Gordon ("Zola") Edgar

This last weekend was the annual US Federation of Worker Co-ops conference and this year it was in the Bay Area. I actually prefer when conferences I want to attend are in other cities. Ones in my own backyard always sneak up on me and I never end up attending as many panels as I want or getting that conference experience of meeting new people or having those on a break/at the bar/ downtime discussions with people that are often the most valuable part.

No, instead I ended up doing odd tasks. I enjoyed my tasks, don’t get me wrong, but between not getting my shift covered on Saturday and sleeping in on Sunday I missed pretty much the whole event.

My best task – being one of the few Bay Area co-op folks with a car — was getting to pick up and drop off our keynote speaker, Jim Hightower. Oddly enough, Hightower was actually the keynote speaker at the Cheese conference in Austin last year. Except for my own workplace and hanging out with Cheeseboard folks, those two parts of my life do not often collide!

If you have never heard Jim Hightower speak, he is one of the best: energizing, funny, populist, and smart. Laurie used to listen to his Ag reports when he was the Agricultural Commissioner of Texas and she was growing up, so I borrowed some of her Texan credibility by mentioning her a lot. I am pleased to say that Commissioner Hightower was great one-on-one as well. Good thing, since we hit traffic and had about an hour in the car together on the way to his hotel.

The other thing I got to do was set up cheese for the conference’s opening reception. I got one of those last Wednesday saying that the food donation for Friday hadn’t come through and did I have any old cheese lying around… I put out the word and we ended up having quite a spread! Check it out:

(Big, big thanks to Maxx at Marin French Cheese, Bob at Cypress Grove Chevre, and Jesse S.)

This got devoured! The co-op people were hungry after a long day of cooperating. I replenished this table a couple of times and still there was little left but scraps after the hour and a half reception. (Don’t tell anyone but Laurie and I ducked out for chile rellano burritos midway through)

For more coverage of actual conference content, check out The Workers’ Paradise blog written by John McNamera of Union Cab in Madison, WI.

Sorry for the ugly cut and paste. Must walk the dog!

encuentro café and wine bar is excited to host Gordon Edgar – the uber-cheesemonger of Rainbow Grocery Cooperative reading from his book “Cheesemonger – A Life on the Wedge”, a witty, entertaining and insightful book about his life with cheese, worker collectives and the punk scene. Cheese tasting will be thoughtfully included. Shauna Rosenbloom of Rock Wall Winery will also join us with some delicious pairings to taste along with the cheese.

Seating is limited. Regular dinner service will begin at 7pm.

RSVP – 510.832.9463 if you would like to let us know you are coming.

Encuentro Cafe and Wine Bar
202 2nd St. (2nd and Jackson)
Oakland, CA

Hey everyone, my event at Encuentro in Oakland has been postponed until Monday 8/2. It’ll be great, but don’t show up this Monday!

Had a really nice event at 18 Reasons last night. 18 Reasons is the events offshoot of Bi Rite, a store that I will always have a fondness for. Way back in the late ‘80s I lived at 18th and Dolores and that was my corner store. It wasn’t fancy like it is now – mostly stale Hostess pastries, old canned food, and booze – but they were friendly and it was the closest place. After the ’89 earthquake they forever earned my loyalty because they just gave away all their candles and batteries to the locals.

Bi Rite back then was owned by the father and uncle of Sam, the current owner. I should also mention that Anthea, their cheese buyer just represented San Francisco – and was the only woman competing! – last month at the 1st Cheesemonger Invitational in New York . If you can’t go to Rainbow, or if you need meat or good deli stuff, go there for sure.

Anyways, the event could have been weird. Originally conceived of as a panel of cheese writers, it became me reading from my book and cheese author Laura Werlin conducting a cheese class. Kind of funny that she’s written five books and she’s conducting the class whereas I talk to customers about cheese every day and I’m reading from my one book, but hey…

None of us were sure if the format – me reading a section that vaguely related to the cheese on the plate, Laura leading a tasting and talking about wine pairings – would work, but it seemed to. People generally laughed in the right places, ate all their cheese, and drank all their wine. Laura was professional and informed as always. I told little anecdotes about the cheese makers as always.

And the cheese was excellent.

(from the toothpick, going clockwise: Gioia Burrata, Sea Stack, Vermont Creamery Coupole, Pt Reyes Toma, Cobb Hill Ascutney Mountain, Parmigiano Reggiano, Taleggio, Rogue Caveman Blue)

I won’t get into all of them, just want to mention that the Ascutney Mountain from Cobb Hill is a cheese that I like more every time I try it. We’ve only carried it sporadically, but I think I’ll order some this week. If only so I can buy a big hunk myself.

