Olde Posts Addenda (9)

(New items related to old posts)

More Feats By Olivia Ferney
  This concierge from the campus close by, recently arranged what she hoped would be the world's "largest champagne presentation", in Vegas for one of her clients who wanted something "epic." There is really no category for champagne chugging but an adjudicator from Guinness World Records showed up and for this portion of the party, "The final cost for the liquid alone (125 bottles of Perrier Jouet Grand Brut, 50 bottles of Dom Pérignon Brut Luminus and five bottles of Dos Hombres Blanco tequila) amounted to $226,000 and change."
If you are not impressed, those are U.S. dollars. 
  I told you about Ms. Ferney in this post, "Serving the Ridiculously Rich," which provides other examples of her feats, and if you combine this post with that one you will have an extensive Ferney bibliography. She is from Dundas and went to Western.
   "She Makes the Impossible Happen for Her Ultrarich Clients," Guy Trebay, The New York Times, Aug. 10, 2026.
   "Over-the-top was the mandate. The client, a wealthy med-tech entrepreneur, was on his way to Las Vegas to close a $150 million business deal. A celebration was to be had. “He wanted something crazy,” Olivia Ferney said.
    A child of Canadian schoolteachers, Ferney knew nothing about the world of private jets and $25,000-a-day cabanas until she discovered her unusual line of work about three years ago.
   “I was basically up there in my little log cabin,” she said.
   Nowadays, more than two million social media followers watch the videos she posts of her interactions with her tough-to-please clients. She is also making an impression beyond her core audience. Time magazine included her in its list of the top 100 digital influencers of 2026. And Fifth Season, the production company behind “Severance” and “Killing Eve,” has signed a deal with Ferney and her business partner and fiancé, Troy Arnold, for a scripted series based on their agency, Top Tier Travel.... 
  One of Ferney’s working mottos is, “Our job is to execute, not judge.” Given that she and her business partner are routinely tasked with fulfilling the whims of those who think nothing of laying out $2.25 million for a weeklong yacht rental on the Côte d’Azur (as recently happened), this makes a kind of cockeyed sense. 
   Each client of Top Tier Travel must fork over an annual fee of $100,000 and agree to book $1 million in yearly travel. John Block, the chief operating officer of Park West Gallery, which sells high-priced works of art on cruise ships, said the fees were worth it. Not long ago, he explained, Top Tier booked a private jet on short notice to collect his ailing sister for a family vacation. “You can’t just order up a jet like an Uber,” Block said."
[Western is not mentioned in this article, but it is in the articles in my first post about Ferney.]

Travelling Locally

  Six years ago I did a post about GRASSROUTES and you will recognize the signs around Middlesex County which are used to promote local tourism. If you want to find more trail guides for our area, this link is the place to start since some of the links in my older post seem to have rotted. 
  Back then I did the post because of the covid pandemic. Now there are other reasons for being reluctant to wander too far from home. Who wants to fly anywhere and should we really cross the border near by?
  If you just want to go for a ride through the Ontario countryside and visit a few bookstores, here is the guide you need: Unique and Independent Bookstores In Ontario. (Cardinal Books in Birr is not included, but you can search the store from here or just keep going north on Richmond St.) 
   If you are more interested in Literary Events, which include The Book Drunkard Literary Festival, click on the link provided. Additional destinations are listed at Destination Ontario, where you will also find an alpaca farm and some eco-resorts.

  Two years ago, when things were a bit better with our neighbour, I provided a guide to U.S. Literary Landscapes. I encourage you to look at that post, which is an interesting one, but I suggest that we avoid heading south at this time.

The Bonus: - Going Somewhere in Canada for 36 Hours
  Two years ago I also provided you with a post that indicated how one could spend 36 hours in Toronto. If you type the word "Toronto" in the MM search box, you will find little about that city that is positive and there are many other places I would rather visit, including Mogadishu. 
   Still I overcame my prejudices and the Visiting TORONTO post points you to an article in the New York Times indicating how to best spend 36 Hours in Toronto. Given my prejudices, I thought that the suggestions provided would hardly result in a surge of tourists venturing north in search of, for example, "The Philosopher’s Walk [which] winds through the leafy St. George campus of the University of Toronto." But, "you could quench your thirst at the "Bathurst Local [which] is a laid-back bar with a maze of private karaoke rooms."

