For the record: The return of The NewAlbanist, with good advice about hours of operation.

The Bookseller is back with an idea about independent small businesses staying open for business. In short, how can a city be a tourist destination if its "destination businesses" greet visitors with locked doors?

Good Golly: Mouth Shut Almost a Year

For almost a full year, gentle reader, you’ve heard nothing from me here. Anything I had to say, Ann alone had to hear it. Poor woman.

Let’s see. I tossed my hat into the ring for election to a vacant school board seat and lost – badly. I sought to return to my career in journalism and was all but ignored by what passes as our “local” paper. And then, glutton that I am, I offered myself for yet another school board seat that came open – and was roughly treated.

In business, I’ve been the living embodiment of the aphorism that pioneers get slaughtered while settlers prosper. I’ve been at it long enough and seen enough peers disappear that I qualify for the former category. But the scars I’ve earned entitle me to advise the latter.