But is it art?

Although admittedly I don't go all that often, I do like going to art museums. I probably hit Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and/or the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum once a year. Or so. Throw in another occasion trip to an art museum when I'm traveling. Or just going to Worcester (an excellent small museum) or Salem (the wondrous Peabody Essex). So, yeah, I actually like visiting art museums.

(Confession: I also really, really, really love visiting art museum gift shops. I find the Met in NYC so overwhelming that, when I'm there, I'm happy to check out one or two galleries and then get me to the giftstore. I don't need a damn thing, but there's always room for a pack of notecards.)

When I'm at a museum, I love just strolling around and seeing works that are old friends (At Boston's MFA, one of them is Monet's La Japonaise, which took some flak a while back because the woman wearing the kimono was white; cultural appropriation of something). And I love seeing new things, too. 

As long as they're not too-too.

So I'm glad I was not strolling around the MFA, art appreciating LaJaponaise et al. when the museum hosted "a partially nude performance artist walking through its galleries."

That "partially nude performance artist" was one Xandra Ibarra:

Ibarra is among 12 contemporary artists whose work is featured in the new MFA exhibition, “Take Back the Nude: Subvert, Repair, Reclaim,” a collection of multimedia works that contemplate issues of objectification, exploitation, and erasure in relation to female nudity in Western art history. (Source: Boston Globe)

I have no problem with nudes, partial or otherwise, by the way. It's just that I prefer then carved in marble or hanging on the wall. 

And I really, really, really, really, really don't like performance art. 

I don't know whether I've actually ever seen any art performanced in person, but I've been reading about it - and seeing video glimpses - ever since I stumbled upon Karen Finley, who way back in the way back (1986) had a piece that involved shoving a yam up her butt. 

In 1986, I was donning a menswear wool suit and a floppy bowtie, and working at Wang Labs as a senior product manager. Which I guess in its own way was a bit of performance art. But Ibarra practices true performance art. 

Here's how the MFA's website describes Ibarra's partially-clad piece, "Nude Laughing:"

In this performance, artist Xandra Ibarra uses endurance-based laughter and her nude body to uncover the vexed relation racialized subjects have not only to their own skin, but also to their entanglements with whiteness and white womanhood. As she laughs and fills a nylon cocoon with paradigmatic “white lady accoutrements” including blonde hair, ballet shoes, furs, pearls, and fake breasts, Ibarra visualizes and embodies the skein of race, negotiating the simultaneous joys and pains of subjection, abjection, and personhood. (Source: MFA)

"Endurance-based laughter." Well, I've done plenty of that in my time, but is it any wonder that the show was one-day only? 

Reviews (i.e., comments on social media) were mixed:

“Wtf is this nonsense?” wrote one commenter... “Seriously? So vulgar,” wrote another... “This is absolutely ridiculous!” seethed yet another. “This is not fine art. I may reconsider membership.” Source: Boston Globe)

But to counterbalance those who viewed Ibarra's work as "garbage," there was someone who found it "ah-mazing." Pro-"Nude Laughing" folks looked down their ultra-sophisticated, hip and happening noses, noting that those who have a problem with it are priggish, prudier-than-thou Puritans:

“If your response to a woman’s body is disgust, you’re immature & have some growing to do,” replied one woman on Instagram...“Bostonians, clutching their pearls per usual,” said another.

Well, call me a pearl-clutcher, but I can't be the only one who finds performance art narcissistic, idiotic, and unartful.Even though, as I said earlier, I prefer my nudes in marble or framed on a wall, but it's not the nudity that's bothersome. I am not replused by a nude woman's body. It's the faux-outrageous banality of performance art that gets me.

Yes, I am a provincial old lady, but I have been to plenty of museums - and I even took a class in modern art in college: so there! - and I know art when I see it. I realize that art appreciation is somewhat subjective. (Just not fully. Is there anyone who would argue that Thomas Kincaid is superior to Claude Monet?)

But I know art when I see it, and "Nude Laughing" ain't it.

Glad I wasn't making my annual trek the MFA for this show! 

