Bookstore Bits

Shakespeare and Company 
  This storied bookshop is in Paris, not England, and Shakespeare never visited it. There are lineups to get in, however, and it has been around for a long time. A recent article in The Economist wondered why it is so popular: "What the World’s Most Famous Bookshop Reveals About Culture: Shakespeare and Company in Paris is Turning 75. Is its Success Replicable?", Aug. 27, 2026
   Probably not, to answer the question posed in that title. Many people  show up because it is on the left bank of the Seine. Myth has something to do with it since there was an earlier Shakespeare and Company and the American owner of that shop had many famous friends, like Hemingway. It also helps that the shop has "hundreds of thousands of social-media followers," some of whom may actually read books. It also does not hurt that many have seen films in which the bookshop has a role, Midnight in Paris and Before Sunset, for example. Even those who stay at home may have watched Emily in Paris, the TV series.

  While Shakespeare and Company may have been seen by many, those who enter are not allowed to take "selfies", or photos inside the store, which is said to enhance the store's mystique. If you buy a book, it is stamped with the shop's name and logo, which proves one was there. Authors also visit and sign books which "can triple sales" and "higher-margin merchandise, including tote bags and notebooks, accounts for around 30% of total sales." I suppose that what this "Bookshop Reveals About Culture" is that the success of Shakespeare and Company cannot be attributed solely to books or a great desire to read them.

The Bulk Buying of Books
   Back in Canada, very large numbers of used books are being purchased. This is not necessarily good news. They are not bought to be read, but to be scanned. The books are pulled apart and used for training for large language models like Claude.

  "Physical books, particularly those published before OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, are in demand for AI companies. That's partly because some experts say the language models degrade when repeatedly trained on their own output, so they need to be fed with content that is guaranteed to be free of AI-generated text."

That is from: "Used Bookstores Navigate 'Suspicious Bulk Orders Amid AI Book-Shredding Fears," Kevin Maimann, CBC News, Sept 1, 2026.

A Beautiful Bookshop
  In the article in The Economist there is mention of Livraria Lello in Porto which looks like "a cross between a cathedral and a robber baron's mansion." You have to buy a ticket to get in.

London's Bicentennial (Snippet 44)

A Transatlantic Flight From London to London in 1927
  In my last snippet, to mark London's 200th birthday, I wrote about a London brewer who was kidnapped in 1934. In this one a London brewery (Carling) offered in 1927, $25,000 to any aviator who successfully crossed the Atlantic. There are many accounts in the news about these London stories and samples about this one are found below.
  Also provided are some sources for those who would like to read more about this aviation adventure, which was not a successful one. The Sir John Carling was able to make it to Newfoundland after a couple of delays, but the plane did not go much farther and was never found, nor were the pilot and aviator.
   

 "Flying From the Heart of the Empire to the Soul of the Empire" - 1927

From the Evening Star (Washington) Aug. 11, 1927.

Sources:
  The picture of the postcard is found at Miller & Miller Auctions where a good account is provided by Tess Malloy: "Brewing With Ambition: The Ill-fated Carling's Brewery London-to-London Challenge: A Daring Transatlantic Journey Ends in Tragedy and Mystery," Oct. 9, 2023.
  The "Empire quotation" is in this article by Larry Cornies: "A Plane Was Lost, and So Was a Story of London's Aviation History," London Free Press, May 21, 2022. Here is a portion:

  "Mere months after Charles Lindbergh's gruelling 33½-hour flight from New York to Paris in May 1927, London entrepreneurs decided the coming age of aeronautics was too exciting to pass up. And Lindbergh's achievement sparked what local historian Alice Gibb has called "the ultimate public relations campaign in London's history."

   That campaign was put together by Arthur Carty, a former London Free Press reporter who had built a news and publicity service with his uncle Edmund Carty, and Charles Burns, president of Carling Breweries.

   The ad they posted in The Free Press on June 29, 1927, only 38 days after Lindbergh's flight, was for a "Canadian aviator to fly from London, Ont., to London, Eng." The $25,000 prize - the same amount paid to Lindbergh - would be equivalent to about $400,000 today. The funds were held in trust by London businessperson Ray Lawson, with the support of mayor John M. Moore and London Chamber of Commerce president A.J. Grant.

