Ojai Quarterly - Winter 2025-26

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

ROOM

TO BUILD DREAM HOME

Hidden behind the gates of Rancho Matilija sits a stunning 3-acre lot with magnificent 360 degree mountain views. Surrounded by mature trees and wildlife, this lot offers a beautiful connection to nature while still being conveniently located near all the amenities, recreational parks, hiking trails, Lake Casitas, fishing and all the outdoor adventures you may be looking for as well as easy access to Ventura, LA and Santa Barbara. Don’t miss this opportunity to build your dream home with endless possibilities in this serene and picturesque setting. This gated, private community offers beauty, peace and vision to the person looking for a one-of-akind property.

PROPERTY DETAIL

MOUNTAIN VIEWS

TIMELESS OASIS

Discover a quiet East End compound offering nearly 5,000 square feet across three private homes. Originally crafted by Mr. Shippee for his family, the main house welcomes you with a walled courtyard, covered veranda, sparkling pool, and lush landscaping. Inside, acacia wood floors, an open cook’s kitchen, and a dramatic double-sided fireplace anchor the living spaces. Three bedrooms with French doors open to the gardens. A 1,400-square-foot guest house adds two bedrooms, a bath, a private courtyard, and a two-car garage — ideal for visitors or extended family. The third home features modern concrete floors, a spacious living room, kitchenette, bedroom, bath, and two secluded patios. The landscaped grounds mix drought-tolerant plantings with fruit trees — apple, citrus, fig, pomegranate — and olive trees lining the drive. A fenced paddock and turnout area make the property horse-friendly. Altogether, this rare compound blends versa-

Thank You Ojai For Voting Us Best of Ojai Four Years in a Row, Gold for Property Management in 2025 & Bronze for Best Real Estate Office!

Set along Ojai’s coveted Foothill Road, this restored 1929 Tudor Revival estate blends historic charm with modern elegance. A designated Historic Landmark, the property features a 4-bed main house, barn, yoga studio, and enchanting gardens with mountain views. Moments from hiking trails, farmers markets, and the Ojai Valley Inn, it’s a rare chance to own a piece of Ojai history.

A PEACEFUL OASIS IN OJAI’S EAST END WITH AN ABUNDANCE OF STYLE AND ARCHITECTURAL APPEAL, AN IMPRESSIVE FAMILY ORCHARD AND 360-DEGREE VIEWS AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE.

$3.250 M

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“A Must See” The New York Times

BUILDING A HEALTHY, SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY.

For over 40 years, we’ve led the way in sustainable construction, building homes that are healthy, comfortable, durable, and better for the environment. We are relationships first, 100% employee-owned, and proud to be voted the region’s best contractor eight years running. Healthy homes and clients for life start here. Scan to Meet our Ojai Team

Wheeler Hot Springs

Bathe in a Natural Wonder of Your Own

This historic property was the genesis of Ojai as a wellness resort town. Since the 1800s, travelers visited Wheeler Hot Springs to ‘take the waters,’ believed to have healing qualities. For decades, the property was a busy resort featuring a lodge, spring-fed hot tubs, and a cold spring-fed swimming pool. Visitors also enjoyed massages and other treatments in cabins peppered around the grounds. There are no structures remaining today, but the abundant natural elements that made this property world famous are still flowing freely. The present owner has planted numerous redwood trees, which, combined with the palm groves, enhance the spectacular views of the mountains and the peaceful energy that surrounds you. So come experience it all, and create your own Nirvana in Ojai.

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OJAI QUARTERLY

THE LENS & THE LIGHT

Wander Through Ojai’s Streets, Shadows & Small Miracles

Story By Devorah Cutler-Rubinstein

THREAD BY THREAD

Museum Follows The Women Who Stitched Ojai Together. Story By Brady Hahn

Editor’s Note p.22 Contributors p.23

Ojai Podcasts & 2 Degrees

Arts Section

Artists & Galleries

Yesterday & Today Section

Design By Uta Ritke

Hiking Map

Healers of Ojai

JOURNEY A Daughter Retraces Her Family’s Shoah Survival Story by Bret Bradigan p.96

Calendar of Events

COUNTER CULTURE

Meet the Dames Who Love Diners Story by Ilona Saari

FEATURES & departments

The Madre Fire’s

Resilient Survivors

Story by Bret Bradigan

Story by Sami Zahringer

Story & Photos By Chuck Graham

OJAI QUARTERLY

Living the Ojai Life

Editor & Publisher

Bret Bradigan

Director of Publications

Bret Bradigan

Creative Director

Uta Ritke

Ojai Vortex/Hub Administrator

Julia S. Weissman

Contributing Editors

Mark Lewis

Jerry Camarillo Dunn Jr.

Jesse Phelps

Columnists

Chuck Graham

Ilona Saari

Kit Stolz

Sami Zahringer

Interns

Alex Gutierrez

Emilie Harris

Circulation

John Nelson

CONTACT US: Editorial & Advertising, 805.798.0177 editor@ojaiquarterly.com

The contents of the Ojai Quarterly may not be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written consent of the publisher.

SUBSCRIPTIONS:

To subscribe to the OQ, visit ojaiquarterly.com or write to 1129 Maricopa Highway, B186 Ojai, CA 93023. Subscriptions are $32.95 per year.

You can also e-mail us at editor@ojaiquarterly.com. Please recycle this magazine when you are finished.

Jack La Plante

Realtor® | DRE 02134607

805.640.5571

jack.laplante@sothebysrealty.com jacklaplante.sothebysrealty.com

Elegant Mediterranean Estate

Located in the exclusive gated community of Rancho Matilija, this stunning home captures the serene beauty of Ojai with vistas from every angle. Bordered by the Ojai Land Conservancy and Ventura River, the property offers unmatched privacy and direct access to equestrian and pedestrian trails leading to the Los Padres National Forest and surrounding neighborhood paths. Enjoy sweeping views of the Ojai Valley and the iconic Topa Topa Mountains, the home features five spacious bedrooms and five bathrooms, including a primary suite with stunning views, a luxurious en-suite bathroom, and a large walk-in closet. Designed with comfort and style in mind, the open floor plan includes travertine flooring in the entry and kitchen, solid hardwood in main living areas, and three inviting fireplaces. Set on almost 3 acres with a vast variety of plants and trees including: citrus, palm, and olive trees, the backyard offers a tranquil escape with breathtaking views of Ojai’s famous Pink Moment. offered at $3,495,000

Erik Wilde

Realtor® | DRE 01461074 805.830.3254

erik.wilde@sothebysrealty.com erikwilde.sothebysrealty.com

12986 MACDONALD DRIVE, OJAI, CALIFORNIA

OUR OWN ‘FIRE NEXT TIME’

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

— Mary Oliver

Around Ojai, winter’s stillness is deceptive. Beneath the quiet, seeds are plotting. Rain, if we’re lucky, will coax green blades from blackened hills. And if not — well, Ojai has never waited politely for miracles. We make our own.

This issue is about what endures, and what rises after the burning.

Chuck Graham takes us to the Carrizo Plain, where the Madre Fire scorched 81,000 acres into a moonscape. Yet already, life stirs — a pair of great horned owls perched in the last two trees, a bull tule elk bugling defiantly across the char. “The place will come back,” says a Fish & Wildlife biologist. It always does. That sentence could serve as our motto in “this smiling vale,” as Annie Besant called us.

Beth Lane’s “UnBroken” documentary tells another kind of regeneration — her mother and six siblings hiding from the Nazis for two years, and the daughter who rebuilt that shattered lineage through film. Memory itself can be an act of restoration. “Would you hide me?” the film asks — a question that reaches far beyond one family’s history.

Ojai, “the Little Orange,” has always been a refuge for the unbroken — those singed by the world but not destroyed by it. That spirit threads through every story here. Robin Gerber’s portrait of Cassandra Jones’ Mega Gallery glows like its subject — a jewel box of self-help irony illuminating our shared absurdities. Brady Hahn writes about the Ojai Museum’s Women of the Valley exhibition, drawing Ethel Percy Andrus, Annie Besant, Beatrice Wood, and dozens of unsung heroines back into the light.

Ilona Saari’s “Dames Who Dine in Diners” reminds us that community is built as much over biscuits and gravy as at city council meetings. Sami Zahringer, as ever, catapults us into her cauldron of witchy joy. And Mark Lewis turns his historian’s lens toward Edward Libbey — not as marbleized benefactor, but through his restless tinkerer, Michael Owens, whose “world’s most complicated machine” helped build Ojai itself.

If there’s a through line, it’s resilience — not the self-help kind (Cassandra has cured us of that), but the authentic, oxygenated sort that emerges from paying attention to what burns and what blooms.

In “The Fire Next Time” James Baldwin wrote, “The most dangerous creation of any society is that man who has nothing to lose.” I think of that when I see the black stubble of chaparral along Highway 33, and the first green shoots pushing through it. Nature always gambles everything — and somehow wins. Baldwin also knew that the fire outside mirrors the fire within. We, too, burn and are remade.

Ojai teaches that daily. Stacey Jones, our resident coffee roaster, has kept her shop humming for 30 years. So do the artists who open their studios each winter to the chill and the curious. So does every resident who’s watched the hills blacken, then blush green again. In this valley, we don’t worship permanence — we celebrate persistence.

It’s fashionable to market resilience like a wellness package. But the real thing is quieter. It happens when an owl pair nests in a burnedout tree. When a daughter turns silence into art. When townspeople gather not for spectacle, but for coffee, or the faint hope of rain.

Ojai’s winters invite that rarest of acts — reflection. Light fades early, the mountains turn the color of old copper, and the night sky reclaims its awe. Let this issue be your warm mug in cold hands, your light after fire, your reminder that beauty and loss are not opposites, but accomplices.

Stay unbroken, Ojai.

OQ | C ONTRIBUTORS

ROBIN GERBER

is the author of four books and a playwright. Check her out at RobinGerber. com

MARK LEWIS

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

RYAN SCHUDE

is a photographer & educator from Oak View. You can find his most recent photos in the book “Also On View: Unique and Unexpected Museums of Greater Los Angeles” by Todd Lerew.

CHUCK GRAHAM

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

BRADY HAHN

is the founder of the Noodle Collective, and an award-winning consultant, producer, and researcher with more than 15 years of experience in helping organizations and people develop their ideas into meaningful action.

UTA RITKE

is following the tug of curiosity, shaping clean visuals with a touch of delightful weird. Find her at utaculemanndesign.de and utaculemann.art

ILONA SAARI

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

KIT STOLZ

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

SAMI ZAHRINGER

is an Ojai writer and award-winning breeder of domestic American long-haired children. She has more forcedmeat recipes than you.

ARTS & OJAI: Ojai’s stunning vistas and serene environment attracts many artists seeking inspiration, beginning in the very early 1900s with the California Plein Air movement. This trend gained significant momentum in the 1940s with the arrival of Beatrice Wood, a prominent ceramic artist known for her key role in the avant-garde art scene. Wood’s presence solidified Ojai’s reputation as an artistic haven.

IN BRIEF: OJAI TALK OF THE TOWN PODCASTS

PAZDERKA’S ART OF EXILE & RETURN

Tom Pazderka grew up behind the Iron Curtain. That split between ideology and freedom, East and West, has helped define his creative life. His latest exhibitions have been using fire and ash to create moody and mysterious paintings. “I’ve always been drawn to the esoteric ... and living here, this is literally the land of fire. Like it’s always this present thing. ” (Ep. 258)

OQ | ojai podcast

FRED FISHER & ‘THE REBELS IN THE SAND’

What makes a city fertile ground for creative reinvention? Ask Fred Fisher, one of the eight architects immortalized in the iconic 1980 photograph by Ave Pildas, marking a period of extraordinary creative ferment in Los Angeles. The architects were reunited for the documentary, “Rebel Architects.” “There’s a nostalgia among younger generations for what was happening then, and they kind of wish they were in on something like that.”

(Ep. 256)

THE BERMANS ON AWAKENING PEACE, HEALING WITH ART

Lisa and Brian Berman met at a reconciliation event in Germany 23 years ago. They’ve been promoting peace throughout the world with their organization, Awakening Peace, ever since. Most recently, Lisa, a naturopath, and Brian, a sculptor, worked with an international organization in Poland. “There’s many reasons people stay silent,” they said. “Trauma is like a frozen energy.” (Ep. 254)

MIMI LEDER & “THE MORNING SHOW”: POLITICS, POWER & OURSELVES

Emmy-winning director and producer Mimi Leder returns to the podcast to talk about the fourth season of Apple TV’s “The Morning Show,” starring Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston. It’s one of television’s

SAMUEL JOHNSON & THE REAL ‘HAPPY VALLEY’

ONE: Many of us assume Annie Besant and Jiddu Krishnamurti coined the name “Happy Valley” when they established their spiritual school in Upper Ojai a century ago. After all, it fits perfectly with Krishnamurti’s early emphasis on “happiness” as the outcome of living in truth rather than illusion.

TWO: But local historian Craig Walker recently uncovered a surprise in the archives — newspaper references to “Happy Valley” in Ojai and Upper

most-talked about dramas, and for good reason: Leder tackles some of society’s most urgent issues: rise of artificial intelligence, toxic masculinity, the struggles of legacy media, and much more.

“‘In a lot of ways, it’s very hard to

do a show like this because the news cycle is fast, and it’s moving faster and faster ... our show is a character-driven drama and it’s all told through the perspective of this landscape where there is so much to explore.” (Ep. 250)

2 of OJAI

SEPARATION

TWO DEGREES BETWEEN

Ojai as far back as 1879, decades before Besant ever set foot here. The name, it turns out, came from Samuel Johnson’s “Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia,” a popular 18th-century fable about a young prince who leaves his own idyllic valley in search of meaning, only to discover that true happiness lies at home.

