Ojai Magazine Summer 2023

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Sales, rentals and management

Volume 41 No.2

EDITOR’S NOTE - 20

COVER STORY

Logan Maxwell Hagege: Visions of the Southwest - 24

COWBOYS PAST AND PRESENT

Ojai Cowboy, Sheb Wooley - 32

Law & Disorder, Ventura’s DA - 40

ART & CULTURE

Rhiannon Giddens - 48

Stoked Sur oards - 62

Khaled Fouad Photography - 122

FOOD & FARM

Mama Tree Farm -54

Fonteyn’s Fennel Feast - 84

HEALTH & TRANSFORMATION

Becoming Better Men - 68

Ojai Energetics - 76

OUTDOORS

Taft Gardens - 102

Ojai’s Soil Obsessives - 110

Summer Hikes - 116

EVENTS

Calendar - 90

Ojai Playwrights Conference - 94

april 20 – june 11

june 22 – aug 13

alfred wallis terry frost

canvas and paper

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EDITOR’S NOTE: SUMMER 2023

“Passing through, passing through. Sometimes happy, sometimes blue, Glad that I ran into you.

Tell the people that you saw me passing through.”

“Passing Through,” lyrics by Dick Blakeslee

One of the last outposts in California’s Southwest, the Ojai Valley is still connected to the deep roots of its origin story — the Chumash, vaqueros, cowboys, the rugged west itself, and the generations of health and spiritual seekers who settled here before us. The tale of the draw to this east-west-lying valley weaves a common thread over the dusty road of time to the current iteration of Ojai life.

Still they come … today’s easygoing, mystic-curious, dirt-loving, DIY souls who compose today’s Ojai village are not unique to this place. We feel the pull to ride the generational wave toward the wide open space, to neighborly hospitality, and to a slower, looser, simpler life. Most folks in the valley seem willing to take a moment to explore an idea or a memory with a stranger — enjoying the present moment, no matter who it’s with.

Some were born here — chosen by Ojai — not to mention whatever generation before them that migrated to this valley. For those first-generation choosers who now live in this special little western town, it is commonly by cause of life quest.

These days, the dilemma facing Ojaians is how to adjust to the waves of simultaneous influx and outflow of residents during a seismic economic shift. Population and housing numbers have been stagnant for decades, so as a newcomer arrives, another neighbor is lost. Deciding how much we are willing to share space and opportunity will largely determine Ojai’s cultural future. Should the people who work here be able to live here? Are we a small town with a big heart? The answer — through our actions — will say more about the character of Ojai than anything else. It’s not who we were that matters … it’s who we are and who we are becoming. And for those who haven’t realized that we are all visitors here, I suggest they take a deeper look. Native or transplant, we are temporarily in Ojai, at this time, and upon this Earth. Aren’t we all just passing through?

This issue takes a look-in at our collective journey, and specifically some of those who have made and continue to make a formative impact on Ojai culture:

Sheb Wooley, a singing cowboy from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, arrived in Ojai’s Casitas Springs. The legendary American country-western singer/comedian found peace and sobriety in the valley that soothed his soul.

One of Ventura County’s most powerful prosecutors, former six-term District Attorney Michael Bradbury — a man who still resides at his Ojai Hang ‘em High Ranch — has left his mark as lawman, horseman and cowboy poet. His credo: “Do what’s right.”

Looking forward, Jeremy B. Cohen, the new artistic director at the Ojai Playwrights Conference, raises the curtain on society’s next act through theater.

The good hearts come and go, and forward we march, dance, shout, sing, trip, and trundle on. We at Ojai Magazine continue to be inspired.

With a ection,

EDITOR / PUBLISHER

Laura Rearwin Ward

ART DIRECTOR

Paul Stanton

ASSISTANT EDITOR

Karen Lindell

WRITERS

Karen Lindell

Kerstin Kühn

Perry Van Houten

Gregg Stewart

Mimi Walker

Barbara Burke

Kimberly Rivers

John Fonteyn

Georgia Schreiner/Jake Pinkus

PRODUCTION SUPPORT

Tori Behar, Mimi Walker

ADVERTISING

Linda Snider, director of sales

Catherine Miller, account executive Ally Mills, advertising assistant

CONTACT

team@ojaivalleynews.com

advertising@ojaivalleynews.com www.ojaivalleynews.com/magazine @ojaimag

Cover art: “A Di erent

Shade of Blue” by Logan Maxwell Hagege

www.LoganMaxwellHagege.com

©2023

by KERSTIN KÜHN

Logan Maxwell Hagege

VISIONS OF THE SOUTHWEST

“My paintings are rarely things that I have actually seen with my eyes,” says Logan Maxwell Hagege. “ ey’re things that I have put together in my mind, a very distant memory of something, a time of day, or a combination of colors that I remember from somewhere.”

One of the most prominent Western artists in the U.S. today, Ojai-based Hagege creates paintings that bring together nature and imagination. Telling a highly stylized, modern tale of the desert lands of the American Southwest, his works uniquely capture the magic and mystery of a culture that has inspired artists for centuries. His vibrant oil paintings of amber cli s, lofty clouds, brawny horses, and blanketed citizens of Native American tribes have established him as a leading voice in his field, with his works part of the permanent collections of renowned institutions such as the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma

City, and Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West in Arizona, to name just a few. His works have sold for anything from $2,400 to $234,000 and range from small paintings to giant canvases as large as murals. We meet in Hagege’s studio in Meiners Oaks, a huge 2,000-square-foot open warehouse with a 20-foot-high ceiling that looks a bit like a barn from the outside. This, the artist says, is intentional so that the studio blends in with its rural surroundings. A large, light, and airy space, it features a big 8-by-8-foot window on one side, a wall lined with a bookcase bursting with art books and sculptures on another, along with handcrafted sur oards in a

enthuses. “But it only became a reality when we moved to Ojai.” Hagege grew up in the San Fernando Valley and was obsessed with art from childhood. His first creative endeavor was pursuing his passion for comic books and cartoons, when, at age 19, he joined an animation studio in Glendale. Here he was advised to hone his drawing skills at a nearby art school, where he fell in love with life drawing and quickly realized that the collaborative process of animation wasn’t for him. “At art school I loved that I would come up with an idea for a drawing or a painting and it was entirely my vision from start to finish,” he says. He quit his job at the studio and enrolled in a two-year, full-time life drawing

recalls. Upon graduating, Hagege got his work into a gallery space in Pasadena, and from then, he never looked back: “I started showing at more and more galleries and it’s been a slow evolution ever since.”

Indeed, an artist’s journey is often said to be an evolution, and Hagege admits that his journey to finding his unique style has taken years. “When you go to art school, they teach you a language and you learn how to speak and write that language. But you don’t know how to create poetry,” he explains. “When I first started showing my work at galleries, I had this vocabulary in art that allowed me to paint pretty well, but I didn’t have my own voice.”

He describes his initial style of painting as impressionistic, with short, thick strokes of paint primarily showing scenes of women on the beach. “But then I got to a point where I was suddenly really unhappy with my work and I started to explore di erent styles of painting,” he says. He began to paint things from his imagination instead of copying photographs and started to move away from a realistic to a more stylized way of depicting his subjects. “It was a strange transition because I’d had enough success early on in my career that to suddenly change my style so drastically felt like an unusual move. I wasn’t sure what people were going to think,” he recalls. “But I knew I had to follow my instinct, and actually these new paintings were more popular than my other works, and I think that was because my own unique voice was beginning to come out.”

corner (a nod to a former life), unfinished paintings on easels, printed blankets, slotted shelves holding works and canvases, and piled-up sketchbooks on his desk. It’s an artist’s atelier in the truest sense of the word, and to Hagege it’s a dream come true. “I had the vision for this type of studio — a big, bright, open space — for as long as I can remember,” he

and painting course, which saw him spend at least six hours, five days a week drawing live models. However, despite immersing himself fully, he still wasn’t sure that art would be his future. “I didn’t actually realize that art could be something you could do full time until this woman at the art school explained the process of getting into galleries to me,” he

It was around this time that Hagege embarked on a life-changing road trip through the Southwest, where he rediscovered the desert in a completely new way. “I’d never considered the desert as a subject before then, but during this trip it suddenly made so much sense,” he explains. “The feeling of being out there, the sense of exploration and traveling through these really quiet and lonely places was so exciting. The simplicity and aesthetic of the desert just clicked with me.”

Left: “The Man From Bylas,” 2020

Above: “A Day In The West,” 2017

Hagege began by painting the landscapes of the desert in a stylized yet simplistic way. But his background in life painting quickly inspired him to include the Native people of the area he met and built relationships with during his travels in his paintings, too — people from the Apache and Navajo tribes as well as the Taos Pueblo. His style began to evolve, and his paintings became more complex, developing into his mature stylized realism, which portrays the desert lands and its people in his unique and hauntingly beautiful way.

Describing his work process, Hagege says he always begins with a sketch. The notebooks he shows me, filled to the brim with his own doodles as well as scribbles from his young kids (“I’m not precious,” he laughs), are a perfect illustration of how Hagege’s imagination leads his creative process. “I start with very rough stream-of-consciousness sketches that may or may not develop into ideas. If I find something that works, a composition that I like, I try to find photographs that resemble that idea,” he says.

From there, he roughly puts the photos together in Photoshop and begins to work on the canvas, first outlining the shapes with charcoal, then painting in oil. His compositions reveal a mastery of geometric design and light, a realistic reflection of the colors and shapes that exist in nature, but an imagined coming together of elements that create an almost dreamlike scenario.

During my visit to his studio, a large painting titled “A Song at Sunset” leans against one of the walls. A huge work sized 8 by 12 feet, it features a collection of people, both on horseback and foot, in a desert scene with distant cli s, deep green cacti, and billowing clouds. A signature element of his works, the clouds act as a design feature, mimicking the shapes of the blanketed figures in the foreground, and creating a visual roadmap that guides the viewer’s perceptional journey of the canvas.

Hagege reveals that the painting began as an experiment to challenge himself to create a work on such a big scale. “In order to grow

as an artist I try to push myself into di cult and uncharted territory,” he says. “The idea sprouted from a small doodle in my sketchbook, no larger than 2 inches wide. From there, I referenced photos, which I used as a jumping-o point, for the people and horses. As with most of my work, the actual scene and setting was invented. I rely on memory and imagination to compose my paintings. The people in the painting are all friends that I have

Above: Hanging “A Song at Sunset,” 2020

Right: “Arizonaland,” 2019

Below: “Crawling Light,” 2020

made and painted over the years. And although this scene didn’t actually occur, with everyone together as a group, it brings me joy to see them all together in the painting.”

“A Song at Sunset” took over a year to complete and was intended to be part of a solo exhibition in April 2020 at the Maxwell Alexander Gallery in Los Angeles. However, due to Covid-19 the show ended up being a virtual exhibition, so despite the immense e ort the artist put into this work, it has been physically seen by only a handful of people. “That being said, I am still grateful for the experience of working on such a large piece, and plan on doing more at this scale in the future,” Hagege adds.

Hagege’s next big show, the Prix de West exhibition at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma

City, which will be on view until August. The most prestigious Western art exhibition in the U.S., it has run for more than five decades and features works by the most renowned Western artists, covering everything from historical depictions to impressionistic and contemporary pieces. “It’s a big deal in my world,” Hagege says.

Yet while Hagege feels a huge connection to the West, he shares that he sees the world through eyes di erent from those of some of his contemporaries. “I’m not a cowboy and I don’t pretend to be,” he insists. “My paintings are not historical representations or cultural depictions and they’re not paintings of Native people, but paintings of people who happen to be Native. My paintings are my vision of the world; that’s where it starts and that’s where it ends.”

Sheb Wooley An American Cowboy in Ojai

story by MIMI WALKER

photos courtesy Suzanne Gould, Chrystie Wooley, Amelia Pate Chapman, and Old Greer County Museum & Hall of Fame, Inc.

Principally preserved is the time, and house, that Johnny Cash made a home in Casitas Springs. In the early ’60s, when Cash first came out to the valley, he had plans in motion to help bring out another crooning cowboy crony of his: Sheb Wooley, star of Rawhide and father of “The Purple People Eater.”

Sheb, too, began a di erent kind of legacy as he built a life around Lake Casitas — one that would impact a handful of lives in ways even more uplifting than his comedic jukebox jewels of the day. That legacy’s journey was tracked down by Suzanne Gould, a self-professed Rawhide

superfan, in her book An American Cowboy: The Biography of Sheb Wooley. It begins in “The Breaks,” Wooley’s childhood turf, southeast of Erick, Oklahoma, which has a population of less than 1,000 people. It was far out into the country, the veins of the Dust Bowl; locals typically describe the area as where the “poorest of the poor lived.” Wooley’s mother, Ora, was a child bride; she was 13 when she was wed to William, his father, who was 26 at the time. Sheb was born in 1921, the fourth of five siblings. They lived hand-tomouth; the kids got one

e outermost lands of the Ojai Valley experienced a distinctive cowboy era in the 1960s that is still celebrated fondly today.

new pair of shoes a year. The Wooleys ventured out to Erick on Saturdays to shop and sell the cotton crop from their tiny farm patches. This is where Sheb fell in love with singing cowboy movies at the local theater, and dreamed of being a star in the same fashion. This fire in his belly urging him to break away began to kindle inside, too, on account of his “pa,” who’d come home on his mule-pulled wagon whooping and hollering from all the moonshine.

“They could hear him all through The Breaks,” Gould says. Not only did he become known to locals for rowdy drinking antics, but in Erick, William Wooley is also still remembered “to this day, over a century later, for being excessive” with the belt-beatings of his boys, notes Gould. Sheb’s eventual

only No. 1 country hit, “That’s My Pa,” is a biographical account of this searing memory.

Sheb’s work ethic kicked into overdrive to get away from it all. He was always the kind of kid who knew what skills he needed to master to reach a goal. The fiddle was his father’s instrument of choice, so Sheb followed suit for a bit. By age 11, “Sheb was the kind of person who could play anything,” Gould says. “The guitar was popularized by the singing cowboys. That’s what they had, that’s what he wanted. He got his father to trade a shotgun for a neighbor’s used guitar and he taught himself how to play,” even though his father later smashed that guitar in a jealous, drunken rage.

He started o performing at age 14 at community barn dances, and a year later developed his first band, The Plainview Melody Boys. He rode his horse for hours to get to Elk City, and willed the radio station into giving him and his bandmates a weekly spot on the airwaves.

