Ojai Magazine Winter 2023 by Ojai Magazine

O J AI M A G A Z I N E | WINTER ‘23

PUBLISHED SINCE 1982 BY OJAI VALLEY NEWS

WINT ER 2023

MAGAZINE

L AURA

Dern & DIANE Ladd A HEALING JOURNEY

OJ A I • V E N T U R A • S A N TA B A R B A R A • WE S T L A KE • M A L I B U • S A N TA M O N I C A • L A

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Coming Soon 535 DEL ORO DRIVE Single Level | 4 bedroom ranch style 3 car garage | Detached workshop Oak studded Acre | Popular neighborhood $2,250,000

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THE ONE AND ONLY • LIVE AND WORK IN STYLE TURNKEY MID-CENTURY VILLAGE MIXED-USE • 216 E. Matilija St. Ojai Offered at $2,500,000 Step into the heart of Ojai with this exceptional one-of-a-kind live & work property, ideally situated next to the vibrant Sunday Farmers Market, renowned restaurants, wineries, boutiques, galleries, and the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa. Completed in 2023, this mixed-use gem boasts 750 sqft of retail and commercial space and 1250 sqft of meticulously remodeled private living quarters. Revel in the high-end finishes, skylights bathing the interiors in natural light, and the chic, midcentury, artistic cinder block design. The gorgeous oversized backyard, a rare find in the heart of town, offers views of the iconic Topa Topa mountains and the famous Ojai Pink Moment. This hip, and sophisticated oasis is the perfect live-work sanctuary. Fabulous investment opportunity in the historic city filled with charm and bustling Midtown Ojai!

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TWO HOUSES, TWO LEGAL LOTS This gated, private compound includes two legal lots with two separate houses on nearly an acre in a magical, nearly hidden downtown location. The front house is a 5br/3.5ba 3500sqft Mediterranean with balconies, high ceilings, large windows and a guest suite with kitchenette. In back is a 2,123sqft 1920s cottage in an oak grove that could be potentially three separate rentals or a large secondary home for offices, studios or guests. 300WSantaAnaStOjai.com

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© 2023 Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties (BHHSCP) is a member of the franchise system of BHH Affiliates LLC. BHHS and the BHHS symbol are registered service marks of Columbia Insurance Company, a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate. BHH Affiliates LLC and BHHSCP do not guarantee accuracy of all data including measurements, conditions, and features of property. Information is obtained from various sources and will not be verified by broker or MLS. Buyer is advised to independently verify the accuracy of that information.

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WINTER 2023 Volume 41 No. 4 E D I T O R ’S N O T E - 22

COVER STORY: Laura Dern & Diane Ladd, Honey, Baby, Mine - 28 ART

Pottery, Burt Horowitz - 38 Superpowered DC - 46 C U LT U R E

A Crown Wedding - 66 The Model Pastime - 120

120

BIG ISSUES

Man of Sorrows - 56 Demystifying the Hurriquake - 76 F O O D & FA R M

Dharma Farming - 86 SPORTS

Polo Player Extraordinaire - 96 EVENTS

Calendar - 105

HISTORY

Krotona at a Century - 110

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805-646-1476

96 46

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2187 McNell Road Built in 1922, this iconic Spanish estate located on historic Whale Rock Ranch is on two private acres surrounded by majestic Oak trees, exotic cactus gardens, hand crafted stone walls, a running stream & magnificent views. The two-story hand plastered house has 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, Italian single stone carved marble sinks, vaulted beamed ceilings & a massive rock fireplace. Cross the stone bridge over the stream & you’ll find the one bedroom ‘pool house’ complete with kitchen, bathroom & living room that looks out to the saltwater pool, spa & thriving herb garden. The third structure, a studio with bathroom & gas fireplace, has flexibility to be whatever you need: private office, yoga studio, or another guest space.

1204 N. Montgomery Street With a perfect mix of indoor & outdoor living, this classic California Ranch style home has five bedroom, four bathrooms & features vaulted ceilings, light filled rooms, a gorgeous kitchen with six burner Wolf stove, glass-front Subzero refrigerator, & a large island with Rain Forest granite. The kitchen is open to the covered patio & looks out onto the backyard with a variety of fruit trees. The primary bedroom has a spa-like bathroom & french doors leading to a private deck. Majestic Redwood trees both in the front & backyard along with the meandering pathways add to the charm of this home. There is a separate office or art studio off the garage with its own private entrance.

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2023

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EDITOR’S NOTE: WINTER 2023 You live on through the love you left behind, in the eyes of those who speak of you at the distant whaling outposts. — from “Jonah” by Robert Peake

ou can learn a lot about Ojai by the way we live, but there are also lessons to be learned from the way we say goodbye. Perhaps I’m leaning into my Maude years (Harold and Maude, 1971) more than I should, but there is nothing like a good memorial to give one an appreciation for others, and a fresh grasp on what we are living for. Maude asked the big questions, and being in the questions business myself (Ojai Valley News, Ventura County Sun), I’m a huge Maude fan.

MAGAZINE

E DITO R/P UBL ISHER Laura Rearwin Ward A S S IS TA NT EDITOR Karen Lindell A RT DIREC TOR Paul Stanton WRITERS Karen Lindell Perry Van Houten Mimi Walker Barbara Burke Dave LaBelle John Fonteyn Peter Deneen

Gusts of our own mortality can bring our lives into focus, (memento mori). With our daily constructs torn down by loss, we are forced to listen, to slow down, and we are given the chance to reset. In the fall, our community came together en masse a few days after the sudden loss of a very young man we all knew. We came together in the same space, in the midst of our confusion and grief, to cry in community. It was an affirming event because we drew support standing by our neighbors and feeling the interconnectedness of the Ojai Valley. Together we ached for and celebrated our memories of the young, talented, and sunny friend Benny Schurmer. Whenever we come together to celebrate life — the one we’re having or the one we’re missing — we can go forward, knowing we do so together in our small town. Those we knew remain in our communal hearts. The stories in this Winter’s issue share the urgency of a need to say what needs to be said before it’s too late. These stories are clearing the air, commemorating rites, and holding up the fleeting moments of life for close consideration. A few illustrations of this theme are found in our cover story about well-known mother-daughter duo Diane Ladd and Laura Dern (pg. 28); in Man of Sorrows (pg. 56) — a father’s story of loss; and in a rite of passage: A Crown Wedding (pg. 66). Demystifying the Hurriquake (pg. 76) puts the now in context of geologic/seismic time. Dharma Farming (pg. 86) explores the deeper meaning of growing crops and the thoughtful work of food production. We offer a collection of stories to give you pause — to interrupt your thoughts — to honor our loved ones, our rites of passage, our happenstances, and to celebrate life.

Laura Rearwin Ward

P RO DUCTIO N SUPPORT Tori Behar, Mimi Walker Georgia Schreiner A DVERTISING Linda Snider, director of sales Ally Mills, account executive CONTAC T magazine@ojaivalleynews.com ojaivalleynews.com/magazine 206 N. Signal St. Ste. G Ojai, California 93023 @ojaimag

Cover photo: Victoria Stevens

With affection,

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Diane Ladd and a young Laura Dern at home in their living room.

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DIANE LADD & LAURA DERN

Honey, Baby, Mine. A quest to heal Mother — then, to heal Mother Earth

“Y

our child is your diamond,” whispers multi-hyphenate movie star, writer, and longtime Ojai resident Diane Ladd, whose native Mississippi drawl remains unﬂinchingly expressive, dripping, like honey, with ethereal certitude — a voice rendered unbreakable by a storied seven-decade career.

by MIMI WALKER Photos courtesy of the authors

“And a diamond is nothing but a by-God piece of coal that stuck to its job, and learned patience. ... We humans can take a lesson from that.”

years from, she says, unwittingly inhaling pesticide drift from citrus groves abutting her former East End home. Her digestion also took a hit, resulting in a procedure on her esophagus and the removal of a portion of her colon.

Diane had to stick to the hardest job of her life in 2018, when she was given three to six months to live due to a compromised respiratory system: keeping herself alive. Her lungs were loaded with scar tissue that built up over three

Diane’s own diamond, her daughter, second-generation movie star, Oscar winner, and environmental activist Laura Dern, displayed unfailing love and determination, and put her mother to task on the doctor’s recommendation

by walking with her in the ocean air to strengthen and expand her lungs. Diane, her airways tight like pinholes, was in agonizing pain in the beginning of the journey. “That’s when I thought, ‘You know what? Let’s choose topics. Tell me stories,’” says Laura, desperate to keep her mother on the literal path to recovery. Soon it dawned on her, “literally, in the moment, organically, ‘Why don’t I record them in my phone, so that we have your stories for your grandkids?’ Because we both were feeling this imminent fear of the end of her life.” What started as an idea to archive sweet memories soon revealed, despite their many moviemaking collaborations, there were still oceans untold between them in the real world.

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Laura Dern uses her platform to advocate for regenerative agriculture. Photo courtesy Big Picture Ranch

“As we started having the conversations, we started to uncover, despite how close we are, how much we never talked about,” Laura says. After hours and hours of conversation, Diane regained enough lung capacity to defy her doctor’s prognosis. Upon hearing of the raw recorded talks that kept Diane moving, Laura’s agent convinced the pair that a book was waiting to be born. What convinced Diane and Laura to publish the walk-talks was that their rawness helped propel both women into “psychological healing,” Laura says.

“As I share in the book, when we talked about the very hardest things — areas of grief and difficulty that we’d never deeply discussed — my mom started getting better. And I will never forget that moment.” In that truth, Laura says, she and her mother wanted to inform others “that there is the capability to heal, be it psychological and, even, physical, that we can give each other just by communicating, and saying out loud what has felt buried in life.”

And so, the New York Times bestseller Honey, Baby, Mine: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life, Death, Love (and Banana Pudding) was born of mother and daughter, published in April by Grand Central Publishing. The book’s title comes from a line in Woody Guthrie’s “Crawdad Song,” and stands on its own as a term of endearment in their family. Diane and Laura with warm mugs in 1985.

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The most difficult aspect of the book’s editing process was determining “the key moments that really created change for us. And we really didn’t hold back, because it was in the hardest discussions, and in the laughter, that we found the most healing,” says Laura. The book is not without arguments; years-old resentments are brought to a boil, but when the two hash it out and give it a day or so to dissipate, it proves far more restorative than keeping it all too close to the chest.

says Diane. “My favorite moment in the whole book is one day I got up to take a walk … ‘Mother, just walk a little bit further’ was her (Laura’s) thing. I hate walking, if you want to know the truth. She leaned down and started tying my shoelace. And I said, ‘Oh, honey, you don’t have to tie my SHOELACES.’ And she looked up at me, with her big blue eyes, and said: ‘Why not? You’ve tied mine plenty of times. Maybe it’s my turn.’ And my heart just broke open.”

The book also provides an intimate lens into Diane’s divorce from Laura’s father, actor Bruce Dern, and the heartbreak of the tragic and untimely death of the couple’s ﬁrst child, Diane Elizabeth, years before Laura was born.

Diane believes raising a daughter is “a replay of yourself, in some ways,” but the richness of life is in allowing “your bird, in human form, to ﬂy, free in the air, without any threat of harm…. And whatever talent God gives your children, I beg the parents to encourage it with everything they can, ’cause the rewards are thousandfold.”

A series of prompts for readers in the book’s appendix came about by “thinking through the things that got us going, and we really spent the time to track back through the things that we felt like had really incentivized getting to deeper spaces. That was a huge and fun process,” Laura adds. Those range from: “What are your favorite things — song, movie, book, food?” to “Whom would you like to forgive or be forgiven by?” “Our book has a lot of comedy and funny things in it, a lot of truth and a lot of vulnerabilities,”

Even so, this was a challenge for Diane to accept when Laura, as a tween, nabbed a ﬁlm audition, after which the director confessed to Diane her child had “cinema magnetism.” As much as Diane wanted to steer her child away from the many landmines that lurk in show business, she was nevertheless brought to tears by Laura’s natural gifts. “To work with your own child is a miracle … the pleasure of working side by side with somebody you love is an incredible experience,” Diane shares. The work of bringing Laura into existence was itself a miracle.

After a harrowing tubal pregnancy, several doctors discouraged Diane from attempting to conceive another child. “‘I’m so sorry, Diane, it’s impossible,’” Diane remembers being told. “And I prayed. And I said to those doctors: ‘I will have another child. I WILL,’” she avowed. She ﬁercely dove into anatomical studies and adhered religiously to the dietary principles of Gayelord Hauser’s Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Invitation to Beauty. The same doctors were nonplussed by the consequent pregnancy, and thunderstruck at the birth of Laura Dern. “I’m very proud of my daughter. I’m very proud of her as a mother, and I’m very proud of her as a friend to her friends, (and) because of her ethics. She’s very gracious, and highly, highly intelligent. I think she’s the best of me, and the best of Bruce — of both worlds. “And I think what you should want for your children is that they stand on our shoulders, in the hopes that they can see further than we have. “And if we could all do that with our children, then someday, this human world might really become humane.

