Deeds & Words

The Sonoma County Literary Arts Guild hosts the annual book festival each September. Saturday was the 13th Book Fest. Often it conflicts with my writing group, but not always, and this year it didn’t.

They cordon off Mendocino/Santa Rosa Avenue and detour the cars (non-book people are probably less that thrilled at this arrangement). The events flow out from Old Courthouse Square. This year some were held at the Corrick’s store, at the Library Annex, a local tequilera and the Share Exchange, on Fifth Street.

In the Know

Two writers I know were participating in panels; Brian Fies, the award-winning graphic novelist, and Stacey Jay, urban fantasy and young adult writer who currently lives out by the Russian River. I missed Stacey’s panel but got a chance to say “Hi,” after she finished up.

Old Courthouse Square is filled with book vendors. There were two stages; one for poetry reading and one being used for children’s programming, including Alladin of the Lamp performed with marionettes.

While I was browsing I ran into Arletta Dawdy, who is selling her independently published book Huachuca Woman. Arletta and I worked in the same division over ten years ago (she retired 12 years ago). Even before she retired, she was researching this book, which was inspired by stories about her husband’s grandmother. When she did retire, she and her husband took several trips in an RV, heading back to the part of Arizona where the book is set, and resarching. Arletta told me once she loved going to the little towns and listening to people “talk story.”

(I love how Arletta flouts convention. Who needs to see the name of her book anyway?)

Kim Richards is a novelist who was selling her serial-killer novel Death Masks at the booth for Eternal Press. Eternal Press had a robust selection of YA, paranormal romance, thrillers, fantasy and romance novels. Based on the sheer volume of YA fantasy, I have to assume the wave has just about crested for this subgenre. I’ve been wrong before, though.

Kim lived in Ohio and lived across the street from a metro park. She said she wrote a lot of the book in the park. The foliage and density of the trees always made her think that the park would be a great place to hide a body. Where do writers get their ideas?

At the Santa Rosa Friends of the Library booth I got 10 children’s books for about seventeen dollars.

It’s Interactive:

The Charles Schulz Museum is a co-sponsor of the festival and they had a booth. Eventually Snoopy came by. Another local celebrity, Clo, the spokes-bovine for local dairy Clover-Stornetta also showed up.

This booth had lots of books by Goosebottom books. I picked up two more, bringing my All Hallows Read total to 30 (Yaaay!). The books are lovely but that isn’t the coolest thing. This is:

The book is interactive with your tablet. Yes, we’ve reached that point all ready. This book is a book about hauntings. Hold your tablet over the picture page and suddenly a 3-D ghost-image will pop up on your screen. Turn the tablet and look at it from any direction, it doesn’t matter. It’s 3-D! The one for the headless horseman also included hoofbeats.

I don’t know why this was such a gosh-wow for me, but it was. I mean, it’s not that much cooler than pointing your smart phone at the car radio and having it tell you the song title, artist and recording company. But I’m not seeing it at some glitzy 4G trade show in Vegas, but on the grass in Old Courthouse Square.

A Novel Panel

I cruised through Corrick’s and caught about five minutes of the panel titled “You Have a Manuscript, Now What?” The panelists seemed smart and funny but in five minutes I didn’t really hear anything new. I bought a lined notebook, hurried out the back door, turned left and scurried down Fifth Street to the Share Exchange, in time to meet Brian and Karen before the graphic novel panel started. Brian introduced me to a friend of his from his journalism days (North Bay Business Magazine), and a few minutes later to Paige Braddock, author of Jane’s World. Paige and I share a haircutter and we met about a month ago.  Brian was crushed by this knowledge but he rebounded manfully.

Steve Alcosta, Alcorta who works for the library and is the graphic novelist curator (I guess) introduced the panel of four… er, three novelists. Brent Anderson draws Astro City, and comes out of the superhero tradition. Paige draws Jane’s World. Brian has his two novels out; Mom’s Cancer, a personal, autobiographical story, and Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, an allegory about America’s love affair, break up, and reconciliation with science, seen through the eyes of a boy and his dad.

