The Egatz Epitaph

Hello, readers. Thanks for your kind emails during my half-year hiatus. We’ve had much happening at the loft, and outside events have essentially taken over my life for the past six months. They include family illnesses, freelance work, readings, radio interviews, a lot of spouse time, legal maneuverings, and a host of other matters both good and bad. The massive amount of emails from FoEs and regular readers alike are most welcome, and the encouraging messages helped get us through. It reminded me of the last time I shut down The Egatz Epitaph at the end of the 1990s, when regular readers got seriously pissed. This time, though, I don’t intend to quit. Enough with the personal issues for now.

Out in the real world, much has happened in the technology and book vending industries since I last posted. As chronicled on this site, Borders has finally completed its long march into the history books. After a seemingly endless series of executive and managerial missteps, the 40 year old company collapsed, leaving many vendors in red ink, and 10,700 people without jobs.

My wife Jenny and I did our part, though. With many publishers and authors still sending me books to review, we keep our book purchases to a minimum. We are, after all, running out of room for books. Hello, iBooks, but I digress. We visited our local Borders, but the garage sale atmosphere was just too depressing. It felt like people were picking over the carcass of an old friend.

Somewhat hypocritically, instead of walking away with books at fire sale prices where publishers, hence authors, were never going to get what was coming to them, it somehow felt cleaner to pick over other bones. Jenny and I were able to get four huge leather chairs from the café area. We didn’t get an incredible deal on them, but they’re big, comfy, and our friends and family love them.

You can learn a lot about humanity from what comes out of a chair where many people sat, drank caffeine, and read. We seared tuna over a fire fueled by all the blow-in cards pulled from underneath the cushions. We also helped keep Camber Press going with all the money we found inside those four chairs. Coins still fall out when we move them to vacuum.

I’d rather not have the chairs, as much as we like and use them. I’d rather Borders be around, and there would still be some nationwide competition in the book superstore business. Then again, I felt that way over the past 25 years as I watched my favorite independent booksellers driven to oblivion. Technology marched on, right over Borders. Jenny and I sit in our chairs, read, and look up at each other over cappuccinos, knowing some things we can control and some things will be all right.

Regarding other things beyond our control, it isn’t breaking news the Great and Powerful Steven P. Jobs has passed away at least twenty years too soon. Jobs, a personal hero of mine since 1984, was all about quality. This is something I don’t see written about, with most pundits talking about his massive contributions to technology and design. They write about him as a visionary. Jobs himself talked many times about his visit to Xerox PARC and how he saw the future when he was shown object oriented programming, a fully networked office environment (with email, networked printers, etc.), and an early GUI. Remember, this was before 1983. Before the Mac. Before the Lisa.

This didn’t make him a visionary. It made him an observant individual who knew great, if not fully realized, technology. In other words, quality.

The inherent value of good design is quality. What is a good feature or a bad feature? What is necessary and what can be omitted? Does the design of a product or service produce an experience of quality?

Jobs could smell the level of quality in almost anything. Sure, he was a pain the ass at times, but what creative force isn’t? What human isn’t? Jobs will be missed because he knew what was quality and what wasn’t, and he demanded quality from his workforce. Apple will be innovative for a long time without him, but the world has lost a visionary, and will be poorer for it.

The other thing that happened in the past six months is Amazon released some new Kindles. Okay. And you still can’t read an ePub book on them. I’m guessing that will change.

Thanks again for your support. Feel free to keep the emails, cards, and letters (yep, real paper letters!) coming. Like buying chairs from a dying behemoth, every stamp you purchase helps keep the institution Benjamin Franklin started in Philadelphia circa 1775 around a little longer.

Art by Sean Armenta. Mounting by artofframing.net.