in jeans, ran to the office, got my cameras, showed up at the White House, and I spent 20 minutes alone with him in the Oval Office.

“And I took this photo that was published around the world. It was the cover of Paris Match. It was, you know, one of the biggest pictures I ever took because I have him with the Iran briefing book, in his sweater, working on it. …

“The most I ever talked to him was that night. … I almost didn’t take a picture because I was setting up and he started

Arthur Grace of Ojai with President Jimmy Carter on the Delta Queen, traveling on the Mississippi River in August 1979.

telling me about all his issues he was having with Congress, and things that were going on. … So, I finally interrupt him. I had to do it because Carter had a habit of cutting things off abruptly, saying, ‘That’s enough.’ And he did that with photographers all the time. And so I was worried he was going to do just that, and I would walk out of the Oval Office with

zero pictures. So, anyway, I literally said to him, ‘You know, Mr. President, we better get these pictures done.’ So we went to work and I shot like one roll of film.”

Grace notes that when he arrived that night to take the photos, Carter “came down in a suit. Because it was 10 at night, I said, ‘Mr. President, do you usually wear a suit?’

“He said: ‘Oh no, I don’t. I have my cardigan sweater over there.’

“I said, ‘Oh, would you mind, if that’s what you wear when you’re doing your work, would you mind putting it on?’ And that’s what he did.”

Never to be seen again

Another historic photo is of Carter at a huge campaign rally in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1980, getting out of his bulletproof presidential limousine and climbing on the roof to shake hands with the throng of supporters reaching out to him. “That type of photo op will never happen again unless the president is behind protective bulletproof glass. That’s because Reagan got shot five months later outside a hotel in Washington, and everything changed.”

President Jimmy Carter in his home office in Plains, Georgia, after his presidency.

Above: President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter at their breakfast table in Plains, Georgia.

Left: President Jimmy Carter and first lady Rosalynn Carter with Egypt President Anwar Sadat in 1979.

President’s ‘secret adviser’

Grace has on his wall at home the TIME magazine Nov. 3, 1980 “Letter From The Publisher.” There’s a candid photograph of Grace with the president during the campaign, along with this excerpt:

“Last week in Waco, Texas, TIME Photographer Arthur Grace was reminded that the candidates get a good chance to watch journalists too. As he posed for the accompanying picture with Jimmy Carter and Correspondent Christopher Ogden, Grace was surprised to hear the President call him his ‘secret adviser.’ Added Carter: ‘Whenever I speak, I look to you to see if you’re going to give me the thumbs up or down.”

Grace says that when Carter was campaigning, the press pool would be in the front of where he was talking. “And he did look down a lot at the photographers. And he did look over at me from time to time, mostly because he’d known me for quite a few years and I was a familiar face.”

Another day at the (Oval) Office

Asked whether he ever had to pinch himself talking to the president in the

Oval Office, Grace is quick with his answer: “No, never crossed my mind while I was in the Oval shooting. I had work to do. And it was a stressful job. You’re always competing with other photographers for the best angle or position. But there were times when you were hanging around the White House pressroom waiting for a photo op when it hit you that you were actually in the White House covering the president of the United States.”

Perspective

In retrospect, Grace says of Carter: “Flaws and all, he was a much better president than many people gave him credit for. He stood for something important — human rights — and he never wavered from that. And he was a decent man with integrity. That’s saying a lot these days.”

Arthur Grace is an award-winning photojournalist, documentary photographer and author of six books of photographs, including Choose Me: Portraits of a Presidential

Race.

Above: President Jimmy Carter campaigning from the roof of his presidential limousine in Columbus, Ohio, in 1980.

Jimmy Carter and first lady Rosalynn Carter welcome the Reagans to the White House for tea the morning of Ronald Reagan’s Inauguration on January 20, 1981.

Below: Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter sitting with Ted and Joan Kennedy at the dedication of the JFK Library in Boston in October 1979.

Jimmy Carter greeting a lone voter in New Hampshire as he began his run for the presidency in December 1975.

Photojournalist Arthur Grace of Ojai shaking hands with President Jimmy Carter in a photo accompanying a TIME magazine “Letter From The Publisher,” published Nov. 3, 1980.

In1980 I served proudly as a New York state deputy press secretary for the Carter-Mondale reelection campaign, and those flags brought back wonderful memories, which included the excitement of the presidential convention in Madison Square Garden. Early in my writing career, I worked as a freelance rock ’n’ roll writer and had been to many rock concerts and huge rock festivals. They were heady experiences, filled with drama and thrills, but none compared with the electricity I felt in the Garden as I witnessed the unbridled enthusiasm shown by the delegates in this moment of history. Once the convention ended, I reported to the Manhattan campaign headquarters, which was akin to a gigantic pressroom with rows of gray metal desks, but no clacking typewriter keys or black landlines ringing off the hook. Many voices were talking at once, however, or so it seemed. Thankfully, the press office was separated from the “desks.” This was a pre-computer, pre-Xerox, pre-fax, pre-cellphone era, but the press office did have phones, typewriters, and mimeograph machines. I organized large and small press events and wrote press releases that I’d send to White House press secretary Jody Powell in D.C. for approval.

The hours were long and I often missed dinner, but at times the work was just plain exciting and fun. I was barely thirtysomething when I was asked to organize press coverage of New York City’s legendary St. Patrick’s Day parade. I found myself jumping between two long, flatbed trucks, one for the local press, the other for the national press, both equipped with pool television cameras for reporters’ standups on the trucks. We slowly rolled down Fifth Avenue, Luciano Pavarotti on horseback leading the parade, followed by President Carter and Gov. Mario Cuomo, then the trucks and me, having fun bickering with ABC’s Sam Donaldson about hogging the standup spot, or with local TV reporter Gabe Pressman on the other flatbed, for the same reason. Nothing, however, compared with my first helicopter ride in 1980. A 5 a.m. call from headquarters summoned me ASAP — no explanation. I immediately thought something awful had happened, so I took a five-second shower, dressed in record time, grabbed a cab, and was in the office before my hair had dried. A campaign volunteer carrying a very tall, narrow box ushered me out of the building, where he hailed a cab, somehow got the box in the car, and told the driver to take me to the Pan Am building, as it was known then. He instructed me to go to the building’s heliport, where a helicopter would be waiting to take me to the C.W.

Post Campus of Long Island University (now LIU Post) to deliver an American flag for President Carter’s scheduled town hall. The college did not have a big-enough flag to serve as the president’s backdrop.

At the Pan Am building, the cabbie and I struggled to get the flag out of the cab and I dragged it to the nearest elevator. On the roof, the pilot threw it inside the chopper and we were airborne within minutes. Did I mention that I get seasick? Flying over Queens made me nauseous, and as we flew over my hometown neighborhood of Bayside, I tried to focus on the view below, but the up/down, side-to-side movement of the chopper made my eyes roll to the back of my head, taking away the joy of seeing my town from above. I prayed that I wouldn’t throw up.

Once we landed, another staffer grabbed the flag and the chopper took off toward Manhattan. As my stomach calmed down and I found my land legs, it dawned on me that I was way out on Long Island with no way to get back to the city.

At the town hall building site entrance (the school’s gym), a Secret Service detail commandeered me to help sign-in reporters and check their credentials. The doors were open to a huge parking lot. As I sat at a table, the roar of approaching planes became deafening, so loud I covered my ears, as two massive helicopters landed on the ground in front of me. I mean massive. It was a thrill to behold. As the propellers slowed and stopped, my adrenaline soared as a herd of national reporters jumped from one chopper and ran toward me. I knew a few, and had even dated one. As I checked their press passes, presidential aides scrambled off Marine One, the president’s helicopter, and into the gym through a different door.

After everyone was ushered in, I entered a gym filled to the rafters. As Carter hurried in to thunderous cheers and took his place at a podium, I saw standing behind him the American flag that I had brought on my stomach-churning ride. I was filled with emotion and pride.

Afterward, I briefly met the president before he boarded Marine One, and realized that nothing in my political life would equal this experience. I’ve tried to remember how I got back to Manhattan, but just can’t. I assume I hitched a ride with one of the local reporters; who knows? Maybe my emotional high lifted me off the ground and flew me home.

Ilona Saari is an Ojai resident, freelance writer and novelist. She was a New York Deputy Press Secretary for President Jimmy Carter in 1980. Learn more: www.ilonajoysaari.com

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FOR Jimmy Carter

1980, Madison Square Garden. Ilona Saari is New York state deputy press secretary for the Carter-Mondale re-election campaign.

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The Playhouse Returns

Photo: Ciro Coehlo

Ten years, four months, and two days after the flood, Ojai finally has its beloved movie theater back.

by PERRY VAN HOUTEN

On Friday, Nov. 22, 2024, the Ojai Playhouse reopened to a packed house, screening its first movie since a 2014 water-main break flooded the building and closed the theater during its 100th anniversary year.

In 2020, the Playhouse’s former owners sold the 5,500-square-foot, 200-seat theater to David Berger, who invested $10 million in repairing, renovating, and revitalizing the historic venue.

“Four years of deep restoration and a lot

in 2020, “it’s one of the last of the single-screen, small-town movie theaters in America. Not only that, it’s an anchor for the downtown, and always has been,” says Ojai historian and author Craig Walker.

Apart from the fountain at the pergola, in front of Libbey Park, the theater was most likely the town’s first Mission Revival structure, and influenced Ojai benefactor Edward Drummond Libbey and his architects to adopt the style

The theater got some competition in 1963, when the Los Robles Theater opened near Vons at the Y, showing first-run films.

In 1966, new owner Wayne Glasgow changed the name of the theater to the Glasgow Playhouse. Historians say city officials expressed concern over Glasgow’s previous ownership of a pornographic movie theater in San Francisco, but he promised he would only show arthouse films.

In 1983, the theater was purchased in by brothers Khaled and Walid Al-Awar, who

of thought, energy, time, and teamwork,” Berger says. “We’re excited to bring the community together in a really positive, creative space.”

The reopening of the theater, with top technical audio and visual upgrades, reprises its role as a thriving cultural hub, according to Berger. “The Ojai Playhouse has been a vital gathering place for our community for nearly a century, and I’m deeply honored to bring it back, newly restored with state-of-the-art capabilities,” he says.

Designated Ojai Historic Landmark No. 26

throughout downtown. “I’m sure it was the theater that inspired them to pick up on the Mission Revival theme and to carry it through with the Arcade, the post office tower, and the pergola,” Walker says.

The venue first opened in 1914 as the Isis Theater, owned by J.J. Burke. The theater’s first advertised, full-length film was Jack London’s The Valley of the Moon. Burke sold the theater in 1926 to theosophists Fred and Lida Hart, who renamed it the Ojai Theatre.

The first talkie shown at the theater was The Great Divide, in 1930.

years of dereliction and now

changed the name to the Ojai Playhouse.

The theater was a family business for three decades; Khaled’s children all worked at the theater, as did Walid’s son and various nieces and nephews. “It taught us a great deal about responsibility, even if we didn’t realize it at the time,” says Tania Parker, Khaled’s oldest daughter.

And no one realized there was a water main beneath 145 E. Ojai Ave. that was just waiting to fail, which it did on July 20, 2014, flooding the building and forcing the audience to evacuate during a matinee screening of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

After

restored to its former glory, Ojai’s historic Playhouse graces East Ojai Avenue once more.

Photo: Ciro Coehlo

Following a lawsuit and a $3.85 million settlement from Golden State Water Company, repairs on the theater resumed and the Al-Awars made the difficult decision to put the Playhouse up for sale. “We considered keeping it in the family, but all of our kids have grown and have their own careers,” says Khaled. A clause in the contract said the buyer must keep it a movie theater.

Enter Berger, who “came out of the blue and made us an offer on the theater,” says Parker. “He’s really committed to keeping the theater a theater and bringing good art and entertainment to the community, and to it being a community

center. We can’t imagine a better person to carry on my family’s legacy.”

Ojai-based builder Kerry Miller was involved in the restoration from the beginning. “I’ve been committed to this building since the flood, since working with the Al-Awars, getting it back together, saving the historic value of it and bringing it back as a theater for the community,” he says.

Miller says the sale to Berger was the right move for the community and for movie lovers everywhere. “David came along and put in what it really needed to fully restore it for a life that will last at least another 100 years,” he says. “It’s

really a gift to this community.”

Since the day it began screening silent movies and then talkies, the theater has employed the latest technology, and that hasn’t changed, according to Berger. “The Playhouse has always had the newest stuff,” he says. “And we’re still using the best of the best, to have a really incredible experience for the fans, the artists, and the films.”

