We are proud to announce that Buffalo Street Books will be re-opening its doors this Saturday April 23rd at 10am!

I’d just like to point out to all of you how amazing what we’ve all accomplished has been. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that this effort has gotten national attention within the bookselling and publishing communities. This morning I got a call from Nashville, Tennessee asking about what we’re doing, and last week I fielded an email from Moscow, Idaho. And once you’re big in Moscow, Idaho, you really know you’ve made it.

The work and support of the community on this project has been nothing short of astounding and I am very happy to say that this Saturday, we’ll be able to give you all, our new owners, the thank you gift you deserve: a community owned bookstore, freshly cleaned and ready for business (okay, the cleaning hasn’t happened just yet, but we’ve got a couple days still).

To celebrate our reopening, we’ll have food and beverages available and in the evening, we’ll have music from Doug Robinson, Eric Aceto and Brian Earle at 5pm and the Catherine Joy Band at 6:30pm.

I hope you’ll be able to join us. I look forward to seeing all of your faces and shaking all of your hands (or just one of each of your hands, forgive my grammatical confusion) and welcoming you back to Buffalo Street Books.

yours,
bob

This little bit of paperwork should make a big difference in how much we can get done and how fast we can get the doors open again!

b

Q: Is the store now going to be a not-for-profit, as in a tax exempt 501c3 organization?
A: (First of all, people do not “frequently” include the 501c3 bit in this question, but it has been mentioned) No, a cooperative is classified as a for-profit business. But unlike a normal for-profit business, where profit is a primary concern, the primary mission of a cooperative is to provide benefit and mutual help to its member owners and the community at large. In order to do that, it is necessary for the Coop to make money, but those profits are either distributed to members through patronage dividends or recapitalized into the business to make capital improvements or protect against future loses.

Buffalo Street Books is not becoming a charity, we are continuing to operate as a business, and as such, we will be committed to operating as a profitable bookstore. But that profit will be means to an end, that end being providing our members and the community with an excellent bookstore and center for literary and cultural events in the heart of downtown.

Q: If the bookstore couldn’t survive as a single proprietor, for-profit business, how will it survive under this new model?
A: There are a number of answers to this question, which, when combined, I think put us in a strong position to be sustainable over the long term. Before addressing these, it should be mentioned that the number I put out in my original proposal for this project, which stated that the store faced a $100,000 per year short fall, was a pretty large overstatement. In point of fact, the bookstore itself more or less breaks even at the end of every year, with a couple panic-inducing dips into the red during the doldrums and a return to the black after the sales of course books and the holidays. The problem with the store as a single proprietorship was simply that the stress
of running a bookstore that “more or less breaks even at the end of every year” is a whole lot for one person to take.

So what’s changed other than the fact that there will now be 600-some owners instead of one? A couple things. For one, the burden of debt servicing has been removed: the Coop will start without major pre-existing debts and in fact, with some amount of available capital. This makes a huge difference right out of the gate.

During our period of downtime, we’re taking a look at a lot of how we do things, as far as day to day operations, and streamlining them in an attempt to do more with less. While we’re not putting anyone out of a job, we are trying to make sure everyone’s job is clearly defined and that things work as smoothly and efficiently as they possibly can.

We’re taking also this opportunity to explore other revenue streams, taking on projects and changes to the store that we couldn’t do while involved in day-to-day operations. The primary things being explore right now involve using the reading room as gallery and cafe space, in a way that leaves the room available for the readings and events that are crucial to our identity as a community bookstore.

In addition to in-store changes, with a large corps of volunteers to draw from, we hope to be able to expand our off-site activities, including book sales at events around town (author readings, theater events, bat mitzvahs, etc.). We do a bit of this now, but it’s been mostly limited by what Gary or myself can attend.

There is also the somewhat sticky subject of fundraising. One way of looking at the store’s finances goes like this: when it comes to selling books, we’re in the black. What occasionally pulls things back into the red are some of the expenses associated with non-revenue generating events like book club, author readings and all the things that make the store more than just a retail space. In the past, these have been financed purely out of book sale profits, but it’s my belief that through dynamic fundraising (including seeking grant money), events like these could finance themselves. We have set up a not-for- profit wing which, over time, will take over the financial aspects of non-revenue generating activities. Not only will this relieve some of the pressure on sales, but it will allow us to expand these types of programs and events.

