Field Notes.
Observational writing on the daily life of the county.
Field Notes is the column where the rhythm of actual living gets written down — a Saturday morning in Pierpont before the visitor cars arrive, the week of the Ojai Music Festival when the Ranch House table is impossible to get, the way a year here shapes up month by month from the marine layer through fair season into the Santa Ana window. The pieces are first-person, present-tense, and specific. No best-of lists, no superlatives, no hidden gems. Real names of real places, used precisely, by someone who has been here twenty-five years.
A Ventura County summer
What to actually do with a summer here, written for the people deciding whether to live it year-round: the islands, the July calendar, the evenings, and the honest cost of August.
The week of the Ojai Music Festival
What the second week of June actually feels like in the valley — the festival, the lavender harvest, the dinner reservations, and what a small town that hosts global-tier programming tells you about Ojai.
A year in Ventura County, briefly
Twelve months written down honestly — when the marine layer comes in, when the fair takes over the harbor end of town, when the lavender is up, when the rains come back. The seasonal rhythm relocators ask me about most.
A Saturday morning in Pierpont
Notes from one weekend on the surf-side grid — the rhythm of the lanes between the pier and the harbor, written down before I forget the small details.
A 1031 in eleven days: the choreography behind a clean exchange
How I structure timelines, identify backup properties, and keep lenders moving when the IRS clock starts ticking.