The theater’s projection room features dual Simplex 35mm reel-to-reel projectors and a digital Barco 4K laser projector. For cinema and listening events, there’s a Meyer Sound audio system, a Dolby Atmos sound system, and a Yamaha inversion sound system. For video capturing and livestreaming, there are Sony FR7 PTZ cameras.

Along with Miller, principal architect Bob Kupiec led the restoration, with Holwick Constructors serving as general contractor. “The journey has been very thoughtful,” Kupiec says, “exploring options of how to turn this place into that hypercreative art space. David’s commitment to it has been amazing.

Originally called Isis Theater, the building as it appeared in 1914.

Photo courtesy of Ojai Valley Museum

The movie theater as it was in the 1950s. Photo courtesy of Ojai Valley Museum

“We haven’t left any stone unturned.”

The only independent arthouse film venue on the coast between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, the Playhouse offers an experience unlike any available elsewhere, according to Kupiec. “The integration of technology into this space for both cinema and sound, I can’t think of any place that would even come close to replicating this, anywhere,” he says.

Professional theatrical lighting and flexible mood lighting round out the technical improvements, with the addition of programmable RBG lighting giving the audience “not just the sound show or a movie; there’s a light show going on,” says Kupiec. “It’s all just an added layer of having fun.”

Though the technology is new, Berger and Kupiec worked to honor the history of the building and the history of Ojai. “On the outside of the building we were very careful about maintaining a historic feel for what the original Playhouse looked like,” Kupiec says.

The building required a lot of work, including seismic upgrades and replacing the stucco. “The facade needed to be redone, with a new marquee that was more appropriate for the building,” Kupiec says. “But now when you come through the front door there’s cinema, entertainment, live performance, streaming. All these technologies are part of our everyday life, so they’re here, and they’re here in a very serious way.”

The Playhouse also offers a green room, front lobby refreshments, a rear box office, an outdoor garden, a microcinema, private event space, and a café and bar.

Kupiec says restoring the theater was like a roller coaster ride, “dealing with multiple insurance companies, litigation, stops and starts, two owners, COVID. And here we are today.”

“They’ve done a really good job updating the interior to be consistent and appropriate, but modern and contemporary, and then preserving the outer structure, the facade of the building,” Walker says.

The Ojai Playhouse has been a part of life for generations of Ojai Valley residents, according to Walker, who remembers watching plenty of Westerns and war

movies at the theater as a young man.

“Now when I drive through town and see people coming out of the theater at the end of a movie or lining up to go in, it really reminds me of the old days when that’s where people went,” he says.

The first month of movies offered a wide variety, “an eclectic mix of Oscar-contending movies, holiday classics, classic nostalgia, and cult classics,” says Berger.

Family, documentary, contemporary first-run arthouse, international, and midnight movies will also be screened. “I’m excited to offer programming that resonate with everyone,” says Berger, “in a magical space that celebrates Ojai’s rich heritage and the joy of shared experiences.”

Left: July 4th, 2015. Protesters demand that Golden State Water pay their bill and clear the way for the return of the theater.

Photo courtesy of Ojai Valley News

Below: Grand Marshal Khaled Al-Awar parading past the theater on July 4th, 2015.

Photo courtesy of Ojai Valley News

Berger also plans to stage comedy shows, lectures, playwright conferences, podcasts, curated music, authors, and Q&As with directors, artists, writers, and actors. “By supporting the film and arts communities and showcasing the work of creators both locally and internationally,” Berger says, “we’re building on its historic legacy as a cultural hub.”

Now complete, the inviting glow of the restored foyer and entranceway of the auditorium is once more thronged by moviegoers.

On opening night, to cheers from the audience as the lights came down, the newly restored Playhouse screened the 1995 Michael Mann crime drama Heat, starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Why Heat? “Because the heat’s been on me the whole time,” says Berger, with the No. 1 question he’s had to answer the past four years being, “When are you going to reopen?”

As they say in life and in the movies, everyone loves a happy ending.

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“It’s all about our perspective of death,” she explained. “I have to be careful not to stay in my head over the deaths of my children, because it doesn’t bring joy or lead to life. We can’t fully heal grief from our heads; we need to bring it down to our hearts. In grief, we feel we have to die, too, but I believe, if I don’t live to my fullest, I’m not honoring my children.”

Alison is the mother of Jericho Skye Magallon, who was killed Sept. 5, 2023, while voluntarily defending Ukraine from Russian attacks. She also lost the first of her four children, Maya Rose Magallon, 25, to overdose on Oct. 22, 2017.

“I’m the face of every mother’s worst nightmare,” Alison said. “Friends have walked away, because I’m the epitome of their biggest fear. People seem to think it’s contagious. All I can say is there’s a grace I know that I hope they’ll never have to know.”

Grieving

Although her children had much in common, the grief process with each of their deaths has been extremely different for Alison. “The moment I got the news about Maya, life force left my body through a primal scream, but with Jericho, I immediately knew this was his soul’s journey,” she said. “I didn’t have that knowledge when Maya died. It has nothing to do with how they died, but that I’ve changed. I’m totally different, and I need to own and honor that. I know I have more grieving to do; I’m not in denial. I’ve been asking if I’m giving myself permission to fully grieve.”

After Maya transitioned, Alison spent several months in Costa Rica sitting in ceremony with plant medicine and serving others at a retreat center. She’s certain it saved her life by expanding her perception of death and allowing her to see grief as transformation.

A small card on Alison Magallon’s refrigerator proclaims “I Choose Joy,” gently reminding the bereaved mother to stay in her heart.

by ERIN LABELLE

Grief Architect:

A LISON MAGALLON

Remembering

She describes Maya and Jericho as kind, compassionate, and generous, with humanitarian hearts, adding they were lovers of people and animals who could light up a room with their inner and outer beauty. Both were empaths, yet they responded differently to the suffering they encountered.

Maya didn’t know how to remedy the pain she witnessed and experienced, so she chose drugs and alcohol to silence the discomfort within and around her. Jericho was motivated to take action in the face of what he perceived as adults acting like playground bullies, so he headed to Ukraine, determined to liberate women, children, and animals from the destructive forces.

Healing

She’s aware plant medicine may not be suitable for everyone, but for her, the path made all the difference.

“The plants opened doors to deep emotional insights, allowing me to confront and explore the pain of my loss in ways I’d previously avoided,” she said. “I found myself immersed in a realm of understanding where I could connect with my children’s spirits and the essence of love that transcends physical existence.”

The insights gained during these sessions encouraged Alison to embrace her grief instead of pushing it away in self-protection.

Right: In March 2022, Alison posed with Jericho before driving him to LAX for his first flight to Ukraine. Photo supplied

“It validated my feelings and reinforced the importance of self-love,” she said. “I emerged from these experiences with a renewed sense of clarity and purpose, feeling more equipped to honor my children by nurturing my own well-being. Plant medicine helped me realize healing isn’t linear; it’s a complex dance of joy and sorrow, and both can coexist within me as I continue to grow and evolve.”

Shifting

Alison believes the consciousness of grief is changing.

“It’s being transmuted. The pain is still there, but it’s shifting,” she said. “We have to evaluate the stories we tell that hold us in an old paradigm with outdated beliefs. We need to step out of victim consciousness. My children’s deaths are a big part of my life, and it’s changed me, but it’s not my identity. We’re all made up of so many stories.

“What I’m sharing is my truth, and it doesn’t have to be agreed upon by anyone else in the grief world. I have to be authentic to what I know to be true today. I want to grow. I want to be open, because we’re in such a time of rapid evolution that nothing’s the same. So why would grief be the same? Our awareness is awakening. Grief is natural.

“The medicine showed me the perfection in life in the trees, the snakes, in everything. I asked Grandma Aya about us, and she said, ‘It’s all still perfect.’ After losing two children, that’s a hard pill to swallow, but this is so temporary, and we’re missing much of what it’s all about.”

Reflecting on the saying that children shouldn’t die before their parents, Alison asked: “Who first said that? It’s man’s interpretation of what a life should be. I believe we’re all souls that come in for a time, and this was their soul’s journey. I’m still alive for some reason. It must be to continue my work and remain open.”

Growing

Six months after Jericho’s body was recovered and returned to Ojai, his mother is supporting other bereaved parents and deepening the practices around death. She’s completed both levels of Death Doula training offered by Bridging Transitions, as well as their online class called “After the Tears, Redefining Grief.”

Death midwives and teaching partners Cheserae Scala and Birgitta Kastenbaum became Alison’s mentors and introduced her to a more meaningful, sacred way of living and dying.

Bridging Transitions offers workshops and educational retreats, including certification courses for death doulas and death midwives, according to their website. They provide emotional, spiritual, and practical support for those interested or involved in conscious dying.

At a young age, Cheserae knew death needed to be held sacredly. Accompanying her mother through her cancer diagnosis and death was the catalyst and training ground that led to a workshop and 16 years of teaching and serving.

Alison atop The Flying Lion, a grief-relief bus that serves as a safe place for people to connect and talk about grief.

Photo: Rebecca Magallon

“Birth is celebrated; death should be, too,” said Cheserae. “Grief is holy and needs to be held differently in our culture than it is today. It’s really about love. We have to turn inward first and see it from the heart, not the mind. If we look from the space of our mind, we’ll continue in a downward spiral, and this keeps people stuck in their story. But if we look from the space of our hearts, we can alchemize it, and that’s the medicine. The dying are our teachers.”

In her work, the body is never left alone.

“We sit vigil, like sitting shiva in Judaism. In whatever time we have, we create the most beautiful, sacred space, even in a hospital. In California, we can keep the body home for three days and allow for the exhale. One to three days with someone who’s died gives our heart time to catch up. There’s a beautiful gift when there’s a pause, because grief will look different, even if there’s only 12 hours. There’s a completion that happens.”

Trusting

Ten months after Jericho’s death, his body landed in Los Angeles as family members embraced on the windy tarmac. They’d planned to gather in Ojai on June 30 to celebrate the day that would have been his 29th birthday, but plans changed when Alison received a phone call on the final day of Death Doula Level One training. She was informed her son’s body had finally been found, and he was coming home.

Alison describes everything that followed as Divinely orchestrated, with doors opening perfectly to honor Jericho and support his family. Beginning with the Patriot Riders’ escort from the airport to Ojai, followed by Taft Gardens welcoming friends and family who wished to create sacred space, and finally, the gift of a nearby house as lodging for the group, everything came together effortlessly. Small gestures, like finding flowers on their Wheeler Gorge campground table when the family retreated for a few days afterward, helped Alison know she wasn’t alone.

“It all flowed in Divine order. Everyone saw it,” she said. “Those are times that can cement us into knowing there’s a bigger picture. We can hold onto this, knowing Jericho is doing something huge from the other side.”

Dreaming

Alison is determined to carry her children’s legacies forward, weaving their dreams into her own. Jericho wanted to return to Ukraine and rescue animals after the war, a mission he launched by buying pet food during his time in the country, with money sent by family members, and finding a safe home for an abused dog. Maya’s dream was similar, yet unique to her experience.

“She used to say, ‘I’m going to kick this addiction and have a home for people in recovery and abused animals,’” said Alison, who holds the vision for a future ranch where people and animals can come to heal.

Working under the name Grief Architect, Alison comes alongside clients as a guide to assist in navigating the emotional landscape of loss. She focuses on tending inner and outer lives, staying

In 2021, Alison’s mobile grief education and support effort was born with The Flying Lion, a grief-relief bus that serves as a safe place for people to connect and talk about grief.

“The Flying Lion has been such a labor of love,” she said. “I’ve wanted to give up many times. When I connect with my authentic self, the passion returns, and I feel encouraged to keep going. My dream is outside the box, but I’ve always lived outside the box. I need a grant writer, because with funding, I could get a fleet of buses and invite other grief coaches into the project,” she explained, stressing the importance of sharing stories.

Alison and her family are overwhelmed by the Ojai community’s support, and she’d like to thank everyone individually, but far too many have made a difference since Jericho’s death.

centered in the home of the heart, which she views as a space within where strength and comfort can be found during life’s greatest challenges.

Alison is energized by reimagining physical spaces, and she enjoys helping clients create a sanctuary to honor memories and provide the comfort necessary for healing. “I understand that a home is not just a structure; it’s where life unfolds. After the passing of a loved one, it’s essential to create an environment that fosters support and renewal,” she explained.

