I’m kind of a newsletter junkie, but I’ve noticed that if your newsletter sucks, it just gets deleted. Here are some local ones that always get read.

Salem Cinema: Loretta’s nostalgic-looking, gentle reminder of the power of cinema is a noteworthy heads-up about the latest must-see independent films.

Tigress Books: JoAnne Kohler sometimes breaks national news with her occasional e-newsletters about happenings at her downtown shop. Her notes to her customers are frank and lovely in a way that rarely gets used in the form. Roar!

Minto Island Growers: An always satisfying menage of home recipes, insider’s info about the farm and cultural-historical information about the great stuff in their CSA baskets, the Minto Island Growers newsletter, put together by Elizabeth Miller, is a must-read for home cooks with a love of the local.

E.Z. Orchards: The farm stand newsletter is mostly product updates about what’s available at the farm’s darling store on Hazel Green and Cordon roads. But who doesn’t need a little gentle nudge to be reminded of a MIXED BERRY SHORTCAKE BIGGER THAN YOUR BABY’s HEAD.

The Salem Public Library: Sonja Somerville puts together a fantastic, multi-page pdf newsletter of events at our local library. She might illuminate the best DIY car repair books in the library’s collection or remind you about the almost daily book-related happenings there. Adult story time? Snuggle up!

Life Source Natural Foods: Don’t just eat food. Meet the people who make it! Or learn about one person’s journey through a gluten-free diet! It’s a little text-heavy, but if you’re a reader and you like food connections, check it out.

Salem Breakfast on Bikes: Exclamations! Shout it out! The man behind Breakfast on Bikes has excitement for the the lifestyle practice of biking that just bleeds off the screen. Even better? He uses ample links to make sure we will never lose our way to the Monster Cookie.

A.C. Gilbert Discovery Village: Quite possibly the best laid-out e-newsletter in town (color is not just for kids!), A.C. Gilbert’s flagship news vehicle is an inspiration to keep facilitating those experiences for your children. Get out of the house!

Friends of Straub Environmental Learning Center: Proof every time that a city like Salem has a lot of country to explore and learn about.

Friends of Salem Saturday Market: The sheer bulk of this immensely readable newsletter is a testament to the huge and positive role the market has in this community. Also, a heads up about visiting baby goats.

Ok, so I know that mine lean heavily towards food news.

What ones have I missed?

I first met the Jondles last fall when I was interested in learning about how to slaughter a chicken by hand. They also made frequent trips to Salem to sell their farm-raised, organic free-range chickens from the back of a truck.

In an age when many farmers are reluctant to allow journalists entry into their businesses for fear of media looking to expose their farming practices, they were generous, open and kind. At least in terms of their operations, they knew they had nothing to hide.

Living Culture’s Nate Rafn spent a lot of time learning about their farming practices and documented them for his show Living Culture.

From my visit, I  remember being amazed at the happy chatter of the family as it processed the chickens.

As more details of of Scott and Marilyn’s murder become public, as more people comment on the S-J website with their judgments and their hypotheses and their snarky asides, as more people think, with each new revelation that they understand more of what happened, I am reminded:

Every family is a secret world unto itself.  Every man is an abyss where you can’t see the bottom.

Don’t forget to show your face tomorrow, Wednesday, at the FOOD FOR THOUGHT STAND-IN.

The Marion-Polk Foodshare and Women Ending Hunger have asked volunteers to form a line and hold empty plates from the steps of the State Capitol through eight blocks of downtown Salem, from 5:00 p.m. to 5:20 p.m. on Wednesday, September 1.

The group estimates it will need a minimum of 370 people to cover the distance, each representing 100 children.

The goal? Make a statement that will be hard to ignore.  Volunteers will be circulating up and down the line to hand out information about the issue and ways community members can join Marion-Polk Food Share and Women Ending Hunger to reduce that number.

We’ve all got a lot on our plates. This is a great chance to learn about how to get involved with the Foodshare and draw attention to  an issue many local families struggle with.

Thank you.

I’ve been taking ads on this blog for about two weeks now, with my first trickle of revenue this month going entire to support the M-P Foodshare’s programming.

It’s been an interesting experiment to see what Google Adsense ads come up based on the content I write.

Blog about ants in your kitchen? Don’t be surprised if all you see is Terminex for a few weeks. Write about reading? Well, maybe you’ll get an ad for an awesome PDX indie bookstore/comic shop. Once and never again.

Thank you to those of you who have supported our advertisers. With your help, I am giving $100.00 to the Marion-Polk Foodshare for use in their programming to help feed school-age children.