  A flood of applications poured in from pilots willing to risk the 6,200-kilometre trip "from the heart of the Empire to the soul of the Empire" in a Stinson Detroiter monoplane, made by Stinson Aircraft Corp. in Detroit.

   The pilot ultimately chosen was Capt.Terence Bernard Tully, a 33-year-old decorated Royal Air Force aviator and former Aero plane test pilot for A.V. Roe and Co. Tully and his wife Anne had immigrated from Ireland four years earlier; he had logged more than 2,500 hours flying for Ontario's forestry service. Tully then selected Lt. James Medcalf, 28, another RAF veteran, as his co-pilot and navigator."
  The pilots took off from Harbour Grace, NL and the story is reported by some folks out east: "Disaster Strikes: The Sir John Carling," Community Stories. (n.d.)

See also, "Harbour Grace Airstrip," by Harbour Grace Tourism. 

Fran Lebowitz's Library

  Fran Lebowitz is a very funny person who has a very serious library of around 12,000 books. It is not the kind of library one would expect from someone kicked out of school twice, mostly because of "nonspecific surliness" or general petulance. She became an atheist at 7 and has smoked since she was 12, but is still around at 75. You may have seen her on Letterman or Leno, or even on Fallon or Maher. If you read anything about her or by her, you will laugh a lot. See, Fran Lebowitz on Wikipedia for starters. It doesn't mention that she owns a Checker Marathon, which seems about right.
   Almost ten years ago, she answered some questions about her library and some of them are presented below.
 
[When you saw her name above, you may have thought of that other Jewish New Yorker, the famous photographer who ran into financial trouble a few years ago and whose photo collection caused a real kerfuffle out in Nova Scotia. She is Annie Lebovitz, with a V not a W.]

From: "Fran Lebowitz: By the Book". The New York Times. March 21, 2017.

How do you organize your books?

  My books are organized first by category. Fiction, letters, essays. Those kinds of categories. And then there are many subdivisions. Then within categories, they’re alphabetized. I always have arguments with the guy who helps me organize my books, because I have a biography section. He says: “You can’t have a biography section. You have to have them arranged by writer. For instance, Henry James’s fiction, then the letters, the biographies, etc.” And I say: “I know. That’s the right way to do it. But that would take up too much space.” All the apartments I buy or rent are for my books, not for myself. I don’t need the space. I’m 5-foot-4. I have a whole bookcase that this guy calls “your crazy books.” The crazy book category. Those books are not alphabetized.

   I also have a large reference library. I have numerous encyclopedias; I have many, many dictionaries. I actually bought myself the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1978. I always wanted it, and when I wrote my first book and had some money, I bought it. I didn’t have it growing up; I had the World Book, because it was less expensive. The Encyclopaedia Britannica was so hard to buy, I can’t tell you. I had to make one million phone calls. Because it was generally sold on an installment plan. They didn’t know how to send these books to someone who is just going to send a check.

Nobody uses these books anymore, but I do. When the second edition of the O.E.D. came out, there was nothing I wanted more. It was like $10,000. I had a friend who owned a bookstore, and I begged her to let me buy it at cost, and she did. It was still several thousand dollars, but I’m delighted to own it, even though I think it’s now free on the internet.

You’re in the process of moving your personal library. What’s that been like?

   Believe me, I’m not in the process of it yet. Because it’s so awful, I keep putting it off. But I just did it a year and a half ago. They come and pack the books. That takes three days. But two times before that, it took two months to organize them first. I have many bookcases. They have glass doors. They are mostly 19th-century. The books all go in certain places in my apartment. I like to have fiction in the living room, reference books in the writing room. I have 10,000 books. I know this because I move them. When I move, I go through them and take some out. Many books come to this house unbidden. And unbidden books, I don’t want to keep them. Once the books are all rearranged, I can put my hand on any book. I know where they all are.

When do you read?