On her altar, Alison keeps a shadow box filled with photos, keepsakes and other objects to help her remember good times and feel close to her children. Photo: Erin LaBelle

“After Maya died, I was in Costa Rica where people didn’t know her, so I’m finding comfort being in Ojai, because people are constantly telling me stories about Jericho and how he helped them,” she said. “They’d meet him for five minutes and feel the kindness and love he exuded. I want to talk about my son and who he was. I want to keep his spirit alive.”

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Krishnamurti’s way of living

Differently

Silence grew and became intense, wider, and deeper. The brain, which had listened to the silence of the hills, fields, and groves, was itself now silent.

It had become quiet, naturally, without any enforcement. It was still, deep within itself; like a bird that folds its wings, it had folded upon itself; it had entered into depths that were beyond itself. It was a dimension that the brain could not capture or understand. And there was no observer witnessing this depth. Every part of one’s whole being was alert, sensitive but intensely still. This new, this depth was expanding, exploding, going away, developing in its own explosions; out of time and beyond space.

KRISHNAMURTI’S NOTEBOOK

In 1978, leaning across the lunch table at Brockwood Park in the U.K., “the speaker,” as Krishnamurti often referred to himself, shared: “I have only said one thing my entire life but I have said it a thousand ways. It’s so damn simple, even a child can understand it.”

What is that one thing, and why do so many spend years or decades studying his insights? Personally, I was drawn by something compelling. I understood a few scattered concepts, but failed to grasp the essence or source holistically, in a single “life- and world-changing flash.” That is, until I did.

Why Jiddu Krishnamurti and why Ojai? As with many mythic stories, his began with a prophecy.

Marinating in the occult, mid-1800s, as a catalyst for human evolution, it

A Buddha is one who has brought a final end to suffering and frustration, and discovered a lasting and deathless happiness and peace.

FROM ADYAR, TO HOLLYWOOD KROTONA, TO OJAI

H.P. Blavatsky, a foremother of theosophy, prophesied a coming World Teacher, a Christ in the Christian tradition, or Maitreya, the future Buddha in Buddhism. In 1909, C.W. Leadbeater, the occult seer of the Theosophical Society, discovered a young Hindu boy of impersonal and selfless qualities on the beach at Adyar, India. Occult communications confirmed: “That is the boy.”

In September 1910, Annie Besant received a letter suggesting that 70% of the Baja California Peninsula would be a prime location for the new Krotona

“Give your heart and your mind with everything

story by MICHAEL MENDIZZA

Photos by permission of the KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION OF AMERICA

was time for a highly evolved state of consciousness, the Maitreya or Future Buddha, to incarnate in a human body. At age 14, J. Krishnamurti was chosen for this role, the Future Buddha or Christ incarnate. That was the prophecy. By who and why is another story.

Colony. The cost of $200 million, nearly $7 billion today, was pledged by wealthy families to finance a nucleus of Universal Brotherhood without distinction of race, creed, sex, cast, or color for the next evolution of humanity, the sixth root race. Besant was convinced that her plan

was too ambitious. Marie Russak, an American friend, traveled to California in search of the best alternative. In 1912, the first Esoteric Krotona Estate was established in the Hollywood foothills. Also in 1912, Krishnamurti and his brother Nitya were taken to England for their education, health, and preparation.

The brothers undertook a heavy schedule speaking around the world. These travels became a heavy strain on Nitya. In Sydney, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. It was suggested that Ojai possessed an excellent climate for consumptives. It was arranged that a friend, Mrs. Grey, would lend them a cottage set in an orange grove on the east end of the valley.

Besant stated, “Ojai reflected as a cradle to nurture a new race or generation of human beings as the great melting pot from which a new race is destined to emerge.” Krishnamurti described the Ojai Valley as having an atmosphere of peace, tranquility, and a spirituality that is more reminiscent of India than any other part of the globe. From the time he first arrived in the Ojai Valley, until his death in 1986, Krishnamurti considered Ojai his home.

JOSEPH ROSS, TS AND KROTONA HISTORIAN

“Bill Quinn was a neighbor of Krishnamurti during World War II in 1944. Mysticism, in the Greek it meant ‘hidden.’ But, it means specifically, ‘hidden to the mind of image and concept.’ In

experience.’ A mystic is one who perceives directly.”

BILL QUINN, INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL MENDIZZA

Implied are two distinct states. A simple yet brilliant description of these two states:

“Our true nature could be compared to the sky (eternity), and the confusion of the ordinary mind to clouds (time). Some days the sky is completely obscured by clouds. We should always try and remember: The clouds are not the sky, and do not belong to it. They only hang there and pass by in their slightly ridiculous and non-dependent fashion.

“And they can never stain or mark the sky in any way. So where exactly is this Buddha Nature? It is in the sky-like nature of our mind. Utterly open, free, and limitless, it is fun, so simple and so natural that it can never be complicated, corrupted, or stained, so pure that it is beyond even the concept of purity and impurity.”

SOGYAL RINPOCHE, THE TIBETAN BOOK OF LIVING AND DYING

The 2020 film Infinite Potential: The Life & Ideas of David Bohm implies care, attention, empathy, compassion, and identification, not with a separate imageego, but rather our entangled interdependence with all life, with the limitless ecosystems and the cosmos from which we emerge and depend. As the speaker often described, “We are the world.”

you have to find out a way of living differently.”

J. Krishnamurti, in India.

Above: One of the earliest images of Krishnamurti and his brother Nityananda.

Right: Krishnamurti and Nityananda in England during WWI, circa 1918.

Facing page: 1912, Krishnamurti, George Arundel, Annie Besant, Nityananda, Jinarajadasa and C.W. Leadbeater.

For Krishnamurti, his identity and reality were grounded in this sky-like nature of the uncontaminated human mind, which uses thought and knowledge as creative tools in the service of that ground.

KRISHNAMURTI ON IMAGE-MAKING:

“One’s relationship with another is based on memory. The various images that I have about you, wife, husband, girl, or boy, or friend, and so on, there is always image-making. When one is married, or lives with a girl or a boy, every incident, every word, every action creates an image. Actually, you can see it for yourself. A word is registered; if it is pleasant, you purr. It is nice. If it is unpleasant, you will immediately shrink from it and that

creates an image. The pleasure creates an image; the shrinking, the withdrawal creates an image. So, our actual relationship with each other is based on various subtle forms of pictures, images, and conclusions. When there is an image like that, she has and you have, then in that there is division and the whole conflict begins, right? Where there is division between two images, there must be conflict.”

J. KRISHNAMURTI, BROCKWOOD PARK 2ND PUBLIC DIALOGUE 1978

The paradox, of course, is that the speaker used words, metaphors, and verbal concepts to describe a state that is free from words, metaphors, and concepts. Similarly, nearly every human being

listens to his metaphors with attention that remains at that verbal or symbolic level. They hear the words but that is as deep as it goes.

As a window is used to see what lies beyond, metaphors invite each listener to experience directly what is being described. Krishnamurti invited us all to look through the metaphor, not at the metaphor. In every talk or dialogue the speaker would remind us, “The word is not the thing.”

Implied is a different quality of listening and attention that embodies what is being described as direct perception, not just a bunch or words. The quality of one’s attention is therefore key.

“What we are trying in all these discussions and talks here is to see if we cannot radically bring about a transformation of the mind. Not accept things as they are, nor revolt against it.”

What we are trying in all these discussions and talks here is to see if we cannot radically bring about a transformation of the mind. Not accept things as they are, nor revolt against it. Revolt does not answer a thing. But to understand it, to go into it, to examine it, give your heart and your mind with everything you have to find out a way of living differently. But that depends on you and not somebody else. Because in this there is no teacher, no pupil, no leader, no guru, no master, no savior. You yourself are the teacher, the pupil; you are the master, the guru, you are everything.

“Because you are serious, because you are intent, then you are aware of the whole process of the observer.

“Which means that you are totally attentive, completely attentive. And in that attention, there is no border created by the center. When there is complete attention there is no observer.

“The observer comes into being only when, in that look, there is inattention, which is distraction.

“We have put away the observer and therefore there is attention, which may last a second; that is good enough. Don’t be greedy to have more. In that greed to have more you have already created the center, and then you are caught.

“In that attention there is no seeking at all. And therefore, there is no effort. And the mind becomes extraordinarily alert, active, silent. Such a mind is the religious mind. And such a mind has an activity totally different, at a different dimension that thought can never possibly reach.”

J. KRISHNAMURTI, PBS BROADCAST,

OJAI, CALIFORNIA, 1966

“Experiencing the insights being shared does not rest with the speaker. Rather, on the capacity of the listener to hear and perceive more than just the words. We are so deeply conditioned by words that most have lost touch and are blind or deaf when meaning is experienced directly. Most only recognize descriptions.

“There have been so many saviors, masters, gurus, political leaders, and philosophers, and not one of them has saved you from your own misery and conflict. Perhaps there may be quite another approach to all our problems. There is something sacred, but it is not in the word, not in the statue, or in the image that thought has built. There is nothing sacred about tradition, however ancient or modern. The brain carries the memory of yesterday, which is tradition, and is frightened to let go, because it cannot face something new. Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay. One must take the journey unburdened, sweetly, without any effort, never stopping at any shrine, at any monument, or for any hero, social or religious — alone with beauty and love.”

J. KRISHNAMURTI, THE ONLY

REVOLUTION (1970)

“We are faced with a breakdown of general social order and human values that threatens stability throughout the world. Existing knowledge cannot meet this challenge. Something much deeper is needed, a completely new approach. I am suggesting that the very means by which we try to solve our problems is

the problem. The source of our problems is within the structure of thought itself.”

Krishnamurti recognizes that thought — rational, orderly, factual thought, such as in doing proper science — is valuable, but the kind of thought that he has in mind is self-centered. At first sight one might wonder why self-centered thought is so bad. If the self were really there, then perhaps it would be correct to center on the self, because the self would be so important. But if the self is a kind of illusion, at least the self as we know it, then to center our thought on something illusory that is assumed to have supreme importance is going to disrupt the whole process, and it will not only make thought about yourself wrong, it will make thought about everything wrong, so that thought becomes a dangerous and destructive instrument all around.

DAVID BOHM, PHYSICIST, INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL MENDIZZA

Bohm and the speaker are inviting us to discover, not another idea or concept, but rather to have a direct embodied insight, to rediscover what sensitive, appropriate presence feels like. It has been said that Krishnamurti began where Buddha ended. Buddha is supposed to have brought rationality into spirituality. Krishnamurti goes beyond and he shows us the limitation of thought as a means of psychological mutation, and that pure perception, which is not related to time or thought, acts and breaks away the pattern of the brain in which human being has been caught over a million years, repeating the same thing over and over.

Unconditionally Free: The Life and Insights of J. Krishnamurti by Michael Mendizza is available from https://store.kfa.org

Krishnamurti in Ojai .

Sharon Scott Williams’ Crazy Mama takes the stage at the Rubicon Theatre

“Sharon races home from school a couple days after her 8th birthday to beat her teenage brother Spikey to the last slice of birthday cake. When she enters the kitchen, she finds her mother wielding a knife. As the Sheriff escorts her mother away, the deputy tells Sharon that her mama is ‘not right in the head.’”

So begins the official synopsis for Crazy Mama: A True Story of Love & Madness, a one-woman autobiographical play written by Ojai’s own Sharon Scott Williams.

With Sharon’s husband, Happy Days alum Anson Williams, as director, and actor Linda Purl at the helm — playing 16 different characters throughout a decades-long timeline of tumult and triumph — Crazy Mama is set to take the stage at Rubicon Theatre in Ventura from March 26 to April 6.

For Sharon — a prolific Realtor known throughout Ojai as Sharon MaHarry — debuting the raw reality of her upbringing onstage is a full-circle moment.

“When you have the kind of upbringing that I had, with my schizophrenic mother, you have a lot of challenges that other kids don’t have. ... You grow up quickly,” Sharon said. “Reading and writing have been my comfort for my whole life. When I was going through all this with my mother, you know, that’s where I would go. I had a vanity in my bedroom that had a little skirt on it; I would crawl in there behind the skirt with my books and read because I felt safe in there, like a cocoon.”

Sharon, who grew up in Roanoke, Virginia, has “always” been a writer — “I was writing songs when I was in first grade,” she revealed. Writing was not only a coping mechanism, but also a skill through which she could connect

by MIMI WALKER

with her mother’s interests in the good moments. She said: “My mom was a very creative person and read constantly when she wasn’t in one of her mental episodes. Of all the things that she possessed, her books were her most favorite possessions. … She had set her sights on memorizing the Encyclopedia Britannica. … She was highly verbal also, but unfortunately, because of her mental illness, she was never able to do what she should have been able to do.”