Around 9 PM, when all the cheese was consumed and Laura and I had sold a few books, Laurie texted me from home with cute pictures of Schnitzel so I knew it was time for me to go. I stepped out onto the street lugging a box of books and saw Sam handtrucking a load of dirty dishes a block back to the main store.

“There’s no glory in this, is there?” I said.

“I wouldn’t want it any other way, ” Sam replied.

My publisher made a video interview of me but for the life of me I can’t figure out how to embed it here.

So, check it out anyway:

or see it on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cheesemonger-A-Life-on-the-Wedge/237739816764

I visited my parents yesterday and my mother chided me for not making any blog entries in a couple of weeks. The world has indeed changed when one’s mother complains about one not blogging enough, eh? Anyways, the reason I have been pre-occupied is that Laurie and I got a new puppy. That’s right, the imaginary white, miniature Schnauzer from my professional bio is now a real dog!

I haven’t had a puppy since I was about 3 years old. They take a lot of work! I hope to be back on a regular posting schedule soon, but how can I resist this face?

I had to rush from Olympia to get to Portland for a radio show on the great community radio station KBOO.* I was actually listening to the other cheese guests as I neared Portland. I almost crashed the car when I heard Chrissie Zaerpoor gave the best description of how rennet works that I’ve ever heard. (I paraphrase) “All mammals have rennet enzymes in the lining of their stomachs. When a baby spits up, look at the consistency… they’re making cheese.”

I don’t know how scientific that is, but more of that, less preciousness in the cheese world please.

My old Rainbow pal Kelly The P took me around Portland during the day and showed me her cheese department at New Seasons Sellwood. Oh how I miss her little retail touches back home!

My reading that night was at the new cheese shop inside Square Deal Wine and Cheese. They have an awesome little back room for events and even though I had never been in that part of Portland before I liked that there was a little walkable neighborhood there. Sasha Davies, one of the main organizers for this years ACS conference in Seattle, runs a nice little, local-based cheese shop there.

I convinced Tami Parr to do the event with me since she is the expert on Pacific Northwest cheese, and it was a really great combo of her knowledge of cheeses in the area and my usual bullshit. What I really liked was that, much like a co-op, we got to do the event in a circle. I felt like we were all really sharing.

I do apologize for saying that Briar Rose Creamery had sheep instead of goats. I blame the seven events in four cities in four nights, Sarah.

It’s probably more for another post, but I did find that Portlanders are especially locavore in their cheese orientation. I felt judged that I didn’t read anything about Oregon cheese! That was probably just in my head though. It did make me even happier that Tami was there though since we can’t even get most of the Oregon cheese that Square Deal had and I’m not super familiar with it. I keep telling people, there is just as much, if not more, interesting things happening in cheese in the Pacific Northwest than anywhere in the country.

Special thanks to the Portland folks who came to support me again (Joel, Alice…) and for Sara and Steve for their hospitality and letting me park my car in their garage so I didn’t have to unload and load one last time.

Then I drove home (yes, this is taken while driving)

*This Wednesday it’s Cheese Maven Day on the KBOO Food Show. Guests include Tami Parr of the Pacific Northwest Cheese Project, Chrissie Zaerpoor of Kookoolan Farms in Yamhill and Sarah Marcus, a start-up goat cheesemaker with the Briar Rose Creamery in Dundee. And Gordon Edgar takes us inside his edgy new Cheesemonger memoir. You can totally hear me laughing when they played that Social Distrotion song I was making fun of on my blog as my intro track.

I’m not really a timely writer. I don’t miss real deadlines, but I meander around my own projects rather than make sure they are done right away. For example, on my Pacific Northwest Tour reports, I left off after Bellingham and went on to other things. I’m coming back now, but –even though this is a blog and the “new media” is supposed to be all immediate and stuff – I think my entries are actually better when, like a cow, I ruminate on them awhile.

For example, my Olympia events… I could just be all, signed books at the co-op, read at a bookstores, entertained extremely drunk co-op workers, went to bed. All true. In fact that would probably be my post if I had taken pictures. Blog readers – in general — love pictures.

Instead, this entry will be a block of words. Oh well.

Grocery store events are problematic. Generally speaking, grocer shoppers are not there to buy books. Most grocery shoppers are doing a chore they wish they didn’t have to do, especially at an after-work time like the time I got to the co-op. Still their cheesemonger, Michelle Noel, took care of me and cut up some Gothberg Farms goat cheese for people to eat so I wouldn’t be lonely. I might mock it at times, but I love the Oly Food Co-op. Still, when I saw their tiny, awkward cheese cutting space I felt very appreciative for Rainbow.

