Ojai Quarterly - Spring 2023

OJAI’S MODEL CITIZEN

HAPPY VALLEY TO BROADWAY & BACK

THE GREAT CELEBRITY RIOT OF 2023

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

$3,550,000 FOR SALE

ABOUT THE PROPERTY

Welcome to a rare find in Ojai. Located behind private gates, this lovely four-bedroom, three-bath home has vaulted ceilings and a spacious open floor plan. There is a fireplace in the living room which is open to the kitchen and dining room with French doors leading to magical gardens. A large library is off the living room with two offices upstairs. Perfect blend of indoor/outdoor living as there are many windows and plenty of light. There is a 2 bedroom,1 bath guest house and an artist studio on the property as well. All of this is sitting on 7.5 flat usable acres with some of the most incredible views of the majestic mountains.

GATED PROPERTY

DONNA SALLEN

805.798.0516

donna4remax@aol.com

www.donnasallen.com

$4,920,000

ITALIAN VILLA

$3,875,000

Perfectly situated on just under four acres lies the historic Casa de la Luna compound. More than 8,000 sf with 11 bedrooms and 16 bathrooms, this magnificent estate is likely the best value anywhere in California. With limestone and hand-scraped floors, wrought-iron doors and a new gourmet kitchen.

Nestled on over an acre of land, this Italian Villa inspired estate is just minutes from downtown Ojai. This impressive family home is perfect for entertaining, formal dining, formal living room, open kitchen with large fireplace, overlooks the huge covered deck. Marble and hardwood floors.

G A B R I E L A C E S E ÑA

THE NEXT LEVEL OF REAL ESTATE SERVICES

Realtor | Luxury Specialist Berkshire Hathaway

Unwavering

805.236.3814 | gabrielacesena@bhhscal.com CAL DRE# 01983530

Gabrielacesena.bhhscalifornia.com

310 E. Matilija Street | $3,800,000 | VMU | Classic Victorian

Its sunny, romantic wrap-around porch & large windows overlooking downtown Ojai is home to the famous Porch Gallery, unique as both a historic residence & eclectic gallery space! A classic Victorian, the third oldest building in town, was built in 1874 by Ojai Pioneer John Montgomery. A celebrated

Gallery & Beato Chocolates Store (named after famed artist Beatrice Wood), is an iconic communal gathering spot for celebrities, world-renowned artists, and locals alike. The high-profile community space & residence is zoned VMU & designed as a live/work space. SEE YOU ON THE PORCH!

1175 Cornwall Lane | $1,295,000 | Open Floor Plan | Pierpont Beach

The delightful Pierpont Beach Bungalow, located only 7 homes away from the beach, will capture your heart and imagination! The historic town of Ventura ranks nationally as one of the top cities to live in! Featuring an open floor plan, this just under 1,000 sqft, cozy two bedroom / one bath move-in ready bunga-

low with an inviting backyard is steps away from famous sand dunes and surfing. The Ventura Harbor and the oldest pier in California are a few minutes away. Explore and be inspired by the romantic midtown San Buenaventura Mission established in 1782! BLISSFUL BEACH LIVING AT ITS BEST!

1458 FOOTHILL ROAD, OJAI, CA 93023

$4,679,000 | 3 BEDS | 3.5 BATHS | 2,890 SQ FT

Tucked behind a private gate, nestled amongst the Oaks within the charming Foothills, is a 2022 single-story New Build with the design features of a modern/contemporary home. Private, enchanting, serene, is the description of this destination home’’ with just steps and access to the Pratt trail, yet just a jaunt from downtown Ojai. No expense was spared in this 3 bedroom 3 1/2 bath, 2890’ home. When entering the home, you are greeted by an expansive room that invites you into nature with treetops and mountain views. Designed to lean towards a more modern theme, the homes ceilings vary from 18’+ ceilings to 12’ with multiple sliders for indoor outdoor living. The kitchen is equipped with a 48 Wolfe Range, sub-zero, drawer’s style DW, limestone/sandstone countertops, Rift sawn oak cabinetry, fire clay sink, & Newport fixtures. The products used for the flooring thru-out are white oak, marble & limestone. All bedrooms have en-suite bath & sliders for access to the outdoors. The open concept seamlessly leads from the kitchen to the living-room with a 22’ x 10’ foot slider, surround sound, and 10’ Acu-Craft gas fireplace. So much detail to this home such as: Tesla roof which includes integrated solar in the shingles, black out shades in the bedrooms, whole house filtration/water., Aluminum Reglet trim around all interior doors & flush base molding, LED lighting, operable skylights, 96% heat/air efficiency, garage epoxy flooring w/cabinetry, ALL glass garage door. A must see...

SALES, RENTALS AND MANAGEMENT

CALIFORNIA’S PREMIER EPICUREAN WEEKEND

DOMINIQUE CRENN

CHRISTOPHER KOSTOW

OCTOBER

NANCY SILVERTON

26-29, 2023

GAVIN KAYSEN

• TICKETS ON SALE NOW

ALICE WATERS

Ojai Food + Wine, presented by FOOD & WINE, brings together more than 50 top chefs and 100 acclaimed wineries in over 40 unique experiences. Join us October 26-29 for an exclusive, four-day gathering showcasing some of the world’s best culinary personalities. Ticket packages and resort accommodations are extremely limited, please book now to avoid disappointment.

To purchase tickets, visit ojaifoodandwine.com or call (877) 436-1083.

The spring market is coming!

The Spring market is coming!

Have you been thinking about changing things up in your life? Do you have a little one on the way? Maybe your kids have flown the coop? Whether you’re looking to upsize or downsize or just want a change of view, you should start by meeting with a real estate broker you trust. I can help you get your home market-ready and counsel you about how to price your property considering current market conditions and comparable sales in your neighborhood. So if you want to make a smooth move into the next chapter of your life, reach out to me with a call today, and let’s get started.

ARTISAN MADE CLOTHING & ACCESSORIES. EXCLUSIVE MUD LOTUS DESIGNS

a n y m o r e . B u t n o w w e d i s c o v e r e d t h e m a g i c a l t o w n o f O j a i a n d t h o u g h t t h a t t h i s w o u l d b e t h e p e r f e c t p l a c e f o r T h e I v y t o r e - o p e n . O u r w i d e r a n g e o f i t e m s i n c l u d e s a n t i q u e s , n e e s t a t e j e w e l r y, s t e r l i n g s i l v e r, E u r o p e a n p o r c e l a i n s a n d p o t t e r y, l i n e n s , a n d e x c e p t i o n a l a n t i q u e f u r n i t u r e f r o m a r o u n d t h e w o r l d . A s a l w a y s a t T h e I v y, t a b l e t o p a c c e s s o r i e s a b o u n d i n n e d i s h w a r e , c r y s t a l , a n d s i l v e r t o n i s h o ff y o u r t a b l e i n s t y l e . C o m e s e e o u r n e w l y e x p a n d e d s h o w r o o m f e a t u r i n g e x c l u s i v e , v e r y m o d e r n , a n d u n u s u a l f u r n i t u r e , a r t , r u g s , a n d a c c e s s o r i e s . I f y o u n e e d t o n d t h e e l u s i v e " p e r f e c t " g i f t , T h e I v y i n O j a i i s t h e o n e - s t o p - s h o p f o r a l l y o u r n e e d s C o m e j o i n u s , a f t e r a l l : ' E v e r y o n e s h o p s a t T h e I v y.'

OJAI QUARTERLY

p.25

TWO DEGREES

Anton Chekhov & Ojai

By Bret Bradigan

p.25

FRIENDS OF THE POD

Kevin Breslin, Steve Bennett, Zhena Muzyka & More

p.34

THE WILD LIFE

Ollestad Authors His Wandering Life

Story By Kit Stolz

By Bret Bradigan

p.45

ARTISTS & GALLERIES

Where Ojai Finds Its Purpose

p.110

NOCTURNAL SUBMISSIONS

The Great Celebrity Riot of 2023

By Sami Zahringer

p.49

SOMETHING IN THE AIR

Pizzeria’s Higher Purpose

As Recovery Refuge

Story by Ilona Saari

p.64

OJAI’S MUSIC MAN

Fr anklin Lacey’s Improbable Career & Unlikely Collaborations

Story By Mark Lewis

Hike a lot? Give a little!

OVLC has permanently protected 2,400 acres of open space and maintains 27 miles of trail for all to enjoy. This is all done with donations from you—our community.

El OVLC ha protegido permanentemente 2.400 acres de áreas naturales y mantiene 27 millas de senderos para el disfrute de todos. Todo esto se hace con sus donaciones—nuestra comunidad.

¡Camina lo que quieras, dona lo que puedas!

Photo by Nathan Wickstrum

HIGH SCHOOL MINI PROJECTS: Mindful Archery, Sound Recording, Pneuma Breathwork, Surfboard Painting, Cooking, Improv, Hiking, & Sewing

The Art of Living and Learning

At Oak Grove School, our challenging college-preparatory curriculum is balanced with a comprehensive enrichment program - encouraging students to use their minds, bodies, and hearts well.

OAK GROVE SCHOOL

FOUNDED BY J. KRISHNAMURTI

The Art of Living and Learning OAK GROVE SCHOOL

The Art of Living and Learning

NOW ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS FOR HIGH SCHOOL, GRADES 9-12.

oakgroveschool.org /discover

OJAI QUARTERLY

SPRING 2023

Editor & Publisher

Bret Bradigan

Sales Manager

David Taylor

Director of Publications

Bret Bradigan

Creative Director Uta Ritke

Ojai Hub Administrator

Jessie Rose Ryan

Contributing Editors

Mark Lewis

Jerry Camarillo Dunn Jr.

Jesse Phelps Columnists

Chuck Graham

Ilona Saari

Kit Stolz

Sami Zahringer

Circulation

Target Media Partners

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

David@ojaiquarterly.com

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

SUBSCRIPTIONS:

To subscribe to the OQ, visit ojaiquarterly.com or write to 1129 Maricopa Highway, B186 Ojai, CA 93023. Subscriptions are $24.95 per year.

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

© 2023 Bradigan Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Photo by Miki Klocke

THE SIGNAL & THE NOISE

“Nothing is so aggravating as calmness.” — Mahatma Gandhi

According to Arthur Schopenhauer, the more sensitive to noise you are, the more intelligent. And if the inverse is true, I must be a raging idiot, which I’m sure some of you have already confirmed. I find that I often work best with noise and distraction. It was a talent developed during my years working in the clamor of a busy newsroom. Cradling the phone with my neck, holding the notepad with my right hand while scribbling notes with my left for an important comment from a wary cop or grandstanding politician minutes before the issue was supposed to be put to bed, amid the relentless chatter of my colleagues and clatter of their keyboards, I would do some of my best work. It’s a version of Hemingway’s dictum: “Write drunk, edit sober.” Write noisy, edit in silence.

Given the public noise and clamor around town lately, I wonder if our collective IQ is dropping the more contentious we become. Ironic then that so many seek Ojai for its peace and quiet. We’d like to think the Ojai Quarterly contributes to that reputation as a calm, reflective place to learn about and appreciate this place, and what it means for the hundreds of thousands of guests we host each year. Light, not heat. If heat is what you seek, there are plenty of places that cater to you. Nextdoor, I’m looking at you. We at the OQ seek to provide more signal than noise.

This issue in particular, written and edited amid the vibrant emerald hillsides and cool morning breezes, speaks to that sense of place. Mark Lewis’ incredible article on Franklin Lacey and Aldous Huxley puts Ojai at the swirling center of an international culture that spanned some of the most formative decades in American life. Lacey, a child prodigy and formidable talent, not only collaborated with Huxley on “Brave New World: The Musical” but wrote the book for “Music Man,” one of the most beloved musicals of all time. Revenues from that intellectual property still benefit Besant Hill School, the place he taught and led for years. This story is one of the most important ever written about Ojai.

Looking toward the future, we’ve got our cover profile on Cameron Jones, a local product who is already staking a claim in the highly competitive world of modeling. Don’t be surprised if her level, blue-gray-eyed gaze starts turning up everywhere. We want you to be able to say that you saw it here first. More than just the next fresh face, she is the granddaughter of Gloria Jones, the designer and community stalwart, so you know she will have a solid grounded approach to her future success. Speaking of which, Kit Stolz brings author Norman Ollestad into focus, and his remarkable life of vibrant adventure. Ilona Saari’s profile on AIR Pizza’s Tere Karabatos demonstrates he and his wife helping others along their own roads to recovery.

It is our frequent pleasure to have Chuck Graham’s work grace our pages. His story about the elusive badgers of our magnificent backcountry puts his writing and superb photography skills in clear focus. Jerry Dunn’s profile of Heath Perry is case in point on Ojai’s allure as a wellness destination. This issue ends as always with our Sami Zahringer. She is one of the funniest writers in America, her manic cleverness and absurdity reveal a highly attuned intelligence at work. To have her work grace our pages is a privilege we gratefully extend to you. So here is your Spring OQ, Ojai’s premier magazine. Enjoy responsibly.

BRANDI CROCKETT

is an Ojai pixie tangerine peelin’ native and an editorial and destination wedding photographer. Check out her work at fancyfreephotography. com

JERRY DUNN

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

CHUCK GRAHAM’S

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

MARK LEWIS

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

is an independent artist, designer and curator. She is a member of Ojai Studio Artists and runs utaculemann.design.

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

JESSE PHELPS

grew up in Ojai and has written extensively for and about the town. He enjoys freelance projects and throwing things. He can be reached at jessephelps@ outlook.com

SAMI ZAHRINGER

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

UTA CULEMANNRITKE

Ojai was first developed in the early 1870s by Royce Surdam, after purchasing the land from railroad baron Tom Scott. Surdam relentlessly promoted the town sites, naming it Nordhoff, after Charles Nordhoff, author of 1873’s “California: For Health, Pleasure and Residence,” which extolled California for its salubrious climate and natural wonders.

IN BRIEF: OJAI TALK OF THE TOWN PODCASTS

DUNN’S WELLTRAVELED LIFE

Award-winning travel writer (and frequent OQ contributor) Jerry Camarillo Dunn Jr. talked about his peripatetic career. A Stanford grad, he left law school to travel the world, a vagabond with a backpack. Jerry worked with the National Geographic Society for 35 years and has written hundreds of articles in major publications. His 11 books include “My Favorite Place On Earth.”

POL’S PATH FROM NORDHOFF TO SACRAMENTO

Steve Bennett, former Nordhoff High School history teacher and present State Assemblyman from the 38th District, talked about growing up in small-town Indiana, his many years organizing the S.O.A.R. initiative and serving on the Ventura County Board of Supervisors. Bennett also talked about political heroes FDR and California legend Gary K. Hart.

Zhena Muyzka joined the podcast to talk about her latest venture, Magic Hour, and for a lively discussion about her book, “Life By the Cup,” publishing an imprint for Simon & Shuster, selling tea off a cart at Nutmeg’s Ojai House as a single mom, and building up the multimillion dollar enterprise, Zhena’s Magic Tea, losing it, then starting over with new purpose and hard-won experience. She also talked about her love of Ojai and how it has changed during her more than quarter century in the village.

LEGENDARY NEWSPAPERMAN’S SON SPEAKS ON ALL THINGS BRESLIN

Filmmaker Kevin Breslin grew up in the thick of every major issue to confront New York City during his youth — from the Stonewall and Crown Heights Riots to Son of Sam. His father, Jimmy Breslin, was the Pulitzer Prize-winning

ANTON CHEKHOV & OJAI

ONE: Dr. Anton Chekhov is considered one of the greatest writers of all time. His plays and short stories are models of the form, and are still in wide circulation. Chekhov, born in modest circumstances, lived only 44 years but left behind timeless works such as “The Seagull,” “The Cherry Orchard,” and “Three Sisters.” He supported himself and his family while finishing medical school. He said “medicine is my lawful wife, and literature my mistress.” His older brother, Alexander Chekhov, fathered a son, Mikhail, with his second wife.