An Even Bigger Bonus - 36 Hours: The Series
  The New York Times has for many years offered travel suggestions under the title, "36 Hours in ....." The latest one as I write is, "36 Hours in the Cotswolds" (Aug. 20, 2026.") Typically included are: Key Attractions, Restaurants and Bars, Shopping, Where to Stay and Getting Around. The suggestions are not necessarily intended for those on a limited budget. For example, one place to stay in the Cotswolds, is the Estelle Manor at around £600 per night.
   Back to Toronto. The post "Visiting Toronto" was about what was recommended in the spring of 2024. But, I then provided references to articles indicating what was worth checking out in Toronto in 2016 and 2005.

   I then gathered all of the other 36 HOURS --- ELSEWHERE IN CANADA which were published in the NYT, between 2002 and 2024. The cities covered range from St. John's to Victoria. There is one for the entire island of PEI and there are four for Whistler and Vancouver.

   This post will be tremendously useful for someone who wonders how one could have best spent 36 hours in Newfoundland in 2006, or if one is curious about what changed for tourists in Victoria between 2004 and 2018. It is certainly likely that the names of some of the Key Attractions will have vanished if they were named after some formerly popular Canadian, now out of favour. 
  Once again, all of this valuable information about what was worth visiting for 36 hours in Canada over a number of different years in many different areas is found in the post, "Visiting Toronto", where I still think spending 36 hours is much more than enough. 

Reuel Wilson (1938 - 2026)

   Reuel Wilson was on the faculty at UWO/Western University for many years. Given that it is rather quiet on campus right now and that less people read newspapers and, perhaps even less notice obituaries, my purpose here is to provide his obituary and the memorial notice found on the Western website. As well, information about Reuel's last book is included. 
  Many years ago, I played squash with Reuel and for a period when he was away, probably in Wellfleet, I lived in his house on Huron Street. Being the son of a very famous father and perhaps an even more popular mother, it contained photographs of many people who were recognizable, including his uncle, an actor. Over the years I would occasionally run into Reuel on campus and in our brief conversations, the famous people were never mentioned and I am sure he was pleased that the name "Wilson" guaranteed a certain degree of anonymity. I don't think any local reporters bothered him when one of his parents was in the news --- for example, when his mother called Lillian Hellman a liar on The Dick Cavett Show and was sued for $2.5 million, or when they passed on. I am fairly sure he enjoyed his quiet life on campus and he did come to London and stay here. I will say little more, since some of his colleagues provide comments about Reuel after the thorough obituary.

  In recent years Reuel was sometimes seen walking through the stacks in Weldon Library, in which he had a carrel. The "library window" referred to in the blurb for his book, is the one in Weldon where he did his research and writing. If you want to know more about a very interesting and nice fellow, or are curious about what he might have to say about his days at Western and in London, I suggest you buy the book. It is simple to do so. Go to Amazon and look for the title, Holding the Road...
   Order it and, no matter where you are, a copy will be printed close by and delivered to your door. Mine came the next day from Bolton and was quickly read and enjoyed. I am glad I was able to meet him. 
  

   "Reuel Wilson’s new memoir, Holding the Road: Away from Edmund Wilson and Mary McCarthy, follows the author through his childhood, spent in the households of his divorced parents, and then the expanding perspectives of his adult life. The reader meets Reuel’s closest relatives and confidants: Bowden Broadwater, his first step-father, Rosalind Wilson, his older half-sister, his uncle, Kevin McCarthy, the famous actor, and two remarkable Polish women, one a surrogate mother, the other McCarthy’s brilliant translator, who came to play the role of an aunt whom had never had. Following his diverse interests, Reuel traveled widely. Intellectual and cultural history are reflected in the people and places he knew and glimpsed – Montgomery Clift, Peggy Guggenheim, Hannah Arendt, Dwight Macdonald, Renata Adler, James Jones, Edward Said, Eldridge Cleaver in California, a zombie prostitute in Moscow, a flamboyant independent book seller in Havana, a venerable Marxist writer in Port-au-Prince. The book closes with an inside view of academia, the author’s home territory. He also recalls his mother’s stints as a college lecturer, and analyzes her ground-breaking novel The Groves of Academe. The conclusion, punctuated by a student demonstration under the writer’s library window, takes a broader view of the outlying city, landscape, and, by extension, of his adoptive country, Canada. In conclusion, he voices the hope that these fragments of life, now recalled in tranquility, will find wider resonance."

