Salter pens book
"There is a geography to baking bread." - Cathy Salter
For Hartsburg resident Cathy Salter, much of life can be related to the geography of people, place and time.
Salter, a Boone County Journal columnist since 1993, has published a collection of her works into her first book, "Notes From Breakfast Creek."
If you have not read Salter's writings, the book's subtitle, "A Look at the World," will tell you much about her.
Salter taught in south central Los Angeles before working at "National Geographic" in Washington, D.C. She then re-located to Mid-Missouri and learned an entirely different way of life, a rural and farm life.
"I owe so much to neighbors like the Beckmeyers and the Hilgedicks," Salter said. "Their door is always open and they let me come to their homes and the fields and ask all the silly questions."
But while Salter left the city for rural Mid-Missouri, she never left the idea that all things can circle back to place, time and family - the geography of people.
Salter says her topics come from notes that she takes during the week.
"I can't be assigned a topic," she said. "My ideas for writing come from connections. I make notes for things that will later jog my memory for later writing. There is so much going on in our community, so much richness. The hardest thing to write about is family because I have learned that when you write about things you remember them one way and the rest of the family doesn't remember them that way at all. My mom never forgets."
Of bread-making, Salter also writes: "Egyptians mixed grain meal with water and made flat bread by baking their dough on heated rocks. Greeks learned bread making from the Egyptians and taught the method to the Romans. By the Middle Ages, bakeries could be found in most European cities. Today, the art of bread making has become the passion of a new generation of home bakers."
Salter's book brings the reader full circle, as does her theory of geography, of people and places.
Readers can purchase "Notes from Breakfast Creek" for $18 at Alan-Anderson, the Boone County Journal and the Boone County Historical Society.