Sharon nurtured her writing prowess to build a successful life, and credits her father for being one of her greatest ports in the storm. “I had a great dad, who is incredibly responsible and took care of my mother through all of her challenging, challenging times, and me and my brother,” Sharon said.

“I was just really lucky … and my dad, unlike a lot of men back in those days, kept reminding me that I could

do anything I wanted. And that was really not what girls were hearing back then. … I was really driven by my dad’s standards to do the best I could do at whatever I decided to do.”

While at Roanoke College, earning a bachelor’s degree in English, Sharon did some modeling, and through that, networked with advertisers to keep writing a part of her career. Starting out as a copywriter, she eventually became the first female creative director at Young & Rubicam — an advertising agency that Mad Men used as creative inspiration. But it was in Ojai, where Sharon started her real estate career over 20 years ago, that she found her true calling to creative catharsis — specifically, at a writers’ retreat with script consultant Dara Marks, also of Ojai.

“I owe it all to Dara, I have to say,” Sharon shared, describing that writers’ retreat as “almost like a therapy session for four days. And it was incredible. And I realized at that time that I, really, for my own mental health, needed to write the story. I needed to get it down on paper, what had happened to me and my mom. … It just started to pour out of me, all of these things that I remembered and … had blocked out all these years.”

Photo provided

Her coming-of-age musings eventually became a 300-page memoir, though it was never officially published; years later, Anson read it.

“He started reading my memoir — probably to decide whether he really wanted to marry me or not,” Sharon laughed.

“I had to vet the heck out of her!”

Anson replied. But shortly after reading the whole story, Anson told Sharon: “This is a play. … This is a one-woman show. You need to do an adaptation of this memoir as a stage play.” With thehelp of Anson and Dara, it was adapted for the stage in about six weeks.

Anson said that during test readings at Ojai Underground Exchange, “We’re watching the audience, and they’re not moving. They’re just not moving. And I’ve never had a standing ovation in

makes it special. I mean, you laugh, you howl, you cry … but it’s so damn inspiring. It opens up every window, every door,” Anson said. “We found out, just through readings before we sold it, how much this affects the audience in a very positive way. Everyone has … a mom and something’s happening … they reinterpret it their way. It is such a healing experience.”

intermission for reading. So we knew we had something pretty amazing.”

A theater producer who attended one of those readings was taken enough that he called Rubicon Theatre, and before Anson and Sharon knew it, Crazy Mama was on the theater schedule. In advance of the show’s run here in the 805, staged readings of Crazy Mama, with Lee

Purcell as the lead, took place April 12 to 14, 2024, at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in Bethel, New York — the same site as 1969’s Woodstock.

On casting Linda Purl for the Rubicon run, Anson said: “You know, Linda took over for Vanessa Redgrave in The Year of Magical Thinking, the one-woman Joan Didion show … Linda is now doing a tour de force in Crazy Mama. She’s playing 16 characters … from children, to police officers, to a psychotic breakdown, mother, to a father, to a brother, to the kids. Everything with subtext … a woman spending 40 years to see if she’ll ever get her mother back.”

Sharon’s mother passed away when Sharon was 54 — 46 years after that pivotal breakdown. “So all those years, I just kept praying and hoping and believing that she would somehow come back to me as my real mom,” Sharon said.

Sharon elaborated: “What we’re trying to do is destigmatize mental illness as much as we can. I mean, it’s very difficult, but I remember my dad used to say: ‘Honey, you gotta understand, it’s a chemical imbalance. It’s like diabetes — it just doesn’t look like it.’

“Hopefully we can help to make them see inside the person who’s afflicted, and have more empathy for them.”

“One thing I really want to get across, because, even though it’s (about) mental illness, it is such an entertaining play. It

Sharon added: “I really felt like it was important, because a lot of people suffer through this. … It shows you how families can make or break people in a situation like this. I was super lucky that I had really great people, my dad, my grandmother, my aunt, and then I had another aunt who is in the story — there’s some very funny, awful things that she did! … My dad was a very funny guy, and so he tried to find the humor in the situation, and so that was one way we got through it.”

Anson said the end of the play “shakes you up in the most positive, hopeful, magical way. And I will tell you this, this whole play leads up to one last line. You will never, ever forget that line. Ever. It will become part of your life.”

He added: “And to see how this family, instead of destroying each other, they loved each other more. Love got them through it. Hope got them through it. … It’s an underdog story where you win. Everyone walks out of this theater opened up … sharing their feelings, sharing their stories, and it just pays it forward to really show you’re not alone.”

Anson expressed his pride toward his wife’s vulnerability: “She’s finally getting her just rewards for her talent. And it’s just the beginning. … It’s wonderful to see that she has her time now.”

WHERE: 1006 E. Main St., Ventura

WHEN: Wednesdays through Sundays, March 26 to April 6

TICKETS: Visit rubicontheatre.org or call 805-667-2900

Director Anson Williams

Photo provided

Linda Purl, Anson Williams’ former Happy Days costar, plays 16 roles in Crazy Mama.

Photo: Matt Baker

If you’re thinking about selling your home, listen to what other homeowners have to say about Sharon MaHarry. A 21-year veteran in Ojai Real Estate, two-time President of the Ojai Board of Realtors, and top producer at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties, Sharon will do for you as she’s done for so many.

“Sharon clearly demonstrated the pedigree required to sell our multi-million dollar home. Sharon accommodated every condition we laid out for her. She curated a high quality list of potential buyers and we ended up selling to an absolutely wonderful family who will be an asset to the neighborhood (one of our conditions). Thank you so much, Sharon.”

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The 79th Ojai Music Festival returns to Libbey Bowl this June and will feature, as expected, an all-star ensemble of acclaimed composers and musicians. What’s less expected, perhaps, are some of this year’s unlikely muses.

“There was a crow just singing an aria,” says Claire Chase, this year’s music director, describing a unscheduled guest singer during a contemplative cello solo that she attended at the festival in 2024. “Singing is maybe the more generous interpretation. It was croaking aria, and it was so much louder than the amplified cello. Of course, there were a few chuckles in the audience, but it was that moment that I said to myself, ‘Everything that we do, everything that we put on

stage, needs to embrace the multi-species conviviality of the space.’”

Speaking on a call from her home in Brooklyn, Chase recalls the dawning sense that what another artist might perceive as a cawing nuisance, she could treat as an opportunity: “[We could] think about these not as interruptions, but as co-conspirators and collaborators … I am so excited by the idea of not only not tuning it out, either onstage or offstage, as a listener or a performer, but welcoming it.”

Ara Guzelimian, artistic and executive director of the Ojai Music Festival, describes Chase as “one of the most generative forces in music.” Her biography backs him up. The first flutist to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, she has performed as a soloist with the New

York, Los Angeles, and London Philharmonic orchestras; held the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall; serves as a professor at Harvard University and a creative associate at the Juilliard School; and is in the middle of “Density 2036,” a 24-year project that takes an ambitious, community-focused approach to commissioning music for the solo-flute. Born and raised in Southern California, Chase is also a three-time performer in the festival, and her experiences in Ojai have informed her conviction about what is uniquely possible here.

Of the first time she played the festival, Chase recalls “this very moving sensation that’s very rare for a performer: knowing that 1,000 people are with you, and they’re curious,” she says. “I believe that what we want, even if we’re going to hear a masterwork that we’ve heard countless times, is to be surprised and moved and changed. It’s very rare as a performer to go into a situation where the audience has already signed up for that adventure. They’re there specifically because they don’t know what’s going to happen, and they want to be moved, and they want to be changed by something that is new and unfamiliar to them.”

And while native birdsong may not be unfamiliar to local attendees, perhaps the quality of attention, or even reverence, that the festival bestows upon it will be.

birds

birds

by AGATHA FRENCH

Photo: Gail Hadani

Above and left: 2025 Music Director Claire Chase. Photo: Walter Wlodarczyk

Tania Leon

“We’re doing a lot of improvised-based work, so there will be lots of opportunities to cocreate in real time with whatever flora and fauna decide to grace us,” says Chase, who cites rewilding, rebirth, and reimagination as among this year’s overarching themes.

A piece by Pauline Oliveros, titled “Witness,” is grounded in listening to the natural environment surrounding the listener; Liza Lim’s “How Forests Think,” which employs the ancient Chinese reed instrument the sheng, explores our interdependence with nature. Another piece commissioned specifically for the festival, by composer and percussionist Susie Ibarra, will debut at a free community concert performed in the Ojai Meadows Preserve.

“Musically, she speaks the language of birds in such a beautiful and effortless way,” says Chase of Ibarra. “She’s been able to translate — quite literally translate — the rhythmic material, pitch material, harmonic material, of very complex birdcalls onto drum sets and percussive arrays of instruments … I’m so excited to see what she does with this prompt.”

As music director, Chase took as her own prompt the idea of “oddkin,” a term coined by the feminist author Donna Haraway, which encompasses “unexpected collaborations and combinations” in the making of a chosen family, or in Chase’s case, a festival of pieces and performers. In that vein, says Chase, “there will be some sprinklings of very old music, 14th century music, heard in new

arrangements and new ensemble configurations, and there will also be music by almost four generations of composers, most of whom I’m just so gobsmacked to say will actually be in Ojai with us.”

Additionally, rather than present a traditional cohort of featured artists, Chase has constructed something closer to a nonhierarchical collective. “Importantly, a lot of the composers

Photo: Square Productions

Photo: Shervin Lainez

Photo: Cindy Pitou Burton

Below: Ara Guzelimian is Artistic and Executive Director of the Ojai Music Festival

The JACK Quartet (violinists

Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell)

Students Alicia Gonzalez (left) and Lucy Tirado try out trumpets from Ojai Music Festival’s BRAVO Music Van for elementary schools.

are also performers,” she says. “You’ll see me as a side act one night and as a headliner the next. … So often as artists were asked to come to a festival to do one thing. … I really love the idea of inviting this group of people to come and do many things, to show the full range of what they do as artists, and also to find themselves in unexpected combinations.”

Those unexpected combinations may extend off the stage, when audience members rub elbows with performers at chance encounters along the arcade.

“Given the informality of Ojai, you may be just as likely to run into a composer at

Guzelimian goes so far as to say that “music sounds better in Ojai,” a phenomenon he credits to the singular chemistry between the surroundings and spirit of the valley. “There is something about being in community, in a physically beautiful environment, which I think creates greater receptivity and openness on the part of both the performing musicians and the audience,” he explains. “You come ready to drop accumulated expectations and listen to music for what it has to offer.” Chase echoes the sentiment: “It’s a level of curiosity on the part of the listener that I’ve never

a musical drama for solo-flute, live electronics, and community musicians, as the capstone of this year’s opening night. It’s a piece from her own “Density 2036” project, which follows “the Greek flute-playing figure of fame or infamy, depending on which part of the Greek myth you subscribe to,” she says. As the oldest-known constructed musical instrument, the flute has been used for millennia to mark occasions of ceremony and celebration and predates many of the systems of social organization that we take for granted today. The “Pan” ensemble will include not only Chase — a virtuoso whom The New York Times called “the most important flutist of our time” — but also anyone with the inclination to join her. Children from the Ojai Music Festival’s BRAVO program, which brings music education to Ojai’s senior centers and elementary schools, will participate, as well as any attendees willing to attend two brief rehearsals, where instruction will be given on chanting and handheld percussion instruments.

Everybody is welcome, Chase insists, regardless of age or ability. “If people want to play, the invitation is open,” she says. “No experience is required.”

For tickets and more information about the 2025 Ojai Music Festival, held June 5-8 at Libbey Bowl, the Ojai Meadows Preserve, and other locations, visit ojaifestival.org.

Photo supplied

Left: Marcos Balter

March

“Metes and Bounds: Mapping the Ojai Valley” Exhibit Through March 9

Ojai Valley Museum

130 W. Ojai Ave.

805-640-1390

ojaivalleymuseum.org

Canvas and Paper Exhibit: William Scott Through April 13

311 N. Montgomery St.

Open: Thursday – Sunday

Noon – 5 p.m.

Free admission canvasandpaper.org

“What is Beauty? Rethinking Women’s Portraiture in Art” Group Exhibit Through May 11

Museum of Ventura County

100 E. Main St., Ventura. venturamuseum.org

“Masters from the Museum of Ventura County Collection” and “InnoVision: Ventura County Artists to Watch” Through May 11 Museum of Ventura County 100 E. Main St., Ventura. venturamuseum.org

Ojai Historical Walking Tours

March 15, 10:30 a.m.