I laughed out loud when Paige talked about how spontaneous and contemporary she is about making plot changes in Jane’s World. Jane’s World is more like a comic strip (complied) than a novel, and she told us about deciding that the newspaper where Jane worked would hire zombies. Because they were dead, corporate headquarters would not have to pay for health care for them.  Brent’s observation about how graphic novels resemble movies was also thought-provoking.

I always like hearing about how people approach the creative process but the best “aha” moment of the panel came from Brian, who said that when drawing his characters he visualizes where their energy center is. This sparked an interesting discussion between Brian and Brent; when Superman flies, he leads with his chest. Ironman’s power center is his powerboots. (My metaphor for power centers crashes and burns when I try to imagine Ironman as “well-grounded,” but artistically I see the point). Brent has drawn a character who leads with his head, literally. Brian’s point is that someone drawing Ironman, Superman and Brent’s character Samaritan flying would have to draw them differently. Expanding that to prose novels, determining where your character’s energy springs from can be very helpful. Head? Heart? Genitals? Are they powered/drawn by something outside of themselves, ahead of them? Are they held back by a power source behind them? Lots to think about.

This was panelist Number Four, held hostage by the county’s traffic. I think his name is Coro and he got his start as a graffiti artist. I would love to know more about him — but he only got to talk for about ten minutes.

I came home with many books and many ideas — and I started a short story.

Riskpress Gallery doesn’t stop with paint and ink artworks. They’ve exhibited sculpture, and right now they have a show of handmade books. The August exhibit was a quilt show. Two quilters, one from Petaluma, one from here, displayed. Pauline Pellini is a local who grew up here (her family owns Pellini Chevrolet).

Pauline has a couple of quilts in the exhibit that are inspired by Hawaiian quilting, like this one:

She told me the one of the quilts hanging in the window contained quarters that came from Hawaii. I tried to take some photos of the outward facing ones, but the light was wrong.

 Because I love sunflowers, I did bite the bullet and take this one.

I plan to take three boxes of craft stuff to Goodwill today; rubber stamps and stamp pads, feathers and felt, heat guns, mask templates, stencils, corn husks, sequins and beads. I also took a tote bag and a box full of books, including some nonfiction. I almost gave away Rock Water Wild by mistake but recognized it and pulled it out at the last minute.

I set aside some books to offer to Mockingbird Books first:

• Cha-No-Nu, the Japanese Ceremony of Tea
•  The Places that Scare You
• 9 Dragons
• Lud-in-a-Mist
• The Pope and the Heretic (Giodorno Bruno, that brilliant weirdo)
• Montsegur and the Mystery of the Cathars (this is an interesting history of the Cathars and the Albegensian Crusade)
• To Honolulu in Five Days
• Local Color (a coffee table book about the Rene diRosa Art Preserve)
• Two Cassandra Clare books.

Brandy does not hold Clare in very high esteem, so I don’t know if she will want these two. Goodwill is two blocks away from the bookstore, so City of Bones and City of Ash will find a home somewhere.

Over the past twelve weeks, I’ve taken about eight boxes to Goodwill, and these included a whole bunch of books. So why doesn’t it look like that? A box a week… that’s all I’m aiming for.

UPDATE: The Goodwill parking lot was packed with people, like me, who were doing a cleanup project this Labor Day. The helpful attendant shook her head at my six jars of embossing powder. “We can’t take glitter,” she said, “or stuff like glitter. No matter how carefully we tape the lids shut, the little kids get into it and then there’s glitter all over.” I pulled those out and gave them the rest.

In other news, the decision on the Cassandra Clare books was, “Just ‘cause we don’t like it doesn’t mean we won’t sell it.”

I had some legal papers that needed review so I spent an hour with our charming lawyer Erica. The only disappointment was the absence of her exuberant Yorkshire terrier Olivia. Olivia was visiting Erica’s grandmother on Monday.