The nephew followed his uncle into the arts. He

columnist with the New York Daily News, whose punchy, witty prose provided eagerly anticipated daily routines for millions of readers. He first came to attention the day after John F. Kennedy’s funeral with a lyrical profile of JFK’s gravedigger.

He also wrote novels, nonfiction, hosted a radio show, and for a while, his own late night television show. Kevin, himself an acclaimed filmmaker, shared stories of his colorful father and the city they both loved.

2 of OJAI SEPARATION

TWO DEGREES BETWEEN

studied at Konstantin Stanislavski’s First Studio in Moscow. Stanislavski said he was among his brightest students, and Chekhov adopted and adapted his mentor’s Method style to create his own experience-based acting system. He moved to America near the outbreak of World War II and resumed his teaching career. Among his most famous students were Marilyn Monroe, Clint Eastwood and Anthony Quinn.

He also taught Woody Chambliss, Ford Rainey and Iris Tree, who lived and performed in Ojai as the High Valley Theater for many years, including adaptations of l’oncle Anton’s plays.

OJAI’S TEA MASTER

ELEMENTARY & MIDDLE SCHOOL OPEN HOUSE: SATURDAY, MARCH 18

RSVP: admission@ovs.org or (805) 646-1423

Ojai Valley School offers a challenging PK-12 curriculum with small classes led by a team of supportive & dedicated teachers, a diverse student body, a vibrant visual & performing arts program, middle & high school athletics, and numerous opportunities for hands-on learning through outdoor exploration & service.

LEARN MORE AT OVS.ORG

Limited Spaces Available for the Upcoming School Year!

VILLANOVA Middle School

Villanova Preparatory School is a Catholic boarding and day school founded in the Augustinian Tradition in 1924. After a century of educating students to be critical and conceptual thinkers, effective communicators, and selfdirected lifelong learners, Villanova Prep is excited to be adding Villanova Middle School to our beautiful 130-acre campus for the 2023-24 school year!

Villanova Middle School will provide academic rigor with a small school feel, including many extracurricular opportunities in the arts, athletics, community service, and leadership.

OUR PROGRAM

▶

▶

A well-rounded, challenging curriculum that educates the mind, heart, and body. Learn more at villanovaprep.org/apply Any questions? Contact us at: admissions@villanovaprep.org Tel. 805.646.1464

Safe, supportive school community with dedicated teachers and staff. Student-centered approach with class sizes of no more than 20 students. Access to science labs, art center, theater, gymnasium, pool, makerspace, and computer labs.

Ojai’s newest female owned boutique offering Ladies Clothing, Hats, Shoes, Jewelry, Candles & Home Goods. A curated Collective of small female led business brands featuring Cleobella, Port Sandz, Reset by Jane and more.

OPEN DAILY 10AM-6PM

305 E Mati lija Unit 101B Ojai , CA

34 storm crazy

Ollestad’s Searching Life Brings

Him to Ojai

34

32-44

Boutiques & lodging

Where to Stay, Where to Shop

43 artists & galleries

The People, Places That Make Ojai an Arts Destination

“If you’re considering having your event at the Deer Lodge in Ojai I have one thing to say to you; DO IT! The staff went the extra mile for us on our big day. The vibe of the Deer Lodge cannot be beaten - it is quintessential Ojai.”

“A night at The Deer Lodge guarantees great conversation with folks you’ve known your whole life or visitors stopping by for the weekend. The menu is hearty, the cocktails are unrivaled and it’s clear that all are welcome at the Lodge.”

The Writer Advent

Under the tutelage of his wildly charismatic — and just plain wild — father, Norman Ollestad grew up chasing a life of adventure.

Before he could even walk, his dad put him on his back and took him surfing at Topanga Beach. “I am harnessed in a canvas papoose on my dad’s back,” Ollestad writes in his first book, called “Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival.”

STORY BY KIT STOLZ

urer

“It’s my first birthday. I peer over his shoulder as we glide the sea. Sun glare and blue ripple together. The surfboard rail engraves the arcing wave and spits of sunflecked ocean tumble over his toes. I can fly.”

Topanga Beach in Malibu in the ‘70s became Ollestad’s childhood playground.

“The beach I grew up on was a nude beach,” he said, in a video made to promote his 2009 memoir. “It was also a beach where some of the best surfers in California lived, and a whole host of really interesting characters.”

Among those characters was his father, an aggressive attorney who served in the FBI, but quit it to write a tell-all book, (“Inside the FBI”) detailing his disillusionment. A fearless skier and surfer and social adventurer — who divorced Norman’s mother when Norman was a boy — Ollestad’s irrepressible father pushed Norman into taking risks on the slopes, on the swells, and at the rink. By four, Norman was skiing the steepest and most dangerous black diamond slopes at Mammoth. Before long he began competing in junior races. At 11 he was on a ski team, working with a coach, and competing for top prizes in races,

aiming to qualify for the Junior Olympics, despite being smaller than most of his rivals.

At times he resented his father for pushing him, but often too, he admired him for the relentless pursuit of risk he championed — and demanded.

Ollestad writes in “Crazy for the Storm,” recounting how he crouched on the beach, feeling the sand under his feet, looking at big swells at Topanga, and thinking of surfing with his father.

“Off the point at Topanga Beach I stared into the eye of a distant wave. Somewhere in the oval opening I grasped what Dad had

“Dad taught me to fly right there on those waves,”

NORMAN OLLESTAD

always tried to make me see. There is more to life than just surviving it. Inside each turbulence there is a calm — a sliver of light buried in the darkness.”

The ability to find that calm inside the turbulence of fear and desperation probably saved Ollestad’s life. In 1979, after competing and winning a ski race at Snow Summit in the Big Bear mountains, and driving back home to the beach with his father and his father’s girlfriend — so that Norman could compete in a scheduled hockey game — the three flew from Santa Monica back to the Big Bear area early the next day in a small plane to pick up his trophy.

The blithely confident pilot did not check the weather or file a flight plan. He planned to fly without instruments under the clouds to the Big Bear airport at about 7,000 feet, but before long lost his bearings in the clouds, and crashed into a jagged ridge high in the precipitous San Gabriel mountains.The pilot was killed instantly, and Ollestad’s father, badly injured, soon succumbed, slumped over in the snow. The girlfriend Sandra had injured her arm in the crash, and a scratched-up Ollestad huddled with her for a time in the half-shelter of a wing in the snow.

The wreckage of the plane had come to rest on a ridge thousands

of feet above a wooded canyon. Norman, convinced they would not survive long in the freezing wind and snow, set out in his sneakers, jeans, and windbreaker to walk down to safety, leading Sandra. Despite his best efforts to support her, she slipped and fell to her death. Somehow 11-year-old Ollestad stayed upright in the snow and ice — and although frostbit on his fingers and toes — scrambled and stumbled down the rock and snow and ice to be rescued. He was the sole survivor.

In Ojai at the cafe, Ollestad still looks a bit like the stereotypical Southern California surfer, youthful despite his 50-odd years, blond, in forgettably nondescript clothes, with strong hands, a muscular chest, and a calm, steady gaze. He brings the family Golden Retriever, named Bullit along, and Bullit lies placidly beneath the table as Ollestad talks about his life and his work.

In his second memoir, “Gravity,” published in 2015, he writes about his adventures in his twenties skiing terrifyingly steep powder slopes in the Alps, all the while trying to fit in with the intimidatingly caustic ski bums scrapping by in St. Anton, one of the world’s biggest and best ski resorts. Ollestad recounts being challenged by a scornful and athletic German skier. Hearing that Ollestand grew up in Malibu, the German derisively asked if he was “a surfer dude.”

OLLESTAD AS A CHILD SURFING WITH HIS FATHER

The freedom to venture wherever and whenever he wished in the wide world meant nearly everything to his father, and seemingly to young Ollestad too. After a tumultuous youth — often fighting with his fellow students as well coming into conflict with the hard-drinking man his mother took up with after splitting from his father — Ollestad went to UCLA Film school and began to write screenplays. But he never stopped having adventures, and admits that as a young man, testing himself on the slopes

mattered more to him than a career.

“From the time I was 15 or so, I just wanted to do my thing,” he recounted. “After school I was like — what’s that over there? I think I’m going to go live in Austria and ski. I’ll figure out later how to make some money.”

In 2009, Ollestad published his first memoir. “Crazy for the Storm” became a worldwide success, was optioned by Warner Brothers, and for a time seemed headed for film production, with Josh Brolin slated to play Ollestad’s late father, and Sean Penn to direct, following the success of Penn’s “Into the Wild.”

In the end, the movie was never produced. Ollestad continued to write in a variety of forms, including screenplays, novels, memoirs, and journalism. He published two novels, first “Driftwood” and then an edgy thriller with strong sexual overtones, called “French Girl with Mother.” Today he forthrightly admits that although he admires some contemporary and prize-winning wordsmiths, such as Jhumpa Lahiri — and in particular the iconic Cormac McCarthy — for him writing is about more than just choosing the right word.

“I’m into words and I use them, but it’s a little more kinetic

“I like to surf,” Ollestad said calmly.

“Then why’d you come here?”

“Because I like to ski too,” he said. “And here I can ski wherever I want.”

NORMAN OLLESTAD SKIING IN ST. ANTON BACK IN THE DAY

for me,” he said. “I like the motion of words, the cadence, and sometimes I find myself using what is slightly the wrong word because I like the sound of it in the action.”

Recently Ollestad pitched and sold an “Audible Original” called “Formentera,” about a screenwriter who has been hired to write a big sexy movie for a powerful and manipulative European producer. In order to extract from the writer the daring script that the producer wants, he draws both the writer and his beautiful — and somewhat estranged — wife into a high stakes psychosexual drama on the gorgeous island of Formentera, off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean.

Ollestad had heard about this legendary free-spirited island from a French buddy who had surfed the world. After one surfing vacation in the Pacific nearly ended in disaster, Ollestad, with his family, has returned to Formentera every summer (save one for the COVID lockdown) for six years in a row.

“There’s something about this place — it’s a unique vibe, and it’s something I’ve always wanted to capture,” he said. “And from my own experience, having been in many relationships, there’s a dynamic between men and women involving money, and it’s maybe not a popular truth, and it’s not what we’re hearing in the media, but beneath that ideology some heavy, primal shit goes on, and that’s what I’m interested in.”

a book to be read (or listened to).

“

I just instinctively thought, if it’s going to be audible, perfect. We’ll have the husband and the wife, alternating [narrating in the first person] and you’ll get that rub between them. The juxtaposition will say what needs to be said, and it was also fun to write from the woman’s point of view without deconstructing her thought processes.”

Ollestad said that the producers at Audible accepted it “without saying a thing” and hired two actors to play the husband and wife. The Audible Original story was released in September of 2021 to immediate success. Ollestad said that the finished version was pitched to two major stars (whom he could not name) as a movie, and said they were on the verge of committing, but at the last second, the woman decided she couldn’t do it.

“It’s a very intimate story,” Ollestad said, seemingly understanding her perspective. “It’s more than the sexuality, it’s just very intimate.”

The story takes us to the depths of both of these characters, far beneath their conventional exteriors, showing us how they understand each other and how they don’t, and how they are both in turn being manipulated by a powerfully amoral film producer, seemingly intent on pushing them into a nefarious game. Loosely inspired by the Jean-Luc Godard film “Contempt,” it’s the most enthralling Audible production this reporter has ever heard, and by a good margin. Ollestad compares it to a short story, by a Paul Bowles or an equally sophisticated storyteller, and seems pleased but unsurprised to hear how well it plays.

He says he has a meeting that afternoon with a prominent agent from UTA, a big firm. The agent apparently wants to talk about an intellectual property sale of Ollestad’s work. A quick handshake and the soft-spoken and unpretentious adventurer and writer is off, the shaggy Bullit — a deer-chaser, “a dog with a wild hair,” he says — at his side.

Having learned how to navigate drama writing screenplays, Ollestad was intrigued by the idea of an original audio production, and approached it as a drama to be heard, not

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OQ | ARTists & GALLERIES

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 a unique selection of contemporary fine arts, jewelry and crafts.

238 East Ojai Ave

805-646-5682

Daily 10 am – 6 pm

OjaiValleyArtists.com

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

CANVAS AND PAPER

paintings & drawings

20th century & earlier

Thursday – Sunday noon – 5 p.m.

311 North Montgomery Street canvasandpaper.org

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

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

KAREN

K. LEWIS

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

CINDY PITOU

BURTON

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

798-1026 cell OjaiStudioArtists.org

LISA SKYHEART MARSHALL

Colorful watercolor+Ink botanical paintings with birds and insects. Visit her studio October 8,9,10. For info see: OjaiStudioArtists.org or SkyheartArt.com

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

MARC WHITMAN

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

TOM HARDCASTLE

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

PERSIMMON HILL LUXURY

This 5br/4.5ba home is situated on 3½ acres and surrounded by spectacular mountain views. An over 4,000 square foot main home boasts sprawling great rooms, soaring ceilings, a formal dining room, a wine closet and a massive stone fireplace. The grounds include a spacious guest house and a gorgeous rock pool/spa. This very private property affords the perfect mix of country living while also being mere minutes from all the amenities of downtown Ojai.

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Offered at $3,750,000

Over 25 years of experience matching people and property in the Ojai Valley

STORY BY ILONA SAARI

SHARING

a whole pie with family or friends is a perfect, inexpensive dinner out (or “take-in”), but grabbing a slice is an “on-the-run” gourmet experience in Manhattan. You want to shop during your lunch break but you’re starving? Grab a slice. You only have a few minutes to eat before curtain-up at

the theater, but you need to stop your growling stomach from adding to the sound effects during the play? Grab a slice. It’s late and you’re finally leaving work, you’re hungry, but you don’t want to cook? Grab a slice to go … maybe two … or three you can heat in the oven when you get home. Meatball, pepperoni, mushroom slices and more, at your lip-tips for a few bucks. Culinary satisfaction worth a million.

This joyous food experience (can you tell I love pizza) has arrived in Ojai.

Slices of New York -style pies to take out or to stay-in are ready for you in Tere Karabatos and wife, Kristen McGuiness’s AIR Pizza “parlor.”

The restaurant’s hand-tossed pies include all the classic New York-styles: cheese with house-made sauce, mozzarella and Grana Padano cheeses and toppings such as sausage, pepperoni, or wild mushrooms or other veggies if you have a craving, plus some inventions of its own such as the “punk rock” pizza, dubbed Meat Puppet, a shout-out to the rock group of the same name, topped with a variety of meats and grilled chicken, and the Mira Monte pie with wild mushrooms, yellow peppers, Kalamata olives, ricotta, garlic, basil and Grana Pandano cheese. Kvell over the sourdough thin crust (or gluten-free crust, also available). How this gem of a joint ended up in the magical valley of Ojai is a tale of recovery and discovery.

A life-long athlete, Tere is a southern California boy, mostly from Arcadia.His father, a restaurateur, owned a slew of coffee shops,truck stops, diners and the like (not at the same time). His dad was also a

LEFT: TERE KARABATOS AND WIFE KRISTEN MCGUINNESS

BELOW: TERE WEIGHS OUT DOUGH

chain-smoking alcoholic who spent most of his days and nights at whatever restaurant he owned at the time. To be closer to his father, Tere began to work in whatever restaurant dad owned, chopping food, busing tables, cleaning the kitchen. Whatever manual labor a kid could do, he did.

Though born in America, Tere’s first language was Greek, because of his Greek heritage .