Ojai Valley Museum

130 W. Ojai Ave.

Tickets: ojaivalleymuseum.org.

Learn about Ojai’s unique history on a 90-minute tour led by docent Cricket Twichell.

Works from Beato’s Studio Opening Reception: March 22, 2 - 4 p.m. Through May 11

Beato Gallery

Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts 8585 Ojai-Santa Paula Rd. beatricewood.com

“Crimes of the Heart” at Ojai Art Center Theater

March 28 - April 20

113 S. Montgomery St.

Tickets and showtimes: ojaiact.org

Ojai Historical Walking Tours

March 29, 10:30 a.m.

Ojai Valley Museum

130 W. Ojai Ave.

Tickets: ojaivalleymuseum.org.

Learn about Ojai’s unique history on a 90-minute tour led by docent Mark Lewis.

April

123rd Ojai Tennis Tournament

April 23-27

Tickets and schedule: theojai.net

Canvas and Paper Exhibit:

Cornelis Kick, William Scott

Louis Valtat

April 24 – June 22

311 N. Montgomery St.

Open: Thursday – Sunday

Noon – 5 p.m.

Free admission canvasandpaper.org

Rewild Ojai Native Garden Tour

April 26, 9 a.m.- 3 p.m.

Info. and tickets: ovlc.org

805-649-6852

Tour of eleven native plant gardens across the Ojai Valley

May

Chamber On The Mountain Presents: Jan Bartoš, Pianist

May 4, 3 p.m.

Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts

8585 Ojai-Santa Paula Rd.

Tickets: beatricewood.com

48th Annual Art in the Park

May 24-25, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Libbey Park

210 S. Signal St. ojaiartcenter.org/artinthepark

Ventura County Potters’ Guild Exhibit

Opening Reception: Sat., May 24, 2 - 4 p.m.

Through July 6.

Beato Gallery

Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts 8585 Ojai-Santa Paula Rd. beatricewood.com

June

Ojai Music Festival Presents “Ojai Talks”with Claire Chase and Festival Artists

June 5, 3 p.m.

Ojai Presbyterian Church 304 Foothill Rd.

For ticket info. visit: ojaifestival.org email: boxoffice@ojaifestival.org or call: 805-646-2053

Ojai Music Festival Presents “Pan” Program of works by Annea Lockwood, Marcos Balter, and Claire Chase

June 5, 8 p.m.

Libbey Bowl

210 S. Signal St.

For ticket info. visit: ojaifestival.org email: boxoffice@ojaifestival.org or call: 805-646-2053

Ojai Music Festival Presents “Impressions” A Program of Works by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Cory Smythe and Craig Taborn

June 6, 10:30 a.m. Libbey Bowl

210 S. Signal St. For ticket info. visit: ojaifestival.org email: boxoffice@ojaifestival.org or call: 805-646-2053

79th Ojai Music Festival June 5-8 Libbey Bowl

210 S. Signal St. For ticket info. visit: ojaifestival.org email: boxoffice@ojaifestival.org or call: 805-646-2053

Susie Ibarra will perform the West Coast premiere of Sky Islands at the Ojai Music Festival 2025 June 5-8

Photo: Tony Cenicola

“Iwant to read something short,” announces a man in the sunny courtyard of Bart’s Books, the world’s largest outdoor bookstore. It’s a bright winter day, and a smattering of other customers are skimming shelves or reading peacefully, perched on wooden benches and wrought iron chairs. “Fiction,” he adds. “Excellent prose.”

Emma Bailey, events manager at Bart’s, marches over from within the stacks. “Claire Keegan,” she replies without hesitation. “Have you read Foster? No? Come with me.” Within minutes he’s found the very thing he didn’t know he’d been looking for, and Bailey is pressing the bagged book into his hands.

The algorithm, as they say, could never. Such is the magic of a brick-and-mortar bookstore, and in particular, the essential Ojai institution, Bart’s Books. After more than half a century in business, the art of the hand-sell is alive and well here, and while Bart’s may be known worldwide for its bohemian, eminently Instagrammable setting — a kind of Ojai aesthetic writ large — for a community of local readers, it remains a vital source for inspiration, ideas, and connection.

“The thing that matters is to be able to continually provide people intellectual, emotional, moral, and spiritual sustenance,” says Bart’s General Manager Matt Henriksen. “What we do here is important and valuable in people’s lives. That’s the story that keeps mattering to me.”

To celebrate its recent 60th anniversary, and in anticipation of many more years of selling new and used books to come, the magazine turned to a few die-hard Bart’s fans to hear what the bookstore means to them.

the novelist

“In Ojai, Bart’s has the quality of a ‘third place,’” explains acclaimed novelist Jacqueline Winspear, a former full-time

by AGATHA FRENCH

resident who now spends winters in Ojai. (The term “third place,” coined by urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg, refers to a public setting that hosts “gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home

and work” and serves as “the heart of a community’s social vitality.”) As Ojai evolves to host more weekend tourists and second-home owners, she describes Bart’s as “welcoming to visitors, yet recognizing regulars, with seating so you can linger for a while or browse — and perhaps end up having a conversation about books with someone you’ve just met.”

To Winspear, that “warm sense of belonging” is Bart’s chief function and appeal, but because she is an author of historical fiction, it’s also come in handy for source material. “Immersing myself in time and place is a key element in my research,” she notes. When writing The Care and Management of Lies, which is set during the Great War, she unearthed two rare British Army manuals of the era. “That’s the sort of magic that happens in Bart’s — you’ll be in a given section and there it will be, on the shelf right in front of you, the book you really need, want, or was just meant to be yours.”

This spring, Winspear will publish the 18th — and final — Maisie Dobbs novel, The Comfort of Ghosts. (The first installment was published in 2003.) To cap off the internationally bestselling series, which represents more than two decades of celebrated work, Winspear has chosen to hold it — where else? — at Bart’s Books on May 10.

the firefighter

“I think I have close to 1,000 books in my apartment right now, and a lot of those I bought at Bart’s,” says Ventura County Fire Department Capt. Tony McHale. “I go there as often as I can, even when I’m working. I developed a habit of driving by when I’m on duty. I’ll have the engine roll up near the door, and I’ll wave at the staff inside, just to check on it, just to keep an eye on things, because it’s such a special place.”

Hale first discovered Bart’s in 1977, as a boarding student at the Ojai Valley School. His father visited the store and bought him a copy of Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence as a graduation gift. “I still have that book,” he notes. For McHale, a voracious reader who visits the store weekly, Bart’s has played a significant role in passing his love of literature on to his own children. He frequently takes his kids “treasure hunting” at Bart’s — it’s even written into his will that when he passes away, they can keep the books they want and donate the rest to the bookstore.

Bart’s is the site of many warm memories

for McHale — including memories of love. “I’ve even sparked romances in there,” he says of an old flame. “We used to go to the poetry room, which is toward the back, and rendezvous, meaning we’d meet and read and hang out. … It was very romantic.” McHale grows especially wistful when describing Bart’s in intrepid weather, “when they batten down the hatches, but you can hear the rain hitting the corrugated steel roof.” An amorous fireman reading poetry in the rain? Is that Hollywood calling? In fact, Bart’s Books was so central to the romance that “BB” (Bart’s Books)

became their lovers’ code. And although the relationship ended, the sentiment lives on. “I still have books that she bought me there, and she’d always inscribe them with a note, and then she’d write ‘BB,’” he says fondly. “I’m still in a BB state of mind. Even though life changes and romance changes and everything else, BB is a state of mind for me. Bart’s Books: It’s safe, it’s a refuge, it’s comforting, it’s embracing.”

the council member

“Bart’s is a connecting place,” says City Councilmember, astrological consultant, and artist Rachel Lang. “There’s a feeling of being connected to the community that has donated those books, or the people who’ve read those books and then given them back.”

Like Hale, Lang appreciates the thrill that can only be found at a used bookstore.

“Every time I walk into Bart’s,” she says, “I feel like I’m walking into a cave with a buried treasure … diamonds in the rough.” Independently published and out-of-print books especially attract her eye, and she draws much of her inspiration as an artist from the store’s excellent art-book section. “I found, for example, a set of notebooks from Hilma af Klint, who’s one of my favorite artists, and it’s all of her sketches.” (Hilma af Klint, considered a pioneer of abstract art, was also a mystic; Lang holds a master’s in theology from Loyola Marymount.) “I didn’t even know that existed … now it’s one of my favorite purchases,” she says.

Lang, who moved to Ojai during the pandemic, views Bart’s trade-and-sell policy

as a “revolving bookshelf.” Holding a book in your hands that belonged to a fellow Ojaian, she explains, is a form of intimacy: “[Bart’s] is a place where you connect to ideas, where you connect to other people that you might never meet, but you’re connecting to them because you’re holding the book that they read at night to go to sleep.” Before she moved here, she’d visited Bart’s and enjoyed the novelty of an outdoor bookstore, but since becoming a full-time resident, her relationship to the store has deepened. “It’s been written up in different magazines, so it’s well-known,” she says. “But I think for those of us in the community, it’s a place where you can go and be still. It’s a respite.”

the journalist

“It’s always been there,” says journalist Andra Belknap, “but it’s always been the people that steward it as opposed to the place.” Belknap is deeply invested in the people and places that make this community tick. A Ventura County native, she also brings an established perspective, an insider’s view of the way Ojai is evolving. “In my memory of Ojai, there were times where we had two new bookstores, both of which were in the arcade. Neither of them, of course, is in business anymore.” Belknap’s interests as a journalist, which she describes as wide-ranging, include homelessness and incarceration, and while she does use Bart’s as a resource to deepen her interests, she turns to it more often for inspiration, nourishment, and belonging. “If you go through the old books, you’ll often find people’s names. You’ll find notes they wrote. Sometimes you’ll find a birthday card or a photo that somebody was using as a bookmark. There are all these sweet little personal touches, like pieces of the community between the pages of the books, literally.”

Others have delighted in Belknap’s own ephemera. “I brought in two boxes of old books, and then, like a week later, a friend of mine texted me,” she says. “He’d picked up a copy of … Dubliners by James Joyce, and it had my name in the front.”

These days, Belknap is mostly trading in fiction for memoirs. “I am really inspired by other women’s stories of their lives,” she says. In some ways, the scope of her own life has been influenced by communities that, in difficult times, have coalesced around the bookstore. “There have been

times where fellow creative friends have organized readings,” she says, describing an event following the 2017 Thomas Fire that asked writers to share work about their experiences, including what they chose to take with them when they evacuated. “It feels like only very recently that I’ve felt comfortable with the title: ‘I am a writer.’ But friends of mine in the Bart’s Books community invited me to use that title and contribute to a reading before I was even ready to call myself that,” she explains.

And while the literary landscape of Ojai has changed since she was a kid, Belknap

is quick to remind readers “that we’re extremely lucky to have a bookstore the size of [Bart’s],” not least of which because its stewards have ensured that it remains a truly welcoming space for everyone. She credits employees, including Bailey and Henriksen, for keeping that tradition alive. To put it simply, she says, “We’re lucky that it employs so many cool people.”

the mom

“I’d just moved here, I had a new baby, and I was lonely. Meeting people through Bart’s was the first time I felt like I could make Ojai my home,” says Agatha French.

Wait a second, that’s me.

Dear Reader, the final Bart’s Books superfan is yours truly — a beleaguered, on-deadline, drowning-in-laundry mom, the writer of this very article. Please permit me to break the fourth wall as I attempt to summarize the special role that Bart’s has played in my life as a new Ojaian.

fans featured here:

Ernest Hemingway

12. In Praise of Risk, Anne Dufourmantelle

I am (forgive me) a recent L.A. transplant who moved here less than a year ago with her husband, baby, and elderly mom. As a caregiver, I mostly work at home, and for those first few intensely isolating months after moving to a small town where I knew virtually no one, I was desperately in need of a “third place,” lest I completely disintegrate. Bookstores have always returned me to myself, and I can reliably find company in a good novel, but Bart’s offered something I wasn’t expecting: welcoming, fast friends. The people I met through Bart’s have invited me to birthday

“Have you read F o ster? No? Come with me.”

parties and coffee dates, added me to text threads and co-working groups, and taken the time to get to know me (and my now busy toddler).

