Mom and Pop's and Books and Stuff ...

Jim at serontoninrain shares this post about what appears to be a vanishing breed on the American cultural landscape ... the small, mom-and-pop bookstore ...

Here, In the Tall City, I still lament the closing of "Pages & Prints." And I found myself nodding in agreement more than once as I read Jim's post about what we stand to lose - not just as readers, but as a community - when such stores close their doors.

P&P's Jim and Alathea Blischke weren't just proprietors of a bookstore. They were - and still are! - friends of mine, and friends of my family. Among the gifts that greeted the arrival of our firsborn, was a copy of "The Legend of Bluebonnet" , a present from the Blischke's, inspired by one of the first photos we had taken of the our child, lying in a field of Hill Country bluebonnets.

While they do offer their own, unique advantages, our modern mega-bookstores simply can't compete in other respects. The setting at Pages & Prints was intimate, the contact was personal, and the experience of discovering old bibio-friends - or finding new ones! - was exhilerating.