<
https://www.whoevenreads.com/indie-bookstores-promoting-masking-and-covid-consciousness-in-2026/>
"In October of 2019, just months before the Covid pandemic hit, acclaimed
author Kelly Link and her husband, writer and editor Gavin J. Grant, opened
Book Moon Books in a charming one-floor space on Cottage Street in Easthampton,
Massachusetts. In 2021, Gavin began experiencing symptoms of what turned out to
be Long Covid. In the years since then, he has been severely limited in his
everyday activities. “I can do a couple of hours at the store and then am
exhausted so I work from home (flat as I can possibly get on the couch),” he
tells us via email. “I am not able to be on the schedule as my abilities
fluctuate from day to day.”
Gavin and Kelly have continued to run Book Moon with mitigations intended to
protect themselves and others from the known and unknown dangers of the ongoing
pandemic. “We encourage masking as an easy method for individuals to support
the common weal,” Gavin says. “A good percentage of Covid-19 cases are
asymptomatic so people may have the virus and unknowingly be infecting others.
We have free surgical masks just inside the door and provide N95s for those
booksellers who choose to wear them. Kelly and I always use nasal sprays and
mask in any indoor space.” This makes theirs one of a number of independent
bookstores that still requires or strongly encourages masking in an effort to
keep its staff and the general public safe. Recently, we searched out as many
of these stores as we could and contacted booksellers like Gavin and Kelly
directly to get a sense of their reasons for continuing mitigations and their
experiences doing so.
We limited our search to stores within the United States, and were also limited
by the amount of information we were able to find within a reasonable time
frame, so we believe that the number of bookstores (and other community spaces)
with masking policies and sometimes additional mitigation measures extends far
beyond those that will be mentioned in this article. In communicating with
booksellers, we also discovered evidence of a much higher level of
Covid-consciousness and desire for health protections among the public than the
overall tenor of mainstream media and prominent conversations suggests."
Via Violet Blue’s
Threat Model - Ebola - Hantavirus - Covid: May 21, 2026
https://www.patreon.com/posts/ebola-hantavirus-158834285
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