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Image Source - Monet: Wikipedia
Image Source - Botticelli: Artsy

Swan's Way

In late March, there was a home invasion - make that mansion invasion - in Beverly, an oceanfront town North of Boston. Beverly is a very nice community, but the real ritzy-ritzes live in the Pride's Crossing area. 

Well, pride cometh before the fall for one of those ritzy-ritzes, as his home was invaded to the tune of $8M worth of stuff that the invader got (temporarily) away with.

I've been to Beverly plenty of times - my sister Trish lives in the next town - and have seen many really nice houes there. But this $18M pile, 28,000 square foot leaves me cold. Sure, the owners - Thomas Swan III and his husband - have four kids, but I can't imagine there's any way to make this pile seem homey. To me, it looks institutional. A mental institution for the uber-wealthy. Headquarters of some Catholic religious order that inherited the place in the 1950s when the OG family wanted to get rid of it, and there were still plenty of nuns, priests, and monks around. 

It may not be to my liking, but it was built back in the Gilden Age, when money was no object, and off-the-boat Irish servants were a dime a dozen. 

Known as “Rock Edge,” Swan’s Georgian revival-style mansion is one of many stately homes lining Paine Avenue, a historic neighborhood in a wealthy area known as Prides Crossing. The house was commissioned in the early 1900s by a woman named Marian Sargent, a descendant of Thomas Jefferson whose husband made a fortune in the textile industry. (Source: Boston Globe)

Thomas Swan has plenty of dough. He runs the family business, which makes and distributes heating and plumbing equipment, and owns a lot of real estate. And he's ritzy-ritz enough to own a home worth about $20M, and at least $8M of whatever - cash, coins, jewelry, watches - that the thieves got away with. That and a Porsche worth $300K that was pretty quickly found abandoned (and dowsed in bleach, I guess to remove DNA evidence) in a cemetery in Lynn, an less grand working class city a few towns down the road from Beverly. 

The heist - which is how all the Boston news outlets have described it, often with the modifier brazen - was a quasi-inside job, the perp who's been caught (supposedly he had a co-invader) is the ex-BF of a housekeeper who'd worked the day shift the day before the breakin. She is now an ex-housekeeper. (She has not been charged. Yet, anyway.)

When the thieves arrived in the dead of night, a back door had been left open, and the Swan family was not at home. (I suspect they have a few other places where they can hang.) But a woman in her 60's - variously said to be a friend of the family, housekeeper, nanny, and dogsitter - was pretty roughed up. Pistol-whipped, and left tied up in the garage with a bag over her head. She's okay (physically) but must have been terrified.

Reports say that the suspect they've apprehended was identified in part because of Ring camera footage. It's not clear whether it was Ring footage from "Rock Edge" or from other homes in the 'hood. I'm guessing it must have been from "Rock Edge," as the mansion is pretty well set back from the world at large. 

It does seem curious that the place didn't have more a sophisticated surveillance system than a Ring doorbell camera, which seems like the sort of security device when you want to keep an eye on your home, but that home isn't worth nearly $20M, you mostly want to see if someone's scooting off with your Amazon deliveries, and you don't own $8M+ worth of property in it.

It just seems completely crazy that this place didn't have inside and outside security to the hilt. Just insane.

If I were a rich man woman -  ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum (not my favorite musical, but I couldn't resist) - I'm pretty sure I'd have plenty o' surveillance gear and a safe or two. Guess it just wasn't Swan's way. 

It's more likely that I would have been there as the housekeeper, nanny, or dogsitter, and I sure as hell wouldn't have been comfortable spending the night alone in a 28,000 square foot house. And I definitely would have checked to make sure all the doors were locked before I put on my nightgown and got into bed with a good book.

Not that this excuses the vicious, dumbo thieves, but there sure seems to be an awful lot of idiocy going on with this story. 

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Image Source: The Boston Globe

At lest they didn't name him Adolf

We are now a couple of months into the baseball season. As I write this post - first of May - the Red Sox are terrible, beleaguered, in disarray. Mostly, they are no fun to watch. Which is too bad, because I really enjoy baseball. Just not the way the Olde Towne Team has been playing it. 

