Flying Even Higher!

When SurfWriter Girls first wrote about LA Video Drone it was just a fledgling, testing its wings to explore all the things it could do. Now one decade later, YoYo and Heather (McAndress) Bianchi have exceeded all expectations. Expanding their business and tying the knot to make it a family affair.

Drones are in the spotlight these days, doing things no one imagined. The Bianchis were there from the start, growing their business with each new technology and opportunity. SurfWriter Girls invite you to look at this story from November 2015 that shares how it all began.

Flying High and Making a Difference

A Surfrider Sponsor Story

Written by SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel

Up in the sky! It’s a bird…it’s a plane. No, it’s LA Video Drone.

Next time you’re in Huntington Beach, look up! There’s a chance that Surfrider Foundation sponsor LA Video Drone is on the scene. The innovative aerial drone company is often out at the beach capturing “eye in the sky” camera footage of beach activities and events.

The Los Angeles-based company is a pioneer in aerial drone photography, using the latest ultra HD 4K cameras.

Less expensive and more effective than helicopter photography, the radio-operated drones can get right in on the action, providing new perspectives and sweeping panoramas.

Covering everything from business and charity events to golf tournaments and auto races, LA Video Drone can provide whatever you need – from high resolution photos to web-ready videos; raw footage to edited formats with music and special effects. Heather McAndress, Vice President and Creative Director, explains that they can tailor their services to each client’s situation.

And now they have an even newer drone in the lineup  – the DJI Inspire 1 Pro with a Zen Muse X5 lens. “This camera is unreal – truly a game changer for the drone industry, ” says McAndress.

Film production companies are especially jazzed about what video drones can do since the nimble, flying cameras can replace costly camera setups requiring helicopters, scaffolds and towers.

Drones can be used by police and fire departments and search and rescue teams.

McAndress told SurfWriter Girls the company wants to use its resources to contribute to the community. “When we started LA Video Drone, one of our main goals was to get involved with social awareness. Right away we connected with Surfrider’s Huntington/Seal Beach Chapter because of their inspiring energy and dedication to environmental consciousness. Now we take part in their beach cleanups and events by providing both aerial and ground video coverage to help their cause.”

Chapter Chair Tony Soriano welcomes their participation, saying, “Our partner LA Video Drone gives an added dimension to our visual awareness and they continue to grow with us.”

LA Video Drone photography took viewers right on board the kayaks with Surfrider volunteers cleaning up Huntington Harbor.

Drone technology that once seemed fantastical is unfolding before our eyes. As they say in science fiction stories, “The future is now.”  And, LA Video Drone is right at the vanguard, leading the charge.

Heather and YoYo – Congratulations on 10 Amazing Years!

The sky’s the limit!

Follow @LAVideoDrone on Instagram.

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Pictures of Golden State Sold Oranges and Dreams

Written by SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel

Art isn’t just something you see in a book or a museum. It’s a part of our everyday lives and can emerge out of the humblest circumstances when you least expect it…even in an orange grove.

Orange crate art – the colorful scenes of idyllic orange groves, panoramic fields and mountains, and the people picking the fruit – was created to sell California oranges across the nation in the 1880s when the expanding transcontinental railroad routes began connecting the West and East.

What started as a simple marketing tool to identify one grower’s oranges from the rest, not only built the produce industry, but attracted people from every corner of the U.S. to the Golden State to experience the California Dream.

The bright paper packing labels, glued onto orange crates that were shipped to buyers, weren’t thought of as art or anything to be saved. They were just a profitable way to draw attention to each farm’s produce.

What helped to make the vivid labels possible was the development of the lithographic printing process and specialty inks – often with secret formulas guarded by the designers.

SurfWriter Girl Patti is especially fond of orange crate art because it reminds her of special days at her grandmother’s house in Santa Ana when she and her sister Eileen would run into the orange grove behind the house, zig zagging around the smudge pots, to pick oranges from the trees.

“Grandma gave us each a large, brown grocery bag and we would fill it to the top with fresh-picked oranges,” says Patti. “We’d always take home bags full of oranges and grandma would make us orange juice, squeezed by hand in an orange juice squeezer.”

