Monthly Archives: April 2010

My reading in Mendocino was great. I was at work at 7 AM, off by Noon and in Mendo in time for my reading at 6:00. When I arrived, Margaret Fox and the folks from Harvest Market had not only set up cheese, they had set up cheese that I recommended in my book, with little quotes by me in from of the grazing piles. I was embarrassed/flattered.

I don’t know much about Mendocino beyond what I have seen on vacations and my regular reading of the The Anderson Valley Advertiser* so I was a touch worried about the fact that I knew that the independent, local grocery was co-sponsoring the event but that Mendo has a collective grocery spitting distance from the book store. Would there be tension? Would I just be ignored by the collective folks? Had I sold out already without knowing it?

Nah. Almost the first person I saw was a guy from Corners of the Mouth that I met a decade ago at a co-ops and collectives tour of Redwood Hill Farm. In fact, he had just had surgery on his leg but made it to the reading anyway. Awwwww.

My crappy photo of the Gallery Bookshop. I really need a new camera…**

It was so nice to have someone else set up the cheese for an event. In most of my future events I will be lugging a cooler of cheese and doing the set up myself (I actually totally gouged my finger right before my Reading Frenzy event. But I didn’t bleed on the cheese!) so I owe the Harvest folks a big thanks.

All book events should be walking distance from this:

It was the first event I had where (except for the one collective grocer) I didn’t know anyone who would be there or if anyone would come at all. But of course, the cheese pulled people in and we got a pretty big crowd, especially since there was a competing book event down the street! My favorite moment was when asked about political issues with dairy, I said that, imo the most political thing was keeping small farmers in the dairy business and that – because of the financial differences between selling dairy as commodity fluid milk price and selling cheese at a price that reflects the cost of production — the resurgence in regional American cheese making could help accomplish this. I hadn’t read anyone in the crowd as being involved in commercial dairy, but at the end of the reading someone came up and said he came from a dairy family and appreciated that I had talked about how hard it is to make a living dairy farming.

By the end I was talking to the Harvest folks about shelf tags and cheese conferences. Then I went to the room they had provided for me and watched “Footloose” until I fell asleep. Mendo was good.

Sunrise on the Mendocino coast

*At one point someone (can’t remember who) told me that the AVA would “cover” my reading but no one there identified themselves. That’s a bummer because I would have asked ‘em to come if I knew they needed encouragement. What I love about the AVA is that the idea of them reviewing my book or reading scares me a bit. That means that they are a real newspaper.
**Ha! If I saw their webcam before I would have alerted you so you could have watched my car for the entire two hour event. That’s where I parked.

Would you eat it?

(Thanks Jennifer Workman Stechauner!)

For the first time in months I worked a full work week and it felt great. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about getting the opportunity to do so many readings and events. I even feel a little guilty that I happened to write a non-fiction book on a trendy subject while other writers I know try and write more challenging fiction that may not ever get printed.

Not too guilty mind you, just a little. That this is my lowest paying second job ever right now, mitigates it a little. Some day in 2011 when I theoretically get a royalty check I may be able to take more days off without feeling it, but I’m a by-the-hour worker (as we all are at the co-op) so – logically to me, unbelievably to everyone I mentioned it to – I went from Goat Fest at the Ferry Building to working my closing shift at Rainbow, which also included deep cleaning of a cheese cooler.

Here’s me and an old sales rep at the Goat Fest:

I didn’t take a picture of cleaning out the cooler because 1. I was dirty from cleaning out a cooler and didn’t want to touch a camera and 2. It probably would have shown my plumber’s crack, but maybe I will next time. If memory serves, the pictures of me composting 100 lbs of bad Mozzarella made everyone happy. Hey, that was a Saturday night as well!

But I really love my Saturday night closing shift. I like the pace of Saturdays and I also like that I don’t get phone calls from reps (no offense!) on the weekends. It’s all cheese, all the time! It’s the purest form of everything I love about my job.

Of course on Friday I’m driving four hours to Mendocino after working 7 AM – 1 PM so I can do a reading there at 6 PM. Then Santa Rosa in two weeks. Then my Pacific Northwest Tour… Actually, that’s all pretty great too.

I didn’t know the book was in the Netherlands. My Dutch/Brit friend sends me this (it comes with a warning about diction):

Dude I just bought your book! In a shop in Amsterdam, they had it in stock and everything, I didn’t even have to order. Initially there were some minor misunderstandings as my British pronounciation of the word “monger” sounds just like the Dutch pronounciation of the word “manga”, but the food section in that shop happened to be right next to the fantasy section so I ended up in the right place anyway. Woohoo!