So Borders the bookshop chain is closing down. The branch in Brighton was heaving this weekend with bargain-hunters like me looking for the best stuff on which to apply their 40% sale discount. Settled on The Family Mashber by Der Nister, a collection of Tobias Wolff‘s stories called Our Story Begins and a Lonely Planet City Guide to Chicago. Hoping to go there sometime before the end of the decade. Only ever flown into and out of the airport. Been to New York, Syracuse, Memphis, San Francisco, Portland Oregon, Seattle, Vancouver, Lancaster County and State College Pennsylvania, Cape Cod, Oxford Mississippi, Asheville NC, Appomattox, Montreal, Toronto and many other interesting parts of  North America – nothing against Chicago, just ain’t got round to it yet.   Been interested in ‘Border Studies’ since doing a Diploma in HE in American Studies at Staffordshire University back in the 1990s. Wrote an essay then on the clash of cultures around the Mexico – USA highly porous border. Wonder if I still have it somewhere? I thought it was quite good at the time.  (American Studies was closed down at Staffordshire Uni several years ago).  Posted a comment on Jeff Newberry’s Muse of Fire blog mentioning The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction. He lives in Georgia, USA. A bit of border crossing going on there, indeed. What’s a border on the internet? And then there’s Cormac McCarthy’s western novels, from Blood Meridian to No Country for Old Men.

How long before the barbarians decide that there is no evidence of “progression” or vocational qualifications in these courses and as a consequence decide that they must “go”; or will they survive just so long as they break even from the fees charged? At least some concessionary rates survive up ’til now, £20 for either 20 or 10 week courses, which is pretty good, I reckon.

Manchester or Brighton? A life in either, it seems to me, must be very good indeed. Both are places to be ‘proud of’ living in. Libraries, galleries, cinemas, new and used shops, eccentrics who aren’t really because nobody takes any notice, trend-, fashion-, ideas-setting rather than following, little or no discernible generation gap (whatever that is), a certain confidence in the air which I’ve also seen and felt in Melbourne, New York, Portland, Seattle, Asheville and Vancouver.

Thanks for creating this site, Beth . Many happy hours lie ahead.

So now I start planning how to make the rest of the site match the quality of this! Tough assignment – I have the materials but how to present it all?