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... That’s pretty deceitful, right there.” When Laura learned of the connection between pesticide drift and her mother’s critical ailments, she says, “it ﬁlled me with rage — rage is probably my No. 1 feeling. You know, my mother has lived this long and incredible life, and had all kinds of journeys and experiences. And the fact that petrochemicals would be the thing that would take her down … I mean, Roundup (glyphosate’s brand name) is not illegal in the state of California, which is insane to me when there are multibilliondollar lawsuits where people have died, or are dying, because of their exposure to Roundup … I have strong feelings about how I long for California to be a leader in the regenerative movement, as a produce leader and exporter; that is the very exciting hope.” Although Diane’s lungs are as healthy as they can be after that grim prognosis ﬁve years ago, “Right now I’m still a guinea pig,” she says. “I’m now working with doctors to try cold laser (treatment) to remove the scar tissue. That glyphosate is still in my blood.” Diane and Laura revisit their old stomping ground at the Bluffs in Santa Monica. Photo by Jona Frank

“And that’s what I pray for. And I also pray for the highest good for every single person that reads my book.” Diane adds: “We’ve dedicated our book to any two people who are brave enough to tell each other the truth. That doesn’t mean to use truth as a weapon — it means you use it to free yourself.” The next leg of the journey Honey, Baby, Mine was also created to encourage people to nurture and heal the planet. A great hope is that the tender roots of Diane and Laura’s love for one another will permeate the roots of Ojai Valley’s agriculture — and, eventually, all of America’s agriculture. “I know it would be so moving to me if everyone in Ojai knew her journey and knew the lessons that we had learned as family,” Laura says.

“We talked about it and decided that we owed it to mankind to talk about this horrendous thing going on, which is the spraying of pesticides and poisons into the air,” Diane says. Diane’s health was on a slow downward slope leading up to the hospitalization. She could not pinpoint any suspected cause of her weak breathing. The turning point came when her Cavalier King Charles spaniel, whose paws were wet with what had seemed like morning dew, died a sudden and excruciating death in the night. Diane then knew it was not dew in her yard. Diane says she “never received one notiﬁcation” of spraying events near her property, despite state regulations. She submitted a soil sample for testing after her neighbor’s yard tested positive for the herbicide glyphosate, but “to this day I have not received my report. To this day.

Diane went through phases of asking why, out of the whole vicinity, she was the one taken down by chemicals. But, she says, “I think God wanted us to write the book. ... I said, ‘God, why did you let this happen to me?’” Replying as God, Diane bellows: “‘Well, you got a big mouth, Diane. And you got some power. And you can use the power to help our people.’ I think God let it happen to me so I can help ﬁght for this town.” And it ultimately led to the purpose of the book, which is about “healing all over.” Through joining forces with several regenerative-farming activists, including Josh and Rebecca Tickell of Ojai, Diane and Laura have turned their attention to a new calling. “The farmer and the consumer have been fed a system, a model, that is destroying our planet, and at the same time, killing us,” Laura says. “And I don’t say that lightly — it is killing my mother. My mother, my amazing mother, will likely die,

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when she does, of pesticide exposure. That will be the reason I lose my mother. That is a very devastating thing.... Everybody’s looking for this answer in this horrifically terrifying climate crisis. We don’t need to invent a new thing. The soil and our ocean, if we leave them alone, will 1 million percent save us. But we have to stop abusing them immediately. And there’s no sign in sight that on a government level that’s happening. So it’s up to us … to fight for, not only regenerative farms, but fight to have the corporations that we support give us food that is healthy.” She adds: “I think it would be amazing if Ojai could be the bright light. This is a community that you could completely reinvent, and there are so many extraordinary people in the community who know how to do this, or long to do it.” Of her mother, Laura says: “She doesn’t want to waste a minute, and she expects that from all of us. I mean, when my mom was at her worst … my mother was on Zooms with the governor’s office, with the head of the California EPA, talking to the agricultural commissioners of various counties, going to town hall meetings, demanding information, talking to environmental lawyers to try to understand what’s in place … honestly, I wish I had the energy to do all that she was doing at her sickest.” Laura continues: “I have had the best front-row seat, for a number of years, to our greatest living actress, from my perspective — the most incredible, pure, unbelievable, boundaryless actor and artist in my mom. I’ve watched her play the most radically complicated, almost evil characters … an angel … the most withheld characters … all of them completely different than who she is, but she completely commits and embodies whoever she has played. ... I want my mom’s life and legacy to be living out her life in the most health she can, and having made an impact and a difference, because God knows she has to cinema. But how heartbreaking for this woman, who loves her community, to feel that she could impact cinema, but not her neighbors.” Ojai is the “place of the light,” says Diane, who dreams it will be “a city that all of

Bruce Dern, Diane Ladd and their daughter, Laura, as a tiny tot.

America can look to for guidance. Of course, there’s darkness everywhere, to try to hide the light, but the people in Ojai only put up with that darkness for so long. We got some great people in this town, Ojai — we got some winners here.”

help balance it,” Diane declares. “We’re ﬁghting for pure food and pure air — is that too much to ask? And we’re ﬁghting to get the farmers more money — is that a bad thing? They supply our food; they deserve it.”

Diane’s list of personal Ojai delights is plentiful: Ojai Ice Cream, Ojai Village Pharmacy, the post office, the hospital, Ventura County Humane Society, chess games. Most poignantly, she loves Libbey Park, where she is proud to have participated in the Ojai Film Festival, but also ﬁnds bliss swinging on the swings.

To that, Laura concludes: “I love Ojai. ... It really is a deep home to us and such a special place. I certainly long for everyone in the community to take care of its majestic, amazing, peaceful artists’ hub by treating the soil as your closest relative and neighbor. And my mom being any part of that will be as special as it has been for me to have her as a parent, and have her as a mentor and teacher in art and ﬁlm.”

“I’m privileged to live in this beautiful little town, and I wanna do everything I can to

HONEY, BABY, MINE by LAURA DERN & DIANE LADD is available in hardcover, unabridged audiobook and Kindle formats wherever good books are sold.

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www.bartsbooksojai.com

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WINNERS 11 YEARS IN A ROW!

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ottery has a fundamental groundedness, Burt Horowitz believes. Something as organic and primal as clay that’s been fashioned to create pottery for millennia, he says, can be used not only to communicate, but also to disrupt viewers’ sometimes apathetic perspectives on the world and inspire them to reflect on injustices in life, and perhaps take action. The artist benefits, too. “Pottery is great therapy,” said Horowitz of Santa Barbara, whose works grace Ojai’s Firestick Pottery Studio. “I get to do something tactile and it gives me joy when I can take something out of the ground and fashion it with value … the potter’s primary goal is to center the clay on the wheel—nothing in life can be accomplished if we don’t have a balanced and centered life.” He referred to a biblical verse from Jeremiah: “He is the potter, we are the clay. Mold me, shape me, have thine own way.” Horowitz continued: “This is a universal truth. When working with clay, the goal is to form and shape it into something of beauty, worth, value, or utility. Once the clay is fired at over 2,400 degrees, it literally turns into stone. Hence, the term stoneware. You can take that piece of pottery and place it in the ground; 3,000 years later, someone may excavate it and it will be in the same condition.” He paused, then added: “From a very meager and fragile piece of clay, in the hands of a potter, something permanent can be created. I love this analogy: My personal life goal is to live a centered life, with purpose and vision of hope.”

Hope amid horror Horowitz’s visionary pottery addresses social issues, albeit through a prism of unabiding hope. His War Series, which depicts the horrors inflicted by conflict, “is intended to focus on how we as human beings are to think about the impacts of war responsibly and with a sense of compassion,” Horowitz said. “But also, how we can carry that compassion through to action. We can do so by one neighbor loving another.” Horowitz’s works about war drew international attention when he posted some of them on social media. “I have an ongoing professional relationship with Tetiana, a potter in Kiev, who saw my pottery on social media and my posting of the Ukrainian flag,” Horowitz said. “She

Right: Part of the War Series, “Bent on Destruction” led Horowitz to post: “The horror of the world at war! The weathered hands of wisdom are balancing the conflict. Is there hope? Yes, it starts with each of us seeking the higher good.”

responded online and now often shares the challenges that she and her family face daily, such as having to run into the forest in the middle of the night to avoid the bombs.” An inherent aversion to the violence in armed conﬂicts is embedded in Horowitz and informs his artistic expressions. “My mother is a post-Holocaust survivor from Salzburg, Austria, and her father, my grandfather, was taken by the Nazis to Dachau concentration camp,” Horowitz said. “My grandmother, Irene, paid off the Nazis to get him out of the camp and they left for America a few months later. On my father’s side, my grandfather Joe left Russia when he was 15 years old … I am very grateful to America because it feels like what we’ve done since the war is lifesaving for thousands.” Moved by the trauma Tetiana endured, in mid-August Horowitz offered his works to the Eyes of War — Eyes of Hope fundraiser in Santa Barbara to beneﬁt Ukrainian refugee children. “Artist Rich Wilkie painted 100 originals of Ukrainian refugee children,” Horowitz explained. “My black-and-white pieces were in each corner of the gallery. My items being so monochromatic added more to the drama of his works.”

Burt Horowitz

by BARBARA BURKE

Pacifist

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Potter

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One of the most striking pieces in the ‘War Series’ is “A World of Hurt!” Four overwhelmed subjects are shown in the grips of despair and angst, grasping to comprehend war’s senseless violence and killings. Their faces depict tortured expressions, cradled by their worn hands. Helplessness pervades the piece. “The pain and anguish of a world at war,” Horowitz commented in his Instagram post accompanying the piece. “Every nation feeling the anguish of unrest and destruction. Families broken. Relationships severed. The profound sadness of the human condition. Is there hope? Yes! It starts with each of us seeking the higher good.” Explaining another piece in the series, Horowitz posted on Instagram: “The horror of the world at war! Will the human species ever change? Will LOVE prevail?” Elaborating, he said: “This piece represents

“The weathered hands of wisdom that are balancing the conflict, while the fancy speaks of the beauty we seek in our everyday walk of life.” The bullet hole informs viewers that violence has entered and shattered the dream. “However, LOVE will prevail. Never give up!” Horowitz admonished. “Never give in to evil! Speak the truth! Sacrifice! Serve! Reach out to the ones that are hurting! Be the LIGHT in a darkened world.” Another piece in the War Series, “BENT on Destruction,” is a tank shell bent like a piece of fabric implying malleability — and hope. Perhaps, person by person, Horowitz posits, peace can be achieved. Elements of joy and surprise Not all of Horowitz’s creations are a somber commentary on society’s deficiencies. Much of his pottery is joyful and coy, and contains an element of surprise. Consider, for example, his realistic depictions of purses, satchels, and beach bags complete with zippers and buckles —Horowitz toys with incorporating metal objects and other elements within clay works. He loves to tell the story of a woman who came upon one of his works of pottery on the check-in counter at the El Encanto boutique hotel in Santa Barbara, where he displays his works and talks with guests every Sunday afternoon. “She came up to the counter and thought someone had forgotten her purse. But it was actually one of my pieces that is a pottery depiction of a beach bag, complete with a water bottle, flip-flops and sunglasses!” Horowitz exclaimed. To enjoy some of Horowitz’s intriguing pieces, go to Ojai’s Firestick Pottery Studio, where he fires his pieces.

the ultimate challenge for men and women to carry a mantle and message of peace. To love and serve one another.” The top section of the work’s missile shell, Horowitz explained, “represents the business, logistics, and mechanics of war. The bottom looks like a ﬁnely woven vulnerable bag — life is fragile!

For more information: Instagrams: @burtwarepottery @firestickpottery firestickpottery.com burt.horowitz@gmail.com

Right: “My coffee tasted so good in these new bumpy mugs!” Horowitz exclaimed online. This cup is porcelain with a clear glaze.

Above: “The variegated color is transformative.” The piece uses acrylic color wash rather than glaze. Below: Part of the Amber Green series, this 16-inch bowl has an inlaid double glaze which was sprayed in two opposite directions to yield the two-toned 3D enhanced look. Left: Horowitz’s latest creations feature intricate weaving elements and a pottery version of a small scarf draped over the piece.

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Above: “Get me out of here!” We all have our baggage that we carry through life, Horowitz observed. Right : “Life is like a beautiful worn leather bag reflecting a life well lived,” Horowitz explains. “Enjoy the ride!” Above right: Another piece from the World of Hurt series evokes this message from Horowitz: “Love will prevail. Never give in EVIL! Be the LIGHT in a darkened world.” Below right: This altered vase contributed to my love of exploring with dimensionality.

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Image courtesy Warner Bros.

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by MIMI WALKER

Superpowered LESLIE IWERKS

Photo by Jeff Vespa

Covers New Ground Three generations of the Iwerks family, for the better part of a century, have built on the legacy of pop-cultural prototypes that are well-embedded in the fabric of cinema. Two patriarchs are both Oscar winners and Disney Legends: Ub Iwerks co-created Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit with Walt Disney in the Roaring ’20s, which fueled the fire in his son, Don, to become a special-effects master in his own right. Now, Don’s daughter, Leslie Iwerks, herself an Oscar and Emmy nominee, has found the space in Ojai to be still and tap into the source of her own creativity as she forges new paths in documentary filmmaking.