Just like Rasselas, Walker notes that many of Ojai’s children grow restless and flee their own “Happy Valley,” only to realize later what they left behind.

SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709-1784

STEVEN SHARP AND ASHLEY RAMSEY Ojai locals, friends, and now partners in real estate. After years of working alongside one another, we’ve teamed up to form the Sharp Ramsey Group, blending our strengths to offer a more collaborative, client-first experience.

Our approach is simple: real estate done with care, intention, and a deep understanding of the communities we serve. From the heart of the Ojai Valley to the coastlines of Montecito and Santa Barbara, we bring trusted local insight, refined marketing, and a hands-on process designed to make your next move feel seamless.

Whether you're buying your first home, selling something special, or just exploring what’s next — we’re here to help you navigate it with confidence and connection.

Explore more at SharpRamsey.com Or scan the QR code below to connect with us directly.

GIFT GUIDE

Curated with Love from Ojai’s Makers & Merchants

LARK ELLEN FARMS

ORGANIC GRANOLA

Sprouted nuts and seeds in Snack Lovers

Gift Box, $34.99 www.purelysprouted.com

MUD LOTUS

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805- 252-5882

Handmade embroidered silk crepe kimono, under $175

FRIENDS RANCH

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Mail order is available online; fruit ships in the New Year. FriendsRanches.com. Local citrus sells at $5+ per 2 pound bag

PURELY SPROUTED SPROUTED SNACKS

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MUD LOTUS

305 E. MATILIJA ST. SUITE G

805- 252-5882

Travel toiletry pouch under $25. Hand-block-printed cotton

SUNDAY’S

307 E. OJAI AVE • 805- 766-1366

Sustainable Gift Boxes. Our approach is to create high-quality, unique gifts that support the community. Thoughtfully curated & free local delivery

REVEL KOMBUCHA

307 E. MATILIJA ST. STE C • 805-272-0028

Bring locally crafted Revel to your holiday gatherings — delicious, festive, and enjoyable for all ages!

MUD LOTUS

305 E. MATILIJA ST. SUITE G

805- 252-5882

Cashmere shawls under $150, made in Nepal with a fair trade designation.

HEY BINGO!

PET FOOD & ACCESSORIES

305 E. OJAI AVE • 805-798-1355

Give your fur babies a little holiday magic! Whether it’s a cuddly plush toy or a delicious treat, stop by and spoil them this holiday season

This Season, Skip the Click. Stroll, Browse & Discover the Spirit of Ojai

Or, Stop and Smell the Ojai

BY DEVO CUTLER-RUBENSTEIN PHOTOGRAPHY

BY DEVO FOTOARTS

Under the snow-capped gaze of Chief Peak, two teenagers pump their bikes down Ojai Avenue. “Here comes the sun!” the one in back squeals, purple hair peeking from her helmet as she films the morning light flickering off the mountains.

In Ojai, even a commute can feel cinematic.

Each dawn, the Topa Topas catch the first blush of sunlight, and every camera in town seems to rise in salute.

Early riser Mike Cason lifts his coffee at Java Joe’s, toasting the pink-tinged ridgeline behind his wife. “Ojai’s Mayberry,” he says — then, seeing her look, amends it: “Well, it used to be more Mayberryish … but we still love it here.”

That mix of nostalgia and awe defines the valley. One local healer jogging past with three rescue dogs calls Ojai “its own homeopathic rescue remedy.” Maybe that explains why so many people come here to recover — from work, from speed, from noise.

“No, it’s the opposite of Las Vegas,” says writer and teacher Caron Tate, who visits for workshops and an internship with Healing in America. “What happens in Ojai you want to take with you.”

A TOWN THAT FRAMES ITSELF

To stop is to listen. To listen is to reframe. To reframe is to renew.

For a century, Ojai has drawn artists, writers, and dreamers to its clean air, green meadows, and restless light. Pleinair painters once set up easels along creek beds; now photographers join them, shoulder tripods at the same bends in the road … Eucalyptus groves drape over trails, seeming to call us: to create here is to slow down — to listen.

“It’s like hijacking the essence of something,” Tate laughs. “Not stealing its soul, just borrowing it for a minute.”

Ojai’s local farmlands, citrus, olive, and avocado groves fill quaint, self-serve roadside stalls and serve Ojai’s two openair Farmer’s Markets. It’s a fun, visual feast, says 24-year-old McKenna Winder, a farmer who is visiting Ojai to volunteer after completing her eight-month AmeriCorps stint; “Ojai’s so open-hearted.”

Artist Linda Taylor, one of Ojai Studio Artists’ earliest members, still sketches outdoors before translating her

drawings into intricate, multi-layered woodcuts at her Spotted Dog Studio. Chickens wander her garden, windmills turn lazily above a fish pond, and visiting printmakers from around the world crowd into her bright workshop. Taylor says, “The Ojai community welcomes and embraces all the arts … visual arts, music, theater, dance, poetry, video — with enthusiasm, passion and love. One visit to the Ojai Arts Commission underscores the importance of the arts to our community.”

While there are those in the arts community who feel “the vibe” has swung too far towards tourism, the community of Ojai enthusiastically embraces all the arts, Taylor said.

Walk downtown and you’ll see it everywhere: the muralists on ladders, the guitarist under Libbey Park’s oaks, neighbors waving to each other from bicycles. Ojai’s 4.3 square miles pulse like a single photograph still developing in a bath of life’s chemistry— half nostalgia, half hope.

LIGHT, MEMORY, AND THE LENS

Since its incorporation in 1921, Ojai has been both subject and muse. The name itself — awha’y, from the Ventureño Chumash — means “moon.” That lunar magic lingers. Even the famous “Pink Moment,” that five-minute alpenglow at sunset, feels like a daily reminder to pause.

Photography may be our era’s way of preserving that pause.

1 2 3

Where once anthropologists like Campbell Grant documented native sites, today’s locals document their own streets and faces. Every shutter click can resonate as a tiny act of gratitude.

Resident photographer Mark Tovar captures Ojai’s light daily, walking from the west side to the east with his camera. A former JC Penney executiveturned-community archivist, he posts images of protests, concerts, and quiet mornings. “Fall’s my favorite,” he says. “The weather is, well, perfect.”

His photos once rallied neighbors to save an historic cemetery from bulldozers — proof that beauty can be persuasive.

Still, the camera has its shadow side. One old-timer watching a pack of walkers lift their cell phones sighs, “We used to call that a morning constitutional. Now it’s a photo op.” Roger Ford of Healing in America mostly agrees: “All that snapping can at times take you out of the moment instead of deeper into it.”

Framing a moment is a form of mindfulness. New York Times Pulitzer 5 6 7 4

Yet, rediscovered prints — the shoebox kind — can pull us right back in. They remind us to look, not scroll. As a local Buddhist put it, “To find yourself, just look away from the screen.”

THE DEMOCRATIC EYE

Everyone’s a photographer now. Phone cameras can see in the dark, steady shaky hands, and color-grade a sunset before you blink. But the best images still require intention. Why do we love the texture of a pomegranate up close more than the tree it hangs from? Because we recognize ourselves in its imperfection.

Prize photojournalist Lynsey Addario once said she was “drawn to beauty first, then to war to make a difference.”

Images, she believes, can ignite action.

Danielle Baker, a recent graduate from UCSB in environmental studies, agrees. She spent her final semester studying the ecology of Ojai. Her passion was documenting Ojai’s ancient oak trees. “Just witnessing these keystone gems is a revolutionary act,” she says. “They’re the backbone of our ecosystem. Coastal Live Oaks are a lifeline for over 300 species of flora and fauna. Photography helps us see what needs to be protected.”

THE ART OF NOTICING

Whether you’re on a bike, behind a lens, or sipping coffee at Java & Joe’s, Ojai asks the same thing of everyone: look closely. Notice the reflection in a storefront window, the lavender shadow on a white wall, the burst of seed from a milkweed pod.

That is our local alchemy — turning the ordinary into the extraordinary simply by paying attention.

If Thornton Wilder’s Emily Gibbs could step onto Ojai Avenue, she’d find her answer to the question, “Do any of us realize life while we live it?” Maybe not always. But with a camera in hand and the Topa Topas glowing, we get close.

CLICK, PAUSE, REPEAT

“You cannot change how someone thinks, but you can give them a tool to use, which will lead them to think differently.” — Buckminster Fuller, philosopher/pioneer whose ideas shaped the Ojai avant-garde in the 1970s.

Technology may have changed how we 9 8 11 12 10 13

see, but it hasn’t changed why. We shoot Ojai to remember how it feels to stand in this valley of light. Each photo is a small rescue remedy for the heart — an invitation to stop, look, and breathe.

So next time you spot a butterfly at the Lavender Inn flitting on milkweed or a rain-polished pomegranate glinting on the sidewalk, pause before you press the shutter.

Take it in. Ojai has already framed the shot for you.

Dedicated to photographer Bruce Ditchfield, whose lens captured Ojai’s light for more than three decades.

1. OJAI VALLEY LAND CONSERVANCY TRAIL OFF OLD BALDWIN ROAD

11. WINDMILL ON DROWN STREET

12. MONARCH BUTTERFLY TAKES A NECTAR STOP AT THE LAVENDER INN

13. SUNFLOWER SEES ITSELF IN THE MIRROR, ART PRINT BY LINDA TAYLOR

14. VETERAN JOE PUGLIO GIVES TALK ON LOVE LETTERS AT OJAI LIBRARY

TREASURE HUNT

We hope you enjoy this Ojai City treasure hunt. And maybe, instead of the usual breezing by the ordinary, you may find they are extraordinary, and you may discover your city and even yourself anew. PAIR THE PHOTO WITH THE LOCATION TO WIN A FREE PORTRAIT FROM DEVO FOTOARTS & ONEYEAR SUBSCRIPTION TO THE OJAI QUARTERLY

2) THROUGH THE WINDOWS POURS LOVE AND COFFEE

Downtown off Signal Three Birds Bookstore and Restaurant ( ) Barista & Poet Corey greets the photographer ( ) Adjacent to the micro gallery ( ) All of the above ( )

3) DECAYING POMEGRANATE AFTER A RAIN

Downtown ( ) East End ( ) Arbolada ( ) Hwy 33 ( )

4) IT ALL HAPPENS HERE – GREETING THE DAY

Joe’s Liquor & Food Mart ( ) East Ojai Ave / Today I’ll win the lottery ( ) Southwest Taormina Corner Store ( ) Skate Park Downtown ( )

5) BURSTING WITH REBIRTH – NATIVE MILKWEED

Ojai Meadow Preserve Path ( ) Topa Topa Taproom Garden ( ) Field Just South of Art Center ( ) Help of Ojai parking lot ( )

6) LET’S GET SPOOKY - ABANDONED FEED STORE IN FOG

Route 33 Outside Ojai City Border ( )

Behind the closed Rite Aide ( ) East side near Boccali’s Pumpkin Patch ( ) None of the above ( )

7) SUCCULENTS LOOKING LIKE CASTLE SENTRIES

Top of Gridley Rd ( ) Southside Pickle Ball Courts ( ) Chief’s Peak trail ( ) Outside Ojai Library ( )

8) MAD HATTER BIRTHDAY PARTY

Upper Ojai/West Side off Fairfield Rd ( ) City Center (OV Women’s Club) ( ) Sarzotti Park Community Rec Room ( ) Author’s Downtown home ( )

9) EASTER POETRY IN AN EGG HUNT

Downtown off Aliso ( ) Nordhoff High School Track ( ) Resident’s Backyard Down Street ( ) St. Anthony’s Church Lot ( )

10) KACHINA DOLL – PRAYER IN OLD TREE STUMP

West Side (The Cottages) ( ) Ranch off Gridley Street ( ) East Side (Mesa Village) ( ) Creek off Ojai Avenue Adjacent Lumber Yard ( )

was born out of necessity. Our research showed that even longtime locals were missing out on great events happening right here in Ojai. So we built a better way to stay connected. is your all-in-one calendar for what’s happening in town — from concerts and shows to fundraisers and festivals. You can search by date or category, map venues and directions, and even buy tickets — all in one seamless experience. OJAINOW

Pamela Grau

Petrucci

Heidi Bradbury

Nancy Currey jewelry

Jennifer Grasmere sculpture

Ted Gall

painting

Susan Guy charcoal Sandy Treadwell woodworking

David Blackburn mosaics

Yolanda Bergman mosaics

Sherri Sanchez leather Don Earl rock sculpture

Martha Moran

A veterAn hiker retrAces the “rAnge of Light” And confronts the uncomfortAbLe LegAcy of AmericA’s greAt wiLderness prophet — And the fires his vision mAy hAve spArked.

BY KIT STOLZ

TRAILSIDE SELF

PORTRAIT, KIT

STOLZ, ATOP

MATHER PASS, ELEVATION 12,100

FEET ABOVE SEA LEVEL

As I plod at first light up the legendarily difficult “Golden Staircase” towards Mather Pass, panting, pushing down on my hiking poles for a little extra oomph, with five miles and thousands of feet still to go to reach the crest, I wonder what in the world has come over me.

What kind of spirit is this? What has possessed me to try this — at age 70?

In my chest I feel my heart pound. A fiery ache fills my watery legs. Every few minutes I look around for a flat-topped boulder on which to sit, rest the weight of the pack, catch my breath, let my thudding pulse slow. I stop often this way, to nod and smile perhaps a little wryly at the occasional younger backpackers who pass me by.