His mother, who suffered from bi-polar disorder and often unable to be a guiding parent for Tere and his brother, taught English to herself and to Tere. She also encouraged him to expend his hyper, high-strung energy playing sports, beginning with Little League. Baseball became a passion, and like many talented young boys before him, Tere dreamed of playing infield in the majors, but

soon realized that, as good as he was, he wasn’t talented enough to make The Show. But he never lost his love of playing sports and turned to soccer, skateboarding and surfing. It was sports, especially surfing, that taught him a steely determination as he practiced and practiced ‘til he mastered it.

Unfortunately, his childhood freedom from lack of parental supervision led him to start drinking at age 12. His “gateway drink”

to many years of alcohol abuse was his father’s stash of Budweiser. At age 15, cannabis became Tere’s “gateway drug” to battling years of drug addiction. He dropped out of high school and paid for his booze and drugs by working various jobs. He dabbled in construction, found gigs in restaurants and sold sports equipment. When he was able, he’d skateboard or catch a wave.

One evening while drinking and smoking with his father, Tere

TERE KARABATOS AND KRISTEN MCGUINNESS WITH THEIR CHILDREN

BELOW: AIR PIZZA FAVORITE, THE MIRA MONTE PIE

had a sad moment of self-realization … he was becoming his father, and this was not the man he wanted to be. He needed help. His brother brought Tere to Alcoholics Anonymous and “Hollywood Late Night” AA gatherings which he describes as a “Rocky Horror Picture Show” experience … one in which he felt at home. He related to those in attendance, from the famous to the infamous, and he understood how AA’s 12-Step program could help him. It was in AA that he met Kristen.

Connecticut born and Texas raised, Kristen was parented and guided by her mother who worked for a corporate lawyer. Her father, a major drug smuggler who believed marijuana should be legal and accessible to everyone, was in- and out- of jail most of her life. Kristen left Texas when she entered Hamilton College in New York, then worked for years in the city in the book publishing business at St. Martin’s Press, Simon & Schuster and Harper Collins. Traumatized by 9/11, Kristen left New York and moved to Los Angeles, only to return to NYC in 2006 to work with Judith Regan at Regan Books. When Regan Books relocated to LA, Kristen went, too. During her years in LA, she also worked in the feature film business and as an assistant to a top-Hollywood agent. While Kristen’s career appeared fulfilling and glamorous, she developed a serious drinking problem over the years.

Settled in Los Angeles, she became a fundraiser for a Los Angeles-based non-profit serving low-income families. She went to AA, picked up a pen (keyboard) and began writing. Her first screenplay, “The Betty” was optioned and her first book (non-fiction), “51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life” was released. Living a single life in Los Angeles, entering her 30s and newly sober, she began her social experiment … 51 dates in 50 weeks and discovered that finding love was a harder struggle than finding sobriety. She wrote the aforementioned book about it, “51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life.” Today Kristen is in the process of developing her own publishing imprint

for fiction and non-fiction books, and is working on her first novel, “Live Through This,” which is scheduled to be published by Rise Books in August.

When Tere and Kristen first met they were involved in other relationships and initially became good friends. When those separate relationships ended, they spent more time together, fell in love and later married. They lived in Paris for a year, “which was actually the first time we talked about opening a pizza shop. AIR Pizza Paris? Who knows?” she says. They’ve now been together a dozen years, married for 10 and have two children — a seven-year old daughter and a four-year old son.

Now sober, Tere was mentored in Los Angeles by Salman Agah, the founder of Pizzanista pizzerias that specialize in New York-style thin-crust pizzas. While Tere was perfecting his pizza-making craft, Kristen had an unexplained revelation while watching the Taylor Sheridan movie “Wind River” in which one of the characters, played by now-Ojai resident Jon Bernthal, described the best Christmas of his life in the town of Ojai. She told Tere they had to leave Los Angeles and move to Ojai to raise their family. Tammy and Stefano Bernardi, owners of Ojai’s popular Osteria Monte Grappa restaurant, took them under their wings and helped them bring AIR Pizza to fruition. Tere, a UCLA-trained alcohol and drug counselor who ran a Sober Living program in LA, wanted to continue helping others struggling with addictions and named the new restaurant AIR Pizza — Athletes In Recovery — in honor of Tere’s athletic background and his respect for athletes. He has opened the restaurant’s doors to all in need for meetings on Monday mornings where they follow a basic 12-step program which includes finding a new freedom and happiness, discarding self-pity and exploring ways to help others through past experiences.

Pizza in Ojai — Tere and Kristen have got you covered, and if need be, recovered.

“...The feel is fun, energetic & evokes the perfect Ojai picnic...”

469 E. Ojai Ave. www.OjaiRotie.com

805–798–9227

GOOD WINE IS WINE THAT YOU LIKE

Grown in Birmingham, aged in Ojai, winemaker Nigel Chisholm has always treated the community like family. First, with downtown’s iconic restaurants The Village Jester and The Vine, and now with Feros Ferio Winery; wines so fine they bear the ancient Chisholm motto…

“I am fierce with the fierce.”

OPEN FRI-MON 11:30 AM -6:00 PM

Check Website for Winter Hours Tue-Thu

LIVE MUSIC SAT + SUN 4PM-6PM

Tasting Room, 310 East Ojai Avenue

Phone: 805 669 8707, www.ferosferiowine.com

Photo by Andraz Lazic

1449 North Montgomery Street

This beautiful single-story craftsman home is located in a highly desirable neighborhood, just a short distance from the bustling downtown area. The home features four bedrooms, three bathrooms and an office, providing plenty of space for a growing family or for hosting guests. The primary bedroom features an en-suite bathroom and a walk-in closet, while the three additional bedrooms share a conveniently located hall bathroom with a powder room off the living area and an outdoor shower located outside the primary bathroom. The gourmet kitchen is fabulous for entertaining and has a service window out to the exterior. But the real showstopper of this home is the outdoor living space. The covered outdoor patio is an extension of the living area, providing a peaceful retreat for enjoying the beautiful Ojai weather. There is a fantastic outside bar with a grill and a TV and a stunning rock fireplace. There is also a sparkling pool and plenty of room for lounging and dining - it’s the perfect place to enjoy warm summer months. The beautiful gardens that surround the home provide a serene and private oasis. The home’s location is unbeatable - it is close to town, yet feels like it is a world away. The property is located in a quiet neighborhood, making it an ideal place for those who desire peace and quiet while gazing at the views of the mountains.

Price Upon Request

OJAI VALLEY

5 gated, private acres close to downtown with wrap-around porch, 5 bedrooms, media room, wine cellar with tasting room, library, gym/ massage room, 4 fireplaces, pool and spa, sauna, family orchard, olive tree orchard with approximately 30 trees, Bocce court, putting green, volleyball court, chessboard, gazebos, pasture, private well, 150-year copper roof, copper gutters, RV parking with hookups, six-car garage and workshop, and more.

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We’re lifelong residents.

Enjoy resort-style living at this luxurious, private, 10-acre estate in Upper Ojai boasting gated entries, 7-bedroom main house with 2 guest wings and 3 fireplaces, pool house, swimming pool with beach entrance and wading pool, spa, gym, artist’s loft, lighted tennis court, horse facilities, outdoor kitchen with pizza oven, patio fireplace, family orchard, 3-car garage + 2-car garage, and spectacular mountain views. RocaVistaRanchOjai.com

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STORY BY MARK LEWIS

Way back in that long-lost world we call the 1950s, an Ojai high-school drama teacher named Franklin Lacey co-wrote “The Music Man,” an enormously popular Broadway musical comedy about the redemptive power of love. Impressed, the British novelist Aldous Huxley recruited Lacey to reinvent Huxley’s dystopian novel “Brave New World” as a musical.

Unsurprisingly, this effort failed. What’s surprising is that Huxley and Lacey attempted it in the first place. What led them to launch such a quixotic project? The answer is woven into the history of Ojai’s Happy Valley, an equally quixotic project that nevertheless succeeded — with considerable help from Huxley and Lacey.

into its run, the recent revival of “The Music Man” remained the hottest ticket on Broadway. It filled the cavernous Winter Garden Theatre night after night with people paying hundreds of dollars per ticket to see handsome Hugh Jackman as Professor Harold Hill singing “Seventy-Six Trombones,” and winsome Sutton Foster as Marian the Librarian singing “Till There Was You.” Hit revivals of beloved musicals often run for years with multiple cast changes, but when Jackman and Foster departed the show, the producers opted to quit while they were ahead, and closed the show on January 15.

Their decision was met with regret in Ojai’s Happy Valley, where “The Music Man” looms large. The show’s book was co-authored by Franklin Lacey, a former Happy Valley School drama teacher and head of school, and a longtime board member at the Happy Valley Foundation. Lacey’s widow bequeathed his share of the show’s rights to the foundation, which oversees the school (now called the Besant Hill School of Happy Valley), the Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts and the Happy Valley Cultural Center.

Even with the Broadway revival ending its run, the Laceys’ bequest remains a gift that keeps on giving. “The Music Man” is

so frequently performed by high schools and community theaters that it contributes significant financial support for Happy Valley year after year.

“The Music Man” was not Lacey’s only claim to fame. At the age of 9, he toured the country as a Theosophist lecture-hall prodigy. As an adult he toured the country again with a successful oneman comedy show. He also hosted history’s first TV talk show, and he briefly took over as impresario of the Ojai Music Festival.

Huxley’s claims to fame are many, as a novelist, an essayist, and as a famous public intellectual who laid much of the groundwork for the human potential movement. His novel “Brave New World” remains in print and widely read, and its predictions about a dystopian future seem ever more prescient.

Huxley and Lacey crossed paths in Ojai, where the Theosophist leader Annie Besant had tried to plant a utopia in the wilderness. She called it Happy Valley. After she died, it lay dormant for decades. Then it began to come to life — not quite as Besant had envisioned it, but close enough to claim the mantle of her legacy. Both Huxley and Lacey played key roles in its regeneration.

(AND BACK AGAIN)

FRANKLIN LACEY

What does any of this have to do with “Brave New World” or “The Music Man”? Read on.

FRANKLIN KNIGHT LACEY

was born in Vancouver, B.C. on Sept. 26, 1917. His father, John Mason Lacey, was a mining engineer who specialized in prospecting for oil. John and his wife, the former Maude Knight, had eight children, of whom Franklin was sixth in line.

John and Maude were avid members of the Theosophical Society, which sought to synthesize the religions of East and West. Franklin grew up in a household that venerated the group’s leader, Annie Besant, and her protégé Jiddu Krishnamurti, whom she was grooming for the role of Theosophist messiah. To prepare the way for his coming, she had created the Order of the Star in the East and put Krishnamurti at the head of it. By late 1925, the O.S.E had more than 40,000 members worldwide, and John Lacey was one of them.

At the time, ambitious Theosophists were jockeying for position in expectation that Krishnamurti would soon begin his messianic mission. Southern California, teeming with Theosophist lodges, was a hotbed of O.S.E. activity. Krishnamurti himself had a home in Ojai, where his neighbors included the Krotona Institute of Theosophy. Southern California also teemed with oil fields — and John Lacey, after all, was an oilman. The stars seemed aligned for a change of scene. In late December 1925, John moved his large family from Vancouver to L.A., where he immediately became a prominent lecturer for the Order of the Star in the East, doing his bit to lay the groundwork for the coming of the World Teacher.

John and his family, including young Franklin, likely were among the hundreds of Theosophists who turned out to meet Besant’s train when she and Krishnamurti arrived in L.A. in September 1926. She passed most of the next seven months as Krishnamurti’s houseguest in Ojai, where she had an epiphany. She decided to plant a Theosophist colony here in this beautiful, isolated valley, and make it the cradle of a future golden race.

“We desire to form on this land a Centre which shall gradually grow into a miniature model of the New Civilization,” she announced in The Theosophist in January 1927.

To get the ball rolling, Besant bought 465 acres in Upper Ojai, dubbed the property Happy Valley, and created the Happy Valley

Foundation to oversee its development.

“The Foundation will include a School — later I hope a college — which will endeavor to train boys and girls to be good citizens in the New Civilization,” she wrote.

Years later, Franklin told an interviewer that his parents often brought their kids to Ojai in the ‘20s to hear Krishnamurti speak. Franklin must have been referring to the Star Camps that took place in 1928 and 1929, when thousands of Theosophists from around the world came here to sit at the World Teacher’s feet.

(These camps featured the actress Beatrice Wood performing in “The Light of Asia,” a play about the life of Buddha. This might have been young Franklin’s first significant exposure to the theater, to which he would devote his professional career.)

At some point during this period, Franklin crossed paths with Ray W. Harden, a Theosophist from San Jose who was charged with publicizing the World Teacher project in the U.S. Harden also oversaw the Theosophical Society’s campaign to recruit teenagers and younger children to the International Order of the Round Table, which sought to invest Theosophy with the aura of King Arthur and his knights. (Harden’s title was Chief Knight for America.)

Harden saw something in 9-year-old Franklin, and he persuaded the Laceys to let him take the boy under his wing. Franklin was named the Chief Knight’s squire and joined him on the national lecture circuit. Their topics, as emphasized by the publicity materials, included “the magic of the Ojai Happy Valley.” Harden’s squire was billed as “Franklin Lacey, boy clairvoyant, who played with fairies all his life.”

Fairies were a big deal to Theosophists, who tried to photograph them using special cameras. Adult lecturers who discoursed on this subject tended to be sneered at in the mainstream press. But newspaper writers were more indulgent with Franklin, who was only a boy, albeit an unusually charming and articulate one. His fairy lectures made local headlines all across the country.

“Peter Pan would have found Franklin Lacey refreshing,” gushed The Des Moines Tribune. “Franklin not only believes in fairies, he sees ‘em!”

He talked with ‘em, too.

“Almost every human being has a guardian fairy who looks after him and talks to him,” Franklin assured his audiences. “My particular fairy I call ‘the Doctor.’ He has been with me, off and on,

since I was 2 years old. Counsels me and looks after me.”

His lecture tour with Harden was such a success that Franklin was invited to meet with the famous inventor Thomas Edison, a Theosophy enthusiast who shared with Franklin his own experiences with the occult. Franklin even did a command performance at the White House, during which his impersonation of the vaudeville star Will Rogers elicited a chuckle from the usually taciturn president, Calvin Coolidge.

Ray Harden provided Franklin with some unusual experiences. A friend of Franklin’s would recall that the boy “grew up under the tutelage of a guardian who one day took him to the top of the Woolworth Building in New York City, then the tallest structure in the world, and hung him from his ankles from the top!” Most youngsters would have been utterly terrified to be dangled from the pinnacle of a building that was nearly 800 feet tall. But Franklin, according to his friend, “could only remember the exhilaration he experienced at the time.”

The highlight of Franklin’s career as a Theosophist prodigy came in August 1929, when he and Harden arrived in Chicago to attend the Theosophical Society’s World Congress. Besant had traveled all the way from her home base in India to preside over the gathering. In her speech welcoming the delegates, she focused on her Ojai project.

“Two years ago, I bought a large tract in California,” she said. “I call it Happy Valley because that is a beautiful name, and life ought to be beautiful and happy, and would be if people lived as they ought to live. I want to use it as a colony to attract families with children of the new type. By later intermarriage between them, the growth of the superior race will be hastened.”

Franklin’s ears must have been burning as he listened. He was, after all, a California kid, and Besant had singled out California kids as heralds of the coming golden race.

Several days later, in the Theosophical Society’s American headquarters in nearby Wheaton, Ill., Besant was introduced to 12-year-old Franklin, “in whom she had recognized a very special spark,” Radha Rajagopal Sloss wrote in “The Story of Happy Valley.”

It is interesting to note that Besant only a month earlier had lost her messiah-in-training when Krishnamurti publicly rejected the role and dissolved the Order of the Star. Krishnamurti had only been 14 when Besant first proclaimed him the future World Teacher; perhaps now she was auditioning possible replacements from among the supposedly golden youth of California. In any event, nothing came of her brief encounter with Franklin, who never saw her again.

