Tower falls

News of Tower Records' passing is not an easy thing to take if you, like me, spent portions -significant portions - (OK, enormous portions) of your youth browsing in book and record stores. I won't miss the sometimes surly clerks (though I feel for the 3,000 people that will lose their jobs) or the dust, but I will miss knowing there is a place to go where one can make unintended discoveries. For some of us, record stores were our own research facilities. Bookstores, it would seem, can still serve this need (more or less), so I still sleep. But I do not rest easy.