I blame John Muir. Were it not for Muir; for his captivating adventures, for his inspiring and oft-quoted words about his beloved “Range of Light,” I wouldn’t be here. Trying to walk 212 utterly exhausting miles through the High Sierra — in smoke.

The Sierra National Forest, 50 miles to the south, was on fire. And for that, too — some say — John Muir is to blame.

I flash back 40 years. With my young family — a thirtysomething partner and a twosomething child — I visited a tiny luggage store next to the Vista Theater in Los Angeles to buy a suitcase for a trip. On a high shelf behind the sole proprietor are a dozen or so travel books for vacation locales, including one that seems wildly out of place — “My First Summer in the Sierra,” by John Muir. I buy it on impulse,

remembering a handful of blissful times in my youth in the mountains. Upon reading I find myself plunged into the raw beauty of the Sierra once again. A different, wilder life awaits me. If I want it. I search out more of Muir’s writing and hear the mountains calling him. I hear that call, too.

“Camp out among the grass and gentians of glacier meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of Nature’s darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings,” Muir wrote in 1898. “Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”

Living in smoggy, chaotic, traffic-choked Los Angeles, I needed that natural peace in the 1990s. Eventually I went to the mountains to look for it. As do countless others today, perhaps equally “over-civilized,” who find they need wildness and beauty and adventure in their lives, (And as did countless others in the late 19th century, about as many women as men, who united to form the Sierra Club, which Muir launched in 1892 “to explore, enjoy, and protect wild places.”)

So perhaps I should credit John Muir and his allies. Had they not spent decades expanding the national parks and forests, building trails, blocking planned roads through the mountains, expanding forest protections, the John Muir Trail, or JMT, wouldn’t be here. Exhausting me.

Flash back a few days, to September 3. With a friend from days spent on the Appalachian and Pacific Crest Trails, I head south from Tuolumne Meadows. We’re left gasping in the thin air on the first steep climb, but a night later recover under a full

moon by Thousand-Island Lake. After four days and a stay at a hiker’s cabin in funky-but-friendly Red’s Meadow — about 50 miles south of Yosemite — we turn up the JMT again, energized but troubled by reports of a major fire 50 miles to the south. Dingy blue-grey wisps of smoke hang in the trees.

The smoke came from the Garnet Fire, which — following lightning strikes — had broken out a little over two weeks before in Sierran forests east of Fresno. The fire burned for almost a month with catastrophic intensity, consuming about 60,000 mostly uninhabited acres of old growth forest. This is the sort of forest fire which some experts blame on, yes, John Muir.

DID MUIR’S VISION OF WILDERNESS BRING ENORMOUS FIREs TO THE SIERRA?

“To solve the wildfire crisis, we have to let the myth of “the wild” die,” was the headline on a story in August in the Los Angeles Times by reporter Noah Haggerty. In a story published just days before the Garnet Fire broke out, Haggerty wrote that “Muir sold the president (Teddy Roosevelt) on a uniquely American myth of the wilderness — that if we work hard enough to isolate public lands from our influence, we can preserve a landscape essentially “untouched” by man.”

Haggerty in his news story interviewed fire ecologists and indigenous fire experts working to bring beneficial “good fire” back to Sierran forests. The idea is to reduce fuel for wildfires to prevent an all-consuming wildfire. The Garnet Fire is the sort of inferno that has destroyed millions of acres of forest in California in the last five years, in dozens of uncontrollable fires, many of them — such as the Camp Fire that killed 85

STOLZ VISITS THE STORM SHELTER

KNOWN AS MUIR HUT, 11,975 FEET

people in Paradise — lethal. Muir in 1903 on a famous camping trip in Yosemite with Teddy Roosevelt convinced the President to put Yosemite under federal protection. With this protection came a vision of wilderness untouched by man, implicitly (if unwittingly) excluding the first peoples who lived there. This prevented native peoples from “tending the wild” with frequent low-intensity fires, all but guaranteeing the destruction of forests, when the fires came roaring back the next time, having built up tremendous fuel loads from years of suppression.

“The single most important reason mentioned by Native American elders when asked why their ancestors burned the Sierra Nevada was to keep the underbrush down to prevent a large, devastating fire,” writes M. Kat Anderson, a leading researcher of indigenous land-management techniques used in the Sierra. In a report to Congress in 1996, she documents that in the 500 years before 1800, as many as 100,000 Indians lived in the Sierra, and the burning, tilling, seeding and other tools used by residents in more than 2,500 native villages had an enormous and beneficial impact, making forests sustainable, as they cannot be if left entirely untouched.

It’s a powerful critique of Muir’s vision of a wilderness untouched by man. It’s a fact that Muir’s desire to protect forests from man — and loggers — shaped Teddy Roosevelt’s thinking about public lands. It’s true that Muir’s idea of “the wild” as a place apart from man proved short-sighted, because it assumed that Sierran forests would not need tending.

But it’s also true that the government didn’t take control of the management of Sierran forests for many decades after

MOONLIGHT

LAKESIDE CAMPING

FIRE ECOLOGIST MEASURES A LARGE SUGAR PINE IN THE TEAKETTLE EXPERIMENTAL FOREST

CHRIS NOTTOLI, FRIEND AND VETERAN HIKER, HAS HAD ENOUGH OF SIERRA SMOKE

WALL OF SMOKE FROM THE GARNET

FIRE FILLS THE SIERRA, ABOUT 60 MILES SOUTH OF YOSEMITE

the Gold Rush, well into the 20th century for most such forests, and long after — tragically — the native peoples, such as the Yokuts and the Mono that “tended the wild” in Sierran forests had been decimated.

Fire ecologists know what happened in the forests that burned in the Garnet Fire because in these Sierra National Forest lands stands the Teakettle Experimental Forest, a block of about 3,000 acres used for the past century to study and test forest management techniques. A meticulous fire scar study of the Teakettle forest showed that before 1865, fires in the Teakettle were frequent, occurring in the range of every 11 to 17 years, presumably started by native peoples. The study detected that no major fire occurred after 1865 — none until, that is, this year.

One can blame John Muir for racist remarks about people of color in his early years, even if he argued forcefully and at length against the eradication of American Indians (when that was California state policy — a $5 bounty for their scalps — in the 19th-century).

One can blame him for not realizing that the “gentle wilderness” he so admired in the Sierra forests was the work of the first peoples, and needed their tending. Yet when indigenous “good fires” in the Sierra National Forest came to an end, Muir was working as a young inventor in a broom factory in Ontario, Canada. He had yet to even see California.

He had nothing to do with the decimation of the 100,000 first peoples who lived for centuries in Sierran forests, a great number of whom were felled by European diseases in the 1830s. To blame

John Muir for the genocide of California tribes, not to mention for forest management policy a hundred years after his death, makes little sense.

Kim Stanley Robinson, the author of “The Sierra Nevada: A Love Letter,” has come to Muir’s defense, with several other California writers. He points out that Muir never advocated for the removal of native peoples from the land in anything he wrote, even in unpublished letters or journals. Further, exploring coastal mountains in Alaska in later years, Muir lived for a time with the Tlingit people. As a child Muir had been nearly worked to death by his father, and often beaten. For that reason he greatly admired the respect these people showed their children.

“I have never yet seen a child ill-used even to the extent of an angry word,” Muir wrote. “Scolding, so common a curse of the degraded Christian countries, is not known here at all. But on the contrary the young are fondled and indulged without being spoiled.”

SMOKE FROM THE GARNET FIRE DRIVES HIKERS OFF THE TRAIL

Regarding the Garnet Fire, Matthew Hurteau, a fire ecologist, published in early September an impassioned piece called Eulogy for the Teakettle, in which he mourned the loss of the grand old growth forest to which he had devoted two decades worth of his work and life. The tragedy for Hurteau — and the Sierra National Forest — is that he and his colleagues over several years put together a treatment plan to reduce the risk of a catastrophic fire in a large and ancient forest.

LAKE MARIE, NEAR SELDEN PASS

Despite bureaucratic opposition, a government shutdown, and management changes, in 2018 they won a $896,000 CalFire grant for prescribed burns for most of the 3,000-acre old growth Teakettle forest. These treatments were meant to save the forest. After countless delays, they were scheduled to begin in the fall.

“I cried on September 1,” wrote Hurteau. “I am sad and angry. I am sad because this old-growth forest is no more. I am angry because this outcome was a choice. The choice was inaction by forest ‘leadership.’ They chose doing nothing instead of working to prepare these incredible trees that are hundreds of years old and some as much as nine feet in diameter.”

I had read reporter Haggerty’s piece in the Los Angeles Times before I started on the JMT. Although most analysts don’t blame Muir for the “Smokey Bear” policy of fire suppression — which became official Forest Service policy after World War II — it’s widely accepted among foresters that this policy has failed. In 2007, two researchers with the USDA (which oversees the Forest Service) published a white paper called “Be Careful What You Wish For: the Legacy of Smokey Bear,” pointing out that “the long-standing policy of aggressive wildfire suppression has contributed to a decline in forest health, an increase in fuel loads in some forests, and wildfires that are more difficult and expensive to control.”

Still, the possibility that my hero — the man whose signature I had tattooed into the inside of my forearm — could have even inadvertently caused such ruin unsettled me. Would these fires spoil

the Sierra? Would I come to dread this trail? Lose faith in Muir?

As I walked southbound, a little more hesitantly, towards Evolution Valley, I had in mind what a Hawaiian-shirted backpacker told me when we encountered him and a friend on the trail. They were heading out, cutting their trip short, and he told me why.

“I don’t want to have to see Evolution Valley in smoke,” he said. “I don’t want to remember it that way.”

Days later I reached the famously beautiful Evolution Valley. The valley, as paradisical as any in the Sierra, was shadowed by orangeish clouds flowing in and building up against the peaks. Blessedly, these same clouds that night brought rain, washing the air. The precipitation resumed late the next day, as I panted my way up out of Evolution Valley to Evolution Basin, a thousand feet higher, but this time it came as hail and hardened snow. I hastily put up the tent. After a freezing night, the air at dawn could not have been cleaner. The sparklingly clear view up the long, treeless climb to Muir Pass made it all worthwhile.

The renovated Muir Hut atop Muir Pass serves as a portal to the higher and much more challenging JMT in the Southern Sierra. Each of the next five 12,000-foot passes on the southern JMT took me a half day or more to climb, and as I made my way slowly up the switchbacks, I forgot my worries about smoke. In their long history, these rocky mounts have seen far worse — ice ages, avalanches, monumental floods — and recovered every

time. “By forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive Nature accomplishes her beneficent designs — now a flood of fire, now a flood of water; and again in the fullness of time an outburst of organic life,” wrote Muir, about Mount Shasta, but he could easily have been describing the timelessness of the Sierra. A few days of smoke cannot ruin these mountains, any more than a few crashing waves can ruin a beach.

I tackled the all-but-endless climb up the Golden Staircase, a path that steepens pitilessly towards the top of the glacial canyon and Mather Pass. After seven hours or so, I at last crested the final rise and collapsed at the top, on a tiny beach near an outlet stream: rethinking my allegiance to this trail.

Robinson too, as much as he adored the Sierra and admired John Muir, had no such affection for the JMT.

“Have I mentioned that I don’t like the John Muir Trail?” writes Robinson snarkily. “The Interstate 5 of the Sierra, the crowd scene, the foot killer, the permit sucker? The 212 miles of nonstop human busyness?”

Four days later, when on my way out I crossed over the Sierra crest on Kearsarge Pass in Onion Valley, the last of the high passes on my route, I decided in my weariness that he had a point. One can experience the Sierra in all its glory without spending weeks on the Muir Trail. Muir himself often wrote of a day chasing a butterfly, or hours spent counting the tiny flowers in a yardsquare of mountain meadow, or of simply strolling along in the sunshine.

“Hiking — I don’t like either the word or the thing,” he wrote in 1911. “People ought to saunter in the mountains, not hike.”

EVOLUTION VALLEY AT SUNSET, WITH SMOKE FROM THE GARNET FIRE

AUSTRALIAN HIKER CHRIS, SOLO, AFTER HIS ‘MATE’ WAS INJURED

OLD GROWTH TREE IN THE TEAKETTLE EXPERIMENTAL FOREST

SIGN AT KEARSARGE PASS READS “ENTERING JOHN MUIR WILDERNESS”

With more than 250 hours of conversation, Ojai's podcast, Talk of the Town, has barely scratched the surface of what makes this village, perched on the eastern edge of the Pacific Rim, so rich, diverse and fascinating. Listen in on conversations with legends like Malcolm McDowell and Sergio Aragonés to the people who make Ojai what it is such as Chumash elder Julie Tumamait-Stenslie and assorted newsmakers, writers, filmmakers, fishermen, musicians, rogues & scoundrels.

UnBroken

IN A

DAUGHTER’S JOURNEY INTO SILENCE, SURVIVAL, AND MEMORY

Alfons - first Senta - second

STORY BY BRET BRADIGAN

the opening frames, a ship rolls on a heavy sea — as a man’s voice intones, “There are no logical explanations for miracles. But here we are.” The film is titled “UnBroken” — a name that holds both rupture and continuity. What follows is not just history, but the intimacies of loss, courage, and the long arc of return.

Bella - seventh

Ruth - third Gertrude - fourth Renee - fifth Judith - sixth

On board that ship, the S.S. Marine Flasher, rode seven children, Alfons, Ruth, Senta, Gertrude, Renee, Judith and Bela. They were presumed orphans, and enroute to America after surviving one of history’s most horrifying chapters.

