F. Leon Wilson wrote:
>Chomsky subscribers:
>
>How do you acquire information and new knowledge?  If you are like me, it
>is through reading books, magazines and the literature of our favorite
>critics and authors.  . . . gaining
>access to materials outside the mainstream and the controlling Right and
>Left seems more and more difficult.
. . .
>extrapolate what happens when a the combined impact of a consumption based
>economic system couples with classism and blocks the free flow of
>intellectual discourse.
. . .
>F. Leon

Snipped from an email, the item below is one thing that can be done
with your local superbookstore.
=======================
Check out the Greens homepage
for our bi-monthly forums and meetings.
http://home1.gte.net/populist/politics/greens.htm

CALENDAR ITEM

Saturday, June 10, 4:00 p.m.
Joel Jordan and Alex Caputo-Pearl, radical teachers
and activists, will lead a  discussion of "Radical Visions of Education:
Beyond the Corporate Practice of Liberal Goals."
At the Ecology Discussion Group, Border's Books & Music .

Saturday, June 24, 4:00 p.m.
John Johnson, editor of Change-Links and
a long-time activist, will lead a  discussion of "New Left
Radicalism in the 1960s and Today."
At the Ecology Discussion Group, Border's Books & Music .

Also check out the new website for the Peoples' Convention - L.A. 2000:
http://www.peoplesconvention.com/
=======================

Plus, Borders has books. I bought two of them. Plays by Harold Pinter.
However, my several copies of Pynchon came from Amazon or Barnes and
Noble online.
I'm not going to address the commodification, appearance and reality of
superbookstores but it's a spectacle that I'm not entirely opposed to
and find quite amusing. Additionally, anonymity can be a plus -- the
national security apparatus is probably not surveilling the
superbookstores and injecting moles, diffusers or agents provocateur.

From the article that F. Leon Wilson included:
> . . . "Rather
>remarkably," Mr. Collins writes, "the superstores have cultivated an
>atmosphere that allows, if not encourages, their patrons to ignore or
>suppress the consumer impulse and to use them as substitutes for the
>lending library -- that is, for the not-for-profit cultural institution
>that played a critical role in the creation of a literate public and hence
>in the social mobility of generations of Americans." . . .

I'd take issue with that interpretation and replace it by noting that
the superbookstores' sheer lust for foot traffic and providing a
fulfilling shopping experience may provide some opportunity but this is
not the same as encouraging critical thinking.