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Leslie’s had a busy year, with two docuseries she directed debuting on Max streaming this summer: 100 Years of Warner Bros., narrated by Morgan Freeman, and Superpowered: The DC Story, narrated by Rosario Dawson. The first two episodes of 100 Years of Warner Bros. premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May — a rarity for a series. “It was an amazing experience — a five-minute standing ovation — it was just incredible,” Leslie said. “Warner Bros. came to me and they asked if I would be interested in doing a docuseries on that brand, because they saw The Imagineering Story on Disney+ (her six-part series on the evolution of Disney theme parks), and they really loved it. They said, ‘No one’s really ever done the story of DC,’ and it’s a very storied legacy with a lot of ups and downs. … One thing I really learned a lot on 100 Years of Warner Bros. is just how courageous the studio heads were, from Jack Warner and his three brothers taking on really risky films, to Steve Ross, who came in after that regime ended and took Warner Bros. into a whole new era of the ’70s and ’80s, and pushed really hard on bringing in new stories and new filmmakers. They pushed the envelope as far as the medium goes, with a genre (horror) like The Exorcist or comedy with Blazing Saddles. These are great examples of a studio taking bold, courageous swings into new territories.” Superpowered: The DC Story — co-directed by Mark Catalena, a DC superfan — also explores the zany depths of new territories. “I love stories about creativity, business and innovation — those are the three pillars of subjects that I really like to try to tell,” Leslie said, highlighting The Imagineering Story, The Pixar Story, and Industrial Light & Magic: Creating the Impossible as examples. “All of these stories are sort of underdog stories, and DC was no different; DC was very much an underdog story from the very beginning.” She continued, “I really love the folks over at DC Comics spearheaded by Jim Lee … his passion for the arts and for the fandom and characters was just really apparent and really real.” The origin stories of the iconic superheroes reveal the narrative of “the shifting sands of the industry as it changed through the years” and how “economic cycles affected comic books and the comic book industry.” The hidden aspects of Wonder Woman’s inception were particularly fascinating to Leslie. She said: “The creator of Wonder Woman was a man named William Moulton Marston, and he was the creator of the lie detector test … he was really interested in the politics of feminism. He was very much a feminist ally. And … the symbols, like the powerful lasso that Wonder Woman holds and uses, (he) took those images from the suffrage movement, ideas of emancipation. The weird thing, too, was that he had an open relationship with numerous women, and their impact on Wonder Woman’s identity was huge. … To me, I suppose the most interesting aspect is just the evolution and how you can make these characters evergreen time and again. They don’t die. They can go through so many different iterations and different mediums — whether it be comic books, or TV shows, feature films, or cosplays, you name it — they’re beloved. The content in which they’re applied can fail, but then they can find another director

Above: Ub Iwerks, designer and co-creator of Mickey Mouse Photo courtesy of The Walt Disney Company Right: Don Iwerks with vintage 1920s 2709 Bell & Howell film camera he’s restoring Photos courtesy of Leslie Iwerks Below: Ub Iwerks’ and Don Iwerks’ Oscars Photos courtesy of Leslie Iwerks

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and another medium who will bring them back to life in a whole new way and they’re loved again. “I’m always interested in why people resonate with certain characters. Perhaps that does stem from my grandfather’s own creation of Mickey Mouse … how did Walt Disney continue to keep Mickey Mouse going through all the different times and generations of kids coming in?” Leslie explored that very question in her first feature-length documentary, The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story, which stemmed from “a burning desire” to tell her grandfather’s story, as she felt he “really hadn’t gotten the proper credit for his design and co-creation of Mickey Mouse with Walt Disney.” Leslie worked closely with Roy E. Disney (nephew of Walt Disney, and son of Disney Studios co-founder Roy O. Disney) on the film, who was a strong advocate for her storytelling vision. She made it a point to “interview the people that would no longer be around much longer who knew him. … That was one specific thing I just wanted to do before it was too late.” She thus got to know her grandfather, who died when she was 1, much more intimately. In turn, she began to know herself more deeply, too, in the midst of early success that sometimes felt bewildering. “That journey of discovery was really critical to me, and I realized I really love telling underdog stories and I really love taking a subject and finding ways to make that story riveting through the tools of documentary,” she said. “You have to use a lot more ingenuity and creativity through photos and re-creations and music and interviews to make it compelling, and it’s not easy. But it led to a number of other projects that allowed me to do what I really found that I loved, which is going into new worlds I’ve never been to, going behind the scenes, discovering subjects I never knew about before, interviewing amazing people — top CEOs to visionary leaders, maverick filmmakers, scientists, ecologists, astronauts, anthropologists, environmentalists, you name it. So what’s fun for me is to learn; I love to learn, I’m like a sponge … I was that kid that would bring encyclopedia books on family trips.” Her educational documentaries have screened at Ojai Film Festivals past, such as Recycled Life (an Oscar-nominated short about the people living near the largest landfill in Guatemala) and Downstream, about Oil Sands projects in Alberta, Canada, and “a doctor who was a whistleblower for toxic oil, toxic sludge that was getting pumped into the rivers and going downstream to these little towns where a lot of Aboriginal native communities lived,” leading to an onslaught of health crises that Leslie and her team tracked. But she is proud to still carry the torch for her grandfather’s place as a Disney forefather. Leslie was recently a guest speaker at Destination D23 at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida, as well as on the Disney Wish cruise ship to the Bahamas. “I really love spending time with Disney fans,” she said. “They’re probably the most enthusiastic fan base outside of Comic Con that I’ve ever met.” Disney is in her blood, after all; Epcot was practically her back yard growing up.

The late Tamara Iwerks, hiking. Photo courtesy of the Iwerks family

Don Iwerks ran the Disney studio’s machine shop for many years, “the epicenter for all the visual effects, technology, cameras, and projections … for the films and theme park attractions,” Leslie said. His hand was used as the mold for the hand of the “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” animatronic at Disneyland. Leslie and her sister, Tamara, used that rubber mold as a regular tool for family pranks. Leslie’s mother, Betty, piqued her daughter’s curiosities through natural inquisitiveness. “We’d sit around the dinner table and she would always ask my dad, ‘What was your day like?’ ‘What did you do today?’ ‘What did you learn?’ I think … my mom’s natural ability to ask questions and be inquisitive sort of wore off on me and inspired me to ask questions. My dad, just being an inventor, and trying to come up with things that have never been done before, was also really inspirational.” Don and Betty relocated to Ojai about eight years ago. Leslie, to be closer to her family, followed about two years ago, encouraged by Tamara, who was a prolific journalist, outdoorswoman, and animal lover, as well as an avid supporter of the Ojai Raptor Center. Tragically, Tamara passed away in a hiking accident on the Rogue River Trail in southwestern Oregon in 2021, as Leslie prepared to move here. “We miss her a lot; Ojai was her spirit center, I think. She really loved it up here,” Leslie reminisced. The sisters shared a passion for environmental activism, and Tamara was a key facilitator on many of Leslie’s projects. Leslie hopes one day to “to do more films in her honor, that would cover her spirit and what she loved,” perhaps taking a deeper dive into the endangered-animal causes Tamara so fiercely championed. “Sometimes, weirdly, I think she had a hand in getting me this house. … I had been looking for quite some time, and finally found the house that I always wanted,” Leslie shared. “I do believe in energy out there, and I believe Ojai is a very spiritual place. I believe she’s with us every day.”

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Left: with Jon Ingalls on the backlot of Warner Bros. for a drone shoot day. Photo courtesy Iwerks & Co. Below left: with Cannes Film Festival Director Thierry Frémaux at Cannes in May 2023 for the premiere of 100 Years of Warner Bros. Photo courtesy Ti Martin

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the precursor to Mickey Mouse Image courtesy Wikimedia CC

The family unit is as close as ever. Betty is an active volunteer with HELP of Ojai and the Ojai Studio Artists tours. Don “has a fourcar garage that he turned into a machine shop. He’s restoring old vintage cameras — it’s unbelievable what he does at age 94. He’s an artist, he’s got his art studio there, his blades, his mills, all his equipment … He doesn’t stop,” Leslie extolled. He’s even taught himself the art of coding and software. Leslie’s future plans include “developing my own feature film, and also some tech-related projects.” She added: “It’d be so great to create a film group up here, and invite film people, writers, directors, you name it, to come and speak and talk over drinks and just have ideation talks … to tell us the story of the making of that film.” Leslie summarized her own storytelling credo: “One of my passions is to encourage people to tell their life stories, to encourage them to record their family stories before it’s too late. … I hear about so many people who wished that they had recorded their grandfather or their father or mother before they died, and they didn’t. And that’s the old African proverb: ‘When an old man dies, a library burns.’ And if you don’t record that library before it burns, you lose it.

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“I’ve been very fortunate … (I) just think, how in the world did my grandfather come up with a 360-degree camera system for the Disney parks? How did he come up with the animation Xerox process that virtually saved Disney animation, or the traveling-matte process that allowed for the live action/animation combinations for Mary Poppins, and The Birds from Hitchcock? Those are all really creative, innovative solutions to technical problems, and without those solutions, we wouldn’t be as far in advance in how we see and experience ﬁlms. I look back on the groundbreaking terrain that my father and grandfather have laid and pushed forward; I’m just trying to do the same thing, continuing to push boundaries and tell stories that haven’t been told before.”

Below: At the Warner Bros. archives. Photo courtesy Iwerks & Co.

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit’s debut short, “Trolley Troubles,” premiered in theaters on Sept. 5, 1927. Image courtesy Wikimedia CC

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man of sorrows

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MARK BENKERT stands on a boulder,

hands folded, over-

looking the Ojai Valley,

where nearly 15 years

earlier he and his wife,

Marcia, carefully placed their son Jonah’s ashes

in the hollow of a large

rock they felt looked like

man of joy

a whale. The multi-ton

stone had a small cradle

that resembled a blowhole.

The act brought some

peace; they knew in time

the sweeping breezes

would lift and carry

Jonah’s ashes down

over the valley they

loved. “Thank you, God,”

Mark whispered, “for his

beautiful life, for 32 years

with this remarkable man.”

story and photos by DAVE LABELLE

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In February 2008 I hurried through the open front door of Mark and Marcia’s Aliso Street home after receiving an urgent call from Mark, a voicemail sent the day before. “How did you know to come over?” Mark asked, tears in his eyes. Marcia was in the kitchen, clutching the phone, crying, pleading. I heard her say, “Are you sure?” Their oldest son, Jonah, 32, had been found after a long search. The broad-shouldered bear of a man, who swam the breaststroke on his swim team and climbed El Capitan in Yosemite, had chosen to end his own life, and his suffering from drug addiction. Grief wears many faces, and we, as individuals, navigate it differently. Some retreat to their interior world, suffering silently, bitterly turning away from the world, climbing deeply into the safety of themselves. Others channel their grief outward, wading through their pain publicly, hoping to ﬁnd meaning and solace by sharing and helping others. The Benkerts chose the latter. Though their deep faith in God sheltered them through their process, the loss of Jonah, who Mark describes as “a remarkable friend and son who was also like a brother,” the Benkerts’ pain was understandably ever before them. Mark admitted weeks after Jonah’s death that he wasn’t coping day by day, but rather “hour by hour and sometimes even minute by minute.” Many long, prayerful hikes in the hills above Ojai offered him the necessary silence, space, and solace.

And then came the bear When the Benkerts were still wading through rivers of pain one year after Jonah’s death, an unlikely event occurred, ushering in waves of unexpected healing. A 400-pound black bear Mark would name “Elliot” lumbered down from the mountains into the city of Ojai, and after crossing yards late at night, scurried up a large pine tree across from the Benkerts’ home, perching on a limb 30 feet above ground, one paw dangling. The next day, still in the tree, the bear caused no small scene. Soon Aliso Street was bustling with concerned and curious

neighbors. Mark remembers school kids waving at the bear. In the evening, officials from the California Department of Fish and Game arrived and shot a tranquilizer dart into the bear’s thick fur, startling the bruin, who climbed higher, escaping to the top of the 60-foot tree. Then, to the horror of those watching, the show turned tragic. The scared bear grew dizzy, lost control, and fell helplessly, crashing to his eventual death across a fence and a three-decades-old paddle cactus. Much controversy surrounded the way the incident was handled, leading to a policy change in dealing with bears and wild animals that wander into town.

YOU LIVE ON

THROUGH THE LOVE

YOU LEFT BEHIND,

IN THE EYES

OF THOSE WHO

SPEAK OF YOU

AT THE DISTANT

WHALING OUTPOSTS.

“JONAH” BY ROBERT PEAKE

Peake’s poem, comments, and a short film by Alastair Cook can be seen at the following links: www.robertpeake.com/ archives/3604-jonah.html www.robertpeake.com/archives/917an-unexpected-dedication.html www.youtube.com watch?v=I1BDFAp-TQ0

Deeply troubled by the incident, Mark, an artist specializing in metal sculpture, began drawing on steel at sunrise to fashion a memorial sculpture in the shape of the fallen bear. Climbing the pine tree, he hoisted and ﬁxed the heavy metal piece, which weighed as much as a stove, onto the limb where the frightened bear originally sought refuge 30 feet above ground. The piece remains in the tree as a silent witness to the event on the property the Benkerts now own.

