The Other Ojai

Working at Help of Ojai I have a skewed perspective of who I think makes up Ojai.  I have had multiple opportunities this past week to enjoy the other parts of Ojai and here are a few stories from those days.

In a small town you always have some sort of festival that takes place.  Ojai's festival is called Ojai Day and people go around the week before wishing others a “Happy Ojai Day”.  The night before Ojai Day the main street is closed to paint a mandala on the street.  Different artists come up with designs for the sections.  Ryan and I helped paint sections of red and white.  It was a zoo and some of the artists were very particular about each color and how you painted.  Luckily I was just told to fill in the pre-drawn circles.  I'm glad my three years of art in high school came in handy.  On Ojai Day shops set up booths to sell merchandise, there are performances at stages, food venues and different organizations set up informational tables.  Of course Help of Ojai has a table every year.  The most popular question during my shift was, "Oh, Help of Ojai!  Can you be helpful and point me in the direction of the Raptor Center?”  The crowd in attendance is mostly moms with children, hipsters and dogs.  It's everything that you are imagining right now.  During the entire day, we had the belly dancers performing behind us.  I never knew that one dance(?) studio could have a 6 hour long performance.  The music ranged from bohemian to rap to an Irish jig.  At another stage, mimes acted out the Passion of the Christ with rock music. My favorite booth was one with printed t-shirts had phrases like Coffee O'clock and Half Mermaid.

Next, I had the pleasure of attending the Best of Ojai Reception.  Year round people vote for the “Best of” categories in Ojai through the newspaper.  All of the winners come together and are recognized during the reception.  Each winner donates to the event to make it a fun evening.  If you are a restaurant winner you donate food or drink and if you are in another category you donate something from your business.  I won a free haircut from a local salon and our executive director won a pair of free sunglasses from a local optometrist.  You would think this would be a formal event for networking purposes. It was really jeans casual because everyone already knows everyone.  It was a delightful evening and I enjoyed being informed on the town's gossip.

Lastly, there was the Help of Ojai's Pumpkin Social.  I would equate the Pumpkin Social to a church festival.  Everyone at Help of Ojai puts in a lot of time and effort to make sure it runs smoothly.  First, I got to help bake the first half of the 198 pumpkin pies that we sell at the social.  It was a lot of fun working with people at other Help of Ojai’s sites and seeing how our senior nutrition program is run while we used their kitchen.  Next, we spent Friday afternoon setting up and decorating.  This consisted of Halloween and fall decorations coming out of multiple boxes and being tossed onto trees and tied onto poles.  We all came in the next day to finish setting up and run the event.  There were a lot of seniors with great lipstick color choices, which reminded me fondly of Honey.  There were also a lot of people with what looked like hoarding problems as they bought 6 almost dead plants.  Even if you put them in the ground, we are still in a drought!  The best part of the day was a toss-up between the live music and the pumpkin pie.  The music was good enough to be played at the International Bluegrass Festival.  It's a small band that picks up a few people for this event every year and you would never know they don't play together full time.

So here is the other Ojai and a cheer to this small town.