Pleasant Ridge Reserve, made near Dodgeville, Wisconsin, took best of show at the ACS Awards for the third time.

Forget last night's Emmys — the results of the 2010 American Cheese Society Awards are here. The annual competition at the ACS "Festival of Cheese" is among the highlights of the nation's culinary calendar. This year's contest took place on August 28 in Seattle, Washington. The society released the complete judging results from the competition online today, and they are a great reminder of why life in Wisconsin is so appetizing. Wisconsin cheesemakers took home almost one third of the awards given at the contest, including 29 firsts, 36 seconds, 33 thirds, and the prestigious best of show prize for Upland Cheese Company's extra-aged Pleasant Ridge Reserve.

I'm not an expert cheese taster, but I did grow up on a small Wisconsin dairy farm where cheese was always a treat. More than half a century ago, my grandfather helped manage a cheese factory just a mile up the road from my family's farm, and although the place stopped making cheese before I was born, I can still see the little old factory building across the valley from my bedroom window. Today the farm where I live no longer even produces milk, but I've kept my childhood eagerness to always sample all the cheese on the tray, and growing up I've learned how to appreciate skillful affinage.

Given my background, I'm often surprised at how few of my fellow young Wisconsinites realize the diversity and renown of the cheeses made in our midst. We've been raised in a generation of big box stores and chain restaurants, and they've spread an illusion that every city and every state is the same, except that some places have more people and more chain stores than others. These chains breed ignorance of the homegrown products that make every town materially different from the next. People know that Wisconsin is "America's Dairyland" — it's printed on the license plates — but the cheeses in Wisconsin's big supermarkets arrive from mass-producers across the Midwest, and the award-winning cheeses made right in the neighborhood go to high-end restaurants and specialty stores in California and New York. Luckily, our farmer's markets, locally owned shops, and the cheese companies themselves all continue to sell the fruit of the state. For the unfamiliar, here's a quick tour of just a few of the remarkable cheese producers in Southwest Wisconsin

Best of Show at the 2010 American Cheese Society competition went to Uplands Cheese Company, located just north of Dodgeville. It makes a highly-decorated cheese called "Pleasant Ridge Reserve," which has now won the top award at the ACS contest an unprecedented three times (2001, 2005, 2010). Pleasant Ridge Reserve is a washed-rind cow's milk cheese in the style of French Beaufort, created by Mike Gingrich and now crafted by Andy Hatch. The cheese is made in small quantities on the same farm that supplies all its milk. I have not yet had the opportunity to sample the extra-aged variety of Pleasant Ridge Reserve that took a ribbon this year, but I have tried the younger version in the past. It has a nutty flavor that is complex but amiable — pleasant, like the name suggests.

A Few Award-Winning Cheesemakers in Southwest Wisconsin.

Hidden Springs Creamery, outside Westby, was another big winner this year. Hidden Springs, run by Brenda Jensen, specializes in sheep's milk cheeses and has built an international reputation. British humorist Stephen Fry visited the creamery in 2008 as the basis for the Wisconsin segment of his "Stephen Fry in America" documentary series on BBC One. This year the creamery's "Driftless" variety swept the flavored fresh sheep's milk category at the ACS contest this year, with a first for the Lavender Honey flavor, a second for Cranberry Cinnamon, and a third for Maple. There is nothing better on warm bread or bagels in the morning than Driftless Cheese. The creamery's aged Ocooch Mountain Reserve also tied for second in its category this year.

There are several other local cheesemakers whose work I can personally endorse:

• Edelweiss Creamery, near Monticello, picked up a blue ribbon for its Emmentaler, which the creamery makes in a copper kettle that produces 180 pound wheels. Noted for its holes, Emmentaler is a traditional cow's milk cheese created in Switzerland, but it's far richer than the so-called "Swiss Cheese" sold in the U.S. The version I've had from Edelweiss has a grassy flavor with a tinge of caramel sweetness. I haven't had Edelweiss's Gouda, which also got a ribbon this year.
• Maple Leaf Cheese is affiliated with Edelweiss, and is located a few miles to the south in the hamlet of Twin Groves. Although it did not place at this year's ACS Awards, Maple Leaf has won accolades in the recent past for its aged Cheddars. I can attest to their sharp, crumbly, and occasionally crystalline deliciousness.
• Montchevre-Betin in Belmont is run by Frenchman Arnaud Solandt. It makes goat's milk cheeses including an unusual goat's milk "Mini Cabrie" and several flavored soft-fresh cheeses perfect for crackers. This year the company got a first-place ribbon for its Chevre in Blue, which is still on my list of cheeses to try.
• Lactalis USA, which also has a plant in Belmont, mass-manufactures soft-ripened French style cheeses for the American market. It's President Brie is too uniform to compare to Brie from France, but that doesn't keep teams from Lactalis from routinely preparing ribbon-winning wheels of Brie for the ACS contest.
• Carr Valley Cheese in La Valle, Sauk County, took 18 ribbons at the ACS show this year. Sid Cook, the company's leader, has crafted an amazingly diverse variety of original cheeses with the milk of cows, goats, and sheep. Marisa, a rich sheep's milk cheese named for Sid Cook's daughter, placed first in its class for its fresh variety, and second in another class for its aged version.

Sterling Reserve is an aged raw milk goat's milk cheese made at Mount Sterling, Wisconsin.

