Bright flavors of tangerine, orange and lush hibiscus meld with immune supporting elderberry & vitamin-c rich rosehips for a ca eine free steep which will transport you to our mystical valley where we blend this tea as a love letter to you and the world. Ojai is a land of magic and possibility, where the
dusk is painted a rose hued pink and the mountains alight amid a ceremonial, calming glow. Pixie Tangerine groves, vineyards, and meditation gardens dot the landscape of our beautiful valley where we blend this tea with love for you to taste the landscape of the mystical lands we call home.
Set along Ojai’s coveted Foothill Road, this restored 1929 Tudor Revival estate blends historic charm with modern elegance. A designated Historic Landmark, the property features a 4-bed main house, barn, yoga studio, and enchanting gardens with mountain views. Moments from hiking trails, farmers markets, and the Ojai Valley Inn, it’s a rare chance to own a piece of Ojai history.
On 40 prime East End acres, this unique citrus ranch has fabulous Topa Topa views, four legal houses, a 2800 sqft barn, and 36 acres of organic orchard. One of the best wells in Ojai provides reliable income from 6000 Valencia trees, 2000 Pixie trees and 200 pecan trees. The remodeled 3500sqft, 3bd/2.5ba main house, built in 1917, has beautiful views from nearly every window. The 3 auxiliary houses provide great rental income. Includes extensive water infrastructure, 2 Casitas water meters, 40kw of solar panels, a John Deere tractor and a Gator.
Offered at $7,500,000
67 ACRE UPPER OJAI MODERN RANCH
Amidst the wild beauty of Ojai’s backcountry, this property encompasses three contiguous parcels, offering extraordinary scale, privacy and potential. Anchored by an architect-designed main home and guest house - true jewels in the landscape - this property offers a sublime vision of country living. The primal forms of the existing buildings are artfully integrated into the terrain, and form a canvas for the movement of the sun and the passage of the seasons. Built with fire-resilience in mind, they feature sliding steel doors designed to seal and protect. Offered at $5,875,000
EDITOR’S NOTE - 24
COVER STORY
Time Travel: A Devotion to Hydrosols - 28
By John Fonteyn
ART & THEATER
The Artistic Brush of Christopher Noxon - 34
By Mimi Walker
Inspired by Beato for a Life in India - 50
By Stephen Huyler
Ojai Theatre Festival: Jon Bernthal Creates - 86
By Kerstin Kühn
CULTURE
My Stay at Hotel El Roblar - 44
By Kimberly Rivers
USA’s Smallest Post Office - 78
By Perry Van Houten
Fall Hikes - 123
By Perry Van Houten
MINDFULNESS
Healing Hats - 60
By Erin LaBelle
Ojai Scent Dispatch - 126
By Meike Kopp
BIG ISSUES
The March Continues: My Full-Circle Moment in the Civil Rights Movement - 68
By Lanny Kaufer
UFOs & Nukes: Between Us and Oblivion - 114
By Grant Phillips
CALENDAR OF EVENTS - 94
FOOD & FARM
Granola Girl - 98
By Karen Lindell
Healthy Harvest Bowls - 106
By Sharon Palmer
graham sutherland
september 4 – october 19
graham sutherland, still life with banana leaf, 1947
emerson woelffer
october 30 – december 14
emerson woelffer, untitled, 1948
located in a classic california bungalow a short walk from the arcade, canvas and paper is a small art museum with a focus on 20th century modernism. exhibits change every two months. admission is free.
311 n. montgomery street thursday – sunday noon – 5pm canvasandpaper.org
Editor’s Note: Fall 2025
For those seeking story, rather than narrative, read on. Ojai stories — written by, about, and for real human beings — share the essence of who we are. Though people read and write more and more, we talk to each other less these days, and we are bombarded with so much “junk food” content that it leaves our bellies roiling. Distracted by the deluge, readers are less and less patient and willing to spend the time to interpret, employ critical thinking, or even read to the end.
Our attention spans are shrinking along with our vocabularies. AI is showing up to even explain summaries. We are wise to consider the sources and the limitations of this entity — without life experience — that will remix human art, culture, music, film, literature, news, and history itself … into an AI-redux collage until all the truth and value have been hashed and rehashed out of it.
As a permanent record of Ojai life and times, the printed words in Ojai Valley News and Ojai Magazine cannot be re-engineered as digital-only content can be. It is distinctly Ojaian to screen out pretention … we may drift but we always come back because we are seeking what is real.
On a recent podcast, American novelist Walter Kirn spoke about AI concerns, urging calm, stating that “cultural products are the true genius of America.” We hold the advantage: “American ingenuity is still alive,” he said. That is vitally important because “the breakdown of culture precedes political disintegration.” Kirn’s good news is that there is the possibility to restore, or even give rise to, a renaissance of culture. And through our creative products we might understand each other better.
Understanding begins when we humans tell our stories ourselves; we who can turn the late night sage-dirt smell of Ojai into a potion (pg. 28); who have walked with John Lewis and Hosea Williams for civil rights in Selma (pg. 68); who have plunged hands into slippery viscous pink paint and created a horizon (pg. 34); who have filled your bowl with their perfected granola (pg. 98); who traveled to India on the heels of their iconic mentor (pg. 50); who have tread the boards of dark despair to produce theatrical inspiration (pg. 86); or helped to build the smallest post office (pg. 78); or touched toes under the sheets of Hotel El Roblar (pg. 44). We happy few, who daily sip the libation of beautiful Ojai days and are comforted by its quiet dark skies, bring you Fall Ojai Magazine, offering our community’s stories, done by hand.
Cover photo: John Fonteyn Photo by DJ Pierce instagram @thedjpierce
A BeGiNnEr’S gUiDE
tO TImE TRaVeL ...
story by JOHN FONTEYN photos by DJ PIERCE
Every year I fall deeply in love with some new facet of plants. And when I say deeply in love, I mean a fixation bordering on obsession — dropping it into dinner conversations, hijacking friends and waterboarding them with some fascinating (or not so fascinating) botanical trivia. This year, the object of my fevered devotion is hydrosols. Not essential oils.
That’s a whole other beast. Hydrosols are the delicate, floral, herbal, earthy, chi-fluffing distillate of plants — think of them as the whisper to the essential oil’s shout. Equal parts science experiment, medieval alchemy, and kitchen-based witchcraft.
Tom Robbins, author of Jitterbug Perfume, suggests that you could time-travel through scent — and I’m inclined to believe him. One huff of orange blossom hydrosol and I’m suddenly a barefoot kid, bats flying over my head, running
And my fevered devotion to hydrosols with its keys to memory portals
through the East End in the rosy glow of a late April pink moment. A spritz of rose, and I’m a marabout in a Marrakech courtyard, sipping mint tea, humming along with the Gnawa, swatting at bees, and giggling with Jinn. These hydrosols aren’t just water. They’re keys to memory, portals, bottled spirit. They let you take the lingering aromas of Ojai — the sage-covered hills, the Grand Avenue orchards, the scrappy artemisia — wherever you go. Hydrosols are time machines you can carry in your tote bag.
Making them is a glorious blend of carefully controlled chaos and magic. Picture this: my kitchen, part apothecary, part meth lab. On the stove, there’s a pot of boiling water holding orange blossoms, lavender sprigs, rose petals, or verbena leaves. An upside-down lid collects the rising steam, condensing and dripping distilled hydrosol into a bowl nestled in the center of the pot like some herbalist version of Breaking Bad. Over in the corner, a copper alembic hums quietly, its curving swan neck feeding a vapor trail through a network of tubing, all connected to a submersible fish tank pump. A flux capacitor snowman made of pennies on a ventilator.
Each plant yields something unique. Orange blossom hydrosol is euphoric and sunny, like liquid spring. Lavender is calming and clarifying, the scent equivalent to being wrapped in a cool linen sheet. Rose is pure seduction, soft and ancient and wild. And verbena? Sharp, green, and rising to the crown chakra like an alarm clock for your subconscious.
There’s an urgency to capturing the essences of each season. The summer days are longer and the nights are shorter, but still, I find myself staying up well past the Dodgers game and my bedtime, hovering over steaming pots and copper kettle. My kitchen becomes a sanctum of obsession: countless Ball jars carefully labeled with dates, processes, and plant varieties. The fantasy of buying a ridiculously large industrial refrigerator to store my hydrosol hoard starts to feel not only reasonable, but necessary. It’s all-consuming. Psychedelic waking dreams of conversations where Jacques Polge and Anne Flipo eau and awe after dipping their beaks in my latest potion, guessing at the ratio of resins to bark. There’s a sense of participating in something ancient. I think of the pagan roots of distillation, of Silk Road traders passing through incense-thick tents. Of weary travelers, Bedouins, explorers bending their heads into caves redolent of jasmine and neroli. They carried these vaporous treasures home to cover the scent of cabbage and camel, B.O., wet wool, and stewed meat. Bringing home the memory of a place to their wives, their mothers, or their altars. Arcana it was, arcana it remains.
My Ojai kitchen, with its recycled jars, copper tubes, and gallon jugs of distilled water, is not so different from those ancient places. The vapors wafting from my beakers are more lavender than frankincense, and my goose-necked copper pot might share counter space with a coffee grinder and a dish rack, but the essence is the same. This is witchcraft. This is perfume. This is prayer. Spraying yourself with these hydrosols? It gets your prana all hot and bothered. One spritz and suddenly you’re on third base and headed home. You don’t smell like heaven — you smell like the best parts of Earth. People stop and ask you what you’re wearing, and you get to say, “Oh, just a little orange blossom water I
made myself,” like some kind of coquettish botanical sorcerer.
So here’s your permission slip: Go make your own mischief from herbal moonshine. Pluck the blossoms before the fruit sets — some spells are worth more than any harvest. Buy full-grown lavender from the nursery, then cut it to pieces before it ever touches ground — magic often asks for sacrifice before it blooms. Volunteer to weed a stranger’s garden for a basket of geraniums, or charm your way into a grocery sack of rose petals. Get a big pot, a bowl, and a bag of ice. Or, if you’re feeling flush, splurge on a little copper still. Make a mess. Smell everything. Bottle the moment. Give it away.
Photos: instagram.com/thedjpierce
Christopher Noxon’s chromatic awakening has been in progress since inception — but in the wake of a tragedy, it cascaded out into horizons unearthed.
“I’ve always thought really visually,” Noxon said. “I loved to draw pictures, which my grandma used to call ‘busy pictures.’ So I would sit on the floor and draw maps with mountains and cities and little farms and cowboys and spaceships and all kinds of stuff.”
As an adult, having cultivated a background in print journalism — inspired in part by watching Lou Grant as a child — Noxon created three books of his own. In Good Trouble: Lessons from the Civil Rights Playbook, published in early 2019, Noxon illustrates the faces of the Civil Rights Movement, inspired by a trip to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. “I talked to people who’d been involved in the movement, drew them, and then drew the places that they were,” he said. “So it was kind of part reporting, part drawing, part meditation. I was trying to figure out ways to sort of get around the intellectual defenses. I feel like our ideology and our values can get sort of set, and we get kind of in a rut. … And for some reason, art and pictures have a way of sort of subverting that, getting around it and speaking to you in a kind of pre-logical way. … I’m a thinker, constantly processing, but I’m also a feeler. And as I get older, that seems to me, way more important.”
He said his first book, Rejuvenile: Kickball, Cartoons, Cupcakes, and the Reinvention of the American Grown-up, “was all about adults who act like kids. … I love to play, and I’ve never really been interested in capital A adulthood.
by MIMI WALKER
As above, so below, in living color.
Above: "Awha'y 3," acrylic and oil on canvas, 2023
Left: "Fairway Lane," oil on canvas, 2024
Christopher Noxon in his East End studio
"And painting is play, man.” (His second book, Plus One: A Novel, was released in 2015.)
On the last day of 2019, Noxon’s life changed forever. While he was on a holiday trip to Utah with his three children, his firstborn, son Charlie, died in a skiing accident. He was 20 years old.
Shortly thereafter came the COVID pandemic, and Noxon decided to relocate from Los Angeles to Ojai.
“I was … putting myself back together, kind of trying to figure out how to go on, and started painting,” said Noxon, whose paternal grandmother was painter Betty Lane of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. “Around the same time, my father had died, and left all of my grandma’s paintings, first to his wife, then she gave them to me,” Noxon explained. “So I have 600, 700 paintings from this woman who I idolized my whole life; they’re all in my garage. So she became my teacher — I didn’t go to art school. … I’ve been taking her pieces and bringing them in here, and then trying to learn how she did what she did, copying her composition, looking at how she’s applying paint, looking at her color sense, and trying to let her kind of guide me.”
Although Grandma Betty was “mythical,” yet “very practical” and “a little bit of a hard-ass,” Noxon admitted, she “was clearly channeling all kinds of stuff” in her artwork, too. When he let his imagination run wild on paper as a kid, “she took one of my pictures and stuck it up in her house. … That was a stamp of approval, and I realized I’m still doing the same thing — I’m making ‘busy pictures’ now.”
Apart from his grandmother, Noxon counts Fauvists — especially André Derain— David Hockney, filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, portrait artist Alice Neel, abstract pioneer Hilma af Klint, and landscape artist Charles Burchfield among his strongest artistic influences. He also cited
a trip to the Biennale Venice art fair in Italy two years ago, where he witnessed “an explosion of imagination and color and technique … there were illustrators and occultists and knitters, and they just sort of blew open the doors of who could play, and I got so excited. I just came home and I was like: ‘It’s time to get weird. Let’s go.’”
Using acrylics, oils, watercolors, and mixed media, he approaches painting in a decidedly unacademic way. “Every time I try to study color theory … the garage door in my brain just shuts down,” he said. “I can’t think of color academically.” Instead, he calls upon the greater mysteries that orchestrate our lives from beyond the earthly plane.
Early on, when Noxon finished a painting, he’d say: “‘I don’t know how that got made. I don’t know who made that. I didn’t know I could do that.’ And that’s the best feeling of all, just to be like, ‘Holy shit, where did that come from?’ That mystery is so great and exciting.”
Noxon’s career change was unexpected: “I was just trying to figure out how to do something that didn’t feel miserable,” he said. “And then it snuck up on me; I realized that I was bringing myself in a very non-conscious, non-deliberate way, and that self was churning and ruminating and working through all that stuff. And it showed up in the work.”
As a writer, he said, “I had to know from the beginning exactly what it was. … I had to work really hard to sound like myself. And when I’m making paintings, I don’t know who’s doing it. I don’t know where it’s coming from. I’m surprised constantly by what shows up. And to me, that’s a much more interesting way of making things. … I’m always trying to not paint what I see, but paint what it feels like.”
