Good-bye Old Friend, Hello Strange New World – The End of Borders and Our Lives After It
It’s gone and no more. The struggle is over. The plug pulled. The eulogy given. Borders Books and Music has been laid to rest in a tomb in the center of a vast and growing necropolis of dying bookstores all over the country. Disenchanting and heartbreaking that it is, this is the future after all. 2011 is steaming (or, should I say, high-speed streaming) forward to 2012 in this technological, broadband, instant access age, and books are changing. Be happy about that. Be thrilled, in fact, that they are changing, evolving, and developing and not being left behind entirely like cassette tapes or tube TV’s, because that is what matters the most here. Remember, stories are still being told. Writers are still writing. People are still reading.
Educators and book enthusiasts qualm over the lack of people reading today, but honestly, when haven’t they? And while this is something that is constantly being addressed and debated, I can’t say I completely share the bitter gloom that some paint. You can join any number of book reading communities like Goodreads, Shelfari, or LibraryThing and see that reading certainly is alive and well. What people have to remember is that things are always going to change like they always do. With new technology, new forms of entertainment, and new stresses for people to handle in their lives, other outlets of technology, entertainment and stress becomes shuffled around or, unfortunately for some, taken out of the deck entirely. Reports of new gadgets soon kill off other outdated ones that become worthless and slow. The convenience of instant downloadable content like movies and music soon make compact discs and VHS players obsolete. And with the passing of polio comes the bigger, scarier monster that is AIDS.
Yet, if you look at every case, the core of these realities remains: technology is a constant because there is always room for improvement; engineers and creators are always producing new means of enriching our lives through software and data access. Communication has created a globalization of our new and connected world community where nothing is a secret for very long. And, obviously, the whole of the medical field isn’t going anywhere any time soon, because with each eradication comes a new strain.
Admittedly, this is going a little overboard for being about the passing of a national bookstore chain, but I guess I just want you to see how I see it. Reading isn’t going anywhere - the core remains. People are surprising and funny sometimes, and while reading isn’t the chief means of entertainment in the world the way it used to be a hundred years ago, stories will always be told. This isn’t a stumbling block to reading but merely growing pains for the new millennium - a time when muscles form and hair begins to grow in strange places, as will books begin to take shape in e-readers, smart phones and on the computer screen.
Personally, I had a kind of unique relationship with Borders that I never really shared with anyone until now. I guess you could say its demise spurred in me feelings that were buried by the moment at hand, by the excitement of being in a vast palace of fresh, new books, and not just a limited selection provided to me by my local library. In retrospect, I was sort of like a child who doesn’t understand or realize what they have until it’s too late – for me, that realization came when public school started, and I didn’t grasp the easy life I had, nor did I appreciate it until I had to wake up early every morning and go there.
It wasn’t that I had a special connection with the company on any kind of financial or interpersonal level, but coming from the rural Midwestern farmlands of Ohio, Borders and B&N signaled in me a kind of keystone of reaching a City, an urban cultural centerpiece with a sophisticated pinnacle, a hub of likeminded readers and thinkers. It was the signpost that said you reached civilization. In a way, it does pain me to think I won’t be greeted with those signs any longer, that one of the two great nucleuses of the written word has fallen from grace, a teacher has left their pedestal. But what I take comfort in is the accessibility of what I have in pocket right now, or with the machine I’m writing this article on. The reminder that everyone from here on will have the kind of freedom and simple entry into a world of knowledge and entertainment that I didn’t have growing up. Strange how I’m not even thirty yet and that passage makes me sound fifty years older. This, of course, only proves the rapidity of the age we live in.
Too, added with the fact that I’m a self-published author on the cusp of a grand and swiftly growing new realm of possibility, is a new kind of thrill I can use to replace the loss of the big chain bookstore. In any case, here’s to the memories. Here’s to the blood red walls and the smells of newly shipped books and freshly brewed coffee. Here’s to the college students cramming for tomorrow’s exam, huddled together like campers around a sparking, crackling fire of information in the stacked textbooks at their table. Here’s to the bum seeking shelter and a place to sit down out of the cold or the heat. Here’s to the Horror, Sci-fi and Romance sections. Fare thee well, old friend. A moment of silence, please.