The bookstore event (at Orca Books)was put on by Jon Quittner who is well know (in certain, very small circles) for his bands Mulkilteo Fairies and Behead the Prophet: No Lord Shall Live.* It was a really great event even if I screwed up the start time. I had driven the scenic route from Bellingham to Olympia and spent the first 80 minutes listening to a J Church mix CD in the rain and it made me sad and reflective. Many of those miles I had tears in my eyes.

I thought about Lance.** I thought about how he did really live his dream in many ways, packing in no-one-knows-exactly-how-many records in the years he was alive. I thought about how much I miss him. I thought about his partner and how she showed up for a book reading and I hadn’t even realized she was in town. I just reflected on the belief in humanity in his songs, how he was one of the few who could write political songs that were sweet and not arrogant or dismissive.

So, at the Olympia reading, I read the section of my book about “Cheese Cultures, Punk Subculture, and Reagan Cheese”. I dedicated it to Lance. I know that I choked up a little and I saw Jon and my old friend Becca were affected as well. Not so much the rest of the audience… I guess I didn’t express myself well enough in my dedication for the non-punks to be able to cross that gap. Oh well, those who know, know.

As I finished the reading, a few people came in at the time I had told them to come. They thought I was joking when I informed them they missed the reading. I gave them a pound of cheese each as consolation and they seemed to be ok with that. If they are reading this, sorry again!

After the reading I visited the other Oly Food Co-op location, ate decidedly non-Mission burritos, and fell asleep. This tour was exhausting!

*

** Lance Hahn, the singer, died a couple of years ago at age 40. Here was my spur of the moment obit.

.

I posted a quick facebook link the other day, but the more I think about the California Milk Advisory Board (CMAB) filming in New Zealand for their “Happy Cows” (live in California) campaign, the more mad it makes me.

First off, I haven’t extensively studied the film industry in New Zealand, but if CMAB’s advertising agency is willing to have work done 7000 miles away we can assume that, compared to California standards, they are paying scab rates. In an economy that is doing worse than much of the rest of the country, it’s no wonder that state politicians are getting involved in this instance of redistribution of wealth from California to New Zealand.

CMAB is, after all, funded by a mandatory assessment on each hundredweight of milk that (cow) dairy farmers produce. That is, a government-organized program, providing no opt-out for dairy farmers who may not want to be linked with every other dairy farmer in the state (for whatever reason), must send part of their hard-earned money (at a time when dairy farms are having some of their worst times in recent memory*) 7000 miles across an ocean to people who will likely never consume an ounce of California dairy products.

While that’s annoying, there’s also the issue of potential dishonesty of filming a promotional campaign for a region, in a completely different part of the world. How does CMAB respond to this? With gibberish:

Fact 1: To set the record straight, we are not shooting Happy Cows commercials in New Zealand, we are shooting unhappy cows from all over the world auditioning to become California cows. Any ads that show actual California cows have always been – and will always be – filmed and produced completely in California.

As far as I can tell, what this means is that they are not shipping California cows to other countries to film them. Well, duh. No one said they were. This cutesy statement does not, you will notice, say anything about the how the filming of non-California cows will be used but is just a circular argument about something too cost prohibitive to consider anyway. And do California dairy farmers, who pioneered the concept of confinement dairy** really want to get into a debate with New Zealand about who’s cows are happier?

Here’s the CMAB press release. More to pick on than I can address in this entry. I should also say that I know (and respect) some of the people on the CMAB Board of Directors. CMAB has never done much for us (though I notice that they take credit for some “grocery store” jobs in their claim of dairy being responsible for 3% of California’s work force) and that’s fine, we don’t really have the same promotional needs. But I didn’t really want to pick a fight with them. As a Californian, however, this was too much to ignore.

On the other hand, they also just produced this commercial about the Giacomini family which does get to the heart of a lot of real dairy issues.

*Oh look, CMAB describes it this way: “The California dairy industry is facing its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. The situation has been so bad that 10 percent of dairies in California have been forced to shut down and sell off their cows.” The logical conclusion of these statements is clearly to ship 10% of the budget overseas!

**One of the biggest problems with the mandatory CMAB assessment is that it takes money at the same rate from the 10,000 cow operations and the mom-and-pop ones that may have very different styles of dairy farming. The California “Happy Cows” campaign (which really pisses off Wisconsin folks, btw) makes no distinction about this and never will.

***any backchannel communication by CMAB folks or their publicity people with be considered to be submitted for publication.