Ojai: Talk of the Town

Bernie Larsen, owner, producer and engineer and session musician for Spinout Records and the impresario behind the Underground Exchange, joins the podcast to catch up on what he's been up to since the pandemic hit Ojai like Keith Moon on a drum kit. Larsen's shift to a virtual space for performers created a community around the weekly webcasts with audiences thirsty for live music. He'...

The Ojai Music Festival's Artistic Director Ara Guzelimian was well situated to lead the festival through the tumult of the past three years. He's certainly looking forward to the June 8-11 festival this year and a return to something more closely resembling normal and worrying more about the music and less about the logistics of managing this premier festival of modern contemporary music through...

Laurel Braitman grew up in nearby Santa Paula and attended Thacher School before embarking on a circuitous and peripatetic career that led her to the faculty at Stanford School of Medicine where she is the Director of Writing and Storytelling. She just published her memoir, "What Looks Like Bravery," about her family and journey through grief, loss, growth and love. She previously wrote the New Yo...

As the Assemblymember from the newly redrawn 38th State Assembly District, Steve Bennett works hard on local issues in Sacramento — including preserving farms and open lands, water issues, campaign finance reform, managing the economic shifts to a greener economy. He knows the district from the inside out, having served five terms as Ventura County Supervisor, and before that on the Ventura City C...

Stu Crowner's fascination with show business began with seeing a wooden rendering of a cameraman sitting backstage during the opening credits of Kraft Mystery Theater. He's since worked with all major commercial networks, PBS and cable channels. He's still at it, producing four shows this coming season for Ojai Performing Arts Theater.  His career has given him the chance to work closely with...

Al West retired as the Deputy Director of the U.S. Forest Service, the second highest post in this vital government agency, overseeing millions of acres and billions of dollars in Washington, D.C. He retired to Ojai, where his career had taken him earlier as District Ranger of the Los Padres National Forest and then Los Padres Forest Supervisor. His peripatetic career in forestry began humbly enou...

It's a long ways from the Big Apple to the Little Orange, but the issues and the personalities that shape them are remarkably similar. One key advantage New York had that Ojai didn't was an epic chronicler and columnist with the street smarts and monumental charisma of Jimmy Breslin. He was the perfect fit for his beat — with its charlatans, wiseguys, politicians and police — and the connections t...

Jerry Dunn has a dream job - maybe THE dream job - traveling and writing about it. He worked with the National Geographic Society for 35 years and has written hundreds of articles for magazines and newspapers, large and small, from the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune to our own Ojai Quarterly. Jerry is also the author of eleven books, including "Tricks of the Trade,” “My Favorite Place on Ea...

Dan Parziale and co-founder Kyle Thompson came together early in the pandemic around the idea that young adults aging out of the foster care system are basically thrown out on their own with few resources or information. No wonder so many end up homeless, perpetuating the cycles of poverty and trauma. Dan, a veteran nonprofit leader, and Kyle, a veteran entrepreneur (co-founder Topa Topa Brewing C...

Nicholas Gray joins the podcast to talk about the Ojai-based startup he's been building the past two years with Vu Dang, that uses their own AI-aided app, FlowAI, to help people maintain the perfect flow state in their meditation. FlowAI uses the cameras on your phone or desktop to watch you as you meditate, monitoring vital signs such as breathing rate, heart rate, facial muscles and more to give...

Few if any Ojai residents were thrust further into maelstrom of the Covid-19 breakout than Haady Lashkari, Ojai Valley Community Hospital's chief administrator. Lashkari is responsible for the hospital's 300 employees and, by proxy, for the health care for the entire Ojai Valley. Those earliest days in the late winter and early spring of 2020 were met with a determined response: Assessing capacity...

Zhena Muzyka is an acclaimed author "Life by the Cup," a social entrepreneur, teacher, executive coach, public speaker, and former publisher of Enliven Books, a new Mind-Body-Spirit imprint from Atria/Simon and Schuster. Most recently, she is the creator & chief formulator of Magic Hour Tea & Transformation (www. ClubMagicHour.com), based here in Ojai. Magic Hour was founded in Ojai, where, Zhena...

Colonel (Ret.) Keith Nightingale has been helping ferry supplies to Ukraine through Poland, including boxes of Ojai citrus, which is much welcomed on the front lines in the eastern portion of the country. Nightingale brings us through the current state of the conflict, the fierce resistance being mounted by Ukraine, the structural advantages with their armed forces that help neutralize Russia's ma...

The Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization ended 50 years of the Roe v. Wade era, in which abortion was settled law. In doing so, the Supreme Court unleashed a wave of outrage, anger and despair, and blunted what the expected "red wave" in the midterm elections. Susan Kelejian, director of the Ojai Valley Artists Theater Ensemble (OVATE), went to her board with a plan to create an applied t...

October 27-30 is the annual Ojai Storytellers Festival, one of the premier events on the storytelling circuit. This year they've added what Kara called "a mini-Shakespeare Festival" with Deb Newbold's acclaimed "King Lear, Retold," the music group Merry Wives of Windsor, the Sheriffs of Schroedingham and the return of Ojai's own Madrigali Singers. Sheila Arnold will be the master of ceremonies, an...

Shane and Aaron Harris, along with trainer Bruce Siben, operate the American Legend Mustang, a nonprofit group based at the 22-acre River Rock Ranch. The crew picks up mustangs from the Bureau of Land Management at their corral in Ridgecrest, bring them back to Ojai, and train them to the saddle. In the four years they've been operating, they've adopted out about two dozen horses. The BLM rounds u...

Ojai's own Rain Perry, singer-songwriter known for her lyrical prowess and crystal-clear voice, has been working on a one-woman show, which opens Thursday, October 13 and runs through October 22nd (Thursday, Friday and Saturday both weekends) at Kim Maxwell Studio,  226 West Ojai Avenue, #102. All shows are at 8 p.m. The show is named after David Foster Wallace's viral commencement address, "...

Franz Lidz is one of very few return guests on the Ojai podcast. If you check out his earlier appearance (Episode 24, Aug. 27th, 2020) you can see why we were eager to have him back. His recent feature in the Los Angeles Times about Ojai's new restaurant scene was widely read and discussed, but that was only the tip of the spear for our wide-ranging discussion. Lidz' career has included decades at...

Jonathan Fraser Light is a renowned trial attorney in Ventura County, who has spent decades writing the acclaimed 1,112 page "Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball," a compendium this incredible lens through which to view American history. For example, the Civil Right Era properly began when Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey offered a contract to a standout UCLA football running back and...

A long-time visitor, author and illustrator Christopher Noxon moved to Ojai full-time three years and got busy right away with volunteering and sharing his talents. He joined the Ojai Studio Artist as one of the 17 new artists this year. The Tour is free this year and takes place October 8-10. We discuss the great expansion of the tour from 50 to 67 artists, how the group has made a major resurgen...

Isaac Koren and Mikael Jorgensen met through the routines of being dads with young children at school. Knowing that they were each talented musicians, it made sense they'd collaborate and see what comes of it. Mikael approached Isaac with this idea; "What if we took jazz standards and slowed them down? Way down?" After some modifying and improvising, they formed The Expandards and have played seve...

Maggie Wellman has been collecting short stories for several years now, and has just published her second collection, "Falling Into the Silence." The fictional stories are often told from the perspective a young girl just learning the shape of the world, an observer who says little and misses nothing. As actor Bruce Davison wrote, "These short stories are compelling little gems that sparkle like t...

Ojai author Ron Phillips starts his new book with a macabre true incident; Argentinian dictator Juan Peron's gravesite was disinterred and his hands were severed and stolen by unknown burglars in 1987, 13 years after his death. Why? It remains a mystery. Phillips joins the podcast to talk about "The Hands of Juan Peron" and the journey to getting his suspense-filled novel out into the world. It wa...

The Ojai Film Society is back! The nonprofit group was once an integral landmark in Ojai's cultural landscape, with their Sunday screenings packing the Ojai Playhouse Theater with 200+ filmgoers, seeking that communal experience through the flickering celluloid. In June 2014 that all changed when a water main burst in front of the theater and it has been closed ever since. (Here's hoping for an op...

Ojai resident Douglas Parker, a writer and attorney, was deep in the thick of it when Watergate reached its apogee in 1972-1973 as Nixon's White House counsel, working for the formidable Leonard Garment. Parker, Garment and Nixon all worked for the same Wall Street firm in the 1960s, and came onboard to helped Nixon navigate the subsequent scandal after members of Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the...