ALDOUS HUXLEY

never encountered Besant even once. But he was born (in 1894) into a family that took a dim view of Theosophy.

Aldous’s paternal grandfather, Thomas H. Huxley, was a scientist famous for his aggressive defense of Charles Darwin’s then-controversial theory of evolution. Among Grandpa Huxley’s sparring partners was Helena Blavatsky, co-founder of the Theosophical Society, who insisted that humans evolve not just physically but also spiritually, guided by metaphysical masters who dwell in hidden valleys in Tibet.

In her book “The Secret Doctrine,” Blavatsky sneeringly referred to Grandpa Huxley as “the great man of Science,” who supported “with all the weight of his scientific authority the most ‘absurd’ of all theories – the descent of man from an ape!”

Some years after Blavatsky’s death, her protégé Besant took over the Theosophical Society. Aldous Huxley, raised in his grandfather’s rationalist tradition, regarded Blavatsky as an outright

DES MOINES TRIBUNE, 1927

fraud, and he poked fun at Besant for the “errors in science and history, which thickly encrust her books.” He also rejected Theosophy’s particular embrace of the Eastern religions Buddhism and Hinduism.

Yet Huxley did not reject Theosophy entirely. “Except for the bunkum about astral bodies, spiritual hierarchies, reincarnations and so forth,” he wrote, “Theosophy seems to be a good enough religion — its main principles being that all religions contain some truth and that we ought to be tolerant.”

If Huxley noticed all the newspaper headlines in 1929 about Besant’s plans to create a utopian Theosophist colony in Ojai, he likely rolled his eyes at her idea of educating a new race to seek truth based on intuition rather than reason. Even so, when he published his dystopian masterpiece “Brave New World” in 1932, Besant’s Ojai project was not his target. Instead, his satire took aim at the utopian fantasies of the novelist H.G. Wells, who put his faith in reason and scientific progress.

In “Brave New World,” set 600 years in the future, science and psychiatry have fine-tuned a totalitarian World State where babies are created in test tubes, children are brainwashed in the crib to be content with their lot, adults are kept sedated with a happiness drug called Soma, and people willingly give up the possibility of individual freedom in exchange for stability and security. A mindless, soulless, but very comfortable existence, with every pleasure provided. Nine decades after it first appeared, “Brave New World” remains a staple of school curriculums, frequently invoked as an all-too-accurate prophecy of dire times ahead. But within just a

few years, Huxley had come to regret the darkness of his vision.

By the mid-1930s he had become a committed pacificist, who very much wanted to believe that the bleak outcomes prophesied in “Brave New World” could somehow be avoided. He also was beginning to embrace the “Light of the East” wisdom he once had derided. His pacifism would lead him from Europe to America, and the light of the East would lead him to Ojai.

AS A TEENAGER

in the early to mid ‘30s, Franklin Lacey remained an active Theosophist. At 16, Ray Harden’s precocious squire served as the editor of Modern Knighthood, the official organ of the Order of the Round Table. At the Order’s conventions he rubbed elbows with such influential Theosophists as Robert Logan and Rukmini Devi Arundale, with whom he would remain close.

How did a mere youth acquire so much responsibility? Well, Franklin had always been unusually mature for his age, and a self-confident extrovert who was preternaturally articulate. Plus, the lanky teen already was taller than many of his older co-workers. He eventually attained the height of 6 feet 4 inches, but his weight topped out at 145 pounds. Being so tall and so thin gave him the elongated aspect of a stork, so much so that a friend once said he resembled a statue by Giacometti.

The ‘30s were hard times for the Theosophical Society and its offshoots. Membership had plummeted in the wake of Krishnamurti’s defection, and it spiraled further downward with the advent of the Great Depression, followed by Besant’s death in 1933. Fortunately, Franklin by that point had discovered an alternative career path.

While attending junior high school in Santa Cruz, Calif., he fell in with the drama crowd, and dazzled his teachers with his skills as an actor and playwright. Encouraged by this early success, 14-year-old Franklin wrote himself a note stating an ambitious but distant goal: He must write a successful play by the time he was 38. He sealed the note in an envelope with instructions to himself not to open it until he was 21. At that point, he would have 17 years to write that play and get it produced. Plenty of time. Shakespeare had churned out two or three plays a year, hadn’t he? Piece of cake.

ALDOUS HUXLEY

But when Franklin finally did turn 21, on Sept. 26, 1938, he evidently had forgotten all about the envelope, because he left it unopened. Already a savvy show-business veteran, he seemed well on his way to the big time. He had a brand-new clipping from the Los Angeles Times to prove it.

“An unusual attraction booked into the Wilshire Ebell Theater Oct. 13, 14 and 15 is the Franklin Lacey monologue show,” The Times reported on Sept. 24.

Billing himself as “America’s Master of Monologue,” Lacey impersonated stock characters from rural America, both men and women. He gently lampooned their foibles, taking care not to be too cutting with his satire. “These people are the backbone of true Americanism,” he told a reporter. He wrote his own scripts and songs (both music and lyrics) and designed his own costumes for these one-man shows. He already had toured the country performing his act as the luncheon entertainment for women’s clubs. These shows at the Wilshire Ebell marked his arrival at the next level.

“He certainly has what it takes,” Program magazine noted. “In his male skits he is excellent, in his female skits he is a riot … Good fun, this young feller.”

Performing his one-man show for women’s clubs would remain Lacey’s bread-and-butter move for the next decade, even as he branched out into theater, radio and a new, experimental broadcast medium called television.

TV in the U.S. debuted in April 1939 at the opening of the New York World’s Fair, and Lacey’s own debut came just a few months later. NBC broadcast its programming from Radio City in midtown Manhattan via an antenna on the top of the Empire State Building. Hardly anyone owned a television set at this point, but fairgoers flocked to the RCA Pavilion at the fairgrounds to view NBC’s offerings on the special monitors provided. Those who were there on Sept. 26, 1939 — Franklin’s 22nd birthday — watched him perform as part of the afternoon programming. The New York Times TV listings billed him as “Franklin Lacey, impersonator.”

THREE THOUSAND MILES

away, in a rented house in Pacific Palisades, Aldous Huxley was

confronting a personal crisis amid a larger one. World War II had just begun on September 1 when Hitler invaded Poland, prompting Britain and France to declare war on Germany. Meanwhile, Aldous had just accepted a well-paying job from M-G-M to adapt Jane Austen’s novel “Pride and Prejudice” for the silver screen.

This was exactly the reason that Aldous and his wife, Maria, had settled in Los Angeles early in 1938. Their idea was that Aldous might make some easy money as a Hollywood screenwriter when he wasn’t working on a novel. But now, with a war on, the M-G-M job offer pricked his conscience.

“I simply can’t accept all that money to work in a … studio while my family and friends are starving and being bombed in England,” he said.

Among the close friends he turned to for advice was Krishnamurti, the former Theosophist messiah turned freelance philosopher. After moving to L.A., the Huxleys had invited themselves to Ojai to meet the resident sage, and they had developed an instant rapport with him and his close associate Rosalind Rajagopal. Krishnamurti evidently counseled Huxley to take the job, for on September 10, 1939, Maria Huxley wrote to Rosalind in Ojai:

“… Aldous has taken up his [M-G-M] job and I am quite sure it was the right thing to do, for the moment anyway. … Tell Krishnaji. He was a great help. Tell him we thank him. He probably knows anyway.”

Krishnamurti was still based in Ojai but had cut his ties to Theosophy. Both he and Huxley were committed pacifists, an awkward thing to be in 1939 as the world confronted the Nazi menace. Arya Vihara, Krishnamurti’s home on McAndrew Road, was a refuge for people who felt as Huxley did.

Feeling the need for some sort of spiritual framework for his newfound pacificism, Huxley was exploring traditional Hinduism at the Vedanta Center in L.A. But, as a dyed-in-the-wool agnostic, he was more strongly drawn to Krishnamurti’s non-sectarian philosophy.

Huxley was fascinated by the commune of like-minded folk that coalesced around Krishnamurti at Arya Vihara. Huxley felt at home among them. Some were old friends from his youth, such as the English actress-playwright Iris Tree. Others were new friends, like the prominent Theosophists Robert Logan and Louis Zalk. Together these people comprised a community of highly cultured, intellectually inclined pacifists, living in peaceful

seclusion among the orange groves. Aldous and Maria frequently joined them at Arya Vihara.

FRANKLIN LACEY

was not a pacifist – or, if he was, he was carried away by the patriotic wave touched off by Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. When America entered the war in December 1941, he tried to enlist various branches of the military, but they all classified him 4-F due to his se- vere hay fever. Stymied, he resumed his the- ater career in L.A. as a member of Elsa Lanchester’s popular sketch-comedy troupe at the Turnabout Theatre. (Lanchester, a native of England, is best remembered for playing the title role in “The Bride of Frankenstein.”) The Turnabout gig evidently was not a fulltime job, for at the same time Lacey resumed his TV career as a performer for Paramount Television in Hollywood.

At Paramount in 1942, Lacey made history by hosting “The Franklin Lacey Show,” the first-ever talk show, broadcast live and unscripted from the Paramount Pictures lot via the experimental station W6XYZ (the future KTLA).

“During the war, the best of W6XYZ’s programming consisted of live, unrehearsed interviews conducted by Franklin Lacey, who became television’s first talk-show host, on his own show,” Michael Ritchie wrote in his book “Please Stand By: A Prehistory of Television.”

TV’s first programmers adopted most of their formats from radio, and radio didn’t have shows featuring a host interviewing celebrity guests. There was no precedent for that until Franklin Lacey invented the format. “The Tonight Show” is often credited with being TV’s first talk show, but Lacey preceded “Tonight” by a decade.

over to their house for dinner afterwards. And Franklin and his guests frequently accepted. Lacey’s talk show was a true block party, lasting several years.”

Lacey was a natural for the host role. People who knew him invariably used words like “amiable,” “affable,” “likeable, “outgoing” and “charming” to describe him. Some of his TV guests, including the English comic actress Beatrice Lillie, remained his friends for life.

Another person he charmed during his Paramount Television days was Gladys Turner, an Australia native who worked at Paramount TV as a secretary. Her friends called her Glady. She and Franklin were married on March 23, 1943, and were still together when he died 45 years later.

Glady presumably accompanied Franklin on his extended visits to Ojai during the war. We know about these visits because on at least two occasions he performed at the Ojai Art Center.

“Mr. Lacey came to Ojai to visit friends and was persuaded to give a performance while he was here,” The Ojai newspaper reported in August 1943. “… Mr. Lacey has worked with and written material for numerous stage and screen luminaries.”

Did Lacey encounter Aldous Huxley in Ojai during the war years? Probably. We don’t know where Lacey stayed during his visits here, but we do know that he was friendly with Krishnamurti and Rosalind Rajagopal, both of whom were also close to Huxley. And Robert Logan, whom Franklin knew from his Order of the Round Table work, was (like Huxley) a frequent wartime guest at Arya Vihara.

Franklin also was friends in Hollywood with the Lansbury show-business family, emigrees from Britain whose eldest daughter, Angela, was an up-and-coming M-G-M ingenue. She was friendly with the actor Hurd Hatfield, and she visited Ojai at least once to party with his friends here. These friends comprised Iris Tree’s crowd, the former Chekhov Players, including Woody and Erika Chambliss and Ford Rainey, a circle that overlapped with Krishnamurti’s crowd. (They all lived near one another in the East End.) Angela Lansbury in a memoir noted that she met Aldous Huxley while attending one of Krishnamurti’s public talks.

“The uniqueness of Lacey’s show was that even though there was a tiny number of set owners watching, week after week Franklin could convince stars like Beatrice Lillie, of Broadway and London musical fame, to join him for an hour of civilized conversation,” Ritchie wrote. “No prizes. No audience participation. Just talk. And the show was so popular that the 40 home viewers would call W6XYZ and invite Franklin and his guests

As for the Huxleys, they too had many Hollywood friends, especially among the British-emigree contingent — people like Charlie Chaplin, and Charles Laughton and Laughton’s wife, Elsa Lanchester, who regularly motored up to Ojai to hear the sage speak. Lanchester, of course, was Lacey’s colleague from the Turnabout Theatre.

In sum, Lacey and Huxley traveled in overlapping social circles which maintained interconnected outposts in Ojai during the war years. These were small worlds indeed, so it’s likely that the two men crossed paths here. Did they become good friends during this period? Impossible to say. But if they did not forge a bond during the war years, they would forge one soon enough, with Ojai as their common ground.

WHEN THE WAR

ended in 1945 with mushroom clouds rising over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the science-worshipping dystopia Huxley had imagined in “Brave New World” seemed more prescient than ever. His Hollywood friends Paulette Goddard and Burgess Meredith offered to make a film of the novel, with Meredith playing the lead role and Goddard supplying the financing. She was feeling flush, have recently extracted a huge divorce settlement from Charlie Chaplin.

Back in 1932, Huxley’s then literary agent had sold the novel’s film rights to RKO Pictures for the paltry sum of 750 British pounds. RKO had never filmed it and had no plans to do so, but the studio had no objection to someone else filming it – so long as RKO received a piece of the action. A tentative deal was struck to allow the Goddard-Meredith project to proceed.

But there was a hitch. That same literary agent had sold the novel’s dramatic rights to the playwright Louis Walinsky. His play had premiered in Paris in 1938, and resurfaced there in 1939 for another brief run before closing a week before the war broke out. It had not been produced since. But Walinsky still held the dramatic rights, and he refused to sign a waiver. The producers refused to proceed without that waiver in hand. So that was that.

Huxley still owned the book publishing rights, and his publishers agreed to put out a new edition of “Brave New World,” which went on sale in bookstores on Jan. 1, 1946. But Huxley, in his preface to this edition, confessed to some second thoughts.

The novel ends on a bleak note when the character called John, a.k.a. the Savage, confronts an unsolvable dilemma. Having been raised on an indigenous reservation in New Mexico, he cannot adjust to life inside the supposed scientific utopia; nor can he see returning to the so-called “primitive,” pre-scientific world of the reservation. So, he hangs himself.

“The Savage is offered only two alternatives, an insane life in Utopia, or the life of a primitive in an Indian village, a life more

human in some respects, but in others hardly less queer and abnormal,” Huxley wrote in his new preface. “If I were now to rewrite the book, I would offer the Savage a third alternative. Between the Utopian and the primitive horns of his dilemma would lie the possibility of sanity — a possibility already actualized, to some extent, in a community of exiles and refugees from the Brave New World, living within the borders of the Reservation.”

Huxley contented himself with writing the revisionist preface; he left the book’s original text untouched. But he had planted the seed within himself of a future novel that would bookend the pessimism of “Brave New World” with the possibility of hope. This utopian novel – eventually titled “Island” – would germinate for many years before it finally found its way into print. In the meantime, Huxley would help nudge another person’s utopian project closer to fruition.

That person was none other than the late Annie Besant, about whom Huxley had made so many snide remarks in his younger days. Now he adopted her view that Ojai could become the site of a special community.

Almost 20 years had passed since Besant had laid out her vision for her Happy Valley property in Upper Ojai. Yet the property remained mostly undeveloped. In 1946, Rosalind Rajagopal decided it was time to create a Happy Valley School under the direction of Dr. Guido Ferrando, a retired philosophy professor from Vassar College now living in Ojai.

“Such a school is in keeping with the original intent of Dr. Besant,” the Happy Valley Foundation board declared. “… It was generally agreed that a school, embodying Dr. Besant’s ideas in education, and the people who would inevitably gather around it, would help forward the community and cultural ideals for which the Foundation was originally created.”

Huxley took a keen interest in this project. He and Krishnamurti both participated in the discussions about what approach the new school should take.

