Today, Sweety and I had lunch together and went to run an errand afterward. "Let's go to Elephant Pharm," I said. "We need diapers."

Elephant Pharm is a locally owned pharmacy chain. It's an extremely cool place; clean and friendly, with organic choices in everything from food to baby lotion to feminine hygiene and beyond. Conveniently, it's right next to Trader Joe's. This is great because Elephant Pharm has all the stuff Trader Joe's lacks. Often, I have to schedule a Trader Joe's trip in tandem with another grocery trip, because they never have diapers or zippered plastic bags or unscented hand lotion.

Make that was and had. When we got there, we found a store that looked like it hadn't opened yet. No lights on, everything still in place on the shelves. A man in sunglasses stopped us, as if blocking the door. "Elephant Pharm is closed," he told us. "Your prescriptions have been moved to Long's." He didn't move, just handed us a flyer and stood there talking. He seemed very East Coast to me somehow, and not in the ways I like. Sweety said later that he thought the man was trying to block us from reading the sign on the door.

Sure enough, the sign said that all Elephant Pharm store closed yesterday, "with a heavy heart" and probably forever. Knowing Long's was recently acquired by CVS, I asked the man what happened to the Long's employees who used to work Long's corporate headquarters in Northern California. "They were given generous severance packages," he said.

I found this entire exchange very troubling. Long's used to be a locally owned chain, before CVS bought them and rendered many locals jobless. Elephant Pharm was local, too. I'm all for global culture, but walking into a CVS just like the one in Sweety's New Jersey hometown holds little appeal.

Until recently I gave most of my business to a national chain pharmacy simply because it was more convenient. It seemed good to save the gas. But a few weeks ago, I decided that I couldn't afford to have more jobs leave our community. I also decided to stop ordering from Diapers.com, even though it would cost a few dimes more per pack to buy them at Elephant Pharm. I wanted to keep the last local pharmacy in business.

It seems my change was too little, too late.

Like most American grownups, I've been thinking a lot about the economy lately. And like most American grownups, I've been thinking about our personal finances and how they fit into the economy.

I'm wondering, what are the best ways to keep the economy afloat without wasting our own money? It's pretty obvious that the "consumerism as patriotism" thing didn't work. I've always been of the opinion that buying useless junk helps neither the economy nor our budget, but what about other things?

For instance, the other day I bought some organic cherry tomatoes. The American-grown ones cost 6 dollars a pint. There were Mexican-grown grape tomatoes next to them, which were the same as far as my recipe was concerned. The Mexican tomatoes didn't have a price tag, but I assumed they were about the same or a little bit cheaper.  I know that my $6 doesn't make a huge impact alone, but if a few other shoppers make the same decision, that helps the grocery store decide what to stock. What the grocery store stocks pretty much makes the decision for the people who don't care about these issues. So, in terms of the economy, money returned to the community, semi-local ecology, etc., was it more cost-effective to buy the American ones?

Of course, this is further complicated by my guess that the life of the average Mexican farm worker isn't so hot, either.

Today I renewed our Natural History subscription for another two years. It's one of Sweety's favorite magazines, and it's associated wth a museum, so I'm all for it. Didn't hurt that you get such a good rate when you re-up early.

But I paused for a minute when I remembered the latest issue ran 48 pages. I've never counted their edit-to-ads ratio, but a thinner mag usually means less content. Subscriptions help, sure, and so does selling mailing lists (although we're no help in that regard), but ad revenue is still where most mags make their money. When ad pages drop, so do edit pages. I'm not saying NH will stop printing or anything; I don't know how their overall finances are, and I think they probably have some core readers who will never give up on the mag.

I've been told that the first thing people let go when their household budget gets constricted is magazine subscriptions. They're not all that expensive over the time you get them, but if you're up for renewal and see a fast way to not spend forty bucks, a lot will depend on how much forty bucks means to you at that moment. I guess I've always seen dropping subscriber numbers--and you can easily track these at a magazine's Web site, because they have to reassess their rate base quarterly--as a bad sign for not just the mag staffers, who lose jobs if this continues, but for the economy in general. Of course there are surer ways of showing how the economy's doing, but it's a segment I find a little sad when things aren't going well.

The case of Natural History is especially worrisome because it's such a good magazine, always very solid and interesting. Sweety loves the science articles, and even I often tear out their book reviews and add to my Amazon or library list. Discover went ridiculously fluffy a few years back, so there aren't a lot of science magaziness that I can both comprehend and stand any more. If NH gets thinner, it is a loss for both of us. And not just for us; it means there are fewer ways for average joes to learn about science, and it might mean the museum is suffering, too. That's a bad sign not just for the current economy, but for the future of our economy.