Sheb and his first wife, Melva Miller, eventually found their way to Nashville

as the Grand Ole Opry was starting to take o . With massive ambitions to be a songwriter, and never without a pen and pad, he’d wait in parking lots of radio stations for bandmates of stars to come out for a smoke break, passing lyrics to them for consideration. Along the way, Sheb met Cash and they became close buddies in their musical pursuits.

In December 1945, Sheb made country music history when he recorded the first commercial record in Nashville for a Nashville label. “In that way, he really kicked o Music City,” Gould says. Things really began to change in 1946 when he relocated to Fort Worth, Texas, and was hired to be a bandleader for “Sheb Wooley and His Calumet Indians.” The band was sponsored by the Calumet Baking Powder Company and toured throughout the Southwest, appearing on several radio shows. After that gig was up, in 1949, Sheb felt he had enough fuel in the tank to go to Hollywood to try out movies. He landed several supporting roles and bit parts in notable films and TV shows throughout the ’50s, including 1951’s Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison — Cash’s inspiration for “Folsom Prison Blues” — and 1952’s High Noon, co-starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, the performance that inspired Gould to write about Sheb’s life and

wealth of talent lying under the surface. Sheb unwittingly cemented his status in Hollywood perpetuity as the voice behind the infamous “Wilhelm Scream,” recorded in post-production for an alligator-attack scene in 1951’s Distant Drums, another Gary Cooper film, which has now been used in several hundred films and TV shows over the last half-century.

After marrying and divorcing Miller and then Edna Talbott, Sheb met Beverly Addington at the Palomino Club in North Hollywood, and it was love at first sight for both. They wed in 1955, and a few years later adopted their only child, daughter Chrystie.

Sheb recorded and wrote music for MGM Records, but nothing charted until May 1958. When he wrote “The Purple People Eater,” it was an o -the-cu exercise in wordplay responding to the cultural “space invasion.” MGM didn’t even want to release it. But Sheb believed in the novelty ditty, and young novices playing it in the break room at work convinced execs that the song was landing with youth. It was the first single to reach No. 1 on the Billboard chart after two weeks, a record not bested until 1964 with “Can’t Buy Me Love” by The Beatles. By June 1958, Sheb made the equivalent of more than $2 million in today’s dollars.

From left: Chrystie Wooley and Cindy Cash don their fathers’ clothes in Oak View circa 1962; Sheb as Pete Nolan in Rawhide; Chrystie, Beverly and Sheb ride their horses by Lake Casitas; Sheb’s high school graduation, 1940; Sheb and his first wife, Melva Miller — cousin of Roger Miller — in 1940; Sheb with Ian McDonald, Lee Van Cleef and Robert J. Wilke in High Noon, 1952.

Soon after “Purple People Eater Fever” took the country by storm, as Gould coined it, the Western cattle drive adventure series Rawhide premiered on television in January 1959, and Sheb Wooley, as trail scout Pete Nolan, was the name the public recognized ahead of the tragic Eric Fleming and eventual Hollywood titan Clint Eastwood. The series was praised for its realism, and rugged-yet-wholesome appeal. Sheb stayed for a few years, but wanted to get back to the music. Always trying new things, he devised a liquored-up, comic alter ego, “Ben Colder,” in 1962 — country music’s tipsy forerunner to “Weird Al” Yankovic. For example, “Don’t Take Your Cash to Town, John” is the irreverent inverse of Cash’s ominous hit “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town.” Sheb as Colder was named Comedian of the Year by the County Music Association in 1968. He appeared many times on Hee Haw in the ’60s and ’70s; he even wrote the show’s theme song. The early ’60s was the time the Cashes and Wooleys came up to the valley from L.A. Cash oversaw construction of simple stucco duplexes in Oak View’s river bottom, which attracted a lot of folks from Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. “My dad felt really comfortable with the people that lived there,” Chrystie Wooley says. The Wooleys stayed there for six months while their property was built on Santa Ana Road, on a 26-acre plot of land 1 mile above Lake Casitas.

The Cashes and Wooleys converted a mini golf course into the Purple Wagon Square Mall of Oak View (now the Gateway Plaza); Sheb mounted an old wagon from the 1800s at the site and painted it purple.

Johnny kept his o ce there, and the wives had their own joint beauty salons: Vivian’s Beauty Spot and Bev’s Purple Wagon Beauty Salon.

Chrystie would stay with the Cashes and their four girls when her parents had to go out of town, and she became especially close to Cindy Cash, who was the same age, running into all kinds of mischief. After Cash divorced Vivian and left the valley in 1966, Sheb took over his Boys’ Clubs of America benefit concerts.

Chrystie says growing up by the lake was “utopia.” She and her dad rode horses bareback for miles. “I knew it was special then … I had a beautiful imagination because of it.”

Her dad “loved the peacefulness … he loved spreading his wings. I knew my dad was somebody, because everyone wanted to talk to him all the time.” But, she says, “my parents were not fancy people.” Neither one was impressed by materialism; they’d happily host ordinary folks for dinner and take calls from Clint Eastwood that same evening.

When Sheb came home after a work commitment, though, his troubled childhood came back to haunt him, and he drank. “He didn’t drink the way some

people drinking … get angry and hostile. My dad was not like that,” Chrystie says. In fact, he was often the life of the party; guests found him “hysterical. But he … wasn’t present,” she remembers. “I didn’t know how to really put my finger on that at the time; it just felt wrong and I’d ask him not to do it.” In the grand scheme of things, she acknowledges that his antics were comparatively “mild” against other notorious industry battlers of the bottle. Still, something had to be done. He got sober when Chrystie was 12 in the early ’70s. He came home after being away for a month, and promised he’d take her to play softball in the fields, but was too drunk the next afternoon to get out of bed. When Chrystie expressed her disappointment in his broken promise, he came quickly to his senses and knew that it was time to give it up. “I’m so sorry … I need to do something about this,” he said, and went to his first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that very evening in Ojai.

“He did not drink at all for the rest of his life … He spent the rest of his life being available to people that he knew needed

co-star and father of the electric banjo, Buck Trent, who said Sheb saved his life by bringing him to meetings; and Ventura

KUDU DJ Lee Akers, who recalled in 2015: “Had it not been for Sheb, I don’t think I would have made it another year. But here it is 46 years later, and I have nearly 32 years clean. He is directly responsible for that. … The last time I saw him … he hugged me, and said, ‘Keep after it. I love you, son.’”

By the time the ’80s rolled in, Sheb moved out of the valley after divorcing Beverly; after two decades together, she still remained “the most loyal person he had ever known and trusted her with everything,” Chrystie says. He ultimately relocated to Nashville, where he spent the remainder of his life, apart from a mid-’80s starring comeback in the sports drama Hoosiers. He passed away at age 82 in 2003, only four days after his dear friend Johnny Cash, whose service he had just attended, and four days after he recorded his final song. Though the Wooley home on Santa Ana Road was torn down in the mid-2000s after it became eminent domain, the memories of life in the valley with her dad remain ever strong for Chrystie. He made sure her life included the bigger picture. “He believed in forgiveness and making amends,” she says, but forgiving his own father for the abuse and trauma of what he put his beloved mother through was the hardest thing he had to do in his spiritual life. Chrystie appreciates how her father’s transformation through AA has added “an extra layer of depth and knowledge about what that looks like”

and how to relate to other people through it. It wasn’t perfect, but she feels “beyond blessed.”

She recently reunited with Rosanne Cash after decades of losing touch. “There’s a beautiful trust … just the history with our parents,” Chrystie says. “Rosanne and I just hugged each other; we just were so happy to see one another. After all these years, as I close my eyes I can smell the sagebrush in the mountains, and the lemon trees and the orange trees … Ojai will always be my home even though I’m here (in Nashville).”

She adds, “The older I get, the more I realize just how tenacious and wonderful a human being both of my parents were.”

“The Purple People Eater” still finds life today in many children’s catalogs and, most recently, in Nope, Jordan Peele’s 2022 neo-Western horror film. But the legacy of sobriety, found in Ojai, is unparalleled to Chrystie, who says “helping people attain their sobriety was such a Sheb Wooley thing to do. I’ve never met a man that embraced his humanness as much as my dad, but worked so hard to better himself … it was always a struggle to find that beautiful balance … that’s a legacy that he leaves that’s huge.” She is proud of her father for being “one of the hardest workers I’ve ever met in my life; he had (a) work ethic like nobody’s business. He never, ever, ever accepted no for an answer,” she says. “He made it in all these areas … I know he was very proud of all of it.”

“Walk the Line No. 2”

by Ben Colder/Sheb Wooley, 1963

As sure as day is dark and night is light Hey, I don’t think that I said that right Well anyway I’m flyin’ high tonight I feel fine, I walk the line I find it very very easy to be true But the question is, to be true to who…? ’Cause I ain’t got no one to be true to And that’s just fine, I walk the line

There’s winding road that runs right by my shack It was late last night I started back When a patrolman drove right up to find I paid the fine … couldn’t walk the line I find it very very hard to hit these notes But that’s the lowdown way this song is wrote I think I need a little something to wet my throat (sips) Thank you friend … I walk the line I find it very very easy to forget That Johnny Cash is the one that wrote this hit I guess I might get sued a little bit He was a friend of mine, I walk the line

From left: The Wooley brothers, circa 1940 (Logan, Hubert “Skeet,” William Jr. “Dub” and Shelby “Sheb”); Sheb at the height of “Purple People Eater Fever” in 1958; Sheb Wooley Avenue in Erick, OK; a scene from Rawhide, Season 1, Ep. 20 “Incident of the Judas Trap,” 1959; Sheb and Chrystie sing “Only for You” at the Boys Club of Ventura benefit concert circa 1969.

There’s a reason a cowboy poet shepherded a policy that has made Ventura County one of the safest counties west of the Mississippi. That policy has led more than one crook to skip breaking the law in Ventura County just to avoid being prosecuted by its top lawman — District Attorney Mike Bradbury.

Bradbury’s “do right ethic” is demonstrated in his experiences with Mafia run-ins, headless bodies in Grimes Canyon, the Skyhorse and Mohawk case, the booking of Charles Manson before the Tate murders (Manson’s famous mug shot is the Ventura County Sheri ’s O ce booking photo), and Glen Campbell’s escapades, among many more. Those are only a few of the sensational tales in Bradbury’s new memoir, Law & Disorder: Confessions of a District Attorney.

A second book is already in the works. Whether a particular case is about bringing justice for the victim or punishment upon the criminal, or both in equal measure, the work of a prosecutor is ultimately about people, and the work touches each person di erently.

The longtime Ojai resident’s memoir recounts his years leading up to his tenure as Ventura County’s top prosecutor from 1978 to 2002.

His memoir o ers a glimpse into his first years at the District Attorney’s O ce, starting as a clerk under DA Woodru “Woody” Deem (1962–1973), then as a deputy district attorney under DA C. Stanley Trom (1973–

‘Do what’s

1978). Many of his stories are humorous, outlandish, or harrowing. Ultimately, he was elected to the o ce six times, five times unopposed. His chief assistant, Greg Totten, was elected after Bradbury retired.

In the book, some names are changed to protect the innocent and culpable alike. Bradbury gives his take from the prosecutor’s perspective and hints at what it’s like to start out as a cowboy from Susanville whose legal mind becomes sought after by governors, attorneys general, and presidents.

Recruited to Ventura County

“Being from a law enforcement family, I didn’t think about being a prosecutor,” Bradbury says. “I wanted to be an FBI agent. My dad focused me in that direction, knowing I would have to go to law school. You either had to have a law degree or accounting degree back then.” Bradbury’s father was a sheri . His uncle and brothers were also in law enforcement. The FBI plan was set in stone. Or so he thought.

by KIMBERLY RIVERS

“All of a sudden, a guy named Woodru Deem, the district attorney of Ventura, a place I’d never heard of, showed up and he was interviewing. A buddy of mine said, ‘You’ve got to experience this guy.’ He said don’t worry about the job, just experience this guy. So I was interviewed. I was just blown away by the man. He was so internally powerful.”

Deem invited Bradbury “to come down to Ventura. He said, ‘Give me two years and it will make you a better agent,’ and decades later, I haven’t left.”

The DA’s o ce was young, intentionally. “Truly, after two years, people moved on,” Bradbury says. “It was the youngest o ce in the state. Woody intended it to be that way. He wanted this young blood. You had guys a year and a half out of law school trying murder cases. They’d just established a Public Defender’s O ce here in ’66. Those guys had 30 to 40 years of experience. I mean, they were eating us alive and they knew every trick in the book. They were the dregs of Los Angeles. And you learned fast and became a good lawyer fast. And all of a sudden, I knew I loved the courtroom. That’s where I wanted to be.”

Bradbury’s love of the courtroom “arena” kept him in the prosecutor’s o ce even after Deem retired and C. Stanley Trom succeeded him. “I thought Trom would be there forever. He was only a year older than I was.”

Michael Bradbury’s memoir re ects on a district attorney’s life striving to do the right thing.

‘The

courthouse in Camarillo was one of the great ones. I tried a lot of cases there, including assisting Paul Powers in a prosecution of Charles Manson in 1968.’

Photo courtesy Michael Bradbury

right’

‘Skyhorse was excep- tionally dangerous, having killed at least two people that I knew of, and one was a bank guard. I reached under the seat for my .45 caliber Colt 1911 pistol. It wasn’t there.’

Right: Mike, second from the left, with fellow investigators at a Ventura County crime scene.

Photos courtesy Michael Bradbury

But suddenly, Trom went into private practice.

“And I’m the next guy in line, so I got involved in politics, which I thought I would never do,” Bradbury says. “You know, horses, horseback people have some really great connections.”

Those connections became key to Bradbury’s campaigns over the years. Bradbury was good friends with Bill Clark, former Oxnard police chief. The Clark family was close with Bradbury’s wife’s family through horses. Clark’s son, William P. Clark, served as secretary of the Interior under President Reagan from 1983-1985. “He was Reagan’s right-hand man,” Bradbury says, and had been with Reagan since his campaigns for governor.

“Bill Sr. chaired my campaign when I first ran. He asked me to come to Washington when Reagan was elected. I had known Reagan, campaigned with him, flew around with him to help.” Reagan was also an avid horseman. “But I had just been elected DA. I just can’t leave. He put me on a crime commission. I was back there once a month. It was the best of both worlds. I could stay in the county I love.”

