The country’s oldest gay bookstore, Giovanni’s Room, needs some help. The independent, located in Philadelphia, has a problem with one of its walls that will cost $50,000 to fix. Owner Ed Hermance is looking for volunteers to assist in fundraising activities.

The store will continue to be open as the work is done, so if you are in Philadelphia, drop by and spend some money at the place. This past March, Oscar Wilde Bookshop in New York City closed down because of a weak economy and a reading life that is diminishing in this time of the Twitter.

Years ago, Lewis Lapham, former editor of Harper’s magazine, wrote people who read serious fiction and lived in New York, probably could not fill Yankee Stadium. At the time I thought he was being a little bit over the top; however, now I’m not so sure. The National Endowment for the Arts published a study two years ago called “To Read or Not to Read.”

“This study shows the startling declines, in how much and how well Americans read, that are adversely affecting this country’s culture, economy, and civic life as well as our children’s educational achievement,” said then NEA head Dana Gioia.

The report’s numbers, especially on the reading habits of the young, would make a cranky librarian pass out: “1) Less than one-third of 13-year-olds are daily readers, a 14 percent decline from 20 years earlier. Among 17-year-olds, the percentage of non-readers doubled over a 20-year period, from nine percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004, and 2) on average, Americans ages 15 to 24 spend almost two hours a day watching TV, and only seven minutes of their daily leisure time on reading.”

Seven minutes?!?! What’s that? Like a page a day?!

Yearning for some bygone cultural life that more than likely never existed is always tricky, but if you believe in the phrases “gay community” and “gay culture”, then the survival of Giovanni’s Room is important for the sake of our memories of where we have been. That sense of memory, history, is not going to come from a Twitter feed or the travails of pretty people on the small screen. It’s all there on the pages. If those pages go missing, how will we know our next steps?