Thursday, I went to the Battenkill Bookstore to prepare a video of Connie and Marilyn talking about their astonishing holiday season – best ever for the store – looking ahead to 2012, to more projects together, and to Connie and Marilyn’s own ideas and feelings about running a small independent bookstore. I’ve been encouraging Connie, as she points out, to use her blog to bring all of us into the experience of running a bookstore today.

Both of these women are trying to make sense of the Battenkill Experiment, something all of us are trying to sort out. Connie says the experience has redefined her notions of community. I see it as an affirmation of individual creativity.  Like having a farm, many people thinking running a bookstore is a simple fantasy, and a perfect life. There are wonderful things about both, and very challenging things, and Connie is resolved to begin telling that story. Marilyn is also thinking about her role – perhaps doing more book reviews and commentaries. She projects very well on the small screen. In addition, a number of local writers – me and Jenna Woginrich of Cold Antler Farm to begin with, are working with Connie to steer our readers to her store, as often as possible. I’m working to see that my E-book Original on Rose can be sold on Connie’s website.

The challenge, then, is to keep the Battenkill Experiment going, to make it a permanent, not a seasonal, reality.

I loved the video – nearly brought me to tears, really – and I couldn’t bear to edit it much, so it’s a bit over five minutes long, one of the longest I’ve done. It’s worth it, for what is says about courage, individuality, community and the great challenge in contemporary American for institutions like bookstores and people like Connie (and me, too, I suppose) to survive in the corporate nation.  You all do want to deal with human beings, and support them. Bookstores don’t have to disappear, you all have proven that.

So come and see and hear for yourself. I don’t think you will regret the time.