He was on point to be named U.S. Attorney by President George W. Bush, but was notified he wouldn’t get the post due to a local controversy.

“The Los Angeles County Sheri ’s Department opposed my appointment because I had investigated them for a shooting here in Ventura County,” Bradbury says. Los Angeles sheri ’s deputies had shot and killed a rancher in Ventura County claiming he had been growing marijuana. “They didn’t find a seed in the place. That’s in the next book.”

‘Do what’s right’

When elected, Bradbury took the reins and brought a new approach to prosecutions:

reduce pleas and take cases to trial.

“I started insisting cases go to trial,” he says. “The first year I was district attorney, trials increased 100%.”

Bradbury says he’d tell the attorneys in his o ce: “I don’t care how good your negotiating skills are. I want good trial lawyers. The important thing was to fairly charge. Don’t overcharge. We charged only what we could prove and then we expected you to prove it. Plead to the top charge or go to trial.”

But no prosecutor is ever perfect.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Bradbury says. “It’s every good district attorney’s nightmare that you prosecute an innocent person.”

To endeavor to prevent that, he says, a

prosecutor has to “do what’s right. It’s the beginning and the end. It may mean you don’t get re-elected. I wouldn’t make any changes. I’m not saying I’m perfect.”

He found out last year that a man prosecuted under his term was wrongly convicted and spent 30 years in prison. “And DNA corrected that,” he says. “We didn’t have DNA.

“Even though a lot of them are involved in other criminal activity, if they didn’t do this murder, they shouldn’t be sitting there for 30 or 40 years. There’s nothing that bothers me more than that. Thank God it hasn’t happened very often. It’s interesting, too, because he sued everybody except me.”

Even though the elected district attorney is not physically in the courtroom for every

Rubbing shoulders with the Great and the Good

Top left: with President Ronald Reagan

Middle left: with President George W. Bush

Bottom left: with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

Top right: with President George H.W. Bush

Middle right: with Senator John McCain

Bottom right: with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

case the o ce argues, for the cases that were tried on his watch, Bradbury takes responsibility.

“I am always the prosecutor in the room. It’s in your name. You’re the one making the decisions. You set the policies.”

When it came to homicides, he says, often, “we would indict.” That means a grand jury would be convened to test whether there was adequate evidence to take it to trial. This can take some pressure o the district attorney in making the ultimate decision to file.

Bradbury says he had a process when there was an indictment. On Friday afternoon, “every top-notch lawyer would examine the facts of the case. So we were really careful about what we filed, and especially homicides. We would invite the defense attorneys in to make sure we weren’t missing something. But that one slipped by. But thank God for DNA. It is now developed to the point that it’s so refined, almost like 1 in a trillion that if that DNA is not right, you’ve got the wrong person.”

There are times, though, when the district attorney declines to file, but the police think they’ve got the culprit.

Recently, he says, current Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko let him know he had been correct in refusing to file charges in a case. “That’s the other side of it, refusing to file a case that I didn’t believe in, and you take a lot of heat. I was pretty well-liked by law enforcement because of my police background and my family. But they were really unhappy with me over a couple of murder cases where I just declined to file. They thought they had the right guy, and now with DNA, they’re finding who the real killers are. So it cuts both ways.”

Cowboy poet

Today, Bradbury spends most of his time at his Hang ’em High Ranch in the Ojai Valley with his wife, Heidi, and family that includes a raucous troupe of nine dogs, a couple of pigs, chickens, donkeys, a mule, and horses. He no longer rides, however, because of a rare muscle disease that prevents him from climbing into the saddle.

Awards, acknowledgments, and accolades from his storied legal career are displayed alongside photographs of beloved horses, treasured saddles, bridles, and lariats.

The home of a horseman and true cowboy, Hang ’em High Ranch puts his love of horses front and center.

The silver buckles he and Heidi have won riding horses over the years in teampenning and cutting competitions are displayed in rows. Cutting is a timed event in which a rider works to separate a particular cow from a herd and prevent it from returning to the group. One horse in particular has a special place: “Montana, a Doc baby — one of the greats,” Bradbury says. “We were lucky to have him for a long time.” A Doc baby refers to a famous cutting American Quarter Horse named Doc Bar who sired numerous top-winning cutting horses.

Bradbury holds up a framed photograph leaning against a window in his o ce. The photograph shows an Indigenous woman walking along a highway in a barren landscape. She has deep-set dark eyes and a square jaw. “I’ve been a photographer all my life. This was in New Mexico, I saw her walking, we were driving down the highway. I thought I’ve got to capture that. Look at the face. The look. Just extraordinary.”

When asked what recognitions, awards, or accolades he treasures most today, standing in his o ce surrounded by signatures and photographs of presidents and prime ministers, he answers, “To tell you the truth, I think it’s the trophy buckles that I’ve won that mean more to me than anything,”

Law & Disorder: Confessions of a District Attorney by Michael Bradbury is available for sale through www.mikebradburybook.com

‘I’ve been horseback since my childhood in Susanville. I treasured the days sitting on my Morgan mare, Boots, on top of Skedaddle Mountain, watching the wild horses run across the Nevada desert next to the California state line.’

Above: The treasured silver buckles Michael and Heidi have won riding horses over the years in team-penning.

Left: Mike Bradbury with his saddle photographed in April at Hang ‘em High Ranch in Ojai.

Photo: Kimberly Rivers

Giddens

Giddens — the daughter of a white father and Black mother, a North Carolina native who also lives in Ireland, a classically trained soprano who also plays banjo, a composer who writes arias based on slavery ballads — has always felt “neither/nor, but something more.”

She is drawn to “the edge, the points of connection, because that’s kind of where I’ve lived all my life,” she says. “I realized that … all of the things that I am exist within me at the same time. I don’t have to choose. But that’s kind of a radical concept in a country that wants to put everything in a box and label it.”

Her philosophy about life, people, and music knows no boundaries or limitations.

That vision will be on full display at the 2023 Ojai Music Festival. Giddens serves as this year’s music director, and as such is given the creative freedom to curate four days of concerts, June 8-11, that reflect her musical ideas, interests, and collaborators.

A graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music who trained as an opera singer, she’s also a founding member of the former Carolina Chocolate Drops, which played the music of old-time Black string bands. She serves as artistic director of the

by KAREN LINDELL

Silkroad Ensemble, founded by Yo-Yo Ma, and is a singer, songwriter, banjo player, composer, podcaster, and children’s book author.

She’s been nominated for eight Grammy Awards and won two in the folk album category: for Genuine Negro Jig in 2011 as a member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and for They’re Calling Me Home in 2022 with her partner Francesco Turrisi. In 2017 she was named a MacArthur Fellow for “reclaiming African American contributions to folk and country music and bringing to light new connections between music from the past and the present,” stated the Mac Arthur Foundation.

Ara Guzelimian, the Ojai Music Festival’s artistic and executive director, says he is “in awe of her range of musical curiosity and knowledge, coupled with a real social and cultural awareness. The range of music styles she embraces are, for her, a coherent part of the same world. It’s like

show “where the peaks peak,” and how at the core they are all “coming from the same heart.”

From Jane Austen to Joe Thompson Giddens grew up in North Carolina, where she was exposed to all kinds of music — pop, 1960s folk, classical, bluegrass, alternative rock, country. At one point, she had a mixtape that included “Bohemian Rhapsody,” a Haydn cello concerto, and a Reba McEntire song. She also performed in youth choirs, learning traditional American folk songs and other choral repertoire. Giddens attended a math-science high school, but decided on music as a career at age 17 after attending a summer choral camp.

While at Oberlin, where she studied opera, Giddens also discovered contra dancing, which she originally thought was English country dancing like something from a Jane Austen novel, but learned instead was a form of American folk dancing.

OJAI MUSICFESTIVAL 0608 –0611 2023

encountering a playlist you never knew existed — and falling in love with all of it.”

The festival’s opening concert is titled, appropriately, Liquid Borders, featuring a work by Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz performed by the red fish blue fish percussion ensemble, and the Attacca Quartet playing works by Haydn, John Adams, Flying Lotus, Philip Glass, Kayhan Kalhor, and Giddens herself.

Liquid borders — musical ones — are what Giddens hopes to explore at this year’s festival. “Borders are not hard; they’re always soft,” she says. “When you look at the spectrum of color, there are no walls, no place where blue stops being blue and green starts being green. There’s this constant gradation, and that’s what music is. All these things blend into each other because of movements of people and histories of countries.”

She doesn’t fuse or “smash” together seemingly disparate musical styles. Instead, she layers them on top of each other to

After graduating from college, still active in North Carolina’s contra dance scene, she heard old-time Black music in Greensboro, and delved into scholarly study of the banjo. Contrary to popular opinion, she learned, the banjo is not an instrument with roots in “mythical white mountaineer history.”

“It was an African American instrument,” she says. “Why don’t we know that? Answering that has been driving me for the last 15 years.”

As Giddens said in a 2017 keynote speech at the IBMA (International Bluegrass Music Association) Conference about the history of not only the banjo, but also bluegrass music: “We need to move beyond the narratives we’ve inherited, beyond generalizations that bluegrass is mostly derived from a Scots-Irish tradition, with ‘influences’ from Africa. It is actually a complex Creole music that comes from multiple cultures, African and European and Native — the full truth that is so much more interesting, and American.”

Rhiannon Giddens sees music, and the world, as “an incredible cultural swirl,” mixed and mingled, borders a blur.

Photo: Ebru Yildiz

Black string bands, she says, were “a really important piece of musical history that’s almost been erased from the narrative. She describes the bands as “the jukeboxes in the 1800s,” playing especially for dances.

In 2005, while steeped in learning about Black old-time music, she attended the Black Banjo Gathering at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, to hear fiddler Joe Thompson perform. Thompson, in his late 80s, was the last in the line of a family of African American string players from North Carolina going back to Frank Thompson, a popular Black fiddler in the 1800s.

(Giddens discusses both Thompsons in Black Roots, a podcast series for BBC Radio 4 in which she explores the history of African American roots music.)

There, she met her future Carolina Chocolate Drops co-founders: violinist Justin Robinson and multi-instrumentalist Dom Flemons. Thompson became the group’s mentor and teacher before he died in 2012.

“Jane Austen led me to Joe Thompson,” Giddens says. She now tells young music students: “You have to live and do things that are not related to your classical training. That is what might lead you to a thing you didn’t know you were going to be interested in.”

The Carolina Chocolate Drops went on to perform on the Grand Ole Opry, open for Bob Dylan, and win a Grammy.

Giddens became known as a solo artist in 2013 when she performed at a folk concert in New York inspired by the film Inside Llewyn Davis and produced by T Bone Burnett. She held her own in a lineup that also included Joan Baez, Patti Smith, and Gillian Welch when she sang the American folk song “Waterboy” along with Gaelic music. Burnett then produced her debut solo album, “Tomorrow Is My Turn,” a mix of folk, gospel, blues, and country (although Giddens hates labeling music with such terms).

Cross-cultural collaboration

Giddens is not a newcomer to the Ojai Music Festival. Audiences who attended the festival in 2021, with John Adams as music director, might remember her playing the banjo and singing with the Attacca Quartet, including a performance of one

of her own songs, “At the Purchaser’s Option.” The haunting ballad was inspired by a historical flyer Giddens saw that advertised an enslaved woman for sale, with her 9-month-old baby included “at the purchaser’s option.”

Guzelimian invited Giddens to be the 2023 music director at the 2021 festival when he realized they were kindred musical spirits.

“We talked about what ‘classical’ music means when you look at the term outside European or Western cultures,” Guzelimian says.

Among the musicians performing in 2023 are Wu Man on pipa, also called a Chinese flute; Kalhor on kamancheh, a Persian bowed instrument; Seckou Keita on kora, a West African stringed instrument; former Carolina Chocolate Drops member Justin Robinson on fiddle; and Silkroad Ensemble members playing various instruments.

“Cross-cultural collaborations are important because they really show us how similar we are,” Giddens says. “Especially if you don’t share a language, (with music) you immediately find points of connection to communicate.”

She’ll also perform an intimate acoustic concert at the festival with Turrisi; another boundary crosser, he is a native Italian who moved to Ireland and plays multiple instruments.

“We’ve been messing with boundaries and borders of genres,” Giddens says. “Maybe we’ll do a 17th century Italian classical song next to a ‘60s pop song that would have been on radio, but with voice and piano. Hopefully the people in the audience won’t know where either one came from, and won’t care.”

An enslaved man’s journey

One of the highlights at the festival will be the world premiere of Omar’s Journey, a chamber work based on the full opera Omar by Giddens and Michael Abels, known for creating the film scores for Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Us, and Nope. Omar premiered at the Spoleto Festival in South Carolina in 2022, and was performed by the LA Opera in fall 2022.

Omar’s Journey, written for singers and a small ensemble of musicians, will be framed by music from Senegal and the Carolinas that the opera’s real-life title character might have heard during his lifetime.

The opera tells the story of Omar ibn Said, an enslaved man born in the Futa Toro region of West Africa, now along the border of modern-day Senegal. In 1807, at age 37, he was taken from West Africa to Charleston, South Carolina, and sold to a cruel owner. He ran away to North Carolina, was caught and imprisoned, then lived with another slave owner.

In 1831, Omar, a Muslim, wrote an autobiography in Arabic, his native language. The short, 15-page memoir was later translated, and is described by the Library of Congress as “the only known extant autobiography” of an enslaved person “written in Arabic in America.” Omar’s writing reveals that he was not only literate, but a scholar of the Quran, and a man of deep faith who held on to that faith even though he converted to Christianity in the U.S.

The Spoleto Festival USA commissioned Giddens to write the opera, even though the singer until then had not heard of Omar.

The memoir’s brevity could have been a liability, she says, “but it was a freedom, too” because it allowed her to add new elements that might not have been historical facts, but captured the spirit of the time and his story.

“I tried to stay true to all the things I read in his autobiography, what he quoted from the Quran, phrases he wrote that I contextualized,” she says. “The central narrative is really about his faith.”

At one point in the opera, when Omar escapes from South Carolina, he meets a fictional woman, Julie, who helps lead him to North Carolina. When Omar sees Julie again, he asks her why she helped him. In “Julie’s Aria” (Rhiannon will sing the part of Julie in Ojai), we learn that Julie recognized Omar as a Muslim, like her own father: “My daddy wore a cap like yours.”