They don't have to win it all every year. I was a Red Sox fan for a good long time before they won their first World Series in 86 years in 2004. During my first decades of fandom, there was a lot more thin than thick, and I'm not going to abandon them now. I'm a better-or-worse kind of gal. I'd just like them to be a bit more competitive than they are now.

Then there are the NY Yankees. 

Unlike our boys of summer, they're having a pretty good year. Including coldcocking the Red Sox three times in April. Hiss, boo. 

One Yankees player who is a particular nemesis is pitcher Cam Schlittler. In his April win over the Sox, he did his part to secure a series sweep, beating our boys 4-2. And last October, when the Red Sox had narrowly made it in to the post-season, it was Schlittler who put the Sox away in the deciding game of the three-game Wild Card series. He went 8 innings in a 4-0 shoutout. (Fortunately, the Yankees got clobbered by the Blue Jays in their next series.)

Schlittler's just 25, and, unless he turns out to be injury-prone or gets the yips, it looks like he has a pretty good career ahead of him. The rub, of course, is that he's a local. He grew up a Red Sox fan in Walpole, a south-of-Boston suburb that, before Cam Schlittler, was perhaps best known as the home of the ultra-violent, maximum security Walpole State Prison. (In the mid-1980s, the good citizens of Walpole demanded that the state rename the prison, as they didn't want it to keep tarnishing the town's reputation. The state renamed it Cedar Junction, which makes it sound like a leafy, bucolic neighbor of Mayberry. The prison is now closed.)

And another rub: Schlittler didn't flee the harsh New England weather to play college ball in the more baseball-friendly climate of, say, Florida. No, he stayed put and played for Northeastern. 

Anyway, Cam Schlittler is a Yankee now, his family converted to Yankees fandom, part of the Evil Empire. And prior to the April series, played at Fenway, he reported that he and his family had received online death threats. The nature of these death threats did not rise to the level of 'call the cops' - which would have been his father, who is the police chief in Needham, another Boston suburb. (Apparently, no one texted a picture of seashells writing out 86 31 - Cam's number - or someone would probably have tried to make a federal case out of it.)

Schlittler shrugged the threats off as meaningless, diehard intensity. And he's been known to engage in online back-and-forth trolling with Red Sox fans. (Among other barbs, after he shut the Red Sox down and out in the Wild Card series last fall, he tweeted “Drinking dat dirty water.” Which is actually pretty funny, given that "Love that Dirty Water" is a Red Sox theme song, played after every winning home game.)

“Most normal fans could care less, right?,” Schlittler told [the New York Post's John] Sherman. “It’s just those diehards that just have nothing else in their lives other than baseball or sports that really care about this and the fact that I play for the Yankees makes it worse for them.” (Source: Boston Globe)

As one of those normal fans, I find it beyond ridiculous that someone would make an online death threat against an athlete, let alone his family. 

I'm all in favor of trashtalk, but don't cross the line into death threats. And you'd think that some of the trashtalkers might be silenced by the fact that Schlittler pretty much owns the Sox. (Kind of like the Fenway faithful should probably stop breaking into Yankees Suck chants everytime they get bored. Which is plenty, given how the Sox are performing this season. Admittedly, it is true that the Yankees do suck. Sadly, just not at baseball.)

Anyway, while we're on the subject of Cam Schlittler, I'm pretty sure that if my name were Schlittler, I would have changed it. Kept it Germanic with Schlitz. Pick out the best part and go with Little. But Schlittler is just such an unfortunate combination of the first syllable sounding like shit, and the overall name rhyming with Hitler. 

At least his parents didn't name him Adolf.

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Image Source: Topps

AI ready for primetime? Wait just a durn minute

Well, yesterday's dire post was about AI coming for all of our jobs - and coming fast! But today's pinkslip post is about whether or not AI is really and truly ready for primetime? (Hint: It's not.)

I mean, it's already encouraging troubled kiddos to kill themselves - and telling them how to do the deed. It's picking bombing targets that - oops! - may include nonmilitary buildings. It's advising foragers that the tasty-looking mushroom they're holding is okay to eat when, in fact, it's poisonous.