   Pretty much all the time. Especially if I’m supposed to be doing something else. I was very frequently punished for reading as a child because I was reading when I was supposed to be doing homework. I got in trouble in school for reading, I got in trouble at home for reading. My mother would actually bang on my door and say, “I know you’re reading in there!” In my adult life, I’ve gotten in trouble for reading because I’m not writing when I’m reading. So it’s really rare that reading is unaccompanied by guilt for me. But I’ve learned to live with it. I feel guilty pretty much all the time.

How do you like to read? Paper or electronic? One book at a time or several simultaneously?

   Obviously, paper. I mean, actually, on his show once, Jimmy Fallon gave me a Kindle. He actually gave it to me as a present. I said: “I know you gave me this because I don’t have one. You know what else I don’t have? A Bentley.”

   I don’t think they’re horrible. I don’t object to them. I’m just not interested in them. People are always showing me this stuff like I’m from outer space and I’ve never heard of it. I have really bad eyesight, so they always tell me you can make the type bigger. I suppose that would be a good thing for me, but I don’t care. I’d rather squint.

"The only monogamous relationship I have had 
in my life is with my car."

You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

   None. I would never do it. My idea of a great literary dinner party is Fran, eating alone, reading a book. That’s my idea of a literary dinner party. When I eat alone, I spend a lot of time, before I sit down to my meager meal, choosing what to read. And I’m a lot better choosing a book than preparing a meal. And I never eat anything without reading. Ever. If I’m eating an apple, I have to get a book.

Postscript:
  I see that this is the third private library in a row that I have presented, which is curated by a woman. The other two: Hannah Arendt and Marilyn Monroe!

London's Bicentennial (Snippet 43)

 The Kidnapping of John Labatt - 1934
  If you search for old news about London, you will find many mentions of this event. Over three days in August 1934, newspaper readers wanted to know what had happened to this wealthy beer baron.

You will notice that in Nome the Dionne quintuplets are mentioned and the articles provide another example of words spelled differently in British/Canadian and American English - kidnapped/kidnaped.

This is what the front page of the London Evening Free Press looked like on Aug. 14, 1934.

  It is found on the website of the Archives and Special Collections at the Western Libraries. See, Labatt: A Closer Look, from which the following is copied:

  "The fact that the Labatt brewery prospered during prohibition when so many other breweries failed made John S. Labatt a target for kidnappers. Kidnapping was common during the darkest days of the Great Depression. Kidnappers targeted people who could command a “king’s ransom,” and few had prospered more than the beer barons who had survived prohibition. In 1934, John S. Labatt was one of the wealthiest brewers in Canada. At a time when many across the nation could not even afford the gas to run their cars, John Sackville was chauffeured around in a stately black limousine.

   On August 14, 1934, three kidnappers pulled John Sackville from his car on a secluded gravel road just outside of London and ordered him to write a note to his brother. “Dear Hugh,” John wrote, “do as these men have instructed you… and don’t go to the police.“ On the other side of the note, the gang’s leader, Michael McCardell, a sharp-featured man of forty-two who had lost his index finger in a shoot-out with police, wrote: “We are holding your brother for $150,000 ransom. Go to Toronto immediately and register at the Royal York Hotel… You will know me as Three-fingered Abe.”

   For three days, John Labatt remained blindfolded and chained near Lake Muskoka. When the kidnapping became front-page news, the bandits panicked and agreed to let Labatt go if he promised to pay them $25,000. At 12:30 am on Friday August 17, John Labatt was dropped off at the corner of Vaughan Road and St. Clair Avenue in Toronto, just a few miles northwest of the Royal York Hotel, where Hugh Labatt was stationed. John Labatt was free."
[The author of the above is Matthew J. Bellamy.]

Sources: 
  For additional ones, see the Wikipedia entry for, John Sackville Labatt, where this one is found: "Three Fingered Abe and the Labatt Kidnapping."

Postscript:
   There is still a Labatt's brewery in London, but it is no longer Canadian-owned. The oldest baseball park is also in London and it is Labatt Mermorial Park. See Snippet 11.