In “UnBroken,” debut director Beth Lane ventures into the quiet, almost sacred terrain of her own lineage. The documentary traces how her mother and her six siblings — the Weber children — survived Nazi Germany by sheer cunning, solidarity, and the kindness of a German farmer and his wife who sheltered them in a laundry hut some 40 miles east of Berlin. The children, ages 6 to 18 at the end of the war, evaded capture and death, relying on their instincts and each other. The film then follows Beth’s modern journey as she retraces that path, interviews the surviving siblings, pieces together archive and memory, and discovers how the family was broken — and yet held together.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a perfect (so far) Tomatometer: “You won’t forget your encounter with this remarkable family.” Critics praise its delicacy and emotional force. In We Live Entertainment, Kenny Miles calls it “a harrowing documentary … filled with intimacy of a family revealing complex and delicate details” and applauds the blend of animation, archival photography, and firsthand testimony.

“Beth Lane’s ‘UnBroken’ is remarkably powerful; it touches the soul,” says Michael Berenbaum. The Forward calls it “incredibly moving,” and Film Threat calls it “profound and remarkable. What a triumph.”

These accolades are not accidental — the film’s emotional architecture is careful, patient, and attuned to the silences of discovery

PHOTOS ON THE RIGHT:

LINA BANDA WEBER

ALEXANDER WEBER, C. 1933

and revelation. As Lane herself told No Film School, she did not want “UnBroken” to be a dry history lesson: “I let the stories stand on their own, inviting our imaginations to do the heavy lifting rather than showing the visual atrocities of concentration camps.” In the same piece she reveals she spent seven years making the film — a gestation that felt, in her words, “arduous, creative, maddening, and breathtaking.”

GENESIS OF THE FILM: A DAUGHTER’S LONGING

Beth Lane was only 6 years old, living in the Chicago area, when she learned that her mother was adopted — and that was only after an incidental conversation after school. Beth mentioned that a new classmate had been adopted. “And I said I didn’t know anyone who was adopted ... My mother said, ‘You do know someone who was adopted. Me.’” She also learned that she had five aunts and an uncle. “I knew I didn’t know anything about it,” Lane confesses. “She had so few memories.” Her mother, Ginger Lane, arrived in America as a 6-year-old refugee from Nazi Germany, and had rarely spoken of her origins. The memory of that revelation — that her mother had hidden depths — lodged in Beth’s imagination.

Over time, Beth’s curiosity persisted. Her mother eventually reconnected with her siblings; one brother, Uncle Alfons, wrote a 40-page memoir for the 50th anniversary of their arrival in America. That memoir became a roadmap for Beth. It was Alfons’s work that allowed her to mark the streets, towns, and disciplines of vanished childhoods.

When Beth and her extended family traveled back to Germany (Berlin, Worin, and the hiding farm) in 2017, she felt compelled to turn the journey into a film.

“We visited the farm where my mother and her siblings were hidden during the Shoah … Seeing the place where they endured such unimaginable hardships deeply moved me. I made a vow then to tell their story.”

Thus began a process that was equal parts excavation, homage, and reckoning.

HIDDEN LINEAGES AND UNSPEAKABLE LOSS

Before telling of the children in hiding, “UnBroken” must confront the wounds that came earlier. Beth’s grandmother Lina was murdered in Auschwitz on December 1, 1943, at 11:35 a.m. — a specificity that underscores a life erased — not as abstraction but as a person bound by a time and place. Lina had been active in the Jewish resistance in Berlin, forging visas and passports in secret to help others escape. But she could not save herself.

Thus the Weber children — Beth’s mother and her siblings — were orphaned in body and memory, but not in spirit.

Beth’s grandfather — Alexander — survived Oranienburg (one of the earliest Nazi concentration camps) but was never the same in health or mind. Even after he immigrated to America in the late 1940s and had found work and safety, “he always kept a suitcase by the door,” Beth Lane said, “ready to leave at any moment.”

That scene is part of how the film acknowledges the limit of what any document can yield, the distance between record and affect. Yet the core of “UnBroken” is how the seven children survived, and later how their fates splintered and then slowly recombined.

THE HIDING, THE ESCAPE, AND THE ORPHAN’S DECLARATION

The film narrates that, when the Weber children were in mortal danger, a German farmer drove them (in the back of his truck) to his fruit orchard some 40 miles east of Berlin, where he hid them in the laundry hut. There, for about two years, the children lived alone — or as alone as possible — amid bombings, rationing, fear, hunger, and loneliness. They carried with them a core directive from their father: “Always stay together!”

The children were sometimes reduced to scavenging for food, sometimes hiding from patrols, sometimes enduring violence — their survival depending on instinct, refusal to scatter, and the tacit complicity of local people who turned away or acted with discretion. The film does not shy from the trauma: the siblings “fought through hunger, loneliness, rape, bombings, and fear.”

The film includes a scene where Beth meets with archival documents in the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin, without previewing them: “I wanted the camera to capture me bearing witness to whatever they had.” BETH, CENTRUM JUDAICUM - BERLIN 2019.

Then came the final fracture: separated from their father, the siblings were encouraged to declare themselves orphans to facilitate their escape to the United States. That decision, paradoxically their salvation, also began the slow process of dispersion and dislocation.

REUNIONS, LORE, AND THE LONG SHADOW

Although the siblings were separated, they did not vanish entirely. Starting in the 1980s, they began to reconnect — sometimes in pairs, sometimes in clusters. The memories they carried were patchwork: of trauma, blankness, rumor, and fragment. Beth’s task was to assemble those pieces.

In interviews, she speaks of playing Scrabble with her mother to prompt stories; making noodle kugel with Aunt Gertrude so that the conversations could unfold around ritual and scent. She learned to leave the camera rolling at doorbells — never knowing which moment would unlock a memory.

One sibling, Aunt Ruth, initially refused to see the final cut; another, Aunt Judy, opted

out of filming but attended a screening later and felt “seen.” These responses underscore that the film was not just a record — it was also a catalyst of reweaving.

As the film incorporates archival material, animation, graphics, and original music, it also acknowledges the limit of memory and the creativity of reconstruction. Lane chose animation purposely: to bridge the gap between adult recollection and childhood subjectivity. That decision frees the film from rigid literalism and opens space for empathy — for emotional truth.

Lane began principal photography in March 2018 (Yad Vashem, Jerusalem), continued in the U.S. in 2018, and filmed in Germany in 2019. Post-production began in 2020 and concluded in August 2023. The active compressed period of making “UnBroken” spans about five-and-a-half years.

RIGHT: ARTHUR & PAULA SCHMIDT, LEFT: BETH AND MARLIS WORIN - GERMANY 2019

OUTSIDE THE SCHMIDT FARMHOUSE

Beth describes buying a Canon C-100 camera, two lenses, and a shotgun mic as the starter kit:

“That’s it. I don’t know anything about cameras,” she said.

While she had little experience behind the camera, Lane was a veteran in front of the camera and on stage; she trained with Meisner Method’s William Esper in New York, received her Masters of Fine Arts at UCLA and her first acting job was for director Tony Bill in the acclaimed “My Bodyguard.”

The first major shoot was at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, where she and her crew attempted to film the ceremony honoring Arthur and Paula Schmidt — the courageous farming couple — in the Gardens of the Righteous. The site was crowded with press crews, and she said: “My crew and I either caught what we needed or we didn’t.”

The editorial labor was enormous: the first editor screened over 200 hours of footage with Beth, helped build workflow, flagged transcripts, and taught Beth to let the footage itself point toward its story. Then lead editor Aaron Soffin joined to wrangle a rough cut with emotional precision, asking what Beth calls “exceedingly challenging and sensitive questions.” The animation and graphics came from the team at MISFIT; original composition was by Jonathan Snipes, who Lane had known since graduate school, and who performs with Daveed Diggs (“Hamilton”) as the experimental hip hop group Clipping.

Making the film was also emotionally arduous: confronting silence, trauma, gaps in memory, and the fear of doing wrong by the siblings. But Beth felt an urgent need when the Charlottes-

BETH & GINGER LANE

UNBROKEN ANIMATION - EYES OVER THE CITY - MISFIT

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS BETH LANE & JOEL MOODY, OPENING NIGHT OF HEARTLAND INT’L FILM FESTIVAL, WHERE “UNBROKEN’ WON BEST DOCUMENTARY PREMIERE

THE ANKLER + PURE NONFICTION DOCUMENTARY SPOTLIGHT EVENTS HOSTED

ville rally in 2017 revived white supremacism. She recognized that “our story couldn’t wait.” It was interesting timing, then, that “UnBroken’s” release took place the day after the horrors of the Hamas attack on Israel Oct. 7th.

DISTRIBUTION, FESTIVAL LIFE, AND STREAMING REACH

“UnBroken” premiered at the Heartland International Film Festival on October 8, 2023. It traveled the festival circuit, won awards (Best Documentary Feature Premiere at Heartland) and audience accolades in multiple festivals. The film was acquired by Greenwich Entertainment for domestic distribution.

On April 23, 2025, in a notable moment, “UnBroken” premiered on Netflix on Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), and within 24 hours reached #5 in the U.S. Netflix Top 10.

AT “UNBROKEN’S” NATIONWIDE RELEASE WITH EXECUTIVE MANDANA DAYANI

Lane was interviewed by The Ankler’s Thom Powers. The Ankler is considered an Academy Awards documentary gatekeeper. Beth said the shortlist will come out in mid-December, with Oscar nominations announced at the end of January. “UnBroken” received something like 1.5 million streams in an extraordinarly short period of time, Lane said.

Distribution through Netflix, theatrical runs, and community screenings has extended “UnBroken’s” reach beyond typical documentary circuits, offering larger public engagement. The Weber

BY THOM POWERS

UNITED NATIONS 2025 WITH BETH, JOEL & GINGER

PHOTO CREDIT: KEAN & KOLAR COMMUNICATIONS

PHOTO CREDIT: WEBER FAMILY ARTS FOUNDATION

PHOTO CREDIT: DANA PLEASANT

Would you hide me?

Family Arts Foundation (created by the family) is working to bring the film into schools, synagogues, community centers, and anti-hate education initiatives. And on January 27, 2026 the nonprofit group Journeys for Film will launch “UnBroken” as an educational resource for schools across the country.

WHY THIS FILM MATTERS — TO OJAI & BEYOND

Beth Lane was particularly honored to land a collaboration deal with Lingua Franca, a sustainable luxury fashion label known for its hand-stitched cashmere sweaters, featuring culturally relevant

quotes and lyrics. Lingua Franca will present “Unbroken” on one side of their sweaters, and “Would You Hide Me?” on the other.

Closer to home, Ojai Playhouse’s David Berger will host a special screening Sunday, December 7th at 1 p.m. Michaela Watkins will moderate a post-screening panel discussion.

What makes “UnBroken “especially resonant is how it reframes the Holocaust narrative through a microcosm: one family, one constellation of experience. But in doing so, it gestures outward to universal questions: Would you hide me? The film asks not only what it takes to hide another, but what it takes to hold onto our humanity when everything conspires to erase it.

JEWISH MUSEUM OF BERLIN - BETH LANE - 2019

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STORY BY ROBIN GERBER

Stand outside the new Mega Gallery at night.

The 8’x10’ space glows like a jewel box — pulsing with color, daring you to step closer. You can’t go in, but you can’t look away.

Local artist Cassandra Jones built an art space for the imagination, featuring an inaugural exhibit that aims to meet the moment, by playfully taking on the self-help movement.

The gallery is Ojai’s tiniest big idea. Jones dubbed it the “Mega Gallery,” an ironic poke at the enormous commodified galleries like Hauser & Wirth.

The exhibition’s centerpiece is a work by the late Bay Area artist, Susan O’Malley. Surrounding O’Malley’s screen print of cascading colors are the words, “It Will Be More Beautiful Than You

Could Ever Imagine.”

Filling the walls on either side are a wild variety of art that explicitly dares you to think about current affairs and imagine a better future.

“Pretty or not here I come” preaches in psychedelic green from the orange crown of hair in local outsider artist Carmen Abelleira’s work.

There are also sculptural pieces — an old carved piece of wood by Joel Fox reads, “My passwords are protected.”

OUTSIDE LOOKING IN: PHOTO BY MIKAEL JORGENSEN

Jones stocked her “bookshelf” piece with ironic titles. “How to be Perfect” sits next to “Nobody’s Perfect” — a hilarious send-up of self-help’s contradictions.

For Jones, self help wasn’t an abstract concept — it was the soundtrack of her childhood. Jones grew up with what has become the secular religion of self-help, which has boomed in the social media age. She has a broad smile and intense gaze as she describes what is now a $45-billion-dollar-and-growing industry.

Cassandra’s mother is a self-help devotee. As they were growing up, she made Jones and her sister listen to self-help tapes in the car rather than music.

“Self-help was meant to be what would get me through life,” Jones explains.

Wayne Dyer, a self-help guru of the 1970s, was her mother’s favorite. Dyer rose to fame for uplifting quotes like “Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.” Dyer also preached that you could ‘manifest’ anything that you wanted: mind over matter.

“I grew to believe that if you don’t have it, you create it,” Jones explains. But she chafed against what she called “toxic positivity.”

Relentless optimism is hard-work, and there’s a thread of blame that runs through the self-help culture, she observed. “Self-help is hyper-individualistic,” Cassandra says with a grimace, “and full

of self-doubt and shame.”