“There were so many orange trees out back that growers from local co-ops would come each year to pick them, paying grandma for each box,” Patti recalls. “You can still see the original Sunkist Orange County Fruit Exchange building on nearby Glassell Street in Orange.”

By the late 1950s orange crates were replaced with less-expensive cardboard boxes and the artistic labels were discontinued, a victim of cost-saving and modernization. For the most part, people forgot about the labels and their romanticized odes to the California dream.

But a few collectors recognized the labels’ artistic value and preserved the fragile paper advertisements for future generations to enjoy. And later, in the 1960s and 1970s, some treasure troves of forgotten orange crate labels were discovered in printers’ shops and stashed away in packing warehouses.

By then, these vibrant vestiges of another time were ready to stand on their own merit – not just as functional shipping labels, but as 12″ x 25″ artists’ canvases that glorified the Golden state…capturing its story one slice in time.

Oranges, lemons, limes.

Memories of special times

when each California crate

showcased the golden state.

To see this original California art form for yourself, visit the Picturing Paradise orange crate art exhibit at the Hilbert Museum in Orange, CA. It runs until April 19, 2025.

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Aussie Dancer/Choreographer was 110-Years Young

Written by SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel

They say, “age is just a number.” For Australian dancer/choreographer Eileen Kramer (November 8, 1914 – November 15, 2024) age was just “a dance number” – a dazzling 110 years.

With the New Year upon us SurfWriter Girls Sunny and Patti would like to honor this amazing talent, who seized each new day. Providing enjoyment for others through her dance, she watched her own life evolve through each movement. “There is a continuous shifting, like a cloud that keeps changing shape. I can dance in the mirror for hours.”

Born in Mossman Bay, Australia, Kramer joined the acclaimed Bodenwieser Ballet company in 1940 and danced her way throughout Australia and around the world in an incredible 84-year career.

Touring with the ballet company – which combined classical ballet with the emerging modern dance form – until 1953, she performed in France after WWII and traveled throughout Europe, Africa, India and other locales.

Kramer later worked as an artist’s model for French cubist painter Andre Lhote and had a long-running professional and personal collaboration with filmmaker Baruch Shadmi that lasted until his death in 1987 when she resumed her dance and choreography career.

In 2008, Kramer, who was living in the United States at the time, published her autobiography, Walkabout Dancer.

Then in 2014 she returned to Australia. And to celebrate her 100th birthday, staged, choreographed and performed an original ballet, The Early Ones. She also began collaborating with award-winning dance filmmaker Sue Healey and appearing in other filmmakers’ dance films and video productions.

The winner of many awards and prizes, Kramer was featured in films and books and lauded for her contributions to dance, film and the arts. She even did a TED Talk.

A self-described “child of the bush and the harbour,” she embraced the world, meeting people from all walks of life, including jazz great Louis Armstrong, who had a few dance moves of his own – teaching Kramer the twist in the1960s.

Kramer saw over a century’s worth of history unfold and was right in the middle of it, interpreting social and world events in artistic terms and communicating through dance.

For Eileen Kramer, dancing was an extension of herself, as much a part of her daily activities as eating and breathing. The title of her recent memoir tells it all: Life Keeps Me Dancing.

And it kept her enjoying each day…and using her talents to bring enjoyment to others.

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Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel hold the exclusive rights to this copyrighted material. Publications wishing to reprint it may contact them at surfwriter.girls@gmail.com Individuals and non-profit groups are welcome to post it on social media sites as long as credit is given.

Thankful for Colors of the Reefs!

 Written by SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel

November is Coral Bleaching Awareness Month, drawing attention to the need to protect the world’s coral reefs from losing their vivid colors and sustainability.

During this time of Thanksgiving when autumn’s red and gold leaves are taking center stage, it’s easy to overlook the dazzling colors hidden from sight below the sea in the ocean’s coral reefs.

Exotic and mysterious, coral reefs around the world, from Hawaii and the Caribbean to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef exist in an endless variety of color – color that is at risk of fading to white as reefs lose their nutrients due to environmental factors and can potentially die.