Catharsis For the artist, salvation often lives in selfexpression. I’m reminded of Eric Clapton, who in the depths of grief over the loss of his 4-year-old son, who fell to his death, wrote “Tears in Heaven,” one of the most beautiful and poignant memorial songs ever penned and performed. Mark, who was still grieving over the loss of Jonah, channeled the deep pain in his heart into a larger, more permanent creation to memorialize Elliot, seeing a similarity between the death of the bear and the death of his son. “The system let them both down,” he said, sharing how Jonah struggled for years with drug addiction. Mark fashioned a scale model of the multi-piece, one-ton steel sculpture after someone from the city saw his ﬁrst rendition in the tree, which prompted Ojai to commission the permanent memorial. He then worked in his driveway to complete the larger bear sculpture, offering the public a view of his process. “A lot of our friends were part of the creation,” he said. “Different artists were hanging around and I had a lot of input.” Once the sculpture was ﬁnished, Mark said, “a handful of homeless folks helped lift and place (it). I didn’t pay them; they just wanted to help.”

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Elliot died on Oct. 9, 2009, and the statue was dedicated in Ojai’s downtown Arcade in February 2010, two years after Jonah’s death. “I dedicated it to Jonah,” Mark said. “He was kind of a big bear of a guy, and the bear, in a way, symbolized that to me, that he came into our lives for a short while, and then he was gone.” Marcia felt like Jonah sent the bear. Perhaps a sign of respect for the bear sculpture — a park centerpiece for the past 13 years — “Elliot” has not been defaced like previous art pieces displayed in the same location. Mark said he is both surprised and grateful.

Another unexpected connection During the tragic ordeal, another unexpected bonding and healing opportunity emerged when the Benkerts’ neighbor, poet Robert Peake, shared his grief over the loss of his young son. Peake wrote a poem titled “Jonah” that he read at the Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts as part of “Weird Words,” a poetry reading on Sept. 18, 2010, then again at the bear sculpture’s dedication ceremony. “It was really a way we comforted each other,” said Mark. “He described it so well, the healing that took place.”

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Joy and gratitude After the several-mile journey up the rocky Sisar Canyon trail to the place the Benkerts placed Jonah’s ashes 15 years before, the whale-shaped rock could not be found. Erosion, road grading, and maybe the shaking earth had pushed the huge stone down into a ravine out of sight. Watching the afternoon shadows crawl up the valley, I feared Mark would be disappointed, but to my surprise, he said: “Instead of bringing me sadness, being up there was more like, ‘Thank you, God.’” Grief has been no stranger to the Benkerts. Since Jonah’s death, Mark said: “We’ve lost a grandson, (daughter Emily’s son) Liam, a really gifted artist who lived in Sweden. And now Jericho, too, who was like another son.” Jericho, a longtime family friend, was killed in Ukraine in September. Yet, even through the living nightmares, Mark continues to laugh often, seeming to live in a state of joyful gratitude. I asked him how he remains so positive, and he replied: “Jesus is joy. Jesus lives in me.”

Author’s note

I met Mark Benkert late in 2007, about a year after he and Marcia moved to Ojai from the Bay Area. Always benevolent, the Benkerts have a home on Aliso Street that was usually filled with grandchildren, dogs, and friends often needing a helping hand or a place to stay. Mark, a multi talented artist, designed and built climbing walls and created metal sculptures. You’ve likely seen him around town, quiet and unassuming, supporting causes that benefit Ojai. A gentle, articulate soul, he speaks softly. Not once in 15 years have I heard him raise his voice in anger. His deep faith in God keeps him smiling easily and often, despite the grief he carries.

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The Ojai Trolley Service, established in 1989, is owned and operated by the City of Ojai. The Trolley provides daily fixed-route transportation to approximately 9,000 riders per month throughout Ojai, Meiners Oaks and Mira Monte. The Trolley is a well-known feature in the Ojai Valley, and in addition to the daily fixed-route services, participates in many local community events, fund raising activities, community service, and educational functions.

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A Crown

by KAREN LINDELL photos by KT MERRY

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Amanda Crown weds David Krauss at the Ojai Valley Inn

Wedding T

he most auspicious headwear at Amanda Crown’s wedding to David Krauss was far from regal. It was a groom’s cake in the form of a hat — the hat that initially brought the couple together. It was a black New York Yankees baseball cap decorated with blue, green, and purple dinosaurs. Amanda and David were married May 28 at the Ojai Valley Inn, which is owned by Amanda’s extended family; the Crown family controls Henry Crown and Company of Chicago, which purchased the inn in 1985. Amanda is the daughter of Ellen and Dan Crown, and the granddaughter of Lester Crown, son of Henry Crown. She grew up in Manhattan, and David in Short Hills, New Jersey; his parents are Kim and Robert Krauss. They met in 2012 while students at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, but didn’t start dating until 2018. In college, the two were barely even friends. “We always knew of each other and had similar circles of friends, but our paths only crossed once,” Amanda says. “We met one Saturday at school when I asked to borrow his hat at a tailgate. After some persuasion on my part, he said he would give it to me, but it was his favorite hat and I had to promise to give it back.” It was, she says, “truly the ugliest hat that ever existed.” David jotted his number down on her phone, but neither followed up on the loan. Eight years later, they reconnected

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in Montauk, Long Island, when both were on separate trips with friends; at the time, Amanda was living in L.A. and David in New York City. “When I heard his name,” Amanda recalls, “I said, ‘This is going to sound crazy, but is there any chance I had your hat in college?’ He knew it was me right away and said, ‘That was you?!’” In Montauk, the couple went on one date before Amanda ﬂew back to L.A., and David met up with her again in L.A. while visiting friends. “We ended up dating long distance for about a year-and-a-half, spending long stretches in both cities until COVID hit,” Amanda says. “We quarantined together in L.A. until we ended up moving back home together to New York.” David proposed to Amanda in October 2021 at the Mayﬂower Inn in Washington, Connecticut. “I thought I was taking my mom away

for the weekend as a surprise for her birthday,” Amanda says. “Needless to say, I was the surprised one. He had called all of my friends in the weeks before and planned a huge engagement party for the next day without me knowing.” The couple wanted a destination wedding, and Amanda says she chose the Ojai Valley Inn “because Ojai has always been such a special place to my family, especially my dad. I’ve watched a few of my cousins get married at the inn and I was always so taken by its tranquility and beauty. As crazy as it may sound, I really believe there is something so special about the energy in Ojai. Given how meaningful it is to my family and how unique and special the inn has always felt to me, I knew it would be the perfect place for us.” David says he ﬁrst visited Ojai with Amanda and her family. “Walking around the inn with Amanda and her dad … made me realize what a special place this was for her family,” he says. “I quickly understood why

as I fell in love with the beautiful scenery, the calming energy, and the pink moment. The golf course didn’t hurt either.” They aimed for a wedding weekend that resembled “adult sleepaway camp in many ways … timeless but contemporary, and not super formal,” Dave says. “Overall, we … really wanted everyone there to feel how special they were to us.” Finding a dress wasn’t nearly as easy as choosing the venue, says Amanda, who wore a custom Monique Lhuillier gown from Mark Ingram Atelier that ended up being the dress of her dreams, a strapless ballgown with a sweetheart neckline and a long train. “To me it felt classic in a way that I would love forever but also fresh and unique,” she says. David wore a custom Zegna tuxedo. The wedding, a traditional Jewish ceremony, took place outdoors at the inn, under eucalyptus trees on the golf course behind the farmhouse. The marriage party was unusually large — about 20 bridesmaids for Amanda and 20 groomsmen for David. “We feel so lucky to have stayed very close with so many of our friends from throughout our lives,” Amanda says. “We couldn’t imagine the day without each and every one of them.” For the wedding menu, they went with more traditional choices. “But we tried to give it a classic steakhouse feel (sides of French fries on the table, etc.),” Amanda says. “Most importantly we had the inn’s Parker House rolls.” The cake, from The Butter End, was designed to match Amanda’s gown. It consisted of half chocolate almond cherry cake with cream cheese buttercream frosting, and half red velvet cake. David’s “hat” groom’s cake was a surprise. Amanda and David have since moved to downtown Manhattan and are planning a honeymoon. David works in ﬁnance; Amanda, who works in entertainment, is pursuing dual MBA/MFA degrees at New York University’s Stern School of Business and Tisch School of the Arts. Of course, we must ﬁnish with the hat. Somewhere along the way the couple lost David’s dinosaur cap, but Amanda found a replacement on eBay and surprised him with it before he proposed.

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THAT THAT DAY DAY FELT FELT STRANGE STRANGE D EMYSTI F Y I N G T H E ‘H U R R I QUA K E’

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Looking north toward Whiteacre Peak in the Sespe. Photo Devlin Gandy.

A On one weird afternoon this August, the first tropical cyclone in 80 years coincided with the strongest earthquake in Ojai’s recorded history, setting records and raising questions ranging from climate change to human-induced seismicity.

by PETER DENEEN

t 2:41 p.m. on Aug. 20, 2023, residents across the Ojai Valley fled their shaking houses and ran outside into the rain, opting to get wet rather than possibly become trapped in the rubble of their own homes. That Sunday afternoon, the first tropical storm to impact Ojai in nearly a century was delivering the region its wettest August day ever when the strongest recorded earthquake in the city’s history sent Ojaians fleeing toward the lessthreatening of the two natural events. Rain from Hilary — a Category 4 hurricane that had weakened to tropical storm status — was still coming down when a shallow 5.1 magnitude earthquake, centered just 3 miles beneath Sulphur Mountain ridge, shocked the region. The coincidence of rare phenomena resulted in little damage, but it made for an extraordinary seismometeorological moment and raised questions about the causes of the events and their potential relatedness. I spoke with experts to answer lingering questions from one of the strangest days in Ojai’s natural history.

WHY THE ‘HURRIQUAKE’ FELT SO ‘WEIRD’ A confluence of meteorological, geophysical, and psychosocial elements made the hurriquake the phenomenal climax of what was an already weird late summer weekend. Nearly everyone was looking up, and thinking up, when their attention was suddenly, and forcefully, grabbed from below. In August, anxieties are typically fixated on the threat of wildfire. But the weekend of Aug. 20, residents were on edge about an impending hurricane, Hilary, whose trajectory at different stages of development included the Ojai Valley in its bull’s-eye. The day before Hilary made landfall, the governor of California issued a state of emergency and the National Hurricane Center issued its first-ever tropical storm warning for Southern California. For days before the storm arrived, the weather was a phantasmagoria of atypical atmospheric elements. The dry August air became heavy with humidity, and altocumulus clouds and fast-moving upperlevel winds created a sense of dynamic movement in the typically cloudless August sky, resulting in a billowing tropicalia that

electrified sunsets and roseated the evening light. The barometer plummeted. Google searches across the region involving the terms “headache” and “Hilary” spiked, and posts on social media complained about the sudden onset of headache symptoms from the precipitous drop in atmospheric pressure. The day before the storm, occasional sonic booms from the Camarillo Air Show emanated from the direction of Sulphur Mountain, adding thunderclap to the already odd Saturday weather, raising eyebrows, and turning heads toward the mountain no one knew was about to move. Later that evening, lightning flashed, real thunder clapped, and a squadron of firefighting aircraft deployed to extinguish the Plant Fire near New Cuyama on Hurriquake Eve. Ben Heilveil is a Sulphur Mountain resident, psychotherapist, and core faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where he teaches community mental health and ecopsychology. He said we experience anomalous weather not only as unusual in the physical environment, but also as unusual psychologically: “That day felt strange because it was strange. Normal patterns were disrupted. We had a day in August that felt like it could be in February, and that demands attention psychologically.” As Hilary bore down on Saturday evening, the U.S. Geological Survey recorded a swarm of 19 minor earthquakes, including a sharp 2.5 magnitude temblor at 9:15 p.m., adding earthquake to the calamity of mild but esoteric natural events. These would be the foreshocks to the main event on Sunday afternoon, still 17 hours away.

DID CLIMATE CHANGE CAUSE HURRICANE HILARY? All that can be said for certain about climate change and Hurricane Hilary is that the increased warming likely enhanced the storm’s precipitation. The atmosphere holds approximately 7% more water for every degree Celsius of warming, which means when it does rain, more precipitable water is available. Although Hilary’s path was rare, it was

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Above: Thomas Dibblee Geological Map of the Ojai-Santa Paula area. Orange circles represent the earthquake swarm. The 5.1 magnitude earthquake is highlighted. Approximate surface traces of the Arroyo-Parida, Lion, and Sisar Faults are depicted in stippled red lines. The location of Cross Section A-B (Figure 2) is also depicted. Colors on the map represent different geological rock units. (Orange is the Monterey Shale and associated rocks, red is the Sespe Formation and yellow represents the Pico Formation.) Below : Interpretive and idealized Cross Section A-B (Location on Figure 1). Location of important Map features are indicated. The projected faults are indicated in red. Half arrows represent the direction of fault movement. These faults dip to the south and the fault movement is toward the north. Green spheres are the locations and magnitudes of the earthquake storm. Also depicted is the Gary Huftile Cross Section AA.