One could say Noxon’s colors teach the observer to feel, too. “I love pink, clearly, but a particular kind of pink, a sort of grapefruit sunset pink — it’s like an orangey pink,” Noxon said. “I started using it as the ground color. I’ve always got a bin of it going … and then putting it on as the base of every picture. I think it’s like an energy … it’s the force that binds everything together. I love that it peeks out from behind whatever I’m putting on top of it. … And what it does is create this kind of pulsating undercurrent over everything else I do. … There’s something just beyond the veil that’s pulsing, that has energy, that has life.”
Noxon quoted art critic Jerry Saltz, who said: “‘Art is not a thing, or a noun. Art is a verb. Art is something that does something to you.’ … Those colors make me feel something, and so I use them, just trusting that that feeling will take me to someplace interesting.”
It has also led to a new way of connecting with everyone around him — past, present, and ubiquitous.
Noxon spoke freely about his unending love for Charlie, who was a student at
Charlie and Christopher Noxon, Park City, Utah, 2019
“Lost Horizon,” acrylic & oil on canvas, 2024
Columbia University and spoke multiple languages, including Chinese — he even lived in China during his studies. “He and I were very aligned around imaginative play and world-building,” Noxon shared. “He loved to read. He was a big Star Wars kid, and before that, he was into Legos, and he was into trains as a little kid. And I feel like when I’m working, I’m kind of getting back into that place where we connected around building worlds and seeing the thing behind the thing, trying to connect with something bigger than us. … I feel like I’m finding ways of communicating with him and ancestors and spirits and people who aren’t around and imaginative places, and it’s just a way of getting out of the way.”
He elaborated on the intersection of grief and community: “I know that his sister and his brother and his mom and I will never be the same. … We all get a measure of this — I got it bad as the father of a young man who was right on the brink of an incredible life. … We don’t get a guarantee about how long we get to live. It’s coming for us all. … Before he died, when I was around people who had a disease, or who had lost someone who was really close to them, or had suffered real misfortune, I was uncomfortable and didn’t want to be around them. And now I want to be close to them. Now, I’m much more interested in talking to people about their profound losses. …
“Such a profound loss feels so bad that the first thing I think is it will never get better — it doesn’t get better. The idea that you will grow feels, on a very base, deep level, wrong. It is anathema to someone who’s in grief to think you’re going to be better off, because you’re never better off. You want your person back. At the same time, simultaneously, I know that my heart is bigger, that my imagination can go farther … he taught me so much in his life, and he’s teaching me more in death.”
He added: “I truly believe that I would do anything to have him back, and that it is the worst thing that has ever happened to me or my family, full stop. Also, I truly believe that his death changed my life 100% for the better … you know, you have to hold those two truths. The second truth is a lot harder to grapple with.”
As the anguish of such a soul’s parting could remain the great definer of life, Charlie’s love remains present as a teacher of presence. Noxon holds that love and moves through life with a palette of possibility, alongside his two younger children, making room for wonder to return in many forms and always looking up and beyond.
In his 50s, Noxon said, “I got this … crashcourse awakening into the fragility of life.” As for Charlie’s brother and sister, "they got it as young people, and I hope that they’re able to carry that growth, and what I’ve perceived as ... the cruelest gift that I got at midlife, and I get to now take with me through how ever many years I get left.”
The gift of Charlie now, he said, is to “let everything that he taught me speak through me, and not try to put it into a bench, foundation, or any just one thing. It’s everything ... everywhere ... all at once,” adding, after a beat, “he would have loved that movie.”
By finding a more cohesive way to be himself through painting, Noxon had a full-circle family moment in 2023 with an exhibition at Sullivan Goss art gallery in Santa Barbara, “Betty Lane & Christopher Noxon: From One Generation to the Next.”
Here in the valley, he’s become an Ojai Studio Artist and a board member of the Ojai Valley Museum. He also leads painting workshops at HELP of Ojai.
“[I] came up here at a time when I was super vulnerable and when you couldn’t really meet people,” Noxon said. “I love this place so much, and part of it is just the astonishment of having grown up in L.A., lived in Europe, lived back east, and never really feeling home.”
In surrendering to what Noxon said are “very, very fewer certainties,” each wonder and wound can be the compass points leading us home to ourselves.
“Grief is this big mean ruler,” Noxon elaborated. “In my brain, he’s a he, and he’s like a pharaoh, and he demands that you lay down and submit. And the moment you submit, if you lay there, supine ... the moment you surrender, he’s going to go off and do some other stuff, and then you can move around a little bit in your grief — but you can move around. There’s more room to move.”
Such candidness might widen the pomelo pathways for us all to move around in, to look up to the electric, cottony ethers, and dream — or perhaps, as Noxon illustrates, it’s everything, everywhere, all at once, in living color.
For more information, visit: christophernoxonart.com.
Yogi, the Studio dog
CORRAL CANYON RANCH
Make your dream of country living a reality on this 277+ acre ranch surrounded by the Los Padres National Forest. With a beautifully remodeled main house, caretaker’s house, bunkhouse, two guest houses, open barn, paddocks, fenced pastures, hay fields, arena, covered round pen and so much more, this unique property has everything you need to enjoy the tranquility of Ojai’s back country set against the stunning Sierra Madre Mountains in Cuyama Valley. 29443hwy33.com. $5,500,000
ROYAL OAKS
5 Bedrooms, Upscale Finishes Throughout, Media Room, Wine Cellar, Tasting Room, Gym/Massage Room, Pool & Spa, Putting Green, Well, Six-Car Garage, Bocce Court, Views, and So Much More. RoyalOaksRanchOjai.com. PRICE UPON REQUEST
ALMOND AVENUE
Four-bedroom Oak View home with gas fireplace, wood-burning stove, RV parking, two-car garage, covered patio, large closets, and large family room in walkable neighborhood . $919,000
RANCHO ROYALE
21-Acre Equestrian Estate with 8 Houses, 7 Barns, Hay & Equipment Barns, Entertainment Barn, 4 Arenas, 20 Corrals, Panel Walker, RV hookups, Archery Range, Mountain Views & More. RanchoRoyaleOjai.com. $7,890,000
ROSE VALLEY LAND
Create an off-grid, country retreat on 40 acres with mountain views, trails, and a natural spring in Rose Valley in the Los Padres National Forest. $1,200,000
RIVERSIDE DRIVE
Two Bedroom, Two Bathroom Manufactured Home + Outbuildings on Flat, Usable, .81-Acre Horse Property Close to Lake Casitas and Oak View Shops & Restaurants. $799,000
An Ojai local enjoys her staycation at Hotel El Roblar
Water cascades skyward as the man plunges into the perfectly aqua pool on a warm Wednesday June morning at Hotel El Roblar. Boisterous laughter fills the air as he comes up out of the water. His joy is infectious. I chuckle and share a smile with the woman who came with him.
“Oh, marvelous,” the man says as he twirls in the pool with a grin. We are the only people at the pool.
We — locals and visitors alike — are twirling together in this Valley vortex.
And then my matcha latte appears poolside.
An absolute Ojai moment.
When I arrived the day before, I threw the valet attendants for a loop when I walked up the curving pathway from Ojai Avenue pushing my wheeled suitcase. No car. Just a local walking in after my workday. They didn’t see me until I reached for the hotel’s front door and a young man rushed to open it. Leaving the heat of the day for the cool enclave of the lobby, I paused.
Dark leather, large river stones, and a taxidermy roadrunner greeting visitors from the stone hearth over the fireplace. We are all just visitors here. Ojai legends, icons, and myths appear in the mural encircling the room. Annie Besant, Edward Libbey, and a T. Rex enjoy a jaunt through Ojai. To the left is a niche bar, aptly called Snug, that is open to the non-guest public, with cocktails, and some mocktails — try the hibiscus ginger beer.
The lobby was quiet. It was midweek, and I was lucky enough to be one of the first guests. It was quiet and felt like a lodge nestled in a forest valley.
A brass cowboy hat on leather disguises the electronic key that unlocks the door to my understated room. Wood, natural fibers, and neutral colors make the patio ferns and blue sky outside pop. A black, retro telephone signals an Old World feel. I’m still wondering if the aged paper clip used on the pages of hotel information and menus in the room was deliberate.
by KIMBERLY RIVERS
After walking into the room, I first opened the large double doors leading out onto the tiled patio. Ojai’s post office tower waves from a different vantage point when viewed from across the curved red tiled roof of the hotel. I poured a sparkly beverage from the minibar, and reclined on the small settee outside. My brain and body welcomed the catnap.
In the bathroom, period tile in the bathroom and chrome fixtures complete the
lure of the deep tub. Hello, gorgeous! You and I will soak it up later. To repeat: It’s a deep tub. Any hotel can offer a white fluffy robe, but a green-striped cozy robe is at the ready here for a post-soak lounge.
The pool beckoned, but my workday was not over. I had to cover a local meeting at Ojai City Hall, so I put my shoes back on and walked over. Walking through Ojai is something all locals should do regularly. I wonder if visitors spend more time walking downtown than most of us locals.
After the meeting, at about 10:30 p.m., I walked back through town. Unfortunately, the hotel restaurant was shut for the night, so I missed dinner during my stay. The apricots, figs, and vinegar chips in the room complemented my late-night soak. There is nothing quite like an outdoor patio in downtown Ojai. All of Ojai gets quiet at about 10 p.m., so all I heard was the occasional car, and maybe some jazz from far away.
I slept with the patio doors open and woke up as downtown was stirring. I am normally a morning person and enjoy the ritual of waking up, and breaking the fast of sleep. Downtown is surprisingly quiet in the morning.
I planned to do a little work by the pool after breakfast and made my way downstairs. During my wandering I studied the eclectic artwork in the stairwells of the two-story section where the rooms are. Eric Goode, one of the four hotel owners, told me he collected the pieces throughout the hotel from various places, including estate sales at California Auctioneers in Casitas Springs. From antlers to mixed-media and painted-over vintage pieces, the art will amuse curious whimsy seekers.
Before breakfast I needed to return a work call, so I strolled the garden pathways. Past a pingpong table and sitting nooks, I discovered two ancient hotel visitors: a pair of large endangered Aldabra giant tortoises on loan from the Turtle Conservancy. I walked into the enclosure and sat on a stone step to make my phone call. One of the tortoises was either eavesdropping or napping close by.
Breakfast is included with the room: soft-boiled eggs, meats, fruit, quiche, nuts, cheese, and of course, coffee. Simple, delicious, uncontrived.
Business and breakfast were done. Now, the pool, where I was the lone guest. Comfort, joy, and cheerful touches, with a retro vibe.
I relished the heat as the sun rose, and the bright deep pink of the bougainvillea. It had been a strange week — local and global events — and it was otherworldly being in that space.
Plunging into the cool smooth water. Staying under. Blue sky above. Alone.
Quiet.
After my stay I came back for lunch and dinner. First, on a hot afternoon, in the shade sipping cold hibiscus tea from Ojai’s own Magic Hour Tea. Then, chop salad and steak. Medium rare, perfectly done. I thought I was finished. But the kind server suggested the carrot cake. The restaurant had barely been open a week and tales of the carrot cake were already being passed around. Oh, my heaven. Eat it. That is all I have to say about that.
Above: A graceful arched entrance welcomes guests. Left: The cool lobby exudes western charm. Photos: Gregory Goode
For dinner, I came back a week later with a friend to enjoy the Condor Bar. It was the first night the restaurant was officially open to non-hotel guests. Again, the design and layout of the indoor and outdoor space offers new downtown views and ways to be in our town. Viewing the Ojai Playhouse and post office tower through arches with Black Mountain in the background. We shared three items: a shrimp cocktail served with fresh handmade tortillas, a celery salad, and duck with a delicious
sauce. More tortillas were hidden inside a cloth towel that came with the duck, but I didn’t discover the tortillas until we had finished. We would have wiped up every drop of the sauce.
Desert was churros y chocolat con café. De nada. Perfecto.
Ojai is known for special experiences like an evening stroll under the arches after a sip of wine or whiskey as the pink moment blooms on the Topatopa Mountains. Both locals and visitors enjoy these moments. We get out into the natural open space that’s in our backyard, and enjoy the built environment in town. Sharing our home with visitors is part of the joy of living here.
Kimberly Rivers is managing editor and reporter for the Ojai Valley News and Ventura County Sun.
Hotel El Roblar: theroblar.com
Left: Poolside at the El Roblar
Photo: Kimberly Rivers
Above: The lounge-like lobby area has a homey atmosphere. Photos: Kimberly Rivers
Above: The hotel is located in the heart of downtown, close to the town’s many restaurants and amenities.
Below: The Snug Bar
Photos: Kimberly Rivers
“Notice everything. Open your eyes and truly see. Every aspect of existence is of equal value, worthy of notice, deserving of esteem.
Learn to truly listen with every fiber of your being.”
—Beatrice Wood
Iknew the legendary artist Beatrice Wood throughout my childhood in Ojai, but we became friends when I was 18. She was an enigmatic fixture in my early memories: always dressed flamboyantly in full skirts and peasant blouses, silver jewelry, hair coiled on her head, her eyes flashing with wit. I was born and raised on the campus of The Thacher School, only a few hundred yards from her home and studio on McAndrew Road in the valley’s East End. Beatrice had a crush on my grandfather. My father photographed her pottery and sculptures for her first brochure. In 1970,
INSPIReD bY OJai
For a Life in India
by STEPHEN P. HUYLER
I asked her for a summer job, and she hired me on the spot to garden her roses and cacti, and clean and organize her studio. But Beatrice’s remarkable mind and invitation to travel to India with her transformed my life.
My life’s journey is undeniably unique. I recount my unusual adventures, discoveries, and observations in my newly published memoir, Transformed by India: A Life. Beatrice’s influence upon me threads through each chapter. Her fascination with humanity’s endless diversity and creativity was infectious, engendering the entire trajectory of my career.
Above: Beatrice Wood as she dressed before going to India, 1958.
Photo: courtesy of Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts
Left: Jiddu Krishnamurti, Radha Rajagopal, and Beatrice Wood.Photo: courtesy of Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts
Right: Beatrice Wood served as Helene Huyler’s maid of honor at their outdoor wedding in Ojai’s mountains, 1973
Photo: Hal Boucher
Left page: Stephen Huyler was mentored closely by Beatrice Wood for the last 18 years of her life.
Photo: Marlene Wallace
Beatrice’s personal philosophy reflects that of her two close friends: Marcel Duchamp and Jiddu Krishnamurti. In her 20s, she became friends with Duchamp, already a name to be reckoned with in the art world early in the last century. Duchamp encouraged Beatrice’s artistic expression, coaching her to look beyond what was obvious to open her mind to possibilities outside the structured confines of her late Victorian upbringing. Together, they explored and tested the limits of human perception and categorization, challenging the accepted definitions of what is or is not art. Beatrice, Duchamp, and their friend, author Pierre Roché, are regarded as primary founders of the New York Dada Art Movement.