More than just objects of beauty, coral reefs are underwater living ecosystems that provide food and shelter to more than 25% of the ocean’s sea life. Coral reefs have been called the “rainforests of the sea.”

And like trees protecting the land from the elements, coral reefs protect the world’s shorelines from storms and erosion and help to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air.

The different colors of the reefs – red, orange, yellow, blue, pink, and more – come from the mix of algae in their tissues and varying light conditions and water temperatures. The brighter and bolder the colors, the healthier the reefs.

Marine scientists are working to keep the vivid colors in the reefs – no easy task given the threats from climate change, pollution, habitat destruction and overfishing.

In her children’s book The Great Barrier Thief author Dr. Sue Pillans (AKA “Suzie Starfish”), a marine scientist and visual artist, tackles the problem of coral bleaching and the reasons that many coral reefs are losing their colors.

With the help of her protagonist, a pink fish named Anthia, Pillans hopes to ensure that the Great Barrier Reef doesn’t lose its dazzling colors.

SurfWriter Girls are excited about the world of beautiful colors under the sea and are thankful for the coral reefs.

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Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel hold the exclusive rights to this copyrighted material. Publications wishing to reprint it may contact them at surfwriter.girls@gmail.com Individuals and non-profit groups are welcome to post it on social media sites as long as credit is given.

Essayist Championed the Individual and Nature

Written by SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel

American essayist, poet, and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882) was one of the leading thinkers of the 19th Century, helping to define and shape the core thoughts and beliefs on which the nation was built.

In the first century of its independence much of America’s development revolved around Emerson’s ideas of fairness to others, self-reliance, and respect for nature.

A strong believer in the power of the individual to accomplish great things and overcome obstacles, Emerson stated, “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”

His views on independence and freedom inspired famed abolitionist Bronson Alcott (father of Little Women author Louisa May Alcott), Teddy Roosevelt, environmentalist John Muir, poets Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost, and countless others.

A self-described “naturalist,” Emerson wrote in his essay Nature about the need for people to take time to immerse themselves in the natural world and focus on non-material things. This was something that President Teddy Roosevelt took to heart and influenced him in spearheading the creation of the country’s first national parks.

Emerson was a mentor to Walden author Henry David Thoreau and Leaves of Grass poet Walt Whitman. It was on Emerson’s secluded Walden Pond property in Massachusetts where Thoreau lived alone for two years communing with nature and writing his 1854 landmark book about living a simpler life.

With admirers in Europe, as well, Emerson’s contemporaries included acclaimed English Romantic poets William Wordsworth (“Tintern Abbey”) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”). Both shared Emerson’s views on nature and its role in providing emotional comfort and stimulating creativity.

So many of the things we think and do today have their roots in Emerson’s philosophies: “Life is a journey, not a destination.” “It’s not the length of life, but the depth.” “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

“Don’t be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.” “Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.”

The more we’ve learned about Emerson, the more SurfWriter Girls marvel at the broad scope of his vision and his belief in what we can accomplish through our own efforts. He wrote, “Sorrow looks back. Worry looks around. Faith looks up.” A gifted wordsmith, he could write simply, too: “Be silly. Be honest. Be kind.”

A leader who inspired other leaders to achieve greatness, Emerson recognized people’s longings for motivation, noting: “Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we can be.”

What is success? Emerson said, “To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” One of his best-known words of advice was: “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ideas and ideals are as bright and new today as when they were first conceived, spurring the new nation of America to achieve greatness.

And they leave a long trail to guide us.

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Wave Pools Bring Ocean to You!

Written by SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel

The Beach Boys song “Surfin’ U.S.A.” says, “If everybody had an ocean across the U.S.A. then everybody’d be surfn’ like Californi-a.” Little did the singing surf bros. know that one day everybody would have the next best thing to an ocean – a wave pool.

Now, thanks to the entrepreneurial vision of surfers and scientists working together, surfers are hanging ten in places you would never expect – from Waco, Texas, to East Rutherford, New Jersey. In wave pools of all shapes, sizes, and skills levels.