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not unprecedented. The trade winds that typically push Paciﬁc cyclones westward into open ocean are likely what permitted the storm’s northward track and allowed it to rapidly intensify to a Category 4 hurricane in just 24 hours. UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said we should not necessarily expect to see more tracks like Hilary’s in a warmer climate.

WHAT WERE HILARY’S IMPACTS? Hilary set August rainfall records across four states and caused an estimated $600 million in insured losses and possibly up to $9 billion in overall damage and economic losses. A month after the storm, California filed a major disaster declaration requesting federal support. Although Hilary set rainfall records in the Ojai area, the storm was almost entirely beneficial, dropping enough rain to saturate the topsoil and raise flows on the Ventura River by half a foot and Sespe Creek by 1.5 feet. Hilary shattered both Ojai’s single-day and monthly rainfall record for August. The more than 2 inches of rain measured at Soule Park brought Ojai’s 2023 total above 44 inches, making it the wettest La Niña winter ever, and surpassing 2005 for fifth-wettest winter on record. In some Ojai locations it was the second wettest winter on record. At the monthly Ojai Basin Groundwater Management Agency meeting the week after the storm, hydrogeologist Jordan Kear said the main Ojai groundwater basin, which had been filled to capacity at the end of last winter, increased 16 feet thanks to Hilary, refilling the basin to 86%. Ojai entered the

Above left: A live oak crashes down at the home of Kit Stolz in Upper Ojai. Photo: Kit Stolz Below left: Cal Trans workers prepare a large boulder for detonation. Photo: Cal Trans District 9

2024 water year, which began Oct. 1, with more supply in the groundwater basin at the start of a new water year than any year since measurements began in 1944.

THE EARTHQUAKE The rain had been coming down for nearly three hours when, at 2:41 p.m. on Sunday afternoon, a mixed strike-slip and oblique reverse faulting, somewhere between the Mission Ridge-Arroyo Parida and Lion Canyon faults, produced a shallow 5.1 magnitude earthquake, centered on Sulphur Mountain ridge, about 4.3 miles southeast of downtown Ojai. The mainshock prompted a USGS Shake Alert, an advanced warning system that issued a push notiﬁcation to mobile phone users seconds before the shaking began — or for those closest to the epicenter, as the shaking was already underway. No one was certain if the 5.1 was the big one, or if a bigger one was coming. The USGS aftershock forecast gave a 9% chance of an even greater magnitude temblor to follow. That was chance enough for Sulphur Mountain resident Trevor Quirk, who heads the disaster nonproﬁt Upper Ojai Relief, and his family to sleep in their car the night of the mainshock. A bigger one didn’t come, but a total of 260 aftershocks kept nerves high. Some of the larger aftershocks had aftershocks of their own. For days after the 5.1 earthquake, the ground in Upper Ojai, which is an ancient lakebed and liquefaction zone, seemed to never stop moving.

Nearly everyone was looking up, and thinking up, when their attention was suddenly, and forcefully, grabbed from below.

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The earthquake was confusing for both residents and scientists, who called it a “complex” event. Though magnitude 5 earthquakes occur daily all over the world, scientists said the Ojai earthquakes were unusual for their magnitude, type of slip, and foreshock sequence. Craig Nicholson, a geophysicist at UC Santa Barbara, said the Ojai earthquake had some characteristics of an oblique reverse and some characteristics of a strike-slip earthquake. The foreshock sequence was unusual, he said, because of the large number of earthquakes in the days prior to the mainshock, adding that the magnitudes and number of aftershocks were typical for a magnitude 5 earthquake. At the crest of the Dennison Grade on Highway 150, a Fiat-sized boulder — so big that Caltrans had to use dynamite to explode it into movable pieces — fell onto the road. Bottles and dishes crashed to the floor at local businesses, causing several thousand dollars in losses. Deep in upper Matilija Canyon, residents reported that a dormant spring began flowing eight hours after the earthquake. The spring, which reemerged and flowed for a year and half after the Northridge earthquake in 1994, flooded driveways and required a diversion to redirect the cascade of sulphur water.

DID THE STORM TRIGGER THE EARTHQUAKE? Changes in atmospheric pressure and precipitation can trigger microseismicity, and even some damaging earthquakes, but the USGS says the instances are small and not statistically signiﬁcant. Experts were unanimous in their opinion that the two events were unrelated. Judith Hubbard, a Caltech and Harvardeducated structural geologist who focuses on faults in the Western Transverse Ranges, said in a Substack post there was no evidence the earthquake was related to the storm: “It’s plausible that in some cases, atmospheric or hydraulic loading on the crust could alter the stresses on crustal faults, especially shallow faults. However, earthquakes are common in California, and links between storms and earthquakes are tenuous at best.” Despite the uncanny timing, Nicholson said, there was no connection between these earthquakes and Hurricane Hilary.

The earthquake reactivated the Sulphur Cascade spring on the eastern end of Sulphur Mountain. Photo: Peter Deneen Below right: Hilary clouds move across the Sespe Wilderness. Photo: Brendan Willing James

WERE THE EARTHQUAKES HUMAN-INDUCED? Haley Ehlers, director of Climate First: Replacing Oil & Gas, a nonprofit based in Ventura County, said she received a dozen inquiries from residents concerned that local oil and gas activities might be connected to the earthquakes. Induced seismicity has been conﬁrmed in Oklahoma, for example, a region that experiences little tectonic activity, but has more human-induced earthquakes than anywhere else in the nation. There, induced seismicity is caused by injecting millions of barrels of water per day — wastewater from hydraulic fracturing (aka fracking) — deep into the ground at high pressure, breaking apart rock, lubricating faults, and generating swarms of earthquakes. Ojai, by contrast, lies in one of the most tectonically active areas in the world. The area is rich in easily accessible oil and gas-bearing rock from the Monterey formation — the source rock of oil and gas in California. Tar and oil, the “black gold” of California, seeps and bubbles up to the surface in many parts of Upper Ojai.

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The primary difference between oil production in Oklahoma and the Ojai Valley is the methods of water disposal. The geology around Ojai seldom requires the same extraction or injection methods that trigger seismicity in places like Oklahoma, and where it is practiced is done so at a fraction of the scale — hundreds of barrels per day versus tens of thousands. In Ojai, water is injected into pressure-depleted reservoirs, a process that is state-permitted and overseen by monitors and watchdog organizations. Jane Farkas, vice president of land and regulatory affairs for Carbon California, the primary oil and gas operator in Upper Ojai, said no fracking is currently being practiced on any of Carbon California’s leases, and the state of California has said it plans to stop issuing permits for fracking by 2024. Vaughn Thompson, Carbon California’s vice president of exploration and geology, walked me through the company’s activities in the Ojai area, the majority of which are located several miles east of the earthquake cluster. Wastewater injection occurs at a handful of locations in Upper

Ojai, the nearest of which is more than 2 miles from the epicenter of the August 20 mainshock. Termo, the other main oil and gas operator in the area, has one active injection well site 1.75 miles from the epicenter, although Thompson said that well discharges into a different fault block. Nicholson and Hubbard concurred that the Ojai earthquake pattern suggests natural seismicity. “In some places where there’s anthropogenic (i.e., caused by humans) activity, when you look at a timeline of seismicity you see persistent seismic activity at a given location,” Hubbard said. “Whereas when you see natural earthquakes, usually you see … aftershocks at a certain time and then the slow decay of seismicity. In places where there’s a lot of oil activity, you sometimes see lots of little earthquakes popping off at exactly the same location. When I look at the record here I don’t see that kind of behavior.”

DID THE EARTHQUAKE BUY US TIME? Nicholson said the stress released by the

Peter Deneen is an Ojai native and holds a master’s degree in Climate and Society from Columbia University. Follow his work at petedeneen.world and on Instagram @dancin.pete.

5.1 Ojai earthquake did not necessarily buy us time before the next big one. In fact, he said, our earthquake may have actually made matters worse. The faults that produced our 5.1 earthquake are now less likely to generate another major earthquake any time soon, but Nicholson said they weren’t major hazards to begin with. “Only big faults can produce big earthquakes,” Nicholson said. “The (magnitude) 5.1 was … mostly a secondary fault. Thus, it did not release the stress on the adjacent big faults, and in fact some would argue it actually transferred stress it released onto these adjacent bigger faults. If so, it loaded these adjacent faults with higher stress, bringing them closer to failure, not moving them away from failure.”

HOW MUCH BIGGER CAN EARTHQUAKES HERE GET? The paleoseismic record suggests the potential for much larger earthquakes exists in faults in the region. According to Hubbard, earthquakes that can uplift the ground surface 15 to 30 feet are possible on the Ventura Fault, extending offshore south of Santa Barbara onto the Pitas Point Fault, in a magnitude 7.7 to 8.1. An event like one Hubbard described may be 8,000 times stronger than Ojai’s Aug. 20 earthquake. Hubbard and Nicholson said a big one may yet be pending and is still possible, the potential strength of which challenges comprehension. Underlying Ojai is a confusion of faults that splay off of the San Andreas “master fault.” Ojai’s major faults tend to strike east-west, transverse to the orientation of other major faults and geologic structures. The valleys themselves are bound by dipping reverse faults, whose movement will compress and eventually destroy the Ojai Valley over the next quarter-million years. The mountains that hold the Ojai Valley must still move a great distance toward each other, as the Paciﬁc Plate mercilessly compresses our mini crustal block, meaning many thousands more major earthquakes will inevitably occur. Despite knowing this, the likelihood of those thousands of major earthquakes coinciding with another tropical cyclone any time soon is astronomically low.

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Dharma Farming WARNING! WARNING! This article makes reference to the verbiage common to half of Ojai and to Hindu and Taoist philosophy, and may be triggering to the other half of Ojai.

t acknowledges the existence of reiki healing, energy work, volition, vicissitudes, intention, karma, and mindfulness as a means to a possible path to enlightenment. The language used here expresses my experience as a firstgeneration farmer and modest student of Eastern spirituality, not as a participant in the appropriation of Asian culture for the sake of entertainment or a fancy way of interacting with my own ego. I’m just an old white dude who was raised in Texas by scientists, so my awakening to the use of the word “energy” as a subtle stream of life force connecting humans to each other and to all life has been both slow and prejudicial. These days in Ojai, you can’t swing a cat without hitting an energy worker. My tendency toward contempt prior to investigation of “energy work” caused me to label it as either Voodoo or snake oil, neither of which interested me. That being said, back in June, my wife, Elizabeth, signed up for a reiki training down in Baja and I decided to tag along. We stayed at a retreat center north of Cabo and south of Pescadero. While she was in class, I walked the beach and bathed in the reflected light of the other attendees during breaks and mealtime. Witnessing these beautiful, wellintentioned souls hover their hands over one another, sending out invisible waves of love, particularly over their food, sparked

something in me and made me re-examine my fixed mind state. Suddenly, I found myself in another time and place, a hula hoe in my hand, weeding the cosmic debris from in between the planets, my third eye slowly blinking open—feeling the stirrings of Shakti—life force energy-uncoiling from around my root chakra, slithering up my spine toward my brain until the hood of the Cobra shaded me from the harsh gaze of scientific squint and fundamentalist skepticism. I started to remember my former trip of wanting to bring my mindfulness practice into farming, and food turning both farming and cooking into a meditation. This wasn’t the first time I’d thought of how mindfulness, farming, and cooking naturally align; it had occurred to me in my past life as a farmer in the field, and again more recently as I was taking a walk along Ventura’s boardwalk listening to Joseph Goldstein and praying on my mala beads. That probably sounds pretty Ojai, but down on the promenade anything goes; it’s a safe space amongst the other sannyasin outside the temple walls — you’ve got to weirdout pretty hard near C Street to draw any attention. The podcast was about the Satipatthana Sutta, specifically the four foundations of mindfulness, and my monkey mind started thinking about bananas. Food is my whole job, so wandering off in that

by JOHN FONTEYN

direction happens. Obviously, this concept of mindfulness in farming and cooking isn’t a new idea. Most recently, farmers like Masanobu Fukuoka and Wendell Berry, and chefs like Jeong Kwan, have popularized this idea, borrowing from the original agronomists and women of antiquity, the kind you see on old pottery or papyrus. As I’ve gotten older and sober, the booze and drugs have mostly worn off, so all my favorite things to blame for my lack of attention unfollowed me on my socials and started ghosting me on text. I have become less interested in suffering anyways. On my best days it is easy to draw a straight line from my self-inflicted suffering and the likelihood of passing it on to people I love, people I don’t love, online “friends,” and those who linger in the crosswalk on Ojai Avenue with no intention of crossing the street—the ones who suddenly decide to cross the street after they see we’re all stopped waiting for them to cross super slowly without so much as a wave or head nod of acknowledgment. (Oops, I slipped on my samskara again.) Nowadays, my primary tool for a 5% to 10% reduction of self-loathing and victim mentality wrought by surviving the vicissitudes of life has been meditation. Taking a breath is the best medicine while waiting again for those staring at their phone as they slowly amble toward the crosswalk on their way to Bart’s Books. Francisco Torres, my original meditation teacher, was a wizened man in his early 70s when I was still a beer-bloated, smoked-out juvenile in my 30s. We were both working for Steve Sprinkel at the old Honor Farm. I was new to farming, so I was still looking to get something out of it more than get something from it or give something to it. Weeding, picking, and planting were daily tasks of suffering to painfully endure until lunch, then again till happy hour. Smoking, day drinking, and fantasizing were all