If you enjoy the company of writers and readers, attend a Bart’s Books event. If you crave smart conversation with smart people, avail yourself of Bart’s passionate booksellers, whose literary knowledge is far-reaching, and whose recommendations are consistently on point. And if you want to know Ojai — whether it’s the place you call home, or the idyllic town you’re just visiting for the weekend — spend a few hours wandering through the store. Treat yourself to a few intriguing books and get curious about what you find in them.

Because, as Lang says: “When you go into a bookstore, you’re going to see: What does this community care about? Who are the people here? What are they learning? What worldview do they embody?” Bart’s is, in many ways, a reflection of the

community’s true character. The books themselves may be paper- or hard-back, rare or familiar, dog-eared or pristine, but it’s the people — the readers — who make what they contain come alive.

Emma Bailey, events manager at Bart’s Books

Photo by Liz Fish

by JOHN FONTEYN

Weeding FOR Wellness

IN our busy, often chaotic lives, it’s easy to become disoriented by the crowds on Shelf Road or the home invasion of a late-night sonic boom. We crave silence, peace, and stillness, but all too often these moments of tranquility are fleeting. Maybe you catch a small glimpse of it during a Tuesday night downward dog at Move Sanctuary, or a moment or two in a Thursday night sunset and sound bath at Meditation Mount. Well, if you’re looking for more, a powerful wellness practice is sweeping the nation, and it’s happening at Poco Farm in Meiners Oaks, every third Sunday of the month. No, it’s not a hot Lagree class, and it won’t help you lose that extra 10, or outline how to launch that side hustle you’ve been boring your friends with. This practice, wait for it … is silent weeding meditation — wow, right!!! By tuning into the act of weeding in a garden, we can learn to be present with what is, without attachment to the outcome. Revolutionary, I know. It’s going to be bigger than walking, knitting, or baking sourdough bread from your own starter.

I’m guessing that for most people, weeding a garden may seem like the last thing they want to do; it’s a dirty, tedious, never-ending task. And, if by some weird chance they’re into that kind of kink, what kind of masochist would weed someone else’s garden, much less farm, and do it silently.

It’s like drinking a tall glass of orange juice after brushing your teeth. After all, the weeds grow back, no matter how many times they are pulled. (I wish my hair did.) In Buddhist philosophy, impermanence (anicca) is one of the three marks of existence. Everything — our experiences, our emotions, even the things we most try to control — changes and fades away. (Like a relatively stop sign-free Grand Avenue, Casa de Lago, and affordable housing). When we weed a garden, we confront this impermanence in a tangible, immediate way. When you pull a weed, ya know it’s coming back.

This cyclical nature mirrors the ebb and flow of life itself. No matter how hard we try to prevent weeds from reappearing, they will always come back like a wildfire or June gloom. In this way, silent weeding meditation is not about

achieving a permanent solution, but about accepting the constant change. We can practice the subtle art of letting the f*ck go of the desire for control, progress, and perfection. (What if they never finish the road construction in front of Nordhoff? What if the bowling alley just stayed a parking lot for cops and the occasional RV?)

As we pull the weeds, we practice the art of equanimity — the ability to remain balanced and calm when you discover, after waiting in an insane line behind a family of four and their huge dog, that they bought the last of your favorite pastries. Weeding becomes a process of observing and participating, rather than an attempt to “fix” or “improve.” The pulling of weeds offers a moment of stillness to align with the present and detach from any ideas of how something should look or how to hurry up and finish it perfectly forever.

It’s easy to think that silence is the key to meditation, but consider the boom of another one of Elon’s rockets, the roar of a power washer, or the braap braap of motorcycles in the distance. These sounds are often seen as bad, crappy distractions, interrupting our precious peace and quiet. But in silent weeding meditation, these sounds can serve as invitations to deepen your practice. The loud, seemingly disruptive noises of everyday life are not so different from the sounds of nature. Just as chickens cluck in the background, or the wind whispers through the leaves, Rocket Boy’s toys or a motorcycle could be observed without resistance.

Instead of pointlessly wishing these things away, we could use them as an anchor to our present experience. Using every sound as a call to return, to the garden, to the weeds, and to the present pink moment.

Weeding a garden isn’t a chore or a spiritual bypass — it’s a practice of embracing what is. It’s about letting go of our attachment to peace and quiet and inviting the crapcophony in for tea. We learn to sit on the banks of the river of noise, then lovingly dry ourselves off when we repeatedly find ourselves neck-deep and wet with craving and aversion. The leaf blower, like the weeds, is not something to be banished; it is a reminder that life is full of noise, and our job is not to control it, but to figure out how to be OK even

if our neighbor’s kid got drums for their birthday.

One of the central teachings of Buddhism is the concept of impermanence. Weeds are a natural part of life. After all, “weeds” is just a word we made up for plants that are growing somewhere we don’t like. It reminds me of the Burning Man word for trash — MOOP (Material Out of Place). No matter how many times we remove them from the garden, they will always return. It’s like Superman coming home from a long day at work and telling Lois, “No matter how many times I save the world, it just keeps getting F’d up again.” But if things were different, Superman would just be some weirdo flying around in his underwear lamenting perfection. The cycle of growth, death, and rebirth mirrors the impermanence of all things in life.

The weeds in the garden are no different from the MOOP that appears in our lives and sticks to the bottom of our shoes. We may clear them away temporarily, but they will inevitably return in some form. This isn’t failure or something that must be “fixed,” but rather a reflection of life’s transience. Just as weeds appear and disappear, so do our difficulties, desires, and attachments.

Weeding invites us to let go of outcomes and stop smearing our attachment and aversion on the walls of our mind. We can’t control the garden, so why be pissed off when the weeds grow back. The practice of weeding is an opportunity to do the task without resistance, appreciating the process over the result. The weeds themselves, in their impermanent nature, teach us about the beauty of acceptance. Weeds and thoughts aren’t “good” or “bad”; they’re just MOOP. Sure, you can’t control them, but you can control how you respond. Maybe this sounds terribly boring, or maybe it feels like nonsense and you’d rather be scrolling. Well, fair enough. Here’s the hard sell: It’s free, it’s only an hour, and it’s right around the corner from Farmer and the Cook. And when you’re done suffering your way through something that’s supposed to bring you closer to peace, joy, and clarity, you can go brag about your zen-like superiority over a killer chai and fresh carrot muffin.

Poco Farm is a nonprofit learning farm in Meiners Oaks run by Dan and Grace Malloy (and Li’l Early). Learn more at pocofarm.com.

Bjørnland’s operation is still small but steadily expanding. Working from her home kitchen, she crafts her loaves using organic flour, salt, and water, added to a sourdough starter she began during the pandemic. “The starter has been with me everywhere, across continents,” she says. Her bread, with a 36-hour fermentation process, is delightful. It perfectly balances crispiness, chewiness, and softness, and is both nutritious and easily digestible. “The long fermentation makes it easier to digest and unlocks more nutrients,” she explains.

Beyond online orders and a small farmstand she has launched outside her home on La Luna Avenue, one of Bjørnland’s proudest baking achievements has been her partnership with the Ojai Unified School District (OUSD). With her children having been a big inspiration for her decision to focus on healthy, homemade bread, she wanted to take this a step further and feed more kids. “So, I decided on a whim one day to contact Lexi Hicks, the Director of Nutrition Services at OUSD, offering her my bread to see if it was something the district would like to serve its students.”

Indeed it was. Hicks says that thanks to a grant for providing local, whole foods to its students, bringing in Bjørnland’s bread seemed like a natural fit. “We started with Nordhoff [Junior High and High School] because we have a daily sandwich option at the school. It has been a hit. Students are definitely noticing,

and we are hoping to expand it to the elementary sites this [spring] semester,” she says. “Bread typically contains a ton of pesticides, unless it’s organic, so Linn’s bread has allowed us to offer a nutritious and safe alternative. She even went the extra mile to make sure the loaves are the right shape, have the correct ratio of whole grains, and slices, and she delivers it for us.”

Bjørnland says, of her twice-per-week deliveries of whole wheat loaves to Nordhoff, “I wanted to offer something healthier than processed bread,” she says. “It’s rewarding to know my bread is part of kids’ meals.”

For Bjørnland baking bread has become a way to connect with her community in a meaningful way. “Bread brings people together,” she says. “It’s satisfying to know that what I make can nourish others and build connections.” Her vision

for Bluebell Bakehouse goes beyond bread, although she is also working on expanding her menu to include more varieties of bread, like seeded multigrain loaves, baguettes, and sweet treats. At her small farmstand at her home, she plans to sell these baked goods alongside other handmade items, like candles, handmade brooms, and dyed fabrics. “I’m an artist, and I want to create a space that reflects both my and Ojai’s creative spirit,” she says. As she reflects on her journey from ballet to baking, she smiles and says: “It’s funny how life takes you in unexpected directions. But I’m happy with where I’ve landed. Baking has given me a way to express myself, connect with others, and build something I’m proud of. And that feels pretty amazing.”

Bluebell Bakehouse 1351 S. La Luna Ave., Ojai bluebellbakehouse.com

Above: Linn’s sourdough is the perfect balance of crispiness, chewiness, and softness. Right: Hand-crafting a rustic broom handle. Photos supplied

Earth Day Eating

Celebrate Earth Day with your fork!

Dig into these Earth-friendly kitchen tips and an Earth Day menu.

Ojai is at its fi nest in the spring. The hills are carpeted with the velvet green of wild grasses; poppies and lupine wave in the breeze; birds busily build their nests; and water trickles in creek beds. No wonder Earth Day — April 22 — falls in the spring.

AN EARTH-FRIENDLY KITCHEN

So, what can you do in your kitchen to reduce your impact on the planet?

Check out these green tips to get started.

TIP 1: REDUCE PLASTIC USE

The ubiquitous use of plastics in our food stream is emerging as one of the most critical environmental concerns of our time. Plastics, including small plastic particles known as microplastics, pollute our water, soil, and air, and are linked to multiple human health concerns.

Take Action: Use glass or metal storage containers instead of plastic; use reusable cloth bags instead of plastic shopping and storage bags; avoid plastic water bottles; and purchase as many foods as possible in their whole form, with minimal plastic packaging.

TIP 2: EAT MORE PLANTS

Significantly reduce your environmental footprint — water and land use, and

when our planet really shows off her beauty, reminding us just how important it is to take good care of Mother Earth.

One impactful way to celebrate Earth Day is with your plate. After all, the production of food wreaks havoc on our planet.

pollution — by simply cutting back on animal foods (in particular, red meat and dairy) and switching to more plant-based meals during the week. Take Action: Try skipping animal foods one day a week, then as you get more familiar with plantbased foods, add more meat-free days to your menu.

Trade meat for beans, tofu, and peanuts, and boost whole grains and veggies on your plate.

TIP

3: GROW

SOME FOOD

Growing some of your own food can reap myriad rewards: Erase the transportation needed to ship food, as well as pesticide

Sharon Palmer, MSFS, RDN, is a plantbased, sustainability nutrition expert and author based in Ojai.

It is globally responsible for 26% of our greenhouse gas emissions, 50% of habitable land use, 70% of freshwater use, and 78% of water pollution. The good news is that making shifts in your diet can be one of the most powerful tools you possess to lessen your impact on the planet.

and fertilizer use; promote biodiversity and pollinator health; and support your own mental health through gardening. Take Action: Reserve a portion of your garden for vegetables and fruit trees (citrus, stone fruit, and avocados do well in this region). Try container gardening to get started, planting vegetables (easy, bountiful plants include kale, arugula, tomatoes, bell peppers, and zucchini) in the early spring that will thrive through the end of summer. Start a compost pile to enrich your soil without the need for fertilizers.

TIP 4: TRIM FOOD WASTE

Up to 40% of our edible food supply is wasted. Every time you throw away food, you toss out all the inputs used to create that food, including land, water, and fossil fuels.

Take Action: Be mindful when shopping, buying only enough for the week. Use foods before they spoil, and pack up leftovers.

Recipes and Photos by SHARON PALMER

Chipotle Black Bean Burger

This simple, planet-friendly veggie burger is packed with nutrition and flavor, compliments of quinoa, black beans, veggies, and spices.

Makes 10 servings

INGREDIENTS

2 cups cooked quinoa, cooled

1 (15-ounce) can vegetarian refried black beans

½ medium bell pepper, finely chopped

¼ medium red onion, diced

1 medium carrot, shredded

2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped

¼ cup mayonnaise

½ cup breadcrumbs

1 teaspoon chipotle seasoning

Salt to taste

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 375 F.