Finally, and this is perhaps the most import thing, with 600-some member owners, not only do we have 600 brilliant people contributing ideas, but we have 600 advertisers and advocates in the community. Just the other day, I ran into a friend of mine, one of our new member- owners, who said she’d just spoken to a friend and told her not to go buy some book at Barnes & Noble, but wait a couple weeks so she could by it from HER store. I was thrilled, because this is exactly the effect cooperative member-ownership is supposed to have! The Coop is only as strong as its members, and looking down the list of members, I can’t imagine a stronger group. I think we’re at a moment where we can change the way this community thinks about its book purchasing and, while all the auxiliary stuff I’ve mentioned is nice, I really do
anticipate that our day to day book sales are going to increase as the community realizes the store is, very literally, THEIR store.

All right, back to catching up on emailing back to those of you who’ve already sent their checks (THANK YOU! If I haven’t already, I’ll be sending you an email soon! I’m sending as fast as Gmail will let me) and anxiously waiting to hear back from the State of New York about our incorporation papers.

Keep your fingers crossed!

We are at a very critical juncture in making the Buffalo Street Coop project happen. Legal paperwork is being filed as we speak, but perhaps the most important thing at this point is making sure we have enough money to make this project work.

If you have already sent in a check for your pledge, thank you very much. Hopefully you will receive or have already received a confirmation email from me that your check has been received.

If you have pledged but have not yet made payment on that pledge, now is the time to do it. Since Buffalo Street Books is currently closed, you can drop checks off at the Bookery (the used bookstore in DeWitt Mall, right next to the DeWitt Cafe) or mail them to:

Buffalo Street Coop

c/o Buffalo Street Books

215 N Cayuga St

Ithaca NY 14850

All checks should be made out to Buffalo Street Coop and should include a valid mailing address. You will receive an email confirmation that your check has been received.

If you have not yet pledged and would still like to, please go to our website and make a pledge, then send the check to the above address or drop it off at the Bookery. We are still collecting pledges and every share purchased puts the Coop on stronger financial footing.

The community support for this has been incredible and we are moving full steam ahead on it, with an eye to be reopened for business in April. The only thing that can put a stop to it is if we fall short of the amount pledged. We need to collect on these pledges within the coming week if we are going to be able to move forward. As I have stated previously, no money (other than my own) will be spent until it is 100% certain that this is all going to go through. Right now we are at about 99% certain, but it is time for those pledges to become reality and for those people who have considered pledging up until now to join us in making this thing happen.

We are about to do something completely amazing as a community and I hope all of you are as excited as I am to be a part of it. I have been so overwhelmingly proud of the willingness of this community to step up to the plate on a project that would seem absurd in nearly any town but Ithaca. Now that we’re at the plate, it’s time to swing.

With gratitude and an inability to use sports metaphors,
bob

Q. Will I be paying $250 every year?

A: No. The $250 share is a permanent member share. This is not the first installment in an annual subscription. While we do intend to undertake fundraising efforts, they will certainly not be in the form of requiring members to chip in more money. Once you have purchased a member share, you are a member owner of the coop. Period.

Sub Q: If the bookstore goes under, will I, as a member owner be responsible for any of its debts?

A: No, not at all

Q: When do we all get to vote on things?

A: This coop is in a very unique position on this matter. Most cooperative organizations start out with a small number of members, making it easy to work very democratically from the get-go. Our coop started with an idea that very quickly got almost 600 people behind it, with more “joining up” every day.

What this means right now is that a small group of people, picked by me in a highly un-democratic manner (many of them are my friends, one of them is my wife) are participating in a steering committee to put together the structure of the coop itself. At this point, we couldn’t as an organization vote on anything because a) there is no organization and b) there are no rules as to who can and cannot vote. The steering committee is working on the bylaws and operating procedures for the coop, which will then be conditionally approved by an appointed interim Board of Directors. The bylaws and the Board will be subject to change by direct vote of the member owners soon, but they have to be put in place first.

In order to move things along quickly and to seize on the momentum we have right now, very technical aspects of things are being worked over by small groups. This is not done to exclude anyone, it’s sort of a practical necessity at this point. If at any point, anyone feels things are not being carried out with an appropriate level of transparency and public knowledge, please please let me know. I am doing my best to keep everyone informed of developments as they happen, but I am very open to criticism on this point.