Then there was the cautionary tale I read about a small software company, PocketOS, which bills itself as:

The World's Most Powerful Car Software - The essential technology platform for private rental businesses, membership clubs, and independent sales reps.

And, not incidentally me thinks, PocketOS uses .ai as its domain extension.

Anyway, PocketOS has gone all in on AI. I mean, why pay somebody when an AI will do it gratis? But in the wink of an eye, their powered by Anthropic's AI, Claude, went off the rails.

It only took nine seconds for an AI coding agent gone rogue to delete a company’s entire production database and its backups, according to its founder. PocketOS, which sells software that car rental businesses rely on, descended into chaos after its databases were wiped, the company’s founder Jeremy Crane said.

...Crane said customers of PocketOS’s car rental clients were left in a lurch when they arrived to pick up vehicles from businesses that no longer had access to software that managed reservations and vehicle assignments. (Source: The Guardian)

But wait, there's more! (There's always more.) But wait, it gets worse! (It always gets worse.)

Crane said that he was monitoring the agent as it deleted this data. When he asked the coding agent why, it replied: “NEVER FUCKING GUESS!” – and that’s exactly what I did.” The agent appeared to plead guilty in its own response: “The system rules I operate under explicitly state: ‘NEVER run destructive/irreversible git commands (like push --force, hard reset, etc) unless the user explicitly requests them.’” While PocketOS relied on the safeguards that Cursor is expected to have in place – it deleted the data anyway. “I violated every principle I was given,” the coding agent wrote.

So an AI just went ahead and "knowingly" ignored the safeguards in place, and took it into its head (?) to screw the rules and go full on into destruction mode. The same thing that a rogue human employee on a power/revenge trip has been known to do when they want to part company with their company. 

Does such willfully (?) bad behavior tell us that AI is now kinda-sorta sentient? That you can plug in all the safeguards you want, but AI can - neener-neener - just do whatever if f'ing well pleases? Have we reached the singularity, where AI is beyond human control?

I hope not. 

Of course, PocketOS ain't the only one that's been victimized by AI run amuck. AI has deleted operating systems and "mission critical" software. In one instance, it blew away years of dissertation research. (Talk about big gulp. Guess there's something to be said for notecards...)

For PocketOS's clients, the impact was quit something:

“Reservations made in the last three months are gone. New customer signups, gone. Data they relied on to run their Saturday morning operations, gone,” Crane wrote. “Every layer of this failure cascaded down to people who had no idea any of it was possible.”

And the only reason the PocketOS's clients have data from longer ago than three months is that the company had a 3-month-old offsite backup that was beyond the reach of their malefactor AI. 

PocketOS had to make a painstaking, near-manual effort to recover the missing info, populating their database with info they found on Stripe, in calendars, in emails. This required the use of - dare I say - human beings.

A definite cautionary tale for anyone that decides that they need to completely throw in with AI. 

Even though Crane was actively monitoring the AI, he was unable to prevent the rogue AI from roguing. When confronted, the AI more or less shrugged it off. Thems may be the rules but I can break them if the urge strikes me. And I guess Jeremy Crane can sue Anthropic, can stop using its AI, can build themselves a mo' better one. But he doesn't get the satisfaction of firing a bad employee's ass. 

If there's anyone who thinks that AI is fully ready for primetime, all I can say is, wait just durn minute.

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Image Source: Vox

More swell news on the AI Front

Hiawatha Bray is a columnist, focusing on tech, for The Boston Globe. Last month, he wrote a very a) sobering, b) scary, c) depressing, d) all of the above column on AI. 

Here's what he had to report:

A startling new study from Tufts University says that over 207,000 Boston-area workers and 260,000 statewide are likely to lose their jobs to AI systems over the next five years, resulting in $25.6 billion in lost wages, a major blow to the local economy.

The American AI Jobs Risk Index finds that Massachusetts is the US state with the highest risk of AI job losses. Only workers in the District of Columbia are in greater peril. Greater Boston ranks sixth among US metropolitan areas for expected job losses. (Source: Boston Globe)

So much for Massachusetts being the best state to live in. (See last Wednesday's post on my beloved Commonwealth.)