Campus Novels (#2)

    Back in 2024 I offered a list of sixty novels that take place in the groves of academe. The Groves of Academe is on the list and is mentioned in the post. Henry Mulcahy is a character in it, but we are not related. It is a work of fiction.
   In a newsletter provided by The New Yorker, Merve Emre offers her choice of "Five Great Campus Novels" and those choices are provided here along with pictures of Professor Emre. I hope she doesn't mind. I trust, as well, that The New Yorker won't mind my copying her selections. They do appear in a newsletter and I am not sure if they will show up in the print magazine, to which I subscribe, so I am offering them here in a post for posterity. 

  

Five Great Campus Novels (Selected by Merve Emre - "What We're Reading," The New Yorker Newsletter, c. Aug. 1, 2026)

  “Half the campus was designed by Bottom the Weaver, half by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe,” Randall Jarrell writes in “Pictures from an Institution.” In the 1954 novel, the university is home to two types: the asses and the industrialists. The former are dreamy, romantic; the latter, hard-nosed, pragmatic. Each of the campus novels below makes comedy out of these types, and warns us, as Jarrell did, “This institution’s drunk.”

The Amanda Cross Mysteries, by Carolyn Heilbrun (1964-2002)

Heilbrun was the first tenured woman in Columbia’s English Department. In her detective series, under the pen name Amanda Cross, an English professor solves murders whose motives include bad psychoanalysis, student riots, and biographers who know too much for their own good. My favorite, “Poetic Justice,” was described as a “homicidal valentine” to Heilbrun’s mentor, Lionel Trilling.

Possession, by A. S. Byatt (1990)

A swoony double romance. The first love affair is between a Victorian poet and poetess who wrote coded letters and poems to each other in the nineteenth century. The second is between two scholars in the nineteen-eighties who set out to answer the only question worth asking: Did the poets do it? A little-known fact: great chunks of the poems are sentences in blank verse from Henry James’s “The Golden Bowl.”

Moo, by Jane Smiley (1995)

A pastoral satire about a Midwestern land-grant university, for readers who find John Williams’s “Stoner” too nostalgic and sentimental. The campus novel with the funniest building name (“Old Meats”), and the only one I have read that features the workers of the university: cafeteria servers, horse trainers.

The Last Samurai, by Helen DeWitt (2000)

A zany modern epic about a suicidal mother and her genius son, who trade perusing the dust-choked libraries of Oxford for riding the Tube, and the pathetic utilitarianism of the élite university for a useless love of ancient languages, atonal music, and games of chance. Also: a helpful book for teaching young children the Greek alphabet.

I Am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe (2004)

Wolfe’s most hated novel, but my guilty pleasure since freshman year of college. At the fictional Dupont University, the beautiful, naïve, and self-superior Appalachian protagonist learns that what counts in the twenty-first century is not what you know, it’s who you know. Its alternative title could have been “Hillbilly Elegy.”

Sources: 
  A list of the "60 Best Campus Novels"  is found in Mulcahy's Miscellany in Campus Novels.  It is based on a list taken from Literary Hub and the citation is found in the post. Another list of "9 Best Campus Novels" is also provided, and for even more see Wikipedia's, Campus Novel.  

CANCON:

   For some older campus Canadian content see, The Rebel Angels, Robertson Davies.  For some very new, read the review of Lords of Serendipity, by Randy Boyagoda: "Both Sides Now: With His New Novel Lords of Serendipity, Randy Boyagoda Combines Two Worlds: Authorship and Academia," Emily Donaldson, Globe and Mail, Sept.3, 2026. An enticing bit from the review:
   "Lords of Serendipity is ultimately a campus novel that’s less about campus life than the global market that feeds it. Here is the university reduced to a ticket, a brand, a status symbol. Devi has set her sights on getting into Ochyps (OxfordCambridgeHarvardYalePrincetonStanford). What she wants to study is beside the point. She wants to study at Harvard because she wants to go to Harvard.

   The universities of Lords have effectively become borderless, drawing students from across the world even as their own substance and history are being hollowed out. Chapels become wellness centres, library stacks give way to meditation zones, a century-old Gothic quadrangle is “a beautiful front for hedge fund investments.” Employees are made to train the artificial-intelligence bots designed to replace them.