Beatrice told me: “Marcel taught me that art is entirely personal, in the eye of the beholder. Nothing is beyond the scope of creative expression. All is worthy of consideration if we but look. Marcel taught me to open my mind.”
Throughout her century-long life, Beatrice constantly challenged preconceptions. Not long after she met Duchamp, she encountered the teachings of Krishnamurti. As a boy, Krishnaji had been discovered by leading theosophists in Madras, India, and heralded as an arhat, the highest evolution of humanity, reborn to transform humanity. The boy’s education was carefully honed for more than a decade until, in 1929, Krishnamurti renounced his exalted position as World Teacher, stating, “Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path, by any religion, by any sect.” Until his death 60 years later, Krishnamurti confronted structured religions by espousing that there is no single right way, no supreme doctrine. Each human being must find their own inspiration, their own divine direction.
The personal philosophies of these two great men, Duchamp and Krishnamurti, remained integral to Beatrice’s choices in life. In 1948, she moved to Ojai and purchased a lot opposite Krishnamurti’s home on McAndrew Road. There, she constructed a cinder block house, studio, and showroom. Three years later, I was born just up the road and she drew me slowly into her circle.
People in Ojai often regard Beatrice as some sort of Earth Mother, a reputation she found offensive. She was renowned
for her wicked sense of humor, and online sites are devoted to her witty, often pithy sayings. Although I appreciated Beatrice’s offbeat humor more than anyone, her remarkable intelligence and wisdom affected me even more. I’ve never known anyone better educated or more open-minded. She was incredibly well-read, devouring fiction and nonfiction alike, subscribing to 77 periodicals that ranged from art magazines to the
publications of political think tanks. She read them all cover-to-cover and was engagingly conversant in any subject her many visitors cared to discuss. Nothing was off the table: global and local politics, world religions and philosophies, ethics, sexual conduct and morality, social and economic diversity, cults, fashion, art, architecture, craftsmanship, natural science, environmental issues, and so much more. Every moment I spent with
Beatrice was scintillating. How could I not be influenced by her?
Shortly after I began working for Beatrice, I fell in love with Helene Wheeler, the girl who was to become my wife. Beatrice adored Hi, as I call her, and served as our “maid of dishonor” (her term) when we were married in a wild oak meadow on The Thacher School campus in 1973. Our marriage remains the single most important foundation of
my life. Our friendship with and mentorship by Beatrice is the second, paralleled only by the universe she introduced me to: 54 years documenting India’s people, cultures, and arts.
I admit I spent more time enthralled by Beatrice’s stories than working in her garden and studio. She was a captivating raconteuse. Each of Beatrice’s tales of growing up in New York and Paris and befriending or being befriended by many
of the leading artists and thinkers of the early 20th century riveted me. But when she began to talk about her perceptions of foreign cultures and arts, I was enraptured. Although Beatrice called me her “Egghead,” I am naturally a lateral thinker, interested in every facet of existence. That broad compass made it difficult for me to focus on classes at school, and before my mentorship from Beatrice, I had never been a good student. She had
a rare capacity to assess an individual’s talents and scope correctly. She suggested that I might find the inspiration and focus to create a meaningful career by traveling to and learning about the extraordinary diversity of one multifaceted region, India. When she invited me to travel with her around India the next year, I returned to my university to take courses as preparation. Learning about India significantly changed my performance as a student. I had always been a good writer, but I began to excel as a young scholar.
Left page: This woman paints a fresh, new kolam design each day of the year on a village street in Tamil Nadu, 2003.
Photos: Stephen P. Huyler
Above: A village woman in Puri District, Odisha, paints her wall with sacred designs, 1994.
Left: A Brahmin priest lights a ritual fire to invoke the Goddess Chandi worshipped within a sari-dressed tree, 1998.
My life has never been the same since. Beatrice had traveled twice in India during the previous decade, both at the invitation of her good friend, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, right hand of Mahatma Gandhi and founder of most of India’s 20th century crafts cooperatives. During Beatrice’s two trips, she had been so captivated by the Indian people and their arts that she began wearing handwoven saris exclusively. Beatrice rightfully concluded that India’s folk arts and crafts needed encouragement and fine documentation. Rapid industrialization and economic improvement were the primary focus of that newly independent nation. Little scholarship existed about India’s non-classical traditional arts. As she came to understand my fascination with objects made by hand, Beatrice suggested I might carve out a career in India by conducting a cross-cultural survey of Indian craftsmanship.
In 1971, when I was 19, I traveled to India solo overland by local transportation from Paris, crossing the border into the Punjab on my 20th birthday. Beatrice flew into Delhi shortly after I arrived, and we traveled together intermittently over the next seven months. By introducing me to Kamaladevi and other leaders of India’s crafts movement, Beatrice opened doors for me into experiences few others have had.
Through her inspiration and the guidance of others, I have spent my life traveling the length and breadth of India, documenting the arts and crafts of almost every district in the subcontinent. Beatrice taught me to notice and record everything — recognizing that nothing is valueless. Something is worthwhile if it is important to the person who made it or uses it. I brought a 35mm camera with me on my first trip and, since then, have improved my photographic skills and gained a reputation as a fine photographer. Over the past half-century, I have created a visual archive of some 250,000 cataloged images of India, many of which are the only records of selected subcultures. From the moment I first arrived in South Asia, the Indian people have treated me with remarkable kindness, inviting me into their homes and sharing their meals with me. Sometimes, those invitations came through Beatrice or the friends she introduced me to, but more
often, strangers opened their lives and hearts to me. During that trip and in subsequent ones each year, I realized that this open generosity underlies much of Indian civilization. If I allow myself to trust and be open to whatever I experience, each person I meet shares insights into themselves, their families, and their communities. Their stories and the characteristics they revealed gradually began to infuse my documentation of art with personal anecdotes and individual identities.
And so, through Beatrice Wood, I found my true vocation: building bridges of communication and understanding between the people of India and the rest of the world. To achieve that goal, I have had the good fortune of publishing seven acclaimed books and curating several dozen major museum exhibitions of Indian art. In each, I try to allow the stories of individuals, poor and wealthy, young and old, north and south, in deserts and jungles, urban and rural, to anchor and give context to the art. Although I am male, most of my mentors have been women, and I am a determined feminist. Consequently, my books feature stories of women’s identity and empowerment and how they create art to enhance and bring beauty into their lives.
In this, my 73rd year, Pippa Rann, a publisher in Cambridge, England, has
issued my memoir of these decades in India. On the book’s release in India last January, I was thrilled to find that young Indian adults are heralding it for its insights into the underlying values of their culture. My book is as much an invocation to the people I have met, the individuals from every corner of that complex subcontinent who have shared their lives with me, as it is my unusual story. I try not to romanticize India or hide its injustices or inequities; when considering these failings, I emphasize how strength and integrity empower individuals throughout the country to overcome adversity.
My life was anchored in my formative years growing up in Ojai, this small rural town on the edge of Los Padres National Forest, in a valley with a larger population of citrus trees than humans. I was nurtured here, and my interests in global cultures, particularly India, were fostered by growing up at Thacher, hearing lectures at Krotona, finding books at Bart’s and in the library, listening to Krishnamurti, and most important, being mentored by Beatrice. Although a small, quiet community, we have always been interested in the broader world. That is the pulse of Ojai: content through living here but open to the world.
Stephen shares his book, Daughters of India, with one of the women profiled in it. Mumbai slum, 2009
Photo: Stephen P. Huyler
Huyler has made it his life’s mission to give voice and recognition to unacknowledged women in India. 2009
Below: Priest, Baroda, Gujarat, 1992
Stephen Huyler’s captivating memoir of 52 years of travel in India has just been released with a Foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Photos: Stephen P. Huyler
Rick’s handcrafting process involves steaming and blocking a hat, something he learned in the dream that changed his life by inviting him into hatmaking.
Photo: Joshua Blunts Bichayda
A long road led Ricardo (Rick) De Leon to the Santa Paula Main Street space where he makes custom hats today. The self-described soul healer finally feels authentic and fulfilled, offering hats as medicine and using everything he learned along the way.
“We don’t sell hats; we sell confidence,” he said. “My hats bring in a lot of positive energy for musicians and artists. People going through depression come in our door not feeling well, and they go out smiling with their custom hat. I use my intuition and feel what the customer’s going through at that moment. I can help them out and know what they need to feel better.”
HAs a lifelong “artist at heart,” Rick felt destined for a creative life and even received a Kansas City Art Institute scholarship, which he turned down to stay close to home.
“Being Hispanic and being near your family is encrypted in you,” said Rick, co-owner with his wife, Jessica, of E&D Hats, named for their children, Ellie and David.
Rick entered a teaching program during the recession, but felt discouraged by layoffs at the time, so he shifted to business, ultimately ending up in real estate.
“That wasn’t me,” he said. “Then I spent 13 years in the car business, and I liked interacting with humans. I climbed the
eALiNG
HaTs
And the nocturnal dream of Ricardo De Leon
by ERIN LABELLE
ladder fast, but I knew there was more for me than just being a salesperson.”
After resigning three years ago, Rick took time off to get clear on his next step, and a friend introduced him to meditation.
“Meditation helped me relax and get rid of anxiety,” he said. “It helped me slow down and pay attention to what life was trying to show me. I realized I’d been trying to make the owners and my bosses happy, but not myself. We’re always told to ‘follow your dreams,’ but we follow the money, because we think our dreams are to make a lot of money, but that’s the wrong dream.” Then, at age 37, Rick had a powerful nocturnal dream that changed the course of his life.
“Ninety percent of what I now know came from that dream,” he said. “It was very real, and I could almost feel and smell everything. I was making the hats, and it was like I was living the life of someone else. When I woke up, I told my wife I knew how to do it, like it had been downloaded. Hat-making just came to me.”
When Rick was steaming a hat in the dream, he could feel his hands getting hot. He remembers wondering what was happening: “I was stretching it on the wood block using primitive tools to
Rick handcrafts a unique piece for a customer who ordered the hat for a loved one's memorial service. Photo: Joshua Blunts Bichayda
create the hat shape. The essential steps to make hats were taught to me in my dream. The rest I learned in my life by watching my mom and grandmother sew. Everything I do is self-taught. When I sew, I sew with my grandmother’s hands. It’s always emotional.”
Around the same time, Rick helped Jessica launch a mobile boutique, and she began selling clothing and hats at events and festivals. They were surprised when the hat he made for her generated hundreds of orders.
“I bought and customized a generic hat,”
he said. “I personalized it for the outfit she was wearing with feathers, ribbons, and colorful velvets. It was something that hadn’t been seen in California. We had orders, and at that moment, I realized we were going to do each hat one way. They were all going to be one-of-akind.”
Rick began looking for hatmaking tools, but stores weren’t selling what he’d seen in his dream. When he researched auctions, it became clear the equipment was from the early 1800s.
“I needed primitive wood hat blocks and
tools,” he said.
“I started bidding and buying everything I could, because I recognized it all, and I just wanted to practice.
When I got them, I felt like I’d owned the tools for a while, like I’d already met them. Because this knowledge was given to me at the time I needed to know what to do with my life, I think my ancestors did something like this in the past, or it could be from a past life.”
Before stepping away from the car business, Rick remembers a woman in San Diego comparing him to a stone being polished. She told him he had strong energy, and he’d soon know his gift.
“At that moment, I didn’t know what to make of it, because I didn’t understand energy,” he said. “I got connected by speaking to my grandfather in a dream. He was able to communicate that he had a son no one had ever met, and I was able to find his son.”
By reaching out to older relatives in Mexico, feeling they might know his grandfather’s secret, Rick located his mystery relative in North Carolina.
E&D’s
Below
“He was on the other side of the country, but it was easy, because it was a very clear message and my grandfather showed me a picture,” Rick said. “His son was almost identical to him. My mother had grown up with her half brother and never knew they were related. She was able to talk to him for the last few years of his life. It was very healing.”
The encounter with his deceased grandfather felt like an initiation for Rick, opening his energy and awakening his Psi abilities. Hats became the vehicle
to connect with a person and tune into a particular vibration, often opening a channel.
“Since that happened, I’ve had customers sitting here and all of a sudden a message comes through,” Rick said. “I kept pushing it away, but it kept coming back, so I wrote it down on paper and put it in front of them to see if it held meaning, and some people cried.”
Rick’s parents accept this part of their son, having known about his abilities since childhood. “Up to 8 years old, they thought I was just being a kid, but a trip to Mexico changed this when an older lady came up to my mom at the beach and told her I had a gift, and I could see people from the other side,” Rick said. “I used to think this was anxiety before I found out it’s the other side trying to communicate. It was coming through as energy and someone talking in my ear. I was worried, but then I actually started getting symbolic messages. A medium helped me understand. This is like coming out of the closet, like being gay, because I’m a Catholic.”
Rick has developed a following in the Ojai Valley over the past three years, and he’s also collected 5,000 fans through his social media accounts. He’s using his creativity to liberate people so they can fully experience life, and people are responding.
“My hats are a protection of your crown and a shield against all obstacles in life. You can walk with your head high and feel safe and comfortable,” he said. “I just did a wedding in Upper Ojai. The groom went through a very traumatic moment in his life at the Borderline [Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks] when the shooting happened. I made hats for all his guests, and some had never worn a cowboy hat. It rained throughout the whole wedding, so they danced in the rain. The bride and groom are part of a nonprofit that helps veterans heal PTSD by working with horses.”
The groom, Fernan Diamse, felt comfortable the minute he met Rick and wanted his mobile hat bar at his May 3 wedding.
“I’m a therapist at Ventura College, so talking to people is part of my livelihood,” said Fernan, who served as a military combat medic. “I heard a calm kindness, and Rick makes you feel so welcome in his shop. I work with Veterans through Reins of H.O.P.E. offering equine psychotherapy. A veteran kept coming to volunteer, and he met Rick and got a custom that I thought was really cool. One of my gifts to my bride was a custom hat.
"Rick was recovering from surgery when he did my wedding. We were expecting 150 guests, and 238 showed up. Rick accommodated them all. For me, it was more than just a hat. It was the flow of energy, and the kindness he gave to my wedding. I didn’t know it, but he’d just gotten a whole bunch of equipment stolen when he was packing his trailer, but he showed up and made hats.”
E&D Hats offers the largest hat bar on the West Coast, according to Rick, who describes the experience as “‘Build-ABear for adults.’ We get to customize a hat from color to shaping to fitting to accessories. It’s completely unique to you. We have healing pieces with crystals, so fire keepers and Chumash elders come through. There’s an LED sign in our front window that says, ‘You’re Meant to Be Here,’ and that’s what people realize when they experience our shop.”