See you at the capitol.

UPDATE: This blog raised $126.00 for the Marion-Polk Foodshare in August. Thanks again for your support.

Nadelson is one of those people here in town who are assuring that Salem achieves the robust literary culture that it deserves.

One of his first tasks as chair? To put together a roster of must-see, have-to-genuflect-before visiting writers who are speaking on campus this fall.

I do hope they get him a good seat for hosting these talks.

All events will take place at 7 p.m. in the Hatfield Room of Willamette’s Mark O. Hatfield Library, and all are free and open to the public.

September 30: An Evening with Fiction Writer Manuel Muñoz.

• Muñoz, who writes about Chicano/a communities in California’s Central Valley, is the author of two collections of short stories: Zigzagger (Northwestern University Press, 2003) and The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2007). He has received pretty much every distinction out there that you can get for short story writing, including the 2008 Whiting Writers’ Award and a 2009 PEN/O. Henry Award for his story “Tell Him About Brother John.”

October 12: The Art of Playwriting with Andrea Stolowitz.

• Stolowitz is a graduate of the MFA playwriting program at the University of California San Diego and is currently teaching at Willamette. With names like TALES OF DOOMED LOVE and BAD FAMILY, you can bet she writes the kind of approachable, funny stuff for the stage.

December 1: New Voices Showcase: Poet Keetje Kuipers & Fiction Writer Elissa Minor Rust.

• Kuipers is a native of the Northwest.  She earned her B.A. at Swarthmore College and her M.F.A. at the University of Oregon.  In 2007 she completed her tenure as the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident, which provided her with seven months of solitude in Oregon’s Rogue River Valley.  She used her time there to complete work on her book, Beautiful in the Mouth, which was awarded the 2009 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and was published in March 2010 by BOA Editions.

(ok, kind of jealous after typing out that one…)

• Rust lives and works in Portland, Oregon and is proud to call herself a Northwest writer. She teaches writing and literature at Portland Community College, and publishes fiction and nonfiction in national literary magazines and anthologies. Her short story collection, The Prisoner Pear: Stories From the Lake, was published in December 2005 by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice pick.

This event is hosted by the Oregon Chapter of PRSA and is geared towards public relations professionals, but it is also open to the public:

Hopefully this Emily:  Angry shot will confuse you and you won’t read this post as flagrant self-promotion… Should be a great discussion, and I’ll leave the Hulk hands at home.

Here is the official invite:

Capital Chapter members and friends: It’s time to gather the pack.

We’re back for fall with our Wednesday, Sept. 1 luncheon program at the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce. Sign-up details at end.

We’re excited to introduce you to Emily Grosvenor who writes the “Desperately Seeking Salem” blog and teaches magazine writing.

TOPIC: Harnessing Authenticity: Reaching out to bloggers in an age of fractured media

Blogs hold great promise — both as a way to generate conversations in communities and as a means for communicators to spread their messages. Join us for a talk about the power of blogs and for a primer on how to navigate the tricky relationship between public relations professionals and bloggers, especially local ones.

Bio: Before moving to the Willamette Valley, magazine writer Emily Grosvenor worked as a public relations specialist for the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Washington, D.C., studied in Germany as a Fulbright scholar of book publishing, and earned an M.A. in Journalism from the University of Iowa. She keeps an award-winning, hyper-local personal blog called Desperately Seeking Salem and teaches magazine writing at the University of Oregon.

Location: Salem Area Chamber of Commerce, 1110 Commercial St. NE (corner of Commercial and Market Streets NE) in Salem.

Cost:  Program and lunch $15 for PRSA members, $20 for non-members. Program only or student price (including lunch) is $10.

We accept PayPal! Transactions can be made from our Website, under “Events”:
http://www.oregoncapitalprsa.com/

RSVP by Monday, Aug. 30, to this email. spriem@hotmail.com, with your name and title for our roster; or please call your RSVP to at 503-365-8416.

Chapter site: http://www.oregoncapitalprsa.com/

Sometimes, other people get there faster. They do it quicker. They say it better.

So I’m starting a new feature on DSS. Once a month, I’ll feature the best of the Salem blogs.

The BEST:

1. LOVESalem.

That’s the thought I had while reading LoveSalem’s recent post on backyard chickens. If you’ve been consuming news media, you know half a billion industrially-produced eggs have been recalled this month after an alarming salmonella outbreak. What hasn’t been reported as frequently is that controlling the environment that your own chickens live in can significantly reduce the risk of your eggs being infected with the salmonella bacteria.