Boyagoda has, as ever, a sharp eye for the absurdities of university politics and pieties."

Anger Management

 "You're A Loser!" - "No, You're A Loser!" - We Are All Losers Now

  That represents the low level of discourse these days and whataboutism abounds. Everyone agrees that everyone is angry and everyone seems on the verge of shouting, at whatever network they are watching - "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

 Tempers High 

   Proof of the madness has been offered and that is the reason I now provide a short post about the current affairs we all try to ignore. The illustration above "shows the evolution of anger in policy-related congressional floor speeches since 1874. Anger rises sharply after the mid-2010s in both the House and Senate and reaches its highest level in the 2020s." Another set of results "documents a sharp rise in anger in political discourse, with anger emerging as the dominant emotion among citizens, voters, and policymakers alike." This study suggests that "American politics is angrier than ever."

   I am choosing not to say more because I am more depressed than angry. Those wishing to investigate the anger should read the following article, and the study on which it is based:

  "Quantifying Anger in American Politics: The Country is Awash in Indignation," The Economist, Aug. 30, 2026.

  The study: "The Rise of Anger: Emotions and Policy Views," Eve Davoine, et al. can be found here and the abstract is provided:

Abstract:

  "In this paper, we document the rise of anger in U.S. political communication and study its effects on policy views. We combine online and offline data, including the full record of congressional floor speeches since the 1870s, tweets from members of Congress, tweets from voters matched to electoral registries, campaign speeches, and Reddit comments. Anger in U.S. congressional speeches has risen sharply in the last decade, reaching its highest level in a century and a half. In voter tweets, the share of policy-related sentences expressing anger rises 35% between 2013 and 2025. In tweets by members of Congress, the angry-sentence share rises by 72%. Angry tweets by members of Congress or by voters receive around 60% more retweets relative to tweets with no emotion. Our two experiments show that negative emotions increase support for protectionism, restrictive immigration policies, and redistribution. Positive emotions mainly improve perceptions and reduce support for populism. Anger also changes climate policy views, while fear has no detectable effect. Building on the ACTORC framework of Bordalo et al. ( 2026 ), our model shows how emotions direct attention toward different features of policy problems. Overall, emotions shape both engagement and policy views."

The entire report is available as a pdf and it consists of 186 pages!

Postscript:
In Canada it seems that we are just as angry, but perhaps a bit less mad.

London's Bicentennial (Snippet 42)

 Some Taddy Snuff 
   Shopping on Dundas Street over 150 years ago appears to have been better than it is now. Perhaps one didn't have to go to Tytler & Rose if they also delivered the wine along with the white fish.

Source: London Free Press, April 7, 1873

Fireflies

Lightning Bugs

  This year again we had fireflies in our garden. It seems fitting to write about fireflies on the first day of September, since they give us something bright to remember  as winter approaches.
   We called them "lightning bugs" back in Maryland when I was growing up and I still remember how our hands smelled after catching them to light up old Mason jars. Over the years, living mostly in an urban environment, I had forgotten about fireflies until a fair number of them showed up over the last few years bringing along their lanterns, lured by warm weather and a damp garden. They are only around for a very short period. It would be nice to have them during the long, dark nights ahead.
   Recently, I am pleased to report, they have been spotted in Brooklyn. I am not so happy to let you know that they are facing some difficulties in Bali, but it was good to learn that they exist in other regions of the world and some steps are being taken to protect them.
   While typing this I remembered something about "flocks" of fireflies (I am not sure what collective noun applies) all flashing at the same time. I figured it might be just a rural myth, but Synchronous Fireflies do exist in the Smokies. So many people travel to see them, that getting into Elkmont is almost as difficult as getting into the Masters in Augusta.