The agricultural community of Lemoore, in Central California, far from the beach, has the Holy Grail of wave pools – the Surf Ranch, an invitation-only surf spot started in 2015 by legendary World Surfing Champion Kelly Slater.

Created by Slater and USC engineering professor Adam Finchem after ten years of planning, it offers state-of-the-art waves and is the only wave pool certified by the World Surf League. Though surfers have limited access to it now, Slater plans to expand the Ranch with extra pools and open it to the public.

Farther down the state in SoCal’s upscale desert playgrounds three wave pools are currently in various stages of development. The Palm Springs Surf Club, Coachella Valley’s Thermal Beach Club and Palm Desert’s DSRT Surf.

Waco Surf, in the heart of Texas, is a popular spot to chill out and experience surfing Texas-style. With RV hook-ups and pool-side cabanas, it’s a destination spot to kick off your boots, stop, and surf a while.

Skudin Surf, at New Jersey’s American Dream Mall, designed by big-wave surfer Will Skudin, is the world’s largest indoor wave surfing pool. Offering the comfort of surfing inside, it’s part of Dreamworks’ entertainment empire and the only surf spot where you’ll see Shrek sharing positive vibes.

Typhoon Lagoon, at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, offers a chance to surf at “The Happiest Place on Earth.” With an array of amenities and vacation options in the House of the Mouse, it has a variety of water features and inner-tubing over 61-acres.

Surfers are finding wave pools popping up in foreign locales, as well, including the U.K., Australia, Spain, and South Korea. And in the United Arab Emirates, Kelly Slater’s new Surf Abu Dhabi wave pool is bringing his surfing magic to the Middle East.

Now, with wave pools bringing you the ocean, everyone can “be surfin’ like Californi-a.”

Surf’n Beach Scene Magazine

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Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel hold the exclusive rights to this copyrighted material. Publications wishing to reprint it may contact them at surfwriter.girls@gmail.com Individuals and non-profit groups are welcome to post it on social media sites as long as credit is given.

Protecting Our Planet

Written by SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel

Like the tree in Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, who gives everything to the young boy who loves him, mangrove trees give everything to our planet and its inhabitants.

Mangrove forests, which grow along salty ocean shorelines in tropical and subtropical latitudes, are made up of some 80 different species of plants that can subsist in low-oxygen soil.

Noted for their tangle of roots that appear to grow above ground supporting the plants as if on stilts, mangrove trees oxygenate the environment and stabilize coastlines from erosion.

Mangrove trees truly are giving trees. Five times more effective than rain forests at removing carbon from the atmosphere, NASA calls them “among the world’s best carbon-scrubbers.”

Mangrove forests also provide food and shelter to sea life, including a wide variety of fish, shellfish, algae, plankton, amphibians, birds, and mammals.

Critical to the health of our planet, mangrove trees can be found along the shorelines of over 100 countries and territories, with over 40 percent of them located in Asia.

SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel learned that the world’s largest forest of mangrove trees covers an area of about 10,000 km in Bangladesh’s Sundarbans Reserve Forest between the Baleshwar River and the Bay of Bengal.

Due to coastal development, deforestation, climate change, pollution, and other factors, though, forests such as this are at extreme risk and could even become extinct unless countries come up with sustainable practices to protect them.

To create more forests, the SeaTrees Project, started by the Sustainable Surf non-profit organization, has been on a mission to plant millions of mangrove trees (with over 3 million so far!).

Other organizations supporting the mangroves include Conservation International, the World Wildlife Fund, the Nature Conservancy, and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

To save these trees that give so much, the place to start is by giving back.

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Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel hold the exclusive rights to this copyrighted material. Publications wishing to reprint it may contact them at surfwriter.girls@gmail.com Individuals and non-profit groups are welcome to post it on social media sites as long as credit is given.

Penguins Chill Out at North Pole

Written by SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel

With Earth Day (April 22nd) coming soon, now is the perfect time to see Alex Hallatt’s eco-themed, syndicated comic strip Arctic Circle. The penguin characters that are the comic’s stars aren’t surfers, but they share the same environmental interests and fears of global warming. After all, the ice cap is their home.

