As a reader and writer and member of that large demographic of bookish Boomer women, I am making a plea for real women to buy real books. That is, from a real, not a virtual, book store – a bell-jingling, coffee-brewing, pet the cat and spend an hour book store. Where you and a stranger might discuss the latest Annie Dillard. And where a clerk may even know your tastes and nudge you into novel by a great new unknown. And yes, sure, where you will likely pay full price, plus tax.

So it costs a bit more to pay retail, the pleasure of reading is still a bargain. As we cut down on eating out, bar hopping and going to movies, we’ll rely even more on books to fuel us through the cold winter. And if we pay a fair price we’ll be giving back, helping to keep a community business alive, along with the greater world of publishers and authors.

With that in mind I’m making a New Year’s vow to confine my book buying to book stores, preferably independents and local. And to visit the library when my book budget needs relief. It’s not a big deal pledge, in fact very easy for me since I am lucky to live in a town with two surviving book stores and a library. But I’ve done my share of online ordering. When it’s raining. Or I’m feeling lazy. Or when I’m feeling poor and rationalizing that cheapest is best.

I decided to get firm after reading another sad commentary on the book business by New York Times writer David Streitfeld. An admitted bargain book hunter, he confessed to being the kind who buys and sells books through Internet dealers, the ones who sell from their homes and have no arrangement with an author or a publisher. In a recent score he paid 25 cents…plus shipping for a wanted book.

Recognizing that his frugal ways do nothing to support any aspect of the imperiled business that gives him pleasure, he warned, “No industry undermined by its greatest partisans will thrive long.”

By last count an estimated 20 million Americans were in book clubs. So, I’m thinking, what if all book club members made an attempt to buy local for one year? A bunch of car lovers are not going to bail out the auto industry. And all we can do about the banks is wait around and hope.

But we can do our own little bit to prop up those institutions that feed our habit.

I’ve shared my New Year’s intent with my book club and with friends in other book clubs, hoping to inspire others.

There’s been a mixed reaction. Some say they simply can’t afford to buy books full price. Some say it’s more efficient to buy online. My friend in the techie book business points out that it will take all styles of reading, be it by hand-held computer or audio to keep the book industry afloat. She defends some types of online ordering, like Amazon, which discounts books but also showcases authors and is a lifeline for book publishers. I get that. If there’s no other way to get your book, go that route. Otherwise get thee to your book store.

Some say that book stores need to try harder to woo their local readers. I don’t know. My book store gives out dog treats, has a reliable list of staff-recommended books and a nice selection of body wash and Moleskin journals.

We have to do this, I told a friend, or we’ll lose all our great hang outs. Like the smart, comfortable Cody’s, I said, down to only one store in the Bay Area. Oh no, she corrected me. The last one closed months ago.

Listen to the Real Women Buy Real Books radio segment on KRCB’S Another Voice.

It’s been a real effort for us half-full people to put a smiley face on the state of the world, with all the financial disasters and increasing numbers of crooks, cheats and liars.

We upbeat types are not born optimists. We keep a sunny nature even when it’s forced. I think that’s because we fear if we ever went into a steep dive we’d just never stop falling. The half-empty types have it easier. They go around being grumpy and gruff, expecting the worse. But they can always become enlightened and like Ebenezer Scrooge suddenly start kissing babies and dancing in the street. We cheerier-than-thou types might never be able to pull such a turn-around if we got bogged down by only bad news. We might start wailing and never stop.

Still, some days it takes real work to resuscitate your inner Pollyanna.

I don’t need much. Just something to indicate that war and cruelty are not part of human nature and greed is not the only American way and the high and mighty are not all disappointing masters of evil.

Two things lately lifted my mood. I caught a repeat of a Bill Moyers TV interview with a music-maker named Mark Johnson who goes around the world recording a harmonica player in New Orleans and a violinist in Moscow and a choir in Africa to make one song. The global musicians are called Playing for Change and their rendition of “Stand by Me” will make you cheer and cry.

