Me and Stormy resting in the meadow in Yosemite.

Many of you may already know this, but I figured that since Stormy has been part of the heart and soul of Amy’s kitchen and still frolics happily all over the lemonslice, that I should write a post telling everyone that Stormy passed away in January of this year. I know that was a few months ago, but I am just now reaching the point where I can write about her. I’m going to keep this somewhat brief, but I would like to share a little bit about her passing.

For those of you who don’t know how Stormy and I met and became best friends forever, please read our story on the lemonslice.

In July, at the age of 12, Stormy was diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma, a cancer of the blood that is pretty common in dogs. The vet gave her about two months after she was diagnosed in July, but she made it until the New Year with her vigorous will to live. Those last 6 months with Stormy were some of the most precious and beautiful moments with her that my family has had. Stormy had always been wise, regal, loving, and affectionate. However, she bestowed her affection only when she truly wanted to. She loved us, but would only slobber on us on two occasions–one was “morning snuggles” when we would all wake up and snuggle together on the bed, and the other was when we came home from anywhere, even if we had only been gone an hour

In those last few months, she became more gently affectionate with us all the time, surprising us with a single lick at a time of day that would have been far beneath her before. She snuggled with us at any time of day or night, lying gently by my side on the bed instead of escaping to the foot of the bed like she used to where my tossing and turning would not bother her. She never seemed to be doing this out of need, however, or comfort. In fact, it was quite the opposite. She seemed to be able to tell that that WE were the ones who needed comforting, so she would let us know that she loved us and that everything was going to be ok. In the last few weeks, she would lay out on the lawn and watch the birds, which she had always loved to do. The birds were coming closer than ever and stormy would wag her tail as they hopped around her. My mom, sensing that stormy was no threat to them, put seeds all around stormy, and all of the birds of the garden came hopping around her eating happily as she sniffed them and wagged, panting with glee.

I don’t entirely know how I feel about animal psychics, but I happened across a book by one when I was taking Stormy to the vet, and figured, why not, maybe I’ll find out something that Stormy wants in these last few months that she has with us. So I called her, and was told that Stormy wanted to go somewhere she had gone many times before–it was on a mountain, and there were lots of big trees, and a green meadow, and there was a small old house, and it smelled like squirrels. It was her favorite place, and she wanted to go there again. I instantly knew that the psychic was telling me that Stormy wanted to go to our ancient cabin in Yosemite, which we have taken her to every year and which is definitely her favorite place in the world. So I packed up my things and headed out with Stormy. She couldn’t go on long hikes like she used to, but she had never been so joyful romping after squirrels, endlessly sniffing the air, and laying in the cool meadow.

These are some of the photos from that trip, and the picture of Stormy and Me at the top of this post is from this trip as well.

Stormy and Me in the meadow

Me and Stormy looking out over the meadow

Happy Stormy in the grass!

Stormy passed away by natural causes during the night of the first week of January, surrounded by my mother and father. Her ashes are now scattered in the wild garden outside our house, her favorite place to dig. She had an amazing life, and touched us in so many ways. She will always be my first and best dog, that beloved childhood best friend that lives in so many of our hearts.

Me and Stella

Anyone who has ever had a pet or watched wild animals in their habitat knows how amazingly magical, majestic, intuitive, and healing animals can be. As a horsegirl when I was little, there was no creature in the world that epitomized magic and power, grace and beauty more than horses. I dreamt of them, I drew them (they were the only thing I could draw), I rode them, I pined for them. After a very traumatic fall when I was 12, I stopped riding, and horses drifted into the back of my mind, replaced by junior high, boys and fashion, grades and after-school sports, college applications and then learning to live on my own.

This past year shifted all that. After losing three family members, having a very serious health scare of my own, and being in the midst of that widespread (but no less poignant for being so) 21 year old (well, 16-forever) crisis of self and purpose and meaning, I found my mind drifting back to horses over and over, pining for them again in a way I hadn’t since I was 8 years old, seeking not only that solace and peace they had given me, but also that sense of power and purpose and passion that I was so desperately trying to pull together from the threads surrounding me that might become the makings of my “adult” life.

So I decided to start taking lessons again. I got in touch with an old friend, Ariana, who had put me on a horse for the first time when I was 6 years old, and scheduled a lesson. When I got up there, I never even got on a horse. We ended up talking for two hours, and I learned that she had co-founded the Equine Guided Education Association, an association dedicated to helping, teaching, and guiding self development through horses, and that she had a three week program starting the very next week! Now, I had heard of all of the many ways in which horses were impacting lives in various programs—rehabilitating those with eating disorders, children with mental disabilities, children from abusive homes, psychiatric patients, and more. But, I had never heard of a coaching and self development through horses program that I myself could be a part of. I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into, but I signed up….