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fair game—anything to get through the odious rows of stirrup hoeing and knife weeding. Ever the white Westerner, I’d be waiting at the end of every row and bed for some accolade or acknowledgment from Francisco, Steve, or the Universe. Francisco outworked me every single day that I worked with him. I’m sure he never saw it as a competition because, frankly, I

wasn’t in his league. He had so many more ﬁeld hours that only reincarnation would have provided an opportunity for me to catch up. He also wasn’t working at the same fevered pace — I attacked the work— but he instead with an equanimous mind state, knowing the weeds always grow back and the work is never done. Francisco’s eyes were lightly ﬁxed on the few feet in

front of him, and he never seemed to linger with self-adulation at the top of the bed before turning around to go back down the row. He didn’t suffer through his work to get to the end of the day or to forget the bright, hot summer sun. I am sure his mind wandered from past to future during the countless strokes of the blade over soil, but like any good Bikku, when he found himself wet in the river of thought, he walked back onto the shore and dragged his blade of attention to shave another row of carrots. Though Francisco was my first true teacher of mindfulness farming, my first exposure was in the parking lot of the farmers market. I was cooking in the kitchen at Farmer and the Cook when B.D. from Earthtrine Farm came in looking for someone to help him on Sundays. I was mostly attracted to the idea of the market vibe more than anything Orphic. It was on those early mornings, with the clatter of truck doors, the finger-pinching of white tents, the crash of folding tables, the jungle chatter of caffeinated vendor critters, and the thrum of accordion music and reggae, when B.D. demonstrated his unwavering concentration on the handling and placement of the literal fruits of labor. This was years before I would begin my real study under Steve and Francisco, or worked the fields investing my own sweat and blood into an eggplant, beet, or bunch, so to me his efforts felt abstract. As with so many things in my life, I was in a big fat hurry to get the work done and move on to something more important or fun. What difference did it make how the vegetables were piled on the table? Why be so careful with every single bunch of arugula if there were another four boxes in the truck? Surely, B.D. was just another uptight Virgo bent on control, said the impulsive and arrogant Aries! Just because he’s done this for decades doesn’t mean it has to be done the same way, his way—the way. Does it really matter how the empty boxes were stacked? They’re empty! Just throw them in a pile and we’ll deal with them never. Can’t you see I’ve got more important things to do, like be seen at the scene doing the thing so people think I’m something, anything, other than I am, or worse, nothing. These carefully packed and Left: Some advice from Steve

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stacked rows of food are just a distraction from the real show: me, the center of the market stall, the market, the town, the state, the literal hub of the karmic wheel by which the entire universe rotates. I believe I truly thought my feelings and thoughts uniquely dictated the truth and shape of things by which the pattern of the universe hammered itself around. I couldn’t be bothered to participate in the present like it was the only thing that was really, really, real. Not only did I swim in the river, I lived there because it was too dry on the shore with all the navel-gazing supplicants. It took me years to see the wisdom, grace, and beauty in the “Why” of B.D’s practice. I was too ﬁxated on the destination and the How to see that the destination was arriving in every movement, every breath, and that in some way, the food and the act of selling the food were just offerings on the altar of life. Instead of adding my homegrown dukkha, the actual work was merely to polish the temple bells for the beneﬁt of all beings so that the wheel turned smoothly inside the hub.

these teachers have in common is their intention. On a micro-level, they have each developed a practice that helps alleviate their own suffering and therefore adds less suffering to the world, subsequently subtracting from generations of suffering. Obviously, it’s not practical for all beings to ditch TikTok, give up their jobs, and wander out into the dirt long enough to bury their egos in the potato patch. Or is it? In fact, many have tried to bring the ’gram with them into the monastery and it distracts, hence the sign, “please silence your phone inside.” In Texas we would say “all hat, no cattle;” in Eastern philosophy this is the way of the Hungry Ghost. Expecting spiritual wellness, physical health, and satisfaction is unreasonable from systems of society where land use and livelihood are fed from the three unwholesome

we have the opportunity to bring some level of attention and intention into our lives at least three times a day. A humble offering for how to practice this: 1. Focusing on the Body, waking up to our lived experience, noticing how we feel before we eat, while we eat, and after we’ve eaten. Awareness around how we treat our food and the people who grow it prior to harvest, how we treat ourselves, and therefore all life. 2. Focusing on Spirit, connecting with our breath while we farm, while we shop at the market, while we wash the produce, while we chop, while we cook, while we serve and while we eat, pausing to reflect, smelling the food, and practicing prayer and gratitude (mine is, “May this work be for the benefit of all beings”).

These seeds were planted deeply, and it took years of good soil under Steve Spinkel’s tutelage to grow a harvest of my own. Steve’s bhakti method of farming allowed for more grace and faith in the process. His farm was truly the peoples’ temple. He demonstrated patience and humor with every acolyte who crashed their wagon into the gates. If you could put up with the madness and mess, there were heaping amounts of heart, knowledge, and wisdom to ladle into your beggar’s bowl. Everyone knows that although Steve grows great veggies, new farmers have always been his greatest crop. My fourth teacher was the farm at Besant Hill School. I’m now a supplicant myself to the land, which had me on my knees during my first year of sobriety. The coyote, bobcat, vulture, ground squirrel, and badger were my sangha along with wind, frost, fire, and drought, and it was in this greater field where we all enacted the poetry of surrender and nonattachment to outcomes, understanding that it is not what I could make from the clay or how it benefited human beings, but how the practice benefited everything. Whether loosely or rigidly held, spoken or unspoken, what all

John and Francisco, my first true teacher of mindfulness farming

roots: Moha (delusion, confusion), Raga (attachment, greed), and Dvesha (aversion, hatred). I am sure all of us can recall demanding that fellow suffering beings ﬁll our giant distended bellies through our tiny little mouths, only to ﬁnd ourselves full but empty. Fortunately, living necessitates that everyone eat; therefore, unless we’re operating from a place of extreme inequity,

3. Remembering Life and Movement as a meditation whether we are weeding, walking, cooking, or eating. Well-practiced, we can have our union and our dessert, and eventually attention and intention arrive on waves of light and love, something those reiki folks seemed to already understand.

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In Conversation with Ojai Playhouse Project Manager and

Polo Player EXTRAORDINAIRE

Matthew Schwartz by BARBARA BURKE photos by RILEY SMOLLER

nspired by Upper Ojai’s fresh mountain air, majestic vistas, and expansive Topatopa Mountain views, Matthew Schwartz raises and trains polo ponies at Aspen Grove Ranch in Ojai, a gorgeous mecca amid 150-year-old oaks and acres of pasture that are idyllic for raising polo ponies. Schwartz competes in polo tournaments at the Santa Barbara Polo Club, as he has since childhood. He is also the project manager for renovation of the 109-year-old Ojai Playhouse, a soon-to- be-completed effort he approaches by employing the same perfectionist standards he applies to horse training. “My life in Ojai combines everything I love about working with horses and building interesting and meaningful projects,” Schwartz says. The affable Schwartz exudes energy, humor, and intuition, especially when speaking about riding, training, and selecting polo horses. Early childhood success comes in many iterations and, in Schwartz’s case, his ardor for riding horses was apparent when he was only 2 years old. At 6, he began playing junior polo at the Will Rogers, Eldorado, and Santa Barbara Polo clubs. Schwartz is quick to emphasize that he’s not from the stereotypical well-heeled family one might envision as being immersed in the polo world — he’s neither pretentious nor overly polished. Rather, he pragmatically prepares himself and his horses for competition, intently working on the combined technical and tactical aptitude needed to perform gracefully on the polo ﬁeld. “Training a polo horse to act in synchronicity with its rider is an evolving pursuit. In polo, we ask a thoroughbred to do what cutting horses do, moving at high speed in all directions, while the player controls the ball,” Schwartz says, noting that the game requires strong mental acuity by both horse and player.

At the end of a game, Matthews untacks his horses, a Polo term for taking gear off the horses.

“You’re always working to improve the relationship between horse and player, whose partnership has to feel completely seamless, and that level of connection requires immense diligence and constant maintenance.” It takes years to build a string of horses, and each player requires six to 10 of them for a single game, he adds.

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How it all started Schwartz first became enamored with horses because his dad was a horseman. “My dad used to do endurance rides in Topanga, Malibu, and Ojai, and he became connected with cowboys who trained polo horses,” Schwartz says. “I’ve been around horses for as long as I can remember — since I could walk, I could ride.” His first horse was named Pilar. Gentle and fun, she instilled confidence in the toddler, who rode her from the age of 2. Soon, he was learning to swing a mallet. “Matt was born in the saddle and all he wanted to do was to be in the barn,” dad Martin Schwartz says proudly. “Soon, I was hitting the ball pretty well, and I began playing competitively in junior polo when I was 6,” the younger Schwartz shares. “Then, when we moved the horses to Santa Barbara, I started competing more.” Schwartz spent his formative years playing in Santa Barbara, where he developed lifelong friendships with his teammates. As it has throughout his life, serendipity played a key role in Schwartz’s early polo career. Soon, he was thrust into the top echelon of that intriguing world, manifesting Winston Churchill’s adage: “A polo handicap is a passport to the world.” When Schwartz was 12, he was invited to play for Team USA in Argentina’s iconic Copa Potrillos, the largest junior tournament in the world. “Our team of American kids surprised everyone at the 2003 tournament when we made it to the semifinals,” he says. Back home in California, Schwartz, like many youth playing professionally, tried to balance traditional academics with the rigorous athletic schedule. “I attended Beverly Hills High and felt out of place,” he says. “All I wanted to do was to be on a horse.” When he was 14, Schwartz stopped attending conventional high school to play polo professionally. He moved to France to play the French Open at the Polo Club du Domaine de Chantilly, a feat he accomplished the day before turning 15.

Matthew and Vibe share a moment after practicing together

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While his team didn’t score a place in the ﬁnals, Schwartz did score an invitation from Patrick Guerrand-Hermès, then president of the Federation of International Polo, to play on his team. “Playing polo on the grounds of Chateau de Chantilly, where thoroughbreds ﬁrst raced when Louis VXI was king, was a surreal experience for a young teenager from California,” Schwartz says, smiling. Schwartz worked at Hermès’ barn on the chateau grounds with his beautiful Morrocan-bred horses. As he always does, Schwartz intently listened to and learned from more experienced polo players, then contemplated what he should do next in his polo career. Above: Matthew short works his 9-year-old horse Vibe to increase her lateral sensitivity and improve footwork.

Below: Matthew ties up a set of horses and returns them to the trailer after a routine.

“Patrick gave me an incredible opportunity to extend my stay in France and ultimately to win some tournaments,” Schwartz says with gratitude. Schwartz emphasizes that the experience was not all glory. At 14 years old and living in another country away from his family, he shared the attic of an old farmhouse with the grooms, and worked to swiftly transition to a new string of horses and teammates in an incredibly competitive league. “Polo,” Schwartz once said in a college video, “has two sides. One side that’s the glamorous Sunday polo that everyone sees, and then, there’s what happens behind the scenes.” All the world was the 15-year-old Schwartz’s oyster. Heartened but homesick, he returned stateside and began to play for the Walker family in Santa Barbara, where they won the entire fall 8-goal season. “At that point, I realized I might make a career out of polo, and if I wanted to reach the next level, I needed more mentorship,” Schwartz says, adding, “I could hit the ball well, but I didn’t have excellent horsemanship.” He received the opportunity to apprentice for Owen Rinehart of Aiken, South Carolina, a 10-goaler and United States Polo Association Hall of Fame legend who, Schwartz says, “is known as the best horse breeder in the United States and one of the best horsemen of his generation.”