“Huxley particularly emphasized that there be no barriers between different disciplines but an integration of subjects as well as cultures into a world view,” Radha Sloss wrote in her booklet “The Story of Happy Valley.”

For various reasons, the new school was not situated in Happy Valley itself but in Meiners Oaks, on the old Starland property that had hosted Krishnamurti’s Star Camps back in the late ‘20s. The idea was to eventually build a brand-new campus in Happy Valley and move the school there. For now, they would hold classes in the old Starland cafeteria, with Arya Vihara in the

East End serving as a temporary dormitory.

The Happy Valley School opened in October 1946 with three teachers and 10 students, among whom were Radha Rajagopal and her future husband, Jimmy Sloss. The school also came equipped with a board of trustees to guide its development, and among those trustees was Aldous Huxley.

DOWN IN LOS ANGELES,

Franklin Lacey was considering taking on an ambitious new project of his own. He had finally found and opened that sealed envelope with the message he had written to himself when he was 14, the one urging him to become a successful playwright. Had he read it at 21, as intended, he might have thrown it away without giving it much thought. At 21, he had seemed well on his way to success as a live performer. At 28, however, things looked different. The note evidently prompted him to take stock of his career.

“The Franklin Lacey Show” was no longer on the air. Lacey the monologist was still in demand with women’s clubs, but this did not appear to be a path to stardom.

If performing was not going to take him to the top, what about a behind-the-scenes career? Lacey already had put in several years as a stage manager for the L.A. Civic Light Opera, and he had worked as an assistant for theater directors and producers. But he had not yet made the leap to directing or producing himself. His various show-business pursuits added up to a living, but Lacey wanted something more.

He was already an established writer of comedy skits and radio scripts. Writing a successful full-length play required a different skill set. But he still had time to acquire those skills. The unsealed note gave him until he turned 38 to write a play and have it produced. That left him 10 years to get it done. He set to work. The result was “Pagan in the Parlor,” a comedy which was booked for a two-week run at the Pasadena Playhouse early in 1951 — more than four years ahead of Lacey’s self-imposed deadline.

The play was about two spinster sisters leading a very proper existence in New England circa 1900, when their lives are disrupted by a South Seas native who comes to stay with them. The play was directed by the retired film director James Whale, whose Hollywood oeuvre (“Frankenstein,” “The Invisible Man,”

etc.) made him an odd choice to direct a zany farce like “Pagan.” Nevertheless, the opening-night audience loved it.

The L.A. critics were more lukewarm, suggesting that it still needed work. Franklin did a rewrite and, at Whale’s suggestion, set his sights on London rather than New York. The plan was to tune up the play by touring it in the English provinces, then take it to London’s West End, and eventually to Broadway.

At first, all went well. “Pagan” opened in Bath in September 1952 and was a smash. Alas, its star, Hermione Baddeley, was binging on alcohol to cope with a love affair gone wrong. As the tour went on, she began missing her cues, ad-libbing her lines and heckling the audience.

“They said a bottle of whiskey went down her every night,” Glady Lacey told Whale’s biographer James Curtis.

By the time the tour reached Brighton, “Pagan” had degenerated from a sure-fire hit to a disaster. Baddeley couldn’t be fired because she had a run-of-the-play contract, so the producers had to close the show. “Pagan in the Parlor” never made it to London. For Franklin Lacey, it was back to the drawing board.

At least he could still perform his comic monologues to help pay the rent while he tinkered with his playwriting projects. In June 1954, he brought his act to Ojai and presented it at the Happy Valley School, apparently at the request of his old friend Rosalind Rajagopal. After the performance, Rosalind invited him to join the school’s faculty as its drama and speech teacher.

“I’m no schoolteacher,” he protested. But he was a Theosophist who had grown up revering Annie Besant, and he knew that Happy Valley was one of Besant’s pet projects. Twenty-six years had elapsed since Besant had met 12-year-old Franklin in Wheaton and saw something special in him. Now he would join the team that was keeping her dream alive. He took the job, and in 1955 began commuting from Hollywood to Ojai.

Also on that team was Aldous Huxley, who still served on the Happy Valley school board. (This board was distinct from, and subordinate to, the Happy Valley Foundation Board. Eventually the school board would be eliminated.) Huxley was still very involved with the school he had co-founded almost a decade earlier. The title of his 1951 commencement address, “Aun Aprendo” (“I am still learning”), became the school’s motto.

Lacey at 38 already had fulfilled his own dream of writing a play and seeing it produced, even though “Pagan in the Parlor” had

not made it to Broadway. Like many another theater professional, Lacey apparently had reached a point in his career where producing and directing high-school plays seemed more rewarding than chasing the brass ring and never quite catching it. But his luck was about to change.

BEING THE

Happy Valley drama teacher was a parttime job, which allowed Lacey to remain active in the regional theater world, where he now enjoyed a certain reputation as a script doctor. In the summer of 1956, he was hired to punch up the book of “The California Story,” an outdoor historical pageant with a cast of 1,300 that was scheduled for a two-week run in San Diego’s Balboa Stadium. The music was by a composer named Meredith Willson,

who would also be in San Diego conducting the orchestra.

As it happened, Willson for several years had been struggling to complete a musical co medy based on his turn-of-the-century childhood in small-town Iowa. Called “The Music Man,” the show was about a traveling salesman named Professor Harold Hill who tries t o con the credulous citizens of River City into buying instruments and uniforms for a boys’ band. His plan is to take the money and run, but he is stymied by Marian Paroo, the local librarian, who sees through his crooked scheme. They fall in love, and by the end of the play the con-man Hill has gone straight, redeemed by Marian’s faith in him.

In musical comedy, usually one person writes the music, another person the lyrics, and a third person the book. In this case, Willson was writing all three. He was an old hand at songwriting, but he had never written a play before, and he was having trouble making the story line cohere.

Theater fans today who consider “The Music Man” too schmaltzy might be surprised to learn that the original book was much darker and more challenging. Willson had included a subplot featuring Marian’s younger brother, a profoundly disabled teenage boy who is confined to a wheelchair. The problem for Willson was that this subplot was difficult to write in the context of musical comedy, especially as the genre was defined in the 1950s. And, to the extent that Willson did succeed in dramatizing his serious-minded subplot, it tended to overwhelm the book’s love story.

Years had gone by, and many drafts written, and “The Music Man” remained unfinished. In his memoir “But He Doesn’t Know the Territory: The Story Behind Meredith Willson’s ‘The Music Man,’” Willson recalled that by 1956, he was so frustrated by his slow progress on the script that he and his wife were looking forward to forgetting all about the project for the two weeks they would be in San Diego doing “The California Story.”

“Well,” he wrote. “Down there the first person we met was a 6-foot-4 skinny extrovert of a homemade apple-pie smile on

stilts, like we’d known him all our lives, by the name of Franklin Lacey, who was adapting and otherwise trouble-shooting the book … Franklin was the brightest thing that had happened in our lives for a long time.”

Impressed by Lacey’s script-doctoring work on “The California Story,” Willson invited him to his vacation home in the San Jacinto Mountains and showed him the two-foot-high pile of rewrites he’d done on “The Music Man.”

“I can wade you through this jungle overnight,” Lacey assured Willson. “I can see how the scenes should follow as clearly as if I was seeing this show on the stage!’”

“Overnight” turned out to be a tad optimistic. But, with Lacey’s help, Willson soon whipped the story into shape. They made the con-man character less villainous, molding Hill into the sort of lovable rogue that audiences tend to root for. But Lacey’s biggest contribution was solving the subplot problem.

Inspiration struck one rainy morning in New York when he and Willson were having breakfast. Willson was talking about the first-act finale, “The Wells Fargo Wagon,” in which the townspeople sing excitedly about the goodies that might be arriving on the freight delivery wagon. Among the singers was a young boy with a lisp, a character so minor he did not even have a name. But his contribution to “Wells Fargo Wagon” was what really put the song over. Willson wondered aloud whether they should give this kid a name and make him part of the plot somehow. Lacey had an immediate reaction.

“Franklin was bug-eyed, grabbing the table with both hands,” Willson recalled in his memoir. “Then I knew what had hit him. It was spontaneous combustion. For the first time in his life, at least in my presence, Franklin whispered instead of hollered.”

What Lacey whispered was this: Let’s promote the lisping kid into the key role of Marian’s little brother, in place of the boy in the wheelchair. The kid is ashamed of his lisp – a problem much more easily resolved, in a musical comedy, than a profound disability. The subplot snapped into place, and the show was now ready for Broadway.

In mid-June 1957, “The Music Man” was announced for a December opening in the Majestic Theatre, with Robert Preston as Harold Hill, Barbara Cook as Marian, and Eddie Hodges as her lisping younger brother. This announcement made news in The Ojai: Local Drama Teacher Broadway Bound!

“Writing for a musical is quite different than playwriting,” Lacey

told the newspaper. “In a musical you keep adding and shaping, you’re continually open to new ideas. Changes are always being made, but with the story line always in mind to maintain the show’s integrity.”

Lacey praised Willson as a collaborator, especially his generosity: “He’s scrupulous about giving credit where credit is due.”

Script doctors usually don’t get official credit for their contributions. In this case, however, Lacey had lucked out again.

“At the 11th hour,” co-producer Stuart Ostrow would recall in his memoirs, “Meredith told me to add the following to his billing: Based on a Story by Meredith Willson and Franklin Lacey.”

On opening night, after the final curtain, everybody retreated to Sardi’s restaurant near Times Square to wait nervously for the reviews to come in. They need not have worried.

“I still remember the brotherly hugs I had with Meredith and Franklin as the ecstatic reviews were read aloud at the after-theater party at Sardi’s,” said Laurence Rosenthal, a young composer who wrote ballet music for some of the show’s dances. (Rosenthal at 96 is still hale and hearty; he sent his comments for this story via email from Switzerland, where he now lives. He will play a major role in our narrative later on.)

The show was an enormous hit, and Lacey’s name was on it. True, it was printed in much smaller type than Willson’s, but nonetheless it was there. And a few months later, when “The Music Man” won the Tony Award for “Best Musical,” co-author Lacey took home a trophy that was exactly the same size as Willson’s.

“The Music Man” changed Lacey’s life, literally overnight. Previously obscure, he was now the Tony-winning co-author of the biggest hit on Broadway. He became a boldface name in the show-business gossip columns. Producers were eager to stage his next hit, and he had a lot of ideas for new shows. He quit his drama teacher job at the Happy Valley School and went back to being an actual dramatist.

Soon he had at least three separate playwriting projects plus a movie treatment in progress, along with creating a Zeigfeld-style nightclub review for the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas.

He and Glady maintained their Ojai connections. After leaving the Happy Valley faculty, Franklin ascended to the Happy Valley Foundation board in 1959, the same year he accepted the position of artistic adviser for the Ojai Music Festival’s upcoming

1960 season.

(The Music Festival gig was the result of a boardroom coup against longtime artistic director Lawrence Morton, who was away in Europe on a Guggenheim Fellowship. Rebelling against Morton’s preference for difficult, challenging music, the board hired “Music Man” Lacey to program a more tuneful festival. He brought in the Broadway belters John Raitt and Anna Maria Alberghetti. Longtime Festivalgoers who prefer Morton’s approach still shudder at the memory of Lacey’s 1960 installment.)

All in all, Franklin Lacey was a very busy man in 1959. Nevertheless, he responded favorably when “a dear friend” asked him for help with yet another theatrical project. The friend was Aldous Huxley, and the project was adapting “Brave New World” as a musical.

in the future already was almost upon us. On the other hand, he wanted to offer humanity an escape route to an alternative future. He could accomplish that goal by writing his long-gestating utopian novel. But he wasn’t quite ready to tackle that project, so he put it off in favor of rewriting “Brave New World” – not as a novel, but as a movie.

There was, as usual, a hitch. RKO still held the film rights, and still had no interest in exercising them. The studio was willing to sell the rights back to Huxley for $50,000. He could not afford it.

But what about the dramatic rights? If Huxley couldn’t make a film of his novel, perhaps he could dramatize it for the stage. Fortunately, Louis Walinsky proved to be more cooperative than he had been in 1945. Huxley struck a deal with him (“half a loaf is better than no bread,” Huxley noted to a friend) and in mid1956 the novelist began adapting Walinsky’s “Brave New World” script into a musical comedy.

Why a musical? Because musicals are fantasies, and so is science fiction. With musicals, people come in the door prepared to suspend their disbelief and leave reality behind. If they will buy a world where people dance and sing, they will buy Huxley’s brave new world with all its strangeness. That was the theory, anyway.

Thus wrote Huxley in January 1958, even as Lacey was basking in his newfound “Music Man” success. Huxley had just wasted two years of his life trying to dramatize his 1955 novel “The Genius and the Goddess” and shepherd it to Broadway. The play had opened there on Dec. 10, 1957, a week before “The Music Man” was scheduled to premiere. But by the time Lacey’s play opened on Dec. 19, Huxley’s already had closed.

Throughout his long career, Huxley had clung to the notion that turning his novels into plays would yield box-office triumphs that would make him financially secure. He kept trying, and he kept failing. Soon he would try again, with “Brave New World.”

The roots of this particular project go back to 1955, a year of transition for Huxley. He lost Maria to cancer in February, and later struck up a new romance with Laura Archera, whom he would marry a year later. He also agreed to let writer-producer William Froug adapt “Brave New World” as a radio play. Froug’s hour-long version ran on “CBS Radio Workshop” in January 1956, with Huxley himself as narrator. (You can listen to it on YouTube.)

Notably, this version does not end with a suicide. The Huxley of 1956 was not the Huxley of 1932. On one hand, he now was convinced that the dystopian world he had foreseen 600 years

“Everyone tells me that science fiction can never succeed on the stage as a straight play, but that it would be accepted when the medium ceases to be realistic and makes use of music and lyrics,” Huxley told his son.

Another plus: To make room for all the songs, the book of a musical is half the length of a straight play. Huxley would have to compress the narrative considerably, “but the streamlining will be a dramatic improvement,” he noted.

Recall also that the biggest hit on Broadway in 1956 was “My Fair Lady,” a musical version of George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion.” If a literary lion like Shaw could lend his name to a musical-comedy marquee, why shouldn’t Huxley? And Huxley, unlike Shaw, was writing the “Brave New World” lyrics himself:

“Sex galore and no more marriages.

No one pushing baby carriages.

No one has to change a nappy.

Ain’t we lucky, ain’t we happy?

Everybody’s happy now.”

“WHY DOES ANYONE WRITE FOR THE THEATER? IT’S JUST ASKING FOR TROUBLE.”

NO MORE THINKING! NO MORE THINKING! Everybody’s happy now.”

Huxley was quite pleased with his work: “If all goes well and I can get somebody good to do the music – such as Leonard Bernstein – the results might be remarkable.”

And more to the point: “It might be very profitable.”

Alas, the right composer was not found. Bernstein turned him down, as did Huxley’s friend Igor Stravinsky. There was talk of offering it to Rodgers and Hammerstein, but nothing came of that, either. By the middle of 1957, Huxley had put the project aside to focus on “The Genius and the Goddess.” Six months later, after that play had opened and closed in the blink of an eye, he despaired of ever finding success as a playwright.

Let us pause here for moment to contemplate the unlikely fruit of Huxley’s project if he had succeeded: A peppy-yet-dystopian science-fiction musical with lyrics like the above, set to music by Igor Stravinsky. O brave new world indeed! But it was not to be, and Huxley moved on. By 1959 he was hard at work on his utopian novel, “Island,” the counterpoint to “Brave New World.”

He was also giving a series of lectures at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Huxley’s bad eyesight prevented him from doing much driving, so he relied on friends to shuttle him back and forth between L.A. and the Goleta campus. One of those friends was Franklin Lacey. At some point, in a car traveling along the Pacific Coast Highway, Huxley asked Lacey to have a go at “Brave New World.”