A lot of wheels are turning very quickly in order to allow Buffalo Street Books to re-open under our new cooperative community owned structure.  I wanted to take a moment to once again thank all of you who have already pledged your support, be it with time or money or suggestions, or have been considering making a pledge. Perhaps more importantly, I want to give you an idea of where things are at right this moment.  I try to be as forthcoming as possible with information, but the fact is that even right now, there are more questions and contingencies than there are definite answers.

But progress is most certainly being made.  Allow me to share.

We have hired an attorney with a background in cooperative law, which is a tiny and extra arcane section of corporation law because these laws are incredibly specific, especially in New York State.

On our behalf, he has drafted Articles of Incorporation that are designed to specifically fit us within NYS’s restrictive statutes on cooperative incorporation. We’re filling in a couple of final details on these and hope to file them tomorrow, in which case we’ll know within the next few days whether or not we have to revise and resubmit the paperwork.

We’ve formed a steering committee to move much of this process along.  This fantastic group of people includes members from the boards of GreenStar and Cinemapolis, a local CPA, the director of a local theatre and playwriting group, some former and current employees of the store and representatives from both Cornell and IC.

This committee will help put together the bylaws and business plans for the coop, as well as negotiating the sale of the store to the coop.

The next very important step is to collect the pledged funds. To that end, we have set up an account under the interim name for the corporation, Buffalo Street Coop (the final name for the corporation will be determined by the manner in which it is incorporated)

Checks for pledged shares can be made out to Buffalo Street Coop and can be dropped off here at Buffalo Street Books over the next few days, we’re closed after this Sunday, or be mailed to:

Buffalo Street Coop

c/o Buffalo Street Books

215 N Cayuga St

Ithaca NY 14850

All received funds will be acknowledged with an immediate email, to be followed up with a written thanks and shareholder certificate, along with a card indicating your member number.  With that in mind, please be sure to include an email and mailing address with your payment.  If you would like to pay by electronic transfer, please let me know and I will give you the information to set that up.

In the next few days, I hope to be able to send more definite information about the status of our incorporation and announce a public membership meeting.  There will also be an email coming very soon about volunteer opportunities.  In the weeks the store is closed, there’s a whole lot of work to be done and I know there are plenty of you out there who are anxious to lend a hand. Information is coming very soon.  For now, it only remains for me to once again thank you all so much for your support.

Respectfully,

Bob Proehl

This is an absolutely remarkable and unique community! I am flabbergasted and thrilled to announce that, contrary to what I emphatically stated just three weeks ago, Buffalo Street Books is not closing for good. Four days after sending out my farewell closing letter, Bob Proehl put out  a well considered and passionate proposal asking our community if they would consider creating a community-owned cooperative bookstore, and if so, to make a non-binding monetary pledge.

It’s now two weeks later and the proposed financial target has been reached! (Pledges to purchase shares are still being accepted.) In the very recent past I stated that I was closing because the market had spoken. It is now clear that Ithaca has spoken louder.

Of course, there are many, many valid and important questions being raised regarding the exact structure of the cooperative. People are also asking, how to actually commit the pledged funds. Now that Ithaca has passionately spoken, we are actively pursuing answers to both of these questions.

As the present owner, with a deep pride of ownership, I insist that the store that makes the transition from sole proprietor to cooperative ownership must never be less than the same well-stocked, first class bookstore it has always been.

That being said, our closing sale will end Sunday March 13^th! Thank you for helping liquidate the inventory when I thought it was necessary. I was pleased to offer the deep discounts as a fond, going-away present to my friends and customers. Again, thank you. Now, this cash infusion will help with the transition.

Therefore, Buffalo Street Books will be closed as of Monday, March 14^th. We will spend the following 3-4 weeks reordering depleted stocks, going through catalogs and ordering the new Spring and Summer books, cleaning the store, making any structural changes necessary, planning readings and events, all while dealing with the legal, philosophical, and fiscal issues involved in the transformation into a cooperative bookstore.

As the seller, to prevent any semblance of conflict of interest, it will be necessary for me to remove myself from much of the creation of the cooperative structure. Bob Proehl is continuing to spearhead this initiative, along with a steering committee of advisors. He will keep everybody informed of their progress via our website, Facebook, other list-serves, and most effectively in this town, word of mouth.

I will admit, though, that once the transition has been legally completed, I hope and plan to remain integrally involved with the management of Buffalo Street Books, this time as an employee and share-holder.