The aria reminds listeners of colors, and hearts, that bleed into one:

No matter what they say

Our hearts beat red

Just like theirs

For more information about the Ojai Music Festival or Rhiannon Giddens, visit ojaifestival.org or rhiannongiddens.com.

From and to: Ojai, Meiners Oaks and Mira Monte

For Just $1.50!

ADA, Medicare Card Holders, and Seniors 65-74 are 1/2 price. Seniors 75 and over, children under 45” tall and all students are FREE riders on the Trolley

The Ojai Trolley Service Continues to Run Serving the Needs of the Ojai Valley

e Ojai Trolley Service, established in 1989, is owned and operated by the City of Ojai. e Trolley provides daily xed-route transportation to approximately 9,000 riders per month throughout Ojai, Meiners Oaks and Mira Monte.

e Trolley is a well-known feature in the Ojai Valley, and in addition to the daily xed-route services, participates in many local community events, fund raising activities, community service, and educational functions.

Mama Tree

... AND THE 5 PRINCIPLES OF REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE

In addition to its almost 600 olive, 1,500 tangerine, and 40 walnut trees, Mama Tree also grows Star Ruby grapefruits, navel and Valencia oranges, Eureka and Meyer lemons, pomegranates, persimmons, pineapple guavas, kiwis, apricots, and peaches. With the majestic Topatopa mountains towering in the distance, earth, sky, and air infuse the idyllic property with a sense of wholesomeness. The 20-acre orchard and 40-acre woodlands provide the perfect venue for land stewards Natalie Buckley-Medrano and Je rey Reidl to nurture and regenerate an ecosystem.

Mama Tree is owned by Holly Kretschmar and Loren Bouchard, who hired Buckley-Medrano and Reidl to manage the

property in 2020. The foursome’s mission is to transform the formerly conventional orchard into a diverse, regenerative agroecological system that relies on permaculture design.

When Kretschmar and Bouchard first saw Mama Tree, they immediately fell in love. “The property’s physical beauty attracted us, and I had been quietly nurturing a dream of getting involved in regenerative agriculture,” Kretschmar says. “We were looking

by BARBARA BURKE

for a property where we could grow, literally and metaphorically, and be part of a community that supports positive change — it was already a working farm, but we wanted to tinker and experiment with the agricultural practices used.”

Bouchard agrees, saying: “We felt there was an opportunity to grow things di erently. In doing so, we’re doing right by the land.” When Reidl and Buckley-Medrano were hired, they immediately went to work, intent on transforming Mama Tree into a vibrant, diverse, nurturing, integrated system where animals do the work and the land is designed to maximize moisture levels in the soil.

“Our first plan of action was to call a halt to the spraying of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers and cease any tilling,” Buckley-Medrano explains. “Now, we fertilize by strategically rotating our animals through and using practices such as spraying kaolin clay, a natural mineral, on the olives as a barrier against fruit flies.”

She discusses e orts to improve Mama Tree’s ecological health and functionality, including sequestering carbon by building living soil; integrating biochar; making their own compost using animals’ bedding; and having goats eat from perennial fodder o the land instead of alfalfa, which is an expensive, water-intensive crop.

A long, olive tree-lined lane embraces visitors to Mama Tree, a family-owned orchard providing a bucolic oasis of olive, Pixie tangerine, and mature walnut trees nestled on 60 acres on the Sulphur Mountain side of the Upper Ojai Valley.

Left: A member of the mama tree crew with Tecolote. Photo by Holly Kretschmar

Photo by Kate Bowen of Light Beacon Photography

Below: Mama Tree Farm managers Jeffrey and Natalie with their baby and goat Mariposa

Regenerative agriculture encourages choosing a diversity of water-wise and climate-appropriate plants, Reidl notes.

“It also encompasses keeping soil intact — i.e., not tilling, to protect microbial life and support carbon sequestration, as well as integrating grazing animals,” Buckley-Medrano explains. “Our goats are our four-legged composters — they turn tough-to-digest organic material into what are essentially little pellets of soil containing beneficial microbes and bioavailable nutrients to feed the trees. Our animals work both to help build soil fertility and control brush around our perimeter, which helps mitigate fire risk.”

Kretschmar explains that “regenerative farming, or what I think of as collaborative agriculture, traps carbon underground while it improves the health of soil, animals, and farmers.”

“If we have a healthy soil microbiome, then the food we eat is not only nutrient-dense, but also supports a healthy gut microbiome and that is how we have a resilient immune system,” Buckley-Medrano says.

Reidl, a steward of ecohydrology (how landuse practices and biotic processes influence hydrological cycles and vice versa), focuses on retention and rediversion of water and topsoil at Mama Tree. The practices he

employs, he says, will also benefit nearby properties.

Before Kretschmar and Bouchard purchased the parcel and named it Mama Tree, its landscape was designed to drain water as e ciently as possible. Concrete diversions transferred rainwater o the land into nearby Lion Canyon Creek, which feeds the Ventura River.

In 2019, Ojai-based permaculturalist

Connor Jones installed several on-contour berms and infiltration basins throughout a block of the Pixie tangerine orchard. Then, Reidl installed additional berms, swales, and basins to slow and store rainwater runo and collect nutrient-rich topsoil that runs o of the woodlands above the orchard.

In the recent “atmospheric river” torrential rains, the drainage and collection systems at Mama Tree performed superbly, thanks in large part to the contour modifications Reidl and the consultants made.

“Through agroecosystem designs, we can increase the ecological processes that buffer climate extremes, and integral to that is to always have a plan for where water flows next,” Reidl says. “The steps we take in our orchard influence the woodlands above, as well as nearby farms and Lion Creek below us. If agroecology practices are used by

others and we focus on overall ecosystem health on a holistic and larger scale, it will have positive, synergetic influences on climatic and hydrologic processes.”

Such practices to increase soil moisture levels also help make properties fire-resilient.

“There is a direct relationship between the moisture content of the land and the incidence and intensity of fires, and that reality demonstrates the necessity for ‘planting the rain’ and employing techniques such as building berms and swales to slow down and retain rainwater,” Reidl says, referring to a recent NASA study documenting the nexus between moisture content and fires. The e orts made at Mama Tree to retain moisture have already been successful.

“We’re using drone photos to measure the increase in moisture on site,” Kretschmar says. “We dug infiltration basins that attracted frogs as well as a heron! These measures really make a di erence.”

Reidl and Buckley-Medrano bring a world of expertise to Mama Tree. Kretschmar and Bouchard say they chose the couple because the four of them share the same ethical standards and ideals.

“Our land stewards help us take the long view and consider how our decisions will play out long after we’re gone,” Kretschmar says. Moreover, Reidl and Buckley-Medrano have a wealth of experience in working with animals, including using goats and chickens to work on the land and boosting the ratio of fungi to bacteria in the soil. They use support species, such as acacias and locusts, to support their tree crops.

The pair view regenerative farming holistically. For instance, when gophers were encroaching on the crops, they decided they didn’t have a gopher problem. Rather, Mama Tree had a raptor shortage. Raptor perches and owl boxes helped the issue, not pesticides.

“After getting my degree, I worked as an international consultant in East Africa, working in Ethiopia, Uganda, and Tanzania with nonprofit organizations and policy makers,” Reidl says. “I worked in various refugee settlements and orphanages on site, designing regenerative farming systems to grow nutrient-dense food for the children,

Mama Tree’s baby goats enjoy Ojai’s pink moment. Photo by Natalie Buckley-Medrano

and also working on gray-water and water — catchment systems.”

Jennifer Fill Crooks, executive director of Uryadi’s Village, an orphanage in rural southern Ethiopia, says Reidl “has gone above and beyond working with our project. From working on our food forest, to compost, swales to gray-water systems, he was there. He was open and engaged with the local sta and children, making his work also educational, while absorbing the local-based knowledge the community had to o er.”

With her experience in processing hundreds of seeds collected in the U.S. and during foreign expeditions to China and the Republic of Georgia, and her work cutting propagation to clone historic lineage specimens, Buckley-Medrano was well-suited to help Abudu Nininger, the Mama Tree’s resident carpenter and forester, design and build a shade house to grow plants needed on the farm. Some of those plants are hard to acquire elsewhere.

Reidl and Buckley-Medrano met at Quail Springs Permaculture, an educational nonprofit in Maricopa that o ers training in permaculture design and natural building, and Reidl now teaches there. Mama Farm o ers some o -site classes for Quail Springs students.

“There’s a feeling of Gemütlichkeit that I feel when I think of Mama Tree and the work of Je rey and Natalie,” says Quail Springs Permaculture Executive Director Ashwin Manthripragada. “I use that German word not just because it’s a language we were surprised to share in common, but it’s a concept that encapsulates the heart of their work — being at Mama Tree always puts me in a good

mood and brings out a feeling of warmth.”

Owners Kretschmar and Bouchard join Reidl and Buckley-Medrano in having large, yet attainable, aspirations for Mama Tree.

“We want to be a model for our community,” Kretschmar says. “We want to serve as a demonstration farm for ‘collaborative agriculture,’ so others can realize the possibilities.”

Future plans for Mama Tree include investing in biochar experiments, reseeding native species to drive out invasive species, creating a cooler microclimate so that trees retain and recycle moisture, and increasing the orchard’s diversity of tree species.

“We take advantage of relationships between species; for example, by planting nitrogen-fixing support trees under citrus,” Kretschmar says. “We want to maximize the soil’s fertility so that the orchard will teem with life.”

She adds, “The goal is to increase the number of species thriving on the land, including birds, insects, fungi, predators, and humans — they all play a role in nourishing the system.”

Plans also include collaborating with other Ojai growers to build a movement to successfully employ regenerative practices.

“We envision Ojai leading the country,” Kretschmar says. “We plan to sponsor workshops, collaborate with community organizations, and create a network of people dedicated to building a cooler climate through regenerative farming.”

Readers can enjoy Mama Tree’s harvested products at various markets in Ojai, including Rainbow Bridge, and the Thursday Community Farmers’ Market. The farm’s

products also are sold to two LA outlets, farmtocurb.com and earthmatterz.com.

Mama Tree’s product developer and seller is Madeline Mikkelson, who attended high school at Besant Hill across from Mama Tree.

Locals love Mama Tree’s olives, citrus, and fruits, and they are delighted with the walnut butter, which always sells out quickly. Mama Tree’s Olive Oil is also very popular.

“Our oil is made from Taggiasca olives, known for their rich flavor,” Buckley-Medrano says. “Mama Tree’s finishing oil has been described as grassy, buttery, and round with a peppery finish. The Taggiasca olive is notoriously mild and smooth. We intentionally harvest the olives early to get that spicy finish. The spice comes from the polyphenols (antioxidants) that give olive oil its health benefits, and coincidentally, increase the olive oil’s shelf life. I know I’m biased, but it’s seriously the best olive oil I have ever tasted!”

Mama Tree’s dedicated team of land stewards help fuel a community conversation about using regenerative farming techniques to create properties that are vibrant and have diverse trees, flora, and fauna, all in a coordinated, integrated system and all for the greater good.

For more information, visit mamatreeojai.org.

Fresh green walnuts harvested in May for Bar Agricole’s nocino. Photo by Madeline Mikkelson

Owner Holly Kretschmar with a future land steward at a Mama Tree workshop. Photo by Natalie Buckley-Medrano

Surf boards

A fusion of surfboards and photography

smiling warmly, immersed in her colorful ojai workshop’s array of stunning surfboards that depict her photographs and neon creations, artist bobbi jo bennett greets intrigued visitors. she delights in sharing her creative space, which is full of energy and light.

“My sur oards are for your wall or the waves,” Bennett explains. “I have a line of deconstructed, hand-shaped boards featuring my original photography, and a neon line that has become very popular.” Bennett notes those works were very well-received at Aqua Art Miami this year.

Bennett, who grew up in Monterey, exudes an exuberant vibe innate to those immersed in surfing culture. After attending Moore College of Art & Design in Philadelphia, she explored various art forms, starting with photography.

“People went to bat for me as I began my career,” Bennett says. “I first got exposure by donating my works to charity events.”

Philanthropy remains important to her. “I always donate a percentage of all board sales to nonprofits,” Bennett says. She is committed to helping a number of organizations dealing with marine litter issues.

Bennett has always been grateful to her two primary mentors, photographers Cindy Sherman and Guy Webster. Cindy Sherman is one of the most prolific photographers of our time,” Bennett says. “Early in my career, I wrote her a letter, never expecting to hear back — she responded and made a world of di erence for me. Guy Webster gave me input for 20 years.” Webster pushed Bennett to embark on new endeavors, she says. “He told me that I had to shine more and extend my ego a little more.”

When Bennett won the 2016 LensCulture International Exposure Award, one of her most iconic photographs, “Fallen Angels,” was exhibited at the Louvre in Paris.

Bennett has, in a word, arrived. Throughout her career, she has reimagined and redefined her artistic seity and expressed her creativity through various media. As her career evolved, she began to merge her love of photography with her surfing passion, ultimately pioneering a new art medium. “At the time I started Stoked Sur oards, I was

story by BARBARA BURKE photos: MARIANA SCHULZE

the first female owner of a surf company in the U.S.,” Bennett said. Her photographs are mounted on restored, hand-selected, and rare vintage boards, often created by industry icons such as Al Merrick and Rockin’ Fig. The boards are coated with resin and torched, rendering a glasslike appearance. Bennett’s hand-shaped line of “art boards” are immensely popular.

Constantly evolving, Bennett notes that as she creates new sur oard series, “everything is trial and error.” As an artist, she

innovates. “You just have to put your new ideas and your works out there,” she says. Bennett has delved into using her art for activism. “After the #MeToo movement, I created my Mermaid series about our oceans and women,” Bennett says. “It is a political series that has been a great success. The series involves sur oards with Gucci, Fendi, Louis Vuitton, Armani, and Prada themes and other high-fashion brands. Because fashion designers get so much attention, I made the series a little campy and attractive.”

Bennett’s photographs and sur oards are in private collections in Ojai, throughout California, nationally, and internationally. Dennis Quaid, Miley Cyrus, the Grateful Dead’s Billy Kreutzmann and The Beach Boys’ Bruce Johnston, among others, have commissioned her works. Her photograph sur oards are usually ready for customers in four to six weeks, whereas ridables take eight weeks to complete.

Bennett also designs custom interiors and is an art consultant, creating commissioned works or designing interiors for boutiques, galleries, private homes, and businesses.

“I source works by established artists for clients and I also love designing home interiors,” Bennett says. “I focus on luxury residences and I really enjoy collaborating with other artists.”