One can see what Huxley was thinking. Show-doctor Lacey famously had taken on Meredith Willson’s troubled script and helped transform it into a Broadway phenomenon. Two years after its opening, “The Music Man” was still a hot ticket. If anyone could make a hit musical of “Brave New World,” surely that person was Franklin Lacey.

We know from an L.A. Times society item that Franklin, Glady

and Huxley attended a party together in Santa Barbara on Nov. 11, 1959. Perhaps it was on the ride up from L.A. that day that Huxley popped the question. A month later, Lacey’s friend Sheilah Graham broke the news in her syndicated Hollywood gossip column:

“Franklin Lacey, who doesn’t get the credit he should for ‘The Music Man,’ is currently writing the ‘Brave New World’ book; enlarging the [film] treatment of ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy’ to star Eddie Hodges; and polishing a musical version of ‘Pagan in the Parlor.’ Other than that, he has nothing to do.”

Lacey was writing the book and the lyrics for “Brave New World,” but he needed a composer. He didn’t waste time pursuing big names like Bernstein or Stravinsky. Instead, he approached Laurence Rosenthal, whom he already knew from “The Music Man.”

Rosenthal would go on to have a remarkable career scoring such classic films as “A Raisin in the Sun,” “The Miracle Worker,” “Beckett” and “Man of La Mancha,” and TV shows like “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.” He would be nominated for two Oscars and 13 Emmys, and would win seven Emmys. But in 1960 he was a little-known young composer who was hungry for work. Fortuitously, he also was a big fan of “Brave New World.”

“I was immediately enthusiastic about the idea, having read the novel more than once, and considering it to be one of the most astoundingly prophetic books of our time,” Rosenthal told the OQ via email.

Lacey had found his composer. With Glady in tow, he and Rosenthal repaired to Rosenthal’s vacation house on an island off the coast of Maine, where they went to work.

“Soon we flew out to Los Angeles to show Mr. Huxley what we had done so far,” Rosenthal said. “He and Franklin seem to have been good friends. … He was cordial and gracious.”

“Huxley’s response to the songs was very positive. However, recognizing that we still had a considerable way to go before completion, he joked, ‘You fellows had better get cracking on this show, or before you finish it, everything I predicted in the book will already have happened!’”

“… Lots to eat and hours for drinking Soma cocktails — no more thinking.

Lacey and Rosenthal were stunned by the novelist’s conversational fluency.

“I had heard of Huxley’s phenomenal encyclopedic erudition, but this was quite unexpected,” Rosenthal said. “We all shared a dessert that was mostly of pineapple. It was delicious. Suddenly, out of the blue, with complete casualness, Huxley launched into a 15-minute dissertation on the history of the pineapple. It was vastly entertaining, not boring in the least, but told in the breezy style of an expert raconteur.”

At the same dinner, Rosenthal told Huxley how much he’d admired “Doors of Perception,” Huxley’s 1954 non- fiction book about using mescalin to expand one’s mental horizons. Rosenthal and Huxley then exchanged accounts of their recent experiments with LSD.

“All of which seemed to interest Mr. Huxley very much,” Rosenthal said.

Huxley was not the only interesting dinner partner that Rosenthal met through Lacey.

“Franklin was a good friend of Jiddu Krishnamurti, the eminent Indian spiritual master,” Rosenthal said. “Franklin kindly invited me to a dinner party with Krishna and some of his disciples in Ojai. I had a wonderful conversation with the great man. We spoke of religion and spirituality, but also about music, Sanskrit and Gregorian chant, etc. I am forever grateful to Franklin for introducing me to this extraordinary man.”

Lacey’s take on “Brave New World” was less dark and less weighty than the novel, as befitted a musical comedy.

“The No. 1 purpose of a play is to be entertaining,” Franklin later told an interviewer. “Avant Garde plays do nothing for me — they’re like building a house with no blueprints.”

In Lacey’s “Brave New World,” John the Savage recedes into the background, and he does not kill himself at the end of the play. Instead, Lacey arranges a deus ex machina conclusion wherein a passing space flotilla from Mars rescues the Adam-and-Eve couple Bernard and Anina, and transports them to a pleasant and unpopulated planet — an Eden, a brave new world where they can start anew:

“Nurtured by the Earth, and warmed by the sun, The greatest and least of creatures thrive.

And oh, what a boundless miracle it is, To be alive! To be alive! To be alive!”

Was this the sort of thing Huxley had in mind? Apparently so, for he encouraged Lacey to keep at it, and looked forward to seeing it on the stage. Bottom line: Huxley wanted a hit, and he figured Lacey could deliver one.

But Lacey had many other irons in the fire. He was retooling “Pagan” as a musical called “Captain Isabel,” intended as a vehicle for his old friend Beatrice Lillie, with Lacey composing the tunes himself. He also was writing the book for a musical about the showman P.T. Barnum, and a play called “The Lotus Position,” and a revue called “Summer Love.” So “Brave New World” had a lot of competition for his attention.

Huxley too was busy with other projects. He published “Island,” his utopian novel, and tried again to make a success of his “The Genius and the Goddess” play, this time in London’s West End. It only lasted a few weeks before closing.

“The Music Man” itself finally closed in 1961, after a three-and-ahalf-year run on Broadway. The movie version, also starring Robert Preston, was released in 1962 and became one of the year’s biggest screen hits. Lacey had his name on that version too. Huxley might have felt a twinge of jealousy, since “Brave New World,” the novel, remained unfilmed. In a letter to his brother-in-law in October 1962, Huxley complained about “the RKO people, who have never done anything with it but who nevertheless retain ownership.”

“Meanwhile,” he added, “a musical adaptation has been made and I hope that the play will soon be produced. We shall see.”

Huxley never did see “Brave New World” performed on a stage. The musical was still not quite finished when the 69-year-old writer died of cancer in Los Angeles on Nov. 22, 1963, the same day President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Knowing that the end was near, Rosalind Rajagopal drove down from Ojai that day to be by Huxley’s side. She watched as Laura Huxley administered a dose of LSD, per Aldous’s request. He died a few hours later, tripping into infinity.

NINE MONTHS

after Huxley ’s death, Sheila Graham reported in her column that Lacey finally had “Brave New World” ready for Broadway. John

Raitt and Anna Maria Alberghetti, late of the Ojai Music Festival, were to play Bernard and Anina. Rehearsals were to begin in November, with the show set to open in February 1965. But the curtain never went up. The producer ran into financial difficulties. Which may have been just as well, since according to composer Laurence Rosenthal, “Brave New World” was not at all ready for Broadway.

“We never finished the show,” Rosenthal said, and Lacey “literally disappeared from my life. … I never heard from him again. A rather disconcerting and disappointing conclusion of a lively relationship.”

Lacey’s name kept popping up in the Broadway columns into the late ‘60s, always in connection with a play or musical he was writing. None were produced: Not “Captain Isabel” with Beatrice Lillie, not the Barnum musical, not “The Lotus Position” play that was supposed to star Joan Fontaine, not “The Big Island,” a musical set in Hawaii, which a newspaper reported was “now in the hands of New York producers, and which, hopefully, will open there in 1968.”

Lacey did make a notable return in 1968 — not to Broadway but to Ojai, where Rosalind Rajagopal hired him as the new Happy Valley School headmaster.

The school finally was getting ready to move from Meiners Oaks to its namesake valley in Upper Ojai. This was to be a two-step process. First, the school would move to temporary quarters in a pre-existing office building adjacent to the Happy Valley property. Meanwhile, the Foundation Board would raise money to build a brand-new campus on the land Annie Besant had purchased back in 1927. Franklin oversaw the first move, but — like Moses — he didn’t complete the journey himself by leading the school to the promised land. That happened after he stepped down as headmaster in 1970.

“In that decade, with the school in its darkest period, Franklin was persuaded to be the director and he forthwith attempted to keep afloat what was a very leaky craft indeed,” Radha Sloss wrote. “Perhaps his own line from ‘The Music Man’ served him well at this time. When Professor Hill had flimflammed the whole town into buying costumes and instruments for the school band and the moment arrived to play, one voice cried out, ‘But we don’t know how.’ The professor said ‘FAKE IT’ and it worked! Floating between two makeshift campuses, in serious deficit, down to seven students, the school continued, with very little

substance, to project the impression of itself as a school.” After stepping down as headmaster, Lacey returned his focus to show business. He co-wrote the story for the 1971 film “Rain For A Dusty Summer,” a western starring Ernest Borgnine. Then Lacey went back to his theater roots and wrote “Don’t Hate Money,” a musical which opened in December 1976 at the Las Palmas Theater in Hollywood. The critics were not especially impressed, and “Don’t Hate Money” did not linger long at the Las Palmas before it disappeared into theatrical oblivion. But indirectly this production would have an enduring impact on L.A.’s comedy scene, thanks to the involvement of Franklin’s nephew Mike Lacey.

“My uncle … had a new play that needed some punching up and he wanted me to produce it,” Mike told an interviewer. “I went to the Comedy Store to look for a writer and met this young comic [Robin Williams] who was pretty funny. That’s when I decided I didn’t want to produce plays. I wanted to open a comedy club.”

Mike Lacey went on to found the now-legendary Comedy & Magic Club in Hermosa Beach, and he still runs it today.

As for Mike’s Uncle Franklin, “Don’t Hate Money” seems to have been his last hurrah in show business, albeit he was still earning a living from “The Music Man.”

In retirement, Franklin and Glady frequently drove up to Ojai from L.A. to see old friends. They would check in with Beatrice Wood in her studio, or catch up with Alan and Helen Hooker over a meal at the Ranch House. The Laceys led a comfortable life, thanks in part to their ongoing proceeds from “The Music Man.”

Franklin retired from the Happy Valley Foundation board in 1986, after serving on it for 27 years, and he died two years later at the age of 70. Glady died in 2006, at 93. She and Franklin had no children, so she left his “Music Man” royalties to the Foundation, for which they provide a reliable stream of income.

“There is seldom a day when somewhere in the world, a theater is not lit up with a performance of this all-time popular musical,” Radha Sloss observed in “The Story of Happy Valley.”

“The royalties have helped to support the Chamber on the Mountain chamber-music series, and the rebuild after the

Thomas Fire,” adds Portia Johnson, the current Besant Hill head of school.

Happy Valley today is not the Theosophist utopia that Besant envisioned as the cradle for a more-evolved golden race. But it grew from seeds she planted, and drew upon her ideas about education, culture and politics to create a community that is a blend of Besant and Huxley and Rajagopal and others – including Lacey.

As it happens, “The Music Man” is not the only musical comedy Franklin and Glady bequeathed to the Happy Valley Foundation. There’s also “Brave New World’’ — not the rights, but the actual script Franklin wrote for Huxley in the early ‘60s. A copy resides in the foundation archives. One day about 20 years ago, Radha Sloss dug it out and gave it to Susan Kelejian, who at the time had Lacey’s old job as the school’s head drama teacher.

“She handed me ‘Brave New World’ and said, ‘It’s yours — do what you want with it,’” Kelejian told the OQ

The script seemed unfinished, and there was no music to go with the lyrics. Kelejian asked a fellow teacher to compose some tunes: “He wrote music and we put it on.”

And so, some 40 years after he wrote it, Franklin Lacey’s version of “Brave New World” finally had its premiere on Feb. 11, 2004 – not on Broadway but in Happy Valley’s Zalk Theater, in a staged reading featuring Kelejian’s students. To date, that remains the show’s one and only public performance.

Kelejian is not surprised that it has never been professionally produced. The concept — making an uplifting musical comedy of Huxley’s darkly dystopian novel — seems fatally flawed.

“It makes no sense to me to do song-and-dance with ‘Brave New World,’” she said. “It was a little odd to think of it as a quote-unquote comedy. But for historical purposes it was fascinating.” Lacey’s “Brave New World” resurfaced again at the school in 2007 or 2008, not long after the actor and playwright Peter Fox started working there in the development office. One day Paul Amadio, who was then the head of school, handed Fox the script.

“He knew that I was a published playwright,” Fox said in an interview. “He said, ‘Why don’t you take a shot at this.’”

Amadio evidently hoped that if Fox could freshen up Lacey’s script, then “Brave New World” might join “The Music Man” in Happy Valley’s portfolio of revenue-generating musicals. But Fox was not especially impressed by what he read.

“It struck me as kind of outdated,” he said.

Rather than rewrite it, Fox wrote his own version from scratch. But after he finished it, he says, the Huxley estate somehow got wind of the project and quashed it.

A few years later, the estate licensed the novel’s dramatic rights to a team of Broadway musical-comedy professionals, who fashioned their own version. It premiered at the North Carolina Stage Company in Asheville in 2016, to good reviews. Its creators have been trying to get it to Broadway ever since, with no luck thus far.

But Huxley’s novel will enter the public domain in 2028, at which point some producer may want to have a peek at Lacey’s script. Currently a copy is available for purchase on eBay for $465. Huxley’s own copy (actually two copies, both dated 1961) can be found at UCLA among the Aldous and Laura Huxley papers (Box 23, Folders 14 and 15). And the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley has a copy that includes sheet music for six songs composed by Laurence Rosenthal.

Closer to home, there’s a copy that Lacey may have given to Meredith Willson, which recently was acquired by the Ojai Valley Museum. And, of course, there’s that copy that reposes in the Happy Valley Foundation archives. Perhaps in 2028 the Besant Hill School will dust it off again and give Lacey’s version of “Brave New World” a full-scale production, just for old times’ sake. Appropriately, they could fund it with some of their ongoing proceeds from “The Music Man,” which will continue to benefit Happy Valley for many years to come.

PORTIA JOHNSON

Photo: Michael McFadden

OJAI’S MODEL CITIZEN

IFCameron Jones’ face isn’t already familiar to you, it likely will be. You might be among the customers at Java & Joe’s coffee shop, where she worked for several years, or seen her in fashion shoots for Ojai brands and photographers.

Her visibility now extends well beyond Ojai. She recently signed with State Management, one of the nation’s premier modeling agencies, with offices in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Her presence is already receiving a big boost, with marketing campaigns for national clothing and lifestyle brands, including the skin-care company IS Clinical, jewelry brand Miansai and she participated in the Disney Wedding Dresses by Allure Bridals, one of the highest-profile events in the bridal industry.

“We are often taught to look for the beauty in all things, so in finding it, the layman asks the philosopher while the philosopher asks the photographer.”

— Criss Jami

STORY BY BRET BRADIGAN

PHOTOS BY BRANDI CROCKETT

“That was particularly fun,” Jones said. “ It was so much fun to work with so many models during the show, and we got to see Disneyland at night … that had to be my favorite shoot.”

It was an extended family member who helped her land the coveted contract, she said. “Marissa Surmenkow works in (State Management’s) New York location,” Jones said. “She reached out to me and encouraged me to interview with their Los Angeles team. I was very excited for the opportunity, especially after seeing their roster and the brands their models have worked with. I was brand new to the industry and was thankful for her guidance.”

The opportunity didn’t come out of nowhere, though. She’s been looking for her big break for awhile.

“I have always been interested in modeling and have modeled for local photographers and brands before I was officially signed,” she said.

Ojai has been central to her life. Jones is the granddaughter of Gloria Jones of Plush Surroundings, who has been a pillar of Ojai’s community for more than 35 years, active in the Chamber of Commerce and local sports leagues. She is a well-known

fabric designer for both home furnishings and fashion, and a key influence on Cameron’s desire to pursue a career in the industry.

“Gram has influenced my love of fashion for sure. When I was younger she allowed me to ‘design’ dresses out of leftover fabric. Those times have turned into core memories for me,” Cameron said. “She has been so supportive of my career and loves to hear all the details, and I was so fortunate that I have been able to learn what goes on behind the scenes of the fashion world from her.”

