When I was leaving for boarding school last year, I started thinking about all the places in my hometown that meant a lot to me. It occurred to me that the Chatham Bookstore is in part where I grew up. I remember sitting on the stairs in the back room, reading for hours. Everyone there has always been very kind to me. I wanted to give something back. Once on vacation with my Dad, a fellow diner treated us to a pizza at a restaurant. We didn't know he had done it until we went to pay. It was a spontaneous gesture that inspired me. I couldn't stop thinking about it and wanted to do that for someone else.
That's the thing about good will, it's contagious. So I got the idea to start a "Pay It Forward" project at Nicole's bookshop. I started buying books and afterward, Nicole and Wendy would tell me how excited people were to receive their book. It felt great! Some people in turn bought a book for someone else, others didn't. It didn't much matter. Everyone liked the idea just as I had when I was treated to a pizza.
And that's how this project got started. I hope that you will keep the tradition going. Think about paying it forward and passing on the good will!
Cheers,
Jesse Cassuto
We'd like to thank Jesse and all of you for helping to make this bricks and mortar store a place of joy and thoughtful interchange in our community. May "whatever is stored in [the] heart" be used now:
The Summer-Camp Bus Pulls Away from the Curb
Whatever he needs, he has or doesn't have by now. Whatever the world is going to do to him it has started to do. With a pencil and two Hardy Boys and a peanut butter sandwich and grapes he is on his way, there is nothing more we can do for him. Whatever is stored in his heart, he can use, now. Whatever he has laid up in his mind he can call on. What he does not have he can lack. The bus gets smaller and smaller, as one folds a flag at the end of a ceremony, onto itself, and onto itself, until only a heavy wedge remains. Whatever his exuberant soul can do for him, it is doing right now. Whatever his arrogance can do it is doing to him. Everything that's been done to him, he will now do. Everything that's been placed in him will come out, now, the contents of a trunk unpacked and lined up on a bunk in the underpine light.
- Sharon Olds, from
Blood, Tin, Straw, Random House (c)1999
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We have one special event in August and more in the works for September and the autumn.
Best wishes!
Nicole, Thomas, Wendy, Patti, Gloria and Dianne
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Live at the Chatham Bookstore
Saturday, August 9, 5-7 pm
Lucy Frank Two Girls Staring at the Ceiling
Lucy Frank was the winner of the PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship for this novel-in-verse which goes on sale August 5th. The book is intended for young adult readers; because of the subject matter, it speaks to adults as well. The story follows the unfolding friendship of two very different girls who share a hospital room and an illness - Crohn's disease. According to Kirkus Review, "Frank crafts an unflinching look at illness. Riveting, humanizing and real." Two teens from Carol Rusoff's Hudson Teen Theatre Project will read selections from the book. A conversation with Lucy Frank and Thomas Chulak from the bookstore and Q&A will follow the reading.
27 Main Street, Chatham, New York. Free. Refreshments will be served. For more information, call 518-392-3005.
Let us know if you can't come to the event, but would like a signed copy of a book. You may email or call us at 518.392.3005 and we'll put one aside for you.
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Exhibit through August
Street Paintings Mostly from Melbourne:
photographs by WENDY HOLMES NOYES
CLOSED LABOR DAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2014
OPEN TILL 7 ON FRIDAYS
Monday-Saturday, 9:30-5 Friday till 7; Sunday, 12-3