“I fell in love the moment I walked into Bobbi’s studio,” customer Clarrisa Cornwell says. Bennett helped Cornwell decorate the interior of her new home as she and her family rebuilt after the Thomas Fire. “Bobbi put a smile on my face, and when I brought her up to visit the construction site of our new home, she totally got it,” Cornwell says. “Working together was a huge amount of fun. In the end, the new house is a bit of a love song to California, with beautiful artwork by John Nava and Guy Webster, and Bobbi’s wonderful pieces, which just pop with joy and light.”

Art collector Penny Gundry of Montecito agrees. “We love Bobbi’s works because they are something we haven’t seen in other homes,” she says. “Bobbi curated works that seamlessly flow aesthetically from interior to exterior. Whether it is her photography, her sur oards, including the neon sur oards,

she is just so creative in so many genres.”

Bennett is also a gallerist and entrepreneur. For years, she has collaborated with her good friend, Laura Dinning, owner of Montecito’s luxury fashion boutique Allora by Laura. Over the years, Bennett has curated exhibits in Dinning’s boutique that focus on the nexus of fashion and photography.

“We introduced Allora Art with Bobbi’s Goddess series, which worked really well with fashion because there are goddesses of

beauty, passion, and wisdom, and the ‘Fallen Angel Goddess,’ Bobbi’s award-winning photograph was featured in my store as well as the Louvre,” Dinning says. She notes that it is easy to combine Bennett’s energy with fashion: “You could go with bold colors and bold silhouettes to match her really large photographs that are applied to wood, titanium, and textiles.”

Bennett welcomes readers to visit her Ojai gallery by appointment. For more information, visit www.bobbibennett.com.

Photo: Mariana Schulze. Instagram @nothinginmyst

Becoming Better Men

story by GREGG STEWART

What does it mean to live a soulful life? How does today’s man find meaning and purpose in our fast-changing world?

For over two decades, Richard Palmer has been leading men’s workshops and gatherings in Ojai to demystify the role of the masculine in our society. We sat down to talk with Richard about modern men — from the wounded boy to the initiated man to the wise elder — and how we, as men, can learn to discover and fulfill our soul’s purpose.

When I ask Richard what led him to this work, his answer tells me we are about to have a conversation di erent from what is typical for me.

“I grew up in a violent household,” Richard begins. “My father was an alcoholic. Our home was frenzied and fractured. There was no beauty, and nobody was speaking the truth. So I became obsessed with truth and beauty.”

Richard says those early childhood wounds grew into a sensitivity and became the gateway to discovering his gifts. One of his greatest gifts is helping men discover their soul’s purpose. Whenever he’s working with

men, he’s looking for where they’re most deeply wounded. It’s the doorway to their riches and wealth — their life’s purpose.

“Where you are the most wounded is right next to where you are the most gifted,” Richard says, and his words stop me in my tracks. “The place where we were most hurt is the place where we become most exquisitely sensitive. And that sensitivity leads us to our giftedness.”

Let’s pause here because I’m about to timejump a moment. After hearing these words from Richard, I shared them with my wife, and we both burst into tears in the middle of Beacon Co ee. It’s a profound sentiment, and I beg you, don’t miss it. If you want to discover your innate giftedness, you must have the courage to look where you’ve been

In conversation with Richard Palmer on men’s healing work and living ‘the soulful life’

“Where you are the most wounded is right next to where you are the most gifted”

most wounded. Your soul’s purpose and gifts are sitting right next to that wound. I see it so clearly in my life — the childhood incidents that led me to have a passion for storytelling, and advocating for others.

“When we are honest about where we were hurt — and show vulnerability — it opens a doorway to this gold mine of deep healing

work,” Richard says. “That’s where healing and art come together — what I call the soul work. When we live a life imbued with telling the truth and revering beauty, what we’re doing is bringing the healer and the artist together. Healing and art. That’s the soulful life.”

The courage needed to look at where we are most wounded takes a level of vulnerability many men avoid at all costs. I ask Richard why men find vulnerability so challenging, and what we, as men, can do about it.

“The greatest terror a man has is the belief that ‘if you see my shame, I’ll die,’ and it’s a lie.”

“When you have a safe and sacred space — like a men’s group — that dose of compassionate listening is what dissolves shame. Men don’t trust it. But when we get into a kindhearted atmosphere of other men holding our story with sacredness, the shame gets smaller and smaller.”

But it never really goes away, does it?

“No,” Richard says with a hearty laugh. “I can still find all my shame sources. But, it doesn’t run me anymore. It’s more an echo. It doesn’t disappear, but it’s the risk to be exposed and naked that has a curative quality. It’s men’s greatest terror, but as a society, as men, we have to move through it.”

Our conversation turns to men’s initiation practices within our culture, and the challenge that modern men have so few rites of passage into manhood. The step into manhood is ambiguous, and for many, comes with losing

their virginity; “Attaboy, yer a man now.” However, in Indigenous and ancient cultures, the rite of passage into manhood is the opposite of a sexual experience.

I learn from Richard that, in Indigenous cultures, when a boy begins having lustful thoughts and glances, that’s the elders’ cue to take the boy away for initiation into manhood. In this rite of passage, elders teach the boy to discover ‘the goddess standing behind the girl.’

“It’s like looking at a tree and seeing the spirit in the tree as opposed to looking at the tree as only lumber,” Richard says. “So, you move from looking at the world through the objectivity of the mind and you shift to the subject of the heart. Boys need to be taught that. Otherwise, they’re driven by their

“The wounded boy only has two choices,” Richard explains. “He shuts down or he rages. Implosion or explosion. He has no ability to tolerate tension between opposites.”

And what triggers men into that wounded boy state?

“Underneath all wounded boys and ‘boy-men’ is this tarpit of shame,” Richard says. “One of the main reasons why men’s work is so important is that when we are in that shame state, we get destructive and violent. So, it’s an emergency that boy-men learn to get initiated through mentors and elders.”

What are the practices to create more opportunities for initiated men?

impulses. They must be taught the sacredness of life.”

When Richard and his colleague, Tom McGee, lead men’s retreats, they are often asked, “What is an initiated man? And how do you shift from wounded boy to initiated man?”

“A man needs brothers, en he can love a woman, Really love a woman, en he can love the world.”

— Richard Palmer excerpt from e Moan Inside of ings

“One of our culture’s challenges is that elders have kind of checked out in the last century. We need to call them back.”

Grief shrine used in honoring our departed

“There’s this wonderful philosopher, Rollo May, who said freedom is the capacity to pause between stimulus and response,” Richard says. “And so, it’s the pause that creates that ability to grow into a man. Boys don’t pause. They just implode or explode. The initiated man, instead of shutting down or raging, they get introspective, curious, and reverent. But the only way to do that is you have to pause to find that place.”

What are the ways we can support more men to learn how to pause, and thereby experience true freedom?

“We need to call on our elders,” Richard says. “One of our culture’s challenges is that

elders have kind of checked out in the last century. We need to call them back. And it’s two-pronged: They need to be honored, which they don’t feel because we put them in homes. And at the same time, elders need to stand up and say, ‘Damn it, I have something to say, and it has value.’ Why not take the elders with big medicine to share, and put them in schools where they can give back? They don’t even care about the money. Mentors need mentees.

“I’m at that stage — age 58 or 60 is the doorway to elderhood. I’m in that place where it’s not about me shining anymore. It’s about helping others find their gifts so they can shine. That’s the true spirit of the elder:

wisdom, singing, dancing, storytelling. This is what the soul life is all about.”

And this is how we heal?

“Yes, but it’s more about aliveness,” Richard says. “Even grief can have aliveness — where you’re present to what you feel. Even in grief, I am pulling my hair out, cursing, stomping — and I’m alive! I’m grieving that big because I loved that big. You can’t grieve big unless you love big. When we don’t grieve, we tell our soul it doesn’t matter. The hell it didn’t! We should be outraged by our loss to help us move through it. That’s an example of the soulful life.

“We live in what Robert Bly called the ‘Sibling Society,’ where we got our caps on backward and only interact with our peer group, but we don’t look to elders. We’re obsessed with information but not wisdom. All that information is what pushes out the soul. Many things about our modern life push out the soul, like ‘busyness.’ People ask if I’m busy, and I say, ‘No, I will never be busy,’ because that pushes the soul out of my life. I never see clients back-to-back. I do groups in the evenings and reserve two hours every morning for writing. That’s my soul time. If I don’t live this way, how can I ask anybody else to live a soulful life?

“The life of the soul requires some rigor and courage. As we become adults, we hide our souls and our emotions, and we live in what I call Flatland. Joy comes down, grief gets pulled up, and you have this little bandwidth, this little wafer to live inside — what I call the beige life. But ecstasy opens it up.”

Richard is readying to publish his eighth poetry book, A Man Needs Brothers, a compilation of poems all oriented towards men.

“Poetry, of course, is about telling the truth,” he says. “Music is the greatest of all the arts. When I’m in what I call the dream stream of writing poetry, I’m trying to become musical. In the end, I’m an old-fashioned romantic, a poet, and a soul advocate. My work is soul activism.”

Contact Richard Palmer at www.mentoringthelifeofthesoul.com for more information.

photo: Renee Faia Instagram @reneefaia

CBD, an important compound found in cannabis, is known for its myriad therapeutic properties.

Hailed by A-listers from Kim Kardashian West to Tom Hanks and Bubba Watson as somewhat of a magical elixir, CBD has been shown to relieve anxiety and depression, help with insomnia, and reduce seizures. Indeed, the CBD space is of growing interest to entrepreneurs, scientists, and consumers — an industry projected to hit in excess of $16 billion in the U.S. by 2025.

Ojai-based entrepreneur Will Kleidon, the founder and CEO of Ojai Energetics, is a trailblazer in the CBD industry, having patented a groundbreaking water-soluble technology for CBD consumption. He’s also chairman of the California Hemp Council, and pioneering a range of hemprelated projects including new studies into the endocannabinoid system and supercapacitors made from hemp.

I caught up with him at the Ojai Energetics headquarters in downtown Ojai, where we discussed everything from CBD’s role within the cannabinoid spectrum to the history of hemp and cannabinoids for space travel.

When did you first become interested in cannabidiol (CBD)?

I first learned about the therapeutic benefits of CBD when I met Lawrence Ringo, one of the modern geneticists of CBD, in 2009. He was part of the early movement that recognized CBD’s value and how it had been inadvertently bred out of the cannabis stock via people chasing THC, and this really sparked my interest. Then in 2013, when I was experiencing some issues with mild anxiety, I was looking for a CBD dispensary online and came across an ad on Amazon. I ordered the product, and when I got it realized that it had been made with hemp from China, where it is grown in very heavy-metal rich soils. The thing is that hemp is actually incredible at decontaminating soil, but you

don’t ever want to eat that hemp because it absorbs all the toxins. So this stu was filled with junk, and basically toxic sludge. I thought that someone must be making a clean version of a CBD product, but when I looked into it, I found that nobody was. And so that was the impetus for me to start my own company.

What was your journey from there? Did you just jump right into it?

Yes, I did. This was actually my senior project at Prescott College. I had been working in a curriculum around the science of terpenes and essential oils, and part of it was running an essential oils business. I folded the CBD into that platform, and it took o . Initially the business was called Raw Remedies. Ojai Energetics came later, in 2014, and was founded as the first triple bottom line public benefit corporation of its kind. What that means is that as a business we exist as a catalyst for good and put people and the planet before profits.

We usually only hear about the health benefits of CBD and the psychoactive properties of THC, but there are so many other compounds on the cannabinoid spectrum. How do they work in conjunction, and how e ective is CBD on its own?

I often liken CBD to the trumpet section (of the cannabinoid spectrum) because it’s loud and does a lot. But the cannabis plant produces over 113 known cannabinoids, and beyond those it produces a total of around 418 known compounds, including terpenes, enzymes, and bioflavonoids, so it’s incredibly complex. Our bodies have evolved for millennia intaking the full spectrum of complexes, primarily through secondary dietary intake by eating the animals that were fed hemp. So the argument is that having the entire orchestra is better for us than just the trumpet section alone. That being said, CBD is useful, and you can no doubt get benefits from it in an isolated format.

by KERSTIN KÜHN photos courtesy Ojai Energetics

However, the best way to fully nourish our endocannabinoid system is definitely through a full spectrum of cannabinoids. What is the endocannabinoid system? It is e ectively the conductor of our body’s symphony of parts. It has receptors in every single system of the body, and its job is to ensure that each and every system is working in harmony and at optimal levels. Another thing it does is maintain homeostasis so that any time there is an oxidative stress event, our bodies produce cannabinoids internally to fight the oxidation. The way to think of it is that an oxidative event is like our cells rusting, and the job of the endocannabinoid system is to stop that from happening. So if you can give your body an e ective dose of cannabinoids, it fuels your body’s engine and makes sure that all the di erent parts in your body are working at their optimum. What makes your products at Ojai Energetics unique is your patented, watersoluble technology. How did you develop this?

Through serendipity I met a chemist, who told me that he had figured out solubilization techniques for cannabinoids. I said: “That’s awesome! Can we do it without synthetics?” And he said, “No.” So I pushed him to figure that out, and about six months later, we worked out how to do it using only certified organic plants. This was a big deal, particularly when you go into the parameters of nanoencapsulation, because having nonsynthetic compounds makes a big di erence around safety profiles. Traditionally when it comes to encapsulation, a petroleum derivative is used, and while for short-term usage the benefits outweigh the downsides, with regular consumption it has been well documented that these complexes will collect in the liver and build up and cause air tissues in the cells around the liver and spleen, so it’s less than ideal. We perfected that, patented it, and then launched it.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock these past few years, you’ve probably come across CBD –cannabidiol – or at least wondered what it is.

Beyond the clean aspect of the product, why is this water-soluble technology such a game changer when compared to traditional CBD oils?

I would say that the majority of the population has never taken an e ective dose of CBD. … (The) water layer in our mucosa membrane prevents regular fat-soluble compounds from e ciently entering our bloodstream, because through the digestive process, our body will try to filter out any unrecognizable or toxic compounds. What this means is that by the time our body processes a CBD oil and it enters the bloodstream, 90% of the cannabinoids are destroyed by the enzymes in our liver and stomach. So if you’re consuming 20 milligrams of fat-soluble CBD, your body can at best absorb 2 mg. By being water-soluble, our encapsulated CBD oil bypasses this entire process and enters straight into the blood safely and e ectively, allowing users to fully absorb it. What’s more, our technology has a very rapid onset, with users feeling the benefits within 30 seconds or less, as opposed to 30 minutes or more with a fat-soluble, traditional CBD oil.