Our target date to have the gala reopening of Buffalo Street Books is early April. At that time the corporate by-laws will have been written, voted on and approved by the new owner/members. A Board of Directors will have been selected. The store’s General Manager (hmmm) and his/her staff will have been hired. The depleted inventory will be full to overflowing, new and upcoming books will be on order and Tompkins County’s only comprehensive and independently owned bookstore will be fiscally and managerially sound.

With great respect and appreciation,

Gary Weissbrot – Present owner

Also, when I refer here to independent local bookstores, I am referring quite specifically to comprehensive new bookstores. This is in no way meant to denigrate the importance of any of the fantastic used bookstores in town, nor of Colophon Books or either of the on-campus bookstores.

What I am going to propose here is not a bailout.  The unfortunate truth is a bailout at this stage would be a temporary fix.  I am proposing that the community buy out the bookstore and run it on a cooperative model.

Here we are at the wake. For the past few days, I have sat quietly by while people queue up to express their sympathies regarding the closing of Buffalo Street Books, announced last Thursday. There have been three prevalent lines of discussion, each one of which bears a bit of looking at.

1. What the hell happened?
2. This is a terrible loss for the city of Ithaca (or the variant, this is disgraceful for the city of Ithaca).
3. If Ithaca can’t support a local independent bookstore, who can?

Yes, it is a terrible loss. But is it a quantifiable loss? It’s not as if it will suddenly become impossible to buy books in Ithaca. No book that you could have gotten on our shelves will now become utterly inaccessible, I promise you.

In addition to simply providing a excellent selection of books, a local independent bookstore provides the community with readings by local and national authors, facilitates reading groups that are open to the community, hosts benefits for worthy local agencies, provides performance and rehearsal space for local theater groups and sells books to local libraries and schools at deep discount or at cost. Perhaps most importantly, we provide a space in the center of the community where literary arts can flourish.

Of course, none of these things bring in revenue, and all of them are a little tricky to put a price tag on. But I would submit that everyone who has ever bought a book in an independent bookstore has done just that. If you buy a $30 hardcover at an independent rather than at Barnes & Noble or Amazon, either of which might carry the same book at 50% off, you have said it is worth $15 to you to have all of the benefits of a local independent bookstore. If we imagine that Amazon is selling every book it has at an average of 20% off (this number drops precipitously if your interests stray from the mainstream), then by buying your books at a local independent, you are saying it is worth 20% of your book budget to have that independent there.

Beyond the concrete, there is serendipity of place unique to a local bookstore. It’s an environment where everything on the shelf has been hand selected by someone in the store, a member of the community. Any Borders will look like any other Borders, even if they go through the trouble of tacking on a local interest section. In a local independent bookstore, the whole store is a local interest section. Part of the magic of a local bookstore isn’t finding what you came in for, but finding something you never knew existed in the first place. By providing a space for readers to meet authors, authors to meet authors, poets to meet playwrights and so on in endless combination, a local independent bookstore waters the seeds of talent within a literary arts community.

Let’s move back to question one, which will quickly bring us to question three and the variant of question two.

What happened was that the business was losing money. Every year, something new got tried and every year, things worked out about the same. Gains in one area were barely enough to compensate for losses in another. And as will inevitably happen in a situation like this, the owner, who I have the utmost respect for, got tired of lifting the load by himself.

Was it a poorly run business? Not at all. It was innovative and perceptive in a quickly changing market. There was a constant search for options that would save the store. A program was developed to sell books to students on both campuses that has been wildly successful. The store has managed to become an integral part of nearly every aspect of the local literary community, has established an online presence and has explored every possible solution that would have staved off the situation we find ourselves in now.

Believe me when I tell you that the store was in an ideal spot to survive.

Included in the options explored was the idea of converting the bookstore to a not-for-profit model.  This would mean the bookstore itself would run about the same, but the owner or our staff would run a constant capital campaign to make up the difference between sales and operating costs. This move would have been unprecedented, but it looked to be a long road ahead and one we were unlikely to reach the end of.

The fact of it is, the market will not support a local independent bookstore in a town the size of Ithaca. It simply won’t. It is easy enough to blame everyone who spends their money on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, who doesn’t wear their Shop Local pin proudly, who got a Kindle for Christmas. But that’s not the point. If you look at the terms of the market, it is inevitable that a local independent bookstore will fail in all but the largest markets. We can’t sell you a bestseller for 45% off. We can’t stock every title in print and some that aren’t. And that’s not going to change. The market has spoken and it has said, No, Ithaca does not get to have a local independent bookstore.

