I AM A PASTOR of a congregation in a rural community and many of our members are farmers, so I have appreciated the attention you have given over the years to rural issues and sustainable agriculture vs. corporate farming. The corporate near-monopolization of the beef and pork industry is working a real hardship on some of our folk. Your September-October 1995 issue ("Hallowed Ground: Learning to Live Rightly on the Earth") was another fine example of this kind of attention to a problem that in a variety of ways is engulfing us all.
So I was, perhaps understandably, disappointed when I reached the "Calendar" in that issue to notice that all the listed book-signings for The Soul of Politics were at Borders. Now I occasionally shop at Borders, and I even on occasion wear a Borders T-shirt (a gift), but in Ann Arbor I prefer to shop at the Shaman Drum, one of the few remaining truly great independent bookstores. Especially when The Soul of Politics is published by an independent, non-profit publisher, The New Press, it would make sense to vote with the presence of your merchandizing strategy and person for independent, struggling bookstores rather than for K-mart-owned, corporate Borders Books.
Is a sustainable, human-sized economy the walk of Jim Wallis and Sojourners, or merely the talk?
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