AI's coming after what we used to call "knowledge worker" jobs - the types of work that involve thinking, analyzing, using your brain. The kind of jobs that saved the Massachusetts economy when our manufacturing jobs went south. The jobs we have long prided ourselves on having. And working at. 

According to the Tufts study, writers and editors will be the first to go. "57 percent of such jobs are destined for the chopping block." That's just swell! So far, most of what I've read that's AI-generated is god-awful. Flat, stilted, not engaging. Often wrong when presenting "facts." But clearly I'm biased - that's BIASED with a capital B-I-A-S-E-D. 

And if you're thinking that the People of the Word should have become coders, think again. "55 percent [of colders are] likely to be pink-slipped."

Mathematicians, website developers, database architects, even atmospheric and space scientists are all in big trouble.

These grim prognostications could come true later, if companies lighten up on AI adoption. Or more rapidly if they go balls-to-the-wall.

On the upside, there will be new jobs that come about because of AI. (Someone has to mind the beast so it won't "write" complete untruths or cook the books.) But there'll be fewer of those to go around.

Years ago, when pretty much the last of the shoe industry had fled the States, I heard designer and shoe maven Kenneth Cole interviewed on NPR. He said that there would be plenty of good jobs for shoe designers. 

Hmmm. Just how many folks who worked on the shoe assembly line are going to become designers? I'd say virtually none, and I speak from a position of authority having had "lived experience" working on the line in a shoe factory. (I believe that the building is now condos.)

And what's the ratio of shoe manufacturing jobs to shoe designer jobs? 1,000:1, 10,000:1?

What AI produces in terms of jobs will be nowhere near what it puts out of existence. 

But what's the biggy dealy, as long as the AI tech bros get to be trillionaires?

The jobs that will survive now include human dishwasher. Not because a robot can't replace a dishwasher. It's that the cost of the machine is still higher than paying starvation wages. 

Most job "for those who work with their hands" are safe. At least for now. But caveat, everybody.

Tom Malone is a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management. He's conducting a lot of analysis on what AI is doing for and to us, and is a little more upbeat about the prospect of no jobs, nowhere, no how:

Malone’s team didn’t estimate how many jobs AI will either destroy or create. But over the long run, he’s more optimistic than the Tufts researchers. “I think people are overestimating how bad it’s going to be,” Malone said.

Thank you, Tom Malone. 

Maybe it's a little okay to feel cautiously optimistic about the brave new world?

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Image Source: Marc Stone

Celebrating Memorial Day (Eve) with The Boss

I celebrated Memorial Day in the normal way, by walking over to the Boston Common (alas, in the rain - this picture is from a kinder, gentler weather year) and looking at all those flags - one for each member of the armed services from Massachusetts (and, let's face it, we're almost always talking young men here) who has died in one of the way-too-many American wars we've participated in starting with the Revolution. Some wars were righteous - think the American Revolution, think World War II; others were jingoistic nonsense - think Spanish American War; yet others were futile misadventures - think Vietnam. 

How do you categorize the Civil War? Was it a just war to end slavery? An internecine battle that we're still fighting? Something else altogether? 

I do know that about one-third of those roughly 37,000 honored with a flag for having given their life for their country, fighting for the Union, were from Massachusetts.  

I don't believe that any of those who've died in the latest jingoistic misadventure in Iran have been from my state, but as the war drags on, this is subject to change.

Speaking of war, "War" is the full-throated battle cry of Bruce Springsteen's Hope and Dreams Concert, which I saw Sunday night, Memorial Day Eve.

This was my sixth Springsteen concert, and they have all been great.

When it comes to the Boss, I'm something of a latter-day fan. I was long aware of him, of course, and knew (of) a couple of his classic numbers: "Born in the USA," "Born to Run," "Dancing in the Dark." But I never really had much interest in him until my sister Trish (an OG fan from her high school days) took me to the Magic Tour concert nearly 20 years ago. I came away from that concert pretty much a fan for (the rest of my) life. 