Like so many parents of young children, Jones and her husband weathered the pandemic’s chaos, which was still fresh in the runup to the contentious 2024 presidential election. Cassandra was a poll-worker in charge at the Methodist Church in Ojai as the 2024 election took place.

Around that time, “I had been offered a show at a local arts foundation,” Cassandra explains, “but I wanted to wait for the results of the election to decide how to respond ... I knew whatever the result, everything in America was about to change and I wanted to capture the zeitgeist.”

Post-election, Cassandra coped by creating a deck of cards she called “Affirmations for Modern Times.” She wrote “wishes seemingly for the self, but really for the collective, from “I am in control of my phone usage,” to “My creativity outshines Artificial Intelligence.” Cassandra’s house of cards turns Dyer on his head.

“This is how I leaned in,” Jones said. “Affirming for humanity as a whole felt like a sturdier version of spiritual scaffolding.”

She soon discovered that other artists were also “trying to affirm for the collective, and so I sought out works about love, wellness and gratitude that met the moment. I am not alone in my vision for a better future.”

Cassandra sums up her new gallery this way, “My pain came from something that was supposed to help me — self-help. I

CARMEN ABELLEIRA

ALEXANDRA GRANT AND PHILLIP GRISWOLD

KAJ JORGENSEN & CASSANDRA C. JONES

was able to bring that into my life through the art.”

The concept involved collaboration; many artists adapted Jones’ modern-day affirmations to create new, deeply resonant artworks. Jones’ choice of the name, “Mega Gallery,” is also an affirmation that big ideas can emerge from a small space in a small town.

OPENING SPREAD: “PROTECTED” & “IN CONTROL” BY CASSANDRA C. JONES

As you stand on the sidewalk outside the Mega Gallery, looking floor to ceiling and wall to wall, the experience becomes immersive. This is especially true when night falls. The gallery glows like a lantern — small, strange and full of light.

It feels like a beacon.

JONES INSIDE MEGA GALLERY

EMMA LEARY

JOSHUA HEDLUND

DANIELLE MANINI

Perhaps it was potter and “the Mama of Dada” Beatrice Wood’s influence, going back nearly 90 years. Maybe it even goes back further, to the Chumash people’s ingenious and astounding artistry with basketry. It’s clear that Ojai has long been a haven for artists. The natural beauty

FIRESTICK GALLERY

Firestick Pottery provides classes, studio/kiln space and a gallery abundant with fine ceramics. 1804 East Ojai Avenue. Open from 10 am to 6 pm every day. Gallery Open to the Public. FirestickPottery.com 805-272-8760

NUTMEG’S OJAI HOUSE

Featuring local artists, including William Prosser and Ted Campos. American-made gifts and cards, crystals, and metaphysical goods. 304 North Montgomery nutmegsojaihouse.com 805-640-1656

OVA ARTS

40+ local artists with unique contemporary fine arts, jewelry and crafts. 238 East Ojai Ave 805-646-5682

Mon 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tues-Thurs, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fri 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sat-Sun 10 a.m. Third Fridays - 5-7 p.m. with Live Music, Wine & Community OVAArtsgallery.com

JOYCE HUNTINGTON

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

JoyceHuntingtonArt.com

OQ | ARTists & GALLERIES

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

CANVAS & PAPER

paintings & drawings 20th century & earlier

Thursday – Sunday noon – 5 p.m.

311 North Montgomery Street canvasandpaper.org

KAREN K. LEWIS

Paintings, prints & drawings. 515 Foothill Road, Ojai. Viewings by appointment. 805-646-8877

KarenKLewisArt.com

POPPIES ART & GIFTS

You haven’t seen Ojai until you visit us!

Local art of all types, unusual gifts, Ojai goods! Open daily 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. 323 Matilija Street

DAN SCHULTZ FINE ART

Plein air landscapes, figures and portraits in oil by nationally-acclaimed artist Dan Schultz.  106 North Signal Street | 805-317-9634 DanSchultzFineArt.com

CINDY PITOU

BURTON

Photojournalist and editorial photographer, specializing in portraits, western landscapes and travel. 805-646-6263 798-1026 cell

OjaiStudioArtists.org

MARC WHITMAN

Original Landscape, Figure & Portrait Paintings in Oil. Ojai Design Center Gallery. 111 W Topa Topa Street. marc@whitman-architect. com. Open weekdays 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

LISA SKYHEART MARSHALL

is a local artist inspired by plants and birds, flowers and insects. She is a member of the Ojai Studio Artists. By appointment: (805)256-4209

SkyheartArt.com OjaiStudioArtists.org

TOM HARDCASTLE

Rich oils and lush pastel paintings from a nationally awarded local artist. 805-895-9642

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30 years of roast Stacey Jones & The Coffee Roasting Experience

By Bret Bradigan

&

Authentic Diner Experience in Heart of Oak View By

Ilona Saari

Essential Restaurants, Products By Staff

BY ILONA SAARI

There is nothin’ like a dame, Nothin’ in the world, There is nothin’ you can name That is anything like a dame!

—Rodgers & Hammerstein

Meet the “dames” who, like me, love the downhome food served in a good diner (aka “café” – aka “coffee shop” – aka “truck stop”), and Ojai has been blessed with a few terrific diners: The Marina Café (and truck stop, Home Kitchen (coffee shop) and the legendary Bonnie Lu’s (country café). Ojai is definitely “on trend” as famous restaurateur and chef Nancy Silverton (Culinary Ambassador of the Ojai Valley Inn and The Farmhouse) is also a diner dame and is planning to open one in the Los Angeles district of Larchmont. Which brings us to Ojai’s fairly new Noe’s Café, the new kid on our “diner” block.

In my hometown, Bayside Queens, Long Island, New York, there were two diners on “main” street where, as teenagers, my friends and I often congregated after school – it was our own Mel’s Diner as in the hit TV series, “Happy Days,” where we’d devour milkshakes and grilled cheese sandwiches. And if you read or go to the

movies, who can forget the “Whistle Stop Café” immortalized in Fannie Flagg’s bestseller “Fried Green Tomatoes” (made into a terrific move – in my estimation — starring a bevy of great dames).

And, to be a bit more au courant there’s “Waitress,” the hit Broadway musical based on the movie of the same name.

When I think of those diners and the ones I haunted in New York and New England growing up, I remember those tall, freshly baked layer cakes displayed under glass on the “luncheon” counter, and the day’s blue-plate specials, from liver and onions to “mom’s” homemade meatloaf on the menu. I smell the burgers on the grill, and the French fries sizzling in a wire basket submerged in a vat of hot grease ... tuna melts and three-decker club sandwiches, grilled cheese and BLTs, strong coffee and fried eggs “over easy,” buttermilk pancakes and biscuits and gravy, malts and ice cream sundaes and, in Bayside, chocolate egg creams all come to

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT - NOE CASTRO, KATHY SMITH, KATHLEEN KAISER, MIKE

GAIDANO AND KYLE CROWNER

mind. So, of course, I had to try this new diner café and invited four of my “ladies who lunch” with my girlfriends Mike Gaidano, Kyle Crowner, Kathy Smith and Kathleen Kaiser who love this fare as much as I do, to become my “dames who dine in diners.”

Noe Castro, the owner of Noe’s Cafe, had recently bought and remodeled the old J & M Café in Oak View. With the booths reupholstered and restored to their former diner glory, fresh paint on the walls, and a photographic/memorabilia tribute to former Ojai Valley resident Johnny Cash proudly displayed on the walls, he opened the doors to his first restaurant. Noe was raised and educated in Santa Barbara, where his parents owned two restaurants and instilled in him a passion for the restaurant business. Growing up, he helped out in those restaurants and later worked as a bartender and, though he never became a chef or even a short order cook, his dream was to follow his parents’ footsteps. He now walks in their shoes.

My ladies gathered comfortably in a large booth and gave their orders to a warm and friendly waitress. My only request of my friends was that each order something different, which was no problem since there are so many wonderful breakfast and lunch/early dinner choices. Mike ordered the “traditional yummy tuna melt,” as she described it, and finished every last bite. Kathy went for the Ortega chili burger, which she claims “is one that I would definitely get again. Cooked to perfection ... pickles and pepper on the side were a nice add on to the burger.” Kyle opted for the SoCal Eggs Benedict. What made it “SoCal?” Avocado, of course. The eggs, she mused, were “perfectly poached; the tomato was the real thing — red and ripe. I ate it all and grabbed French fries off my girlfriends’ plates. Will definitely go back.” For Kathleen, it was the biscuits and gravy, with a side of scrambled eggs. Her review,

“My biscuits and gravy were exactly what I wanted, very homestyle with a thick gravy and a good taste of sausage. The biscuits were nice and large.”

Noe’s menu offers a deliciously varied selection of sumptuous diner fare:

Breakfast “favorites” include corned beef hash and steak (ranchero) and eggs, along with pancakes, French toast and a variety of waffles. Among the lunch entrees, a longtime diner favorite of meat loaf with mashed potatoes and seasonal veggies (Noe’s “twist” — it’s his “Grandma’s Meat Loaf recipe). But there are new, more diner/cafe 21st century gourmet choices. For example: blackened salmon coated in a spice blend, served with rice pilaf and farm-to-table veggies mash; chicken piccata with a white wine sauce with capers, rice and veggies; a seafood pasta linguini with shrimp, fish and mussels in a tomato sauce; plus fish tacos and fish and chips. There are a variety of burgers to choose from, including a garden burger and the classic patty melt. Sandwiches include tri-tip, a traditional club and, always a diner favorite — BLT. Salads, for you more health-conscious diners, include Cobb and Caesar.

The menu also offers light fare such as a yogurt granola parfait, and a la carte selections from a fruit cup to hash browns, French and sweet potato fries to seasonal veggies, black beans to an avocado.

If life is too hectic for brunch, lunch or to sup an early supper – check out Noe’s Early Bird Specials, Monday to Thursday, 6:45 a.m.-8:30 a.m..

Noe’s gets four thumbs up from these dames who dine in diners, because, truly, there’s nothin’ like a dame — especially one who knows a good diner when she finds one.

SO CAL EGGS BENEDICT

ORTEGA CHILI CHEESEBURGER

The of the Roast

THIRTY YEARS OF COFFEE & COMMUNITY AT OJAI COFFEE ROASTERS INC.

BY BRET BRADIGAN

friends saw it happen,” she recalls with a laugh. “They said, ‘You both just lit up.’” That moment of recognition — part aroma, part instinct — would lead to a business that became far more than a coffee shop. It became Ojai’s living room.

Before coffee, Jones’s life revolved around metal and micrometers. She worked in her family’s cutting tool supply business, selling precision parts to aerospace firms — a trade that demanded exacting tolerances down to the thousandth of an inch. “It was an art, really,” she says. “You learned to read the steel.” As a young woman, she loaded up her van and drove from one machine shop to another, earning respect in a field where women were rare.

On a chilly November morning, the air inside the Ojai Coffee Roasting Company hums with the familiar scent of caramelized beans and quiet conversation. Locals lean over steaming mugs, greeting each other by name as sunlight filters through the front windows, gilding the burlap sacks stacked near the old Diedrich roaster in back — the same machine that’s been turning green beans to gold since 1995.

For 30 years, founder Stacey Jones has kept the heart of Ojai caffeinated and connected. Her journey from selling precision cutting tools to mastering the fine art of roasting coffee is as unlikely as it is inspiring. The spark came on a trip to Calistoga Springs in the early 1990s, where she and her then-husband, Kent, wandered into a small café and felt something shift. “Our

But that world turned dark after an episode of harassment and threats. “It just put me over the top,” Jones recalls. “I didn’t feel safe anymore.” The experience left her shaken but also ready for reinvention. When she and Kent stumbled upon that coffee shop in Calistoga, they saw something they hadn’t seen in years — possibility. Within months, they were mapping out their next chapter.

Jones didn’t leap blindly. She sought out the craft the same way she had mastered the tool trade: by apprenticing herself to it. Every Saturday morning, she would rise before dawn and drive to Sherman Oaks, where veteran roasters Dick and Jane Richards ran a small shop aptly named The Coffee Roaster. “He said, ‘Here’s my filing cabinet — take whatever you want,’” she says. “So I did. Every recipe, every note.”

Those early mornings, surrounded by the hiss of gas drums and the crackle of beans reaching first pop, taught her lessons no manual could. “Coffee is alive,” she says. “Every batch, every crop is a little different. You learn to listen — to the sounds, to the smells, to what the beans are telling you.” By the time she bought her own roaster — a gleaming, brass-plated Diedrich built by family friends Becky and Steve Diedrich — Jones was ready. That same machine still sits in the back of her shop today, a 34-year-old workhorse with the soul of a steam engine.

Stacey credits Kent as “the originator of our roasting style. It evolved over the years and still speaks of his design.”

Ojai was a sleepy town in the early 1990s, long before craft coffee became a daily ritual. “There wasn’t really anywhere to just sit and talk,” Jones says. When she and Kent — who already owned and operated a frameshop in town — opened the Ojai Coffee Roasting Company on December 26, 1995, their goal was simple: good coffee, roasted on site, served with warmth.

They started small — themselves, three employees — Marty Van Lent, Summer Doty and Dick Healy. Another employee called in sick on opening day, an omen of the approaching chaos. “We pasted on our smiles and we got through it, but at the end of the day, we had had it! Totally worn out,” Stacey said.

But with those smiles, along with a modest menu, and a roaster that perfumed the entire block, they quickly built a following of loyal patrons to sustain them.

“Kent used to go in at 3 o’clock in the morning, baker’s hours … you got to do what you got to do. And I could smell it all the way (to their then-residence in

Meiners Oaks) on still nights, but not anymore. We’ve got an afterburner” that vaporizes the smells.