Schwartz worked under Owen’s manager, Beth Skolnik, whom he describes as the greatest trainer he’s ever worked with: “Beth has an incredible way with horses; she handles the entire breeding, breaking, and training process with incredible grace and patience.” For the next three years, Schwartz called Aiken home base and spent his teenage years following the polo circuit, living in barns and picking up playing opportunities around the country and overseas. “When I was 18, I realized that I could keep going and pursue a professional polo career, but I knew it would be an uphill battle,” he says. “It is difficult to reach the highest level of the sport. It is largely based on your operation.” A typical player may have more than 10 horses ﬁt to play and will be supported by full-time staff. Throughout a game, players change horses every two to three minutes, Schwartz explains. “After discussing options with my family, I decided that I could achieve my goals more effectively by building a business career in order to build a stronger polo organization in the future,” Schwartz says. He decided to go back to school and attended Santa Monica College, where he excelled, before transferring to Washington University in St. Louis. Then, serendipity entered into his life again. “I was reconnected with Steve Orthwein, former president of the U.S. Polo Association, and I discovered he had a polo club 10 minutes from campus,” Schwartz says. “Mr. Orthwein was so incredibly gracious to me and he gave me a full string of horses to play. He was truly a polo legend in every way.” As always, the ever-fortunate Schwartz was supported by both the best in the polo world and his loving family. Before he graduated from college, his stepmother, Gayle, helped him buy his ﬁrst 2-year-old thoroughbred for $500. “My dad always calls Gayle ‘Honey,’ so I named my horse Honey after her,” Schwartz says. After graduating from Washington University with an undergraduate degree, Schwartz moved to Nashville to begin

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Matthew rides the award-winning Tiva, 10.

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his career in real estate. He also started building a string of young horses, often driving to Lexington, Kentucky, the world capital of thoroughbred breeding, in search of young polo horse prospects. “I knew I couldn’t afford to buy the horses that I needed to get back into polo, so I decided to train them myself,” he says. He focused on finding untrained 2-year-olds off the racetrack. “In polo, we want the small fillies,” Schwartz explains. “Whereas, in racing, they want the big colts, which means that we’re able to find great prospects for affordable prices at racetracks.” After three years in Nashville working for Lincoln Property Company and rebuilding his string of polo ponies, Schwartz decided to transfer offices, moving back home to California, where he served as a project manager at Netflix on the design and construction team. Because Schwartz’s mom, Kate Blackwood, has worked in residential real estate as an agent and a builder in Ojai for several years, Schwartz has always been enamored with the valley, envisioning it as a perfect place to stable his ponies. “I was very lucky to find a home for my horses in Upper Ojai at Aspen Grove Ranch,” Schwartz says, describing the property as “a playground for a horse trainer.” He notes that its enormous pastures, state-of-the-art full-size arena and round pen are perfect for starting horses. “My horses have never been happier or performed better.” These days, Schwartz balances pursuing a dual degree masters at USC’ operating his own commercial real estate firm, REW; managing the Ojai Playhouse project; and breeding, raising, and training his ponies, all the while also competing at the Santa Barbara Polo Club. Always humorous, he quips, “I try to fit in as much golf at Soule Park as I can.” AFTER TRAVELING THE WORLD, OJAI WILL ALWAYS BE HOME

talented horse I’ve ever worked with. She also happens to be exceptionally beautiful and sweet,” Schwartz says, noting that Senna is named after a legendary driver as well, and it is customary to maintain the naming conventions to track bloodlines. From his cellphone, he proudly displays a photo of Checo, a gorgeous, rambunctious pony with a perfect white star on his forehead. Schwartz smiles down at the image, remarking, “He’s a beautiful boy.”

Schwartz recently foaled his ﬁrst homebred baby, a chestnut colt he named Checo after Sergio “Checo” Perez, the Formula One race car driver.

When asked about his future plans, the thoughtful, deliberative Schwartz pauses a moment, then says, “My goal is to eventually build a breeding operation and produce some of the highest quality thoroughbred polo ponies right here in Ojai.”

“Checo’s mother, Senna, is the most

As a player, he also has many aspirations,

most notably to compete at the club where his professional career began. “My dream is to play the Paciﬁc Coast Open season in Santa Barbara with my childhood friends on a string of entirely home-bred horses,” he says. As Schwartz pursues his ambitions at Aspen Grove Ranch, sometimes the moment is just right and he captures panoramic views of the pink moment, that magical time when the Topatopa Mountains illuminate with vibrant shades of orange, red, and pink, capturing the brilliance of the setting sun as it bids Schwartz and his ever-growing herd of stunningly beautiful and powerful horses a good night. During that pink moment, it seems that serendipity is yet again right on Schwartz’s horizon.

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CALENDAR NOVEMBER Jazz Artist Tom Ranier In Concert Sun., Nov. 19, 3 p.m. Beatrice Wood Center For The Arts 8585 Ojai-Santa Paula Rd. Tickets: $40 beatricewood.com Ojai Historical Walking Tours Nov. 25, 10:30 a.m. Ojai Valley Museum 130 W. Ojai Ave. 805-640-1390 ojaivalleymuseum.org Tickets: Adult $10; Family $25 Learn about Ojai’s unique history on a 90-minute tour led by docent Cricket Twichell. Ojai Glass Fusers Exhibit Through Nov. 29 Ojai Art Center 113 S. Montgomery St. ojaiartcenter.org Leslie Marcus “Let’s Face It” Exhibit Through Nov. 30 Ojai Art Center 113 S. Montgomery St. ojaiartcenter.org

John Talevich Liminality 2023 Exhibit Through Nov. 30 Ojai Art Center 113 S. Montgomery St. Ojaiartcenter.org canvas and paper Paintings: Josef Albers, Max Bill, John McLaughlin Through Dec 10 311 N. Montgomery St. Open: Thursday – Sunday Noon – 5 p.m. Free admission canvasandpaper.org Ojai Mystique Art Exhibit Through Feb. 4, 2024 Ojai Valley Museum 130 W. Ojai Ave. Exhibit features large and smallscale paintings of the Ojai Valley by 21 nationally renowned artists. ojaivalleymuseum.org

DECEMBER “A Christmas Story: The Musical” Dec. 1 – Dec. 17 Fri. - Sat. 7:30 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. Ojai Art Center Theater 113 S. Montgomery St. Tickets: ojaiact.org Ojai Historical Walking Tours Dec. 2, 10:30 a.m. Ojai Valley Museum 130 W. Ojai Ave. 805-640-1390 ojaivalleymuseum.org Tickets: Adult $10; Family $25 Learn about Ojai’s unique history on a 90-minute tour led by docent Connie Campbell.

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WINTER ’23

canvas and paper Works on Paper: Jan de Bisschop, Paul Cézanne, John Constable, Eugène Delacroix, Jean-François Millet, Camille Pissarro, PierreAuguste Renoir, Théodore Rousseau, Joseph Mallord William Turner Dec. 21 – Feb. 25 311 N. Montgomery St. Open: Thursday – Sunday Noon – 5 p.m. Free admission canvasandpaper.org

JANUARY

Humane Society of Ventura County “Santa Paws Is Coming To Town” Fundraiser Dec. 3, 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. 402 Bryant St. Visit hsvc.org for more info

Chamber On The Mountain Presents: Phillip Levy, Violinist and Tae Yeon Lim, Pianist Sun., Jan. 21, 3 p.m. Beatrice Wood Center For The Arts 8585 Ojai-Santa Paula Rd. Tickets: $35 beatricewood.com

The Annual Photography Show Opening Reception Dec. 9, 1-3 p.m. through Jan. 3 Ojai Art Center 113 S. Montgomery St. ojaiartcenter.org

“Meteor Shower” Jan. 26 – Feb. 18 Fri. - Sat. 7:30 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. Ojai Art Center Theater 113 S. Montgomery St. Tickets: ojaiact.org

Amanda McBroom In Concert Sun., Dec. 17, 3 p.m. Beatrice Wood Center For The Arts 8585 Ojai-Santa Paula Rd. Tickets: $45 beatricewood.com

Amartithi Open House at Meher Mount Jan 31. 11:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. 9902 Sulphur Mountain Rd. RSVP to mehermount.org

FEBRUARY Community Contra Dance Series Feb. 11, 7 p.m. Ojai Art Center 113 S. Montgomery St. Tickets: ojaiartcenter.org

Amanda McBroom Dec. 7 Photo courtesy Amanda McBroom

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Annie Besant during the early days of Krotona Hollywood. She had the vision that Ojai would become the birthplace of a more spiritually awakened humanity. Photo: Krotona’s Historical Scrapbooks.

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Institute of Theosophy Remembering the first 100 years. “It is one of the beauty spots of the world,” Annie Besant said. On her 80th birthday, she was making her first visit to Ojai to see Krotona Institute of Theosophy (“Krotona”). Immediately, she was enamored with the majestic hills and serenity of the place. “I find that your Valley has an atmosphere of peace, tranquility, and spirituality that is more reminiscent of India in these respects than any other part of the globe that I have visited,” she added. She was traveling with her protégé, Jiddu Krishnamurti, who also stated: “I know of no other place in the world where there could be found the peace and beauty combined with the ideal climate and living conditions here.” Born in England in 1847 and widely traveled, Besant was international president of the Theosophical Society and first president of Krotona. She was worldrenowned as an influential orator, writer, women’s rights activist, and freedom fighter, well-loved in India for championing the country’s independence from the British.

The Krotona Library is the most well-known and visited structure on campus. Designed by Robert Stacy-Judd in 1924, it was one of the first buildings established on the property in Ojai. Photo by Elena Dovalsantos

It was thanks to Besant’s vision that Krotona was born. Her call for a Theosophical center to be established in the Southwestern United States was answered by Albert P. Warrington and a group of Theosophists who envisioned a place that could be a refuge from the chaos of the outside world — where all who are so inclined could study what filled their souls’ longings, understand life, learn the cause

by Krotona staff members ANANYA SRI RAM RAJAN and ELENA DOVALSANTOS of suffering and how to bring an end to it, and explore how to arrive at lasting peace and happiness. Founded in 1912 in Hollywood, Krotona as a Theosophical center derives its name from Crotone, the community established in 530 BCE by the great sage Pythagoras in what is now the southern region of Italy called Calabria. It is said that the communitywas set “upon a hill just

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Krotona Cou rt is located un sign in Beac hwood Canyo der the Hollywood n. It was desi by Mead an gned d Requa and was the firs established t building in Krotona H ollywood. Be the right is hind it to the Temple of the Rosy was added la Cross which ter as a venu e for mason large gather ic rites and ings as the Kroton . The buildings are now known a Apartmen ts. Photo from Krotona’s Hist orical Scrapb ooks.

outside the city,” like the Krotona colony of Hollywood, and later, Krotona in Ojai Valley. Warrington went on to state that the “founding of the center is a Heart offering,” toward many Theosophists’ dream of a spiritually awakened humanity. The Krotona Hollywood community quickly expanded from 10 to 23 acres. Beautiful buildings of unique architecture were erected to accommodate the influx of new residents. There was great excitement at the time as Theosophy, aka Divine Wisdom or the Ageless Wisdom, inspired a new way of thinking about oneself, the role of the individual, and humanity. There was a School of Theosophy, to explore the deeper questions of life. There was a printing press, a center for the arts, a science building, gardens, retreats. The Krotona community brought together artists, writers, academics, and various thinkers of the time. When Hollywood became too busy, a quieter area was needed in a country setting that could be a center of peace, purity, and sacredness—something of an ashram to allow residents, students, and visitors a place to ponder the deeper

teachings of Theosophy, which are at the core of every great religion or spiritual philosophy. Thus was the Hollywood site divided and sold to different people. Charlie Chaplin and Mary Astor were among the celebrities who first bought a home in the complex. KROTONA’S MOVE TO OJAI The story of how Krotona actually got from Hollywood to Ojai is just one of the strands that will always intertwine Theosophists with J. Krishnamurti. Mrs. Besant’s absolute trust that her adopted son Krishnamurti was to be the World Teacher pushed her to find a place for

The library interior. Photo by Elena Dovalsantos

Krishnamurti’s work. But it was the recommendation of Warrington, who sought a new home for Krotona, that drew Krishnamurti to Ojai. Nitya, Krishnamurti’s younger brother, suffered from tuberculosis, and Warrington had heard the dry air of Ojai was beneficial for such patients. It was Warrington who put the brothers in touch with the family who owned Pine Cottage on the east end of Ojai in 1922. Besant eventually bought the property to share as a home with the brothers, who renamed it “Arya Vihara.” During this visit, Warrington found the Kerfoot Ranch on the western end of Ojai for Krotona’s new home. Several structures were quickly built on the Kerfoot land (now Krotona Hill) starting in 1924, including an administration building, a library, a community garage, and houses for workers. One of the structures seen throughout the whole valley at the time was Krotona’s water tower, which still stands today. In the years that followed, an auditorium, more residences, and guest accommodations were added. Aerial photos taken at the time show a wide stretch of open land, a stark contrast to present-day Ojai. Downtown Ojai was 2 miles down a dirt road without a building in between; Krotona was very much on the outskirts of town. Today, Krotona’s

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wide-open lower meadow is a gateway to beautiful Ojai, a welcome sight to locals and visitors alike. BESANT AND THEOSOPHY’S INFLUENCE ON OJAI Two months after her first visit in 1926, Annie Besant returned in December and stayed for a few months at Arya Vihara on McAndrew Road. Winter in Ojai is magical when the brown hills suddenly turn green after the first season’s rain. When such natural beauty moves one deep within, wonders happen. Besant awoke one bright morning and saw the valley as a place where the seeds for spiritual awakening could flourish. She decided to buy large tracts of open land in the valley. More than 460 acres were procured in Upper Ojai. Theosophists from all over the world donated three-quarters of the funds used to buy the land, and the first board members were all Theosophists. In May

gton Warrin Powell Albert stablished e in 1912 in Hollywood a hy Kroton oup of wealt gr with a . s phist theoso ter, he years la ot Ranch e lv o Twe f r e the K home found is now ute t a h t i in Oja otona Instit Kr to the ophy. os e h T of tona’s rom Kro Photo f l Scrapbooks. a Historic