But where is it written that the market dictates everything that goes on in our community? Why should it dictate? The thinking behind Local First at its heart asks the consumer to go against the natural drives of the market (where can I get it cheaper faster bigger) and to purchase in a way that supports less concrete advantages. In very few towns and cities has the Local First philosophy been taken more to heart. And still the market is squeezing local businesses out of our town.

What is necessary in this case is for the community and its members to realize their power not as consumers, as players within the game of the market, but as a community. The market says an independent bookstore isn’t possible in Ithaca. It’s time for the community to have its say.

Ithaca, if you want to have a local independent bookstore, I’ve got one for you. You’ve just got to come get it.

Understand I’m not talking about a bailout. I’m talking about a community buy out. At the end of this process, the participating community, and I’m talking a cooperative of dozens if not hundreds, would own the bookstore outright.

If you’re still reading, please keep in mind all the numbers below are highly approximate. But they should get the idea across.

It would take somewhere in the range of $200,000 to buy out the bookstore, including everything on the shelves. For a while, I thought the way to do this would be to find ten people who truly believe Ithaca should have an independent bookstore downtown who each have $20,000 to sink in. But let’s face it, I don’t know ten people who have a spare $20,000. But what if we think about it differently? What if that amount was split into shares of $250 a piece. I know quite a few people with $250 who truly believe Ithaca should have an independent bookstore. And that amount could buy them one of 800 initial shares in an organization that would buy out and then own the bookstore. If they’ve got more, it could buy them a couple shares.

I also know a number of people who don’t have a spare $250 but still believe Ithaca should have an independent bookstore. I’ll get to those people in a minute.

If it works, what does it look like? It looks an awful lot like a corporation, one that would elect a board of trustees and hire a CEO. Like a corporation, shareholders would have a stake and a vote in major decisions regarding the future of the bookstore and, obviously, would receive a discount on books.

Are you going to get that money back? No more than you’re going to get your PBS pledge back. What you’re doing with that money is helping to buy a present for your community. You’re saying not just that Ithaca wants an independent bookstore, but that it truly deserves one and will do what it takes to have one. And when this happens, that bookstore won’t belong to one person or a small group of business partners who have to share the heavy financial burden. It will belong to a community of member-owners, with each member lifting the weight they can.

If it all works and Ithaca owns its own bookstore, what does year two look like? Or year five?

Being approximate, let’s say the bookstore, left to its own devices, faces an annual shortfall of $100,000 a year. This, incidentally, is fractional to what an organization like the Hangar Theatre would face if their only source of income were ticket sales and they had to pay all of their ushers. This is where the folks with more time than money become part of the project. About half the above figure can be accounted for in labor costs, just to staff the desk. That cost could be offset by a committed corps of volunteers, each of whom “buy” a piece of ownership with their labor. A worker-owner would earn an equitable share of the store through his or her labor. Essentially, if each share is worth $250, a worker-owner could “buy” a share with twenty-five hours of labor.

Which leaves us with a $50,000 shortfall. Fundraising campaigns and member drives would have to be run periodically throughout the year, every year. This is a daunting amount of work, but within this model, instead of a single owner and his staff of ten trying to make this happen, it would be a community of worker- and member-owners.

I’m talking about a community buy out, and one that would need to get off the ground fast. If this bookstore closes, another one will not rise to take its place, I will practically guarantee it. The difference in start-up cost and effort between opening a new bookstore from scratch and buying out an existing bookstore is huge.

And let me again stress, this is not a money-making opportunity. No savvy entrepreneur is going to exploit this newly created lack in the market because there is no lack in the market. The lack will lie in the community and it is in the community where it will be keenly felt.

There are any number of adjustments and additions that can and should be made to this plan. I’m just throwing sparks onto a fire that is otherwise dying out. If they catch, it will be entirely due to you.

If you believe this city needs and deserves a local bookstore; if, like me, you are appalled at the idea of living in a city without one;   if you are ready to put your money and time where your mouth is; if you are ready for Ithaca to live up to its reputation rather than bask in it; if you are ready to be part of a community that decides for itself what it looks like, rather than allowing itself to be shaped by outside forces …

… then let’s give it a try.

