There is a great photo of Ann Patchett perched on a front table in her luminous independent bookstore, Parnassus, taken last year. You may have seen it. It was in a small national newspaper and then perhaps, on every booklover’s social media feed for days. I still see it occasionally on mine. I quietly bow to Ann each time.

I then (sometimes) look lovingly into Bookbug’s own (less luminous, more harried, equally earnest) space and my own (less luminous, more harried, equally earnest) eyes, and smile at something bigger–and more luminous–than either of these pictures, or places, or people.

I smile at the fact that the independent bookstore is safe.

That the “brutal beatings” we weathered (so termed by business reporters and real-life exhausted operators) were not actually “brutal.” They were inconvenient (perceived conveniences to some): the rise of the Big Box, the growth of online shopping, the steady intrigue of digital intake. All of it interesting, some of it troublesome and none of it touching the actual value in the business of tending books, or knowledge or art. None of it poking through the soul of any true endeavor to do these things, and therefore none of it actually “brutal” at all.

Even the comeback story of the independent bookstore may have been embellished. I enjoyed it (and perhaps our store benefited from it) as much as anyone.  It was rumbling in the belly of the industry even before Patchett and her seemingly brilliant workhorse of a partner, Karen Hayes, opened their store in Nashville in 2011. But those among us who had laid bookish wood floors, painted exposed ceilings, group- epiphanized chalkboard section signs, and survived the lowest-functioning retail economy in decades knew darn well we had something stronger than comeback energy or foolish hope to bank on.

We had our human Selves.

We had the imagination and gall to want to work in a place, with an offering, and toward a goal we care deeply and passionately about, to allow customers and colleagues to support a creative and welcoming home of spirited alertness. We didn’t know if these were the characteristics of the leaders and consumers of a profitable company, but we did know that they were the characteristics of a shared good life. We were selfish in our desire for one.

As years in business and life go on, we are also keenly aware of life breaking, that life is, by definition, broken.

In preparing for a recent staff meeting, I thought about the irreparable loss our store had suffered in the weeks prior: a family of passionate readers whose teenage son died unexpectedly; a father to three vibrant, hilarious kids taken by a car accident; a partner, writer and friend gone on one unjust winter’s night; a bitter, angry,  confused and increasingly belligerent country.

These were stories that broke us. As a bookstore we were (and are) not here to alter or fix them. I took (and take) incredible comfort though in the fact that we are here to be alive and alert to them, to be present in the very same way any worthwhile book, story, or work of human art is: as a physical, intellectual, and emotional recognition of the fact that life is hard and also astoundingly beautiful , that soulful sanctuary is needed and that thought and art and love may be all that any of us should ever dream to have.

A beautiful bookstore is a place to find it.

This is exactly why I bow to Ann Patchett every time I see her in her photo or and hear her cheering on indies, even if we are not really the underdogs. It’s why I agreed to take my own picture.

And so here we are, Ann, in our pictures, holding our dogs, holding our cause, holding our customers in a promise to be present for them, and in the hope (nay certainty) that they will choose to be present back.

Here’s to crowds of them wanting to do so on Saturday, April 29th when you and I and hundreds of earnest bookstore owners have a party in support of our loves.

#independentbookstoreday2017