Stay tuned for a slide show of party pictures that we’ll post in a short while, and in the coming days as more people add their pix.

In the meantime, I wanted to report back about Food for Thought: A News Cafe’s first birthday Saturday. What a great party. What a joyful relief.

As you recall, I feared extremes: A few dedicated souls would show up and leave us with a humiliation of mountains of leftover food. Or the masses would appear, and leave us with trays of scattered crumbs and a posse of disappointed, hungry guests. (As one friend reminded me, 16,000 potential Food for Thought: A News Cafe readers could have attended. Hot flash.)

Neither happened.

Food Goddess Andrea Charroin baked a combined 1,100 lemon bars, rugelach, nut bars, brownies, chocolate chip cookies and apricot short breads. Of those, 18 lemon bars remained. We ordered 100 cupcakes. Of those, just 15 remained. About 12 gallons of coffee and 5 gallons of apple cider disappeared. Mike and Deanne Boehlert of Lassen Peak Winery poured every bottle they brought, right down to the last drop of wine. (Delicious wine, if you’ve not tried it. And it’s local. And the Boehlerts are wonderful, too.) Too bad we didn’t have one of those clicker people-counters. But by our rough guestimate a few hundred people came and went throughout the evening.

Most guests hailed from the Redding area. But others came from miles down the road, such as friend Jill from San Francisco, and my sister Bethany from St. Helena, and Jeff and Judy Morris from Weaverville, who paused from their campaigning to join the party.

Personally, the biggest surprise guests were Brendan Burns of L.A. and Chic Asturi of Santa Cruz, the best men at Bruce’s and my wedding 11 years ago, and his childhood friends many years before that. Those guys drove in a storm to attend the party Saturday in Redding, as did Jeff Gore (Food for Thought poker expert) of Chico, and Jennifer Jewell of Chico, whose program on KCHO, In a Northstate Garden, is one of my favorites, and whose website’s gardening columns, photos and audio interviews will soon link to our site. Cool! (Stay tuned.) And friends and web gurus Jim and Darcie Gore came from Elk Grove just for the party, too. Those are just the ones I knew about. We missed others too far away to travel for the party, such as son Joe Domke and Doug Cushman, our Paris friend, author and artist.

The Jim Dyar band was in its element. It sounded harmonious and terrific. Some guests (including the Greenbergs) were moved to dance.

For three solid hours, award-winning cartoonists Benita Epstein and Phil Fountain hosted the first-ever Cartoon-a-Thon, an improv-style art event where guests gave the cartoonists a scenario and they drew a customized, personalized rendition of it.  Guests were entranced, and so were we.  They drew for donations to benefit Shasta Women’s Refuge and People of Progress. All our net proceeds will benefit these two worthy causes. (Bruce is still counting, stay tuned.)

Alan Phillips’ year-in-review slide show was an entertaining reminder of how far we’ve come in 12 months from our humble beginnings. Alan chronicled how my son Joe in the Czech Republic (seemed wrong to have a party without him) created a little blog to cheer me up after I was fired from my newspaper job last October. The slide show featured the early months of the website, when techie friend/genius Jim Gore and friend Darcie Gore eased us through the technical labor pains and helped us raise Food for Thought from a modest website into a sixth-generation multifaceted news magazine - News Cafe - featuring local, independent journalism, nearly 50 contributors,  dozens of advertisers and thus far more than 1,000 interesting, engaging stories, cartoons, forums, recipes and all kinds of information that’s relevant to our lives.

Pinch me. I never would have believed a personal blog could grow into such a significant, locally owned, locally interested, online independent journalism site.

Never would I have believed that one year after my newspaper job ended I’d be celebrating the anniversary of a new journalism job, an even better, more fulfilling one.

The party acknowledged all that, made possible by you, the readers, advertisers and contributors.

Of course, no party goes off without a hitch.

We blew an electrical breaker with too many coffee pots on one outlet.

We had some bizarre, pre-party drama when a bunch of button tea-light batteries exploded. (I’d removed them from their packaging and stored a few dozen in a Tupperware container.) Apparently, they conducted energy all pressed together like that, then super-heated and blew up inside the plastic container. That popped the plastic lid and flung broken hot metal discs all over our work room off the kitchen.

A little boy accidentally left the spigot open on the water urn for a good long time.

Some people slipped in a side door without paying.

Oh, and some guests left a few belongings behind: 1 chamois-colored coat, 1 pair of clip-on earrings and 1 camera. (Drop me an email at donig@anewscafe.gmail.com to describe your missing item and claim them.)

Bruce and I blew it and printed some sheets of name tags on the wrong side of the paper.

Plus, it rained hard and left some guests standing in line outside under a pair of tents. I felt really awful about that.

All those things faded in the face of the sad news that Elvis, the Brewers’ handsome, sweet, dog, died a few hours before our party. Even so, Kelly, Steve, Max and Seth Brewer soldiered on, put on party faces and helped host a spectacular bash.

The room was abuzz in conversation. As you can see in this photo above, by Skip Murphy, it was also aglow in twinkle lights and floor lamps (after we’d wisely ditched the overheard fluorescent lights). Magic didn’t make it happen. Lots of friends and family helped before during and after the party.

A round of applause for party laborers Canda Williams, Linda Woodcook, Seth, Max and Steve Brewer, Andrea and Westley Charroin, Linda Gutierrez, Alan Phillips and his adorable daughters. I thank my sisters Shelly Shively and Bethany Chamberlain, son Josh Domke and his girlfriend Kat Fiscus. I thank Jackie Goedert, Jim and Candace Dyar, Joanie Pechanec, Charlie Price, Jim, Darcie and Laura Gore.

Everyone’s work paid off. Laughter. Smiles. Hugs. Eating. Drinking. Being merry. Surrounded by some of my favorite people in the world; dear friends, family, readers, advertisers, contributors and even a few curious people who paid to attend the party, not because they’d read our web site or gave two squirts about it, but because, “We heard it was the place to be.”

I think they heard right.

Kelly and I couldn’t have been more pleased.

We can hardly wait until next year.

We also hope you’ll stick around and continue being part of this “we” site. It’s definitely the place to be.