The voters of Jackson County have overwhelmingly defeated the levy that would have reopened their public libraries.By a large margin the citizens of Jackson county refused to raise their property taxes to ensure the functioning of a public library system.From the Save Our Libraries website: A Dark Day...Thank you to all who voted to support Jackson County Libraries. The failure of ballot measure 15-75 marks a dark day in the history of our county. Nevertheless, our citizens and library supporters can be proud of a campaign filled with honesty, passion, and courage; a campaign that told the truth on behalf...
Independents and Community. It’s More than Economic Impact
A couple of weeks ago the San Francisco Retail Diversity Study was released. The goal was "to provide consumers and policy makers with an understanding of the economic benefits of redirecting spending from chains to independents."The study, sponsored in part by the American Booksellers Association (ABA), concluded that " independent retailers as a whole -- bring far more economic value to their communities than do chain stores."This is far from rocket science. Owners of independent businesses tend to live in or around the communities in which their business operates while the corporate chain store tends to feed the minimum wage...
Bill & Craig’s E-Textual Adventure
Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Craig Newmark, founder of the seminal classified website Craigslist, weighed in this week with their thoughts on the future of reading and newspapers. These enemies of hard copy were clearly in their print is dead mode.This years annual convention of The Newspaper Association of America featured Newmark being interviewed by Charlie Rose. A controversial choice to say the least since Newmark's brainchild Craiglist has single-handedly destroyed the classified advertising revenue stream that has fed newspapers for decades.He spoke of the need for newspapers to use their high profit margins to pay more attention to investigative...
A Full Service Bookshop
While the traditional bookstore model continues its death spiral I trust there is a core group of booksellers out there who are actively searching for the right combination to ensure both the survival and the success of "the bookshop."Simply trying to maintain the status quo is a failing proposition (feel free to substitute newspaper book review sections for traditional book store model, they are interchangeable).The independent bookstore has put up one of the better fights to date of any independent business in our corporate culture but it cannot ultimately win the battle without significant revision. We might have lost half...
Visuals. A Rockwell Kent Design and a Writer’s Method
1933, Houghton MifflinJarrett's first novel, a mystery. Follows a book of short stories she wrote under the pseudonym Faraday Keene.Her book bio includes this :"Unlike most writers, she thoroughly enjoys every minute she is at work. Her favorite method is to spread her papers over a grand piano and write standing up. This follows a long solitary walk during which she has organized her material"