Despite natural first impressions, the title is one of of my most accurate and straightforward. Bibliophilia is the name of a Cincinnati Museum Center CurioCity program that was held at the Mercantile Library of Cincinnati on Thursday. The Museum Center (a.k.a., Union Terminal) is currently undergoing a major renovation and numerous events that would normally be held there are being spread around the city. The Mercantile Library is one of the city’s oldest institutions and it is with considerable chagrin that I admit to this being my first visit.
Bibliophilia exhibits included Sarah Pearce’s artistic creations and a letter press from the Museum Center. Pearce made that dress out of pages from a book of patterns following one of those patterns. The letter press was fully operational and even I managed to produce something legible with it. There was also a station with manual typewriters that attendees could use to write Tweet sized (140 character) stories and a place where they could bind their stories into pamphlets. A rather major activity was a scavenger hunt that had people prowling all through the library to answer a set of questions.
I didn’t take part in the scavenger hunt but prowled nonetheless. The Young Men’s Mercantile Library Association was founded in 1835. It lost a couple of homes to fire and moved around a bit during its first seven decades but has occupied the purpose built upper floors of 414 Walnut Street since 1904. It’s here under a $10,000 10,000 year lease that guarantees space even if the building is replaced.
The place looks exactly as a library should. In fact, it looks a lot like what it did in 1904 and some of the furnishings and many of the books predate that considerably. But there have been changes over the years. You can now be neither young nor male and still join and, even though “mercantile” is still part of the name, a connection with commerce is no longer required.
The library was recently the subject of a great Cincinnati Refined article accompanied by some marvelous photos. Check it out here.
A surprise bonus was running into a couple of travelers I hadn’t seen in quite awhile. We’ve sometimes joked online about probably meeting each other beside a narrow road in some semi-distant state. Although the Rowlands (Chris & Katherine) and I both live near Cincinnati, a crossing of paths on two-lane roads seemed more likely than the meeting in a library in the heart of downtown that happened Thursday. I tried to get a candid shot of the two of them but my attempts turned out to be the blurriest of the blurry so I asked to use a picture that Katherine took of Chris & I. Catch up on their travels and learn a lot about Reubens here.
It’s a familiar story I’d never heard before. In no way is use of the word “familiar” meant to be dismissive. It’s just my way of acknowledging that many aspects of Malcolm Fletcher’s story are to be found in the stories of thousands of other World War II soldiers. Of course, each of those stories is also unique in ways both small and large. Large happenings that make Fletcher’s story unique include the actions that earned him a bronze star and the day he watched his brother get shot and captured. Getting coffee and doughnuts from the Red Cross in February and washing clothes and shaving in May are among the not-so-large pieces of the story that make it real. Numerous photographs, maps, and drawings — many by Fletcher himself — really fill things out.
It’s a great story and well told, but there’s no denying that the mere fact that it is being shared plays a big role in setting this story apart from most of the others. The majority of those soldiers never told their story to anyone. A relative few did write it down or record it but not many saw an audience beyond family, friends, or a veterans organization. That Malcolm Fletcher wanted to share his story is obvious. He expanded his wartime notes and produced a “diary”. The title is his. Not For Morbidity’s Sake came from the fact that, as his son Michael says in the foreword, “…he took no pleasure in telling most of this story”. Malcolm Fletcher died in 1994, and Michael, with help from his brother Mark, made publication of the diary a reality. To a large degree, this meant editing their father’s writings, but they also augmented the story with information gathered from other family members, friends, and even some of the men who served with Malcolm.
Those observations also fed some slightly philosophical thinking on the horrors of war and the brotherhood of man. He had personal experience with both. Whether the deeper of Fletcher’s thoughts came during his time in Europe or while he subsequently transcribed his notes in safety in the USA is unclear and unimportant. He was in the midst of battles where men destroyed each other with cannons, bombs, rifles, bayonets, and flame-throwers. He saw many and met a few French, Belgian, and German civilians whose world was ravaged beyond comprehension. And he was there at the end of the conflict, interacting with German and Russian soldiers to learn that “These Russies are just like us.”
You can’t judge a book by looking at the cover. Or, sometimes, by reading the title. That was the case for me with Onramps and Overpasses and the impression I got from the title and cover pretty much explains why it stayed on the unread pile so long that I don’t remember where it came from or why I have it. The cover is a nicely done long exposure photo of cars on a divided four-lane highway passing through what looks to be a rather scenic area. The title reinforces the image of high-speed limited-access roadways. The subtitle, “A Cultural History of Interstate Travel” does a better job of describing what’s inside but the preconception created by the cover and title led me to overlook the word “cultural” and misinterpret the word “interstate”. In my opinion, Perrier goofed on the cover and even more so on the title. Those are, however, virtually the only mistakes she makes here.