In Memoriam

Professor Reuel Wilson (1938-2026)

Remembering Reuel Wilson

   The Department of Languages and Cultures mourns the passing of Reuel Wilson, who retired from the former Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures in 2002. Professor Wilson taught Polish, Russian, and Comparative Literature for many years at Western and is remembered by colleagues as a warm, kind, and generous presence in the department. Those who worked with him recall his wonderful sense of humour, his genuine interest in colleagues and students, and the encouragement he offered to those at earlier stages of their careers. He remained deeply interested in the department’s programs and left a lasting impression on those who had the privilege of knowing him. We extend our sincere condolences to his family, friends, former colleagues, and students.
(This is found on the Western University website - Department of Languages, Cultures, and Linguistics)
--------------------------------------------

The Obituary

Reuel Kimball Wilson Obituary
(From the London Free Press, June 22, 2026)

   Reuel Wilson was born on December 25, 1938, in Manhattan, New York. He died at his home on June 4, 2026, surrounded by his loving family in London, Ontario, where he lived with his beloved wife Natsuko for 46 years.

   Reuel Kimball Wilson was named after his father's uncle, a physician much esteemed by the family. His father Edmund Wilson was an influential literary critic, an early champion of European avant-garde and modernist expression, an active chronicler of his times, and an authority on the work of his contemporaries, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and many others. His mother, Mary McCarthy, was a pioneering novelist, memoirist, and critic. Her bestselling 1963 novel The Group became a cultural phenomenon adapted into a film by Sidney Lumet. Her memoir, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, about her upbringing and the events surrounding the sudden death of her parents during the Spanish influenza epidemic, is considered a classic of the genre and is dedicated to Reuel.

   Reuel's childhood was spent between his parents in New York, Cape Cod, and Rhode Island. As a boy he attended St. Bernard's School in New York, where his cherished stepfather and lifelong friend, Bowden Broadwater, was a well-loved, eccentric mainstay. After attending St. George's School and graduating from Brooks School, he completed his undergraduate studies in Romance languages and literature at Harvard College.

   Raised in an environment shaped by engagement with literary traditions of many cultures, Reuel developed an enduring interest in multilingualism that would define his studies, his scholarly career, and larger outlook in life. In the 1960s he continued his studies of Slavic languages and literature in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. There he studied under, and translated the work of, the Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet Czesław Miłosz. He wrote a doctoral thesis at the University of Chicago on Russian travel literature published as The Literary Travelogue: A Comparative Study with Special Relevance to Russian Literature from Fonvizin to Pushkin. By then, he had become fluent in Russian, Polish, and French; he would later master Spanish, in connection with his love of travel to foreign countries, especially Cuba and Mexico, and his intense curiosity for the contemporary literature emerging from the Spanish-speaking world.

   Reuel taught Polish at UCLA for some years before he moved to Canada in 1970, with his first wife, Marcia, and joined the faculty of the Slavic Languages and Literatures department at the University of Western Ontario. There he taught undergraduate and graduate courses in language, in comparative literature, and in Russian and Polish literature (in the original languages). As a professor, he mentored many students, published articles and book reviews, and another book, with Jan Pachonski, Poland's Caribbean Tragedy: A Study of the Polish Legions in the Haitian War of Independence, 1802-1803. It concerns Haiti's war of independence and Napoleon Bonaparte's plan to have his generals conscript the Polish into the war in order to reintroduce slavery into Saint-Domingue, then the wealthiest colony of France.

