Please indulge for one day, I'm going to stray from the usual today. In no way is this post directly related to running, health, fitness, nutrition, food... basically any of the topics I normally cover. Instead it's about book stores.
There have been rumours for a few years now, that Borders, a national bookstore chain based in Michigan, has been on shaky grounds. I remember meetings when I was working for a record label when we'd talk about the situation Borders was in and how they were decreasing the number of album titles they'd stock in stores. Now I'm reading articles about the latest on Borders, holding off payments to publishers and some distributors are ceasing shipments.
I love going to bookstores. When I was in middle school and high school there wasn't a whole lot to do in our town (I was not one to go looking for trouble) so my friends and I would often hang out at the local coffee shop which was attached to a bookstore. Woody and I still can spend hours looking through books adding to our long list of books to read. Kind of like going to a record store. Putting on the massive headphones that are invariably too big, to try out as many albums as possible before settling on a few to take home. It seems that not as many people like to hang out in bookstores and record shops as they used to. This past Saturday Woody and I made a trip uptown to the big Barnes & Noble store at Lincoln Center. It was one of the best bookstores in the city, until it closed it's doors for good Sunday night.
While I spend a huge amount of my time online, it does make me a little sad to see these places go. They are great places to meet friends, to find new and exciting treasures and of course, they're a great source of jobs, too. One of the saddest things about the possible demise of Borders is that it could result in thousands of more jobs lost in Michigan, where the employment levels are already so low. I get that people are buying fewer books, hey, our own use of the library far outweighs the number of books we purchase now, and I do see the benefits of e-readers and buying online, but I still find it sad to see book stores close - local shops too.
Some people are happy to see big chains close, not because people lose their jobs, of course, but because they often put the local stores out of business when they open. I definitely appreciate and love to support small businesses, and there are some big ones that I'd rather not see expand any more than they have, but I do not like to see people lose their jobs or opportunities to be exposed to things like books and music be diminished. Who knows though, maybe if Borders does close, some of those employees will go and open their own small bookshops. Now, that would be a great thing.
How do you feel about this?
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today's workout -
50min/5.6mile elliptical
3x10 leg press
3x10 hammer curl
3x10 bicep curl
stretching