Left: When a customer requested a Miami Dolphins themed hat for her husband’s birthday gift, Rick made it happen.
Photo: Joshua Blunts Bichayda
heat-shaped hat is a signature piece intended to symbolize love for life and self worth. Photo: Joshua Blunts Bichayda
left: Fernan Diamse gave his bride, Sam Balcezak, a custom E&D hat as a wedding gift, and the couple hired Rick to make hats for their guests from his mobile hat bar at their recent Upper Ojai wedding. Photo: Christian Chavez
Rick does much of his creative work in front of the hat wall at the E&D Hat Bar, a display showcasing many of their crafted pieces.
Photo: Joshua Blunts Bichayda
My full-circle moment in the Civil Rights Movement
by LANNY KAUFER
“Two Minute Warning.” Hosea Williams and John Lewis meet the Alabama State Troopers on Edmund Pettus Bridge. Spider Martin/Briscoe Center for American History
THE MARCH CONTINUES THE MARCH CONTINUES THE MARCH CONTINUES
In March 2025 I experienced my life coming full circle when my wife, Rondia, and I traveled to Montgomery and Selma, Alabama, for the combined 60-year anniversary celebration of the 1965 SCOPE Project and the Selma March of the same year.
Looking back, I remember well the coming-of-age event that shattered my youthful innocence and introduced me to the grim realities of adulthood. I was 16 years old, playing basketball in a high school PE class, when the principal announced over the loudspeaker that President John F.
Kennedy was trying to do.
My opportunity arrived in the early spring of 1965 when, as a freshman at UC Santa Barbara, I joined the SCOPE (Summer Community Organization and Political Education) Project, a voting rights campaign scheduled for that summer. SCOPE was created by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference to address systemic racial barriers to voting across the South. As fate would have it, while planning for the SCOPE Project was underway at SCLC headquarters in Atlanta, and our UCSB SCOPE chapter was raising funds and recruiting members, Selma happened. The murder of a young, unarmed civil rights activist named Jimmie Lee Jackson by an Alabama state trooper at a peaceful voting rights march in February 1965 captured King’s attention and triggered the march from Selma to the state Capitol in Montgomery.
the seasoned veterans of SCLC and the impatient young activists of SNCC who had been doing vital grassroots organizing in Selma. Over time, as Lewis became an outspoken and nationally known U.S. congressman and a leading voice of the Civil Rights Movement, he became the face of the Selma March. To set the record straight, at the SCOPE reunion in Montgomery in the days before we went to Selma for the anniversary of the march, Williams’ daughter, Barbara Williams Emerson, gave a presentation on her father titled “That Other Guy on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.”
Kennedy had been assassinated. No, that was not the first time I became aware that horrible things happen to countries and their citizens. Thanks to a privileged life up to that point — compared to most people on Earth — I just didn’t realize they could happen to me and my country.
Suddenly, the political turmoil of the 1960s became personal to this sheltered teenager, compared with the reports on current events I’d been writing for social studies classes about the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War with Russia, a war that, by then, included the growing conflict in Vietnam. Reading Gandhi’s autobiography for a term paper and learning his philosophy of nonviolence sealed the deal. I was ready to make a difference, ready to help make the world a more just and peaceful place, as I believed
King assigned the leadership and organization of the Selma March to the same trusted aide he’d recently appointed to lead the SCOPE Project, the Rev. Hosea Williams, a man he called “my field lieutenant.”
Over his long career with King, Williams was jailed 125 times, shed blood in 20 states, and marched with 37 martyrs who gave their lives for the movement, including King himself. On March 7, 1965, Williams led the first march across the bridge over the Alabama River alongside a young John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
At the start of the Selma March, thanks to centuries of suppression, only 156 of 15,000 eligible Black people in Selma
King invited Lewis to join Williams at the head of the march in an effort to heal a rift developing between
Lanny participating in one of many voting rights demonstrations organized by UCSB SCOPE chapter at Sussex County Courthouse in July 1965. Photo supplied
Voting rights march en route to courthouse in Sussex County, Virginia, organized by UCSB SCOPE chapter: July 1965. Photo supplied
Hosea Williams and John Lewis lead the marchers over the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Photo: Spider Martin/Briscoe Center for American History
were registered to vote. That is not a misprint. The march was intended for one purpose, to correct such a gross disparity. Instead, on the day now known as “Bloody Sunday,” the brutal beating and tear-gassing of the first marchers by Alabama state troopers shocked the world and galvanized the Civil Rights Movement. Finally, with the help of federal troops sent by President Lyndon B. Johnson, the marchers, by then 25,000 strong, reached the Capitol on March 24. (Ironically, in another 60-year full-circle moment, the deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles in June of this year marked the first time since 1965 that a
president sent federal troops to a state over the objection of its governor.)
The Selma March also galvanized Johnson to ask Congress for a Voting Rights Act to strengthen the 1964 Civil Rights Act initiated by Kennedy in 1963. With the enactment of the VRA expected in June, the SCOPE Project’s mission was to use the new federal law to swiftly increase Black voter registration in the South. Not surprisingly, though, it took until Aug. 7 for Congress to iron out the details and pass the VRA.
In the meantime, the SCOPE Project began as scheduled on June 14 with a weeklong orientation in Atlanta. We
heard inspiring speeches by King, Bayard Rustin (organizer of the 1963 March on Washington), future U.S. Congressman and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Andrew Young, and many other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. Our SCOPE training included learning about the culture of African American communities in the South, organization strategies, local political structures, and the voting restrictions they enforced. We practiced door-to-door voter registration in the Black neighborhoods of Atlanta.
The essential core of our training was nonviolence, specifically the use of nonviolent direct action for social change. We
Lanny Kaufer and UCSB SCOPE volunteers prepare to leave for Atlanta for SCOPE orientation: June 13, 1965. Photo courtesy of Santa Barbara News-Press
learned the philosophy, made a commitment to it, and practiced strategies for implementing it. We engaged in role-playing exercises to test how we would respond to the threats and violence that the opposition might — and predictably did — use against us. And we were given the “weapons” of our nonviolent arsenal: freedom songs. Singing songs together like the well-known “We Shall Overcome” and others adapted from Black spirituals created a common ground and a shared resolve between our cadre of 300 white college students and our Black hosts in towns across 90 counties in six Southern states.
My UCSB chapter was assigned to rural Sussex County in Southern Virginia. A little disappointed at first that we weren’t headed for the Deep South, we realized later what a strategic move this was. Waverly, the small town where I spent the summer, was home to Garland Gray, the county’s representative in the Virginia Senate from 1948 to 1972, during an era when Democrats in the South were the party of segregation and racial discrimination. Not only was he
the head of the Democratic Caucus, but he also enthusiastically chaired the Gray Commission tasked with leading Virginia’s infamous “Massive Resistance” to the Supreme Court’s 1954-55 Brown v. Board of Education decisions banning racial segregation in all U.S. public schools.
On top of that political influence, Gray was president of the local bank and owned the two largest businesses in the county: peanut farming and the only lumber company in an area dominated by pine forest. The majority of Black
residents worked for him and many lived in his employee housing. Those who could afford to, banked with him. You would have to go back to a feudal society in Old England to find a more powerful lord over his fiefdom. Most African Americans in the county were afraid to challenge the system and justifiably wary of being seen with “outside agitators” from California and our supervisor, Herbert Coulton, the SCLC field secretary for Southern Virginia.
Fortunately for the success of our project, the local Black teens were exceptions to the status quo. They were the first to greet us when we arrived, and served as our ever-present companions for the summer. Eager to bring King’s movement to their little county, they quickly learned our freedom songs, held a spontaneous march around their neighborhood, and
Above: View of Edmund Pettus Bridge as SCOPE50 group begins to march: March 8, 2025. Photo supplied
Left: Lanny Kaufer and his wife, Rondia, SCOPE50 pre-march: March 8, 2025. Photo supplied
invited their parents to our first community meeting. Lodging was provided by Black families not beholden to Gray. Work and meeting space was provided by local Black churches. All of this occurred within a defined section of Waverly on “the other side of the tracks.” In fact, a railroad spur to the sawmill went right through many front yards, just 10 to 20 feet from the houses.
Our main activities were walking doorto-door to spread the gospel of voting, starting an improvement association like the one King created in Montgomery during the bus boycott, and trying to get the registrar to expand voter registration beyond six hours on the first Monday of the month. We tried every nonviolent strategy to convince him. We wrote multiple letters, filed a formal charge of
voting rights violations, and held multiple demonstrations and marches. We brought 150 would-be voters to the courthouse on the first Monday in July in an attempt to prove that one day was not enough time for them to pay their poll tax and register. All to no avail.
Finally, on Aug. 6, Johnson signed the VRA. Since we were closer to Washington, D.C., than any other SCOPE chapter, we immediately drove to the Justice Department, which at that time was under the direction of Robert F. Kennedy Sr. We met with his staff and lodged a complaint against the registrar. One phone call from Washington was all it took to open up the hours and eliminate the poll tax requirement.
When I visited Waverly again in 1988, I witnessed the effects of King’s brilliant community organization and voter registration strategy. For the first time, Black people were police officers and members of the city councils and county board of supervisors. The wife of one of my lodging hosts had become the first Black magistrate in the court system. The Sussex County Improvement Association was going strong and still is to this day.
The most satisfying result for me occurred just after we left in September 1965. Eleven years after the Brown decision, Horace Lee Jones, the leader of the youth contingent we’d worked with all summer, walked a few blocks to the local whites-only public high school — in Gray’s hometown, no less — and asked to attend. He was tired of the long bus ride to the dilapidated K-12 Black school way out in the pine forest. Arrested for refusing to leave, he was represented by a young civil rights attorney named Douglas Wilder, who won the high-profile case and parlayed that victory into a political career. In 1990, Wilder was elected the first African American governor of Virginia.
Luckily, our SCOPE chapter came home unharmed, although we had some close calls. After refusing to serve some of our members who arrived in a mixed-race group with local teens, a café owner closed her restaurant for good the next day and put up a vulgar and offensive sign outside the building. Another time, a few of us in a mixed-race group, including me, tried to wash our clothes in the only laundromat in town. The owner arrived and held us prisoners while he washed out all the machines with Lysol and threatened us with bodily harm. In a more serious incident, locals tried to run two SCOPE workers off the road one night in a high-speed chase while pointing a shotgun at them. We pressed charges that resulted in a trial. The judge threw out the case, even though the offenders admitted it was them, because our people could not state the exact year, make, and model of the truck that chased them.
In 2015, the remaining SCOPE veterans held a reunion in Atlanta, home of SCLC. Out of that gathering sprang SCOPE50 (scope50.org), dedicated to carrying on voter registration work and preserving our members’ oral histories. This
year, under the leadership of SCOPE50 president the Rev. John Reynolds, we planned our 60-year reunion in Alabama to coincide with the 60-year celebration of the Selma March. One of our board members, Richard Smiley, was on the original march as a teenager. In an ironic turn of events, Reynolds arranged for an Alabama state trooper escort for our bus from Montgomery to Selma.
My full-circle moment came while we were visiting historical sites in downtown Montgomery during our reunion. As we approached the Alabama state Capitol building where the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery March had ended, we came upon a spirited 2025 version of a rally for voter equality on the Capitol steps. Titled “Reimagining Democracy: A Call to Action,” the demonstration was organized by a youthful Black coalition of civil rights groups. One of their T-shirts read, “The March Continues: Bridging the Past to the Present.” Those words encapsulated exactly what I was feeling at that moment.
Rondia had her own full-circle moment at the Rosa Parks Museum when she sat next to a sculpture commemorating the day Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus. That day, Dec. 1, 1955, is the day Rondia was born.
Rondia Kaufer seated next to sculpture of Rosa Parks at Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. Rondia’s birthday is Dec. 1, 1955, the day Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat: March 7, 2025. Photo supplied
Local groups rally for voting rights on steps of the Alabama State Capitol, Montgomery, Alabama: March 7, 2025. Photo supplied
1417 FOOTHILL ROAD
Perched on a knoll in an exclusive location, this Modern Ranch Revival boasts truly breathtaking and dramatic panoramic views. The fully renovated 4 bed, 3 bath home on 1.17 acres features a lap pool, private guest wing, and luxury finishes throughout — offering seamless indoor-outdoor living at its finest. $4,495,000
995 S. LA LUNA AVENUE
3 bed, 2 bath, 1940s Farmhouse on an inviting acre with room to grow. Planted with mature fruit and olive trees, the property offers a blend of shade, greenery, and open space. Inside, enjoy vintage tile and cabinetry, a large country kitchen, and a floor plan that flows easily into the family
1454 S. LA LUNA AVENUE
Experience luxury and privacy in this 3 bed, 2.5 bath Spanish Contemporary tucked at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac. Designed for seamless indoor-outdoor living, it features vaulted ceilings, light wood floors, and a gourmet kitchen. The backyard is truly one-ofa-kind, with a stunning pool and outdoor living spaces perfect for entertaining. Includes a detached three-car garage — a rare find in today’s market. $1,850,000
310 N. POLI STREET
Tucked away on a quiet street in Ojai’s favorite magical and charming Meiners Oaks community, this 3 bed, 1.5 bath home blends mid-century character with everyday comfort. Features include a bright living room, eat-in kitchen with cedar ceilings, and a fully fenced, private yard. Shaded by a large oak tree, the outdoor spaces are ideal for relaxing, entertaining, and embracing the Ojai lifestyle. $929,000
518 S. VENTURA STREET
This 3 bed, 3 bath Contemporary Spanish sits on over half an acre within walking distance to downtown Ojai. Featuring Saltillo tile accents, a wood-burning fireplace, oversized windows, and a deep backyard with room to garden or expand, this home offers both charm and potential. Enjoy Topa Topa Mountain views from a very private yard, plus a detached studio for hobbies. An excellent value for the size, location, and
TeresaRooney@bhhscal.com DRE: 05994439
by
Photo
Perry Van Houten
Webb Wilcox was 22 years old when he came to Ojai from Illinois to drive the stagecoach at Wheeler’s Hot Springs. It was 1903, and two years later Wilcox married Etta Blumberg, the daughter of Wheeler Blumberg, founder of the popular resort in Matilija Canyon. Wheeler Blumberg homesteaded the property and opened the resort in 1891, offering a cement swimming bath filled with hot sulphur water.
That was the year of the massive Wheeler Springs Fire, which started at the resort when a butane tank burst. The blaze blackened 25,000 acres, but firefighters somehow managed to save the resort. Reportedly, even the post office was spared from the flames. “Firefighters succeeded in saving every building at Wheeler’s and in two other well-known resorts,” read a photo caption in the Sept. 24, 1948 edition of The Ojai newspaper (later the Ojai Valley News).
