Where do all the books go?

Where ever I travel I can’t help myself to look at printed products. My usual motivation is to search out a bookstore. Not the common chain like Barnes and Noble but the mom and pop variety. Believe it or not you can still find a jewel of the written word if you look hard enough. I stumble upon them many times. Usually they are located off the beaten path. If you enter and there is a musty smell in the air you hit jack pot. Dark walls  that dim any light is a special treat. A tiny cluttered bowel of printed pages. Books and magazines that someone found appealing with some long forgotten importance—a guide to building a bomb shelter comes to mind. How many volumes sold I wonder, and if they double as storm shelters.  

Most times I see rack cards in hotel lobbies for shows, brochures for museums, business cards for 2 for one special a kaleidoscope of color for entertaining activities. I reach out and grab a map for the double-decker city tour and browse the legend for points of interest.  Was it digitally printed? Offset printed? 

Post cards from 50 years ago of buildings still standing and others fallen in the march of time. I like buying and sending the old ones. Yellowed on the edges and out dated they send the same message; Thinking of you, wish you were here. A ragged edge of skyscrapers where there once was horizon. There is permanence in the printed word and picture. 

 

Oh that reminds me I better back up my digital pictures and journal.