After I was done I stopped at Screamin’ Mimi’s, Sebastopol’s iconic ice cream store, for a milk shake.  The place was packed with kids when I went in. Okay, there were, like, eight. It felt like a pack. I assumed they’d be staying, but once all of them had their ice cream treats, they bailed, leaving me with this colorful airy store all to myself.

Maraline Olson opened Screamin’ Mimi’s in 1995. It’s one of those places that touts local milk and high-quality ingredients, but the main thing about the ice cream is that it is scrumptious.

The helpful and energetic young woman behind the counter made my mocha shake. She wondered if I wanted a different flavor ice cream than vanilla. I decided on the Cinnimon Coffee Fudge. She thought that would be a good idea and we were both right.

I showed her this picture and said, “You look like a pro.”

“I look like a boss,” she said.

I love Mimi’s mainly for the wonderful names of the ice cream, like Midnight Galaxy, White Tiger and Deep Dark secret. Oh, who am I kidding? I love the ice cream because it’s sweet, rich and velvety and the cool names are just a bonus.

Brandy and Mark opened their door to customers yesterday at 10:00. I got there are about 10:15 and they already had one browser besides me. A minute later a woman came in who said she’s been waiting for them to open. I think she is going to go tell all her friends.

They are waiting for four gondolas; lower stand-alone two-sided shelves that ride on castors so they can be moved around if needed. “We plan to have some display tables and some chairs,” Brandy said. “You know how you always think you’re going to have more time? We planned to visit some of the cute little antique shops and pick up chairs … and at 3:30 in the morning, after listing books, we decided we probably weren’t going to do that before we opened.”

I had pictures of the counter in an earlier post. As you can see, it looks gorgeous.

I see Mark’s handiwork in the quality of children’s books — Newbury winners and other fine reads, and not a lot of Gossip Girl or Vampire Adademy retreads. (By the way, that is not Mark above, that’s his partner.)

I picked up the diary of a woman gold-prospector in the Klondike in the 1900s, and a real find on the science fiction shelves — the recent biography of James Tiptree Jr, aka Alice Mary Sheldon. Brandy shook her head as she rang me up. “Sad,” she said. “So brilliant and so screwed up.”

After I left I had to drive past the location of the old Copperfield’s Used Books. The banner in the window says “For Rent, Available February, 2012.” And July, 2012 too, apparently.

Mockingbird Used Books has great visibility from Highway 12 as you are coming through town. You can turn right on Petaluma Avenue and park at the plaza, and walk over to the store, or park on Main Street and walk one short block east. They are across the street from Jasper O’Farrell’s, next door to the Toyworks. I already know that they are going to become a destination, part of the my Sunday morning ritual. Visit the farmers’ market, stop and buy a book.

The city council is trying to rescue a grove of virgin redwoods that grows in the center of town – oh, no, wait, that isn’t right. The city council is trying to rescue a series of vernal pools, home to the rare, magical blue flame salamander —no, sorry, wait, that isn’t it, either. The city council is trying to rescue a derelict car dealership from being remodeled into a pharmacy and a bank. Yeah, that’s it.

Pellini’s Chevrolet was a mainstay of this town for decades, but it closed about two years ago, a victim of the recession and retirements. The parcel sits on the corner of Bodega Avenue (Highway 12) and Petaluma Avenue, which is the northbound one-way artery through town. Main Street (Highway 116) is the southbound one.

Armstrong Development has submitted plans to redevelop the parcel and turn it into a large CVS superstore, with a drive-through pharmacy, and a Chase Bank. The CVS north of town, in the Redwood Village mall, would close. The developer’s original design didn’t pass the town’s design review, but they appealed and won the appeal. Now the city council has pulled the plug on the project again, kicking the design back for a third time. They are saying that they want fewer parking spaces (yes, that’s right – ask a retailer to provide less parking) and that they’ve “approved everything else.” The developer has yet to come back with a decision.