For years, visitors to Los Padres National Forest enjoyed driving past and taking photographs of Wilcox’s old postal shack and the lodge next door, which became “The Wheel” roadhouse.
But on Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017, disaster struck again at Wheeler Springs. That evening, the Thomas Fire, which had erupted two nights earlier between Ojai and Santa Paula, burned up and around the mountains surrounding the city of Ojai. The USA’s Smallest Post Office and The Wheel were lost in the blaze.
A Caltrans crew driving south on SR-33 through the Wheeler Springs area, clearing a path for fire vehicles, captured video of both structures as they burned to the ground. The tiny post office, which had greeted forest visitors for more than 80 years, was gone.
THE USA’S SMALLEST POST OFFICE
by PERRY VAN HOUTEN
Following Wheeler Blumberg’s death in 1907 (and a name change from “Wheeler’s” to “Wheeler”), Wilcox ran the resort until 1935, when he established the Wilcox Cottages, essentially a motel on the other side of the road. Wilcox also built a post office, a tiny 6-by-7-foot structure adjacent to the handful of cottages. It served approximately 80 families until it was decommissioned in 1962 due to a lack of business. The post office gained national fame in 1948, when it was listed in Ripley’s Believe It or Not! as “The USA’s Smallest Post Office.”
Gone, but not forgotten.
On June 15, 2024, I was covering a story for the Ojai Valley News at the Wheeler Gorge Visitor Center, a small nature center less than 2 miles north of Wheeler Springs operated by the nonprofit Los Padres Forest Association. David Rich, a retired U.S. Navy Seabee, was leading a handful of volunteers making improvements at the center — painting the exterior, installing a countertop, and bringing running water into the kitchen for the first time in the facility’s history.
On the wall, to the left of the front door, hung a historic photo of the beloved post office and the story of its fiery end.
“You should get David to build an exact replica and put it here,” I suggested half-jokingly to Terry Wright, an LPFA volunteer and board member working that day at the Visitor Center.
“The Wheel” roadhouse and the post office burn in the 2017 Thomas Fire. Photo courtesy of Los Padres National Forest
Measuring only 6 feet by 7 feet, the original Wheeler Springs Post Office.
Photo courtesy of Ojai Valley Museum
Webb and Etta (Blumberg) Wilcox on their wedding day in 1905
Photo courtesy of Jay Cortner family
We looked at each other and practically saw light bulbs appear over each other’s heads.
Wright took the idea to the LPFA Board of Directors, which gave the green light. The very small piece of Los Padres history would have a new home at Wheeler Gorge, though it would not be a functioning post office like its predecessor. But before fundraising for construction materials could begin, the project needed approval from the U.S. Forest Service, which owns the property. In his approval letter sent on Jan. 14, 2025, Flemming Bertlesen, acting Ojai District ranger, told the LPFA: “Thank you for your dedication and commitment to restoring our local treasures.” To raise money for lumber, three windows, a door, and the red and white paint, the LPFA launched a fundraising campaign on the organization’s website, with a goal of $5,000.
Along with many individual donations, including gifts from local elected officials, community leaders, and ordinary citizens, the Rotary Club of Ojai West awarded the LPFA a $1,000 grant for the project.
Construction began on Feb. 28, with the placement of six paving stones to serve as a foundation. That morning, Rich, Wright, and I were joined by Andrew Jilani, assistant recreation officer with the Ojai Ranger District, who got his first look at the post office’s future location. Framing started two weekends later. Most of the lumber was purchased locally at Ojai Lumber Co., which delivered the materials to the worksite free of charge.
A total of 26 volunteers organized by Rich turned out during the two months of weekend construction. Along with Rich, Monty Laurie worked every day of construction. Glenn Brunelle, Kaitlin Bella, Katie Fry, and Leticia and Krystal Lopez were also regulars.
For the rebuild, Rich had no blueprints or plans to refer to, only historic photos. He made drawings, drew up a list of materials, and on Feb. 22 announced a rough timeline for construction. The plan was to unveil the post office during the Wheeler Gorge Visitor Center’s annual open house on May 3. That left all of two months to finish the job.
Two of five signs on sign maker David Sinclair’s work bench.
Photo courtesy of David Sinclair/Alojai Creations
Left: Volunteers Kaitlyn Bella and Mike Hanson work on the interior while, below: from left, David Rich, Glenn Brunelle and Monty Laurie install signs. Photos by Perry Van Houten
During the two months of construction on the USA’s Smallest Post Office, these 26 individuals volunteered their time and talents, using hammers, saws and paintbrushes to build a near-exact replica of the historic structure.
David Rich, Monty Laurie, Glenn Brunelle, Leticia Lopez, Krystal Lopez, Tom Carr, Lewis Brown, Mike Hanson, Joe Ruge, Joe Ruge Jr., Kaitlin Bella, Tien Kieu, Richard Mata, Joseph Hsieh, Ehron Capps, Gia Luong, Zach Stankovics, Jon Hargraves, Ricardo Estrada, Brian Harmon, Omar Gomez, Katie Fry, Rich Spiessl, Antonio Taylor, Alexa Delatorre, Angel Garate
Five old-fashioned signs on the roof and over the front door created a great deal of the post office’s charm. But who would agree to make the signs in return for coffee and doughnuts?
In mid-March, I wrote to local sign maker David Sinclair, owner of Alojai Creations, who was recommended by Tania Parker, deputy director of the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy. Sinclair occasionally does sign work for the nonprofit land trust. When Sinclair learned that a retired Seabee was leading construction, his mind was made up. His grandfather had served with the Seabees in the Pacific Theater during World War II.
Using a computer-controlled cutting machine at his tiny shop on South Fulton Street, Sinclair created exact duplicates of the old signs. The mother-daughter team of Leticia and Krystal Lopez carefully painted them. Another partner in the project was Bautista Concrete Inc. of Oxnard, which provided the foundation pavers and scaffolding at no cost. Seabee Allen Egelston created and donated the metal brackets to hold the signs. Construction was completed on Sunday, April 13, and to
help celebrate, Ojai community volunteers Patti Bagley and Connie Biggers delivered a picnic lunch to the group of 10 volunteers working that day.
Ribbon-cutting for the 3-week-old structure took place as planned on May 3 during the Visitor Center’s annual open house. The LPFA offered T-shirts for sale with an image of the Wheeler Springs Post Office on the back. Many who had donated money for the project turned out for the ceremony. So did the forest’s most famous celebrity, Smokey Bear, who helped cut the red, white, and blue ribbon. “This helps bring back a bunch of
memories,” Rich told the crowd. “It was an absolute pleasure for me and everybody who volunteered to build this for you.”
The LPFA invites the public to visit the Wheeler Gorge Visitor Center and take a few selfies beside the USA’s Smallest Post Office, Saturdays and Sundays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., at 17017 Maricopa Highway.
Above: Installing the largest of five signs are, from left, Monty Laurie and Lewis Brown.
Below: At ribbon-cutting on May 3 are, from left, Bryan Conant, Terry Wright, Perry Van Houten, Smokey Bear, Monty Laurie, David Rich, Glenn Fout and Glenn Brunelle.
Photos: Perry and Charles Van Houten
ADA, Medicare Card Holders, and Seniors 65-74 are 1/2 price. Seniors 75 and over, children under 45” tall and all students are FREE riders on the Trolley
The Ojai Trolley Service Continues to Run Serving the Needs of the Ojai Valley
e Ojai Trolley Service, established in 1989, is owned and operated by the City of Ojai. e Trolley provides daily xed-route transportation to approximately 9,000 riders per month throughout Ojai, Meiners Oaks and Mira Monte.
e Trolley is a well-known feature in the Ojai Valley, and in addition to the daily xed-route services, participates in many local community events, fund raising activities, community service, and educational functions. 408 South Signal Street, Ojai, CA 93023 Phone (805) 272 3883 • E-mail: transit@ojai.ca.gov • www.ojaitrolley.com
It all started with a play. One woman at a bus stop.
An unflinching, powerful story about survival, resilience, and love.
O jai Theatre F estival
Bby KERSTIN KÜHN photos JEFF LORCH
ut what unfolded around Ironbound, a one-act drama staged inside Ojai’s new Chaparral Auditorium this past May, was something much bigger: the launch of the Ojai Theatre Festival, a new community-rooted initiative led by Hollywood actor and longtime Ojai resident Jon Bernthal. Best known for his roles in The Punisher, King Richard, and The Bear, Bernthal has lived in Ojai for over a decade, quietly raising his family while continuing to work in film and television.
Over just a few weeks, a group of artists, educators, and Nordhoff High School students came together to transform an unused space into a black-box theater and bring a professional-level performance to the valley. The result was intimate, ambitious, and deeply Ojai.
Left: Marin Ireland in Ironbound
“When we set out to do this, my intentions were pretty clear. I wanted to create something meaningful for the community, something that felt like it came from and belonged to Ojai.”
The festival opened with Ironbound, a drama by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Martyna Majok. Set at a desolate bus stop in New Jersey, the play follows Darja, a Polish immigrant navigating love, betrayal, and economic hardship over 20 years. At the center was Marin Ireland, whose nuanced portrayal of Darja was fearless and emotionally unrelenting. Ireland, a Tony-nominated stage and screen actor known for Sneaky Pete, The Umbrella Academy, and numerous acclaimed off-Broadway performances, has played the role twice before — in New York and at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles — but this production felt especially intimate. Her performance in Ojai was both raw and scrupulously honest, capturing the fire and fragility of a character who is, at times, her own worst enemy.
Bernthal shared the stage with Ireland as Tommy, her on-again, off-again boyfriend, along with actors Shiloh Fernandez and Michael Govan Hackett. The cast
delivered a tight, charged performance that made the most of the stripped-back set and small space. Under the direction of Guillermo Cienfuegos, the play’s themes — love, survival, and resilience — landed with clarity and weight.
But for Bernthal, the real heart of the production was what it sparked offstage. “It was great, really great,” he says. “When we set out to do this, my intentions were pretty clear. I wanted to create something meaningful for the community, something that felt like it came from and belonged to Ojai. And across the board, I felt like those hopes were met — sometimes in ways that hit closer to home than I expected.”
The idea of starting a theater festival had been simmering since Bernthal’s early days training at the Moscow Art Theatre School, where the rigor, reverence, and raw intensity of Russian theater made a lasting impact. “That experience sparked a dream — to build
something rooted in community, with the same artistic integrity I witnessed in Moscow,” he says. “I’ve always thought Ojai was the perfect place for a theater festival. I love what the Ojai Playwrights Conference does, but I wanted something that felt more rooted in and celebratory of the town itself.”
It wasn’t until the 2023 actors’ and writers’ strikes that the vision came into focus. The industry slowdown brought Bernthal back into conversation with longtime friends and collaborators Isidora Goreshter and Josh Bitton. Goreshter, best known for her role as Svetlana on Shameless, has an extensive background in theater and film. Bitton, a seasoned character actor with credits ranging from The Night Of to Bosch and The Pacific, also teaches acting in Los Angeles and New York. The trio had recently produced a successful benefit show in L.A. and were eager to channel their creative energy into something more lasting.
Above: Jon Bernthal and Marin Ireland in Ironbound
When Bernthal asked Goreshter and Bitton to come to Ojai and help build a festival from the ground up, with students at its core, both said yes without hesitation.
Over the months that followed, the team worked together on every aspect of the production — securing rights, building the set, and converting the Chaparral Auditorium into a functioning black-box space. Bernthal funded every element of the festival himself. “I’ve never done anything like this before,” he admits. “It was way more expensive than I anticipated. But I was blown away by people’s generosity and how many stepped up to help.”
Goreshter adds: “Jon, Josh, and I worked on this from day one. Even while he was shooting in Morocco, Jon would have weekly meetings with us. Everyone found their producing strengths naturally — it was very collaborative.”
From the beginning, the organizers made Nordhoff High School a central partner. They worked closely with Director of Theatre Arts John Hoj, whose students were involved every step of the way. They helped install the set, participated in workshops and Q&As, shadowed the actors and designers, and some even worked front-of-house during performances. “Our connection with the festival created a buzz of anticipation and interest that really inspired the students and showed them the many career possibilities within the professional theater world,” Hoj explains. “The impact reaffirmed the passion of many to pursue a career in the performing arts.”
Ojai Unified School District Superintendent Sherrill Knox praises the partnership for aligning with the district’s Career Technical Education goals. “As part of our CTE program, we are required to give students work-based learning opportunities,” she explains. “This partnership with the Ojai Theatre Festival offered unique opportunities for our students to have mentorship and job-shadowing experiences, as well as guest speakers in their classes — all of which are part of providing a high-quality CTE program.”
School Board President Atticus Reyes adds: “The Ojai Theatre Festival was not only a direct fundraiser for the Nordhoff High School Theater Arts Department, raising over $40,000 for a vital program,
but it also gave our students the chance to be part of an extraordinary professional production — an experience that will hopefully inspire and nurture their own artistic aspirations.”
Goreshter and Bitton worked closely with the students. “These students are incredible,” says Goreshter. “Their questions about artistry and the industry were profound, thought-provoking, and mature. They were the mission. And we want to bring them more.”
Indeed, what began as a one-play production has quickly evolved into a long-term vision. The festival’s team is already planning for next year, with the goal of producing at least two plays, possibly more. There’s talk of launching internship programs, creating a dedicated student production, and offering technical workshops for young people interested in behind-the-scenes work. “We want to eventually be able to offer full workshops for the kids, as well as a proper apprenticeship program where we can give them training in every area of theater — technical, design, performance, all of it,” says Bitton.
Meanwhile, Bernthal will be on Broadway next spring, starring in Dog Day Afternoon, a play that fittingly began its life at the Ojai Playwrights Conference back in 2022. This stage commitment means next year’s festival may shift to
the fall. “We’re already getting amazing submissions, with playwrights and actors reaching out wanting to be a part of it,” he says. “Right now, we’re thinking of producing at least two plays, maybe even more, depending on how things unfold.”
The transformed black-box space at Chaparral may also become a new home for Nordhoff’s own productions. “We could perform in the round, or build a set from almost any side of the building and present our work in a space that’s flexible, accessible, and right in the heart of town,” Hoj says.
What happened onstage during Ironbound was powerful. But just as meaningful was what happened around it. The festival brought people together — students, teachers, actors, crew — to build something from the ground up. It wasn’t without challenges. The weather was unseasonably hot, and there were plenty of logistical hurdles. Bitton and Hoj spent hours figuring out how to cool the space with fans and portable AC units. But in a way, that only underscored the spirit of the endeavor: hands-on, collaborative, and rooted in community.