At this point, I’m looking to gauge interest. And by interest, I mean willingness to commit financially. I’m just a poor kid, but I’m putting it out there right now that I’m in for $1000. Four shares. It’s what I can afford right now. There are 796 to go.

Anyone interested in more information or in participating should please contact me at bobproehl@gmail.com.

Q: How did you become involved in writing I See the Promised Land?

Arthur Flowers: I was doing a state department tour of India, one of those goodwill tours, and I was at the Jaipur Literary Festival, which is an extraordinary festival. I did my little performance – I’m a performance poet and a hoodoo-based performer – so I did my little thing and it went over very well. Folks were treating me like I was a literary guru; it was a very amazing experience. Gita [Wolf] the publisher of Tara Books approached me and asked me if I’d be interested in doing a collaboration with a Patua artist on Martin Luther King. And at the time I knew nothing of Patua art, but being asked to do a graphic novel book was interesting to me because it feels very 21st century. And also, Martin Luther King. I’m from Memphis, I was at the marches. Martin Luther King meant a lot to me, because I feel I am a voice of the delta and Memphis, and personally. So I said yes.

Q: How did the collaborative process work?

Flowers: He had done let’s say 10-15 pieces, so they sent me a PDF of what he had done and they sent me the script they’d given him. It was very rudimentary. I said, “Is this for children?” They said, “No, it’s not for children, it’s for adults, but in order for us to get the concept to him, because he’s a tribal artist, and not cosmopolitan, we had to tell it to him in a way that he could appreciate it. He really felt the MLK story and he came up with his interpretations.”

It was interesting because they were very interested in the history of the African American struggle but it was for an Indian audience. So it was two cultures. So for instance, he became very fascinated with the Ku Klux Klan. So he did more Ku Klux Klan paintings than I would have felt appropriate. But you know, you have to go with the flow. And then they had things in the little piece like African Americans learned how to sing and dance in the church, and there were thirty-five paintings of African Americans singing and dancing in the church. So then I had to do my piece. And by now I had an understanding of the Patua tradition, because they had sent me pieces, I had experienced the tradition and I was understanding it was a storytelling tradition. Basically, I had a little more understanding of Tara Books, their mission is to do traditional Indian art forms in a contemporary manifestation. I said, “Well, since he’s doing his traditional storytelling thing, I would love to try to do mine, my African American delta storytelling tradition to make it two storytelling traditions.” I come out of the griotic wing of AA literature, we feel that we are heirs to a literary tradition, and I try to make it work on the page. So I went ahead and did kind of a myth work thing on MLK, an Africa delta storyteller trying to play with the myth. I just wrote out that. And I asked them, “Am I being too down-home? Should I take more of me out and tell it straight?” And they encouraged me, “Do it, do it.” It gave me joy trying to make that storyteller play with Martin Luther King’s life as a contemporary delta storyteller trying to make it significant to the generations. So that’s what the process allowed me to do. Because of the fact that India had responded to a spiritual side of Martin’s life that I don’t experience in the United States, I was able to play with some sides that I really enjoyed playing with.

We had a couple cultural differences. Some of them were very interesting. His idea of the slave ships had Viking prows. I said these are more Viking ships than slave ships. But he’d already painted so many of them. I looked at them and was like, “Okay, I can live with that.” He had this underground railroad that was extraordinary; it had this Indian theme. It was just beautiful. And there was one time where his idea of Martin Luther King’s drum major speech was a little guy sitting playing a snare drum with epaulets. And I said “No, that’s not going to work, I can’t go to the south with this as a drum major.” So that one we had to work with. Otherwise, we just basically let the moment be the moment.

Q: And you’ve been out doing book touring on this, you started in Memphis? Was it well received?

Flowers: Well, yeah, but you know, it was Memphis, it was all the folks who know me and know what I do, and yes, it was very well received and it was a good crowd. I’m trying to do some new performance stuff with it and I tried some things and it went well. They also sent me the scroll, because traditionally what the Patua artists do is they paint the paintings on a scroll and they unroll the scroll while they sing the story. So they asked me, “Do you want us to have him do a scroll of it?” And I said no, but they kept asking me, and I realized they’re trying to send me a scroll version of the novel in the traditional art form. I was like, “Sure, send it!” So they sent it to me; I’m going to try to work it into the act.