Sources:

   "When the Fireflies Come Out to Play: For a Few Weeks in the Summer, They Emerge from Underground and Perform Their Aerial Light Show, Hoping to Find Some Action," Hilary Howard, New York Times, Aug.2, 2026.
In Brooklyn, they , noticed the spike in fireflies about three years ago. “And this summer has been no exception..." Fireflies, which are technically beetles, thrive on the resulting rich soil, she said. They spend most of their lives — two years — underground in their larval stage, “so the soil needs to have enough life in it to support them,” she said. By the time they are airborne adults, they are interested only in mating and don’t eat that much, occasionally sipping on water or plant nectars, she said. Recent firefly swarms in the city are somewhat of a mystery. There is no official data to indicate whether the presence of fireflies is increasing..."  
   The most vulnerable populations in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions tend to live in salt marshes, a rapidly disappearing habitat, Mr. Joyce said.  Fireflies have only a few weeks to live after they emerge from the ground. “The males, once they’ve done their duty, that’s the end of their life cycle,” Ms. Rossi said. “The females are going to lay their eggs in the soil again.” Then, it’s lights out.

   "A Quest to Restore the Sacred Glow of Fireflies in Bali: The insects, revered in local culture, are disappearing for many reasons, including rapid development to cater to tourists," Mukitita Suhartono, New York Times, Aug. 12, 2026.
   "For generations, the soft glow of the lightning bugs was part of the steady rhythm of nightfall in rural Bali. Today, they are fading, driven away by climate change, aggressive land development for tourism, chemical-intensive farming and artificial light that disrupts their mating rituals."
   In 2018, after more than a decade of working as a server on cruise ships, Mr. Wardika moved back to Taro, an ancient village about 20 kilometers, or around 12 miles, north of Ubud, Bali. Converting a corner of his family compound he then founded the Firefly Conservation House, Indonesia’s first firefly conservation facility, which melds Balinese tradition with rigorous science.
   A team of biologists at the lab conducts research ranging from field mapping and population counts to controlled rearing and breeding. Researchers build small glass terrariums they call honeymoon suites, a microhabitat designed specifically for courtship. Inside they pair lab-reared females with males caught from the wild, which they say ensures optimal breeding results.
The payoff is not quick. While an adult firefly lives for a brief 22 days, growing one from an egg into a mature beetle takes anywhere from six months to nearly two years, depending on the species. Raising fireflies inside the lab is half the battle. To ensure the fireflies have a safe environment to return to, Mr. Wardika encourages local farmers to switch to regenerative organic agriculture. To cut down on chemical use, Mr. Wardika has given out homemade compost, fruit-fermented fertilizer and natural tobacco-based pesticides.The sanctuary also operates as an eco-tourism destination, which acts as a source of revenue."

   Synchronous Fireflies - Great Smoky Mountains National Park.     

Fireflies of the Smokies
   "Great Smoky Mountains National Park is home to 19 unique species of fireflies out of over 2,000 species identified worldwide. Among these, the synchronous fireflies (Photinus carolinus) are particularly famous, known as one of few species with the incredible ability to synchronize their flashing patterns. This mesmerizing display transforms sections of the forest into a flickering spectacle, a true marvel of nature.

Why the synchrony?
   "Researchers have investigated the reasons behind this synchronized flashing behavior; however, the synchronous behavior is not yet fully understood. One theory suggests that males flash in unison to elicit a call-and-response interaction from the females. A study found that female fireflies of this species only respond when an adequate amount of flashing is presented to them. Once enough light is generated in the forest, the much dimmer females will respond during the pauses in the males' flashing pattern.
   The flash pattern of Photinus carolinus is a remarkable sequence of five to eight distinct flashes, followed by an eight-second pause of darkness, before the cycle repeats. Initially, the flashing may appear random, but as more males join in, their rhythms align, creating a breathtaking display of pulsating light throughout the forest."

London's Bicentennial Snippet (41)

 

The Dawn of Tomorrow
   That is the front page of a Black Canadian newspaper as it appeared one hundred years ago. It was published in London, Ontario.

   This is one of the stories on that page. There is a Wikipedia entry for The Dawn of Tomorrow.  For a recent article about the newspaper see: 

   "Q&A: Granddaughter Pens Book About the Pioneer Behind London's First Black Newspaper:James Francis Jenkins Was the Editor of Dawn of Tomorrow That Started in London in 1923," CBC NEWS, FEB. 15, 2026. For additional information see, Michelle Angela Jenkins. 

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.