I mistrust nostalgia, I think it is often lazy and reflexive. The world changes, and we either change along with it, or live on the margins, out of the great conversation. I can’t embrace everything that is new, I can’t mourn everything that is lost.

For most of my life, I was a book writer, an author, a best-selling one, it was a very honorable thing to be and I loved it. But that world is gone for me, and I do not spend much time mourning. it. It was my time, and I found new and exciting and relevant work to do.

I do love Brattleboro, Vt., an idiosyncratic, artsy bastion of individualism, an anti-corporate town. It has cafes, and people are welcome to sit in them and read, and it even has an old mystery bookstore, one of the last in the country. People still read book sin Brattleboro, there are two big old musty bookstores crammed with thousands of titles.

Along along Main Street, you get the sense you are still in a reading place, it seems that every other window has somebody sitting in the sun reading a book. This cafe/reading culture has vanished in most of the country.

There are few bookstores big enough to accommodate readers, and most people read now by holding cellphones up their faces while they walk or even work. I loved the sight of this man sitting in a cafe window in Brattleboro in the sun reading a book. He knows he is welcome to sit in that window all day, and someone is likely to come up to him and refill his cup, no charge.