1930, the Happy Valley Foundation was formed to manage the property where Besant Hill School now stands. Adjoining Krotona, additional land was purchased for Krishnamurti’s talks, adjacent to what is now the Oak Grove School and part of Ojai Meadows Preserve. In 1927, Besant also purchased the local newspaper The Ojai, now Ojai Valley News, parent company of Ojai Magazine. The paper provided information about goings-on in the valley and in Krotona. She reta ined the paper’s editor, Frank Gerard, a Theosophist and follower of Krishnamurti. Incidentally, Gerard had once owned the newspaper itself, sold it, then returned to be its editor. Gerard wrote in The Ojai about Besant’s vision, which has played a key role in what Ojai has become. Speaking from Krotona’s library veranda, Besant addressed the more than 150 Ojai citizens who had gathered to learn about Theosophy. The city, incorporated only a few years earlier, had 500 to 700 residents, and they were naturally curious about the group

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that had descended to their little town from the Hollywood Hills. This was their first opportunity to hear what heosophy is all about. Besant summed it up simply as “brotherhood and friendliness: a friendliness based not on agreement or similarity, but on something far deeper, a sharing in a common spiritual inheritance.” To Besant, diversity is essential to life, and our differences should not affect the feeling of kinship we must have with one another. She stressed that even a partial recognition of the truth of our interconnectedness would bring a tremendous change in the world: “Wars would cease. Mutual sympathy and help would replace criticism and condemnation. Selfishness would become the only sin.” It is a solution to much human misery, and her message is as true today as it was a century ago. Many of the practices followed by the ancient Crotonian community, such as a vegetarian diet, reverence for all life, periods of silence and meditation, and abstention from any form of tobacco, alcohol, or recreational drugs, are followed by residents of Krotona today. Theosophy acknowledges that all life is one and that everything holds consciousness. Whatever harm or help we do to one, we do to all. Such a lifestyle has been shown throughout the ages to create a greater sensitivity in the body, mind, and spirit. It contributes to the cultivation of serenity. Visitors to Krotona comment on how they appreciate coming to the campus for walks, relaxing in the gardens, enjoying the library and bookshop, attending classes, or being in a personal retreat. THE DREAM LIVES ON A hundred years have passed since Krotona’s move to Ojai. Meditation and yoga are now common practices. The area is marked by a strong orientation toward health and wellness, creativity and the arts, and kinship and cooperation with nature. There is a growing sense that life offers more than just material pursuits. Quietly, the Theosophists’ vision of the spiritual awakening of humanity lives on, perhaps to find enduring expression in some not-too-distant future, one perfect day at a time.

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Celebrating 45 years serving the Ojai community.

Voted Best 14 years in a row

O J A I M A G A Z I N E | WINTER ‘23

Bryant Circle Mini Storage

• Free move-in truck • Moving and packing supplies • Security system with TV surveillance • On-site resident managers • Competitive rates • Convenient access hours 6am-10pm seven days a week

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Upper Ojai resident Dave Brown got interested in model building at a young age, all thanks to his dad.

The model pastime

Left: Dave Brown’s Convair F-106A, nicknamed the “Delta Dart.” The 1/48 scale jet was built from a Monogram kit from the 1970s.

story and photos by PERRY VAN HOUTEN

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“My father had been a ﬂyer in World War II, so when he came home from that adventure he would spend time building plastic models for me and my brother, and that set the hook,” said Brown, 74. “It’s been a hobby or a sickness ever since.”

buying models again and it escalated from there,” said the 77-year-old Ventura resident.

Gregg Garis, 71, of Mira Monte, remembers the day he became a model airplane enthusiast. His father was an engineer in the aerospace industry, and he and some of his fellow engineers built model airplanes on their lunch break.

For Brown, model building morphed into two hobbies: building model kits and collecting old kits that he never plans to build. “Kits that I spent 50 or 60 cents on when I was young, now as I see them as collectibles — they’re atrociously priced. But that’s a collectible for you,” he said. There are several hundred models in Brown’s built collection and about the same number of unbuilt kits.

When Garis was in elementary school, his dad brought home the first model plane he’d built, which had a small gas engine. “He fired it up, did a real short test flight, and it seemed to fly,” Garis said. “He refueled it, flew it, and it got a thermal, and we never

Brown’s fascination with model building started with jets, but more recently his interests shifted to aircraft from World War II, especially Royal Air Force and Royal Navy planes. Ship models are also a current favorite.

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Still in awe of his dad’s plane that flew into the cloud and vanished years ago, Garis builds mostly flying aircraft models made of balsa wood and tissue paper. “When your plane flies away, that’s a good airplane,” he said. He builds many of them from scratch, some with tiny electric motors. Lorelli, meanwhile, specializes in plastic model aircraft from the World War II era (1939-1945), all at 1⁄72 scale, where 1 inch on the model represents 6 feet. “Over the years, they’ve gone from being pretty crude to where I have a certain level of skill now,” he said. There are nearly 400 planes in his collection. A retired middle school history teacher from Iowa, where “every courthouse in every town had a Sherman tank in the courtyard,” Brown built 25 of the famous fighting vehicles in various versions, all outfitted in different ways and at the same 1⁄35 scale. Besides teaching patience and how to follow instructions, model building also teaches history, according to Brown. “Every model kit you build has on the instruction sheet a brief history of that particular model. So, like it or not, you get spoon-fed some history,” he said. What’s Brown’s favorite part of the hobby? Is it the gluing, the painting, or the decaling? “Everything is my favorite part, and that’s why I’m often working on a number of kits at the same time, because sometimes when I sit at my model table I’m in the mood to do painting, sometimes it’s just basic construction, sometimes it’ll be doing some decaling or weathering,” he said.

John Lorelli in his model workshop, where he builds exclusively model airplane kits in 1/72 scale.

saw that plane again. Watching that airplane go up and up and up until it went into a cloud was the most spectacular thing I had ever seen.” John Lorelli started building models in the 1950s, but really became serious about the hobby after getting out of the service in 1968. His then-wife, a schoolteacher, told him he needed something other than her to keep himself busy. “You’ve got to ﬁnd something to do, she said, and I started

Unbuilt oddities in Brown’s collection include the Visible Man, Visible Woman, and Visible Horse kits. The models have a clear plastic body, a complete skeleton, and all the vital organs. According to Brown, grandparents bought these kits for their grandkids at Christmas because they had educational value. “And when you got them you thought, ‘Ugh, I really wanted a battleship or a jet airplane,’” he said. So the kits went unbuilt, stowed away in a closet somewhere.

“When you get to the point where you’re putting decals on the models they start taking on a personality,” said Lorelli, whose father served on an air crew during the Second World War. As an Air Force brat, Lorelli sat in the cockpits of countless airplanes. “Putting decals down is as much an art as it is a science. The key word is ‘patience,’” said Brown, who displays in his workshop an aircraft carrier model with dozens of tiny planes lined up on the ﬂight deck, each intricately painted and decaled with circular disc insignia known as “roundels,” which resemble targets. “Pilots don’t like it when you call things on their airplanes ‘targets,’” he advised.

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Working on models is an enjoyable evening activity for Brown, especially when accompanied by some classical music. “By gosh, you can look up and it’s two hours later and you didn’t even know the time was passing,” he said. Should things not be going well on a particular model, “Don’t push it,” said Brown. “Get up from your work table, go away, and do something else. Many times problems that seem insurmountable when you’re working on the kit ﬁx themselves when you go back and have another look at it.” Nowadays, model building seems to be a hobby for older men, or the “wisdomenhanced” population, as Brown calls his peers. “You go into a hobby shop and look around at the clientele, and it looks more and more like me and less and less like my grandson,” he said.

Above: A pair of Sherman tanks from Dave Brown’s collection of 25 Shermans, all in 1/35 scale. Below: Several World War II-era model aircraft in John Lorelli’s collection of nearly 400 planes.

Kids are interested in video games, Brown said, and have no patience for model building. “These are different times; they interact with their peers in different ways. We used to get together and build models on a Saturday afternoon and our parents worried that we weren’t developing other social skills, but somehow most of us who are model builders came out OK in the wash. It’s like any hobby. It goes through periods of popularity,” he explained. Garis belongs to a club, the Black Sheep Squadron, which has as part of its charter teaching the art of model building. Trying to spark an interest in younger folks, the club recently held an event at then-Matilija Middle School in Ojai where kids got to build model airplanes and ﬂy them in the gym. “It was a great experience,” he said. “The enthusiasm was overwhelming and I’d be ready to do it again.” For years, one of the leaders in the model kit industry was Revell, based in Venice, California. Aurora and Monogram were other major American kit manufacturers. Today, “model kits are coming from overseas, like so many of our consumer goods. It’s really become kind of a global hobby,” Brown said. Just as collectible as the model inside the cardboard box is the box itself, according to Brown. “For the model companies, the primary way of selling plastic models is with

the box art that catches the eye and hints to the young buyer that they, too, can be riding in a jet if they buy this model,” he said.

and then walking out with a couple of kits that you can’t live without. You get instant gratiﬁcation,” he said.

As the hobby began to see a decline in popularity in the 1980s, places to purchase model kits became harder to ﬁnd. “Brickand-mortar hobby shops are something that’s quickly disappearing into the rear view mirror of history,” said Brown.

And Brown doesn’t sell the models he builds. “The quickest way to ruin a hobby is to try to make money doing it,” he said. “If I want to build a model for someone I’ll just give it to them.”

But he never buys kits online. “Half the fun is going into the hobby shop, having absolutely nothing on your ‘gotta have’ list,

Does he work on his models every day? “I try to, but sometimes my wife has something to say about that,” he said.

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Above: Upper Ojai resident Dave Brown works on a 1/350 scale model of British battleship H.M.S. Nelson, first launched in 1906. Right: Dave Brown and Gregg Garis pick up new model kits at Wonder-Con 2023, a model contest and swap meet held Sept. 9, 2023 at the Murphy Auto Museum in Oxnard.

A good way to learn more about the hobby, Brown said, is by attending a model show, “where the best modelers show the best stuff they build. It’s fun to learn from other people. About the time you think you’re really good at something you see somebody that is really good at something. And we all learn from each other.” Brown said the best part of the hobby is the lasting friendships he’s formed. “My modeling career has stretched over 60 years,” he said, “and I have met some of the most amazing people who became amazing friends because we shared the quest to buy models and the enjoyment in building them, sharing ideas and tips.”

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124 O J AI M A G A Z I N E | WINTER ‘23 203 N. Signal St Ojai, CA 805*798*9291 *Tues Locals 10% off

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FOR SALE $8,199,000

RANCHO ROYALE An iconic equestrian estate with a four-bedroom main house and eight rentals, including a four-bedroom home, two two-bedroom homes, three onebedroom mobile homes, and an apartment. Horse facilities include an 18-stall barn, 16-stall barn, six-stall barn, four-stall barn, two-stall shed row, nine-stall shed row, three-stall shed row, 20 covered corrals, three covered turnout pens, four arenas, two round pens, hay and equipment barns, offices, tack rooms, and a Priefert panel walker. The entertainment barn is set up as a martial arts studio used for filming with an attached office and bathroom or guest quarters. Four gated entrances lead to the main homes and horse facilities. Additional features include an archery range, manure bunker, possible event venues throughout the ranch, ample parking, three RV hookups, fruit trees, and conifers, oaks, and pepper trees providing shade and visual appeal. Much of the ranch and infrastructure has been remodeled or updated. RanchoRoyaleOjai.com

NORA DAVIS

©2023 LIV Sotheby’s International Realty. All rights reserved. All data, including all measurements and calculations are obtained from various sources and has not and will not be verified by Broker. All information shall be independently reviewed and verified for accuracy. LIV Sotheby’s International Realty is independently owned and operated and supports the principles of the Fair Housing Act.

Ojai Realtor® Cal DRE 01046067 Nora@OjaiValleyEstates.com 805.207.6177

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

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This 3900sqft commercial building is in the heart of downtown Ojai. Fully remodeled in 2017, it includes 10 offices, lobby, conference room, kitchen, and 3 bathrooms. This unique building offers many possibilities: a large office, a business collective, a doctor’s office, a spa, a retail space, or a gallery. There is nothing else like this available anywhere in Ojai. 108EMatilijaStOjai.com Offered at $4,100,000 I will help you discover the home that brings peace to your mind and heart

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© 2022 Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties (BHHSCP) is a member of the franchise system of BHH Affiliates LLC. BHHS and the BHHS symbol are registered service marks of Columbia Insurance Company, a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate. BHH Affiliates LLC and BHHSCP do not guarantee accuracy of all data including measurements, conditions, and features of property. Information is obtained from various sources and will not be verified by broker or MLS. Buyer is advised to independently verify the accuracy of that information.