Within a few years, the café became the beating heart of downtown. Artists, teachers, and construction crews lined up for lattes. Hikers stopped in after dawn trailheads; musicians scribbled lyrics on napkins. For many Ojai residents, mornings didn’t properly begin until they heard the grinder and felt the hum of conversation that filled the room.

Behind the counter, the work remains quietly precise. Beans arrive green from farms across the equator — Costa Rica, Mexico, Ethiopia, Sumatra — and are roasted in small 20-pound batches. Each roast takes about 18 minutes at temperatures approaching 400 degrees. “It’s all in the timing,” Jones says. “Pull them too late and they burn. Too early and they’re bitter.” She favors a balanced, medium roast — smooth, aromatic, never bitter. Every batch is logged by hand in a binder, the way she learned from her mentor. Even after decades, she still enjoys the process — the swirl of beans in the drum, the sharp crack of caramelizing sugars, the instant when scent tells her it’s time to drop the batch.

“Dick would tell me, ‘You’ve got to listen to the beans,’ and that’s what happens.” Tastes have changed over the years — drip coffee and lattes were the universal standard for decades, now people seek novelty brews like frappucinos and flat whites, Jones says. “Recently we’ve got a lot of requests for salted caramel lattés. So we’re figuring that out because we make everything from scratch. It’s important to us to give our customers what they want.”

Through recessions, wildfires, and even a global pandemic, the Roasting Company stayed open — sometimes with a skeleton crew, sometimes by sheer will.

STACEY JONES, BEHIND THE COUNTER

PHOTO BY RYAN SCHUDE

SOMETIMES IT TAKES A LITTLE MAGIC TO KEEP A BUSINESS OPERATING FOR 30 YEARS.

PHOTOS THIS PAGE BY RYAN SCHUDE

“There were days I wondered how we’d make it,” she admits. “But then I’d see the same faces walking in, grateful that we were still here. That kept me going.”

Surviving 30 years as a small business in a small town takes more than good coffee. It takes grit. Ojai’s retail landscape has shifted dramatically since the 1990s; restaurants and shops have come and gone. But Jones has endured — a steady hand on the roaster, a welcoming smile behind the counter, and a deep faith in

community. “I’ve seen kids grow up here,” she says. “Now they’re bringing their own kids in. That’s the best part — seeing that continuity.”

“Coffee is alive. You learn to listen — to the sounds, the smells, to what the beans are telling you.”

NATALIE

AND

JONES. SON ADAM JONES, WHO HANDLES ONLINE AND MARKETING OPERATIONS NOT PICTURED

In a world of chain cafés and drivethru espresso lanes, the Ojai Coffee Roasting Company remains an anchor of authenticity. On the day the shop turns 30 — December 26, 2026 — Jones doesn’t plan a big celebration. Just another morning of roasting, greeting, and pouring.

“I’ll probably be behind the counter like always,” she says. “That’s where I belong.”

STACEY FLANKED BY DAUGHTERS

EVERTON

OLIVIA

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86 owens & Libbey

The Duo Behind The ‘World’s Most Complicated Machine’ By Mark Lewis

109 calendar of events Music, Holiday Cheer & More 102 plains of ASH

Plain Prove Resilient

Madre Fire Aftermath By Chuck Graham

96 pulling threads

The Remarkable Women of Ojai and the Museum That Exhibits Them By Brady Hahn

110

submissions Witches Please! By Sami Zahringer

YOUNG BOYS OFTEN WORKED IN GLASS FACTORIES BEFORE OWENS AUTOMATED THE PROCESS (AI GENERATED)

HOW MICHAEL OWENS’ BOTTLE-MAKING INVENTION – ‘THE MOST COMPLICATED MACHINE EVER BUILT’ – FUNDED EDWARD LIBBEY’S REINVENTION OF OJAI

BY MARK LEWIS

ISTORY CREDITS the Ohio glass magnate Edward Drummond Libbey with transforming the dusty town of Nordhoff into the beautiful, Spanish-style village he renamed Ojai. And Libbey deserves that credit. But he had considerable help from a man who was mostly a stranger to this town – Michael Joseph Owens of Toledo, Ohio.

Owens was the Libbey Glass Co. employee who invented the fiendishly complicated Automatic Glass Bottle Making Machine that enabled Libbey to dominate the glass industry.

“Without Owens’ invention, Libbey would not have been nearly as rich, and probably could not have afforded to spend the $1 million or so that he lavished on his Ojai project,” said Ojai historian Craig Walker. “That’s at least $17 million in today’s dollars.”

Unlike Libbey, whose Boston Brahmin family had come over on the Mayflower, Mike Owens was the uneducated son of an Irishimmigrant coal miner. His bottle-making machine revolutionized the glass industry and made him a millionaire. It also made Libbey a multimillionaire, who could easily afford to transform Nordhoff into Ojai with a wave of his checkbook. Most people in Ojai today know Libbey’s name, but very few have heard of Owens. This is his story.

ICHAEL OWENS was born in Mason County in rural Virginia on New Year’s Day of 1859. At the age of 9, he followed his father into the coal mines. But soon he suffered an injury at work that prompted his mother to switch him to a glass factory in Wheeling, W. Va., where she thought he was less likely to come to harm.

In the factory, 10-year-old Owens “worked 60-hour weeks,” the historian W. Kesler Jackson wrote in an article about the inventor. “He was paid 30 cents a day. He went home each night covered in ash and coal dust. It’s a fair bet that his lungs were full of ash and dust too.”

In those days, glass products were created by hand by highly skilled glassblowers, each one assisted by a team that included young boys like Owens. Each team produced about a bottle per minute. Owens worked hard and learned every aspect of the production process. In his 20s he became an activist in the glassblowers’ union, which zealously resisted any move toward automation. But then the ambitious Owens decided to become a manager.

Stubborn and hot-tempered, Owens had an irascible personality that put off many potential employers. But Edward Libbey saw something in him — and Owens saw something in Libbey, even though at the time, the Libbey Glass Co. was struggling financially. In 1888, Owens moved from Wheeling to Toledo to join Libbey’s management team.

“Owens would bring problems, but he would also revolutionize how glass was made, and would save Libbey Glass,” Quentin R. Skrabec Jr. wrote in his Libbey biography. “The Libbey-Owens team would be one of the greatest business

YEARS

THE WHITE CITY, CHICAGO, 1893

GLASS BOTTLE PRODUCTION HAD BARELY CHANGED IN 2,000

BEFORE OWENS’ INNOVATION

THE LIBBEY GLASS PAVILION AT THE 1893 CHICAGO WORLD’S FAIR WAS A SENSATION

OWENS’ AUTOMATIC BOTTLE-MAKING MACHINE, INTRODUCED IN 1903, HAD 10,000 MOVING PARTS

MICHAEL OWENS EDWARD LIBBEY

partnerships of all time.”

Owens was very successful at managing Libbey’s Ohio factories, including one that produced glass light bulbs to go with Thomas Edison’s revolutionary new product, electric light. Owens also built and managed the enormously successful Libbey Glass Pavilion at Chicago’s legendary 1893 World’s Fair.

But Owens soon became obsessed with an even bigger project. He wanted to invent a machine that would completely automate the bottle-making process. For some 2,000 years, glass bottles had been hand-crafted one at a time by highly skilled artisans. Owens envisioned a mass-production machine that would be operated by unskilled workers at a small fraction of the cost. Libbey decided to back him.

This was a very risky move. By way of comparison, at about the same time, Mark Twain famously went broke investing about $300,000 in an extremely complicated typesetting machine which kept breaking down. Libbey had better luck with Owens’ even more complex bottle maker, introduced to the world in 1903. Contemporaries sometimes called it “the most complicated machine ever built.”

innovation in glass-making in 2,000 years. It changed the world.

Of more relevance to Ojai, the machine made Libbey extremely rich. Further contributing to Libbey’s fortune over the years were other Owens technical innovations in the manufacture of plate glass, which allowed for larger windows; and laminated safety glass for automobile windshields, a brand-new market in the early 1900s.

As a result, Libbey was able to divert some of his focus from his glass business to his interest in art and the City Beautiful movement. First, he created the Toledo Museum of Art. Then he discovered Ojai and had his epiphany about giving its downtown district an ambitious Mission Revival makeover. Thanks to Mike Owens and his machine, Libbey didn’t have to think twice about whether he could afford it. He simply went ahead, and the results are all around us today: The Arcade, the Post Office Tower, Libbey Park, the Hotel El Roblar, the Ojai Valley Library, the Ojai Valley Inn and the Ojai Valley Museum (which began life as St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church).

LOOMS LARGE IN SKRABEC’S BIOGRAPHY OF LIBBEY

With its 10,000 parts, including ten rotating legs with claw-like appendages, the 30-ton machine looked like a nightmarish steampunk monster out of a novel by H.G. Wells. But it worked.

“It took Owens five years to produce it, then a few more to perfect it, but in the end (and after burning through half a million of Libbey’s investment dollars) he’d done it,” historian Kessler wrote. “Within just a few years, Owens’ automated bottle-making machines could crank out almost 250 bottles per minute!”

Owens’ machine rendered the master-craftsmen glassblowers obsolete and eliminated the demand for young boys to work in glass factories, as Owens himself had done. (Ironically, Owens was no crusader in the fight to abolish child labor. “Young or old,” he once said, “work doesn’t hurt anybody.”)

Automation and mass production of glass jars and bottles produced a revolution in how food and drink were made available to the masses. Owens’ machine represented the biggest

This past October, Ojai officials bolted a new bronze plaque to the west end of the Arcade, noting that the state has placed downtown Ojai on the California Register of Historical Resources. The plaque credited this move in part to Ojai’s “association with Edward Drummond Libbey.” The text mentions Libbey several times but makes no reference to Owens. But during the winter of 1922-23, he did finally visit Ojai and admired Libbey’s project, which Owens himself had done so much to make possible.

Thanks to his bottle-making machine, the self-educated Owens eventually ceased to be Libbey’s employee and became his business partner instead. When Owens died at 64 in December 1923, The Ojai newspaper ran a front-page obituary, and Libbey eulogized him as “one of the greatest inventors this country has ever known.

“It’s not like he’s forgotten,” Craig Walker said. “He’s in the National Inventors Hall of Fame, and his legacy is reflected in the names of two of today’s Fortune 500 companies, Owens Corning and Owens-Illinois. But he should be better remembered here in Ojai, given that his inventions helped pay for all these historic buildings we celebrate.”

OWENS

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Stories of Ojai’s Women

BY BRADY HAHN

raming history through the lens of women is a weaving of what was written, what is told, and what is remembered. It also requires sitting in the discomfort of knowing that there are limits to historical archives, individual stories, and collective memories.

For what has always been a small, rural town, Ojai has been home to a remarkable number of women who not only shaped the quirky culture here, but made a mark on both Southern California and American history.

When I first moved here 10 years ago, I was thrilled to learn about the spiritual leaders like Annie Besant and Joan Halifax, along with artists like Beatrice Wood. While I consulted for AARP (known as the American Association of Retired Persons when it was formed in 1958) I learned about Dr. Ethel Percy Andrus, who founded the world’s largest membership organization right here in Ojai.

All of these women have books about their lives and work. When a group of friends visited in June of 2023, we walked into Bart’s Books looking for “the” book on the history of women in Ojai. When we asked general manager Matt

Henriksen, he responded with, “There isn’t one … But there should be.”

As a certified researcher, it sparked my curiosity. That day turned into months of thinking about what Matt had said and doing some of my own investigating. A chance conversation in the spring of 2024 with Jennifer Jordan Day, who had recently joined the Ojai Valley Museum’s board, and artist Joel Fox, who grew up in Ojai, turned into a proposal to guest curate an exhibition and produce a coffee table book. The exhibition, Women of the Valley: 100 Years of Ojai History will be opening at the museum on January 15, 2026.

It will focus on the late 1800s through about 1966 (when the Ojai Valley Museum was formed). The Museum will mark its 60th anniversary in 2026, so it felt like the perfect bookend. The exhibition is less of a timeline and more an exploration of the imprint women have left on the Ojai Valley, the county, and the country. This is one of the largest efforts undertaken to date to bring together and quantify the essential role women have played in the making of this special place. The hope is people walk away from the exhibition feeling like they saw things they expected, they learned something new, and feel inspired to share their experience with their family, friends, and neighbors.

Here are just a few examples of the things the Exhibition will cover:

• Ojai has the longest-operating library in Ventura County, opening in 1893, thanks to seed funding from the Thachers, with women like Mrs. J.K. Newton and Zaidee E. Soule at the helm for nearly 100 years.

• All of the major spiritual centers in the Valley, from Krotona to Meher Mount, are based on land that was acquired and/or bequeathed by women.

• Roughly 76 percent of history books are written by men, and less than 10 percent of these authors even write about women, according to a 2015 study conducted by Slate based on the Vida Count project run by VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. The key history texts published about Ojai and its people were authored by women. The latter point, that so many of Ojai’s key historical texts were authored by women, is particularly interesting considering the odds. Candelaria Rios Valenzuela (Ventureño and

Fernandeño), who is known to most as the last Chumash basket weaver (the Museum has replicas of her baskets you can visit), was among the first. She was an informant for the Smithsonian, providing invaluable information to two separate delegations of ethnographers between 1912 and 1915. Informants were individuals who were selected to work directly with ethnographers to provide information (e.g., “inform”), on a variety of subject matter.