Ojai has always welcomed artists and ideas. This time, it gave students and educators a chance to be part of the process. What came together was something meaningful and lasting. And it’s just the beginning.
Left and below: Marin Ireland and Shiloh Fernandez in Ironbound
Ojai Film Society Free Screening of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”
Oct. 3, 7:30 p.m.
Libbey Bowl
210 South Signal St. ojaifilmsociety.org
FALL 2025
The Betty Bryant Trio
Oct. 5, 3 p.m.
Beatrice Wood Center For the Arts
8585 Ojai-Santa Paula Rd. 805-646-3381 beatricewood.com
Ojai Day – Free Festival
Oct. 18, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Libbey Park
210 S. Signal St. Downtown Ojai ojaiday.com
Chamber On The Mountain
Pianist Marina Grozdanovic
Oct. 19, 3 p.m.
Beatrice Wood Center For the Arts
8585 Ojai-Santa Paula Rd. 805-646-3381 beatricewood.com
Ojai Storytelling Festival
Oct. 23-26
Various showtimes and venues Visit ojaistoryfest.org for tickets and schedule
Hootenanny at the Center
Oct. 26, 3 p.m.
Beatrice Wood Center For the Arts
8585 Ojai-Santa Paula Rd. 805-646-3381 beatricewood.com
Canvas and Paper Exhibit: Emerson Woelffer
Oct. 30 – Dec. 14
311 N. Montgomery St. open: Thursday – Sunday noon – 5:00 p.m. free admission canvasandpaper.org
November
Ellen Rundle: “Enchanted and Endangered” Nov. 1 – Dec. 22
Beato Gallery
Beatrice Wood Center For the Arts 8585 Ojai-Santa Paula Rd. 805-646-3381 beatricewood.com
Ojai Film Festival
Nov. 6-10
Ojai Art Center & other venues 805-640-1947 info@ojaifilmfestival ojaifilmfestival.com
Life is an Art Fair in Libbey Park Nov. 8, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. 210 S. Signal St. 805-646-3381 beatricewood.com
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN OJAI?
Holiday Home Tour & Marketplace Nov. 15-16, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Various homes & Libbey Park OjaiFestival.org 805-545-2053
California State Old-Time Fiddlers’Association District 8 Nov. 16, 3 p.m.
Beatrice Wood Center For the Arts 8585 Ojai-Santa Paula Rd. 805-646-3381 beatricewood.com
December
“Annie” Dec. 5 – 21
Ojai Art Center Theater 113 S. Montgomery St. Tickets & showtimes: OjaiACT.org
Life is an Art Fair in Libbey Park Dec. 6, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
210 S. Signal St. 805-646-3381 beatricewood.com
Ojai
Photo: Dean Zatkowsky
GRA
An 1893 advertisement for Dr. John Kellogg’s “Granola: A Health Food,” manufactured by the Sanitarium Food Co. in Battle Creek, Michigan, describes it as “an invalid food prepared by a combination of grains so treated as to retain in the preparation of the HIGHEST DEGREE OF NUTRIENT QUALITIES, while eliminating every element of an irritating character.”
Granola — and advertising copy — have advanced considerably since then. No longer medicinal fare for those who are sick and feeble, granola, particularly in the form of breakfast cereal, is a popular treat for anyone at regular meals, topped with milk (often alternatives like oat or almond milk) or sprinkled on yogurt, ice cream and even salads. Large food companies as well as individual producers sell granolas of all varieties at grocery and health food stores, bakeries and farmers’ markets. Among the brands proclaiming the glories of granola is one made right here in Ojai: Lark Ellen Farm. Lark Ellen Farm’s granola, which comes in flavors including Vanilla Cinnamon, Sweet & Salty Trail Mix, Lemon Blueberry, Berrylicious, and Cacao Cherry,
GIRL
by KAREN LINDELL
was created by Kelley Scanlin of Ojai, who came up with the recipe in 2015 and originally sold her product in brown paper bags at the Ojai Farmers’ Market. Scanlin’s granolas, unique because they feature no oats or grains, are instead made from nuts and seeds that are sprouted, a process that makes their nutrients more easily digestible. Scanlin’s company, Pure Simple Foods, sells Lark Ellen Farm granolas at Rainbow Bridge and other grocery stores in Ojai, as well as Whole Foods and Sprouts locations around the country, and via her website, QVC, and Amazon.
Scanlin’s product line has expanded in the past decade, and so has the Ojai factory on Bryant Circle where the granola is sprouted, dried and packaged. Scanlin, like the Kellogg Company in the 1893 ad, wants to provide “the largest amount of nutriment in the smallest bulk,” but she offers a simpler, earthy slogan that echoes an Ojai ethos: “Feed your body. Feed your soul.”
“If you take good care of your body and eat well, it fuels your soul and allows you to show up better as a person,” Scanlin says. Scanlin loved cereal as a kid (Trix and Lucky Charms were her favorites), but it took her some time to become a cereal entrepreneur.
She moved to Ojai from Santa Paula when she was in the seventh grade, went to Nordhoff High School, then graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 1989 with a bachelor of science degree in agricultural business and management. She lived elsewhere in California and on the East Coast while pursuing a career in marketing and sales for telecommunications companies.
In 2010, after a divorce, she decided to move back to Ojai so her two sons, Ren and Gray D’Angelo, could be closer to their grandparents. “And I wanted to be back in this beautiful town that has my heart and soul,” Scanlin says. “So much good comes out of Ojai.”
Early on, she was a persistent saleswoman. She recalls her first sale in telecommunications, when she walked around knocking on doors or cold-calling to sell businesses new telephone systems. When she learned that the president of one company had gone to lunch, she set up a lawn chair in his parking spot and waited for him so she could deliver her
pitch. Scanlin clinched the sale. Back in Ojai, she started working with a professional trainer to deal with a health issue she’s experienced most of her life: joint pain. Despite numerous medical tests over the years, doctors couldn’t figure out what was causing the pain. The trainer suggested Scanlin start systematically eliminating foods to see if a particular one might be causing the inflammation.
“The thing that hurt my body the most was grains, like oats or wheat,” she says. So she switched to the paleo diet, which eliminates grains in favor of foods eaten by the earliest human hunters and gatherers: fruits, vegetables, lean meats, fish, eggs, nuts, and seeds.
Scanlin was despondent, however, about giving up her favorite morning meal: cereal, especially granola. So she started tinkering with granola recipes that didn’t include oats or other grains, and after three months developed a variety made with just nuts and seeds.
Her sons, parents, and other family members served as taste-testers. “As I started to innovate, I would drive my kids crazy, because I would always be shoving something in their mouths,” Scanlin says, laughing.
Ren and Gray, however, have fond memories of their mom’s kitchen concoctions.
Ren, now 25, recalls his favorite part of the recipe experimentation: “The granola came out of these tabletop dehydrators in trays, all gooey on a sheet. We’d take two pieces from the sheet, put Trader Joe’s vanilla ice cream between them, and eat ice cream sandwiches.”
Without any formal education in cooking or nutrition, Scanlin started studying the dietary benefits of nuts and seeds, and learned about the benefits of sprouting. Scanlin describes sprouting as “finishing the germination process that Mother Nature started.” The nuts are picked before they’ve had a chance to go through their entire germination cycle, when they are still in a “protective state” and coated with a natural substance, phytic acid, that prevents the absorption of iron, zinc and calcium. “All these things are helping the nut and seed protect itself, and when we eat it, it's still kind of fighting our body,” she says. “Sprouting can make them a lot easier to digest.”
Sprouting involves soaking the nuts and seeds in water. Depending on the variety, the nut or seed might develop a tiny sprout, but in general the product looks the same as the unsprouted version (i.e., the nut doesn’t turn into something like an alfalfa sprout). The nuts and seeds are then heated in a dehydrator, which provides textural and flavor benefits. The result is a light, airy, crunchy product. Dehydrating versus baking also has health advantages, Scanlin says. “I try to keep food as close to what nature meant for it to be, and baking and roasting at 450 degrees kills a lot of good things in nuts and seeds. Instead, we blow warm air over them at a much lower temperature, under 200 degrees. But we do it for a longer period of time to preserve some of the goodness.”
She also describes her vegan, gluten-free recipes as “very clean,” organic, preservative-free, and without anything “yucky that you wouldn't want in your body.”
Ingredients in Lark Ellen Farm Vanilla Cinnamon Granola (the bestselling flavor), for example, are sprouted almonds, cashews and pumpkin seeds; sunflower seeds; maple syrup; coconut; vanilla extract; cinnamon; and sea salt.
Scanlin doesn’t consider herself a “purist,” however, and once in a while has a piece of bread. When people ask her why they should go grain-free, her response is: “I don't know that you should. I turned my body into an experiment, and I felt better when I didn't eat it.”
When Scanlin started peddling her granola at the farmers’ market, she sold it under the brand name “Ojai Granola Girl,” marketing it as “Grainless Granola” and “Granola Gone Nuts,” with a logo featuring a spoon holding an orange-red heart. As the company grew, however, she ran into trademark issues with the name “Granola Girl,” and decided to call the brand Lark Ellen Farm.
The name, suggested by Scanlin’s dad, is appropriate because Scanlin lives on Lark Ellen Avenue, and tends a half-acre farm on her property. But when she dug into the history of why her street was called “Lark Ellen,” Scanlin discovered another connection to the name. She learned that “Lark Ellen” referred to a professional opera singer, Ellen Beach Yaw, popular in the late 1800s and early
1900s, who moved from New York to California and visited Ojai. Yaw, a soprano known for her vocal range and ability to sing extremely high notes, earned the nickname “Lark Ellen.” Scanlin says she was touched to learn that Yaw, in addition to her singing prowess, “was a wonderful woman” who also devoted herself to philanthropy, especially to support indigent children and orphans. Among other charitable endeavors, Yaw started the Lark Ellen Home for Boys in Los Angeles.
“I feel like her spirit is in me and my company,” Scanlin says “I like finding ways to do good.”
Those who work with Scanlin agree that she, too, is not just talented at her job, but also a truly good human being. Sonia and Adam Gallegos of Ojai use Lark Ellen Farm granola to top the açai bowls they sell at Revel, their kombucha tasting bar on Matilija Street. They produce their kombucha at a facility on the same street as Scanlin’s factory, and Adam says he often runs into Scanlin on walks, where they bounce business ideas off each other. “She’s been super helpful,” he says.
Ellen Beach Yaw, after whom the Lark Ellen Farm brand is named. Photo: Wikimedia CC
Brandy Blair, administrative and operational coordinator for Pure Simple Foods, says Scanlin “helps people who try to get into business like her. She’s really downto-earth and easy to talk to, and she’s so good to her kids.”
Scanlin has always led her company as the “Ojai Granola Girl,” but Lark Ellen Farm is a family company. In the beginning, her mom, Ann Scanlin, ordered the nuts and the seeds, soaked them in her kitchen, then dried them in countertop dehydrators. Scanlin’s Dad, the “runner,” brought the sprouted nuts and seeds to Scanlin’s house. Scanlin turned them into granola, with her sons at her side mixing. Her parents weighed and bagged the granola on Saturday nights for the farmers' market on Sunday. “It was a really humble and sweet beginning,” Scanlin says. “But it's not something I've done on my own.”
Scanlin’s sons, now young adults, both work for her at Pure Simple Foods. Ren, an artist, helps part-time with customer service and project management; Gray, 22, helps with e-commerce and shipping. Scanlin’s life partner, Mike Mendoza, also works for the company.
Scanlin says her entrepreneurial spirit inspired her to take her products from a farmers’ market booth to commercial shelves.
“But I was so young in this process, it's embarrassing,” she says. “I wasn't even sealing my bags, and I had a customer tell me my label looked like a term paper because I had all these facts on it.”
Her first sale was to Ojai’s Rainbow Bridge natural-foods grocery store.
Scanlin says she learned about the grocery industry “in the back room of Rainbow Bridge” because owner Ernest Niglio helped her figure out how to price products, and explained grocery profit margins to her using a pencil and paper.
She then drove around to regional grocery stores with samples of the granola. “Local companies really embraced us,” Scanlin says. Still, she got her big break at the farmers’ market in 2016, when a Whole Foods “local forager” — someone who scouts out innovative products from local growers and artisans — sampled and liked the Lark Ellen Farm granola.
With little experience in food manufacturing, Scanlin decided to hire a “copacker” to make the granola, and fell prey to
a scammer from Oregon who, instead of acquiring nuts and seeds from local growers, bought them at Costco. After losing $50,000, she decided to bring production back to Ojai, starting out in a 150-square-foot space. She needed a large sink for soaking, but the space had only a tiny one. So Mendoza rigged a much larger water-delivery system made from pumps and a large plastic sink he bought at Home Depot.
“It was the craziest system,” Scanlin says, “but I grew my business that first year, and we got into Whole Foods when I was in that space.”
Eventually they moved to larger facilities with automated equipment, including two giant dehydrators, and took over 17,000 square feet of a building on Bryant Circle. The company has 30 employees, and its products are distributed nationwide. In 2024, the Pacific Coast Business Times recognized Pure Simple Foods as the 10th-fastest-growing company out of the Top 50 in Ventura, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara counties.
Sourcing the nuts and seeds is also important to Scanlin. The company has grown so much that Ojai producers can’t supply all the nuts and seeds needed to make her products, but she buys as much as she can from farmers in California’s Central Valley. Cashews aren’t widely commercially grown in the U.S., so those come from other countries. “We’re very careful about where we source them,” she says. “We make sure they have good practices around their employees, and all of our Lark Ellen Farm products are certified organic.”
The Pure Simple Foods product line has expanded. Scanlin says customers started telling her, "'We love your granolas, but we’d really like to buy just sprouted nuts and seeds.’” So Pure Simple Foods started selling those as well. “We do more than a million dollars a year on Amazon, and 90% of it is just the plain sprouted nuts and seeds,” Scanlin says.
The company’s other brand, Purely Sprouted, features the product in snack form, made with non-GMO ingredients, but not organic, to keep the price down. “I made Lark Ellen so good that it's an expensive product,” Scanlin says, “so I needed something that could still be really good for you, and really clean, but at a better price point.”
Scanlin scraped together funding on her own at first, but once she moved beyond Ojai, she needed financial help. Her biggest challenge, she said, has been securing capital funds to expand.
“You will never know stress until you take other people's money,” Scanlin says, describing herself as “a very honest person” who wants to make sure her investors earn a return on their investment.
She wants the company to grow and hopes to “keep the bones of the manufacturing and sprouting” in Ojai. “It’s been really gratifying to provide jobs to people in Ojai,” she says, especially because the community has been so supportive. Scanlin’s also working on getting her products into Costco, and is developing new flavors, such as Cranberry Pistachio Tahini.