   After retiring in 2002 he published two memoirs: To the Life of the Silver Harbor: Edmund Wilson and Mary McCarthy on Cape Cod (2008), which revisits moments from his childhood and the works of his parents linked to the landscape to which he held a strong attachment; and Holding the Road: Away from Edmund Wilson and Mary McCarthy (2019), where he offers vivid portraits of figures from his past, such as Hannah Arendt, Peggy Guggenheim, and his dear uncle, the actor Kevin McCarthy, best known from his leading role in the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie.

   Reuel continued to travel widely to foreign countries, to spend time in spring and fall in Wellfleet, Cape Cod, and to take pleasure in his various interests, which included cooking, barbequing in summer, gardening, and reading books, newspapers and journals in various languages. He remained close with former colleagues and friends and enjoyed hosting dinners. Eschewing fuss of any kind, Reuel appreciated the straightforward beauty of simplicity in nature, art, music, and friendship. His dry sense of humor and allergy to convention remained intact. His vivid memory of both historical events and of the details of his own and others' personal pasts never faded. He continued to play squash into his seventies and to enjoy bike-riding, swimming and exploring new places by car and on foot for many years afterward. An adventurous traveler quick to pick up the local dialects and idioms of the languages he came to know, he ventured off the beaten path to places such as Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Russia, Poland, and Portugal before the swell of mass tourism.

FROM THE GUESTBOOK

Reuel had a sly sense of humour, and he had a comprehensive knowledge of literature. He grew up in a household in which John Dos Passos and Vladimir Nabokov came to dinner often. I loved the way he often seemed to be mildly amused by life. Thank you, Reuel, for being my colleague.
Laurence de Looze
June 22, 2026

So sad. Reuel was a lovely man. He had a profound knowledge of world literature and a keen interest in sharing it with students and colleagues. I smile when I think of him riding all over London on his bike and surviving some tumbles. We had a brief visit last year and I was looking forward to seeing him again this summer. My condolences to Natsuko and his children.\
Marjorie Ratcliffe
June 22, 2026

Reuel was a wonderful colleague who welcomed me when I joined the Russian studies section of the Dept. of Modern Languages in 1991. We saw each other a lot in the 1990s, and he always wanted to speak to me in Russian, which he did very well. He was an impressive polyglot whose repertoire included Polish and Spanish, as well as French. We had many conversations in his office and saw each other off campus frequently. Reuel was extremely well-read and had a wide range of interests. I will always fondly remember our friendship. Sincere condolences to Natsuko and Sophie.
Vladimir Tumanov
June 23, 2026

I first encountered Reuel's work through the world of Polish studies; we even had the same Polish professor (though in different decades). I was a great admirer of Reuel's splendid book on "Poland's Caribbean Tragedy." When I met him I was of course impressed by his wisdom, erudition, and wonderful amiability. Condolences to Natsuko, Sophia, and the whole family.
Larry Wolff
June 24, 2026

Reuel was a great colleague, full of kindness and humour. I remember being invited to his home and Natsuko made the most wonderful Suchi.
Reuel continued his research after he retired, and after he retired he used to come by for me to sign the forms so he could have a table in the library. I always looked forward to his visits. He is missed.
Joyce Bruhn de Garavito
June 22, 2026

Post Script:
  Over the years, I have often mentioned Western in my blog and some of the people I knew while working there, including Reuel. Most recently, his mother is mentioned in my post about Hannah Arendt. His father wrote many books, including one about Canada, see "OH! Canada?". His father's papers are in Tulsa, along with those of Bob Dylan.

London's Bicentennial (Snippet 40)

Although The Forest City Wood Ash Company was located in London, advertisements for the wood ash it supplied are found in newspapers as far south as Florida. Apparently wood ash can be used as a fertilizer to enrich soil for plants. One can find many articles about wood ash, but I am not sure why The Forest City Ash Company had such large quantities of it and would ship barrels of it by train to DeLand, FL.