If you’ve been out of the loop on Salem’s backyard chicken debate, you should know that the issue will be discussed at its own public hearing on September 20.  Don’t be an egghead. This isn’t some twee agri-fad that has temporarily captured the heart of Depression 2.0 urban homesteaders. If you believe in controlling the safety of your own food, be there.

2. Poetry and Popular Culture.

Local poet Mike Chasar has illuminated, in a simple blog post, the things that I love about Oregon. Here, everyone is an artist/barista/biker/rock-climber/inventor/farmer/mom. Or, in this case, a biking viking/master baker/ physicist. Full disclosure: I know the Biking Viking. My husband gave him his nickname. But I think we can all agree that there is nothing hotter than split personalities of talented Oregonians. I think we must drive ourselves crazy with all of our separate passions, but personally, I don’t know any other way to live.

3. Capital Taps.

Zombies. Monks. Beer. Enough said.

4. Farmer Brewing. (not actually a Salem blog…)

This blog posed the questions that has been on everybody’s mind since Gilgamesh Brewing announced plans for Salem’s — shock and awe! — first beer and cider festival of its own (and you thought what everybody wanted was a room…).  Yes… it is by now a running gag of a meme that has attached itself to Salem. Is Salem really ready for a [insert already trendy event/product/place here]? In this case, the answer is yes, by biblical proportions.

5. EatSalem.

Screw you all. I have tried to find this godforsaken waffle stand on three separate occasions in the past week. Sell me a freakin’ waffle! From the picture, it sure doesn’t look like it’s hiding in plain view. But I have yet to dip my lips in the hot pockets of these waffles, despite following this waffle stand on Twitter and setting out with it as my destination. Waffle stand, please take your cues from Woody Allen and keep showing up.

Clockworks has announced its next session of free classes, including my Blogging Basics class. UPDATE! You can read the full description of classes right here: c4 September class program for web.

This class has been generating some nice discussions about the blogging form, which I’ve been happy to recount, naturally, here on this blog. It’s also been a great way to meet some already and would-be bloggers here in town.

Here are my lessons learned from the first free class (the diplomatic dance of digital capture) and the second free class (the problem with anonymity).

If you  have been to this class before, don’t bother coming unless, like Rob McGuire, you are attending to lend your vast expertise and participate in the discussion. Be forewarned, though that the presentation will be the same (with minor variations of nervousness and stuttering).

Here is some info about the class. Pop me an email at emilygrosvenor [at] gmail.com if you have any questions.

We’ll be meeting at 6 p.m. on Monday September 27. Mark your calendars! It’s open enrollment and the class has been full every time, so get there early for a good seat!

I’d also like to give a shout out to Ms. K. Williams Brown, who is giving a class on Southern Charm and Manners on Wed. September 1. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of eating one of Ms. Brown’s pimento cheese sandwiches, you’d know that charm is something well worth cultivating in your free time — and learning from the master.

I’m also kind of fascinated by “Writing for the Soul,” “Vegan Cooking,” and the “Be Sweet Project.” I have no idea what that means, but I try to be sweet every day and usually end up being sweet and sour, so anything that can help me strike the right balance must be good.

Here’s the full roster of classes:

Mon.  Aug 30 – 6pm – Writing For The Soul – Marcella Swatzendruber
Mon. Aug 30 – 7pm – Intro to Financial Planning – Steven Goto
Tues. Aug 31 – 6pm – Beginning Zumba – Brittany Mcbee
Tues. Aug 31 – 7pm – Fingerstyle Guitar Techniques – Randy Hartley
Tues. Aug 31 – 7pm – Thriller Dance Lesson – First Half
Wed. Sept 1 – 6pm – Fitness for Everyone – Andy Bolliger
Wed Sept 1 – 7pm – Southern Charm & Manners – Kelly Williams Brown
Thurs. Sept 2 – 6pm – Intro to Balloon Sculpting – Tom White
Thurs. Sept 2 – 7pm – Beginning Yoga – Mary Collins
Thurs. Sept 2 – 7pm – Thriller Dance Lesson -  Second Half