Charles Norris, formerly the chairman of Freshpet, is one of the company’s investors and likes to work with early-stage companies that show promise. He has been impressed with Scanlin’s business acumen as well as her personal warmth and openness.
Businesses fail for two reasons, he says: 1) They run out of money; or 2) They don’t ask for help. Scanlin, he says, is open-minded and “has no fear of saying, ‘I need your point of view.’ We view it as a partnership.”
Lark Ellen Farm packaging no longer features the long paragraphs of nutrition facts featured on the original Ojai Granola Girl products, opting instead for three key words: “vegan,” “gluten-free,” and “paleo.” The “heart in a spoon” logo has been replaced with colorful decorative graphics of each variety’s nuts, seeds and berries.
Ren, however, once created a potential Lark Ellen Farm mascot: Andy the Almond. He and his mom nixed the idea of a mascot, but it was arguably a more effective advertising strategy than Kellogg’s emphasis on “eliminating every element of an irritating character.” Andy was an adorable cartoon-like almond with a smile, single sprout of green hair, and a top hat. Scanlin even came up with an idea for Andy to illustrate that her products were sprouted: She suggested placing him in a hot tub.
Fall into healthy harvest bowls
recipes and photography by SHARON
PALMER
Farro Bowl with Pomegranate & Yogurt Dressing
This Mediterranean-inspired grain bowl sparkles with pomegranates, late-season cucumbers, chewy farro, and an herbal yogurt dressing.
Makes 4 servings
Ingredients:
Farro:
1 ½ cups farro, uncooked
4 ½ cups water
Pinch salt
Pomegranate Cucumber Salad:
½ cup pomegranate arils
3 Persian cucumbers, unpeeled, sliced
2 mandarin oranges, peeled, separated into segments
1. To prepare farro: Cook farro in a medium pot with water and salt. Simmer over medium heat for about 25-30 minutes, until grains are just starting to become tender. Drain off any remaining water, and cool.
2. To prepare pomegranate cucumber salad: In a medium mixing bowl, combine pomegranates, cucumbers, orange segments, green onions, mint, garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, coriander, and black pepper.
3. To prepare yogurt dressing: In a small bowl, mix together yogurt, garlic, lemon juice, thyme, cumin, salt, and pepper until smooth.
4. To serve: Arrange in 4 individual serving bowls (2 ½-cup capacity): ¾ cup cooked, cooled farro 1 cup pomegranate cucumber salad.
3 tablespoons yogurt dressing
Pinch sumac
1 teaspoon sesame seeds
Nutrition Information Per Serving (1 bowl): 418 calories, 69g carbohydrate, 14g protein, 10g total tat, 1g saturated fat, 8g fiber, 29mg sodium, 13g sugar
The healthy meal-bowl formula
How do you make grain bowls? It’s simple! You can prep several grain bowls in advance or prepare the ingredients and let your dinner guests make their own bowl. Layer in the following ingredients:
Celebrate the fall harvest season by adding nourishing, satisfying grain bowls filled with seasonal produce to your menu.
Ahearty bowl filled with chewy kernels of red rice, roasted golden squash and chickpeas, wedges of avocado, and a creamy turmeric sauce is another reason to be thankful for the meal-bowl trend! This über-popular mode of eating has grown since it struck the restaurant and social media scene like lightning 10 years ago, with Epicurious declaring 2015 “the Year of the Bowl.” Since then, bowl meals have been soaring in supermarket aisles, fast-food menus, and home kitchens. These delicious bowls of joy check all the boxes for top culinary trends: plant-based eating, colorful meals, satisfying nutrition, clean eating, and easy cooking and meal prep.
What’s not to love? Especially this time of year when our local farms are brimming with seasonal bounty — rustic grains, colorful squashes, earthy beans, and sweet pomegranates — just screaming to be added to your next grain bowl.
While meal bowls may seem super hip, given the number of influencers sharing their beautiful array of meal creations in dreamy settings, this culinary tradition dates back to the beginning of time, when humans first learned to cook mixtures of foods with liquid in a vessel over the fire. Indeed, many cultural traditions have relied upon mixed food bowls featuring grains, noodles, vegetables, proteins, herbs, and spices over the millennia. American traditions typically focused on plates with distinct piles of food on the plate. (God forbid they should touch!) But we are officially moving past this practice and loving every bite out of the bowl.
Harvest Grain Bowl Recipes
Fall is the perfect time to renew your love affair with bowl meals, given the seasonal assortment of ingredients like grains, beans, corn, squash, greens, root vegetables, and pomegranates.
Fall Glow Bowl
Glow up your life with this super-healthy, yummy bowl, which is warm with the golden shades of turmeric, squash, chickpeas, and avocado.
Makes 4 servings
Ingredients:
1 ½ cups red rice, uncooked
3 cups vegetable broth
Roasted Vegetables:
1 medium (1 pound) butternut squash, peeled, cubed
1. To make red rice: Place red rice and broth in a small pan. Cover and cook over medium heat for about 40 minutes until tender. Drain any leftover liquid.
2. To make roasted vegetables: Preheat oven to 400 F. Arrange butternut squash, yellow squash, yellow bell pepper, red onion, and chickpeas on a baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and lemon juice. Sprinkle with curry powder, turmeric, and garlic salt. Toss together with tongs to distribute. Roast in oven for about 30 minutes until golden brown and tender, turning with tongs halfway through. Remove from oven.
3. To make sauce: Combine tahini, water, lemon juice, yogurt, agave syrup, turmeric, cumin, black pepper, and garlic salt in a small bowl, blending until smooth.
4. To serve: Arrange in 4 individual serving bowls (3-cup capacity):
¾ cup cooked red rice
½ cup greens
¼ of the roasted vegetables
¼ cup sliced tomatoes
¼ sliced avocado
3 tablespoons sauce
Nutritional Information Per Serving (1 bowl): 540 calories, 72g carbohydrates, 12g protein, 22g total fat, 4g saturated fat, 10g fiber, 495mg sodium, 6g sugar
Harvest Vegetable Bowl with Barley and Dukah
This earthy bowl features cooked barley, a medley of roasted fall vegetables, mustard vinaigrette, and the Middle Eastern spice blend dukah.
Ingredients:
Barley:
1 cup barley, uncooked
2 cups vegetable broth
1 ¼ cups water
Mustard Vinaigrette:
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon whole-grain mustard
2 cloves garlic, minced
Pinch salt and pepper
Roasted Harvest Vegetables:
½ medium head cauliflower, separated into florets
2 medium carrots, sliced
1 medium sweet potato, peeled, cubed
8 ounces Brussels sprouts, sliced in half
1 small red onion, sliced
1 (15-ounce) can cannellini beans, rinsed, drained
Dukah:
¼ cup pistachio kernels
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1 tablespoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
½ teaspoon salt
Instructions:
1. To make barley: Place barley and broth in a small pot, stir, cover, and cook until tender (about 35-40 minutes). Fluff with a fork.
2. To make mustard vinaigrette: In a small dish, whisk together olive oil, vinegar, mustard, garlic, salt, and pepper.
3. To make roasted harvest vegetables: Preheat oven to 400 F. Place cauliflower, carrots, sweet potato, Brussels sprouts, red onion, and beans on a baking sheet. Drizzle the mustard vinaigrette over the vegetables and toss with tongs. Place in oven and cook for about 45 minutes, until golden brown.
4. To make dukah: Heat a small skillet over medium heat. Add pistachios, sesame seeds, cumin seeds, fennel seeds, black peppercorn, and salt. Toast for 2-3 minutes until aromatic, without burning. Remove from heat, cool, and grind in a spice grinder or small blender for a few seconds to make a coarsely ground mixture. Makes about ½ cup.
5. To serve: Arrange in 4 individual serving bowls (r cup capacity): ¼ of the cooked barley ¼ of the roasted harvest vegetables
is a dietitian specializing in plant-based nutrition and sustainability located in Ojai, where she tends to her organic vegetable garden and orchard.
Follow her @sharonpalmerRD and ThePlantPoweredDietitian.com.
Retired Air Force Capt. Robert Salas steps onto the stage with a kind demeanor, but an assertive presence, discussing moments of grave importance in a matter-of-fact tone.
These traits made him a perfect candidate for his role as an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) launch controller and missile-propulsion engineer for the United States Air Force.
Salas was responsible for manning nuclear payloads for Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana in 1967.
“I’m so happy these two gentlemen are with us,” Salas tells the crowd. “We’re part of an expiring breed.”
Also on the panel are Daniel Sheehan, a Harvard Law graduate and constitutional lawyer known for his work on the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, and Silkwood cases, to name a few.
There’s Bryce Zabel, an award-winning screenwriter and journalist; Ryan Wood, an author and leading authority on Majestic-12 intelligence documents; and Stephen Bassett, executive director of the Paradigm Research Group that organized several UFO-related hearings and events at the
It was an era defined by the peak of Cold War nuclear tensions, when the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the country’s “Doomsday Clock” at seven minutes to midnight, representing how close humanity was to total global catastrophe, with the only protection being “Mutually Assured Destruction.”
Amid a new type of warfare, Salas was a man among few representing the final barrier of defense in preventing the end of the world as we know it. In other words, an American hero, and one who happens to be an Ojai Valley resident.
At Contact in the Desert in Indian Wells on May 30, Salas is part of a panel titled “UAP & Nukes: Disturbing Confrontations over Nuclear Bases,” where he joins two other Air Force veterans, Capt. Robert Jamison and Capt. David Schindele, who experienced similar, remarkable events over military bases loaded with nuclear weapons.
Veteran missileman Bob Salas recounts the story of the mysterious shutdown of America’s nukes.
National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
This powerhouse group of whistleblowers, witnesses and researchers gathers to discuss the most alarming aspect of the UFO phenomena — the power unknown crafts have over nuclear weapons.
These three Air Force veterans — Salas, Jamison, and Schindele — share with the audience their firsthand accounts and reports of unidentified crafts flying over military installations.
But these encounters are not your runof-the-mill reports of objects overhead or mere blips on a radar.
by GRANT PHILLIPS
They involve UFOs allegedly shutting down nuclear warheads at some of the most protected and secure U.S. Air Force bases in the country.
When people discuss national security issues in relation to the UFO phenomena, it includes our most powerful weapons representing less-than-a-speed-bump to these unknown entities.
What’s more shocking than the events themselves and the secrecy that surrounds them is the overwhelming frequency with which they occur.
Robert Hastings, author and former Malmstrom Air Force Base employee, has written the definitive book on the topic: UFOs & Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites.
The nearly 600-page tome includes interviews with more than 150 former and retired U.S. military personnel about their involvement in similar cases of UFOs at nuclear weapon sites.
Hastings’ introduction to the book demonstrates the importance of the May 30 panel: “I have the greatest respect for these veterans’ willingness to discuss — in the face of widespread ridicule and potential official harassment — the classified UFO incidents in which they were involved. I believe their public disclosures to be courageous acts of patriotism.
“There is, in my view, a principle more important than military secrecy: The collective right of the American people to know the facts. It has always seemed to me self-evident that if UFOs do indeed exist — contrary to long-standing official denials — and are actively monitoring and occasionally disrupting our nuclear weapons, as my sources contend, then a matter of this magnitude is a legitimate subject for open, democratic discussion.”
Robert Salas’ experience Salas, now 85, served seven years of active duty in the Air Force, from 1964 to 1971. He has spoken in more than 15 countries about his encounter, including to Brazil’s Federal Senate on June 24, 2022, and Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies on Sept. 12, 2023.
He recalls for audiences on May 30 and May 31 the encounter he first made public in the 1990s, which occurred while he was assigned as a Minuteman I missile launch officer in 1967 at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.
Salas, then a first lieutenant, was stationed at Oscar Flight 1, an underground missile-launch control center roughly 100 miles east of Malmstrom, where the missiles are kept. He was 60 feet below ground on March 24, 1967, when he received two calls within five minutes from a security officer above ground at around 9p.m.
Salas recalls the guard being “so scared” during the second call, after describing a very bright red-orange pulsating light, roughly 40 feet long, hovering above the front gate of the Air Force base.
The security officer told Salas that they pointed weapons at the unknown object flying low and fast, stopping in midair, reversing course, doing 90-degree turns, all without engine noise.
Salas told the officer to secure the facility and not let anyone in or out of the fencedoff areas.
Salas looked down at his status control board, a horn went off, and one missile went from green to red, into an “unlaunchable” condition. Then another. One after the other, all 10 missiles at Salas’ site entered into unlaunchable condition, due to a “Guidance and Control System Failure.”
Salas shares he had been at Malmstrom for three years, and had never experienced multiple shutdowns, especially with triple-redundancy backups set as a safety feature for the missiles.
Jamison was called at home around 10:30 p.m. and tasked with restarting four of the missiles that were shut off during Salas’ watch.
Jamison and Salas were briefed by higher-ups after the incident and told not to talk about it again to anyone. Salas had to sign a nondisclosure agreement about the event.
“If it wasn’t for this man,” Salas says in regard to Jamison, “I wouldn’t have much validation of these incidents.”
Given the secrecy, Salas did not tell anyone about what happened until, in 1994, while browsing at the University of Washington bookstore, he opened the book “Above Top Secret” by Timothy Good to the exact page of a report on a Malmstrom incident, learning his experience was not isolated, and that he could finally speak about it.
Good writes that on March 16, 1967, a similar incident occurred at Malmstrom, this time at the Echo flight facility, where another 10 nuclear missiles were shut down following an encounter with an unknown object from above.
The March 16, 1967 incident was described to Salas by Col. Walter Figel in a telephone conversation Salas recorded in 1996, which Salas plays for the audience on May 31.
During the incident, Figel reported that security and maintenance above ground spotted bright lights appearing overhead, and shortly after, the missiles started going offline, one after the other. Within minutes, all 10 missiles were inoperable due to malfunctions in the ICBM’s guidance and control systems.
The missiles did not suffer any permanent damage in either incident and were back up online roughly a day later.
Hastings describes these two events from Malmstrom Air Force Base’s missile field as “the best-known ICBM-related UFO incidents on record.”
In his May 31 lecture, Salas credits his wife, Marilyn, for her “consistent, dependable and loving support throughout this journey,” telling the packed conference
room, to applause: “I want to give honor and respect, and love, of course, to my wife of 55 years.”
For a brief moment, Marilyn stands up to say: “I was married to this man for 25 before I even heard this story. … When I stop to think about all those years that he held onto this and the strain that that puts on everybody who has to hold secrets like that, it just blows my mind.”