Those details of Cameron Jones’ work are not always the glamorous business of runways and haute couture. It’s a real job that requires discipline and diligence. “Typically, a model will go to a casting, which is essentially an audition, in the sense that a casting director will see if the model fits the part they are trying to fill.

“If the casting director books you for a job, your agent will send a call sheet that lays out what the job entails — time, location, and the use of the media they capture. Arriving early on set is important not only for the creative team, but also the model. Usually, I like to arrive 15 minutes early, if not earlier, in case of any possible setbacks.

“Once I have met the team I will be working with, we will typically start with hair and makeup. For most of the jobs I have done, the client will hire the makeup artist and hairstylists. Clients also have their own photographers they work with. So different brands, different teams.

Her parents have also been supportive of her interest in modeling since a very young age. “Specifically, my dad said ‘Why wouldn’t you use what God gave you?’ I couldn’t ask for a better support team.”

It can be an intimidating way to make a living — competitive and high stakes with lots of people and big budgets. “At my last casting people didn’t seem very friendly. Everyone was kind of keeping to themselves,” she said. “But I decided to be very outgoing, which has served me well in this industry, and try to get people to open up. It resonates with people, and helps you build better connections.”

Physical fitness is a key component of the job. That comes naturally for Jones. She lived in Missoula, Montana before moving back to her hometown of Ojai five years to attend Nordhoff High School. She was a standout athlete in volleyball and basketball. In fact, she was chosen as a sophomore for the Rangers’ varsity

basketball squad as their shooting and point guard. Unfortunately, Jones fell into that cohort who had their senior year of high school derailed by the pandemic.

It helped to be quarantined in a place like Ojai. “Ojai and Ventura County are home to several of my ‘happy places,’ such as the local farmers’ markets, my favorite hiking trails, the beautiful beaches and the famous Southern California kelp forests. I became scuba certified in 2021 and went to receive my advanced certification. Scuba and free-diving has become my passion — I am happiest underwater.” Jones can free dive to 30 feet, and scuba dive to 110 feet down, far enough to be immersed in a different world.

Discipline carried her through those long days of zoom classes. “I like to stay active and exercise six days a week. I keep it moderately short so I can sustain it. It’s a mix of Pilates, weight training, then hikes and runs. I also do yoga at the Move Sanctuary and at the Ojai Valley Athletic Club,” she said.

Her interest in the fashion industry carries through all its elements. “Fashion design, as well as the art of photography, have always interested me,” she said, especially enjoying her time in the darkroom, watching the magic unfold as images emerged from the film. “I fell in love with it and both remain hobbies of mine to this day. I like to be on both sides of the camera.”

Her aspiration is to combine her core interests: diving, photography and modeling. “Diving is my passion and I would love to integrate those, whether that is modeling underwater with an underwater photographer, or simply standing out from the rest by creating content underwater!

For the present, the 20-year-old is attending Ventura College, with the plan to transfer to Cal State Northridge or Cal State Channel Islands as a junior. She is studying film photography and development, as well as business, with the aim of bringing all of her interests, training and experiences together as an entrepreneur.

“I definitely think modeling is a gateway career for me,” she said. “You make lots of connections with photographers and other people in the industry. So I hope I can use what I learn to generate several streams of income.”

That doesn’t preclude the desire to take advantage of the career which she already launched; “And I would love to have a career in the modeling industry in the future, walking shows or working with big brands.

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A well-funded hospital is the heart of a healthy community. The Ojai Valley Hospital Foundation is here to anticipate your needs and ensure that Community Memorial Hospital – Ojai and its Continuing Care Center have the resources to meet them. We raise funds to make facility improvements, purchase advanced medical technologies, and launch new programs and services. And we make sure to keep you informed about the healthcare offerings and enhancements we help fund. Because when it comes to staying healthy, staying connected is key.

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Never did I imagine that these words would come out of my mouth: “personal trainer.” But when I turned seventy-five years old, my wife and sons generously spotted me a series of at-home sessions.

Over the pandemic years I’d stopped working out at our local geriatric gym, although at home I did faithfully watch TV and powerlift spoons full of ice cream. At 6’6”, I soon looked like a stuffed olive on a toothpick. My “physique” needed some retouching, but mainly my family wanted me to stay healthy.

Having tried gyms in the past, I knew I didn’t love the clanking weights and the macho roars and grunts of the ripped regulars. As it turned out, personal trainer Heath Perry is nothing like the stereotype drill sergeant. Instead, he acts as a gentle guide into the world of fitness.

“I’ve kind of created my own unique way of approaching the body,” says Heath, “using a multitude of disciplines, from ancient ones to modern approaches.”

STORY BY JERRY CAMARILLO DUNN, JR

He is 55 but looks 40, making him a walking advertisement for his work. In person he quickly puts you at ease, thanks to the

“Everyone’s heard the slogan, ‘No pain, no gain.’ I feel it’s the opposite: ‘No pain, all gain.”

warmth of his country-comfort Kansas accent. Heath says he acquired it growing up “on the blue-collar side of the tracks –kind of like Cockney compared to proper English.” When his mother remarried, her new husband moved her and Heath to the white-collar side of town, and he went to Catholic high school. He saw new possibilities and became the first in his family to go to college, graduating from Kansas State University in 1989 in the fledgling field of Exercise Science.

“I was shy and introverted back then,” he says. In a moment of serendipity, a friend talked him into trying out for the cheerleading squad. “I couldn’t do any stunts. I didn’t even know the words to the school fight song. The worst tryout ever!” But he ended up making the squad and later coached and judged cheerleading. “It brought me out of my shell,” he recalls gratefully, “and made me feel comfortable in front of people, speaking and teaching. It was a big step.” That lucky step helped lead to his life’s work — getting people excited about moving their bodies and feeling good.

Heath stayed on at Kansas State to earn dual Master’s degrees in sports nutrition and dietetics. By then he had the confidence and perspective to look for a bigger life, and soon he wasn’t in Kansas anymore. “I ended up settling in Miami Beach, of all places. It was incredibly diverse. You’d walk down Ocean Drive,” he recalls, “and hear every kind of language, see all kinds of people and lifestyles. I thought, ‘This will be good for me!’” He landed at a “cool little health club” and also worked in physical therapy. He got certified in Pilates, taught by a woman who worked with Miami’s ballet dancers. He used exercise and nutrition to help HIV patients. He even spent time at Gianni Versace’s Italianate “palace,” training the fashion designer daily — but only for a single week, until Versace was shot on his front steps.

Relocating to an upscale gym in Denver, Heath taught other fitness instructors diet and exercise. In 2005 Men’s Health magazine spotlighted him as one of the country’s top 100 trainers. Despite the crescendo of opportunities around him, though, he and a girlfriend decided to travel around the world for two years. By the time he’d been on the road for nine months, Heath was in Thailand and facing a midlife crisis he calls “manopause.”

“I had let go of everything in my life. I had no commitments, no have-to’s,” he remembers. “After so much traveling, you reach the point where you’re going to that next temple or famous

beach, and you think: What am I doing, really? I had all this education and had just left it behind at a moment when I could have really taken off. I needed to figure out what was going on with me.”

Heath returned and settled in California. “Yoga and the spiritual side of life are in the culture out here,” he says, and that helped him develop his own creative, intuitive approach to health and fitness. “There are aspects of yoga, Pilates, cross-fit, Qigong, and so on that are valuable to everyone. These little nuggets are what I pull into my practice. It’s not something you could find at a health club.”

Heath started me out slow and easy. Rather than having had me buy expensive fitness equipment, he’d recommended minimalist gear that offers maximum benefit. One of my favorites is the TRX system, which is almost absurdly simple: two handles on sturdy straps that hook over a beam in my office. The exercises use my own suspended body weight to build strength.

I also like the Bosu, an inflated hemisphere of blue rubber. Standing on the rounded top to do a squat, I have to adjust my balance continually in order to stay “on the ball” and not fall off. This added element builds both strength and stability. I also have stretch bands that hook over a door, so they’re portable –handy, since I’m a travel writer and can now exercise on the road.

“I like helping older people fend off the inevitable stuff of aging,” says Heath. “My definition of exercise: Doing what you need to do to keep doing what you love — whether that’s hiking, biking, surfing, or dancing. And doing it in a way that you come to love, too.”

Where I once viewed a workout as a grind, I now see it as a pleasure. “Notice how good you feel afterward,” says Heath, “compared to how you felt when you started – energy-wise, body-wise, mind-wise. You think, ‘This is why I do it!”

At the end of the day, if you leave people feeling better – stronger, more alive, happier — you’re doing good work in the world.

For information on Heath Perry’s personal training sessions, classes at the Ojai Recreation Department and Sacred Space studio, online videos, and free weekly Zoom class: www.livin.guide

“I don’t exercise. If God had wanted me to bend over, he would have put diamonds on the floor.” — Joan Rivers

“I used to jog but the ice cubes kept falling out of my glass.” — David Lee Roth

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STORY AND PHOTOS

BY CHUCK GRAHAM

It strained mightily to get a whiff of me. The spring grasses were tall and lush, maybe standing at least 4 feet high in some regions of the Carrizo Plain National Monument. All I could see of this elusive American badger was its throat and the bottom of its black snout pointed skyward.

was standing on its stubby hind legs doing everything it could to make sense of what was plodding along at 10 mph in my truck as I have been known to do for the last 16 years on these dusty dirt roads and across these semi-arid grasslands.

When it finally had a sense of what I was, it got very low as badgers do, and like a lawnmower plowed over and through the towering grasses to its well concealed den on the high veld.

This was in April of 2010, during a Super Bloom. I didn’t see another cantankerous badger on the Carrizo Plain until the

MAMA BADGER ON PATROL

spring of 2020. I was working as a wildlife guide for a film crew for PBS that was creating a documentary on California wildlife and its wild places. The documentary was entitled Planet California. It was released in June 2022. Kit foxes, burrowing owls, giant kangaroo rats, antelope ground squirrels, coyotes, blunt-nose leopard lizards, and the American badger were high on their want list of subjects.

Towards the end of my 6-week gig, I was on the lookout for

wildlife on the southeast fringe of Elkhorn Plain. I stumbled upon a badger foraging at dawn. It immediately began to run away on dusty Elkhorn Road. Making a broad arc it dove into one of its burrows dug out amongst the saltbush and green ephedra. Otherwise, the remote, semi-arid landscape was seemingly lifeless.

I immediately called the film crew while I sat watching the den. Eight hours later, Mark Romanov, an accomplished wildlife cinematographer arrived. After setting up his film camera and camera traps, all we could do was watch and wait. And wait we did well into the night.

Fortunately, with his infrared camera gear, Romanov was able to locate not one, but two badgers poking their heads out of different nearby dens, using their advantageous subterranean way of life to give us the momentary slip. Crafty they are, and after a full 36 hours, Romanov only gathered a small amount of footage. For myself, I never even raised my camera. My quest for photographing them on the Carrizo Plain continued.

During the winter of 2021 I was scanning with binoculars on

MOTHER BADGER LYING LOW IN DRY GRASSES

WILDLIFE CINEMAPHOTOGRAPHER MARK ROMANOV FILMING A BUSY BADGER

the Carrizo Plain west of the Godwin Education Center at daybreak. It was bitterly cold when I saw a badger probably a mile out to the west. It loped along through grasses that were brown and low-growing, California suffering through yet another colossal drought.

Whether it was running from the sight of me or something else I’ll never know, but it was gone before I knew it. Momentarily I thought about walking out there hoping for an opportunity, but out on the Carrizo Plain, I knew of other, more promising possibilities with other wildlife. That badger was long gone as I drove out to another overlook.

THE ROAD CAN BE CRUEL

As my girlfriend Holly and I drove the winding road from King City to Pinnacles National Park in Central California, we enjoyed the rolling hills and chilly, early morning countryside leading into the craggy monoliths of the Gabilan Mountains. It was late April 2022.

We were hoping for decent looks at endangered California condors, a Pleistocene remnant clinging to patches of habitat in swaths of the western states.

BADGER KITS NUZZLING AT THEIR DEN, JUST 30 FEET AWAY FROM ME

SLINKING MOTHER BADGER RETURNS TO HER KITS

ALL THAT DIGGING BY THE FEMALE BADGER LED TO A GROUND SQUIRREL.

As we meandered along, we rounded a sharp bend in the 2-lane road. It happened so fast, but we had just run over what was already a dead male badger. Even though it was another casualty of roadkill, we still felt terrible and pulled off the road. I ran up to it and removed it from the road. It was still intact and wasn’t bleeding, instead surrendering to severe blunt force trauma.

While staring into the glassy, lifeless eyes of this beautiful animal, I thought about how long I’d waited for a great look at a badger. I didn’t want it to be like this. It was a sad moment, so much wildlife lost on our roads.

THERMAL CONVERGENCE

On May 6, 2022, I gave two presentations on the Carrizo Plain, one for the Carrizo Colloquium and later in the day at the San Luis Obispo Botanical Gardens.

After I was finished, I thought it would be appropriate to drive out to those semi-arid grasslands off Highway 58. Somewhere along the way, I was to meet Romanov out on the Carrizo Plain.

BUCKWHEAT FIELD AT SUNRISE OVER THE CARRIZO PLAIN

MOTHER BADGER HEADING OUR WAY, SHE APPROACHED WITHIN 20 FEET SEVERAL TIMES

He works regularly for National Geographic, the BBC, Shark Week, among others, and like me is always looking for more opportunities with wildlife.

It was approaching 11 pm when I received a text with coordinates from Romanov.

“I just spotted a female badger with two kits, said the hard-working Romanov. “I have some new tools.”

I had no idea what “new tools” meant, but just as I was about to pull off a nameless dirt road in the National Monument and snooze the rest of the night away, I now found myself driving madly to Romanov’s location about 20 miles south. He had entered the Carrizo Plain from the south, off Highway 166.

When I finally reached Romanov, he had pulled off along Soda Lake Road, getting his camera traps together. While he worked, he handed me a pair of binoculars.

“Just have a look out there,” he said plain enough. “Tell me what you see.”

What I saw was lots of activity, and the resolution viewed from the thermal binoculars brought the nighttime to life. Those optics were a game changer for locating wildlife that other-

wise thoroughly enjoys their nocturnal advantages. I stopped counting Giant kangaroo rats at 19. Coyotes were spotted on the fringe of their activity. A pair of endangered kit foxes also kept moving through the food chain. However, our focus was on the badgers.

In the middle of all the nocturnal activity was the mother badger digging feverishly on a freshly dug mound. However, her main den with her two kits was about 100 feet to the south. That’s where Romanov set up his camera traps and infrared.

It was 1 am. We headed back to our trucks to sleep until 4 am. As soon as we wrestled out of our sleeping bags, we immediately utilized Romanov’s thermal binoculars. We were looking through them as we maneuvered into position. After approaching, we had the luxury of several saltbushes concealing us from a very busy mother badger. She was still digging, but for what?

It was still too dark to photograph her activity. All we could hope for was that she was still there when it got light enough. However, with those thermal binos we could at least keep tabs on her movements, which were devoted to what we thought was an alternate den site approximately 100 feet north of her main den.

As she dug, her pace was impressive as big, softball-sized clumps of dirt flew out from behind her. In between digging, she spun around looking in our direction. Romanov and I didn’t

BADGER REVEALS ITS VERY USEFUL CLAWS

AMERICAN BADGER POSES FOR A PORTRAIT

move. We didn’t make a sound. She knew something was nearby, but it wasn’t enough for her to go subterranean on us.

At 5:30 am it was just light enough to photograph her constant activity. Her black snout was smothered in freshly dug dirt. Her enormous claws never rested as she created a steep berm surrounding the opening.

As Romanov and I worked, there was movement just 30 feet to my right. Her two kits were above ground nuzzling each other, but never venturing any further than the circumference of their den. They weren’t up long but it was just enough time to fire off a few frames.