Tues. Sept 7 – 6pm – Intro to Home Gardening – Megan Crandall
Tues. Sept 7 – 7pm – Fingerstyle Guitar Techniques – Randy Hartley
Tues. Sept 7 – 7pm – Thriller Dance Lesson – First Half
Wed. Sept 8 – 6pm – Artist Trading Cards: Make & Trade – Ronda Wymore
Wed. Sept 8 – 7pm – Vegan Cooking – Summer Keightley
Thurs. Sept 9 – 6pm –The Be Sweet Project– Austin Rowlader
Thurs. Sept 9 – 7pm –  How to Solve a Rubix Cube – Kelly Williams Brown
Thurs. Sept 9 – 7pm – Thriller Dance Lesson – Second Half
Fri. Sept 10 – 6pm – Guitar Circle – Mandi Welch
Sat. Sept 11 – 2-5pm – Better Understanding Islam – Laurie Erikson

Mon. Sept 13 – 6pm – Intro to Financial Planning –Steven Goto
Mon. Sept 13 – 7pm – CranioSacral Therapy:  Migraines – Janette Warren
Tues. Sept 14 – 6pm – Basic Earrings – Alex Taylor
Tues . Sept 14 – 6pm – Beginning Zumba – Brittany Mcbee
Tues. Sept 14 – 7pm – Fingerstyle Guitar Techniques – Randy Hartley
Tues. Sept 14 – 7pm – Thriller Dance Lesson – First Half
Wed. Sept 15 – 6pm – Fitness for Everyone – Andy Bolliger
Thurs. Sept 16 – 6pm – The Be Sweet Project – Austin Rowlader
Thurs. Sept 16 – 7pm – Beginning Yoga – Mary Collins
Thurs.  Sept 16 -  7pm – Thriller Dance Lesson – Second Half
Fri. Sept 17 – 6pm – Life Shifting – Troy Wenning
Sat. Sept 18 – 3pm – Shamanic Journeys – Leslie Grasa

Mon. Sept 20 – 6pm – Writing for the Soul – Marcella Swatzendruber
Mon. Sept 20 – 7pm – Grassroots Marketing in Salem – Ryan Rogers
Tues. Sept 21 – 6pm – Beginning Zumba – Brittany Mcbee
Tues. Sept 21 – 7pm – Fingerstyle Guitar Techniques – Randy Hartley
Tues. Sept 21 – 7pm – Thriller Dance Lessons – Second Half
Wed. Sept 22 – 6pm – Artist Trading Cards: Make & Trade – Ronda Wymore
Wed. Sept 22 – 6pm – Music for Tots – Christy Hey
Thurs. Sept 23 – 6pm – Budget Event Planning – Dorri Wassom
Thurs. Sept 23 – 7pm – Thriller Dance Lessons – First Half
Fri.  Sept 24 – 6pm – Guitar Circle – Mandi Welch
Sat. Sept 25 – 3-6pm – DIY Filmmaking – Jason Gould

Mon. Sept 27 – 6pm – Blogging Basics – Emily Grosvenor
Mon. Sept 27 – 7pm – CranioSacral Therapy: Pregnancy
Tues. Sept 28 – 6pm –  – Intro to Home Gardening – Megan Crandall
Tues. Sept 28 – 7pm – Fingerstyle Guitar Basics – Randy Hartley
Tues. Sept 28 – 7pm – Thriller Dance Lessons – Second Half
Wed. Sept 29 – 6pm – Fitness for Everyone – Andy Bolliger
Wed. Sept 29 – 7pm – Vegan Cooking – Summer Keightley
Thurs. Sept 30 – 7 pm – Thriller Dance Lesson – First Half
Thurs. Sept 30 – 7pm – How to Solve a Rubix Cube – Kelly Williams Brown
Thurs. Sept 30 – 7pm – Beginning Yoga – Mary Collins
Fri. Oct 1 – SPECIAL EVENT @ CLOCKWORKS!!!
Sat. Oct 2 – 3pm – DIY Kids Portrait Photography – Anati Neiffer

I don’t know about you, but when I’m sick as a dog I strap my baby in a stroller and wander deliriously through downtown Salem.

I get it in my head that I need to drop $25 on hardback literary fiction RIGHT NOW and I set about looking for a copy of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Good Squad, hailed in numerous reviews as the best rock novel ever written.

(No dice).

Then I spend the whole afternoon poking around Salem stores as my temperature rockets to 102 degrees and discover some secret slices of Salem that I was often too harried, too distracted, or too busy, to notice.

Discovery number one: Downtown Grocery.

New to you? No. It’s been around since early May, when it opened to much small-town state capital fanfare — read: a few blog posts, a Statesman Journal article, and a rush of murmur that heralded it as the Thing Downtown Has Been Missing.

I don’t know about that.

What I do know is that the Downtown Grocery carries some awesome middle-eastern and European products and offers the kind of other-world-in-your-own-backyard shopping experience that I haven’t really had since I was living on Mt. Pleasant Street in the El Salvadorean district of our nation’s capital.