You recently created a CBD product for NASA. Tell me more.

Yes, we patented cannabinoid therapeutics for space travel. When you go into space

the oxidative stress on your body is unprecedented. You can imagine this as your cells rusting at a much higher level in space than on Earth. The endocannabinoid system is the best way to respond to this both from a therapeutic and nutrient standpoint, so (with our product) we’re checking all of NASA’s issues, from immunity to mental health, and bone density.

Your company has many di erent arms and you’re working in di erent areas of utilizing cannabis. What are some of these areas?

The cannabis plant is unique in that it has over 50,000 known usages. Our parent company is the IP (intellectual property) creation company, and we hold the majority of IPs for cannabis products pertaining to a variety of di erent areas, from soluble cannabinoids and consumer applications to pharmaceutical usage, materials like 3D printing hemp houses that are structurally sound and bulletproof, fireproof and waterproof, as well as sequestering to create energy storage. And then we have di erent divisions, including the supplements division and a pharmaceutical division. Under the pharmaceutical division we have two drugs that are entering phase two trials at Cedars-Sinai for adjunctive therapy for breast cancer to mitigate the side e ects of

chemotherapy, particularly neuropathy. It’s a young field but it’s very promising.

You are also the chairman of the California Hemp Council, and your company is working with a number of government departments. In a nutshell, can you tell us about some of those projects?

One of our projects is around renewable energy. Hemp is the strongest natural fiber, and when you carbonize it, it turns out to be very e ective for energy storage. We figured out how to make supercapacitors that are similar to batteries in that they can store and dump a lot of energy at once. Right now there’s more than enough sun in California, but the issue is with energy storage, and the supercapacitors solve that problem. We’re very excited about our technology because it can provide the solution not just for the main grid but also microgrids. We’re working with the U.S. Department of Energy and in partnership with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to take this tech and bring it to full commercial scale.

So will hemp save the world?

Hemp has helped catalyze each epoch of humanity. There’s indirect evidence of hemp usage during the Paleolithic age, and while the leading hypothesis of what led us from hunter-gatherers into farming is around wheat and beer, another one is around the ability to fish. The earliest technology for this was, of course, the use of nets, which people could set in rivers and stay in one spot. And we know that hemp was the primary cordage used for this from ancient times all the way up to now. We also know that from the agricultural revolution onward, hemp enabled technology for nautical exploration, which started spanning the next epoch. The etymology of the term canvas is derived from cannabis. And during the industrial revolution, hempseed oil was used as a lubricant as well as a fuel that diesel engines could run o (of) as a petroleum alternative. And now we’re in the age of the petroleum era, but many petroleum products can be fully replaced by hemp, and it can therefore enable us to transition from the petroleum era to the post-petroleum era. That is what our tech is looking at – how we can provide regenerative solutions for nonregenerative inputs in a cost-e ective way.

Tom K. Co ey, MD Joanna Navarro, AuD

Over the 15-plus years I have delivered CSA boxes in Ojai, I have put hundreds of di erent items in the boxes, but fennel has been the most polemic. I can’t count the number of times I have picked up a returned “empty” box only to find a slightly shriveled fennel bulb with its sad wilty fronds looking like the kid who didn’t get picked for kickball. A frequent comment made by CSA members when I am cheerfully chatting with them about the contents of the share I have just dropped o is: “Would you take the fennel back … we never eat it and I hate to waste.” Other comments include “I love it, but my husband hates licorice”; or “Is it good? I have no idea how to prepare it.” Sometimes it feels like people are actually o ended it’s included in their share. But fennel isn’t an ingénue. It doesn’t need to prove itself to anyone and would never stoop to defending its lofty place in the academy of vegetables. It has been both star and supporting actor in countless great scenes. When Ouzo, Arak, and Raki were looking for the perfect player to balance out the cast, Fennel got the call. At sunrise, when Toulouse-Lautrec was wandering Paris streets after staying up all night working on next week’s Moulin Rouge poster, was it wine sloshing around in his hollowed-out cane? Definitely not. Beer? Perish the thought. It was the Tremblement de Terre (Earthquake) Cocktail, a potent mixture of cognac and absinthe (wormwood and fennel) that powered fever dreams and the pink elephant parade down the Boulevard de Clichy into the heart of Montmartre.

To truly understand fennel’s relevance and magic, one must go back to the time when humans were recently formed of clay by the hand of Prometheus. To celebrate his achievement, Prometheus invited Zeus down for some barbecue at the Villa in Mecone. Prometheus, that OG trickster, loved pranking his Old Man Zeus and had the pitmasters put together a couple of “special” entrees for the big guy. One was a “selection” of beef in an ox’s stomach and the other was just bones wrapped in “glistening fat.” Needless to say, Zeus was not impressed and demanded to speak to the manager.

When Prometheus showed up to see what the problem was, he blamed the sta . After some real housewives of Olympus drinktossing and table-flipping, Zeus hid fire from humans as punishment. And just ’cause Zeus

has always been kind of extra, he made them forget that it even existed. In the years that followed, humans, huddled up in an e ort to endure the cold, dark nights in their caves, opined in their misery that something felt like it was missing. When lightning storms lit up the night, you can imagine the unemployed and deflated resident shadow puppet artist saying: “Damn, wouldn’t it be nice to have just a tiny piece of that flash so I wasn’t so dependent on the full moon?” But Zeus was still pretty pissed about being punked by Prometheus and wasn’t super inclined to make things easier. Prometheus actually felt crummy about leaving his creations hanging and, perhaps more accurately, just loved to get in the last word. He knew where Zeus had stashed fire and formulated a plan. The next time Zeus took a little vacation or sequestered himself in his room with one of his gnarly migraines, he would sneak up and steal it back for his human buddies. When at last the timing was right and Zeus was out of pocket for a window of time, Prometheus looked around for something to hide the fire in.

Guess who rose a stalky hand for this epically dangerous journey? Fennel, of course. You know the rest of the story: Zeus finds out and he’s mad, again; he chains Prometheus to Mount Olympus, where an eagle eats his liver every morning and it grows back at night, only to be eaten again the following morning, day after day after day, until Hercules shows up and frees him.

Now fast forward some years (OK, millenia) to a little village at the foot of a volcano called Vesuvius, which incidentally is dedicated to Hercules. Seems Big Herc was on his way to Sicily via Cumae and found himself on the “Phlegraean Plain” (a place of fire), a nice enough place except for all the Giants that roamed the area. With a little help from some of the Gods, Hercules cleaned up the place and named it Pompeii. Years go by and in the mid70s (A.D.), Dr. Pliny the Elder hangs up his shingle in Pompeii and starts seeing patients. Being a citizen wasn’t all just feasts and orgies. Apparently, it was still a fairly dangerous place and people got sick a lot. So when Aeschylus came in screaming that he had just been bitten by a Balkan whip snake, what did the wise Dr. Pliny apply to the wound? A poultice of fennel, of course. And when Hippocrates sat down in Pliny’s o ce and revealed his wife refused to kiss him on account of his horrible lamb breath, ol’ doc Pliny naturally prescribed, “Chew two of

Fennel

these bulbs each morning and evening, and do no harm.” Fennel for Alcibiades’ fatigue, for Bion’s persistent cough, for Dionysus’ hangover (and gonorrhea), for Myron’s flatulence and piles. It makes one wonder if there was anything else in the apothecary other than fennel stored in di erent jars. On a fateful day in 79 when the Earth began to shake Pliny’s kettle, the loudest boom since Hades, Poseidon and Zeus roughhoused in Kronos’ living room and shook Italy’s boot from toe to heel.

Pliny the Elder pushed back his chair from the table where he was having breakfast, grabbed an amphorae of freshly brewed fennel tea, and ran toward Vesuvius. If only he’d arrived in time, he could have poured the contents into the cone and settled her angry tummy. Even though Pliny gets most of the attention for the medicinal properties of fennel, he was just writing down knowledge that had been passed down from healer to healer since we crawled out of the caves. One doesn’t have to look very hard to find this “Zelig” in cultures ranging from Ur to the Yellow River Valley to the Bering Strait, through Clovis Country and all the way into Matilija Canyon.

We are lucky here; fennel grows well in Ojai for nine to 10 months of the year and is easy to harvest. Di erent from its sister, Carrot, who shyly hides her assets in the dark, Fennel proudly sits atop the soil in silent meditation, its lacy crown chakra dancing like kelp in the late afternoon breeze. Come harvest, a simple knife stroke below the waist and it lies down like a drowsy toddler. Though fennel has firm boundaries while it grows, it is ever the diplomat when boxed up. It never fights with its neighbors, doesn’t blush or bruise if packed alongside less proper company, and is content to loan its ample plumage as a pillow for its less travelsavvy cabinmates. Just like its sibling, if left too long in the field, it elegantly pro ers an umbrella and waits for a hot breeze. Truly graceful in departure, fennel o ers up a sweet yellow kiss of confetti, its highly sought-after pollen, that if gathered, any great dish is just dying to receive. The bulb itself is great in soup, salads, roasted, and as a dessert (e.g., fennel panna cotta).

by JOHN FONTEYN

When the aliens do return, it won’t be to see if we found all the Nazca Lines or how the pyramids have held up over all this time. It will be to swing by to grab their stash of the sacred herb.

C AL C AL

AUGUST

Ventura County Fair

August 2-13, Doors: 5 p.m.,

Headliner: 7 p.m.

Ventura County Fairgrounds

10 W. Harbor Blvd., Ventura venturacountyfair.org

Which One’s Pink

Pink Floyd Tribute at Libbey Bowl

August 5, Doors: 5 p.m., Headliner: 7 p.m.

210 S. Signal St.

Tickets: axs.com or call 888-645-5006

Chris Isaak at Libbey Bowl

August 6, Doors: 5 p.m., Headliner: 7 p.m. 210 S. Signal St.

Tickets: axs.com or call 888-645-5006

Judy Collins & Sophie B. Hawkins at Libbey Bowl

August 20, Doors: 5 p.m., Headliner: 7 p.m.

210 S. Signal St.

Tickets: axs.com or call 888-645-5006

Belinda Carlisle at Libbey Bowl

August 24, Doors: 5 p.m., Headliner: 7 p.m. 210 S. Signal St. Tickets: axs.com or call 888-645-5006

ONGOING

Ojai Community Farmers’ Market Thursdays 3-7 p.m. 414 E Ojai Avenue Chaparral School Courtyard in Downtown Ojai (661) 491-0257

ojaicommunityfarmersmarket.com The market will be a safe and loving space for our community to gather and support our local farmers, food artisans and makers.

EN D A R EN D A R

Ojai Certified Farmers’ Market Sundays 9:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. 300 E. Matilija St., Ojai 805-698-5555

ojaicertifiedfarmersmarket.com

Ojai Poetry Series at the Ojai Library 3rd Tuesdays 6:00 p.m. Ojai Library, 111 E. Ojai Ave., Ojai. Contact: Judy Oberlander ojaipoetryseries@gmail.com

98 Degrees at Libbey Bowl

August 17, Doors: 5 p.m.,

Headliner: 7 p.m.

210 S. Signal St.

Tickets: axs.com or call 888-645-5006

Queen Nation at Libbey Bowl

August 18, Doors: 5 p.m.,

Headliner: 7 p.m. 210 S. Signal St.

Tickets: axs.com or call 888-645-5006

UB40: Ali Campbell and Mickey Virtue. Photo by Sven Mandel Wikimedia CC

SUMMER ‘23

entering its 25th year, ojai playwrights conference has been a beloved haven for emerging playwrights.

The conference’s mission is to “develop unproduced plays of artistic excellence from diverse writers both emerging and established, and to nurture a new generation of playwrights.”

When Producing Artistic Director Robert Egan stepped down after 20 years in the role, OPC was poised to embark on a new chapter. The change comes at a time when programs that “grapple with the important social, cultural, and political issues of our day” have never been more urgently needed.

We sat down with Jeremy B. Cohen, OPC’s new producing artistic director, to discuss his love of the theater and his vision for the conference and festival this summer.

Cohen, a nationally renowned director and playwright, comes to Ojai with an impressive list of accolades and awards. For the past 13 years, he’s served as producing artistic director at Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis. Before that, he spent seven years at Hartford Stage in Connecticut and was a founding member of Naked Eye Theatre Company in Chicago.

Cohen grew up on the East Coast in a single-family home. “The arts were not necessarily part of that whole thing,” he tells us, though he had some early experiences with the theater. Those performances stayed with him until he thought, “I want to stop my life and do nothing else but gather 500 people in a room to have a shared experience that I can help create.”

As founding artistic director of Naked Eye Theatre Company, Cohen developed and directed over 15 plays, including several premieres. “It was all about elevating women playwrights,” he says. “Looking at sustainability and compensation practices, and more plays by women, not just developing them, but moving them into production. That was critical. And then, doing it with BIPOC writers as well.”

In the 2000s, he became associate artistic director and director of new work at Hartford Stage. “It was amazing, and I learned I not only wanted to make work, but I wanted to support other artists making work, especially those who had been traditionally disallowed practice or resource or opportunity,” he says. “So, more marginalized communities. It became a central part of my practice because I did a lot of activism.”

with Ojai Playwrights Conference’s new Producing Artistic Director Jeremy B. Cohen

by GREGG STEWART photos RENEE FAIA

Bringing this civic mindset, and carrying it through storytelling, is at the heart of Cohen’s artistic approach. He tells us that if after the conference, he couldn’t walk down the street and chat with a vendor at the farmers’ market, meet with a bike shop owner, or run into yoga teachers and artists at one of the local co ee shops, it would be a sign he wasn’t taking the right approach. For him, the theater experience and OPC cannot work as an exclusive entity within the community. “I want to know how your kids and grandkids are doing,” he says. “I want to know what’s happening. We want to find ways to connect people through the conference. We want to know: Are there other opportunities for artists coming into this community, and artists already in our community, to have more exchange throughout the two-week conference and festival? Especially for small businesses, is there a way to lift each other? That civic practice, being part of a community, is meaningful to me.”

Seeing the things Cohen has spearheaded and brought to other communities, we ask him about his vision for OPC. What’s the impact he’s hoping to have, and what is he looking forward to discovering?