I’m usually not a fan of development, especially when the developers want to chop down trees, pave over streams, or plow up greenbelt. I don’t have too much trouble with developing urban parcels that are already built on, though, and I don’t understand what the city council’s problem is, except that our city council is justly notorious for jerking around developers.

There are a few groups who are vocally opposed to this project. Committee for Small Town Sebastopol, is one, and one of them is Occupy Sebastopol. Reasons range from the practical to the incoherent.  Here are some:

A large retail store will increase traffic congestion.  This is true, and the city should be prepared to deal with it.

A large retail store doesn’t match Sebastopol’s “Main Street Character.” This is Committee for Small Town Sebastopol’s argument, and it just doesn’t hold up very well.  Pellini’s is on the westbound approach into town. On the same stretch of road currently we have the following small-town-type businesses; a liquor store, a tire store, a mate processing plant, an auto parts store, a Goodwill, and a tattoo parlor. This is Main Street character?  Oh, and right now, an empty car dealership, broken windows covered with plywood, already attracting graffiti.

We want something else.  Well, of course we do. Even I do. If I had my choice, I’d love to see a combination performing arts center, gallery, used bookstore, cute little café, preferably with a courtyard or a pocket park, with a fountain where the town’s herd of unicorns could come to drink at dusk. Unfortunately, this particular complex is unlikely to happen (and the unicorns are not the unlikeliest factor in that scenario). Is the city going to offer tax credits and breaks to other syndicates to develop something more like what some of us want? If they are, I have to ask, “With what revenue?”

We hate Chase. This appears to be Occupy Sebastopol’s argument, or one of them at least. I can say with confidence that I’ve spoken to one-third of Occupy Sebastopol, and he doesn’t like Chase Bank because they were one of the architects of the economic meltdown. Chase already has a bank in town though, and all they would be doing is moving their existing one. So, are we proving anything?

They’re part of the 1%. Occupy Sebastopol, again. I don’t know who is part of the 1% —  Chase again, I would imagine.

I have concerns about the project. I drive past that building every day on my way to work, and traffic is already bad. Traffic is a real risk of the project and should be addressed by the city council.  I don’t like the idea of another big empty retail space north of town, attracting graffiti and crime. What will the current CVS space be used for, if they relocate? And I think all these issues could be addressed if we had a city council who knew how to do its job.

The real issue, to me, is that our city council never knows what it wants. They want to create jobs; they want to invite businesses, except when they don’t. They want “Main Street” businesses in downtown, but the local bookstore closed its used book annex because they couldn’t afford the new rent, and storefronts sit empty on the actual Main Street for a year at a time.  Armstrong Developers may decide to walk away from this project. With our little city, there is no guarantee that if they do what’s being asked now, that will be end of it. There’s nothing stopping the city council from demanding the president of Armstrong Developers stand on his head while singing the  theme song from “the Sopranos,” before they approve the project. If they approve it. Ever.

In the meantime, the building sits empty, surrounded by a chain-link fence. Nothing says “Wclcome to Town” like a derelict building.

Thursday I took an hour of vacation time and went to JC Penney’s. Penney’s is a great old-fashioned source of decent clothing that is not horribly expensive. I usually find the selection better than the outlets or bulk stores. I wasn’t shopping for myself, though, on Thursday; I was looking for clothing for a woman named S­­__. She’s a mom, with an an eight-year-old and a baby, and she’s married. She’s a size five, and that’s all I know about her. She is one member of the family our Executive Team adopted for the holidays.  All she had on her wish-list was clothing.

The store wasn’t too busy. Kit rang up the pair of black trousers, the two sweaters and the jacket I found. I asked her where I could find size five jeans. She looked befuddled. “Size five is almost a size four,” she said. I agreed. “Hmm, I think you want Juniors.” She started asking questions about the person the clothing was for and I had to explain that I didn’t know. She thought it was neat that our team would adopt a family. “A lot of the jeans are torn,” she said, “You know, it’s a fashion thing. I’d look at Arizona brand. If you want more colors, check out City Streets.”

