Today marks Cornerstone Books’ 3rd year anniversary as a business in downtown Salem.  As I sit here, I’m still a bit awestruck not only at what we’ve accomplished in three short years, but how much more work there still is to do.  I remember more than a few people telling us we were crazy to go into a business where it’s difficult to survive, much less thrive.  We were crazy all right, but I wouldn’t have missed a minute of it.

We set out to create a place in Salem where folks could go, not only to find their books, but a venue for community events, music, art, storytelling, and just plain socializing.  We were honored this year with Boston Magazine’s Best of Boston 2008 Award for Best Bookstore North of Boston, but the quote that I like to remember most is a little girl walking along with her parents saying as she pointed in Cornerstone’s window, “that’s my favorite store!”

So what’s happened since we opened in 2005? 

Well, for one, new year-round businesses have opened in the downtown.  Welcome again to A&J King Bakery, Rouge Cosmetics, New Civilitea, Chulamama (another Best of Boston 2008 winner), Aveda Spa, Spirits @ 300 Derby, Seed Stitch Fine Yarn , J. Mode Women’s Fashions, Rita’s Ice, Upper Crust Pizza, Gulu Gulu Café, Hex, Sacred Gear, and Crunchy Granola Baby.  I like to think that the City of Salem and neighboring communities are sitting up and taking notice.  When you see a downtown growing instead of shrinking these days, I think we can all take credit in making that happen.  It’s up to all of us (and not just the businesses themselves) to lock arms and continue to promote shopping local and independent as opposed to impersonal and corporate.

Since 2005, we’ve held dozens of author events, children’s storytimes, workshops, offsite book fairs, and music events.  We’ve hosted authors Julia Glass, Brian Lies, Jane Yolen, Kathleen Kent, Brunonia Barry, Nathaniel Philbrick, Kristy Kiernan, Joe Haldeman, Steve Almond, Christopher Castellani, Aviva Chomsky, Jenna Blum, Laurie Stolarz, Tish Cohen, Jennifer McMahon, Claire Messud, Amy MacKinnon, Eve LaPlante, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Dana Cameron and Peter Abrahams, and this only scratches the surface.

We’ve continued and hopefully carried forward our trend of bringing books, reading and writing out into the community, not only to places like The Salem Athenaeum and The House of the Seven Gables, but to our local schools.  We’re honored to have been able to promote book fairs in schools and venues like the Harry Potter Convention, The Salem Academy, Brooksby Village, The Saltonstall School, Hamilton Hall, Salem State College, the Marblehead Arts, Shirat Hayam of the North Shore, St. Joseph’s School, and even the Essex Agricultural High School in Hathorne.  My own hope is that we can continue to serve the local schools in this way and even promote our young writers, from Kindergarten all the way through College by giving them a venue for their work.

To that end, we’ve been coordinating with The Chamber of Commerce to bring a yearly literary festival to Salem.  We successfully held our first festival, “Literally Salem,” with 18 events over 2 days in September of 2008 and the next festival is scheduled for March of 2009, at its regular yearly time.  And while the first festival was a great start, we hope to bring more and better events each year.  My own pet project, as I alluded to before, is to publish a yearly “Salem’s Best Writing” as part of this festival.  The contest would be open to all Salem students, from Kindergarten through College, and the winners would be published in a yearly volume, made available at the festival.  If are interested in helping us coordinate with the schools to help make this happen, please contact me before finishing this sentence!

So while I take this moment to sit and take a look back at the past three years, there’s not much time to reflect.  We’ve got a lot to do, and more mountains to climb.  In three more years, I am guessing I will think I was as crazy as I was when we started all this, and will not have wanted to miss one minute.

Gilbert Pili