A Change in the Wind
Reporting and writing on climate, culture, Ojai and the Pacific Crest Trail
Featured Article
Radioactive Rain
The Partial Nuclear Meltdown That Still Haunts Ventura County Here’s a new story I wrote for Ojai magazine on — believe it or not — a major nuclear accident, a partial nuclear meltdown, that still contaminates part of Ventura County. ‘Woody Guthrie used to say…
Keep readingReporting
Ventura County Public Health Calls for Clean-up of Santa Susana Field Lab
[Note: here’s a story I wrote for Friday’s Ojai Valley News, about the decades-long controversy over cleaning up one of the most contaminated sites in the state, both chemically and with radionuclides.] Public Health Officer warns of dangers of not fully cleaning up Santa Susana Field Lab Editor’s Note: This content is being offered free,…
Mr Willis Goes to Washington
Not long after the COVID-19 pandemic began, a media attack on masking, epidemiology, and vaccination came in the form of a film called “Plandemic,” made by Ojai resident Mikki Willis, which dropped on May 4th, 2020. Spread by thousands of anti-vax and QAnon followers — according to a follow-up investigation by the Stanford Internet Observatory…
Ojai’s Lorax: Alasdair Coyne
Ojai gardener, Alasdair Coyne, left the Japanese Mafia in the dirt in a high-stakes game to preserve what is now the Ventura River Preserve, owned by the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy. By Kit Stolz On a hot summer day in the mid-1990s, the conservationist andprofessional gardener Alasdair Coyne, who emigrated to Ojai fromScotland as a…
Fire weather and climate change
In Ventura County this week, the local National Weather Service station in Oxnard has issued the following warnings: On Sunday, a Red Flag Warning (for high heats and offshore winds)For the week, a Critical Fire Weather warning (for high heat, low humidity)for the last three days, an Excessive Heat Warning Do these “fire weather”warnings seem…
Loading…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
Climate
Storm vs. Drought: After weeks of flooding, how can CA still be in drought?
Climate scientists who have studied the Southwest largely agree that the vast region — which includes Southern California — has been in drought almost since the beginning of the 21st century. It’s a historic megadrought — meaning a drought of twenty years or more — with the driest soils in the West in at least…
UCSB Scientists See End to “Normal” Climate
From the Independent in Santa Barbara, a story I pulled together on two young scientists exploring the data underlying the megadrought in which SoCal finds itself today: By Kit StolzMon Sep 19, 2022 | 4:49pm In August, Governor Gavin Newsom and officials from the Department of Water Resources released a new Water Supply Strategy, saying that because…
Ventura County heats faster than Lower 48
by Kit Stolz [published in the Ventura County Reporter April 14, 2022] Ventura County is warming faster than any other county in the continental United States, according to data compiled by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (1). The county has warmed 4.75 degrees Fahrenheit since 1895, which is about a half a degree warmer than either…
Loading…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
Culture
John Lennon’s Lullaby
This year I stumbled upon a spectacularly good story about the often-overlooked song that concludes the White Album, a record that John Lennon thought included some of his best work with the Beatles. That song is “Good Night.” You may recall the lush orchestration, the soothing, and Ringo — not John — singing with a…
Nature’s Revenge: T.C. Boyle on “Blue Skies”
Here’s this quarter’s book feature for Ojai Quarterly, an allusive interview with the delightful-if-doomy T.C. Boyle. (Think that’s part of Boyle’s brilliance: he embeds an awareness of the end of his characters’ lives into the storytelling — so often we see characters up against their uniquely-driven fates. Worse, they know it — which makes us…
The Eternal Return of the Grateful Dead
Here’s a story I wrote for the Ventura County Reporter on the Skull and Roses festival coming up next week at the Ventura County Fairgrounds. Let me post the published version (below) and add some color, for those who like a little extra. From the VCR: At the end of 1995 the much beloved jam…
Orwell and the earth
When [the critic] Woodcock compared Orwell to Antaeus, who draws his strength from the earth, he might have also meant that he drew his intellectual strength from the specific and the tangible and from firsthand experience. It set him at odds with an era in which ideologies led many astray, not least as doctrines defending…
Loading…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
Kit Stolz 