Since freed from secrecy after learning in 1994 about Good’s disclosures, Salas has written three books about various incidents involving unknown objects near nuclear missile sites: The 1967 Missile/ UFO Incidents: Faded Giant, authored with James Klotz and published in 2005; Unidentified: The UFO Phenomenon: How World Governments Have Conspired to Conceal Humanity’s Biggest Secret, published in 2015; and an updated edition, UAPs and the Nuclear Puzzle: Visitations, National Security, and the Need for Transparency, published in 2023.
Other incursions
Other encounters involving UFOs and nukes have allegedly occurred as close by as Santa Barbara County’s Vandenberg Space Force Base, according to Hastings’ research.
Right: The Minuteman control room with First Lieutenant Salas of Oscar Flight 1. Photos supplied
In September 1964, an Atlas D ICBM was launched from Vandenberg carrying an enemy radar countermeasure, known as chaff, and a dummy nuclear warhead.
“Shortly after nosecone-separation, as the warhead raced toward a targeted splashdown at Eniwetok Lagoon in the Pacific Ocean, it was approached by a disc-shaped UFO,” Hastings writes. “As the saucer chased and then circled the warhead, four bright flashes of light emanated from the unknown craft, whereupon the warhead began to tumble, eventually falling into the ocean hundreds of miles short of its intended target downrange.”
Hastings cites former Air Force Officer Lt. Bob Jacobs as his source on this incident at Vandenberg. Jacobs, at the time, was filming the Atlas launch through a high-powered telescope from a vantage point.
Jacobs relayed that a 16-millimeter film of the incident was shown to a select group of people at Vandenberg, but after that meeting, he was told to “forget” the filmed events and to never mention them again.
From the stage on May 30, Sheehan tells of similar events taking place in Russia, citing one alleged incident where UFOs not only took nuclear missiles off alert, but
also placed them into “launch mode.”
“Between September of ’66, and March of ’67, we lost 30 missiles to UFO activity,” Salas shared on the “American Alchemy” podcast with Jesse Michels on July 12. “There are many other witnesses out there that could come forward to talk about incidents that happened where they were involved.”
On the panel with Sheehan, Salas adds that he is also familiar with “fairly recent events at nuclear facilities,” but that the individuals involved are “not willing to come forward yet.”
Salas continues to raise awareness about his experience, including in February 2023 when he briefed the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), created by Congress to investigate and resolve reports related to UFOs.
After the November 2024 congressional hearing on UFOs, Salas also met with hearing chair Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina to tell her what he experienced in 1967 and what he has learned since.
Salas tells the May 30 audience that he and others sharing the stage hope to return to Congress in the near future. “I don’t care how long we’ve had to wait,” he says.
“It’s not just important to us, but to the visitors themselves.”
Historical ties
Encounters between UFOs and nuclear weapons started almost immediately after the first atomic bomb was tested on July 16, 1945, in New Mexico.
Hastings writes, “According to other documents and the testimony of ex-military personnel, intermittent UFO activity at nuclear-weapons-related facilities occurred as early as 1945.”
Shortly after, a massive spike in UFO activity was reported by both observers and the government and continued throughout the Cold War.
One such incident was the infamous 1947 alleged UFO crash near Roswell, New Mexico.
What was initially identified as a UFO, and dismissed as a weather balloon within a day, has become one of the most notorious alleged coverups in UFO lore.
The Roswell incident occurred a short distance from White Sands Missile Range, where the first atomic bomb was tested. Roswell was also home to the 509th Bomb Group, which at the time, was the only unit in the world equipped with aircraft capable of dropping atomic bombs.
Hastings cites an early FBI memorandum, dated Jan. 31, 1949, stating: “This matter is considered top secret by Intelligence Officers of both the Army and the Air Forces.”
Speculation
Whether or not these actions by UFOs should be seen as a threat, a warning, or as a message toward peace remains unknown.
Salas tells the audience he believes the message is “not one of arrogance,” but is instead a warning for us, that these nuclear capabilities place us “in a precarious position, just by having them.”
“They can see where we’re headed if we continue down this path,” Salas said on the American Alchemy podcast. “I like to conjecture that, since these are very advanced beings, if they were able to travel intergalactically or from another star system, they’ve been through this process
Left: A diagram of a Minuteman launch facility and missile. Buried underground and shrouded with a thick concrete cover, the Minuteman system was designed to survive a nuclear strike. Courtesy of National Museum of the U.S. Air Force
of developing weapons of mass destruction, maybe fought wars themselves, but were finally able to determine how to live in peace with their neighbors, and they want to see us accomplish the same thing, and get rid of our nuclear weapons and try to learn how to live in peace.”
Wall Street Journal article and rebuttal These experiences, specifically the one reported by Salas, have generated controversy due to a June 6 Wall Street Journal article, written by Joel Schectman and Aruna Viswanatha.
In the article, headlined, “The Pentagon Disinformation That Fueled America’s UFO Mythology,” the reporters attempt to dismiss Salas' claim with a “terrestrial explanation.”
They claim the Air Force “developed an exotic electromagnetic generator” that stimulated a pulse of “disruptive energy without the need to detonate a nuclear weapon.”
This EMP device, when activated and placed on a portable platform 60 feet above the facility, could allegedly gather power, then fire a burst of energy, resembling lightning, that could disrupt guidance systems and disable nuclear weapons.
The article cites a potential EMP model, but the EMP referenced was not operational in 1967.
Instead, the EMP was first tested in 1971 and was labeled as officially ready for use in 1973.
The 60-foot superstructure required for this test would have likely been seen by
guards on-site, according to Salas, who wrote a rebuttal to the article that was published in the Ojai Valley News | Ventura County Sun at tinyurl.com/357p477p.
Salas also attempted to submit his 1,200word rebuttal to the Wall Street Journal, as he was mentioned by name and by photo in the article, but was told there is a 250-270 word limit for Op-Eds.
His rebuttal addresses several key aspects of the 1967 incident that contradict the Wall Street Journal’s reporting, including the idea that what he experienced was an EMP test.
“All Minuteman crew members had high-security clearances,” Salas writes in the rebuttal. “We had detailed briefings, both classified and unclassified, on any activities in the field that could impact the status of our missile readiness each time we were sent out on Alert duties.
In the three years I was assigned as a missile-launch officer at Malmstrom AFB, I was never briefed about any EMP testing on operational missiles.”
Salas also addressed some of the dangers a test could present if those in charge of the missiles were not informed.
“It would have been irresponsible and unthinkable for the USAF to jeopardize the operational status of these weapons by doing such tests as they were, in part, the basis of our strategic national security,” Salas writes. “Especially since this time period was during the ‘Cold War’ and we
were engaged in the Vietnam War, and we had a near-nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis only a few years earlier.”
Salas added that Malmstrom recorded a possible incursion near two launch facilities, and both security teams reported seeing the same type of object hovering above the base.
Salas cites a Telex received via a Freedom of Information Act request from Strategic Air Command (SAC) with a “Secret” classification and a subject line regarding the incident at Malmstrom AFB.
The Strategic Air Command [SAC] was a Major Command of the U.S. Air Force and a Specific Command of the Department of Defense responsible for nuclear deterrence during the Cold War.
The Telex stated: “The fact that no apparent reason for the loss of ten missiles can be readily identified is cause for grave concern to this headquarters. We must have an in-depth analysis to determine cause and corrective action and we must know as quickly as possible what the impact is to the fleet, if any.”
Salas adds, “Such a statement would not have been made by SAC headquarters if the shutdowns had resulted from EMP testing!”
Salas says at the end of the podcast with Michels, discussing the Wall Street Journal article: “I’m not the only one, only witness, to these incidents involving UFOs and nuclear weapons, there are many, many out there. At some point, Congress has to do the job of getting to the bottom of this issue: What is it, what have we been doing about it, what studies have we done, what have we learned? And they can start with bringing the Air Force in, and asking them questions about incidents like mine, and others.”
A message
In his May 31 solo lecture at Contact in the Desert, Salas tells the crowd: “Incidents involving UFOs and nuclear weapons are simply a message — a message from our cosmic neighbors.”
He says the missile shutdown at Malmstrom “was not, I don’t consider it to be, a violent act on their behalf. I think there was a message, and the message was: ‘You are not alone. We also live here. Eliminate your nuclear weapons and warfare. Raise your level of consciousness and concern and protections for each other, your planet and its precious life.’”
Salas delivers his solo lecture at Contact in the Desert. Photo: Marianne Ratcliff
Salas revisits a Minuteman mock-up. Photo supplied
Hike the Ojai backcountry during November or December and discover a splendid show of autumn color, in the nearby Los Padres National Forest.
Along Sespe Creek, one of the last wild rivers in Southern California, you’ll find 61 miles of riparian habitat and trees turning a vibrant yellow, as they prepare to drop their leaves in anticipation of winter.
Lace up your hiking boots for any one of these adventures, and you’ll experience not just a dazzling display of color, but perhaps a distinct nip in the air. Plus, you’ll find that the summertime crowds have gone, along with a lot of the bugs!
Each of the trails described here provides options for loop trips or longer, multiday treks.
FaLL Hik Es
Sespe River Trail (20W13)
To get to the trailhead, take Highway 33 north from Ojai for 15 miles and turn off on Rose Valley Road. Drive past the lakes and the road to Rose Valley Falls, all the way to the end of the road at the Piedra Blanca Trailhead (formerly the Lion car camp). No water is available here, but there are restrooms and picnic tables.
You’ll need to display an Adventure Pass (or Interagency Pass) to park. A oneday Adventure Pass costs $5, while $30 will get you a pass good for an entire year. On weekdays, the pass can be purchased at U.S. Forest Service headquarters at 1190 E. Ojai Ave., and on weekends at the Wheeler Gorge Visitor Center at 17017 Maricopa Highway (aka Highway 33). Or park for free outside the signed paid parking area.
From the east end of the parking area, the trail drops to the creek and crosses it three times before heading downstream. Cottonwoods, sycamores and white alders turn a vivid yellow and make an excellent showing of fall color along the river.
The trail continues east for 17 miles, taking you to several stream-side camps and popular hot springs.
Middle Sespe Trail (22W04)
Drive north on Highway 33 for 17 miles to a turnout just up the highway from the former paved road to the old Beaver Camp (the road is now blocked by dirt barriers). Watch carefully for a signpost on the right side of the highway that reads “Trail Middle Sespe.” There are no facilities here and no passes required to park. Keep an eye on kids and dogs, as the parking area is very close to the highway.
Beaver Camp was closed by the U.S. Forest Service in 1999 to protect endangered species, but the trail is open and in good shape, just a little hard to fi nd at the outset. While crossing the creek, which usually goes dry in summer, look to the northeast and you’ll see the trail heading to the right. A bit brushed-in at times, the trail soon becomes wider and much easier to follow.
A word of caution about hiking these trails during wet weather: creeks that appear calm can turn deadly after torrential rainfall. Pay close attention to weather reports during the rainy season and be aware of dangers from flash flooding.
And don’t forget to tell someone where you’re going and when you expect to return.
Lion Canyon Trail (22W06)
The trail starts at the popular Middle Lion Campground in Rose Valley. To get there, use the same directions for the Sespe River Trail, but don’t go as far as the Piedra Blanca Trailhead. Instead, look for a turnoff approximately 1 mile from the end of the road, and descend the winding, narrow, 1-mile paved road to the camp. You’ll need to pay the park concessionaire a $10 day-use fee to park inside the campgrounds, otherwise find a spot off the side of the road, outside the gate.
The trail crosses Lion Creek before ascending into a pleasant canyon, where it splits three ways. The middle fork climbs to Nordhoff Ridge, while the west and east forks lead to trail camps and scenic waterfalls.
A note of caution about another example of fall color you’re likely to find in Lion Canyon and will want to avoid: poison oak. The leaves of this toxic plant turn from bright green in the spring to pink or reddish in the summer and fall.
As the trail heads east, it climbs an 800-foot hill before descending to Rock Creek, where you’re treated to another great showing of yellow foliage. The trail then parallels Sespe Creek for 4 miles to its junction with the Gene Marshall-Piedra Blanca National Recreation Trail.
Left: Sometimes a bush and other times a vine, poison oak can be found just about everywhere in the forest, but prefers shady, moist habitats below 5,000 feet.
Center: A splash of autumn hues — and water — along Sespe Creek.
(Right) In Lion Canyon, trees and chaparral along the trail provide a glut of fall color.
story and photos by PERRY VAN HOUTEN
ScEnT DisPatcH Fall Equinox, A.D., 2025
by MEIKE KOPP
Scent is like a magical Morse code emanating from the land and its inhabitants, invisibly communicating between and across species lines, calling upon our hearts, instincts, and memories.
Welcome to the Valley of the Moon, Ojai — from the Chumash word a’hwai — a land of scent enchantment during the inevitable return of the fall season.
In a post-Covid world, where many of you have experienced your sense of smell compromised, I want to encourage you to awaken the most neglected and unheralded of our senses.
You can arrive in the valley either through the mountains or the hovering coast. Should you choose the first option (driving through the hills of Santa Paula), the initial guiding scent as you drive west appears at a distinct curve in the road, just before passing Thomas Aquinas College. The fresh air is overcome with the intense, acidic smell of sulphur, followed shortly by the scent of ancient oil oozing from eddies on the side of the road, releasing the biologic material of dinosaurs in the form of tar. Nature in her inherent wisdom provides these two acrid aromas to prep you for the sensual opposite.
Once the air is seasoned with the adorable scent of Tater Tots (as you pass the Summit Drive-In), the world of aromas begins to thicken. The flickering scent of pink peppercorn trees volleys with that of eucalyptus and oak. Rising from the earth are pumpkins, squash, and ripening grapes on the vine.
As you continue west and reach the bottom of the winding ribbon that is the Dennison Grade, your scent receptors will note the overall fragrance of citrus. From oranges, to lemons, to Pixie tangerines, these fruits carry two scent songs each: the first, their skin, enhanced by aromatic oils that leap out as you peel or grate them; the second, the flesh inside, a bright, brilliant, and uplifting perfume. Festive marigolds can be found everywhere, from farmers’ markets, to restaurants, to altars on Dia de los Muertos. Experience their pungent aroma by smelling their leaves and stems rather than their blooms. According to Aztec legend, these attributes help your ancestors find their way back to you.
And finally, my dear scent explorers, as you sit down for your evening meal, I encourage you to close your eyes (a scent prayer, if you wish), and slowly inhale: the bread (its yeast calling for your attention); the slight sweet note of its butter; the smoky essence of a charred eggplant or grilled piece of meat. These ingredients, individually, one note; together, a melody. Take it all in before it reaches your mouth and know that your nose and your mouth are divinely intertwined. Your sense of smell is a stop on the road to experiencing flavor. NOW FOR DESSERT: Imagine eating a strawberry without first smelling its freshness, its delight! What a shame it would be to lose half of that moment of ecstasy. Then again, you don’t have to.