Source: The Florida Agriculturalist, Dec. 3, 1890

  This bill head is currently offered on ebay for $22 (US). The company was obviously still around in 1895.

The Bonus: Apart from learning that ash can be useful, I learned that DeLand is named after Henry DeLand who made baking soda. The town had a better name before it was DeLand - Persimmon Hollow.  And a school founded by DeLand, later became Stetson University, and yes, it is named after the hat fellow.

The Losing of Libraries (Pt. 2)

 And Librarians
  In "The Losing of Libraries" I wrote about the disappearance of some local libraries. It is not just a local phenomenon and other examples are easily found.

The NASA Library
 "Holdings from the Library at the Goddard Space Flight Center, Which Includes Unique Documents From the Early 20th Century to the Soviet Space Race, Will be Warehoused or Thrown Out," Eric Niller, The New York Times, Dec. 31, 2025.

  "The Trump administration is closing NASA’s largest research library on Friday, a facility that houses tens of thousands of books, documents and journals — many of them not digitized or available anywhere else....
    The shutdown of the library at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., is part of a larger reorganization under the Trump administration that includes the closure of 13 buildings and more than 100 science and engineering laboratories on the 1,270-acre campus by March 2026….

   The library closure on Friday follows the shutdown of seven other NASA libraries around the country since 2022, and included three libraries this year. As of next week, only three — at the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. — will remain open."

Microsoft Libraries

Public Libraries
  The "library function" at many public libraries is now often a minor one and books are being removed to make room for more important things.

Key Details of the Incident:
Location: Croydon, south London, UK.
What Happened: Contractors cleared out a local building and left books piled on the ground outside.
The Context: The site was closed as a traditional library due to Croydon Council cost-cutting measures and repurposed into a community resource center.
The Aftermath: Mayor Jason Perry issued an apology on BBC News, promised to take action against the responsible contractors, and confirmed that local residents stepped in to collect the books from the pavement so they could be returned inside.
(The AI summary of the BBC piece.)

Hannah Arendt's Library

   I recently posted some photographs of the libraries of Eric Hobsbawn and William T. Vollman and here is another one. This one belonged to Hannah Arendt and it looks to be sizeable. I wondered what happened to those books.

  When she died in 1975 the books were acquired by Bard College. There were about 4,000 of them and "Of particular significance are the 900+ volumes containing marginal notes or lining, endnotes or ephemera, as well as many volumes inscribed to her by Martin Heidegger, Gershom Scholem, W.H. Auden and Randall Jarrell, among others."

Sources: 
  The photograph is found in a review of a new book about Arendt: "A Dense Life of Hannah Arendt Doesn’t Justify Its Prodigious Research," by Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times, Aug. 12, 2026. The book is: HANNAH ARENDT: A Life of the Mind, by Thomas Meyer.
  For more details see Bard's description of the Hannah Arendt Personal Library. 
"After Hannah Arendt’s death in 1975, her personal library was acquired by Bard College through the efforts of co-executors Lotte Kohler and Mary McCarthy;"

  While many university libraries are hollowing out, a few are still collecting books and other material with intellectual and/or aesthetic value.

The Bonus: 
  You will note sbove that a co-executor of Arendt's estate was Mary McCarthy. Her son was a retired Professor Emeritus who taught at UWO/Western University and passed away in June 2026.
  Another, more detailed review is provided by David Denby in The New Yorker: "The Uses of Exile," Aug. 17, 2026. In it McCarthy is said to be Arendt's "closest American friend", and supported her after she was attacked when Eichmann in Jerusalem was published. 

