Rain!
A lot is going on behind the scenes here at VORTEX. You may have noticed lately that much of our content goes behind a paywall. Going forward, some stories will start there, in OLO, a members-only portion of the site with a subscription fee of $5 per month or $55 per year.
Andra Belknap’s four-part series, OUSD, Wtf, about Ojai Unified School District, will be the first to try out this new model.
Meanwhile, the OLO portion of the site is out-growing itself, and we apologize deeply to its mobile users. We are working on solutions to make it more readable and to better reach members when there are important updates. The Events Calendar, for example, gets updated almost daily, but you probably don't want an email from us every day.
It’s been a quiet Winter, but we have some exciting stuff planned for Spring. One such series we’re greatly looking forward to is "How Ojai Grew on Drew: Seven Decades of Adventures, Misadventures, and Magic Through the Eyes of Drew Mashburn,” a partnership with OjaiHistory.com which is itself a partnership with Ojai Valley Museum.
You can get a first taste here in this Winter issue with a story about Drew’s old cat Chester adjusting to Canyon life.
So, I just got the joke: Embers Only. Like members-only.
Jessica Pregnolato attended the season’s most highly-anticipated event: Kate Pepper and Cade Stephens' first Embers Only dinner in Casitas Springs. Luckily, we can all live vicariously through her words and fourteen-year-old Frances' beautiful photos. These events will be regularly held at different venues around the Valley, and those who sign up for The Sack get early access to tickets.
Culture
Stream This: Winter
A smart new contributor joins Topa Talk. Annie Woods goes down to the River bottom with the Vesecky-Beckmans for a weather report. Bret Bradigan gets a post-rain update from a board member at Casitas Municipal Water District.