Candelaria is credited with contributing to both ethnographical and lexical works, and was essential to preserving the Chumash language. The transcripts from her extensive interviews are held by the Smithsonian and Library of Congress. For these reasons, she is the woman featured in the poster for the exhibit. In the image she is seated on a rock, pointing to Lord’s Creek (a tributary of Sespe Creek) in the Sespe wilderness north of Fillmore.

Then there was Elizabeth Chase, who wrote, “The History of the Ojai Valley” in 1933 as part of her Master’s thesis. Her efforts helped to rebuild many of the records lost in the 1917 fire that destroyed a large portion of the town. Meanwhile, Patricia Fry is likely the most familiar name. She authored ‘The Ojai Valley: An Illustrated History’ (1983), the primary history book on the town, which was revised and updated in 2017 by Elise DePuydt and Craig Walker. It’s an incredible collective effort that we were able to work from.

In addition to having well-known names, this project also highlights the lesserknown women who have given their valuable time, energy, and wisdom to

this community as mothers, daughters, neighbors, friends, educators, workers, business owners, caregivers, volunteers, activists, and civic leaders who sustain the fabric of everyday life here.

I’ve been working with Summer van Houten, a researcher born and raised here in Ojai, who joined the project in February and spent countless hours poring through books, obituaries, and personal accounts of the town with me. Dr. Nicole Haggard, Director of The Center for the Advancement of Women at Mount Saint Mary’s University, who was also raised here and has deep roots at The Thacher School, is a reader on the project. Johanna Bjork is leading on design of the exhibition materials and the coffee table book.

We focused on using the Ojai Valley Museum’s Library (an amazing free public resource that you can use with a reservation), their collections, articles and publications. We also had an opportunity to go through more than a dozen interviews that are part of the Museum’s ongoing oral history project.

Additionally, I have personally met with dozens of people throughout town over the past year, including family members, friends, neighbors, and representatives from various groups and organizations, who have been generous with their stories and resources, such as personal photos, binders of newspaper clippings, land deeds and more. The hardest part of the project is sticking to a stopping point, because there are so many stories that could fill several exhibits and books — which will be made available in a digital archive.

We were also lucky to have access to the Museum’s executive director, Wendy Barker, and her team. Board members

THE MUSEUM’S LIBRARY IS FREE TO USE FOR THE PUBLIC WITH A RESERVATION.

BELOW: ANNIE BESANT, THOUGH SHE SPENT ONLY A FEW WEEKS IN OJAI, LEFT AN INDELIBLE IMPRESSION ON SEVERAL KEY INSTITUTIONS.

Jennifer Jordan Day, Kendra Yoes, and Tony Thacher have been wonderful supporters along with the Exhibits Committee, especially Kim Brown and Christopher Noxon. Local experts like Cricket Twichell and Elise DePuydt to name a few, have answered our many questions, pulled items from collections, and shared ideas over the past year.

You will find in a project like this that women’s history isn’t a straight line. Most women start their life with one name, and it changes at least once in their lifetime. They might acquire a nickname, or baptismal name that they go by. They might marry and take the name of their husband(s), or change their name on their own accord. You realize very quickly the time and patience that it takes to follow just one woman through her lifetime, let alone generations of women over decades. It is a weaving of information that requires more research and more time. But every attempt to try and tell even one story offers a new window into our past.

The exhibition will run from January 15 to April 5, 2026, with an opening reception on January 16, 2026. To contribute to the project, visit ojaivalleymuseum.org/ support and include “Valley of Women” in the memo.

ABOUT BRADY HAHN

Founder, The Noodle Collective Guest Curator, Women of the Valley: 100 Years of Ojai History

Brady Hahn is an award-winning consultant, producer, and researcher with more than 15 years of experience in helping organizations and individuals develop and scale their ideas into meaningful action.

ABOVE: ZAIDEE SOULE’S GENEROSITY FOCUSED ON THE LIBRARY AND PARKS.

Where Ojai Gets Growing

grasslands ABLAZE

STORY BY CHUCK GRAHAM

The grasslands were still smoldering as a pair of barn owls flew from one burned out cottonwood tree to the next, the Madre Fire still blazing in parts of the sweltering Carrizo Plain National Monument in the middle of July 2025.

I wasn’t sure what to expect as I slowly rolled down Simmler Road in my van the night before. As I headed westward to the east side of Soda Lake, I couldn’t see the burned portion of the grasslands. Still, the air was thick with smoke, and it was eerily quiet. There were no yelps from marauding coyotes, no barn owls screeching, or any bugling from rutting tule elk.

SCORCHED EARTH

The Madre Fire began on July 2nd. It was completely out by July 28. It started on private property off Highway 166, between Santa Maria and New Cuyama. The origins of the fire are still under investigation. It burned up and over the aridly daunting Caliente Mountains, scorching nearly 81,000 acres (126 square miles).

I parked my van above a parched and desolate Soda Lake, sleeping fitfully. However, by 4 a.m. I was up, anticipating pre-dawn light across the burn area. What would the Carrizo Plain look like after the Madre Fire? When Soda Lake has no water and is dry, the alkali mud cracks and lifts as the sun sears the surface, and a thick layer of salty crust turns into “puzzle pieces” across the largest natural alkali lake in central and southern California. It’s so pearly white that even during the darkest nights on the Carrizo Plain, it’s still easy to see it “glow,” as it stands out across the national monument.

After first light, the contrast between Soda Lake and the daunting burn scar was severe. The entire Caliente Mountains to the west were scorched. The fire reached Soda Lake Road at two points, but it didn’t jump the perpetually pot-holed track. It burned around Painted Rock, a significant Native American site, but not the natural sandstone cathedral itself. I rode my mountain bike out there at dawn. It was too silent.

BY CHUCK GRAHAM

PHOTO

Usually, Painted Rock is teeming with life. It’s common seeing ghostly barn owls, steely prairie falcons, aerodynamic American kestrels, flitting Say’s Phoebes, and flocks of white-crowned sparrows. Desert cottontail rabbits live around Painted Rock’s perimeter. After I rode my bike there, some hardy cottontails still lingered around the rock outcropping that stands prominently on the Carrizo Plain.

BURNED OUT

From afar, I could see all the cottonwood trees had burned that once shaded the southwest side of the historic Saucito Ranch. When I rode my mountain bike out there, the burnt leaves crackled, shaking in unison. The main barn east of the ranch house burned to the ground.

Later, as I slowly drove along Soda Lake Road, the only wildlife I saw were everpresent ravens, and one or two resilient antelope ground squirrels. They behaved as if nothing had happened. Burrowers do well in large wildfires, hiding deep in their maze of tunnels. Still, within the burn area there wasn’t much of anything for them to forage. However, the two antelope ground squirrels that emerged from their burrows displayed typical behavior with their little stubby tails twitching behind them.

Further along, I pulled into the KCL Campground to the south and found half of it burned. The old tack shed in the rear of the camp was burned down. Half the trees in the campground were burned, and I feared the great horned owls that have nested there for at least two decades had fled. Happy to say, though, that I was wrong. In one of the two trees that didn’t burn, I found the breeding pair perched next to

A BREEDING PAIR OF GREAT HORNED OWLS THAT SURVIVED

A PARCHED SODA LAKE

PHOTOS BY CHUCK GRAHAM

KIT FOX PUP THAT SURVIVED THE FIRE

BURN SCAR SURROUNDING PAINTED ROCK

THE MADRE FIRE

each other. Thankfully wildlife can be stubborn, too.

That night I parked my van in the burned-out campground. And at dusk the breeding pair of great horned owls sounded off, hooting in one of two trees that survived the blaze. They continued their nocturnal serenade until an hour before first light. From there, I slowly drove to the visitor center looking for signs of life. A solitary San Joaquin kit fox crept out from underneath a juniper tree, a survivor of the wildfire.

“It is unfortunate for the animals there, but they are resilient,” said Craig Fiehler, environmental scientist for CA Fish and Wildlife. “The plants as well. A lot of the manzanita and other chaparral species will stump, sprout, and the regeneration is rapid.”

GRASSLAND BUGLING

As the sun rose above the Temblor Range in the east, the typically dry summer grasses to the west were momentarily transformed into fields of gold, that low light setting the grasslands aglow. The distinct burn scar beyond the golden grasses was also impressive. From the Caliente Mountains to Soda Lake Road, the landscape was blackened.

I listened to the grasslands, hoping for familiar sounds to drift across the semi-arid biome. And then I heard one of my favorite grassland melodies wafting down from the north. A bull tule elk bugled on the west side of Soda Lake. Just as impressive, his massive antlers stood out while he solidified his territory. With my binoculars, I found his herd of cows and calves strolling in my direction.

Photos by Chuck Graham

BURN SCAR LOOKING TOWARD THE KCL CAMPGROUND

DESERT COTTONTAIL

RED-TAILED HAWK

MID-MORNING BURNED LANDSCAPE ACROSS THE CARRIZO PLAIN

Carrizo Plain has some of the fastest growing tule elk herds in California. Hunted to near extinction during westward expansion, small herds of tule elk were translocated back to the grasslands in 1998. Over the years, their numbers have steadily grown into the hundreds. Dawn and dusk have always proven to be great opportunities to see California’s only native elk.

As burned out as the Carrizo Plain appeared, it was the small herd of tule elk demonstrating how resilient wildlife can be, even against the direst circumstances. They strolled in front of Painted Rock, occasionally looking back at the bull tule elk that was trailing after them.

The Carrizo Plain will come back, but it was good to see tule elk already returning to their usual grassland stomping grounds, their established path announced by a stout and steadfast bugling tule elk bull.

“Let’s hope for moderate rain this winter and the place will be suitable for a lot of animal species soon,” said Feihler.

Photos by Chuck Graham

A SMALL BAND OF TULE ELK IN FRONT OF PAINTED ROCK

A MADRE-FIRE SURVIVOR ANTELOPE GROUND SQUIRREL STANDS TO GATHER FOOD

THE MADRE FIRE BURNED IN AND AROUND THE HISTORIC SAUCITO RANCH SITE

DR. DREW EGGEBRATEN, DDS

GENERAL & FAMILY DENTISTRY

“We specialize in biomimetic principles. Biomimetic dentistry is the reconstruction of teeth to emulate their esthetic and natural form and function. It is the most conservative approach to treating fractured and decayed teeth — it keeps them strong and seals them from bacterial invasion. By conserving as much tooth structure as possible, we can eliminate the need for many crowns and root canals.”

Dr. Andrew Eggebraten, USC Graduate and his family

OQ | EVENTS CALENDAR

december - january - february

OJAI COMMUNITY CHORUS | DECEMBER 6 & 7 | Ojai United Methodist Church

DECEMBER 6-7

Ojai Community Chorus

Time: 3 p.m. Saturday & Sunday

Location: Ojai Methodist Church 120 Church Road

Contact: 805-640-0468

The Ojai Community Chorus, directed by Connie Woodson, presents its holiday concert on Saturday, December 6 at 3 p.m. and Sunday, December 7 at 3 p.m. at the Ojai United Methodist Church, 120 Church Road. The program is “A Christmas to Remember.”

DECEMBER 9

Jonathan Richman in Concert

Location: Ojai Women’s Club, 441 East Ojai Avenue

Time: Doors open at 7 p.m. Show at 8 p.m.

Contact: EventBrite.com or (((FolkYeah!)))

Legendary musician and Modern Lovers founder Jonathan Richman performs in the club’s historic venue.

DECEMBER 13

City of Ojai Holiday Celebration & Tree

Lighting Ceremony

Location: Libbey Park, 205 East Ojai Avenue Times: All Day

JONATHAN RICHMAN | DECEMBER 9 | Ojai Women’s Club

DECEMBER 31

Ojai Valley Museum’s

New Year’s Eve Spectacular

Location: Ojai Valley Museum

130 West Ojai Avenue

Times: 6:30 to 9:30 p.m.

An evening event to ring in the New Year — perfect for families or adults looking for local festivities.

JANUARY 22

Steve Gunn in Concert

Location: Deer Lodge 441 East Ojai Avenue

Time: Doors open at 7 p.m.

Show at 8 p.m.

Contact: DeerLodgeOjai.com

805-646-4256

Steve Gunn has been at the vanguard of American experimental and guitaroriented rock music for over a decade. His work continues to mark major milestones in contemporary guitar music and innovative songwriting.

JANUARY 31

“I See Hawks in L.A.” in Concert

Location: Underground Exchange 616 Pearl Street Times: 7 to 10 p.m.

This alternative country band has been rocking since 1999. Here’s a rare chance to hear a Los Angeles scene fixture at home in Ojai.

OJAI PODCAST | EVERY THURSDAY | OjaiQuarterly.com

RECURRING EVENTS

DEC-JANUARY-FEBRUARY

Historical Walking Tours of Ojai

Date: Every Saturday Time: 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.

Location: Ojai Valley Museum

130 West Ojai Avenue

Contact: 640-1390

Come see why there’s so much historical hullabaloo about this “smiling vale.”

DEC 14, JAN 11, FEB 8

Coffee & Cars

Dates: Second Sundays of the month Times: 8 to 10 a.m.

Location: Westridge Market parking lot

Come check out classic and luxury cars from the area’s proudest collectors. Have a chance to learn from the owners about the history and importance of some of the world’s most incredible automobiles.

THURSDAYS

Ojai: Talk of the Town Podcast

New episodes come out Thursday evenings through the OjaiHub.com newsletter. Guests have included Malcolm McDowell on the 50th anniversary of “A Clockwork Orange,” and Sergio Aragonés on his 60 years as a cartoonist at Mad Magazine. More than 280 episodes and counting. Sign up at OjaiHub.com for a free newsletter of Ojai events, news, arts, entertainment, history and culture. And podcasts.

