Prunedale native Ashley Schwellenbach has been a bibliophile since the age of seven, when she was first compelled to stay up all night to finish an incredible book. (The dog died in the end, as they somehow always do, but that didn’t stop her from majoring in English at UCLA) After college, she moved to San Luis Obispo where she has been working as New Times' Arts and Entertainment Editor for the past four years. In her spare time she climbs trees, organizes flash mobs, dreams about faraway places, instigates, and collaborates. Ashley's contribution:
"I realize, in retrospect, that in my naïveté I had traveled around Morocco looking like a 20-something Indiana Jones imitation. Baggy brown cotton pants. An off-white button up shirt. And a straw fedora that, if I had to be completely honest with myself, had cost more than a hat that would spend three sweaty weeks in North Africa should. But I needed a witness to my adventure. And brown cotton pants could not be trusted to recall anything of any importance. Or so I had justified my purchase.
The hat survived exactly nine days of the journey before I forgot it in the back seat of a taxi in Fez, the newest acquisition of a man who tried to cheat me out of 20 dirham (roughly two and a half dollars)."
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