Do I Know You? And Other Stories from the Rossmoor News

For two years Douglas Hergert has been writing a thousand-word anecdotal human-interest column for the Rossmoor News. Rossmoor, an adult community located about 30 minutes east by car from San Francisco, has a population of perhaps 10,000 residents. The community is economically and generationally diverse, but urbane, intelligent, and active, with a high percentage of retired professionals and artists. The Rossmoor setting is a park-like campus complete with redwood groves, lush landscaping, and abundant wildlife, including geese, wild turkeys, and many other resident species. Life at Rossmoor is characterized by the community's amenities, including two golf courses, three swimming facilities (one indoors), a gym, a library, a movie theater, multiple clubhouses, a restaurant and bar, tennis courts, and a newspaper. The Rossmoor News is published weekly by a paid professional staff, and distributed to every resident. The paper is 60-plus pages long, and allocates space for editorial columns and features, some politically oriented, others more general. In his own column, Hergert has written about topics that happen to catch his interest: books, movies, food, travel, nature, current events, places, human-interest anecdotes, or memories from his own life experiences. The tone of his column is generally light, sometimes humorous, with the aim to amuse and inform. This book is a collection of three dozen pieces originally published in the Rossmoor News. Although the writing Hergert does for the News may sometimes convey a distinctly local context, this collection contains a diverse variety of general-interest stories. In these pages you'll read about: the transition from Paris to Rossmoor; the mystery of coq-au-vin; pizza dough as physical therapy; a tale of Christmas in Paris; reflections on bird watching and memory; life and chicken stew in West Africa; Afghanistan in less troubled times; the Ten Commandments and a curious meeting; a travel journal along the California coast; book reviews and movie reviews; life with prosopagnosia (in the title story, "Do I know you?"); how to live with Montaigne; how to make blueberry pancakes; how to use zucchini and arugula in a pasta dish; and how to stuff a turkey. Even if you don't live at Rossmoor, even if you're younger than 55 - and even if you've never taken a ride in a golf cart - you'll find a bounty of compelling, amusing, and revealing reading in this collection of personal stories.