Red Wing, Minnesota, 2 p.m.

Michael Perry |

Cellphone shot: My "desk" in the Super 8 Motel. Visible items include laptop (lifeline to Volume One) Festival Foods receipts (bought "tour-related" [as in "business expense"] food on the way out of Eau Claire), sugar-coated peanuts ("business expense"), "COOP" postcards (Mom taught me to get those thank-you notes in the mail right away), stamps (use'em quick, rates going up), fine-point Sharpie (the tool of celebrity, which I used to accidentally mark the thigh of one of the two pairs of pants I took on tour), postcard with multiple pictures of me in the mud with my pigs (reserved for extra-special thank-yous), bottled water (must maintain skin turgor), VISA bill (didn't get it paid before I left home, gotta send the money from the road), various business cards (crumpled from pocket), USPS box with books I'm mailing home to my daughter (books gifted to me on the road by a kind soul), white envelopes for receipts (Press-N-Seal...I hate tongue cuts), Post-Its (life before Post-Its was dark and terribly forgetful), Dentyne gum wrapper (must not have zoo breath when signing books), show prep notes from Minnesota Public Radio interview, and scribbled notes that ended up being a blog post about Tom T. Hall.

I'm currently on tour to promote Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting. I'm blogging the tour here, Tweeting the tour here, and Facebooking it here.