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Ojai is an unusual place with more than its share of quirky people. When I first arrived here in 2005 from Hollywood I went to Bart’s Books and asked where the self-help section was. Because, you know, Hollywood. The person behind the counter pondered for a moment, then said “If I told you where the self-help section is, wouldn’t that defeat your purpose?”

Following the quirky thread, years later when I first picked up a copy of Ojai Quarterly I paged through to the end and saw an article, no, a word rodeo, accompanied by a picture of the woman who wrote it. It was a hazy, ghostly photo of this woman gazing up with eyes as black as licorice subway tokens, or Tolkiens? My immediate reaction was “This is a banshee.” Banshee derives from the Scots word ban sith meaning “Woman of the fairyland.” Turns out to be not so far from the truth.

This year I have read everything written by Tom Robbins whose talent with words and storytelling astounds me. This woman, Sami Zahringer, shares some primordial DNA with whatever that muse is. And coincidentally she is a Hebrides-bred Scot.

In 1880 the census recorded one Zahringer family in Pennsylvania representing 100 percent of the Zahringers in the United States. They appear to have spread and we have one.

Sami’s bio describes her as a “writer and award-winning breeder of domestic American long-haired children.” And although Ojai may or may not be a “fairyland,” it’s usually a relatively peaceful burg blithely refusing to acknowledge the tectonic leviathan awaiting us to the east, I desired to know more about this fellow “ink-stained wretch” who writes for us. So, I asked our publisher for permission and he replied, “Good luck getting her to do that.”

Tracking her down was easy. We are big fans of Danny McGaw and the 33 who played “anthemic, Celtic rock” every Sunday night downtown at The Vine for two years. There she was, the banshee, dancing and seeming to know everyone in this throbbing, steaming room. And now, three years later, she has somewhat reluctantly agreed to my request to find out who this Sami is and what the hell is a Zahringer?

I asked her the following questions and told her to do a full Zahringer. She did ...

What is your background?

My background is colorful. I am an intergalactic, time-bounding cautionary tale from both the past and the future. Why I am here, not even the gods can say. Only that I’m definitely some sort of warning. I both exist and don’t exist. I am at one and the same time Schroedinger’s Outer Hebridean and Heisenberg’s Uncertain Leodhaiseach (that’s Gaelic for “person from the Isle of Lewis” if you happen to be sneezing at the same time.) I’m very pale, almost bluely so, so probably come from the cold North of the universe somewhere. Also, I am since 2008 an American citizen.

Why choose America?

Growing up in the Hebrides most of our weather came from the west. We were always peering out of the window looking at the west and wondering how wild it was going to be today and should we bring the washing in from the line. Most of the flight paths from Europe go over the Hebrides to get to the west, and a good deal of our films and music came from the U.S. To the east was the Old World but I already knew about that and I was more ensorcelled with the idea of a young country still being forged. I loved the names of wide-open places that were strange on my tongue — Wyoming, and the Dakotas, Idaho. In the UK, after all, we call our places things like Auchterarder or Achiltiebuie or Bishop’s Inch or Great Snoring or Little Dribbling on the Wold. Seriously. So at 21 I came over to the U.S. for the first time to work for three months and travel for one. I was not prepared for either its size or its variety or its foot-long tubes of meat, but I already knew I relished its contradictions.

What is a Zahringer?

A Zahringer is a robust German lineage which unfortunately found itself on the wrong side of history many times. A MacDonald, which is my maiden name, is a kind of wild-eyed, hairy creature whose hair streams out away from the direction of the prevailing wind, even when its not windy. You can’t often see our faces therefore, but we all have beards. Even the women. Especially the women. We drink orange drinks and have orange cows and squirrels and we emit a low keening sound when surprised or frightened.

Which writers do you admire and why?

Many, so many, and I like bouncing around through the centuries when I’m selecting things to read. As far as contemporary fiction authors go, off the top of my head, I love George Saunders, Karen Russell, Jennifer Egan, Mohsin Hamid, Anne Enright, Jenny Offill, Elena Ferrante, Colm Toibin. There are countless more though. Far from literature dying, I believe it’s in a wildly creative moment. The writers I love from through the centuries are very different from each other but they all do something in their work which leaves me feeling like I’ve got very close to whatever the place beyond human understanding is — pressed up against the veil between the everyday and The Great Mysteries, able to dimly make out their shapes. They make me stare at walls for a long time after reading them, trying to figure out how they did it. I never do.

What is your writing process, and have you always written?

My process is just sitting down to work, no excuses. Sometimes it’s blood from a stone; hair-tearing, clothes-rending, teeth-gnashing torment. Sometimes things write themselves but I’ve learnt over the years that simply gritting your teeth and sitting down for however many hours it takes, and typing out any old crap until you finally like something is more useful and fruitful than simply waiting for an idea. Often other things entirely will occur. Often you end up writing stuff you would never have expected, and that you never would have written, had you just passively waited for something to arrive in your head. I always had fun writing, but had more fun reading. I still do. I read voraciously from a very early age and was encouraged to do so. In my schoolgirl years I wrote daft wee things and some truly, steamingly, reekingly awful offal. Around the time of entering university, they were trying to get more girls into STEM programs and I loved science so I did a degree in Cell Biology. I had so much to write for my courses anyway that I didn’t write much else at uni. Then I did a second degree in Literature at the University of Minnesota. Still no time to write for fun. It wasn’t until my children were about two or three that I began writing again in a blog called problemchildbride. Usually at nighttime, bleary-eyed, but not able yet to sleep. Through that I met incredible people from all over the world but, especially, the US, UK and Ireland — people that have become life-long friends and enriched my life enormously.