Juniors was slightly more busy. City Streets had size six jeans (no size five) on sale for $14. I got in line. A few seconds later, here came Kit. She had gotten a break in Women’s and been called over here because they had a line. She rang me up.

I said, “Do you have sparkly holiday pins anywhere?”

“Yes, we do.” She started to point. “They’re right over…” she looked around. The two women working Juniors had cleaned out the other customers and were busy folding blouses. “C’mon, I’ll show you,” she said, coming around the counter and leading the way.

My own personal shopper at JC Penney’s.

She took me right to a display stand packed with glittery holiday earrings, pins and bracelets; Christmas trees, snow-people, stars, candy canes, poinsettias, bracelets with red beads, tennis bracelets with square red or green glass. I found a shiny Christmas tree pin with irregular red, blue and green beads, and a poinsettia pin.  S__ is getting a pair of jeans, a pair of slacks, two sweaters, an aviator jacket (which she probably won’t need this year because it’s been seventy degrees here) and a pin; thanks to the help of Kit.

*

I didn’t want to cook so Thursday evening I stopped at our favorite pizza place, Mary’s Pizza. I ordered a medium Toto’s (Mary eldest son, not the dog from The Wizard of Oz) with no bell peppers, and added anchovies. The counter man was named Ian and he is also the evening manager. He told me it would be about fifteen minutes. I went next door and did some shopping. When I came back it looked like my pizza was done but Ian went into a huddle with the two pizza cooks. Then he told me it would be a few more minutes. I had a book so I didn’t care. About fifteen minutes later—so, yes, about half an hour, total—Ian came out with my salads in a plastic bag and two pizza boxes. “They made the first one wrong,” he said. “Instead of anchovies they added extra garlic, so I’m giving you both pizzas.”

“Oh, no, not extra garlic,” I said. “How would we cope? Seriously, you don’t have to do that.”

“We insist,” he said. “And besides, pizza freezes really well.”

As I left the two pizza cooks chorused, “We’re sorry you had to wait!”

So we got two medium pizzas for the price of one.

It was definitely Customer Service Thursday for me!

The Schulz Museum is one of Sonoma County’s hidden gems. It’s tucked away in a quiet, rather low-income neighborhood near a dying shopping mall on the west side of Santa Rosa. After our write-in on Veterans Day, Lillian and I drove up there to check out the Poppin’ From the Panel Exhibit.

Happiness is Warm Puppy

Inside the Schulz Ice Arena, the Warm Puppy Café serves standard café fare and lets you watch the skaters. Schulz himself frequently ended a productive day of drawing in his studio by walking over to the café and having a tuna sandwich and an iced tea. If you’re going to check out the museum you should have the complete experience. Have lunch, watch the skaters, then take the crosswalk that heads due west across Hardies Lane onto the museum property.

The arena was jumping. Veterans Day was a school holiday and it was gray, drippy day; the arena was a good outing for many kids and their parents.

The Muralist is In

Darryl Burson is a muralist commissioned  by the museum to put a Peanuts panel on a wall in the gallery. It’s an older strip, with a mischievous Snoopy in the starring role.

At the end of the promenade is the impressive tile mural completed by Yoshiteru Otani. The mural is in black and white, composed entirely of Peanuts strips. To get the black lines the artist had to locate and correctly place the strips that had frames with a dark background.

The museum is quite liberal about photography, but none was allowed for the current exhibit because many pieces were on loan. The theme is pop art and how it related to commercial animation and cartooning. I thought some seemed familiar; they were from the diRosa Art Preserve, so if I hadn’t seen them before I may have seen other pieces by those artists. (You can take pictures everywhere else.)