He tells us big changes are already underway for OPC. First, Besant Hill School, which had historically hosted OPC, chose to step away this year. The news came on Cohen’s third day in his new role. “That was a significant moment,” he says, “and I knew the only way through this was to connect with people and get into the community.”

As a director, he’s constantly in challenging situations. A play, in many ways, is an intricately timed event. Things are supposed to happen, people are supposed to show up, then all too often, nothing goes quite as planned. So now what are you going to do? “This is where I live!” Cohen says with a laugh. “That’s my sweet spot.” He says the best way through a challenge is first to do a lot of asking and listening. So he called playwrights who have been part of the conference for many years. He asked what was impactful for them and what they got from the conference that they don’t get in other places.

“Uniformly, the thing that everyone came back with was ‘Ojai,’” he says. “That’s what makes the conference unique and special—

Ojai. Because it allows playwrights to step out of their lives and deeply invest, not only in their work but in the work of their colleagues. And they do it for a finite period in a meaningful way. The organization has done a beautiful job of doing that for a long time. So I’m excited that we’re getting to reinvent ourselves in some ways and think about what that means in 2023, because to be a working playwright in 2023 is di erent

“Grace Lowe, head of theater at Thacher, is so awesome. If you haven’t met her, you need to!” Cohen says. “The place where she and I have connected is this idea of equitable access. It goes back to how learning and mentorship get integrated. I think the holistic piece for me is care and feeding. We’re bringing in professional artists, and they’re receiving care and feeding, and then they give back, mentoring, like giving a masterclass for high school and college students. The idea of equitable access means that anybody can have access to these opportunities. This means access for folks who might have said, ‘Oh, I never thought I could have that opportunity. That’s for someone else.’

than in 2019 or 2015, as you can imagine. So for me, I think about things like wellness. I’m curious about yoga, biking, and hiking because I would love to o er attendees the opportunity to eat healthy, good food when they come. I would like them to have the opportunity to experience the amazingness of Ojai and the surrounding areas. We believe that artists have value and that their wellness is a priority. With playwrights, they are literally looking at a blank piece of paper and saying, ‘What am I gonna do?’ So, in what ways can OPC be a place where we can meet writers where they are?”

This holistic approach to generating creativity and community is what Ojai is all about. Integrating wellness and connection within the conference aligns with Ojai’s ethos and its future. And it’s exciting to think about theater in those terms.

With these changes come new possibilities. Visiting playwrights will now be partially housed at Ojai Valley School, with more housed at The Thacher School. Also, all the performances in week 2 will now be at Thacher’s theater, which has more than 400 seats.

“I often feel that Art and Theater (with a capital A and capital T) can be elitist. It’s clear when you see the cost of ticket prices. So, we must hold ourselves accountable to the community. We can’t bring in a few artists, hide them on a hill, and you’re lucky if you can get a ticket. That won’t work. So one of the things I’m most excited about — to bring this holistic piece full circle — is that all tickets at The Thacher School theater will be free. Free tickets create a new access point for folks in Ojai and throughout Ventura County. It’s a fantastic opportunity to look behind the scenes to see how theatrical stories get made. It’s less exclusive and more like we are creating opportunities for people to find themselves however they want — as an audience member, a student, an actor, whatever.”

After getting the news he was named the new producing artistic director for OPC, Cohen drove into Ojai to meet with the team. “I was by myself in the car, and I just ... I know people talk about it, but I had a very bodily, somatic experience of coming into town and feeling like I had found the home I had been looking for — that I didn’t know I was looking for — for a very long time. I don’t know how else to put it, but I thought, ‘Oh yeah, this is it. This is my next place.’”

We discuss the works that OPC plans to bring in — is it based on the playwrights themselves, or is OPC focusing on specific kinds of work?

“We’re still deep in the selection process now, taking over 300 applications, but I want stories that can only happen on stage

“Time and space are critical for playwrights, and Ojai provides that like nowhere else.”

and that cannot happen on Netflix,” Cohen says. “And I want stories that somehow challenge and/or reflect the di erent questions of our world right now. That’s why we’re in Ojai, because this is a place where we ask those questions every day. It’s less thematic and more about a story that will shift the room when all 400 of us are together. I want to feel what happens in that room.

“Years ago, Yale did a study that tracked the biorhythms of people watching theater together, and they discovered that everyone’s heartbeats synced throughout

Ojai Playwrights Conference will run for two weeks this summer:

July 24 – Jul. 30: Conference

Week includes play readings and early development for the stage.

Jul.31 – Aug. 6: Festival Week includes rehearsals and continued play development, culminating in public workshops and artists’ receptions.

If you would like to support the Ojai Playwrights Conference by attending, donating, or getting involved, please visit ojaiplays.org for more information.

the performance. That blew my mind. It takes me back to my first moment, standing in the back of the theater, watching this beautiful play, From the Mississippi Delta, by Dr. Endesha Ida Mae Holland. It’s a play about three black women of di erent generations telling stories about their lives, and I felt all 520 people in that theater together, and I thought, ‘Yes, this is what I want to do.’ That experience is what I hope to bring to Ojai. It’s what OPC has been doing, and as our world continues to change, let’s get those artists and those stories here.’”

“My instinct has always been, How am I creating communal experiences for people on stage, with storytelling at its center.”

Photo: Peggy Ryan

Taft

Gardens

As the 2022-23 artist-in-residence at the Ojai Valley’s 264-acre Taft Gardens & Nature Preserve, she skipped over flourishing blooms, seeking instead the property’s unwanted denizens.

Wheat was fascinated with Taft’s “burn piles” — all the plant matter pulled out by gardeners because it’s “not beautiful enough, not young enough, not fitting enough for the region,” she says. Forlorn, this detritus is stacked, out of sight, in massive piles to go up in flames.

“My works deal with … the spaces where we store outcasts so we can maintain our perceived utopias,” Wheat says. “Botanical gardens are these highly curated spaces where anything that doesn’t meet the author’s eye gets edited out. So I wanted to know where the weeds hang out.”

The Taft Gardens Art in Nature Residency, now in its third year, provides artists with an airy studio and plenty of outdoor inspiration, but doesn’t require them to create pretty paintings of captivating foliage. Instead, artists of all kinds — visual, performance, musical — are invited to “explore the relationship between humans and their environment,” whatever form that takes.

During her nine-month residency, interdisciplinary artist Wheat says she wanted to delve into “human belief systems and how they relate to the natural world.”

In her previous artwork, she’s explored the sociopolitical aspects of gardens and agriculture, such as the colonial history of ornamental citrus gardens as displays of wealth. She also started a farming community in Oregon for people with special needs.

Art in nature residency

story by KAREN LINDELL photos ALEXANDRA NICKLIN

Her Taft residency ends in May with the opening of an exhibition of her works, titled You Can Not Control What Is Wild, along with a fundraiser for the gardens. The exhibition will be open through June 30. Wheat describes the exhibition as “a conceptual flower shop, looking at everything that was removed from the garden while I was in residence there, and the things that aren’t there anymore. A lot of my work makes a trace of something. There’s an element of complete collapse in the paintings — like I’m controlling spaces and letting them go.”

Left: Natasha Wheat in the studio. Photo by Marc Alt

For a series of art pieces in the exhibit titled “Outcasts,” for example, she “underpainted” with burnt bone char, then created the final pieces by burning and stenciling plants from the burn pile.

Humans: Meet Nature

The Taft Gardens & Nature Preserve, at the foot of the Santa Ynez Mountains north of Lake Casitas, was founded in 1981 by businessman and developer John Taft when he donated the land to a nonprofit he created, the Conservation Endowment Fund. Curated gardens cover 15 acres; the remainder is protected open space. Areas in the cultivated portion include South African, Australian, aloe, agave cactus, and Zen gardens.

The site isn’t an easy place to find or drive to, located 2.5 miles up a road o Highway 150, west of Highway 33, that floods during rainy spurts. The Art in Nature Residency Program is a much newer creation, born from the confines of the Covid pandemic. Oak View digital-collage artist Cassandra C. Jones came up with the idea while under quarantine. In 2020, at home with her kids and musician husband who’s usually on the road, Jones was “going crazy doomscrolling,” she says. In search of a project that would allow her to get out of the house safely, she thought about Taft Gardens, which she had recently visited, and sent the garden’s coordinators an unsolicited artist residency proposal.

Jaide Whitman, CEO of Taft Gardens and John Taft’s granddaughter, thought it was a great idea, and agreed to renovate a studio on the grounds where Jones could work.

The residency, Whitman says, gives both artists and visitors an opportunity to experience the site as more than a traditional botanical garden. Most such gardens, Whitman says, “have a database of every single plant,” and mark, number, and date each specimen. “We don’t do that. The most important part of distinguishing who we are, and why John Taft created this place, is to have a relationship with yourself in nature.” The Art in Nature program is “a beautiful container for the community to interact with the land” without bringing in too many people at once.

Jones had an additional goal: to support and build up the art community in Ventura

and Santa Barbara counties; resident artists must live in either county.

The first year, when Jones was the resident artist, the gardens hosted a free exhibition of her work along with a fundraising dinner party.

She’s now arts chair of the residency program, which has grown from one artist to eight. For 2022-23, the artists are Wheat, for a nine-month residency; performance artist Shana Moulton of Santa Barbara, for an invitational residency; clay artist P. Lyn Middleton, fiber artist Sally England, painter Richard Amend, and harpist-composer Shelley Burgon, all from Ojai, and painter Chris Ulivo of Ventura, for one-month residencies; and Rosemary Hall of Ojai, for a research residency.

Whitman says when she took over management duties at Taft several years ago, the gardens had been “on a really long hiatus,” focused on preservation e orts for about a decade without a lot of public events taking place. She wanted to return to the three-part mission statement her grandfather created in 1981: to “educate the public about (the gardens’) environmental heritage, preserve our endangered resources, and explore the relationship between humans and their environment.”

‘On the cusp’

As part of their residency, artists are expected to develop relationships with and interact with visitors, too. The main art studio, Jones says, “is like a fish tank, with glass windows all around, and people pop in and talk to the artists.”

Each artist responds di erently to the garden. When Jones was the resident artist, the subject matter for her digital art was “plastics in nature and how the natural

world is absorbing the human role.”

In 2021-22, resident artist Stephanie Washburn focused on drawings of the ever-changing skies above the Ojai Valley; and co-artist Jane Mulfinger created landscape paintings layered with phrases related to climate change, such as “extreme turbulence” and “transpolar drift.”

Wheat says she’s fascinated by the location of the art studio at Taft: where the nature preserve meets the more curated gardens. “It’s really interesting to be in residence right on the cusp of those two possibilities,” she says. Many visitors seek out just the cultivated area, but Wheat has been impressed by visitors who are also interested in the nature preserve and “ecopsychology.”

While Jones was in residence, she gave tours of the gardens as she learned more about the plants that grow there, something she never could have done in a traditional art gallery. “The engagement was better than any engagement of anything in my 20-year career,” she says.

Botanical resistance

Wheat, in addition to the burn piles at Taft, is also interested in the concept of non-GMO herbicide-resistant plants. One of the works she created at Taft, titled “Resistance,” is a neon sculpture of hands holding Boliviana negra, a variant of the coca plant that is native to South America

Taft Gardens founder John Taft

and used in sacred ceremonies and cocaine production.

Wheat came up with “Resistance” after listening to Colombian President Gustavo Petro give a 2022 speech to the United Nations “pleading for the U.S. to stop dropping (the herbicide) Roundup on the jungles there, and speaking to the coexistence of violence and beauty.”

As she considered her “conceptual flower shop” gallery of works at Taft, featuring traces of plants no longer living, she started looking at vintage flower-shop signs for inspiration and kept coming across the classic graphic of a hand holding a rose. She recalled reading about rose plantations in Ecuador “and how pesticides have devastated the environment there. But here in the U.S. we see this gorgeous, soft, beautiful-smelling cut flower that we give as a sign of adoration.”

She also learned that Boliviana negra was resistant to Roundup, which reminded her of the scores of trees that had to be cut down this year in Ojai’s Soule Park because they had been killed by pesticides.

The coca variant, she says, is “hiding in the jungle refusing to die, surviving against everything the colonial world can throw at it. No matter what side you are on, that is … poetic. Who doesn’t love the victorious underdog?”

The weeds, the outcasts, the underdogs, the burned … the resistance.

The 2023 Taft Art Residency Exhibition will be open to view during self-guided visiting hours by reservation at TaftGardens. org/visit through June 30. Twenty percent of the art sales are donated in support of the Taft Art in Nature Program. The 2023-24 residency application is open until July 15; applications accepted at TaftGardens.org/artist-inresidence.

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and flourishing life you have under the soil, the more you’re going to have above.” — Connor Jones

LOOKING OUT ON A SUMMER DAY IN OJAI, IN THE HEAT, THE CLOUDLESS SKY, THE UNRELENTING SUN, ALL MAY SEEM �UIET — ONLY YOUR WIND CHIMES AND A HOBBLING BREEZE TO BREAK THE SILENCE. THE VALLEY’S MOUNTAINSIDES RISING UP TO CRADLE YOU BELOW, TOTALLY — SEEMINGLY — MOTIONLESS.

But in those still scapes, the mountains, the stretch of your yard, the garden beds, there is an abundance of happening; there are wars being waged, careful heists of priceless goods, miraculous and generational bonds of friendship, dynasties rising and falling at the hands of other dynasties. The slaughter of billions of beings at the hands of others. The giving of a billion life-granting gifts. All this churn of interacting life happening under the serene mirage of the soil’s surface.

We all know, as we bury our toes in the land, that miracles happen down there. We know from the treasured foods and alluring flowers and mystifying vegetative creations that burst forth from it. And yet, just as the miracle of life itself, it passes under our noses as wholly ordinary — banal even.

Nowadays, particularly in towns like Ojai, the zeitgeist is coming round on the moral imperative of soil. Glimmering words like “regenerative” and “steward” catch our eyes and ears like tithing opportunities for heaven. And truly, we are the better for it. But most have yet to come round on the majesty of soil. Most do not go sightseeing by hand through the soil the way they do by eye through the forest.

But, sprinkled through this valley like worms through the ground are Ojai’s soil obsessives. Soil is their play, their calling, and in some cases, their livelihood. They are

oozing passion for this thing so brown and (seemingly) inanimate.