Hallatt’s strip, which King Features first syndicated in August 2007, is about three penguins who have migrated from the Antarctic to the small town of Snowpeak within the Arctic Circle. In their adopted home, the penguins’ neighbors include a polar bear, a snow bunny, a lemming and an Arctic tern.

Together, from their Northernmost vantage point, they make the best of all the modern day issues of the 21st Century from climate change, new technologies, relationships and ocean pollution to genetically modified organisms gone wild.

As for how she happened to put her penguins in the Arctic Circle, Hallatt explains in the book she co-authored, The Art of Cartooning, that when she first started the comic strip “I didn’t really enjoy drawing. I thought the Arctic would give me lots of lovely, white, blank space with no complicated backgrounds.”

Since then Hallatt says her attitude toward drawing has changed and “I’ve engineered my Arctic universe to include a lot more than snow, sea and ice.”

SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel love Arctic Circle’s mix of humor and ecology, which reflects Hallatt’s background. The British-born cartoonist has a degree in biochemistry and she worked in the pharmaceutical industry before deciding she was destined to be a cartoonist.

An artist and adventurer, Hallatt, has lived in and traveled to many places and currently resides in New Zealand. So you never know what she will draw on for her daily comic strip.

Whatever it is, you can count on the penguins and their friends to put their own, slightly quirky spin on it.

Whether you read Arctic Circle online or in your morning newspaper, it’s definitely the way to jump start your day. Thought-provoking and laugh-evoking, it’s the perfect way to chill.

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Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel hold the exclusive rights to this copyrighted material. Publications wishing to reprint it may contact them at surfwriter.girls@gmail.com Individuals and non-profit groups are welcome to post it on social media sites as long as credit is given.

A lineup of Lucky Limericks

Written by SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel

A limerick is a funny, five-line poem popularized in Irish pubs in the 1800s.

In the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day, SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel wrote these beach limericks for you –

Surfer Dave

There once was a surfer named Dave,

Who went looking for the perfect wave.

But, just when he found a winner,

A whale ate him for dinner

And Dave’s surfboard was all they could save.

**********

Lotion Commotion

There was a young lady who went to the ocean.

She sat on the sand and put on her sun lotion.

But, her yellow bikini

Was incredibly teeny

And this caused a major commotion.

**********

Surfer Girl

There once was a surfer girl named Jasmine.

Like a magnet, she attracted all the men.

When she went out to compete

In any surfing meets

It’s so crazy how she always would win.

**********

Rude Dude

There once was an arrogant surfer dude,

Who would hog all the waves and act rude.

He’d steal waves away,

Keeping the angry surfers at bay,

Until they realigned his attitude.

**********

Beulah’s Hula

There was a shapely lady named Beulah,

Who could really shake up the hula.

The men would all gather

And get into a lather

And Beulah would rake in the moola.

**********

For each petal on the shamrock
This brings a wish your way –
Good health, good luck, and happiness
For today and every day.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Sunny & Patti

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Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel hold the exclusive rights to this copyrighted material. Publications wishing to reprint it may contact them at surfwriter.girls@gmail.com Individuals and non-profit groups are welcome to post it on social media sites as long as credit is given.

Wild Thing, I Think I Love You

Written by SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel

When it comes to amore, people aren’t the only ones in the mood for love. Just look at the animal kingdom and you’ll get the idea.

From penguins to pangolins, otters and owls,

to chickadees and chipmunks, love is in the air.

To channel your inner animal on Valentine’s Day, listen to Wild Thing, the 1966 number one hit single by The Trogs. Whether you stream it or dust off an old 45, it will make your heart sing.

One of Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Songs of All time, it will have you feeling groovy on Valentine’s Day.

So, light the candles, get out the chocolates and pour the wine.

Then let your wilder side come out.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Greg, Patti and Sunny

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Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel hold the exclusive rights to this copyrighted material. Publications wishing to reprint it may contact them at surfwriter.girls@gmail.com Individuals and non-profit groups are welcome to post it on social media sites as long as credit is given.