Ojai: Talk of the Town

Julie Tumamait-Stenslie grew up in Ojai with an idyllic childhood as the youngest of seven children, playing in the Ventura river bottom. Her father, Vincent, was a revered Chumash elder and keeper of the traditional folkways. Julie apprenticed herself to him, learning the old songs, stories and folkways of this ancient and fascinating people. She now has taken his place, performing ceremonies alo...

Chris Kandziora, the Ojai Valley Inn's Sales and Marketing Manager, could very well have been the busiest man in Ojai during the pandemic. In March 2020 as the first lockdown went into effect, Chris had to manage the ramping down of the huge facility, calling the wedding parties, the conferences and conventions, thousands of booked guests, as well as furloughing most of its 800 employees - then he...

When author and executive coach Jim Selman published his 11th book, "Living in the Real-Time World," in November 2019, he didn't know he would get a "proof of concept" unlike any in more than a century. The pandemic brought home the basic truth that it's a fool's game to predict the future, instead we need to focus on the key capabilities (Jim lists six) that allows the flexibility and resilience...

It's been a long journey for Zander "Z-Man" Gabriel from his earliest days at Ojai's rickety wooden skate park to his astonishing professional success, about to launch his own brand with skateboards, gear, merchandise and more. He's one of the top pros in this exciting sport, though he still spends most days on urban adventures, looking for fun new places to skate. It was one of these urban advent...

Kelley D'Angelo, founder of Lark Ellen Farms, has seen her business increase dramatically during the pandemic. Her line of sprouted, low-carb, high-protein granolas, trail mixes and vegan patés have found a growing list of devoted customers over the past few years and it all began, and remains, here in Ojai.  She got her start as "Granola Girl" at local farmers markets and, with encouragement...

Few performances on the big screen are as memorable as Malcolm McDowell's portrayal of ultraviolent Alex, who terrorizes the night with his Droogs. The film catapulted McDowell to international stardom and firmly entrenched Stanley Kubrick in the pantheon of world's most interesting and innovative directors. An endless repository of fascinating stories, we learn from Malcolm about the serendipitou...

When the Ojai's 2,300 public school students were sent home last March, we had no idea how long until those students would be back in their classrooms. Turned out it would take more than a year before the schools could safely reopen.  One of our earliest guests on the Ojai: Talk of the Town podcast was Tiffany Morse, superintendent of the Ojai Unified School District, to talk about the extrao...

Meredy Benson Rice, a long-time Ojai educator, has a side passion as an author. We talk about her most recent release, "The Wisdom Palace," about 12-year-old Isabelle, whose parents are about to get divorced. She is sent off to her grandfather's farm in rural Ontario, where she dreads the disruption and chaos that ensues. As Rice writes, "Instead she is propelled into the chaotic world of her Aunt...

Ojai is celebrating this month, in however an abbreviated fashion, Ojai Pixie Tangerine Month. So Emily Thacher Ayala, whose family has been farming in the Ojai Valley for a century and a half, is the perfect guide to this sweet, petite fruit, which has become a key characteristic of Ojai. Emily talks about her family's rich history in the valley - her father's side included Sherman Day and Edward...

This episode we get personal, as I reach out to my brothers to talk about our father, Floyd John Bradigan, who died just over 40 years ago at age 60. We mark the moment that all three of his sons have outlived him. It seems like an opportunity to have a discussion about our memories of this singular man, who would have been 101 years old this year. My brothers, Bruce and Bob, at ages 75 and 73, ar...

Fred Fisher, the internationally renowned architect and his wife, Jennie Prebor, could have chosen anywhere in the world to live. In fact, he recently spent two years in Rome as a Fellow with the American University, where he wrote a book, "Robert Venturi's Rome," with colleague Stephen Harby. They studied the Eternal City through the eyes of Venturi, the groundbreaking (literally) architect whose...

Daren Thomas Magee is one of the country's best-known illustrators with more than 370,000 followers on Instagram, and his Real Fun Wow company has become the platform for his singular, instantly recognizable style of simple bold lines and muted hues. He is also the artist whose work graces the Spring issue of our local magazine, Ojai Quarterly, which is flying off the shelves. The discussion cover...