Passion for soil

At some point, they all caught the soil bug. For Connor Jones, founder of Ojai Permaculture and East End Eden, it was being “one of those kids who was in love with being covered in dirt and digging around,” then finding his way to the garden at 11. Camila Guzman, founder of Queen of Compost, also got hooked young, “playing in the mud, as a kid, doing mud baths with my cousins.” But for her it was really a moment of young-adult transformation that clinched it: “Something told me to just reach into the soil. So I started to almost massage the soil. And my arms were getting deeper. It felt like the Magic School Bus moment where I just felt like, wow, this soil is really pulling me in.” Guzman now spends much of her time facilitating those moments for others, “inviting them to get their hands dirty, because once they see the life that’s in the soil, it’s pretty mesmerizing.” She describes them “putting some gloves on, sticking their hand in some rich compost, and then pulling it out, trying to see worms wiggle and little tiny insects crawling around,” adding, “Usually people, even if they are a little squeamish at first, end up having this beautiful relation and compassion for these small critters that are working so hard beneath our feet.”

Creatures of soil

These small critters, these worms and tiny insects, are like the whales and large sharks of the soil. Beyond our eyes’ ability lie billions — no, gazillions! — more beasts. They are the many creatures that populate the ecosystem of the soil, and are every bit as essential to it as plants and animals are to

the ecosystems we know. But even more so, as Josh and Rebecca Tickell, environmental filmmakers (films include Kiss the Ground), explain that “soil is the basis for all life above ground.”

But, why? Jones elaborates, “This intricate web of interconnected devouring critters is actually what’s feeding the root systems of the plants that are then in turn feeding us,” and, of course, all other aboveground creatures. This relationship of life above and below is not loose, like what you do for your child and how much they appreciate you in return. Put simply by Jones, “the more diversity and flourishing life you have under the soil, the more you’re going to have above.”

Recognizing this, these soil obsessives go to work.

OBSESSIVES

Soil organic matter

They haven’t fallen for what Michael Leicht, owner of Ventura Brush Goats, describes as “the misinformed belief that the best thing we can do for land is to leave it alone,” when human changes have already disrupted the natural order of a place. In fact, armed with their herd of goats, their chickens’ excrement, their kitchen scraps, and their neighbors’ yard clippings, they are, as some might accuse, soil organic matter fanatics, compost addicts, and humus enthusiasts. Which is to say, in pursuit of this flourishing soil life, they are devout servants of what is called the soil’s organic matter. Composed of the aforementioned beasts, their poop, slaughtered foes, and your last year’s tomato-plant remains, soil organic matter is dark, rich in smell, and deeply essential to the soil. Essential, in spite of the fact that it makes up only a fraction of most soils;

“The more diversity

Left: A no-till seeder plants hay on a ranch that hired Leicht’s herd of sheep and goats to clear the vegetation instead of discing conventionally.

in Ojai, “in most places it hovers between 0.5%-3%, and the pre-colonial topsoil in our region would have been over 10%,” according to the Tickells.

Many of these soil obsessives are particularly obsessed with maintaining or increasing that fraction, largely through compost. They can tell you exactly how their compost is formulated. In fact, for Robert “BD” Dautch, owner of Earthtrine Farm, making compost is what lit the flame of his soil love half a century ago: “I started making these beautiful compost piles. It really fascinated me. I got seaweed from the ocean, weeds from other vacant lots, manure from the stables, and scraps from the chicken coop.” Leicht, on the other hand, prefers feeding the soil with specialized compost machines of the hooved and cuddly sort.

But organic matter does more than foster life in the soil. “Dense soil organic matter results in better water infiltration, better nutrient uptake into plants and trees, better profit for farmers, and higher nutrient density in food,” say the Tickells. Soil organic matter, in other words, is a central piece of the larger project of soil health.

The soil serving

A healthy soil, as you might imagine and appreciate as you snack or sip while reading this, is essential for growing food. As Dautch definitively puts it, “the health of the soil is the health of the plants will be the health of the consumer.”

But you may be less aware of soil’s other

contributions to our lives. In the wet months, Leicht explains, “the health of the soil can determine the health of our watersheds. … It can be the defining factor in whether or not we have erosion, flooding, or damaging floods.” In the dry months, he says, soil health is important for wildfire resiliency, as healthier soils foster plants that tend to lower probability of ignition, rate of spread, and height of flame. And, in the many months of our lives ahead, “soil is possibly one of the most important opportunities for sequestering atmospheric carbon,” says Leicht.

A healthy soil feeds us better, keeps our houses flood-free and not aflame, and may help save us from humanity’s great climate folly. To be sure, as Leicht notes, this is not an exhaustive account… you can be sure soil is saving your ass in many other ways, too.

Serving the soil

The soil obsessives have all found their way to some version of this truth, have all come to appreciate the gifts the soil so unassumingly hands us from its place below us. They have come to diligently pay due worship to this entity of creation and protection. They study its patterns, for “in every situation, every climate, every landscape, every region, the Earth chooses

to cover herself in a di erent manner that’s appropriate for the place,” says Jones, describing how he patterns his own planting after this. They labor to quench its thirst, advocating as Leicht does to “keep as much water as close to where it’s falling from the sky as possible.” They spread the “Good News” of the soil, be it by film and outreach as the Tickells do, or by food scrap, as Guzman does, allowing people to see it “transformed from recognizable scraps to nutrient-rich soil.” These obsessives might, as Dautch does in the night, “go out into the garden just to look at the plants in the moonlight or chant to them” — the plants that feed and are fed by the soil. Both the Tickells and Leicht independently noted that we humans know more about the stars than we do about the inner workings of the soil. Why we have overlooked this great womb which birthed — and continues to birth by the day, by the hour, by the second — our world is a mystery. Perhaps it frightens us to think that our mother of terrestrial creation is an uncountable collection of crumbled rocks, decaying flesh, and mostly invisible beasts and quasi-beasts. Perhaps its majesty has been too quiet for us to take notice. Perhaps a thing that feeds us in exchange for scraps from our cutting boards, digestive tracts, and livestock seems too bizarre to dig into. In fact, it is just bizarre enough to dig into. So, try it… right now, outside of wherever you are. Reach, a finger at a time, into this terrestrial womb, consider anew this bit of earth, all tender and beaming with the warmth of Ojai’s summer sun.

Top and below right: Connor Jones, young and old.

Left: Camila Guzman and David White make compost.

MAMA TREE

A t Mama Tree, we love our trees and we like to think they love us back.

We o er farm tours, workshops, olive oil, walnut butter, marmalade and other tasty delights. Find us at Ojai Community Farmers Market, Rainbow Bridge, and Farmer & the Cook.

mamatreeojai.com & @mamatreeojai

With SR-33 through Los Padres National Forest likely closed through at least summer due to extensive winter storm damage, hikers and mountain bikers will have to find their fun on Ojai’s front country trails. But make no mistake, great choices for summer hikes exist just a few minutes from Ojai. Here’s a rundown of a few of my top picks, including directions on getting there and what to expect on your hike.

Hikes of Summer

VENTURA RIVER PRESERVE

Proximity to town and a network of varied, wellmaintained and signed trails make the Ventura River Preserve instantly appealing. If you want to get away from the hustle and bustle, without driving far, head for the nearly 1,600-acre VRP.

Opened in 2003 by Ojai Valley Land Conservancy, the VRP o ers trails that run along the riverbank, loop trips that take

you through oak forests and peaceful meadows, and lofty adventures that take you high above the Ojai Valley. My favorites are Wills Canyon and El Nido Meadow.

The VRP can be accessed from three distinct trailheads: the Oso Trailhead, o Meyer Road; the Riverview Trailhead on Rice Road; and the Old Baldwin Trailhead o Highway 150. Parking is free at all three trailheads, just heed the posted summer hours.

SHELF ROAD

Closeness to town has, for decades, made Shelf Road an Ojai favorite. The easy, 2-mile dirt road runs east to west from Gridley Road to Signal Street, and o ers excellent views of the Ojai Valley and surrounding mountains. What’s more, new branch trails give hikers several alternate routes and loop options. A former county road open to vehicle tra c not so

long ago, Shelf Road was recently made much more interesting by OVLC’s creation of the Valley View Preserve. Hike up the Fox Canyon Trail to the Foothill Trail, and back down to Shelf Road via Luci’s Trail, for a bit of a workout and some nice views.

Due to its popularity, Shelf Road parking can get tight, especially on weekend mornings. Pay attention to the signs posted, and if North Signal Street is crowded, you can always park at the nearby Pratt Trailhead and walk a short distance to Shelf Road.

Above: View from Shelf Road hike

Left: Along the Ventura River Preserve trail

story and photos by PERRY VAN HOUTEN

COZY DELL TRAIL

Cozy Dell Trail (#23W26) is one of the most enjoyable trails in the Ojai Valley. Perhaps that’s because the fun, 2-mile trail takes hikers and bikers into a charming, wooded canyon that o ers great views and options for

longer excursions, while located only 10 minutes from town.

To get to the signed trailhead, take SR-33 north for about 3 miles to a dirt parking area, just south of Friend’s Ranches. Initially, the rocky trail climbs many switchbacks under the cover of oaks, with plentiful poison oak along the way. The trail then moderates before climbing again, then dropping to reach Cozy

Dell Road.

Hardy hikers can take Cozy Dell Trail to Cozy Dell Canyon Road, then uphill to the Pratt Trail and Nordho Ridge, past the old Nordho Peak Fire Lookout, then downhill to Ojai on the Gridley Trail, for a total of about 16 miles.

For trail information from the U.S. Forest Service, see www.fs.usda.gov/lpnf

For real time tra c information and road closures, see www.quickmap.dot.ca.gov

Khaled Fouad

All the world his canvas

story by BARBARA BURKE photos

FOUAD

as he discusses his photography projects and professional dreams.

“I love the magic of photography and how a photograph can trigger our emotions,” he says. “I challenge myself with every photograph I take to produce an image that reflects quality, hard work, and finesse.”

When Fouad speaks, his energy is contagious and his vision of photographic perfection becomes clear.

A native of Cairo, Egypt, Fouad is the son of an American mother and a half-German father. He came to California to pursue his passion for photography and earned a degree in commercial photography at Santa Monica College.

by KHALED

Left: Guy Webster by Khaled Fouad

Right: Khaled Fouad by Guy Webster

Tall, young, amiable, and con dent, Ojai’s Khaled Fouad exudes optimism

“I always loved photography from a young age and was fascinated by my father’s old Yashica 35 mm film camera, which I still use, and by pictures belonging to my grandmother,” Fouad says. “Photography is amazing because it almost stops a motion … in time and captures a moment.”

Fouad settled in Ojai after honing his career goals and photography skills by working with Guy Webster, Ojai’s iconic photographer and a colleague of Ansel Adams. The late Webster was one of the early innovators of rock ‘n roll and celebrity photography. For decades he enjoyed a career spanning the worlds of music, film, and politics, and designed album covers for The Rolling Stones, The Mamas & The Papas, The Beach Boys, Chicago, and many more.

Fouad reveres Webster and, as he noted in his eulogy for Webster in 2019, helped Webster with photo shoots and managed his enormous careerlong archive of photos. The pair were introduced by mutual friends because of their love of photography and a nity for motorcycles.

“I always looked up to the photography gods, but I never imagined I would be mentored by one,” Fouad says. “I met Guy at NoSo Vita (now known as LO>E Social Cafe), where he liked to get his co ee and breakfast almost every morning and he would share stories from his lifelong photography career.”

Fouad instantly knew he wanted to emulate Webster, and was inspired to live a similarly exciting life.

For three years, Fouad helped Webster, assisting him in curating his last exhibit in 2019, “Behind the Mask,” hosted by Porch Gallery. The series was inspired by masks that Ojai residents wore in the aftermath of the Thomas Fire. Webster shot the series using a FujiFilm GFX 50 megapixel camera that Fouad helped him select.

Under Webster’s tutelage, Fouad’s skills and career blossomed. His striking photographs include the series “Egypt, a Journey through Civilization,” which highlights some of his

native country’s most gorgeous landmarks, such as the beautiful Al-Sayeda Zainab Mosque. One of the country’s most important and largest mosques, it is dedicated to the Prophet Muhammad’s granddaughter. Like many of Fouad’s works, the black-and-white image is shot from an interesting angle that focuses on some of the ancient edifice’s most phenomenal features, and highlights its ornate motifs and enormous dome. Fouad playfully toys with the e ects of shadows on a cloudy day in his rendition of the Courtyard of the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, drawing onlookers in to enjoy the mosque’s distinctive architecture and features.

“My Egypt series resonates because it plays with gray, black, and white tones utilizing the zone system pioneered by Ansel Adams,” Fouad explains. “A photo is divided into 11 zones, including nice shades of gray together with pure black and pure white. I play with gray and white shades to create a dynamic range within the 11 tone values.”

Fouad says he mostly shoots images in black-and-white and often shoots photos on film. He uses a photo enlarger to print a negative, often on silver nitrate paper. Then, he plays with it digitally in Photoshop, a process that yields extraordinary images. Forthcoming projects include photographs of Ojai landmarks and scenery. Ojai is home for Fouad, who loves to ride his horses in the countryside.

“I do my works in series and I hope to have a show exhibiting Ojai — ‘Valley of the Moon,’ Fouad says. “I am mostly shooting panoramas in this series, highlighting the recent rains and the Topatopa Mountains and their last snow, as well as the Rose Valley and Lake Casitas.”

His portraits include stunning images of Webster and of Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Perla Batalla.

Fouad is also creating a name for himself in the world of commercial photography by shooting industry standard photographs, including impressive images of bottles of Bombay Sapphire Dry Gin and E&J Brandy, and cosmetic products by the likes of Bobbi Brown and Too Faced.

What’s next for this talented young photographer? He plans to complete a series that he and Webster envisioned. He animatedly describes the concept: “The project focuses on the dogs of Ojai”.

Every day, I observe how strong each dog’s personality is; and whether they are young or senior dogs, large or small dogs, they are each a unique individual. I want to capture how they express themselves.

“I will be the happiest person when I work with people who respect and love me and who I love,” he says. “For me, that’s what being wealthy and successful means.” All the world is his oyster; all the world is his canvas. For more information, visit khaledfouadphoto.com

Left page: The Topatopas from Lake Casitas

Top left: Portrait of Perla Batalla

Top right: Highway 33, in the Valley of the Moon

Above: Above: Bread boy, “Egypt, a Journey through Civilization”

Left: Winchester Bourbon Whiskey, product shoot