Sometimes You Have to Spend Money to...

Spend money. The old adage about spending money to make money strikes me as one of the wackiest con games ever perpetrated on the American businessman and businesswoman. When I first opened Miss Prothero's Books, I believed it. I spent money underwriting a local public radio station, spent money buying what I thought were well-placed ads, spent money on T-shirts and canvas bags with the store logo. When people who have just discovered the store ask me if I advertise, I tell them that I no longer have the budget for it. The money I spent to make money has vanished. It's like those government stimulus checks...lost down a rabbit hole. Maybe our country is in such a mess because people are spending and not investing, spending on themselves and not investing in their community, buying gas at the local 7-Eleven and not taking the time to consider ways out of our current madness.

Reading is an investment for which too few take the time. It is a way to understand yourself and the world. It trains you to look back, forward, and in between. Pick up a book. Forget the latest best seller. There are so many noteworthy reads that you have ignored. Ever read Madame Bovary? How about A Man of the People? How about Snow Country? Want to learn about water and the West and place? Try Robert Michael Pyle's The Thunder Tree.