And it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life. In those three weeks, I reconnected with horses, with myself, with the earth…discovered goals, learned to stand up for myself and stop bowing to everyone’s wishes, let go of some baggage I had been carrying around, and left cleared-eyed and bushy tailed, ready to take on the world. That’s just the important stuff …I also painted horses, held baby goats, ate yummy food, played with the horses, and made amazing friends! More than any therapist I had ever seen or any book I had ever read, these horses healed me and helped me grow and expand, and the process continues every day.

If anyone is interested in finding out more about the EGEA here is the website http://www.equineguidededucation.org, and here is Ariana’s ranch website www.skyhorseranch.com where you can learn about the various programs that she offers.

Oh, and you know what else? I’m back in the saddle, riding twice a week!

Riding at Sunset

Wrong.

They are my CLASSES this quarter at Stanford. For actual grades! I’m taking an organic agriculture class, which is three hours a week outside in the stanford community farm, where we learn to compost, learn about soil, bugs, plant structure, sustainable practices, marketing–the works. We got split up into groups of five and each group gets their own bed to cultivate and plant! We keep a field journal just like real farmers and get graded on how well we do. Its a blast to dig around in the dirt and get credit for it.

Here are some pictures of my gardening class.

This is the part of the stanford community farm that is allocated for our class.

Me with my amazing farming group doing an experiment with dirt.

Another group planting their seeds in rows.

Not only am I taking organic gardening, I’m taking a class called the Biology of Birds, which is a field research based class. We definitely have been learning all the crazy and awesome things about bird biology (like the fact that they have hollow bones and can actually circulate air through their bones!), but my favorite part about the class is that once a week I have to wake up at 5 (yes its difficult, but worth it) and go out to the nature preserves around stanford and watch birds and record them for 4 hours. There is something so magical about being in the woods at dawn listening to the birds sing. We are doing a study about Oak Woodland birds. Oaks woodlands are the major habitat for birds in California, and they are dying! We are trying to determine what the affect is of recreational human use of oak woodland spaces on the birds by comparing the bird density and diversity in a preserve that is open to the public and one that is closed to recreational use.

California Oak Trees--the major bird habitat of California.

We got split into groups for the different projects in this class as well. I’m in group Oak Titmouse. This is our mascot:

Oak Titmouse

Out of the 12 or so hours of class I have a week, I spend 6 hours of it outside, and I find myself thinking, “Is this actually school?”

Happily, the answer is yes

But no longer! This quarter at Stanford I have been taking Social Dance three times a week with my boyfriend. We have learned swing, cross step waltz, rotary waltz, club two step, merengue, salsa, cha cha, and tango. My personal favorites are swing and the waltz. Swing is so exuberant and fun, and the beat is so easy to sink into. Plus it reminds me of the rockin’ 50’s and their awesome clothes.

I love the waltz because it is such a romantic dance. When you lock eyes with your partner and go swirling around the room, everything around you fades to a dizzy blur and you feel giddy and lightheaded—the only thing in focus are my boyfriend’s eyes and I feel swept off my feet all over again. I get to feel like Belle from Beauty and the Beast! (Not that my boyfriend is a beast, I just identified with Belle as a little girl because she is brunette, not a princess, and always has her head in a book).

My dance teacher gives us a little social dance history lesson every class, and the general trend that he talks about is that every generation rebels against the dances that were “cool” in their parents generation, getting less and less appropriate every time. My question is, how on earth can dancing get less appropriate than it is now? What are our kids going to do? I have come up with a new theory, which is that we have already hit bottom right now, and that our kids are going to rebel against our “cool” freak dancing by heading back in the other direction and learning social dances from past generations, like the waltz, and swing. I think this trend has already started, since the social dance class at Stanford is filled with hundreds of students every quarter, and Stanford throws old fashioned social dances every quarter that are completely packed! I may be wrong, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed

Even though I always have a job open to me at Amy’s, my parents and I both thought that getting a little experience working at another company would be interesting for me. So I am interning for the summer at Traditional Medicinals, an awesome organic medicinal herbal tea company out in the country in Sebastopol…about 40 minutes from my house. I am interning in both the QC (quality control) and R&D (research and development) departments, doing a project looking at the supply chain and sources of all their herbs, which come from little communities all over the world! TM is really committed to helping alleviate poverty and suffering by supporting these communities, and it feels great to be doing my small part to help them do that.