If you are one of those people that can’t recognize a cardamom seed pod by its face, then you are in luck. The staff at Downtown Grocery can help you sort your spices in a way that is oh-so-satisfying for the home cook with a curious streak.

I’ve heard from friends who are obssessed with the store’s sandwich counter — and its gooey, layered baklava — but have yet to hear from anyone who goes out of their way to buy some of the other packaged, processed stuff that lines the aisles.

Unless you’re talking about fava beans.

If you read this blog, you know that I’ve become wildly enamored of these little green guys after first working with them in California last year and then discovering at my produce paradise at E.Z. Orchards.

Sadly, favas don’t last forevah.

But now I have something akin to that in the canned broad beans (you cheeky Brits!) available for purchase at downtown grocery. No, they don’t have that fresh, green, plucked from the Matrix snap that fresh favas have. But creamed together with some tahini, olive oil, garlic and lemon, it makes a nice hummus.

Don’t forget that you still need to remove the fava bean from the pod before blending!

This one’s for you, Amber. Now you can eat your favas without thinking about Anthony Hopkins.

UPDATE: Thank you to everyone who has been supporting DSS’s advertisers this month. We have raised $75 so far to help feed hungry kids. And the month’s not yet over!

Once a month, I was helping the site’s customers navigate the system by serving as a personal shopper.

Sadly, I can’t get down there anymore. My son’s schedule and his own mess calls prohibit me from the 4-7 p.m. shift.

But hunger is an issue that is near to my heart. And hungry children? I can tell you that if you saw the faces of the families at Table of Plenty you’d wish you could do something, too.

Well, now we both can.

You might have noticed that I started taking ads on this blog last week.

I know my readers — a few hundred a day at last count! — care about Salem. And so, I will be donating the proceeds from all of the advertising from this blog to the Marion-Polk Foodshare for this entire month.

You Can also Show Your Face Downtown September 1

Hungry kids have trouble learning.

On First Wednesday, September 1, Go Downtown Salem and the Salem Assistance League are sponsoring a big back-to-school celebration during which they will be collecting school supplies, giving out information, and supplying other resources to Salem-Keizer students.

Because hungry children often have a very difficult time at school (learning problems, behavioral problems, health issues) Women Ending Hunger and Marion-Polk Food Share would like to call attention to the fact that we have a huge number of children who are probably going to school hungry by creating a visual image for the community of just what that number looks like.

The two groups are asking all friends and supporters of the fight to end hunger to join us in what they are calling a FOOD FOR THOUGHT STAND-IN:  a long, long line of volunteers holding empty plates from the steps of the State Capitol through eight blocks of downtown Salem, from 5:00 p.m. to 5:20 p.m. on Wednesday, September 1.

They estimate that they will need a minimum of 370 people to cover the distance, each representing 100 children — but they welcome many more.

Join us — for info contact Kat at the Foodshare at 503.581.3855 x322.

I’m a terrible wife. No, an awful wife. No, the worst wife ever.

We celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary a few weeks ago and all my husband got was this stinking blog post (late at that).

In the meantime, what did he gift me but the spice rack that I’ve been wanting for about 10 years. (And you thought the fourth anniversary was fruits and flowers…)

Still bowling me over with his handiwork and vision after all these years, he created this under-the-cabinet spice rack using all of the old Earth’s Best baby food jars that I’ve been accumulating the past few months.

How will I ever tell our baby that I chose his nutrition based on the lines and form of this baby brand jar? In this case, Gerber just wouldn’t do.

It’s everything I needed in my light-flooded, raspberry-Yoplait-colored Barbie dream kitchen. And it’s just like us: a little utilitarian, a little upcycled, a little parsimonious, a little homage to getting by farther on what we already have.

I will make it up to Adam. But this time, I’ll let him watch me creating his gift for two weeks so that his heart, too, may be stunned into a similar inaction.

He wouldn’t admit it to you, but this gift of love is really an attempt to impose his world order on me in my own space. Otherwise, my spices would be a tumbling circus family of marjoram and garlic salt in an already overflowing cabinet.

The other sneaky thing? More spices = more originality = more creativity = more food for him. That cheeky monkey!

And so, I’ve been working my way through Modern Vegetarian cookbook, which I’ve charitably given back to the Salem Public Library on time. And the process has forced me to find out where in this town of secret places and impossible-to-find products you find spices fit for my glorious rack.

Stay tuned for Desperately Seeking Spices!