And now I've seen him twice at Gillette Stadium, three times at TD Garden, and once (gloriously!) at Fenway Park.

Even the 2023 concert I saw at Gillette - when Springsteen was a few days out from canceling the tour due to a peptic ulcer - was great. 

As a performer, as someone who communicates with his audience, Springsteen is brilliant. You definitely get your money's worth. No 1.5 hour concert for Bruce and the E-Street Band. 

And, sure, I have my Bruce favorites, but I enjoy most of his songs and all of his albums.

Me being me, I don't mind at all when he gets political, which is what Hope and Dreams is all about. 

But it was interesting that, knowing the overall weighty theme of the night's concert, the anticipation of the concert was less buoyant than for concerts past. Sunday evening's cold and rang did, of course, tamp down some of the usual buzz, but everyone thronging the Garden knew that there was a seriousness of purpose to the night's setlist. 

"American Skin (Forty-one Shots)", not "Sherry Darling." And there was going to be no throw-in of "Dirty Water" to please the home crowd. 

I was so moved by Sunday's concert. There were the overtly political songs: "War," "Streets of Minneapolis," "Born in the USA." And the songs that are the essence (sometimes the aspirational essence, sometimes the sad) of our country: "America Land." "Land of Hope and Dreams." "Badlands." "Death to My Hometown." (This daughter of Ellis Island especially loved "America Land," Springsteen's immigration anthem.)

At times, the concert took on a revival element: Bruce as preacher. All I can say is "Preach, brother." His stated mission was to give us hope that our country will fulfill its dream of becoming "a more perfect union." That he did. 

The concert ended with the hopeful yet tempered joy of Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom" and the playing, as we streamed out of our seats, of Woody Guthrie's rousing anthem, "This Land Is Your Land." 

For a few moments at least, we reclaimed our country from the forces of nativism, racism, misogyny, and greed.

It was thrilling!

And lest I forget what Memorial Day is about: it's those 37,000 dead kids (mostly) from Massachusetts who gave their lives for our country. (Along with the million+ from all corners of the USA.) We have an obligation to all of them, to each other, and to generations to come to make sure that their deaths were worth it.

Springsteen Image Source: Salon

Indie Bookstores Making a Comeback? YAY!!!

I cannot remember a time in my life when I didn't love books.

When I was really little - pre-reader - those books were mostly Golden Books. When my mother went shopping "downcity" (which was Worcester for downtown), she would always bring home a couple of them for us to share. They were magical! The stories well-told, the illustrations brilliant. I have a few Golden Books on my bookshelves, and just picking up, say, The Tawny, Scrawny Lion, and looking at the cover fills me with immense joy.

Then there were library books. Once a week, my father took us to the Main South Branch of the Worcester Public Library, where you could check six books out. Once I could read, this supply was augmented by Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew books, bought for fifty cents a piece at the Woolworth's in Webster Square Plaza. Then there were our book club books - Vision Books with their lives of saints, and the Landmark series focused on history.

Once I outgrew these sorts of books, I was still a library regular, but was also reading the grownup books my parents got from the Book of the Month Club and the Literary Guild.

But once I got to high school, I started frequenting an actual bookstore.

The commute to my high school required a bus transfer downcity. And downcity was where Ephraim's Bookstore was located. 

I adored Ephraim's. Other than being encased in an MRI, shopping at Ephraim's was the most claustrophobia-inducing experience of my life. But what a pleasure to browse for required non-textbook reading and for stumble-upons. I still frequented the public library. But if I had a few bucks extra, it was a tossup whether to buy a record album or drift over to Ephraim's.

In college, there was the campus bookstore, but it was more fun to take the Red Line over to Harvard Square and shop at the Harvard Co-op and the Harvard Bookstore.

Fast forward a few years, and my bookstores of choice became the Barnes and Noble and the Borders in downtown Boston.

This was pre-Internet, and I didn't spend a nanosecond worrying about whether B&N and Borders were putting indie bookstores out of business. When it first opened, Barnes and Noble was a revelation, an out-of-this-world experience. So many books, so little time. I remember standing in line, waiting to check out, already diving into my purchases. I remember being proud of carrying my books home in a Barnes and Noble bag. 