BY SAMI ZAHRINGER

A Housewife’s Log

A SQUABBLE OF WITCHES

Aggideny, Peggy, and Marge convene on a storm-tossed fen to review the week’s comings, goings, and catastrophic doings.

High on a blast-beruffled marsh near the top of the Cuilean mountains in the Outer Hebrides, 40 bats appeared and coalesced into a single form holding a Slurpee.

“Ah, looks like I’m the first.” said the figure. From beneath her thick woolen cloak she produced a battered kettle, a large tupperware box, a pale blue orb, and a mug with a picture of Christopher Walken’s face.

Aggideny Vexx, Witch, for it was she, muttered some foul imprecations just as a matter of course. She sat on a great, flat stone slab, her 1,004-year-old knees making the same noise as a goat chewing a tin can with a side of celery. She was made mostly of knees and elbows but also of night-whispers and the scent of forgotten graves. Deep from within leathery wrinkles peered three sharp, prescient eyes the color of water in a far-off lonely place. The two normal eyes plus a tiny secret third one witches keep deep within their left eyebrow.

Witches don’t pluck on the left, giving some of the more attractive ones the permanent expression of a surprised Roger Moore.

Her nose was so hooked it approximated the coastline of one of

the bendier Norwegian fjords. Other witches could only dream of such a nose. Around these parts, Aggideny Vexx was the Top Witch (Unofficially, of course, because witches don’t follow leaders). She had powerful magic, esoteric and ancient and she had everybody’s respect. And fear.`

The wind howled and tugged. Unlike modern winds it doesn’t bother blowing around people but just blows right through like a wind that’s fought in two great wars, has places to be and doesn’t have time for your nonsense. Aggideny sat on the vast stone slab and waited.

“Where are they?” she muttered — she herself having never been late in 1,004 years. She cast her vast mind out over the landscape, feeling for the minds of the other two witches she was to meet.

A fly has an easy mind to read. It’s just one stream of big simple thoughts: Fly, Fly, Land on Sandwich, Vomit, Suck, Get Swatted, Ouch, Die. Something like a dog is more complicated — a dog can be thinking several thoughts at the same time. Woof, wag, loyal, loyal, ooh butthole! sniff, roll in dung, bite postman. Aggie’s mind drifted far on the wind feeling the sharp, careful little minds of moles; the flabby, wooly minds of sheep, thinking

vaguely of daisies and occasionally of RFK Jr. (Well, they were sheep after all and some of them had done their own research.)

A human mind is a great sullen lightning-filled cloud of thoughts. Finding whatever the owner thinks they’re thinking in the middle of the miasma of prejudices, memories, worries, hopes and fears is almost impossible, except for a witch.

But a witch’s mind is sharp and spiky and Aggie felt the shape of two of them coming towards her at speed: the minds of apprentice witch Morgana Shade (Marge), and senior witch Nanny Peggy (Nanny Peggy)

Marge had rushed, thighs screaming and buttocks whimpering from her yoga class, up to the stone slab, on her tubby little pony, Overnight Oats, who was running less like the wind and more like the winded. Her hair looked like the tangled electrical orbitals of several of the more complicated carbohydrates and her eyeliner had not so much run as sprinted down her freckled cheeks, all pink and shiny with exertion. She was basically a cloud of colorful diaphanous scarves with a winsome smile. In a world of wickedness Marge was a pure and good soul, like an apple in a McDonalds.

Born to a screamingly liberal mother and a virulently conserva-

tive father, the little Marge had something neither of her parents in their deep need for the certainties of their tribes, possessed: Curiosity. And more than that, Courage. Word had spread in the witching world of this girl who was reliably able to find the edge of a roll of tape since the age of 2. Magic indeed! Nanny Peggy set out to locate this remarkable young tape finder. She found Marge in Ojai, CA. By then she was 14, and all curls and ears, like a time-machine mix up between Prince Charles and a dandelion clock. She quite fancied being a witch and mentoring is one of the five pillars of witching. So Nanny brought her back to the Hebrides and under her’s and Aggie’s tutelage Marge had developed into a rather able young witch albeit with a bit more woo and lycra in her witchery than Aggie or Nanny Peggy approved of.

Nanny Peggy arrived next, shrieking onto the slab on her new broom, a gorgeous 2025 Besom Torpedo Mk II which ran on biomagic and had a cupholder and a place to put her knitting. It still had that new broom smell and she was very proud of it. However, to her irritation, Aggie didn’t seemed to notice.

“Drinking and flying again Peggy?” said Aggie acidly.

“Never!” cried B. shocked. “I am just a tiddlywinks wee bit tiddly! I was at my niece’s art opening but it was so dull I started play

OQ | NOCTURNAL SUBMISSIONS

ing “Every time an artwork upends formal aesthetic conventions by disregarding traditional processes, take a drink.” It was a very avant-garde show, see, so I might have overdone it but no more than a frog’s hair. Ah, my days, I can’t drink like I used to!” she sighed as she opened a flask and cheerfully proceeded to drink exactly like she used to. To Nanny Peggy drinking responsibly meant not spilling any. She spotted Marge.

“Hello ducky! You’re looking very urethral!”

“I think you mean ethereal.” said Aggie, crisply.

“I know what I meant,” huffed Nanny Peggy, herself a woman held together with bobby pins, the fumes of old gin gimlets, and large heart-strings.

*It’s worth noting here that the natural number of witches in the wild is one. Basically a coven is nothing more than a pack of ringleaders but the real word for a group of witches is ‘a squabble.’

“Right, let’s get on with it.” said Aggie standing up. Was she taller than before? Nobody could ever really pin down the exact dimensions of Aggadina Vexx. Some of them weren’t in this world. She spoke in unusual tones, half elegy, half hallucination. The trouble was, you didn’t know whose elegy it was.

“When shall we three meet again on this wild and windy marsh, steaming and alive with reckoning and resonance?” Some lightning obligingly flashed.

“It’s not a marsh,” said Nanny Peggy. “There’s a tree, look. Marshes cannot support trees. We’re actually on a wild and windy swamp.”

Aggie glared at her with the sort of look that could freeze off anything that might be precancerous on you. “Okaaaaay,” she said slowly and dangerously “When shall we three meet again on this dank and fetid bog o’er which…”

“Well, as a matter of fact” piped up Nanny Peggy smugly, “bogs are acid, and the fact that all our shoes are currently gently dissolving indicates that this is alkali and therefore a fen. (Witches

footwear is always acid-proof on account of all the bog meetings they must go to. Foot comfort is very important for the busy witch. The preferred brand is Asics. Their hobnailed range now comes with built-in arch support and two small mounted surface-to-air missiles.)

Aggie glared at Nanny. Nanny glared at Aggie. A barbed silence loomed, apart from the sound of Overnight Oats’ doleful flatulence from the tree. The silence between the two witches grew sharp, glinting little teeth. It was a busy, thick silence, the sort that is worse than screams. Of the two of them though, it was Aggie that had the edge on glares. A sharp, and perilous edge. An unwitting ray of sunshine, which had been jauntily advancing across the mossy slab, caught sight of her face and slunk away, sheepishly.

Marge glanced warily at both old women, as orange sparks flared between them where their glares met. No, witches shouldn’t meet up above once a week.

“Ladies, ladies!” Let’s not fight! I hold space for BOTH your truths and, look, I’ve brought buns for dessert!”

Marge produced some clinking fruit buns which looked tasted like the cremated hopes and dreams of various berries.

Aggie glared at the scones. One of them caught fire. After a certain amount of internal struggle, she said. “Well, let us eat then.”

“Are you OK, Aggie? There is some yellow steam coming out of your hat. Do you want to reschedule?”

“I’m fine!” snapped Aggie, and then unpacked her picnic onto the slab at a volume that suggested otherwise. She did a quick Zorro meets Anthony Bourdain thing and in a flash a fully carved roast beef sat steaming between an array of tomato roses.

“That looks delicious!” said Marge, eager to move on from the terrible glaring. “Did you use the new cauldron for it?”

But before Aggie could answer, Nanny Peggy chirped “Since I got my air fryer I barely use my cauldron at all any more!”

“Can we please just get on with it,” said Aggie, in a voice more

appropriate for the opening of hostilities in a middle-range war than a weekly witch review.

“Now, Marge, tell us, how was the week?”

“Weeeeeell, I’ve had a bad cold and am finding it hard to focus on my hocusing and my pocusing. I’ve tried abracadadderall but it just gives me wind and bad dreams about Prince Andrew.

“But how does the orb say I’m doing? How is my progress through your eyes?”

“Dearie, if you could see yourself through my eyes you’d be amazed how blurry you are!” said Nanny Peggy, snuffling happily through her third plate of roast beef.

“Let’s look at Comings and Goings. Comings first. You’ve improved heaps at midwiffery,” said Nanny Peggy, peering at moving images of Marge’s work through swirls in the orb. “This time last year you thought to dilate meant to live a really long time. You really were utterly useless, we were quite despairing, weren’t we Aggie? I asked you what you knew about the Caesarian section and you thought it was a neighborhood in Rome. This week it looks like you successfully delivered two parish babies and nobody was turned into an elf! Slight pointy ear on one child but that’ll just be a fun talking point for her.”

Marge blushed with pride.

“What about Goings?”

“The sad loss of Mr. Desmond Nibblit to report. Choked on a cough sweet. Bit of a stale ham sandwich of a human, but an actual accountancy genius several hundred years ahead of his time. Unrecognized obviously, but his spirit will live on in his Excel spreadsheets, Powerpoint and (checking notes) 9,043 unread emails. He leaves behind a wife who in her distress fed the ducks in the park all the focaccia meant for Desmond’s birthday unaware that ducks can’t digest rosemary, so my healing clinic was 50 percent ducks with dire rear last week.”

“You mean diarrhea” Said Nanny

“Yes, but direr.” Marge shuddered.

I took a Lego out of a 4-year-old’s ear the other day with some castor oil and a Swedish dislodging spell. He asked me whether

Lego had a silent ’t’ like merlot! I mean, he’s four! I almost put the Lego back in. I gave him a ball and prescribed four hours outside daily.

“Good. That’s The Comings and The Goings and The Clinics. What about The Doings?” said Aggie.

At this Nanny Peggy gave an enormous wink and a salacious cackle.

“Ah, the love clinic,” said Marge. Well, Joanie, the butcher’s daughter has been sort of seeing Jeremy, the mobile phone salesman, but she is playing hard to get. Jeremy, meanwhile, is playing hard to want. He lives on muscle milk and supplements and won’t stop talking about crossfit. In truth he is a man so dense that light bends around him but for Joanie, his light shines from a spot between his well-formed glutes. I did a quick mind meld and he does like her but he doesn’t notice it through the junk storm of supplements in his brain,

“Well” said Aggie. “Let’s go back to basics. With young people it’s all about the 4 Fs — fighting, fleeing, feeding, and …, uh, mating. Have you made one of them save the other from certain death or, worse, embarrassment? Have you conspired to get them at the same time in a moderately priced Italian restaurant? Have you pitched them against each other with some adorable misunderstandings in the manner of a 1990s Nora Ephron romcom? You have to do all that before you can get to the Fourth F, do you see?”

Marge nodded.

The currency of the witches is knowledge. Magic too and all the stuff with the newt bits etc., but mostly knowledge.The universe is full of ignorance and the witch pans through it like a gold prospector hunched over a mountain stream, looking for shining nuggets of knowledge among the mud of unreason, the gravel of uncertainty, and the whiskery wee protozoa things of superstition.” Witches were the first scientists.

All this Marge must learn. A witch can apprentice for as much as 300 years before she gets her black hat in witchery. Pointy of course. Novice witches have navy blue hats. She is in year two of Grade III witchery. There are 42 Grades left to go. But that’s OK because, above all, witches have Time. We will pop in on Marge again next year on her journey to Full Witch…

On 40 prime East End acres, this unique citrus ranch has fabulous Topa Topa views, four legal houses, a 2800 sqft barn, and 36 acres of organic orchard. One of the best wells in Ojai provides reliable income from 6000 Valencia trees, 2000 Pixie trees and 200 pecan trees. The remodeled 3500sqft, 3bd/2.5ba main house, built in 1917, has beautiful views from nearly every window. The 3 auxiliary houses provide great rental income. Includes extensive water infrastructure, 2 Casitas water meters, 40kw of solar panels, a John Deere tractor and a Gator.

Offered at $7,500,000

Beneath the majestic Topa Topas, this nearly 2 acre compound blends privacy, luxury, and thoughtful design. A warm 4br/3ba main house features stone and wood details, generous windows, and mountain views throughout. A separate 2br/2ba guest house offers privacy and flexibility perfect for visitors or income-generating rentals. A striking 2,400-square-foot open-air barn invites entertaining on any scale. The resort-style backyard features a pool and spa set among native boulders, multiple dining areas, a fire pit, and a full outdoor kitchen. Offered at $2,875,000

44 ACRE UPPER OJAI MODERN RANCH 12179KoenigsteinRdOjai.com

Amidst the wild beauty of Ojai’s backcountry, this property encompasses three contiguous parcels, offering extraordinary scale, privacy and potential. Anchored by an architect-designed main home and guest house - true jewels in the landscape - this property offers a sublime vision of country living. The primal forms of the existing buildings are artfully integrated into the terrain, and form a canvas for the movement of the sun and the passage of the seasons. Built with fire-resilience in mind, they feature sliding steel doors designed to seal and protect. Offered at $4,575,000