Christ Church Lutheran, Minneapolis, MN 12/14/2013
Light snow fell as I pulled out of my brother and sister-in-laws’ place. My Garmon GPS was tuned to Christ Church Lutheran, an enclave of Finnishness in a Minneapolis neighborhood a stone’s throw east of Uptown. The freeways from Lakeville to the big city were relatively clear. Traffic was light. It wasn’t until I pulled off the Interstate and onto city streets that the significance of the snowfall made it’s presence felt. Throughout the night, a good five or six inches had accumulated on the roads, causing no end of slick intersections and the possibility of collisions. But the all-wheel-drive on my Pacifica acquitted itself admirably. I stepped out of the warm car into winter and shuffled my shoes through the accumulated powder towards a freshly shoveled sidewalk. Two men were working the business ends of shovels with dutiful determination, making ready for Joulu, Finnish Christmas, at the church. I was there as part of the tori, the marketplace, to hawk my best selling regional novel, Suomalaiset: People of the Marsh to folks of Finnish extraction. I was also hoping to sell a few copies of my latest book, Black Water, a recently printed collection of my outdoor stories. I was even optimistic that some copies of Laman’s River (my most recent novel) and Mr. Environment: The Willard Munger Story (a thick-as-a-brick biography of my legislator-uncle, Willard Munger) might get sold.
I hadn’t done a book event outside of Duluth in nearly a year. I’ve been concentrating my efforts on converting my older novels into eBooks, polishing my manuscript (Sukulaiset: The Kindred; also a novel about the Finns and related peoples), and experimenting with CreateSpace, Amazon’s publishing arm. As I’ve written before, I’m done with outdoor art and craft festivals. My EZ-Up tent is relegated to a storage building that holds tons of household crap looking for a home. The weather. The economy. The time. They did me in, made me realize I had to find a better way, a more efficient way, to promote my writing, than sitting in a tent all summer long trying to sell books to strangers. But I haven’t given up on indoor events and when I read an article in New World Finn promoting Joulu and touting the architecture of the church, I just had to sign up.
Plaque at the Church
Inside Christ Church’s education and social wing, I found my table space in a classroom off a hallway. Venders were already set up along the main corridor of the church’s annex. Outside, across a snowy courtyard, the sanctuary of the faithful sat, empty, waiting for sinners. Entering the classroom, I was greeted by the only other vendor occupying the space, potter Lenore Lampi, whose birch-inspired ceramics are so realistic, you half expect a red headed woodpecker to land on a piece’s surfaces and begin hammering away. We introduced ourselves. Lenore, far more market savvy than I, placed a small table outside the door to our room where she displayed a sample of her work and a copy of Suomalaiset.
“Should help draw folks in,” she said.
Table at Joulu.
We talked a bit about her art and my writing. She hadn’t read any of my books but offered that she might buy a copy of Suomalaiset for her son, a Twin Cities filmmaker. Traffic was light but, as the time for the Joulu buffet, the centerpiece of the church’s celebration, loomed, folks began to trundle in from the snow. The hallway was soon bustling with hungry Finnish Americans, their spouses, children, and friends. A few passers-by trickled in. I began to sell books. The funk that had plagued me for most of the past year (due to poor sales and seemingly unappreciative customers) lifted.
“Finns buy books,” I said to Betsy Norgard, a member of the local chapter of the Finlandia Foundation I met at Joulu. Betsy wasn’t a complete stranger. She was someone I’d corresponded with in an attempt to drum up support for my application to the national Finlandia Foundation seeking a publishing grant. “I always do well wherever Finns are shopping.”
I learned that Betsy is a book editor. She expressed interest in taking a crack at Sukulaiset. A connection was made with plans to further discuss her fee.
Other patrons stopped and bought more books. Willard and Suomalaiset were the day’s big sellers. Traffic was moderate but steady. I couldn’t help but smile.
During a lull in the action, I wandered off to the basement and found a hot bowl of Finnish sausage soup. Finns insist on putting rutabagas in everything. There were big chunks of my least favorite vegetable (OK, that’s a lie. Brussel sprouts are my least favorite but rutabagas are a close second!), along with carrot and potato floating in brine. It was quite a feat dodging the crowd, an over-filled bowl of soup in my hands, as I climbed the stairs. But lunch was delicious and book buyers continued to stop in.
I received warm greetings from folks who’d organized the event, including Dan Salin, the person I’d emailed about renting space. They were all gracious and kind, wholly unperturbed that a non-Finn had infiltrated their festival. As the afternoon waned and I still hadn’t been inside the sanctuary of the church, I left my table, walked across the open space between the wings of the building, carefully opened the door to the church, and found a place to stand and listen to hymns. Of course, the lyrics were in Finnish. It didn’t matter.
The courtyard.
In the end, I sold more than I’d expected, made a few new friends, firmed up some important contacts within Minnesota’s Finnish American community, and maybe, just maybe, found an editor for Sukulaiset who can correct my misspellings of Finnish words.
Christ Church Lutheran.
Peace.
Mark