(And here’s to tomorrow and what future holds for readers and writers alike.)
Educators and book enthusiasts qualm over the lack of people reading today, but honestly, when haven’t they? And while this is something that is constantly being addressed and debated, I can’t say I completely share the bitter gloom that some paint. You can join any number of book reading communities like Goodreads, Shelfari, or LibraryThing and see that reading certainly is alive and well. What people have to remember is that things are always going to change like they always do. With new technology, new forms of entertainment, and new stresses for people to handle in their lives, other outlets of technology, entertainment and stress becomes shuffled around or, unfortunately for some, taken out of the deck entirely. Reports of new gadgets soon kill off other outdated ones that become worthless and slow. The convenience of instant downloadable content like movies and music soon make compact discs and VHS players obsolete. And with the passing of polio comes the bigger, scarier monster that is AIDS.
Yet, if you look at every case, the core of these realities remains: technology is a constant because there is always room for improvement; engineers and creators are always producing new means of enriching our lives through software and data access. Communication has created a globalization of our new and connected world community where nothing is a secret for very long. And, obviously, the whole of the medical field isn’t going anywhere any time soon, because with each eradication comes a new strain.
Admittedly, this is going a little overboard for being about the passing of a national bookstore chain, but I guess I just want you to see how I see it. Reading isn’t going anywhere - the core remains. People are surprising and funny sometimes, and while reading isn’t the chief means of entertainment in the world the way it used to be a hundred years ago, stories will always be told. This isn’t a stumbling block to reading but merely growing pains for the new millennium - a time when muscles form and hair begins to grow in strange places, as will books begin to take shape in e-readers, smart phones and on the computer screen.
Personally, I had a kind of unique relationship with Borders that I never really shared with anyone until now. I guess you could say its demise spurred in me feelings that were buried by the moment at hand, by the excitement of being in a vast palace of fresh, new books, and not just a limited selection provided to me by my local library. In retrospect, I was sort of like a child who doesn’t understand or realize what they have until it’s too late – for me, that realization came when public school started, and I didn’t grasp the easy life I had, nor did I appreciate it until I had to wake up early every morning and go there.
It wasn’t that I had a special connection with the company on any kind of financial or interpersonal level, but coming from the rural Midwestern farmlands of Ohio, Borders and B&N signaled in me a kind of keystone of reaching a City, an urban cultural centerpiece with a sophisticated pinnacle, a hub of likeminded readers and thinkers. It was the signpost that said you reached civilization. In a way, it does pain me to think I won’t be greeted with those signs any longer, that one of the two great nucleuses of the written word has fallen from grace, a teacher has left their pedestal. But what I take comfort in is the accessibility of what I have in pocket right now, or with the machine I’m writing this article on. The reminder that everyone from here on will have the kind of freedom and simple entry into a world of knowledge and entertainment that I didn’t have growing up. Strange how I’m not even thirty yet and that passage makes me sound fifty years older. This, of course, only proves the rapidity of the age we live in.
Too, added with the fact that I’m a self-published author on the cusp of a grand and swiftly growing new realm of possibility, is a new kind of thrill I can use to replace the loss of the big chain bookstore. In any case, here’s to the memories. Here’s to the blood red walls and the smells of newly shipped books and freshly brewed coffee. Here’s to the college students cramming for tomorrow’s exam, huddled together like campers around a sparking, crackling fire of information in the stacked textbooks at their table. Here’s to the bum seeking shelter and a place to sit down out of the cold or the heat. Here’s to the Horror, Sci-fi and Romance sections. Fare thee well, old friend. A moment of silence, please.
(And here’s to tomorrow and what future holds for readers and writers alike.)
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