Note that this is an outdoor event, and so dependent upon the weather. At this moment the forecast shows a significant chance of rain for Thursday. Rain is bad for books, and so we will not set up if it is raining, or if rain seems imminent. Why not swing by on your way to Pericles?
While all Bindlestiff volunteers are now vaccinated, for the safety of our customers and staff we will continue requiring customers and staff wear masks while in the bookstore for the next several weeks.
Fifty years ago, activists raided the FBI office in Media, seizing thousands of documents on FBI spying and harassment of a wide range of activist movement. Now an official state historical marker marks the site where the citizens’ committee to investigate the FBI struck. As Inquirer columnist Will Bunch notes,
The suitcases of FBI files that the eight burglars, including the mastermind of the scheme, the late Haverford College professor William Davidon, made off with that night revealed stunning secrets about the lengths to which Hoover’s FBI not only spied upon, but sought to disrupt, legitimate dissent over the war as well as the movement for Black civil rights. The best-known discoveries exposed the existence of COINTELPRO, a massive, covert government operation to harass activists on the left, and efforts to surveil and harass the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., including the notorious 1964 letter in which a top FBI official sent MLK a tape of sexual liaison with an anonymous suggestion that he kill himself.
Could there be a better time to read Betty Medsger’s compelling book, The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret F.B.I.? We’re putting copies in our window to mark the occasion. It reads like a thriller, and it documents the criminality of an agency that continues to violate civil liberties to this day.
Bindlestiff Books plays a starring role in a short film promoting the debut novel by Philadelphian Elizabeth Green, Confessions of a Curious Bookseller. The book is set in a used bookstore in the “heart of West Philadelphia,” steps from Clark Park. In the film our store plays the part of the used bookstore (though of course we have never sold used books), and the author plays the part of the proprietor of said store. The novel itself is epistolary, told through email messages, journal entries and tweets that chronicle her battles to keep the store open and reboot her life. We have the book in stock, you can find the film here.
Words of Revolution; Words of Solace, is a fully captioned innovative video program produced by award-winning Philadelphia cinematographer Aly Spengler and featuring readings from ten of the most exciting voices writing in and around Philadelphia today: Brittney Cooper, Myriam Gurba, Anne Ishii, Airea Matthews, Trapeta Mayson, Kiley Reid, Nikil Saval, Eric Smith, Amber Sparks, and Elissa Washuta. Featured writers will perform words written by their heroes relevant to the ideas of revolution and of solace. Sit back and settle in!