2. Stir together quinoa, refried black

Citrus Barley Salad

This eco-friendly salad sparkles with the flavors of mandarins, grapefruit, wholegrain barley, kale, red onions, walnuts, and a lemony chipotle vinaigrette. You can serve it warm or cool.

Makes 8 Servings

INGREDIENTS

Cooked Barley:

1 cup barley, uncooked

3½ cups water

SALAD:

3 medium mandarin oranges

1 small grapefruit

½ medium red onion, sliced

4 cups chopped fresh kale, lightly packed

½ cup chopped walnuts

LEMON CHIPOTLE VINAIGRETTE:

1 lemon, juiced

1 tablespoon whole-grain mustard

1½ tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

½ teaspoon chipotle seasoning

Salt to taste

beans, bell pepper, onion, carrot, cilantro, mayonnaise, breadcrumbs, and chipotle seasoning in a mixing bowl until smooth. Season with salt to taste.

3. Spray a baking sheet with nonstick cooking spray.

4. Scoop up ½-cup portions of the veggieburger mixture and form into 10 patties (about 3 inches in diameter and 1 inch thick). Place on the baking sheet.

5. Place baking sheet in oven and bake about 40-45 minutes until crispy on the outside and firm.

6. Remove from oven and serve as desired.

7. Serving Suggestions: Serve in a bun with lettuce, tomatoes, and avocado; over a bed of salad greens or as a patty with mashed potatoes and mushroom sauce.

NUTRITION INFORMATION PER SERVING: Calories: 157, Sugar: 1g, Sodium: 360mg, Fat: 6g, Saturated Fat: 1g, Carbohydrates: 21g, Fiber: 4g, Protein: 5g

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Place barley in a small pot with water. Bring to a boil, cover, and cook until just tender, yet firm (about 30 minutes). Drain any remaining water. Cool slightly.

2. While barley is cooking, prepare the salad and vinaigrette. Peel mandarin oranges and slice into thin horizontal circles.

3. Peel grapefruit, and segment, removing the membrane.

4. Place sliced mandarin oranges and grapefruit segments in a large salad bowl.

5. Add red onion slices and chopped kale.

6. Add cooked barley. Sprinkle with chopped walnuts.

7. To make vinaigrette, whisk together lemon juice, mustard, olive oil, chipotle seasoning, and salt in a small dish.

8. Pour vinaigrette over the salad and toss together gently.

9. Serve warm, room temperature, or cold.

NUTRITION INFORMATION PER SERVING: Calories: 211, Sugar: 6g, Sodium: 64mg, Fat: 10g, Saturated Fat: 1g, Carbohydrates: 27g, Fiber: 6g, Protein: 6g

38.2 ACRE RANCH

CAF Cyclists Cruise Ojai

Raising funds and awareness for adaptive sports

Apersonal quest, supported by a community of athletes, turned into a 30-year odyssey of inspiration, achievement, and awareness of the plight and extraordinary tenacity of challenged athletes everywhere. A desire to help a friend in need segued into the creation of the Challenged Athletes Foundation (CAF), a nonprofit organization that has raised more than $178 million, funding over 55,000 grants for individuals with physical disabilities in all 50 states and 70 countries across 105 different sports.

CAF provides direct grants to athletes in need of adaptive athletic equipment, training, and travel support, and sponsors adaptive sports camps and clinics. Since 2005, CAF also provides support to veterans and first responders through Operation Rebound.

Jim MacLaren was a phenom who inspired several of his triathlete friends, including Bob Babbitt, Jeffrey Essakow and Rick Kozlowski, to found CAF in 1994. MacLaren,

a former Yale University football player and athlete, lost his left leg below the knee at age 22 in 1985. In 1987, MacLaren completed the New York City marathon in three hours and 16 minutes, and in 1992, he completed the Ironman World Championship race in Hawaii in 10 hours and 42 minutes, which was a record for an amputee at the time and in the top 20% of all competitors.

MacLaren suffered another accident in a cycling event in 1993, after which he became paralyzed and a high-level quadriplegic. MacLaren’s friends organized a fundraising event to raise $25,000 to purchase an adaptive van to allow MacLaren more independence. The inaugural 1994 San Diego Triathlon Challenge in La Jolla exceeded expectations, raising double its initial goal.

At that time, “for an amputee to run a marathon was almost unheard of — it was before the high-tech running blades,” said CAF Board member Virginia Tinley. “He ran the marathon and had a great time. And afterwards, he said, ‘Okay, now I’m going to do the Hawaii Ironman.’ The Hawaii Ironman was thought to be even more insane for anybody, including able-bodied people.”

Tinley was CAF’s first volunteer and employee, then executive director for 28 years. “The thing that took us by surprise was the number of challenged athletes who came to the event to show their respect to Jim because he had meant so much to them as a role model,” Tinley said. “We found out

that adaptive sports equipment is not covered by insurance, and most couldn’t afford it. We thought …why don’t we just keep doing it, and we’ll put the money towards adaptive sports equipment for challenged athletes?”

Long before the world saw Paralympic athletes in action, CAF was raising funds for athletes with physical disabilities to pursue dreams of participating and competing in recreational or elite competitions for Team USA.

story and photos by HOLLY ROBERTS

“CAF supported 57% of Team USA athletes at some time along their journey. There were 222 Team USA athletes (2024 Paralympics), and we had supported 127 of them,” CAF CEO Christine Entwistle said. The support might have helped athletes when they were young, needed a piece of equipment as they progressed, or traveled to attend a qualifier.

CAF’s 2025 grants, distributed in the spring, will include equipment for even more sports such as rock climbing and water sports. Over 50 year-round clinics reach athletes of all ages around the country in such sports as running and mobility, rock climbing, skiing, cycling, and bobsledding. It’s critical to reach people early in their development. CAF partners with existing adaptive organizations and leagues to provide equipment, coaches, or support for local programming. “The goal is to let us help you plug in where you live, so that you can be active and it fits your lifestyle and you can be with your family,” said Entwistle. Headquartered in San Diego, CAF has regional offices in Northern California, Idaho, and the Northeast. Global partners include Nike, Össur, Smoothie King, Accenture, Toyota, EōS Fitness, the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation, and 100%.

Left page:

CAF athletes roll into the final stretch along the Ojai Valley Bike Trail during their Ojai Women’s Cycling Retreat.

CAF athlete and seven-time USA Paralympic athlete in alpine skiing and cycling, Muffy Davis.

CAF CEO Kristine Entwistle brings up the rear of the group as they navigated Creek Road.

Right page:

Eva Simmons finishes Day 1 of the Challenged Athletes Foundation (CAF) Ojai Women’s Cycling Retreat event on the Ojai Valley Bike Trail.

CAF former Executive Director and current Board member Virginia Tinley (left) and Ellen Osinski prepare to ride out from the Ojai Valley Inn.

KRISTINE ENTWISTLE

Entwistle’s first CAF event was the Million Dollar Challenge cycling event, after she met one of CAF’s founders 19 years ago. She was immediately hooked on the supportive community and mission. Hundreds of volunteers support the events, clinics, and programs. “It’s really something that brings people together, and they hate to see someone on the sidelines,” Entwistle said. “They’re so encouraging. ‘Come on. We can do it together.’ Seeing what one piece of equipment could do for someone’s life — it’s transformational. All of a sudden, you’re active; you’re out and you’ve got a community; you’ve got goals; you’ve got self-confidence.”

One of CAF’s goals is to increase female participation in adaptive sports. “Having that encouragement, having that message that sport is for everyone, can be so powerful,” Entwistle said. More than 30 athletes gathered at the Ojai Valley Inn for a three-day CAF Ojai Women’s Cycling Retreat and fundraiser from Oct.7 to 9 that raised over $100,000. Four CAF athletes participated in the retreat and cycled along with able-bodied riders through the Ojai Valley, around Lake Casitas to the Carpinteria bluffs, along the coast to Ventura, and back up along the Ojai Valley Bike Trail.

Riders took either Epic or Classic rides, depending on the number of miles logged each day. Cyclists covered about 140 miles over three days, with two daily sag breaks and a lunch stop built into the routes

designed by CAF Special Events Cycling Manager Anna Griessler.

One day, riders enjoyed a cruise down winding, oak-canopied Creek Road, and lunch at the Ojai Olive Company tucked away in the foothills of Ojai’s East End. The Epic riders continued through the East End orange groves past Boccali’s Pizza & Pasta, famous for its fresh tomato salad and strawberry shortcake in season, and up the Dennison Grade to Upper Ojai’s panoramic views of the Topatopa Mountains.

All rides started and ended at the Ojai Valley Inn with easy access to the Ojai Valley Bike Trail, a 15-plus˜mile bike and horse trail that follows the path of the original 1898 Ojai Railroad tracks from Ojai to the coast in Ventura. CAF athletes Muffy Davis, Kelly Worrell, Eva Simmons, and Michelle Pinard participated in the event in Ojai.

MUFFY DAVIS

Davis, an up-and-coming junior ski racer in the 1980s, hit a tree while racing at age 16 in Sun Valley, Idaho, and became paralyzed, but that didn’t stop her from achieving big dreams in sports or life. “Through Challenged Athletes Foundation, I was granted one of my first monoskis and was able to get back out on the mountain,” Davis said. “And over time, it didn’t happen fast, but I was able to make it to the U.S. Paralympic team and compete in Nagano, Japan (1998), where I won a bronze (slalom), and then in Salt Lake City (2002), where I won three silvers

in alpine skiing (downhill, super-G, and giant slalom).

“And then I thought I was all done. I had my daughter at 35 and wanted to get back in shape. CAF granted me a handcycle just for recreational riding, and I started competing. Then CAF granted me a racing handcycle, and I was able to go to the 2012 London Paralympics, and I won three gold medals.”

Most recreational or paralympic hopefuls do not receive help funding their equipment

through sponsors until they reach an elite level. “Prosthetics are $30,000 and more — like a running leg,” Davis said. “Everything is so customized because every disability is very different. I have had many times where I’ve just gone out and pushed my wheelchair, and it’s not fun. It’s not recreation. What kid doesn’t want to ride a bike? Like, every kid wants to ride a bike.” Davis said she was honored to ride in the Ojai event: “[S]o many of these women have been the

backbone … and us building each other up, it makes sense. This is a great way to raise over $100,000. To come together and celebrate, and the camaraderie and friendship — it’s really exciting. I hope there will be more.”

Davis — Guinness World Record holder, U.S. Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame inductee, and former Idaho congresswoman — continues to make an impact worldwide as a motivational speaker and current elected member of the International Paralympic Committee’s

Governing Board, the US Olympic Committee’s Paralympic Advisory Committee, and a Board member of LA 2028.

KELLY WORRELL

Worrell came to CAF in 2018 as a grant recipient for a bicycle that included an adaption for riding with a congenital limb difference in her right arm. “I lived my whole life just kind of fitting in with able-bodied people,” Worrell said. “They granted me a

bike that had electric shifting, where you could have the gears and the brakes all controllable by my left hand — just, like one little finger, basically. It was just a game changer for me.”

She raced on her new adaptive bike and qualified for the Paratriathlon Nationals. “It was just incredible. From that point, I was introduced to this adaptive community.”

Worrell went on to win silver at Nationals, and qualified for the USAT Elite Para team.

Worrell is also a USAT Level 1 coach and Paratriathlon coach, and continues to train for Los Angeles 2028 Paralymics. She became the CAF Northeast program manager in 2022, providing community outreach and need-based research, and coordinating adaptive sports camps and clinics. CAF recently brought in coaches from the U.S. sled hockey team for anadaptive sled hockey clinic.

People can try out the adaptive equipment, Worrell said, and apply for a grant. “We can support them in their journey of whatever sport it is that they love, whether it be handcycling or wheelchair basketball.” Other CAF Northeast-sponsored clinics include pickleball, Nordic skiing, rock climbing, and even adapted sailing on the Hudson River in New York City.

Worrell loved joining in her first CAF Ojai Women’s Cycling Retreat. “I was so excited to be amongst these women who are just so strong and passionate,” she said. “It’s a reminder of how many people … need help, and they can’t afford (equipment) that they need to be active. $100,000 is going to change so many lives.”

EVA SIMMONS

Until Oct. 29, 2022, Eva Simmons was living out her retirement bucket list in her hometown of Columbus, Ohio. Earlier that year, she backpacked in Iceland and hiked the Inca Trail in Peru. While out on a recreational bicycle ride alone on a dirt road in Ohio, she was attacked by three pit bulls. She fought them off for over 20 minutes before Good Samaritans rescued her. Simmons’ left leg had to be amputated above the knee the following day, and her right leg required multiple surgeries and rounds of antibiotics over the next two months.

