• Jewish students at FAU are owed an apology
• Fountain pens, quill pens, old pens and nickel pencils
• Sean Hannity and the other radio jerks
• Trayvon Martin shooting requires federal investigation
• Words that ‘inspire’ can also be misused, as history of Ku Klux Klan in Florida shows
• Caffeine withdrawal can cause one heck of a headache
• Roosevelt Wilson will join us; we see Haley as Romney’s running mate
• Age may tell story as Romney and Gingrich face off in Florida
• GOP top candidates in Florida will have to overcome the deficits of age
• Maybe Robert Champion Jr. should have been home, studying
• Seminole football team deserves encouragement rather than doubt
• Mitt Romney hopes that this will not be his last supper in Tallahassee
• Did secession die with Jefferson Davis? Burial speech in Tallahassee praised new, unified country
• Moonpie and a Nehi
• Fewer bookstores and that uneasy feeling that we could have done more to prevent this loss
• End of world is around corner, authorities predict - While the demise of Earth is predicted, many people seem to be skeptical. ...
• Gore tells victim’s parents he has become different person; his death takes 19 minutes at Raiford - Remorseful killer David Alan Gore, strapped to gurney, was dead in 19 minutes after lethal injection. ...
• Bragging about what you’ve done can get you to the death chamber quite a bit faster - Prisoner set for execution April 12 could have learned a lot from Charles Profitt....
• FAMU professors patent new medication for schizophrenia - African-Americans suffer three times rate of schizophrenia says recent research ...
• Murder comes without any warning as rage can build in state’s prisons - Any prisoner can become dangerous and there are ways to make deadly weapons and time to do it. ...
• Many innocent may languish in prison on corrupt testimony, legislative payment shows - Dillon case, Pitts and Lee demonstrate that justice is sometimes difficult to come by in Florida...
• Clues to a murder: forensic botanist finds the little things in death - David Hall helps law enforcement trap the bad guys with botanical clues...
• Honduras jail fire recalls horrific Florida prison blaze where 38 perished amid lingering questions - A scene of racial fights, the Florida road prison in Jay exploded into fire in 1967, leaving truth yet to be fully told. ...
• Waterhouse executed proclaiming innocence - Convicted murderer Robert Waterhouse, 65, died by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison in Starke, with unsettling words....
• Florida Senate kisses an emotional goodbye to prison privatization - Public prisons get a valentine as senate proposal fails in a 19-21 vote; meanwhile, execution slated today...
• Group alleges more financial links to privatization; vote could be today - A watchdog group alleges that privatization backers have financial links the effort ...
• Florida A&M Rattlers have played in 25 of the 46 Super Bowls - Dallas star Bob Hayes won a Super Bowl ring and an Olympic gold medal. ...
• Freedom rider rabbi remembers his arrest in Tallahassee airport 50 years ago - Ministers eventually served sentence, worked as road crew before release from jail ...
• Second Harvest signature soups will help fight child hunger on Wednesday at Capitol - One in six people locally struggle for enough to eat ...
• Cancer patient slips away from hospital to give stranded bus riders a last Christmas gift - In his battle with cancer, he relied on city buses . . . and now he had a plan to help people who didn't know the buses were down for the day. ...
Fewer bookstores and that uneasy feeling that we could have done more to prevent this loss
It’s not easy to watch another building go empty in Tallahassee, and particularly a bookstore where we took delight in wandering about, seeing what was new or amusing on the shelves. And sitting down to enjoy a cup of coffee.
Yet this week, we bought several books online, and not from Borders. Yes, if it were a last-minute need, and the book were not available anywhere, we might have ended up at Borders. Or if we needed a magazine to which we did not subscribe. But it rarely happened, and that, I think, might be a problem.
As one national story said, Borders and other bookstores are often treated as amusement parks for those who love books. And no one is paying for the ride by buying the books.
We live with thousands of books in our home, stacked on shelves in every room I can think of, ranging from Shel Silverstein’s children’s books to hundreds of volumes of history, philsoophy, botany, physics, science fiction and regular fiction. This is not to mention the textbooks left by four departing children, along with pets and other paraphernalia that parents always inherit.
Books continue to be published, and there is always something interesting to buy, or a book urgently needed for an academic paper or for our pursuit of the most perfect photograph of a particular wildflower, described therein in a way we can not resist. When one of our children desperately needed a novel for class at the last minute, we often headed to Borders to get it.
Why Borders failed, according to news reports, is that the firm was late getting on-line, where most people are ordering books these days. Getting books in the mail is nothing new, as I grew up when my parents were members of the famous Book of the Month Club and the Reader’s Digest Book Club.
But the rapid ascent of the Internet made it possible that wishes be granted quickly and that books be delivered to the front door in a couple of days. This might include rare books or some that one simply had to possess, as if mere possession of a book meant one had absorbed the wisdom within it.
We made our choice and that choice was to order online. It’s a valid choice, but one that does the community very little good, unless you work for UPS or Fedex.
I know that Barnes and Noble, Books-a-Million, the school bookstores and the rest of the local bookstores are looking with some trepidation at what has happened.
Perhaps some of us should all pay a visit to a real bookstore and actually buy a book there.
That would be a change for the better.