Kristen McGuiness is the author of the bestselling memoir, " 51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life" in which she recounts her adventures (and misadventures) of entering single life as she neared age 30 after a workaholic decade. In this book, she went on 51 dates in 50 weeks and found more than romance, she found herself. After the manic world of publishing, her next career in the nonprof...

Dr. Tom Krause started Behavioral Sciences Technology in the 1980s with a partner, and from its modest beginnings in Ojai, it has become a global leader in the workplace safety field. Even beyond global, as one of their biggest contracts was from NASA, when they were hired on after the space shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003. We talk about Tom's entry into psychology during the heated debates betw...

Cassandra Jones is an Ojai artist with a list of exhibits and permanent collections that would go on for days. Most proximately, she is the first artist-in-residence at Taft Gardens, the acclaimed westside Mediterranean flora showcase. She is also the wife of Wilco keyboardist Mikael Jurgensen and a mother, a task made harder by quarantine confinement. We cover a lot of ground in our talk - the da...

It's been a rough year for performing artists, for whom audiences are like oxygen, and vice versa. Few people are better positioned to explore the strange quandary in which we find ourselves than Justin Little, a founder of Bailey Blues, a boutique agency representing K. Flay, The Midnight and Jake Etheridge among others. It is a fascinating conversation with a key insider in the music industry th...

Jim Bailey took a roundabout path to teaching, earning his bachelor's degree and teaching certificate when he was 31, after a peripatetic career as a cowboy and surfer. He feels these real-world experiences have given him a richer, deeper context for his teaching. He's now been teaching 20 years in Ojai, including both private and public schools, and is the founder and director of Rock Tree Sky, w...

Despite his down-to-earth demeanor and genial wit, Tony Thacher, the farmer and erstwhile geologist, has a distinguished lineage. His grandfather helped start The Thacher School in the 1880s, and his wife, Anne Friend Thacher, is the daughter of legendary citrus rancher Elmer Friend and part of the historic family that were among the first to stake out claims in the Ojai Valley. We talk about the...

Actor/writer Peter Fox has written a companion piece to Eve Ensler's much-loved "Vagina Monologues." His is called the "Testicle Monologues: If These Balls Could Talk" and has been recorded with professional actors and is being live-streamed at Santa Barbara's Center Stage Theater as a fund-raising event. Much like Ensler's feminine tour de force, Peter's play is a set of loosely woven, hilarious,...

It's been 80 years since a German naval cruiser took out a convoy of 38 merchant ships mid-Atlantic, carrying much-needed gasoline and provisions for the Blitz-besieged defense of England. The motor tanker San Demetrio was one of those ships, spawning an incredible saga. Abandoned by her crew by a captain who feared the volatile cargo would explode, she was left to burn. Two of the three lifeboats...

The first episode of Season Two of "Ojai: Talk of the Town" is our first on-location podcast. So how fitting that's it's at Thacher School's Observatory with Jon Swift, Ph. D., who has helped the school build its astrophysics study and rebuilt its historic 28-inch telescope. In the five ensuing years, he's taught these fortunate students to shoot for the stars. Thacher School is now a respected pa...

Betsy Stix decided to run for Mayor after reading Gay Hendrick's bestselling book, "The Big Leap." The book talks about the finding and living with your purpose. Imagine her surprise when she met Hendricks and his wife Katie while doing door-to-door campaigning. She won the election handily and was sworn into office Dec. 15th, ready to tackle Ojai's toughest issues - high risk of catastrophic wild...

Permaculture expert and advocate Connor Jones has been immersed in the Ojai Valley land for decades, building a consulting and education business on permaculture as a way to preserve, protect and flourish in this often dry, harsh environment. A serendipitous encounter with a textbook while still in high school led him into his life's passion, where he is sought out by landowners, students, farmers...

This episode Chelsea Sutula with Sespe Creek Collective brings us up-to-date on the recent developments with marijuana retailing in Ojai, the onerous new 3 percent tax,  pandemic adjustments, the existential dread and how cannabis might just be the medicine we need to get us through this dreadful year. Chelsea grew up in Maryland and Athens, Georgia, daughter of researchers and academics, bef...

Howard "Hawk" Koch is a true son of  Hollywood, the son of legendary producer Howard Koch Sr. In fact, they are the only father-son team to chair the Academy of Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Sciences, hosts of the Oscars. But he went his own route to make his own mark, leaving for England while still in his teens to join the music business as an assistant to the legendary Harold Daviso...