I Had Forgotten About Phillumeny

 
MATCHBOOKS
  If you are a phillumenist, you are a collector of matchbooks. My sister was and her collection was discussed under "Match Making" to attract readers. More was written about matchbooks in "Matchbook Memorabilia" in "Olde Post Addenda (2). 
  The subject is being raised again because matchbooks are both colourful and informative and I have found a huge collection at Pepperdine University. The collection also contains postcards and other things and it has been digitized. The 1,322  items can also be searched. This will give you something to do while I think about something about which to write.
   The collection is called the, Eric Wienberg Collection of Malibu Matchbooks, Postcards, and Ephemera, 1900-2013. Here is a description:

Summary:The collection consists of matchbooks, postcards, photographs and collectibles dating from the early 1900s up until 2013. It is arranged alphabetically by series and the files are sorted by subject and geography and put in alphabetical order. Items are related to the history of business establishments and sites in Malibu and surrounding areas in Southern California; the one exception is the Cliff House Restaurant Postcards file, which contains postcards from San Francisco, California.
Abstract: The Eric Wienberg Collection of Malibu Matchbooks, Postcards, and Ephemera chronicles the history of business establishments and sites in Malibu and the surrounding area. The collection covers a period between the late 19th century and the 1980s, and features matchbook covers, postcards, publications, and ephemera from restaurants, cafes, bars, hotels, motels, stores, and other businesses from Malibu, Topanga, Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica, Culver City, Venice Beach and Catalina Island. The collection also includes publicity photographs, photojournalistic images, and candid snapshots from life in Malibu and Southern California.

 The Collection is made available via JSTOR and you will be able to access and search it. For another good description see, "Malibu in Matchbooks: Clues to a Lost Coast," by Alex Houston, JSTOR Daily, April 8, 2026.
Save this for a rainy day. 

The Losing of Libraries

   In Mulcahy's Miscellany I often write about books and the collecting of them and a few recent posts have focussed on the private libraries amassed by individuals. Some people still value printed books and I stumbled upon several shelves of them last week on an island in Georgian Bay. They had come from far away and then the books had to be transported by boat and carried over rocks to the cottage.



Institutional Libraries
  The books prized by bibliophiles and kept by casual readers, who like Anthony Powell know that Books Do Furnish a Room, are more highly valued in many homes than they are in our public libraries and universities. I suppose the complaints about collections of books by partners or spouses are more easily parried than those coming from administrators at institutions, but the complaints are increasingly hard to counter when all of the content can be captured on a thumb drive.
  I thought of the article containing the photo above when I returned home and then saw the cover of the August issue of The Atlantic which contains only these few words in very large print: "The Age of Reading Is Over." Then, I happened to see the image below which is found on the website of Western Libraries. It relates to a curious collection that was placed in the Weldon Library at the end of the last century. 

  Although the Pride Library is only closing for the summer and it is stated clearly that, "The Space Itself is Not Moving or Closing Permanently", my guess is that it will only be a sanctuary of sorts, and that there will be continuing pressure to use the space for something other than the storage of books and periodicals, even though the material is of some importance to those found in this initialism - LGBTQIA2S+.  My guess may be wrong and you can decide for yourself after reading: "The Pride Library: Frequently Asked Questions Regarding Temporary Closure."

  I used to work in some of the Western Libraries and there are now fewer of them. I have chronicled the loss of some and lamented the removal of books from the ones that remain (see, e.g. "Library Lamentations - Stackless Universities").
   I also wrote about another loss - one of the colleges/universities affiliated with Western University - Brescia University College (see, "Bad News From Brescia"). I did not note, however, that the Brescia Library also was closed. You can learn more about that lost library in the article below from Western News. The expansion was completed in 2006, but priorities do change. 

   The space is now a Pavilion which would probably satisfy the late philanthropist who passed away in 2008. She and her husband both contributed much to London and UWO (see, "Mr. Richard Ivey").

There were almost 50,000 items in the Brescia Library and they were absorbed by the other Western Libraries or placed in storage. (For the details see: "Brescia Library Integration FAQ")

  There are still two affiliated colleges attached to Western (Huron and King's) and they both have libraries which were curated over many years. I worry that their years are numbered.

The Bonus: 
  A few years ago I published a post about "Edward Gorey's Library". When I  checked to see if the Western Libraries had many books relating to Gorey, I found that they did and that several were in the Pride Library and had been donated by "Empress II Madison Hart, Royal Imperial Sovereign Court of London and of Southwestern Ontario"!!
  For more information about the Pride Library, see Pride Library.