I’m in the process of moving to Seattle, which means I’m living four hundred miles away in someone’s basement and making tough choices like a room of my own or a room with a view? Which sucks. I’m trying to keep myself excited about Seattle and the literary events there, like the show at the James Harris Gallery called “TXT artists investigating language,” and could be called “TXT artists making puns.” One of the (analog, btw) installations looks like a collection of pine-tree air fresheners, reading “Napalm.” Another artist has created textiles to look like the front page of South African newspapers, changing The Mail & Guardian to The Male & Guardian. C’est ne pas une pipe, yeah.

Walter Robinson's Forest smells horribly.

There’s also a bookstore I plan on checking out. I like the bookstore in my basement town, which pretty much does what a local independent bookstore does: Aunties sells books, invites authors to do readings and signings, hosts a book group, and provide space for the local writer’s guild to meet. I was always so satisfied with Aunties that I never thought to dream bigger.

Think about it: What else could a bookstore offer you? If your answer includes yoga, magic shows, beer, and access to a florist, I might have found the bookstore for you.
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Tattered Cover is Denver's biggest independent bookstore.

It’s finals week around here, so I thought I’d stir things up a little bit by talking politics. Apparently some Americans don’t like taxes, namely Americans who run multimillion dollar businesses like Amazon. I don’t get it, but maybe that makes me a socialist, and we know how Americans feel about socialists. Anyhow, here’s the story: Amazon had an Associates program in Colorado until just a few days ago when they terminated it because Colorado passed a law stating that online retailers who sell into the state have to pay sales tax. A group called ProgressNow Colorado is calling for all its members to boycott Amazon for being a big bully. Read the whole article in Publishers Weekly, and tell me what you think. I have to admit, I buy books from Amazon all the time because they’re often the cheapest and I’m poor, but every time I hear something about Amazon it’s how they’re making decisions solely based on profit, and maybe that’s what they’re supposed to do. They are, in fact, a business, and businesses are supposed to make a profit. But at what cost? Maybe the real question isn’t whether or not we should boycott Amazon but can businesses be moral and still succeed? Moral. What the heck is moral? Well, giving back to the communities that support you is a start. As hokey as it sounds, that’s really all Colorado is asking them to do, right, to be fair to the citizens who purchase goods from them? I don’t have the answers, but since it seems like money is always the most effective form of power, then voting with our dollars may be the only way to create change, if change is even what we’re looking for.