The Marriage of Commerce and Art

Three pieces in a line seemed to set the boundaries of the pop-art conversation. On the viewer’s left, the first piece was presented like a painting, but was three-dimensional, augmented with clay or acrylic sculpture medium. Corporate Kiss, by Llyn Foulkes is a self-portrait, of a dismayed and anguished-looking man. He wears a faded blue plaid shirt with a pen in the pocket. The background is desolate, a wasteland—bare, riven ground, wasted trunks of uprooted trees. The cracks and gullies in the dry earth match the furrows on Foulkes’s brow.  The only primary and vibrant colors in the piece belong to the tiny copyrighted mouse perched on his shoulder, kissing his cheek. Foulke’s expression balances between shame and yearning. Foulkes hates the “corporatism” of the Disney corporation but even he can’t resist its charming mascot.

On the viewer’s right is a dark painting that almost looks like photorealism. It’s grim and dated somehow, with a round-hooded truck in the background, a phallic sign saying Liquor, and a circular sign below that with a stylized bell and clapper; Bell Telephone, hanging above an old-fashioned phone booth, the kind with the folding door. Across the dark road, in the viewer’s right foreground, is a  profiled Daffy Duck, standing as high as the Liquor sign, looking brave and out of place in a little sailor outfit. Is it a case of forced perspective? Perhaps the viewer is looking out a window, with a three-inch tall duck figurine on the sill. Perhaps there really is a statue of Daffy Duck on this street with its feelings of hopelessness. Or maybe this is a Godzilla-like duck come to life, a multi-story-tall superhero. In the artist’s statement for Heat of the Night, Gottfried Helwien talks about growing up in Soviet-occupied Vienna, a place he remembers as filled with “rust and dust.” Everything was gray, drab and stagnant until his father brought home some German-language Daffy Duck comics. For the artist, commercial comics were the only source of light, change and hope.

Between these two poles, one who sees Mickey Mouse as an alluring and devastating corporate drug and one who sees comic books as a source of hope and freedom, we have Cartoon for the Last Supper, by James Barness. Painted on antique comic strips like The Apache Kid, the piece features a group of characters in a pose not unlike daVinci’s painting. Some of the characters are funny, others are comic-book strange, and they have large eyes that stare out at the viewer with a gaze somewhere between human and canine.

At the end of this row there is a Superman portrait painted by Mel Ramos. At first glance it is a classic Man of Steel pose, until the viewer looks more closely. Superman’s fists are furled but not clenched, and he is frowning slightly, the frown depicted by a single downward slash of paint. He looks. . . lost, confused. More than that, abandoned, maybe. Lillian put his words to the painting. “ ‘Where did they go?’” she wondered. If we don’t need the Man of Steel anymore, what will he do?

Spidey No More, around the corner, by the same painter, is a poignant and whimsical painting of Charlie Brown assuming the role of Spiderman. Next to it is Thor Versus the Silver Surfer, with Snoopy as the surfer. It is a fun piece, but the Spiderman piece is more thought-provoking.

There is also a concept piece from Christo and Jean-Claude. Okay, I’ve never understood Christo and there is a not-so-secret part of me that thinks he is less  artist than scam-artist. I will admit some of the big installations, like the poppies, and the panels of fabric in Central Park looked cool.  Anyway, this was a doghouse covered in canvas and rope. I rolled my eyes. Snoopy’s house, yeah, I get it. I didn’t really get it, though, until I went upstairs to the Schulz gallery and found out about the Christo connection. In one strip, Snoopy ruminates about Cristos’ work (which he likes)—he talks about the running fence, the Colorado installation, and wonders what Christo will do next. The final frame is Snoopy’s house, covered in canvas and rope. The three-dimensional piece downstairs is homage, created twenty-five years later.

These are only a few of the images in the display, which runs through December 11.

Enter the Labyrinth

The museum features a labyrinth in the shape of Snoopy’s head.  It is right off the road, but somehow the little labyrinth creates an atmosphere of peace and serenity. Behind the main gallery, a small sculpture garden holds Peanuts-themed works including a holographic birdbath, and a giant rendition of Charlie Brown’s sweater.

True Colors

This time of year, the trees are showing shades of gold and crimson, flags of color against the cloudy backdrop.

