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Just Ideas

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White Rose is incubator for community conversations

By Debbie Gardner

debbieg@thereminder.com

        There’s no Wi-Fi at Holyoke’s White Rose Book Store. But there’s a comfy couch and chairs near one window of the High Street storefront, inviting patrons to curl up with a periodical, or skim though a book. In the midst of the bookshelf-lined space, tables and chairs are arranged in ways that beg for conversation. Fresh coffee is always available, along with cookies for just 25-cents each.
        “Our best-selling item is our 25-cent cookies,” joked co-owner Kristen Bachler. “I think people like the idea that they can buy something for a quarter.”
        Despite the coffee shop aura, at heart this is still a bookstore, the kind that offers tomes such as “The New Jim Crow” and “Outside the Lines” – works designed to make you think, make you reflect, make you question.
        It’s not all intellectual fare of course. White Rose also carries fiction and mysteries, and boasts an amply stocked children’s section that’s received high praise from area teachers.
        Jason Lefebvre, a children’s librarian at the Holyoke Public Library and author of “Too Much Glue,” did a reading at the White Rose after his picture book was published.
        In mid-July, Heather Jo Flores, author of “Food, Not Lawns” – which extolls how gardening can help build stronger neighborhood connections – stopped to do an evening reading and book signing at the store.
        Kaplowitz said she was pleased, and a little surprised that Flores would add a stop at the White Rose to her tour; they were such a small bookstore.
        Surprising. Perhaps that’s the best way to describe the literary niche Bachler – an artist – and Betty Kaplowitz – a writer and professional musician – have carved out in the storefront of the refurbished turn-of-the-20th century building the two call their studios, business and home. Since opening its doors in December of 2013, their bookstore has invited the community in for a host of events, from a simultaneous reading of Dr. Seuss’s “Horton Hears a Who” in English and Spanish for neighborhood children to book and poetry readings, monthly discussion groups, political meetings and films, such as the recent screening of the documentary, “The Times of Harvey Milk. “
    “A lot of straight people came, it was an interesting conversation,” Kaplowitz said.    
    That event epitomized what Kaplowitz and Bachler have hoped for all along for the White Rose, that the book store would become a place where people could “have conversations on really important topics.”
        Like the live streaming Bernie Sanders event they hosted on the last Wednesday night in July, followed by a conversation about his campaign organization.
        The night after that, the White Rose was transformed into a site for the kickoff of Holyoke political hopeful Anne Thalheimer’s bid for City Council.
        On the third Wednesday in August, Kaplowitz said the shop plans to host a discussion examining why it is acceptable in our country for people to use guns for violent acts.
        “What is it about the U. S. that makes people feel it is OK to take out a gun and use it?” Bachler asked.
        Though their interests may seem eclectic, at heart their focus is Holyoke – an early Wednesday night conversation, which lasted for six months, was an open forum for discussions about the needs of the community.
        The pair  – who lived in New York City, San Francisco and near Virginia City, Nevada where they ran the local newspaper – fell in love with the city during one of the Passport events a few years back.  When the “affordable” location at  284 High Street became available, the two women bought it, intending to turn it into a studio space for Bachler. Kaplowitz, who admitted to hanging out in libraries when she was growing up in New York, was the one who wanted to convert the building’s storefront into a bookstore.
        “I’ve always been a reader. I just love books,” she said.
        Bachler said they looked at the space and thought about “all the good things we can do here, all the fun things we can do here.”
        Kaplowitz chooses the books – now with help from steady customer Marion Walsh of Northampton, who reads advanced copies and gives advice on purchases.
        Kaplowitz said she initially started with a large selection of mysteries and some political titles, struggling to curate the children’s section that, despite its praise is “not her forte.”
        Today, customers come in for works by Rachel Maddow, the biography of Sonya Sotomayor, and books on subjects such as permaculture.
        “We have a lot of academics who come in here [and] take a lot of time looking around. They tell Betty she has an amazing collection for such a small store, that it has a broad sensibility,” Bachler said.
        From founding Holyoke’s Gay Pride march last year to coordinating a Mad Hatter Tea Party for children this fall in celebration of the 100th anniversary of “Alice in Wonderland,” Bachler and Kaplowitz are trying to reach out to the community with books, with events, with conversations.
        “I have been inspired that people are buying a lot of political books. That means they’re thinking,’ Kaplowitz said.
        Through the White Rose, Kaplowitz and Bachler hope to bring Holyoke – and the Valley’s – diverse communities a little close together, starting with their own bit of downtown. Holyoke.
        “We wanted a place that serves the neighborhood, where locals can come and feel welcome,” Bachler said.
        As Wash said, she travels from Northampton to the White Rose because it has “the best books, and often there are a lot of people here, and we get into great, stimulating conversations.”
        The White Rose, located at 284 High Street in downtown Holyoke, Massachusetts, is open Wednesday to Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 pm. Check out their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/TheWhiteRoseBooks for news and upcoming events.