How This Book Got from Ron’s Computer to you Kitchen
Part Two --A Race Against Time——07/07/24
Ron was diagnosed with cancer in Spring 2022. Having (finally!) retired from the daily operations of The Herbfarm restaurant just a few months earlier, we had planned on travelling the world together when this plan got dispiritingly changed with a terminal prognosis of less than two years.
I wanted him to have a project to focus on…a future to look forward to, something to get him up every morning. So I told him it was time to finally “get that darn book done!” I promised him that if he was not able to complete this project, I would.
So he set off with the goal of completing his/our memoir and an accessible, elegant cookbook. The only caveat was that he needed to finish the memoir section himself because only he knew what was in his head!
Ron had been involved in Desktop- Publishing since before computers he designed this book as he wrote, producing entire two- page spreads on his PC.
In early March, we thought we were close to done but Ron’s computer kept breaking down. One of Ron’s “heroes,” David Blatner, an internationally respected expert in Adobe InDesign, came over to help install Ron’s Adobe programs on my laptop and answer questions Ron had about the program itself and the intricate formatting he had designed into his book.
Having purchased a special large format color printer for this project, Ron printed each spread on glossy paper as he completed them. It was looking so elegant and classy that we were starting to consider finding a “real” publishing house instead of going the self-published route that we had originally envisioned.
He outlined the order of the pages in each section of the book and completed a set of specifications for the printing company. A week or so later he told me that he had completed the manuscript. I suppose none of us will ever know if that was all he wanted to include or all he was capable of completing at the time.
Ron passed just a few days after my birthday in April 2023.