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Rotary Club of Ojai May 1, 2026 — Fellowship Hall Dispatch
It was one of those Ojai spring days that feels less like weather and more like a quiet endorsement of civilization itself. By noon, a loose caravan of Rotarians and guests drifted into the St. Thomas Aquinas Fellowship Hall — fresh off a morning spent at Nordhoff High School, where many had already done a day’s work as mock interviewers, offering guidance, candor, and the occasional reality check to students standing at the threshold of adulthood.
If Rotary has a defining trait, it may be this: we tend to show up twice.
President Wendy brought the room to order just past 12:10. Al West led the flag salute with practiced gravity, followed by Leslie Bouche, whose invocation struck that delicate Rotary balance — reverent, inclusive, and lyrical.
Rotary Invocation — May 1, 2026
We have a moment together right now — and I’ve been thinking — there are many responses you can have to any moment. So, in this moment, our moment, why not choose joy? Joy speaks from the heart and says, “What a blessing to be alive and to be able to feel gratitude for all that we are.”
What is life if we abandon our joy?
I’d like to read you a poem called Wildflowers — I have adapted it to reflect springtime in our beautiful valley:
WILDFLOWERS(adapted from a poem by Danna Faulds)
Meadow of miracles, I am bewitched by your surprises.
It isn’t just the poppies, the pixies, and sages, not just the butterflies and finches, but the whole array of enchantments reaching out to greet me all at once, clouds, mountains, oaks, wild bees, orioles, towhees and acorn woodpeckers — this is landscape architecture on the grandest scale, creation and creator
Jack Jacobs handled greetings, while the machinery of the meeting hummed to life: Cindy Frings on the roving mic, Ren Adam preparing to extract fines, Randy Roth at the editorial helm, and your correspondent —pen in hand, eyes open.
Lunch, a generous taco salad with all the fixings, earned a well-deserved note of thanks from Jayne Cruise. It was the sort of meal that encourages both conversation and second helpings, often in that order.
We welcomed a full slate of guests, a reminder that Rotary remains, at its core, an open door. Among them: Rachel Ticotin, Bianca Roe, Mark Roberts, Edgard Arceo, and a trio of future leaders — Breanna Bowen and Addie Seymour — along with Naomi Santoyo, representing the creative wing of Ojai’s next generation.
Announcements moved briskly. Wendy extended thanks to Bob Eisler, still in the afterglow — and likely logistical debris field — of the Mock Interview program. Bruce Hanson previewed coming programs, including Afton Coombs on May 8, and his own June 5 talk on China’s eco-villages — an “Ecological Civilization” with surprising philosophical parallels to the Chumash people, whose long stewardship of this valley suggests we are sometimes late to ideas already well understood.
Lillian Tally issued a clear-eyed call to service for the June 20 Wine Festival — noon to four, 2,000 attendees, and roughly $65,000 in community grants at stake. Volunteers are not a luxury; they are the operating system. Tickets, she noted, are $80 this week — an early invitation to do the right thing at a slight discount.
Kathy Yee and RYLA
Kathy Yee introduced our Rotary Youth Leadership Academy participants, Breanna Bowen and Addie Seymour, who offered a candid field report from Camp Ramah. The first lesson: surrender your phone. The second: discover what remains. Working in “color groups,” they navigated shared challenges, opened up about personal struggles, and found that leadership is less about speaking and more about listening with intent. They arrived uncertain. They left with a clearer sense of themselves and a willingness to be responsible for others. Rotary, in miniature.
Richa Badami gets her Blue Badge!
We also marked a rite of passage. Richa Badami received her Blue Badge, with Leslie Bouche as mentor and Leah Heckeras sponsor—evidence that she has done the unglamorous work of showing up, leaning in, and completing the circuit.
FINING There was only time for a handful of confessions — perhaps mercifully. Ren Adam ran a tight ship, extracting what truth he could before the clock intervened. Richa Badami, newly badged and evidently unburdened by restraint, offered a triple confession totaling $60. First, pride: her daughter’s onstage triumph in a Shakespeare program affiliated with the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Second, gratitude: to Leah for ushering her into Rotary. Third, promotion (which in Rotary is merely service wearing a brighter jacket): her Living Theater Academy’s coming-of-age productions — The Outsiders (May 29–31) and The Wolves (May 22–24), each a study in youth, identity, and the complicated business of growing up.
Bianca Roe followed with a fundraiser announcement for the Living Theater: a benefit screening at the Ojai Playhouse on May 3 at 4 p.m., featuring The Outsiders and appearances by C. Thomas Howell and Matt Dillon — a reminder that even in Ojai, the cultural currents occasionally run through Hollywood.
PROGRAM Marilyn Mosely introduced Daena Santoyo, who proceeded to tell a story familiar to anyone who has tried to build something meaningful: start small, move often, grow anyway.
When Daena took over the Ojai Youth Entertainers Studio in 2015, it served roughly 25 students. Since then, it has moved three times and expanded into a full-fledged training ground for 100 to 150 young people, supported by 8 to 12 faculty and administrators. Programs now run in spring, fall, and summer, with students — kindergarten through 12th grade — grouped with zoological clarity into Lions, Tigers, Bears, and Monkeys.
Currently housed at OUSD headquarters, OYES is, in a sense, both established and transient — a thriving enterprise still in search of a permanent stage. Their recent production of Alice by Heart was, by Daena’s account, driven by the students themselves — a decision that paid off in both execution and ownership. The program’s deeper work, however, lies beyond applause. OYES actively includes students on the spectrum and those with disabilities, creating a space where difference is not managed but integrated. Daena read testimonials that spoke less about theater and more about transformation: confidence found, voices discovered, identities assembled in the act of performance.
The organization’s current push — “Hear Us Roar” — is aimed at securing a permanent home. In the meantime, the show, quite literally, goes on. Upcoming productions include 101 Dalmatians for younger students and Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief for middle schoolers, along with summer improv camps and musicals designed to keep the creative muscle in motion.
It is easy, in a place like Ojai, to assume that culture simply exists, like the mountains or the light. Daena’s presentation was a useful corrective. Culture is built. It is taught. It is rehearsed — often in borrowed rooms, with limited resources, and with a stubborn refusal to quit.
