Commentary: We're trading happiness for convenience
When I have time away from the obligations that dog a life, I return to my hometown of Brunswick, Maine, to write. The quiet and the cold, the anonymity and those luminous prompts to childhood memory, suit my mood perfectly. I disconnect. I write. I keep to a meager routine.
One of the chief pleasures of these visits, over the years, has been hours spent at the local video store - Bart & Greg's DVD Explosion! - housed in a charmless basement alcove below what passes, in town, for a mall. Bart & Greg's became so important to my ritual that it was no mere disappointment, but a shock akin to a death in the family, when I arrived in December to learn that the store would close. The owner,
