From the Emporium in Yellow Springs

The steel-drummer plays a Baroque tune on the sidewalk outside the Emporium, and I’ve just had a drink and a conversation with filmmaker and friend Julia Reichert, who bought a copy of my book next door at Dark Star Books. I’m at the Emporium (officially Emporium Winds and the Underdog Café: http://www.emporiumwines.com/ ) with coffee; I come here often in Yellow Springs because the coffee’s good, because there’s wifi, and because I see people I know, from Julia to Ed Davis (http://www.davised.com/ ) whose most recent book is The Measure of Everything, a story based on how Yellow Springs citizens saved a farm and stopped urban sprawl. We just talked for a couple of hours. Twice in the last ten days Dave Chappelle has shown up, parked his motorcycle, come into the Emporium and played part of Moonlight Sonata (Beethoven) on the piano here. Interesting, but not as nice as the woman whose name I don’t know (she has gray hair and a pretty face and goes barefoot often) who played piano rather well for about half an hour one Sunday morning while I had breakfast and read The New York Times with Jeanne Lemkau (http://www.lostandfoundincuba.com/ ) whose website is named after her memoir, Lost and Found in Cuba.

Well well. I started out to write about the pleasures of vacationing in my home village and ended up social networking! They say you must learn to navigate Facebook and “the blogs” (Which blogs? As many as you can find!) to sell your novel, so I’m doing the best I can. Hence the epithets and the links above (I suppose I should have added Julia Reichert http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0717064/ and Dave Chappelle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Chappelle ) and now this blog is looking like I’m in a cyber-space hot spot.

Which is not true. I’m in a little village café with battered furniture, yellow walls, and a show of with ceramic art. When Jeanne was in Cuba, her friends posted a map of the country on the wall here so they could follow her travels when they met over coffee. One half the ceiling is painted black. The other half is painted blue and white – clouds in blue sky. I sold one copy of Riders on the Storm in the parking across the street and another at the Farmer’s Market. Both copies went to friends. The book is in Dark Star Books, a couple of doors south of here, along with Jeanne’s and Ed’s and a thousand other authors. (http://www.darkstarbooks.net/ )

End of social networking for the day. I’m leaving for the house, where the maples are full and shady. Deer cross the yard often now that the apples are beginning to fall. We’re invited to friends’ this evening; they want to hear the book read aloud. That’s a form of off-line social networking.