Friends and community members rallied around to offer support in her recovery. She was fitted with a prosthetic leg with a microprocessor knee, which she named Helga, and was eager to get back to her many outdoor activities.

“The first couple of months, I was in a wheelchair kind of letting myself breathe in the morning, but then I had a job to do,” she said. “I went to a gym in a wheelchair, was working out. Once I got the prosthetic, then I thought in my head that I’m just gonna walk. I mean, how hard can it be? I’ve walked all my life. Right? It was such a huge learning curve. I had no idea. Scary, but I took it as a job.”

Participants in the Challenged Athletes Foundation (CAF) Ojai Women’s Cycling Retreat gather in front of the Ojai Valley Inn prior to taking off on Day 1 of their three-day event. CAF athlete Michelle Pinard is pictured in the center on her adapted recumbent bicycle.

Simmons joined her first CAF mobility clinic in Columbus in June 2023. “I was still kind of working on my gait, but I’m like, I’m going to try to run, you know, and it wasn’t good. But the training and the coaching is amazing. It was such a great event there,” Simmons said. “I’m just blown away by CAF support and the community of women.”

Entwistle said of Simmons: “One of the things that was powerful for her is within a couple weeks of her injury, someone was talking to her about sport and saying, ‘You can give back. There’s something you can do. It’s not over. There’s a path.’”

MICHELLE PINARD

Pinard, a lifelong runner who competed in marathons, was diagnosed with cerebellar ataxia, a neurological disease that affects muscle control and mobility. A friend then turned Pinard onto CAF. Michelle’s husband, Mike Pinard, remembered the first time they went to CAF’s headquarters in San Diego in August 2021. “They had a couple of the

volunteers who put her on a recumbent bike … a spare one, and she rode around the building a couple times,” Mike said. “She had a smile ear-to-ear, and they said, ‘Great, fill out this form and take it home.’ So that’s how quickly they were able to get her on a bike and back out on the road.”

Although Michelle had been a runner since age 7, cycling offered her a chance to feel the wind in her face and freedom of movement again. “She has always had to keep moving her entire life,” Mike said. “CAF has given us that opportunity to keep her moving, and also just more importantly, a community of really awesome people that call her, support her, text her.”

Michelle said: “I think there are not enough female CAF athletes out there. We need more of them to have the gumption to come out and get fitted. It can really be any sport. It doesn’t have to be cycling. Across the world, they are changing lives. It’s amazing. Saving lives by allowing people to continue to be active.”

The need for adaptive sports grants increases each year, Tinley said. “The vision that we have is so big that, if we can just keep expanding it over the next 30 years, it will be really meaningful. I think that sports and fitness is a springboard to success in life. It builds self-esteem, self-worth, and confidence — which then allows you to go out into the world and be more successful in your career, in your family life, and within your community.

“The ability to meet incredible people, and not only the challenged athletes that we support; almost everyone has an incredible story and incredible strength from within. It’s a privilege over the years to have met so many as children and to watch them grow through their teen years, and then as adults, and then to start paying it forward and mentoring other challenged athletes.”

In November, CAF will host its flagship fundraising event, the 2025 CAF Community Weekend, in San Diego.

Visit challengedathletes.org for more details about grants, volunteering, or sponsorships.

CAF Ojai Women’s Retreat Cycling participants navigate the winding Creek Road on Day 3 of the fundraising event that raised over $100,000 to support athletes with physical disabilities who want to pursue adaptive sports. Cyclists featured include, from front left, Lenita Anthony, Melinda Johnson, Peggy Cook, and Lotte Toftdahl (waving).

PAULA ROAD OJAI, CALIFORNIA

Set on a breathtaking property, this stunning two bedroom, three bathroom home with a private study o ers the perfect blend of luxury, tranquility, and natural beauty. Surrounded by sweeping mountain views of the Topa Topa and famous Pink Moment and your very own vineyard, this property of 20 acres is a true retreat for those who appreciate privacy and picturesque landscapes.

The home features an open and airy layout with large windows that frame the stunning scenery. The spacious living area is perfect for relaxing or entertaining, seamlessly connecting to a beautiful kitchen with highend appliances. Both bedrooms are designed for comfort, with en-suite bathrooms. An additional half bathroom adds convenience, while the dedicated study provides a quiet space for work or creativity.

Step outside to your personal vineyard, featuring Viognier, Syrah, Malbec, where you can cultivate and enjoy the fruits of your land. Whether sipping wine on the patio as the sun sets over the mountains or strolling through the vines, this property o ers a lifestyle of serenity and sophistication.

$4,250,000

PAULA EDMONDS

AUNLOCKING YOUR C EATIVITY

nd the “why” of it is that I’ve spent my life striving to live creatively — through art, music, poetry, and writing — and though I’ve failed at it in a thousand spectacular ways, the benefits I’ve gotten from expressing my creative voice far outweigh the failures, so much so that I can authentically tell you I love my life because it is a creative life.

I’ve also witnessed countless people benefit from finding their creative voice and authentic expression. I’m so convinced you have something worth saying that I won’t shut up about your creativity until you agree to explore what’s inside you that needs letting out. And if you’re not sure where to start, I have good news: I’m giving you SIX STEPS to show you how to do it.

You may ask: “Why should I be more creative? Why even bother? I don’t have any talent anyway. Everyone will criticize me. And if I’m not good at it or can’t make money at it, it’s not worth doing anyway.”

Let me ask you: If we agree that you don’t need to be a professional athlete or bodybuilder to get the health benefits of exercise, why can’t you get the mental and emotional health benefits of engaging with your creativity without feeling the need to become a professional musician or bestselling author?

Your creative voice is not about having a successful career or becoming rich and famous. Conversely, it’s also not about worrying if no one likes it. I’m telling you, from decades of experience, none of that matters. What matters is what you learn about yourself through engaging with your creative voice.

Every day, we are bombarded with information provided by corporations asking us to consume, consume,

consume. Yet until now there has never been a time in known human history when nearly everyone can transmit their voice to the world. Why are we still scrolling and consuming when we could be creating?

Engaging with your creativity allows you to process everything you’re receiving and transmit your unique expression. We can now close the loop. Creativity awakens your unique voice, and by honoring it, your confidence, empathy, and understanding of who you are and what matters most to you all grow.

So what’s stopping us? The pattern I see with most adults is that — as we take on a career, relationship, home, and family — these new responsibilities and obligations begin to mushroom until our entire focus is on managing a “To-Do” list. So, the first thing I’m asking you to do is deprioritize your to-do list. I’m sure you think your life will implode, but it won’t.

Here’s the truth: Your to-do list is like a sugar high. It’s the low-hanging fruit that makes your existence feel relevant. You’re essentially telling yourself: “Well, I didn’t fulfill any of my dreams to write a novel or show my paintings in a gallery, but hey, at least the laundry is folded.” Because who wants to live with the unknown of writing a novel for eight months, wondering if it’s any good, when we can scratch “pay bills” off the list and feel that we matter?

We live in an extremely result-driven society, so making the to-do list our sole focus is easy. What suffers is our creative expression. That thing we do to feel joy and is our Soul’s Medicine — we give the crumbs of our energy to it.

How many times have you spent the day checking off all your responsibilities and obligations, adulting like a boss while hoping and praying you’ll have enough time at the end of the day to do some journaling or painting — a little something for yourself? But once you reach the day’s end, you’re zapped. No energy.

I want you to live a more creative life. A bold statement, and I realize I might not even know you, but I still want this for you.

by GREGG STEWART photo by RENEE FAIA

You ask yourself, “Why am I not getting to the thing I dream of doing with my life? Where’s my script? My memoir? Why can’t I find time to finish writing that song?”

I asked myself these questions 20 years ago while working, multitasking, providing — doing it all instead of being my authentic self. As I scratched a line through my daily tasks with such intensity that I ripped a hole in the paper, I paused and asked myself, “Why is this stupid list running my life when I’d be so much happier making stuff and being creative?”

I wanted to record my songs, write a novel and a screenplay, score films, write articles, play shows, and tour the world. I wanted to feel alive and express myself. I decided to flip my entire life on its head.

First, I reserved the biggest blocks of time for the things I loved to do. I started focusing on my creativity in the first part of my day, getting up and writing before anything else. I’d get to the laundry and grocery shopping whenever I had the time and energy. I was doing life the other way around now. Plot twist: It all got done. Everything. I didn’t fall behind at all. Here’s why: By honoring my creativity first and taking care of my soul rather than my stuff, every aspect of my life became more manageable — and more fulfilling. Giving myself permission to honor my creativity made everything else I had to do that much easier because I took care of my spirit first.

I was no longer resentful of my seemingly insurmountable tasks. It wasn’t the tasks; it was the resentment that was draining my life force because I wasn’t honoring my spirit. Once I started my day by filling my creative fuel tank, it gave me the energy and vitality to do everything at a higher capacity. My to-do list got done with far less effort. It was as if it all got done without me because I stopped giving it all my attention.

When I chose to put my attention on my creativity, it helped in two fundamental ways:

First, I was learning about myself, reading back what I’d written, and discovering what was happening inside me. As a result, I grew more comfortable in my skin, which helped me become more accepting of myself and others.

Second, creativity helped me cultivate more gratitude for my life, and cultivating

gratitude revealed more and more opportunities to be grateful.

So, I invite you to prioritize your creativity over your to-do list. Your well-being and soul journey matters more than checking items off a list.

Not sure where to start? Here are SIX STEPS to unlock your creativity and express yourself with more authenticity.

STEP #1: Claim Your Worthiness

There are now 8 billion people on this planet — and growing. Yet there is only one YOU. Out of 8 billion, no one has your unique life experiences and vantage point. In fact, of all the people who have ever lived, none have lived your exact life. So, if you don’t share your unique, oncein-a-lifetime experience — your story dies with you.

STEP #2: Pull No Punches

Agree to hold back nothing with your art. Your deepest fears, unprocessed anger, and trauma — creativity is the healthiest place you can put these things. Inside, it may feel like the weight of the world, but once you let it out, it’s only as heavy as a book or as light as a song. (That’s true alchemy!) Don’t worry who might read, see, or hear it. Create with your authentic self, warts and all, or don’t bother. Don’t strive for perfection. Perfection is how we continue hiding. Instead, show your humanity, which is messy and real. Until you “ugly cry” or “let your freak flag fly,” your work isn’t done yet. Go there.

STEP #3: Find Your Jam

Pick a creative outlet — art, photography, writing, music — whatever lights you up or sparks curiosity. You don’t have to be “good” at it — vulnerability will take you further than craft. If you’re not sure what to do, ask yourself: “What was the thing I loved to do most when I was 7?” Do that.

STEP #4: Unlock Your Creativity

Open your calendar and set a time, at least 20 minutes every day, if not an hour, preferably in the morning before the day gets away from you. Remember to take five minutes at the end of each session to review your work. Approach this review like a “dream analysis,” as if your subconscious speaks to you through your creativity. Don’t criticize. Observe and see what you discover.

STEP #5: Set Clear Intentions

What do you want to get from your creativity? You might want to publish a

novel, or you may need to work through some challenges in your life by journaling. Consider writing a love poem for your partner. That’s beautiful and a great use of your creativity to build intimacy and connection. (Notice it has nothing to do with commerce or talent.) Whatever you decide, define your creative vision at the start, and don’t change the “conditions of satisfaction” halfway through the process. Stick with your initial intention.

STEP #6: Access Authenticity

At first, you’ll likely be mimicking those whose work has inspired you, but if you show up for yourself consistently, your authentic voice will emerge, and you’ll begin discovering things you might never have learned. Review your work and ask yourself: “Of all the things I could have created, why this? What am I working through? What is my subconscious trying to tell me?” That’s where the gold is — not in what others think, but in what you learned about yourself through honoring your creativity.

The bottom line: I don’t want you to look back on your life and feel you should have spoken up more, loved bigger, shared with more vulnerability and courage, or fostered deeper connections. I invite you to explore your interior world — your dreams, truths, and fears. Sing your song. Snap that photo. Paint that picture. Write that love poem, screenplay, or novel. Excavate that gold and let it out.

Gregg’s book Let it Out: Unlocking Creativity to Access Authentic Expression is available online and locally at Three Birds (205 N. Signal St.). Gregg also facilitates writing workshops and sessions. Contact thatgreggstewart@gmail.com for more information.