Border Closing Ahead

Closing time, you don't have to go home but you can't stay here.

News hit this week that Borders bookstores filed for bankruptcy, meaning the eventual closing of many branches of the chain. Included in this exodus is the store next to my house and the store next to my office. No bucks, double whammies!

Now, I know that to everything there is a season. Maybe the physical bookstore is the 8-track of the 21st century. Fun while it lasted, destined to become obsolete. But the closing of Borders ends an era.

Long ago and far away, going to Borders was a Kramy/Peters family ritual. If you've read this blog at all or actually know us in person, you are aware that my fellow blogger and I are NERDZ. None of the following should come as a surprise.

In our youth, the parental units would take me and my brother to Borders, often post-boring adult errand, as a bribe to keep us in line. We thought this was pretty awesome (re: nerdz). All of those books...there just for us to rifle through! Glorious. My parents had to feel like it was free babysitting. Each member of the family would happily splinter off to the section that interested them the most. Were you into sharks this week? Science section. Had you just seen The Lion King? CD section. Were you Dad? Newspaper and pastry at the in-house cafe.

Let's be clear, as a kid at Borders, I wasn't ever browsing for Joyce or skimming Dostoevsky. Nerdery had some limits. Tastes varied according to age but usually I was looking for something that, at this distance, feels faintly embarrassing.

"I thought the old lady dumped it into the ocean
in the end? - Well baby, I went down and got it for you.
- Aww, you shouldn't have!"

Elementary school was spent in the Babysitters Club or Anne of Green Gables aisle. As a preteen, I was jonesing for the latest novel in the Sunfire Young Adult Romance series. A series focused on 16-year-old girls (!!!) in historical situations, being wooed by competing handsome suitors. One was usually rich but stodgy and the other was poor but respected the heroine's feisty [anachronistic] nature. Whom to choose?! OMG, lol, ttyl! My favorite of the series was the story of Nicole on the Titanic. I'm pretty sure the author has a viable lawsuit again James Cameron.

Whew, I digress. Borders. As I grew up, reading interests evolved (thank God), but the store was always there to support that. In adulthood, Borders's extensive magazine section provided design inspiration for work. Or offered a free place to sit and read a book that I wasn't committed enough to buy. Ermm...forget that last bit. Sorry, Borders!

Maybe I'll eventually get into the Nook/Kindle phase (birthday's in June, people!), but until then I'll probably shift to Barnes & Noble. Holding an e-reader just doesn't seem to stack up against holding a real book with that paper smell.

Conveniently I just got a notice from Borders.com that my local branch is liquidating their stock NOW. And so, for old time's sake, away I go.

The Chicago Easy Button

If you press the red button, you will get your
heat, but a person will die
somewhere in the world.

Today is November 3rd, which means one crucial thing has changed in Chicago since October. New political leadership, you guessed? True, but like that makes a difference! Nope. Far more importantly, it is Day Three of the El platform space heaters being turned back on!

I speak for myself, but I project that every Chicagoan must have a love/hate relationship with the Easy Button. I love that I can stand under the toasty lamps with my pigeon colony friends and have a buffer from the frigid wind. Especially valuable given that my office El stop is perhaps THE COLDEST PLACE IN THE WORLD. That's saying a lot considering I spent four years in Siberacuse.

But I hate that I have to use it at all. Its reemergence each fall means that deepest winter is around the corner and pretty soon I will be pushing that button like a cocaine-addicted mouse in a lab experiment.

The first rule of Easy Button (and the only one) is that if you are standing nearest the button, your sole role in life while on that platform is to reset the heater the split second the timer kicks off. Preferably a second before it turns off. Count in your head if you have to. Yesterday, I stumbled into the button keeper job and let a whole two seconds pass after the lamps turned off before several people's heads whipped around at me, as if to say, "W.T.F.? Do your JOB, woman!" My reflexes will improve. By February I will be an Easy Button Ninja.

If a tree falls in the boreal forest, how much do I owe Greenpeace?

Save the world! Just $20!

Though I live in Chicago and dodge minor city dangers on a routine basis, my office is located in Evanston, a leafy urban-suburban hybrid just north of the city. It should be an oasis. In addition to two Whole Foods, a host of gourmet fro-yo shops, multiple sushi houses, and most essential services in an tastefully-designed downtown, this paragon of urban planning also houses an elite university. Powers combined, the place is bursting with yuppie guilt and eager students. 

And how is all that do-goodery enthusiasm to be channeled? Social petitioning of course! Initially, my own enthusiasm was right up there with the perky, clipboarded ones. Save the environment! Support women's rights! Well, I'm a woman AND I enjoy trees! Rock on.

The shine wore off the day I succumbed to Greenpeace. Anyone who has been hooked by the question "Don't you have a minute for [fill in cause here]?" knows that the subtext is, "Don't you have $20 [minimum] non-tax-deductible dollars a month to fund us?" If I stood on the corner and repeatedly asked for a Jackson a month to aid the greater good of my bank account, I am sure I would be run out of town by these very same people. (Don't email to lecture me on selfishness. I would never ask for $20. Smaller denominations are perfectly acceptable.)