Manic Bookstore Cafe

Over the past month I have been using another blogging platform for my teaching. One result is that I practically feel like an expert blogger -- over the past four years I've used weebly, blogger, and WordPress. My university uses a platform designed by WordPress, so my students and I have been blogging there . Because the university really limits your color schemes, I was doing a parallel blog as well -- copying everything into the regular WordPress site so I could try different visuals. And mostly, I hate it. So I am giving it up. I will continue to post on the university site, but I have missed my Manic Bookstore Cafe, so I'm moving the content from WordPress to my "home" site, my favorite blog, the one I know and understand and can format the way I like. Even though it's owned by Google, so I can't use it in mainland China (most of the time), and it may take over my life (the way Amazon is trying to...). Whew. I'm committed. I'm staying ...

One of the problems with retail is that you have to keep regular hours. When a fabulous (if very bourgeois) gourmet shop opened in my neighborhood in Philadelphia a few years ago, they didn't post any hours. I would get up and go over to get a coffee and a croissant, or bagels for the kids, and the door would be locked. When I suggested that "before 8 a.m." was a good time for them to open up, the owner said: "yeah. We know. We're gearing up to committing to regular opening hours." The Milk & Honey Market at 45th & Baltimore, with owner Annie at the cash register. Blogs are like that. The statistics on numbers of blogs started are, I imagine, mind-boggling. And many times they peter out. It's as hard to have something to say in a blog on a regular basis as it is to open up at 7 a.m. day after day. (Well, maybe not quite as hard.) Commitment. Difficult in all its permutations. But in making up the silly business card pictured at le...