Claire Fordham

Fordham worked for the BBC, ITN and Sky News in the UK and wrote a weekly anecdotal column for Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper, The Sun. She currently writes regularly for Huffington Post, The Malibu Times and the Messenger Mountain News. See "A Chat with Claire Fordham" on this website under Podcasts.

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How I’d Like to Die Given the Choice

I’ve been thinking a lot about death lately. Witnessing my parents-in-law at ages 92 and 90—a long, slow and cruel decline with neither showing any signs of wanting to give up on…

Kym Gold, Trailblazing Entrepreneur

Kym Gold was already a successful businesswoman and designer with three fashion companies under her belt when she and her then-husband Jeff Lubell co-founded True Religion in 2002. The marriage ended in…

Irony Gallery

The latest addition to Topanga Canyon Courtyard’s thriving business area is Irony Gallery, founded by metal artists and Topanga residents Jill Hari and Glenn Fischer. Hari and Fischer were dining separately at…

A Fine Line to Travel

THIS TOPANGA FAMILY DOESN’T TRAVEL JUST TO TRAVEL. THEY ALSO RESEARCH THE HOST COMMUNITIES THEY VISIT AND BRING ITEMS THAT CONTRIBUTE SOMETHING TO IMPROVE THE LIVES OF OTHERS. When Dawn and Phil…

Ashes to Ashes

A play that germinated in a Theatricum Botanicum Seedlings workshop has premiered at L.A.’s Odyssey Theater. The comedy, Ashes to Ashes, written by Debbie Bolsky, follows the unlikely romance between liberal Sara…

Topanga Mercantile

When Tom Vogel and Dinah Englund established Topanga Mercantile in 2016, Canyon Courtyard wasn’t the beautiful space it is now. The area beside the Topanga General Store was known as “The Ghetto”—frequented…

Shaman Mandy King

For Mandy King, being a shaman isn’t merely a job, it’s a way of life. Shamanism is based on the fundamental relationship with the Earth, the land and the environment. Every culture…

Sosy’s Designs

Sosy Agopian has loved beads for as long as she can remember. “My first recollection of beads was when I was five, in kindergarten. Every week, we strung colorful beads. I loved…

The Nether

A library is usually a place where the history of civilization is found. But a staged reading by the Topanga Actors Company of Jennifer Haley’s award-winning play, The Nether, brought an unsettling…

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Halloween Recap

Two of many Halloween venues in Topanga came to our attention that were awash in little kids and costumes of a million delights who scoped out the best places to trick or…