Thursday, June 18, 2009

Thoughts On Local (Continued)

The last few days I’ve been going up to the Northshire to look at the galleys and make corrections. I’m in that almost-book stage, when one frets over commas and looks up words in the dictionary ten times.

The Northshire and my other favorite shop in town, Al Ducci's Italian Pantry, have in their windows "Buy Local" decals that look like this.

Upon moving to Vermont a dozen years ago, I was struck by the awareness that in a small market like ours every purchase matters. I found that knowing this, buying things from local merchants took on an added dimension, that of a relationship as well as a transaction. This consciousness of how and where I buy combined with my recent explorations in economic processes have led me to look more deeply at "Buy Local" programs. One result is this article that's been up this week on Time.com on why buying local matters.

Okay, so I've got this book that's written, designed, and produced locally. This is an approach that I value and want to support. The book will be sold at the Northshire (and whatever other outlets I can convince!) as well as online. But do I want this to be a "local" book and reach only readers around here? Heck no! I believe that there's another kind of "localness" based on common interest. These are the communities that the Internet and the new social media have allowed us to form. How to find this community of readers will be my next challenge. And that means grappling with the subject of the book.

But for the moment, let's stay local as in Southern Vermont. This is Al Ducci's. I dare you to stop by and not want to buy everything on the shelf. Homemade mozzarella, anyone?

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