Buying Local and making a difference!

Hi everyone!

As the holiday season rides up on us, I have been thinking a lot about how buying local can have an effect in our world.  Like most of us, I try to walk the walk as well as talking the talk.  It's not always possible 100%, but I do my best, because as a small business owner (micro business, even!) I see the difference it makes, every day.

Flashback! The Green Hand Bookshop in Nov 2009.

I don't have to quote statistics to you to explain that the small but vital percentage of people who try their hardest to buy locally instead of from the mega corporations means that I can pay more of the shop's bills sooner rather than later, and pay my employees above the laughable "minimum" wage -- not to mention buy my basic groceries and pay my low-income housing mortgage.  Your money really does have an effect, every day, when you choose to pick up items at local shops.

This year, when everyone's grocery bills have doubled, we are all feeling the tightness and pinch.  Fun-money has become scant.  I'm not asking anyone to spend money they don't have (yikes! never!!), but instead I am hoping folks pay attention to where they spend, when they can.  It's an investment in your community, instead of disappearing into the bottomless pockets of the corporate vacuum.

There are so many great little businesses in Portland and in Maine that have a long dark winter ahead of them.  It's nice to be able to spread a little light, whether it's with Christmas shopping, daily errands, or later on when the midwinter doldrums hit and you just want to do something different!

To those of you who already do this, I cannot thank you enough - every time I see it happen, I am simultaneously delighted and astonished.  I know you are all pitching in, and that's why those of us who have survived are still here, after an unprecedentedly rough few years.  We are very lucky to have a community that cares so much.

Thank you for truly making a difference!  

Here is another cautiously hopeful photo from Christmas 2009.  Remember when there was barely anything in the shop?  😂  We started from scratch, opening in early November 2009, and since then it's been a slow, difficult process, but somehow we are still here, and chock-a-block full of good books now, even having sent thousands of books into good new homes along the way.  We couldn't have done this without you all.  Next year will see our 15th anniversary!

Green Hand Bookshop, Christmas 2009 - Just a baby of a bookshop then!

Help keep the real Portland (and the real Maine!) alive underneath the glib veneer of gentrification.  Everyone in Maine's vital and hardworking small business community will thank you!  And you'll get to see cool and unique things happen in our economy, and see the very change you created yourself.  It's a win-win situation to buy local, every time.

I hope you all have the happiest holidays you can, however you can, with good people around you, and that you find all the light in our hearts visible when you need it the most.

If you do want to buy books from us, or in a way that benefits us instead of Amazon etc, here are a few helpful links in case you can't get into the shop to browse our large selection of used books:

New books coming directly from us:  https://www.greenhandbookshop.com

New books through Bookshop.org, which benefits us generously: https://bookshop.org/shop/greenhandbooks

Or if audiobooks are your thing, and you'd love to avoid Amazon-owned Audible while supporting the Green Hand: https://libro.fm/greenhandbooks