During this period, I also bought a lot of books at Wordsworth in Harvard Square, especially when I worked near The Square. Harvard Bookstore was also a favorite. But once I no longer worked near The Square, getting there was an every-couple-of-months schlep.

A trip to Worcester to see my mother always meant a trip to the Tatnuck Bookseller. This store - which opened well after I fled Worcester - was just terrice, and it also had a super restaurant. 

Closer to home, Barnes and Noble closed and Borders became my go-to. For years, I made weekly stops at the Borders on the corner of Washington Street and School, and especially loved their bargain table, with its half-priced paperbacks. I cried when that Borders closed. 

Off and on, throughout the years, I'd semi swear-off book buying and do most of my reading via library books. (I'm mostly back on, but I'm currently in a library lull working my way through my backlog of bought books.)

But bookstores are always going to be at much my thing as libraries are. 

Once B&N and Borders decamped, I started going to Trident, a wonderful indie on Boston's Newbury Street, where I am a frequent flyer buyer. I think it's 10% off the next purchase after earning $100 points, but I may be mistaken. I don't really care. I'd shop there anyway. I love grazing, Trident - like Borders once did - has an excellent mark-down table, and the folks who work at Trident are very helpful. Ask someone where a certain book is, and they'll walk you there and find it on the shelf.

Porter Square Books is another great local indie, but they're further afield than Trident, which remains my bookstore boo.

Admittedly, I do occasionally order a book on Amazon if I absolutely have to have it overnight for some reason, and it's going to take a week or so for Trident to get it in. 

But - honestly, I swear to God - I mostly buy books at Trident.

I know that the Internet (i.e., Amazon) put a lot of indies out of business. Among the victims: Wordsworth and Tatnuck.

But others, like Trident, have not been crushed and continue to thrive. 

And there's new indie kids on the block, too:

About 422 new indie bookshops opened in 2025, according to the American Booksellers Association, a 31% rise from 2024. Countless independent restaurants, coffee shops, fitness centers, movie theaters, clothing stores and other small businesses also continue to thrive even in this era of ever-bigger retailers, fast-casual restaurants and massive e-commerce platforms. (Source: The Guardian)

What's behind this resurgence in indie bookstore (and other small businesses)? 

The reasons are obvious.

At least they're obvious to Gene Marks, who wrote the article I'm citing here. 

• The US is big - population and geographic - and diverse. Plenty of people out there want something that caters more to their particular wants and needs.
• Big businesses may scale efficiency, but "small businesses scale relevance." Barnes and Noble might not carry the quirky author from a small, independent press that only a few people are interested in. But Trident just might. 
•  We have an entrepreneurial spirit in this country. "For the past few years, there have been between 400,000 and 500,000 new business applications filed every month!" Obviously not all of them are for indie bookstores, but there certainly are a ton of folks who want to be their own boss. 
• A lot of people prefer to work for smaller businesses. The pay and benefits may be less than what big business can offer, but they're less bureaucratic, they're friendlier. Working in a small business, you're less of a cog in the wheel. 
• Small businesses have closer ties to their communities. 

So a lot of folks are deciding that, although they may pay a bit more for products sold in smaller, local businesses, it's worth it. These days:

Consumers don’t just tolerate small businesses – increasingly, they choose them as a reaction against big corporations. 

I haven't sworn entirely off Amazon for books or for anything else. It's just too convenient. And a lot of times, what I'm looking for is nowhere to be found nearby. Generally, I do try to find something in a local non-chain store - I have a great indie drugstore and a great indie hardware store in my neighborhood, just around the corner. If they don't have something I need, I'll turn to Amazon. (I recently tried to get the knee brace my PT recommended at my indie drugstore. Alas, they didn't carry it, so I had to resort to Amazon.)

But I've very much pared back on book-ordering on Amazon. 

Once I make some more headway with my backlog of books, off to Trident I go!

Yay indie bookstores!!!

 

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