Locavore

This weekend my wife attended a convention of independent booksellers from all over the nation. She has worked at local or I should say "locally-owned", bookstores for at least 10 years. Our hometown is experience what everyone else is, a local culture and economy devoured by big-box stores, suburbanization, and rampant development. The convention presented several speakers that impressed my wife very much with their progressive, and my that I mean proactive, views on local economy and locally-owned businesses. Another great example here is Horton's Hardware. This store, under a few different names, has been open for many, many years. It is the quintessential local hardware, filled to the ceiling with odds and ends and brimming with ancient artifacts of plumbing and painting long past. I try to trade (using a term used by my Louisiana grandfather) there as much as I can. Larry the owner often has a forlorn, downtrodden face, that of a man on his last leg, attached to a think and disintegrating tether.