This week at the gym somebody mentioned a story I’d completely missed about the businessman who put up $1 million to take over a hotel in Washington D.C. for the inauguration and give free rooms to wounded veterans and terminally ill people. Now, there’s an antidote for the Bernard Madoffs of the world. Be a generous rich person. Share the wealth. Hoard and you lose. Karma is back.

You have to look for things to cheer yourself on those dark days when you think, “Good grief, what’s coming at us now? Is that fog or a plague of locusts?”

It’s not that I am immune to worry. I worry about the union pension going belly up. Of Social Security running dry. I use to worry about our house losing value. Now it has, and I worry about keeping it. I worry about the newspaper business, the book business and the construction business. But I’m happy for the shoe repair people, pawn shop owners and second hand stores enjoying an upturn in the middle of our downturn.

I worry about something happening to our health plan. I worry about waiters and bartenders losing their jobs because we can’t afford to go out. I worry about California trying to balance its budget by taking money from the schools. I worry about all the people who will lose their jobs if the auto industry goes kaput. And then there’s terrorism and starvation and worrying about one more man or woman being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But everyone’s worrying, and that’s something to make you feel better. We’re not alone. We all feel downwardly mobile. We all are adjusting. We all are cutting back. We all are making more soup. We’ll all crash together. Or recover together. Maybe we’ll get to be true aging hippies and live in the commune we missed in the Seventies.

Hey, there’s something to look forward to.

Listen to the Looking for My Inner Pollyanna radio segment on KRCB’S Another Voice.

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In the story about the national candidate who once tried to bully the town librarian, the details about censorship proved to be only partially true.

With the first mention of how the one-time mayor of Wasilla, Alaska tried to use her moose-bagging brawn to get some books banned, the internet immediately spat out a list of titles that were alleged to be on the mayor’s hit list.

For those already alarmed by this person’s politics, it was a tasty, outlandish list which included Harry Potter and Huckleberry Finn. But the doomed titles proved too bad to be true. There was no list. The story remains, however, that the mayor did indeed ask the city librarian if she would be all right with censoring library books. Seems that for some time a group of social conservatives in town had been pressing the library to remove books they considered immoral. Sometimes library books would be returned with pages defaced or ripped out.

The librarian said no way would she be all right with that. And a few months later the librarian got a letter from the mayor telling her she was fired. The mayor didn’t say it was because she’d been scarred by Judy Blume or Margaret Atwood, but because she doubted the librarian’s support, like she’d failed some type of loyalty test. Fortunately this sent enough shivers through the book-loving townspeople that they rallied behind the librarian and she kept her job.

A banned books list is a sure way to get many people inflamed. We don’t DO that in this country. Or at least we are surprised when we find out that some people actually try to do that. The idea of banning books is so un-American that every fall the American Library Association puts on Banned Books Week. This year, from Sept. 27 to Oct.4.

I always find the displays of books that someone once wanted to ban not only ludicrous but shocking. Imagine. “The Diary of Anne Frank” considered “a real downer”!! And Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” challenged for encouraging premarital sex???

Don’t these people know about choice? As in, if you don’t like a book, choose not to read it.

In the story of the mayor versus the librarian it’s clear who turned out to be the hero. It’s also clear that the person who would want to maybe some day be leader of the free world doesn’t think a whole lot of free speech.

In Sonoma County we are rich in many things. Wine, olive oil, lavender, goat cheese, designer chickens and the like. Plus a healthy community of writers and thinkers of all persuasions. Every year for the past eight, there’s been a book festival in downtown Santa Rosa. The Sonoma County Book Festival is one of the few remaining book fairs around, the only one of a general nature in the San Francisco Bay Area. It happens this Saturday, a day long gathering in Courthouse Square, with author readings and panels on everything from memoir to mystery to the environment and football. I’ll be there, along with writers like Julia Whitty, Adair Lara, Noelle Oxenhandler and David Harris, at various venues, including, of course, the library.

Celebrating the art of writing and the joy of reading is a good way to counter the anti-intellectual fervor being stirred up in this election. Pick up a book, wave it high and say, “I vote for free expression.” It’s also a good opportunity to thank your librarian.

Listen to the Vote No on Book Banners Podcast at Another Voice on KRCB-FM