The working environment at TM is really cool too, since their offices and factory are way out in the country down a one lane road with horses and pigs bordering them. Here are some pictures of the building and the grounds.

This is the office building. I work on the second floor.

This is my cute little cubicle (sigh, someday I will be important and have an office with a window )

My absolute favorite thing to do during break and lunch is go sit in the herb garden. TM has a huge herb garden with examples of a lot of the herbs that they use, and its fun to go meander around looking and smelling the different flowers and plants, or just sit by the lavender and watch the thousands of bumblebees in bliss.

But by far, my favorite part of working at Traditional Medicinals is the people. They are all unique and totally quirky, are soo interesting and inspiring, and are really passionate about what they do. I have two bosses, Katie and Joseph (there is no picture of Joseph because he was in Germany and India doing very important things when I was photographing). Katie is VP of QC, and Joseph is VP of R&D. They both care so much, and I love working with them. I am learning a ton every day.

This is a picture of me with my boss Katie down in the cage where I sample herbs. My my aren’t hair-nets flattering.

Ok, so, this is David. David is not my boss, but he sits next to me and was sort of my boss while Joseph was gone. He is the resident herbalist, and he knows more about herbs than anyone you will probably ever meet in your life. He is also the resident British conspiracy theorist hippie whose father was the photographer for the Beatles (how cool is that? he saw them all the time growing up). One afternoon he told me that my job was to contemplate the veins on my orchid petals for the next few hours (he was kidding, sort of). This is the sign on his door:

In fact, this pretty much sums up the entire company.”Herbalists for Peace”–could i have possibly found a cooler place to intern? (except Amy’s, of course) Most definitely not.

Something that I struggle with personally is the urge to feel good about myself because I am already doing a few things (using a hybrid, changing my light bulbs, biking to get around, eating organic, etc) and then becoming complacent because I can think to myself, “I’m doing my part.” Those few changes are great, and we should feel good about the efforts we make, but I know that I can’t let myself stop looking for ways to improve. I can’t allow myself the luxury to be lazy when it comes to the environment. This is the future of our planet—my future, your future, and our children’s future. That’s our choice. Living green is not a decision we make once and then forget about, it is a decision we are forced to make a hundred times a day, with almost every action. No matter how insignificant a single action may seem, I trust everyone will join me in the effort to push ourselves to make the right decision—every single time.

Where do I even begin? So many things to tell, so little space. Well, I will start by saying that I was studying at CEPE, which is part of the University of Guadalajara, but at their campus in Puerto Vallarta. The classes were amazing, and entirely taught in Spanish. My teachers did not even speak English, and I read novels in Spanish! This is a picture of Ruth, my awesome Mexican literature teacher, who is a writer herself. She gave me a book with some of her short stories in it before I went home.

But, as my dad likes to tell people, I was double-majoring in mexico–studying spanish and the beach! I swam with dolphins, went whale watching, and boogie boarded, body-surfed, and swam non-stop. I also went on some adventures into the mountains, where I rode a race-horse and galloped faster than I ever have in my life and jumped off of cliffs into freezing river swimming holes. Here are some pictures from the various adventures that I had.

Baby dolphin kisses!

Boogie boarding in Sayulita with friends

Attempting to jump into the water with the hundreds of wild dolphins, only to scare them away and get stung by a huge jellyfish that wrapped itself around my stomach while I was in the middle of the ocean.

Crossing a stream on my crazy energetic horse Azteca who nearly ran me all the way to the next time zone (actually the next time zone was only about 10 minutes away so that really was possible).

One question that I get a lot is, was it hard to find vegetarian food in Mexico? Actually no, since essentially you can get rice, beans guacamole, salsa, cheese, and tortillas about anywhere you go, and I could eat tacos every day for the rest of my life and be pretty much content. But, I didn’t have to because believe it or not, there were TWO fully vegetarian restaurants in Puerto Vallarta, one that was really close to my school, owned by a family friend, that I ate at every day. It is called Planeta Vegetariano, which means vegetarian planet. The food was amazing! The other one is called Mary’s and was a little farther away but absolutely delicious.

This is a picture of me outside of Planeta…yummm im craving their incredible buffet right now. Well, I’m actually off to India tomorrow to complete my travels for the quarter so I should stop writing and get packing, but to sum it up, I had an amazing quarter in Mexico…I am pretty much in love with the country…the roads, the cobblestones, the people, the culture, the smells, the noise…I love it all and I hope to spend a lot more time there in the future.