Finally, I've saved the last spot in this post for the Mount Sterling Co-op Creamery, the only active cheese producer in my home county, which specializes in goat's milk cheeses. The Mount Sterling Co-op earned a ribbon for its tasty raw milk cheddar at the ACS contest this year. The creamery's best product, in my opinion, is the cave-aged Sterling Reserve, a washed rind cheese with a hard texture and varied flavor streaked with mouthwatering tanginess. Sterling Reserve won first place in its class last year at the Los Angeles International Dairy Competition, and it took second in its category early this spring at the World Championship Cheese contest in Madison, Wisconsin.

I could write more, and there are many local cheeses with rave reviews that I have yet to sample. Why waste time just reading about cheese here, though, when you could be out tasting new varieties for yourself? Mind you, there's nothing wrong with Mild Cheddar and Co-Jack, but living in Wisconsin without sampling our more unique artisanal cheeses would be like living in Champagne and only drinking Kool-Aid. This is Cheese Paradise! Enjoying it is as easy as eating.

"Pencil Drawing Its Shadow"

In this fine example of postmodern sketch, the artist demonstrates his meager skills by using a pencil to draw a pencil as it draws its own shadow. Freudians will be quick to see phallic symbols throughout the piece, but critics disagree over whether this stems from an intentional depiction of virility and creative energy or a subconscious sign of subdued masculinity and repressed lust. This drawing was drawn on a blank note card provided by Eric, who has also provided most of the comments on this blog.

I was perplexed today by a preponderance of pens. Everyone around me on my first day of College Algebra was holding a pen. I felt very insecure with my sharp number two pencil. Was I surrounded by math wizards who know they will never make an error to erase? I am prone to false starts in math; I would never attempt to calculate in ink. This is not merely a matter of my miserable mathematics, however. Any time I am to put words to paper, I need a pencil in hand — certainly wood, preferably cedar. Plastic pencils have too many pieces and tend to fall apart when I use them. Pens I use only to write checks and sign my name. Otherwise the permanence that pen-points effuse just doesn't suit me.

The pencil is an almost magical device, empowering creation at one end and destruction at the other. The two are inseparable with me, for my writing always implies erasing. This is a symptom of my inability to ever make up my mind. I am endlessly tweaking my statements, coordinating my conjunctions and canceling my commas, scheming up new tropes or repositioning a preposition. The right word often comes to me only after I have written the wrong one, and my most interesting thoughts tend to elude me until I get the dull ones out of the way. How would I manage without my eraser? Work is always in progress; a finished work isn't work at all.

I am also fond of the variation that pencils permit. I speak of shade, of tone, of nuance. With a pencil I have every shade of gray at my command. My lines can be bold or they can disguise themselves into the page. Ink is monochrome, and by extension monotonous.

Even so, it seems that others prefer their pens. I don't mean to put them down. I would not advocate that everyone do as I do or like as I like. I am simply curious as to what other people see in ink that I don't — not to make this a Rorschach test. Which do you prefer, pencil or pen?

Having nothing to say is an interesting phenomenon. It's a sensation I'm rather familiar with, being a very taciturn sort myself. Even so, it's not something I've really thought about much before, so I'm not sure I understand it well. What's really happening when people seem to have nothing to say? It can't be strictly true, can it? People are always thinking, so my guess is that people always have something to say. Whether or not they think they have something to say, however, must be a function of whether or not they judge their thoughts to be worth saying. This is a subjective decision, of course, influenced by all kinds of variables: relevancy, quality, audience, interest, concern for consequences. And many of these variables are subjective factors themselves. Having nothing to say, then, isn't really a condition. It's a judgment, a decree, a statement of will. To announce "I have nothing to say" is, quite simply, to resolve so.

I wonder how often this resolution is conscious, and how often not? Certainly people think about what to say on many occasions, but not always. Some people blither on endlessly without once pausing to consider whether they need or ought to say what they do, and others lock away every thought without even being struck by the notion that certain ideas might be voiced. These people aren't making conscious decisions. They've just fallen into habit, I suppose, and so formed an automated say-it-or-not policy after years of psychological conditioning. So this is a resolution made consciously and unconsciously, every day perhaps. There are always people talking and always people not talking, and at every moment each of these could be doing the opposite. What triggers one to do one thing and one to do another? Do the people who talk the most really have the most to say? Or is it rather the ones who talk least whose minds most teem with thoughts squirming to be let go? I've no idea. I have nothing to say.

I'm walking, slowly, on a campus sidewalk. Around me, others are walking too. They are walking faster than I am, not swiftly, but steadily passing me as they go hither and thither about their days. There are many of them, and most of them are moving together, as one. They flow down the sidewalk together as if a liquid, occasionally damming up behind an obstacle before finally funneling through doors and filtering into their countless destinations. I am only a stone in their river, and as they wash past me on all sides, I too am prodded slowly forward along their course.

I begin to walk faster, until I, too, am one with the liquid mass. It is a new world. At my own pace I had been but one among many, but now we all walk together, a thousand chattering friends in the great hall under the sky. Our conversations come with us as we go; we share tales of the day thus far and make plans for the night to come. We smile and joke and laugh, and we become oblivious to all of our surroundings. It is almost as if we, the walking, were still, and the world was moving briskly beneath our feet.

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