The Schulz Center offers a lot more than just pop-art. They have a replica of Schulz’s studio and a video loop that describes his process and how he worked, a gallery that rotates Peanuts exhibits, and a large education center. They offer regular presentations and speakers, mostly about art and cartooning, but also about things like NASA. They were having some kind of hands-on workshop for young artists the day we were there.

1600 Words

I did manage to make a dent in my Nanowrimo word count. I do want to say a few words about the volunteers and docents at the museum. They are all friendly, helpful and well-versed in the exhibits—not only the standing Schulz exhibits but the on-loan displays as well. This is a great local trip, and a perfect outing for those out-of-town guests who may be coming in for the holidays.

Diego plays guitar and sings in a strong, smooth baritone voice. He sings salsa tunes, Latin standards and original songs. As well as singing and playing an instrument, Diego is a virtuoso whistler.

This market is going year-round this year! With our growing season, a winter market still has a lot to offer. You can get kale, collards, chard, spinach and broccoli throughout the year, some herbs, potatoes and lot of root vegetables. The “protein” vendors (sausage, fish, meat and eggs) should be going strong. Most of the other farmers now offer what the USDA calls “value added” products like salsa, sauce, jams and pickles. The two leanest months of the year tend to be February and March.

I picked up a jar of Nancy’s pear slices in lavender honey sauce as part of a gift basket for a friend. I also got a market basket for that same gift—one of the Ugandan baskets, woven from native grasses. See the woven hat Diego is wearing? The basket is a similar weave in different colors. It has two leather bund handles. I have two like it at home. One holds magazines. The other is a multi-purpose basket that works wonderfully as a laundry basket but also serves to carry a blanket and sandwiches for plays in the park, and important supplies like bottles of wine and hunks of yuppie cheese to social events.

This Saturday was a bright blue-and-gold autumn morning, the kind of fall day that reminds me why I love to live here. I got to the Healdsburg Farmers’ Market late because the cyclists were out in force on the narrow country streets I prefer to drive. Sonoma County has hundreds of miles of back roads that the cyclists love, and this time of year, on the weekend, I can expect to encounter forty of fifty of them. Saturday, I was lucky and only saw about twenty five. These cyclists are knowledgable, experienced, and follow the road rules, but understandably they still slow things down.

It was a warm day without being too hot. The parking lot that holds the market is surrounded by trees that still have their leaves. I left my coat in the car, and a breeze ruffled my hair as I walked across the street to the market. Soda Creek Farms had brought a whole truckful of their tomatoes. Nancy Skall had fresh basil, small Bartlett pears, eggplants, and garlic. I got basil and pears. I figured I’d wait until Sunday to get my weekly supply of onions.

Mary Kelley is the Healdsburg Market Manager, and this market is open twice a week; Tuesday evenings and Saturday mornings. This time of year squash, gourds and pumpkins are coming in strong. There are lots of fresh herbs. The standouts right now are parsley, cilantro and basil.  Apples, pears pumpkins and squash are everywhere. We still have tomatoes, and strawberries.

Mary had some French butter pears for sale. I bought two for a dollar, just out of curiosity. I started to walk away from the stand and took a bite of the pear. It was so rich I had to stop, overwhelmed by the texture and flavor. Most pears are a bit granular, even when ripe; this one was silky. The juice was thick, nectar-like, honey-sweet, with the essence of pear.

On my way out I got bratwurst from Gleason Farms.  For dinner, I split the casings and mixed the sausage with squash, sun-dried tomato, garlic, onion, parsley, fresh basil and goat cheese. I put this stuffing mixture into round green squash. We had a salad and broccoli with it. Tasty!

The musicians were great. They played some kind of 1940s swing-era song; sweet three-part harmony. The fiddler was excellent. As I was walking to my car they added a flautist, but I didn’t get any pictures.

The market will have a Pumpkin Festival on October 22. I have the writers’ group that Saturday, or I’d be there!