Turning our attention back to their mother, she had momentarily vanished below ground. The entire time we thought she was digging out a new den, but instead it was a California ground squirrel she was after. Once she secured it, she left to stash her prey for safe keeping. Badgers are known to hoard food in hidden places.

She didn’t travel far though. She quickly returned, digging, and rolling on the freshly dug dirt of what was the den of the California ground squirrel. After concealing that meal, she turned her attention toward us. For most of the next hour she slinked toward us for a look, a sniff, approaching to within 20 feet of us, but then returning to the freshly dug mound.

Finally, she low-crawled around to the west, watching us, rolling in the dirt, seemingly enjoying the morning sun. Then her motherly instincts settled in. Her kits were up, milling around

the den. She joined them, with a conjoining of nuzzling, black button snouts.

Later in the day I got to see some of Romanov’s camera trap footage. The mother badger had been hunting all night. She brought her kits a giant kangaroo rat just before we arrived early that morning. She immediately went after the California ground squirrel, which required a lot of excavating.

It was 7:30 am when the family of badgers dove into their den for the day. It was a morning I will not soon forget. My quest to photograph badgers was finally successful. Nevertheless, I’ll always scan and watch for badgers, hoping for another opportunity, because it will never be enough.

THAT BUSY FEMALE AMERICAN BADGER IN MOMENTS OF REST, ONCE WHILE CROSSING ITS PADDED PAWS WITH LONG CLAWS, AND TAKING A BREAK AFTER DIGGING OUT THE GROUND SQUIRREL AND STASHING IT FOR SAFEKEEPING

SODA LAKE ROAD, CARRIZO PLAIN

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The Ojai TENNIS TOURNAMENT

Pac-12 Championships • Men’s and Women’s Open Collegiate and Junior Events

The Ojai Tennis Tournament celebrates its 121st year at historic Libbey Park in downtown Ojai. Congratulations to these former Ojai players who competed in the 2023 Australian Open!

Jenson Brooksby, Kaitlyn Christian, Max Cressy, Robert Farah, Taylor Fritz, Marcos Giron, Yannick Hanfmann, Catherine Harrison, Brandon Holt, Desirae Krawczyk, Angela Kulikov, Claire Liu, Mackie McDonald, Ben McLachlan, Brandon Nakashima, Giuliana Olmos, Jean Julien Rojer, Sabrina Santamaria, Ena Shibahara

APRIL 26-30, 2023 • TheOjai.net

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

annual events

MARCH 4-29

“H2O Show” — Opening Reception

March 4, 5-8 p.m.

Location: Ojai Art Center

113 South Montgomery Street

Times: Tuesday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday, 12 noon to 4 p.m.

Contact: 805-646-0117

OjaiArtCenter.org

Show by the Pastel Society of the Gold Coast will feature 32 paintings exclusively of Ojai vistas and animals. Proceeds benefit the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy.

MARCH 19

Liz Queler & Seth Farber with son Joey with “The Edna Project”

Location: Beatrice Wood Center

8585 Ojai-Santa Paula Road

Time: 3 p.m.

Contact: BeatriceWoodCenter.com

Two-time Grammy-nominated artists will be performing music from their “The Edna Project” which puts Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry to music.

THROUGH APRIL

“Tomatomania!”

Time: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Location: Wachter’s Hay & Grain, 114 South Montgomery Street

Contact: tomatomania.com

Get expert advice, find rare heirlooms, classic hybrids and all you need for a successful season.

PIXIE TANGERINE MONTH

| APRIL 1-30 | ojaichamber.org

Ojai Pixie Month

Locations: Restaurants and shops around town. Contact: Ojai Chamber of Commerce 805-646-8126

OjaiChamber.org

Looks for the pixie stickers on windows of restaurants and shops around town for a selection of Ojai’s very delicious and versatile tangerine. From food to beverages to products, the town celebrates its homegrown fruit.

APRIL 16

Rotary Club of Ojai’s “Taste of Ojai”

Times: 2 to 5:30 p.m.

Location: Libbey Park

Contact: 805-620-7589

tasteofojai.com

Taste of Ojai, the region’s finest food-related event, is back with a different approach this year; a walking tour of Ojai’s amazing restaurants and art venues.

APRIL 26-30 2024

The 121st “The Ojai”

Ojai Valley Tennis Tournament

Times: Varies

Location: Libbey Park & Elsewhere

Contact: 805-646-7421

theojai.net

The country’s oldest amateur tournament, going back to 1896, returns with the PAC-12 championships and many other top matchups.

“DISAPPEARING ACT” | MAY 5-28 | ojaiartcenter.org

MAY 5-28

“Disappearing Act”

Location: 113 South Montgomery Street

Time: Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.

Contact: 805-646-0117

OjaiArtCenter.org

Ojai based actor/writer Peter Fox stirs up a spellbinding brew of prestidigitation and discovery. A young magician, a beautiful woman, and a mysterious stranger materialize in this exciting new mixture of magic and theater.

MAY 19-21

Ojai Performing Arts Theater’s “Lawdy Mercy”

Location: Matilija Auditorium, 723 El Paseo Road

Times: Friday and Saturday, 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m.

Contact: OjaiTheater.org, 805-649-1937

OPAT’s Artistic Director Richard Camp’s one-man show about life, love, god and existentialism. Hilarity will ensue.

MAY 27-28

Ojai Art Center’s 46th Annual “Art in the Park”

Times: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. p.m.

Location: Libbey Park

Contact: OjaiArtCenter.org

805-646-0117

Founded in 1977 to give artists a place to sell their work during Memorial Day Weekend.

OJAI TENNIS TOURNAMENT | APRIL 26-30 | theojai.net

BY SAMI ZAHRINGER

CELEBS HIT THE FANS

A Housewife’s Log

haos today as newly transplanted celebrities marched in Ojai to protest their being left alone too much. The march, organised by Kanye West, was proceeding down Ojai Avenue, largely ignored by Tuesday morning trinket and art shoppers, when a scuffle broke out between Mel Gibson and Barbara Streisand about the Crucifixion, and agitation spread quickly through the crowd of already semi-inflamed celebs. An Ojai Quarterly reporter (me) was on the scene and witnessed events as they got out of hand.

“It was like a war zone,” I told myself in an interview later. “There were crazed celebrities everywhere. Cher was stamping on Paris Hilton’s head with a 5” heel. Vin Diesel was upending hybrid cars and yelling something about getting that bitch Judge Judy. Hanging perilously from a helicopter, Sean Penn tried to distribute aid parcels to puzzled people below who kept insisting they weren’t starving. As she marched, Kate Hudson had an aide hold a wind machine in front of her to make her golden hair billow attractively, but the aide carrying the machine walked

backwards right into Vin Diesel’s clean-eating advisor. The advisor’s beard got sucked into the wind fan and the poor man had his chin scalped clean, the bloody beard hanging uselessly from the wrecked fan. It was a scene of carnage this reporter will not soon forget.

Just because I was interviewing me about the incident, though, didn’t mean I didn’t ask me the tough questions.

“Just how killer were Cher’s boots?” I asked gravely, watching me closely.

“Almost fatally killer by the looks of Paris” I recalled. “But luckily the celebutante’s head seemed of a curiously rubber consistency; Cher’s boot heel fairly bounced off it.”

A gracious, and dented Paris later told me that, had she succumbed to the stamping, there would have been some solace for her family in knowing that she’d been slain by really truly killer Prada boots — Butter-soft Italian lamb-leather, totally finely hand-tooled into, like, a poem of foot-shaped baby-sheep. Sooo hot.”

This morning’s furore, which resulted in one death of an unimportant plain person, some serious ego-injuries and a half-dozen

boob deflations was described by some as “the worst carnage Ojai has ever seen since the great cut-flower shortage of the ’80s.” Older readers may remember that day back in the bee-less summer of ‘84 when mobs of angry housewives with nothing fabulous to put on their entrance-hall tables, stormed Mr. Bently, the florist, and held him hostage until he promised to force them some peonies in his poly-tunnel.

That day, Black Wednesday, claimed the lives of a blameless organic butcher, an only slightly guilty artisanal baker and a probably-did-something-at-some-point-but-nobody-couldprove-it sacred-herb-scented candlemaker, and is still marked every year in Ojai by a tasteful outdoor cheese-and-wine party, the release of three white doves, and a one-day-only 50 percent off mourning-sale in local shops.

Today’s demonstration was ostensibly a protest on the part of the area’s celebrities about local people failing to hound them for their autographs. But the protest was part of a larger set of grievances at being outrageously allowed to live quiet, undisturbed lives in a town respectful of its more famous citizens. Spokeswoman Rihanna, youthful in Roberto Cavalli sweatpants and a simple, white GAP t-shirt with “UNDERSTATED” emblazoned goldly across the front, said in an interview after the riot that Ojai’s resident Stars Association were “saddened” at ordinary people’s seemingly complete disinterest in them as they tried to go about their daily business. “It goes completely contrary to what being a star is all about,” wept Rihanna suddenly. “Tom (Cruise) was in tears last week when he was able to sit in a coffee-shop and drink 8 soy lattes before a small child recognized him and asked if he was gay,” said an indignant Rihanna, now recovered again, her beautiful eyes flashing with anger. Other witnesses today reported that skirmishes also broke out when Oprah and Dr. Phil went on a “FREE! Compassionate

Advice-Giving Tour” of the farmer’s market. A local witness said “Dr. Phil’s feelings were hurt,” when he tried to give an ordinary cauliflower-shopper some advice about “sticking with it.” The ordinary person asked him what the expletiving sexual act he meant. Dr. Phil indicated with a puffed-out cheeks gesture and a comically-affected wobbling gait, that it was clear the shopper was overweight and that buying a vegetable indicated that he was “owning his problem” and choosing a healthier lifestyle with his cauliflower purchase.

“The first step on the path to getting rid of that massive gut is the hardest one to take, but you’ve taken it, my friend!” declared the self-help guru.

“What the (rigorous coitus)?” exclaimed the cauliflower shopper, who declined to identify himself, and proceeded to try to insert the cauliflower into the anus of Dr. Phil, shrieking “You’re not so (intercoursing) light on your own (incestuously-intercoursing) toes, you son of a (bestial act common in Wales-ing) (girl-dog!) Have you never heard of body positivity, you absolute stapler? How do you like this colon friendly vegetable, huh? Stick with THIS, you pompous quantity of toilet-paper! Eh? Huh?”

The enraged cauliflower man screamed on, until police arrived on the scene and removed him from the market, kicking and shrieking, as Dr. Phil brushed himself off, delicately removed the cauliflower and explained that he frequently incurs this reaction from pitiable people who have not yet been advised of the way out of their poor behavior patterns.

Meanwhile, in the next aisle of market-stalls, Oprah was cozily advising a 79-year old woman, Miss Betty Dearheart, that “that homemade lemon mayonnaise may look good now, girlfriend, but wait til that sucker’s stuck on your booty!”

Witnesses say the elderly woman tried to shuffle away from the wild-eyed Winfrey, but then Dr. Phil came flying over the handmade soap stall, wrestled the senior citizen to the ground and assured Ms. Winfrey that it was OK and not to panic, he “had the b$%*h under control. They’re an unreceptive crowd,” he added, shaking his head sadly while massaging his brutalized anus, also sadly. “They’re not ready to confront themselves yet. This town is

hurtin,’ hurtin’ real bad.”

I asked Kim Basinger if moving to a small town away from the Hollywood papparazzi didn’t imply a desire on behalf of the stars to live an unmolested life.

“Well, yeah — like duh,” she said. “But, I mean you don’t really expect it, do you? Studies (or is it studios? I can’t ever tell the difference) show that stars need almost permanent adulation in order to shine, you see, and by not revering or indeed reacting in any way to, seeing, say, Ellen, in a headscarf trying not to be spotted at the Post Office, you are causing us anxiety about our own self-worth and fabulousness that translates into poorer performances in our movies/chat-show hosting. It’s you that suffers in the end.”

“Maybe people in Ojai just aren’t that impressed by stars?” I ventured. “After all, there are many talented secondary industry people living here: screenwriters; directors; set-designers, costume-designers and special effects folks; animators; producers; stunt-men and so on. And perhaps the non-Hollywood citizens: the teachers and the house-cleaners and the store-owners and the soccer moms just don’t care to intrude into other people’s lives. Or could it be that you’re just not that interesting?”

At this Ms. Basinger’s chin began to dimple adorably as a fat tear rolled slowly down her flawless cheek.

“We give and we give and we give,” she howled, doing something Italian with her arms (probably a method). “Nobody knows how hard it is for us to be so free with our emotions and how we’re forced to peddle them for massive amounts of money — do you have any idea how much self-involvement that takes? It’s exhausting! Nobody but a star knows how wearying it is to have to do Jimmy Kimmel and attend a charity gala event in one evening, ONE EVENING, people! It’s like slavery or something! It may look like an easy life to you with our limos and our stylists and our personal assistants but we’re far more sensitive than you people. That’s why we’re special. We feel more than ordinary people do, you know?…”

At this point Madonna, in a baseball-cap sporting the word “EMPATH” in diamonds, jogged up and interjected, putting a consoling arm around the gently weeping Basinger. “And I’m tired of being criticized for being a Kabbalist,” said Madonna, veering wildly between Cockney and Liverpudlian cadences. “They say this is just another shallow Madonna fad, a fuzzy spiritual hobby with cute accessories. But you know, wearing the humble red thread wristlet and calling myself Esther is something that moves me deeply. Until Kabbalah nothing else had ever managed to move me more than myself and my own

harrowing personal struggle to make it to the top, so I feel it, like, deeply, you know?” Here Madon na inclined her head slightly and put a slim hand over her heart, as if willing me to understand the real her.

“The other day I had Posh Spice round at mine dry-crying on my shoulder…” ranted Madonna in a (possibly clinically relevant) rapid change of tone, and now using a pronounced Essex accent.

“Excuse me, but…dry crying?” I interjected.

“(Impatient sigh) Posh can’t cry real tears because of make-up considerations. Do you even know how long that look takes several style-professionals to achieve every morning? One genuine emotion could wreck it. Have you any idea what it’s like to be super-super-sensitive and maintain flawless day-to-evening mascara?” Here Madonna’s voice softened. “Behind Posh’s joyless demeanour and cold, dead eyes I knew she was really hurting, you know? She just wants to be recognized for who she really is — the real Posh Spice. She simply wants people to jostle around asking for her autograph as she walks past them aloofly in enormous sunglasses. I means she never actually gives her autograph or interacts in any way, but that’s part of what the fans LOVE!”

The clearly exercised star went on, now suddenly in a more part Kensington, quasi-Queens accent, “Babs Streisand is a wreck because she can clearly see the way forward for the country in our foreign policy and nobody will listen to her! I mean, it’s unbelievable! Ashton Kutcher can’t get anywhere with his harrowing novels of existential doubt in the 1920s Czech surfer scene, and Kevin Costner’s thinking of starring in another crappy baseball movie. Do you know how unhappy we are?”

I said I didn’t.

“Very,” said Madonna, angular in a “Free Europe Now!” t-shirt. (She only consented to be interviewed if I described her as angular.) “And with all the money we spend trying to be happy, we simply can’t have the fans upsetting us!”

At this point Madonna spotted Demi Moore and abruptly left the interview, squealing “Demi, you look so expensive…!”

Over by Bonnie Lu’s, and still stuck to the broken wind-machine, Vin Diesel’s clean-eating advisor’s bloodied beard turned slowly in the breeze like some mangled pastiche of a squirrel. Updates on the various lawsuits stemming from today’s riot will be published as they become available and then dismissed by unnamed powers-that-be. Also, there will be an update on the condition of the ordinary dead person, although he is not expected to come round.

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