Yes, that is the name of a class that I am taking. And yes, all of you who lived through the 60′s are now being studied in university history classes. A strange feeling, isn’t it? My mother was definitely a hippie (see the pictures above–my mom at age 16…looks a bit like me, doesn’t she?), and it is so interesting to study the time that I have heard so much about and seen so many pictures of. The 60′s were such a unique time–nothing like it had ever happened before and nothing like it has happened since. The most amazing part of the 60′s to me was the civil rights movement–I cried the entire time I read Why We Can’t Wait, by MLK Jr, and I highly recommend the book. It will inspire you to re-evaluate racism in our current society. I also just finished reading The Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test, about the Merry Pranksters, which is a trippy book and is suuper interesting too. Are you on the bus?

This is the reading list for my class, if any of you are interested.

The Sixties Papers (Stewart & Judith Albert, eds)
Fire in the Streets (Milton Viorst)
Dreams Die Hard (David Harris)
Whv We Can’t Wait (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
One-Dimensional Man (Herbert Marcuse)
The Whole World is Watching (Todd Gitlin)
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (Tom Wolfe)
Personal Politics (Sara Evans)
Meridian (Alice Walker)

We also had to watch The Graduate, a great movie, and I am about to write a paper analyzing The Graduate through the lense of Marcuse’s social theories in One Dimensional Man. Marcuse is hard, I must say. But for everyone, interested in the 60′s or not, I highly recommend the movie “Across the Universe” that is playing right now in theatres–it is about the 60′s, is a wonderful romance, is based around the lyrics of the Beatles songs, and is visually stunning. What could be better?

Peace, Love, and Rock’n Roll
Amy

First, the dough is made in big vats in the dough room.

Then it is separated into little dough balls that are the right size for each pizza crust.

Then the dough balls are flattened and hand worked to get the perfect crusts, and sent through the oven.

Then the crusts come out of the oven, go down the conveyor belt, and a machine deposits pesto onto each crust.

Then the employees spread the pesto around the pizza as it goes by. I did this for a half an hour and got completely covered in pesto!! It takes a lot of practice to do it right without spraying pesto everywhere.

Then they place six slices of tomato on each pizza.

And scatter broccoli pieces everywhere.

Then someone sprinkles cheese all over the top.

Then the finished pizza heads into the spiral freezer to get frozen. The pizzas actually never stop moving, they spiral up through the freezer on a conveyor belt and come out frozen at the top! That is me and my grandmother Ellie standing next to the pizzas.

After the pizzas are frozen, they are fed into a plastic wrapper that seals around them and is then cut into the individual wrappers.

Then a big fast machine pushes the frozen and sealed pizzas into the boxes.

Then the boxes of pizzas are put into cases.

Then the cases are stacked on big palettes to be shipped out to stores, where they will be bought by a customer, and eventually end up on someone’s kitchen table! Yum!!

My friend Jonah and me on “Rinc Beach” once again

Spring quarter at Stanford is awesome. Everywhere you look, everyone is outside (wearing 30 SPF, of course). The lawn in front of my dorm has been named “Rinc Beach” because at any moment you can find a crowd of people working, playing, or listening to music outside. Plus, my classes this quarter are very chill. I wanted to take it a little bit easier spring quarter after taking 18 units winter quarter so that I could enjoy the sunshine.

I am taking intermediate Spanish, which is a lot of fun, a poetry class, and an intro-seminar called “Top Ten Books,” which is my favorite class that I have taken so far at Stanford. It is a small class–about 12 people, with a professor, and we read the ten books most often taught in English departments in colleges and high school and talk about the books and what makes them “classics,” and argue over whether they should be or not. When I explain this class to people, they always want to know what are the “top ten books,” so here they are, in the order that we read them in (I can’t figure out how to make the blog have italics or underline, so just pretend that the book titles are formatted properly):

Herman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (short story not book)
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Kate Chopin, The Awakening
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior

We just finished reading and discussing The Sound and the Fury, which was super intense and a bit difficult but I really liked it. I had read almost all of these books before, so I am getting to read them again which I love because you miss so much the first time you read most books because you are just trying to figure out what is going on.

The end of the year is approaching and people are getting very nostalgic already, we are creating yearbook pages for our dorm and I get teary-eyed sometimes when I think back on the year. I can’t believe it’s almost over!! I honestly feel like I just moved in, but at the same time I feel like I have learned a lot since then and am not entirely the same person. Its funny how time does that sometimes, isn’t it. I’m excited for summer though, to go back and live with my mom and dad and Stormy (I missed her so much). I am still finalizing my summer plans but will write another post when summer comes around and I have more time to write!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful spring!

-Amy