Do you have any spiritual inclinations and thoughts about afterlife?

I’m an agnostic fundamentalist.

Besides yourself, if you could come back as a person or thing, what would it be?

David Attenborough although that’s a bit of a liberty given he’s not done with his own life yet so, sorry Sir David if you’re reading this. (He’s not.) Or the River Thames. That might be quite interesting and I know the language.

What is the perfect Ojai day for you??

All my best Ojai days have been entirely unplanned but, if it could include some combination of my dog, my loved ones, music, and a ham and rosemary baguette, that would be swell.

If offered, would you go to Mars?

No. Not much interest in doing that at all. I get horribly seasick besides, so rocket-sickness would probably do for me a few miles past the atmosphere. Everybody else would want to boot me off at the moon.

Your favorite thing to do?

Reading. Writing. Walking on a windy day in Scotland. Being with loved ones. Playing with my dog.

Besides your kids, what’s your greatest achievement?

My friends. I’ve got some really good ones, here and in the U.K., and I feel lucky and grateful every day for them.

What three things, besides people and writing instruments, would you take to a desert island and why?

1. A knife. It will last and can be kept sharp on a stone. Uses: Making other tools. Prepping food. Defense from beastie or beasties unknown. Shaving legs so potential rescuers do not think am sasquatch and run away without rescuing me.

2. A shiny pot. Will last and can be put on head if really scared. Uses: Purifying water. Cooking food. Sterilizing knife for when one has had enough and wants to stab self dead. Boiling fungi and interesting leaves to make experimental teas to offer potential rescuers. One cannot let one’s stan- dards slip. Making fire by glancing sunlight off it. Signaling to passing ships, also with glancing sunlight. Watching your careworn eyes hollow out and lose all hope. Checking for things in teeth. My reflection keeping me company.

3. First aid kit. Won’t last but containing useful items like Band Aids for sticking things to other things and hanging Found Art up in one’s rudimentary shelter; plus cotton-wool to rub on one’s nose when sad. Uses: Wound protection. Tweezing things. Saving self when one changes mind after stabbing self to death goes wrong. Soaking the alcohol from the sterilizing pads for lonely, good times.

Your favorite piece of music and why?

This varies with the hour and the light. If I were in a windowless room with no lights or clocks though I’d quite like the company of any one of Bowie, Vivaldi, PJ Harvey, The Cure, The Velvet Underground, Beethoven, Mozart, Leonard Cohen, Tanita Tikaram’s first album “Ancient Heart,” Tom Waits, Blondie, Belle & Sebastian, Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan, Bob Dylan, Pachelbel’s “Canon in D.” There is a song by Leonard Cohen called “Teachers” that hasn’t left me alone for very long since I first heard it about 20 years ago. Is it my favorite? Impossible to say. I’m finding this question really quite impossible to answer.

What are your best and worst qualities?

Not really for me to say. Self-reflection is a necessary thing (very) but, I think, to be done by oneself or with somebody very close to you. I have a lot to work on, put it that way.

What are the chances the human race will last through the 21st century?

I think we’ll last, for better or worse. We’re a tenacious species. I’m probably more worried for many of the other species on the planet. We are doing terrible, destructive things everywhere but we are also doing brilliant, heartening, life-enhancing things too. “What a piece of work is man” and all that. I’m not a Pollyanna but I’m 51 percent optimistic. For many years I have subscribed to “The New Scientist” magazine and have found it immensely good for my mental health. In it are many of the consequences of what we have done wrong but also some of the truly incredible work going on all over the world to try to make things better. I remember in the ‘90s various news broadcasts started to end the program with “good news” stories. “How hokey,” I thought. “Why do we need to be coddled so much? We should be able to face the harsh realities of life without needing to be ‘uplifted’ hearing about the man who knits sweaters for penguins or the woman who opened a bakery that only hires people with a criminal record. What a deeply foolish thing to think that was. I was stupider then about some things. I’m stupider now about others.

What would you want served at your Last Supper and who would be there?

It would last for three days and have lashings and lashings of wine. Across these days I’d serve herring fried in pinhead oatmeal (not a fish in porridge — pinhead oatmeal is a nutty whole grain you coat the herring in), new potatoes and carrots. Turbot in a sage butter sauce. Sausage rolls. Venison in red currant sauce. Chicken Madras. Wholewheat crust quiche. Kedgeree. Haggis, tattoos and neeps. (Yes, really) Then Eve’s pudding and Bananas Foster and a very tipsy trifle. Aside from Shakespeare who would probably be in great demand for other people’s last suppers so might not make it, I’d like Christopher Hitchens, Sister Wendy Beckett, Wisława Szymborska, Rainer Maria Rilke, David Mitchell, Billy Connolly, Emily Dickinson, George Saunders, Elizabeth I, both Obamas, Abraham Lincoln, Alan Coren, Victoria Wood, David Attenborough, Tom Stoppard, David Bowie, Stephen Fry, Karen Russell, Judi Dench, Leonardo Da Vinci, Lee Mack, Mackenzie Crook. That’s quite a lot. Might have to have more than one last supper.

Your Motto?

Only connect. It’s from “Howard’s End” by E. M. Forster. There is an awful lot to be had from just these two words together. They’re endlessly ponderable and endlessly useful.

THERE YOU HAVE IT. YOU’VE BEEN ZAHRINGERED.

Perhaps it was potter and “the Mama of Dada” Beatrice Wood’s influence, going back nearly 90 years. Maybe it even goes back further, to the Chumash people’s ingenious and astounding artistry with basketry. It’s clear that Ojai has long been a haven for artists. The natural beauty