Celebrating Independent Bookstore Day, Virtually
Today is Independent Bookstore Day in the United States, assuming you are reading this on the day it comes out. (And it really doesn’t matter if you’re not. All the important bits still apply.)
Last year I was too heartsore/stunned/scared to post my usual love letter to independent bookstores. My beloved Seminary Coop Bookstore and its little sister 57th Street Books had temporarily closed their doors and were just beginning to figure out how to work through the pandemic. I had enough books on hand to keep me reading for the foreseeable future.* But I worried that brick-and-mortar bookstores would not survive.
A year later, my independent bookstore is still functioning, thanks to a combination of mail delivery, curbside service, and in-person delivery for those of us who live in the neighborhood. I’ve been an enthusiastic user of the in-person delivery option. In fact, I may have gotten a little carried away. Yesterday my book-delivering bookseller, on his second visit of the week, greeted me with a cheerful, “More books!” when he handed me my packages.
In the past, I’ve celebrated Independent Bookstore Day in person, armed with a wish list and an eye for the serendipitous find. This year, I plan to order another book or five and dream of the day when I can go back to the bookstore in real life. I can’t wait!
*(Who am I kidding? I have enough books on hand to keep me reading for years.
The Hat in the Ring Squadron
If you’re a serious aviation buff, or perhaps a WWI buff, you may already know all this, but it was new to me.
The “Hat in the Ring”* Squadron was the nickname for the 94th Aero Squadron of the United States Army Air Service (USAAS) during World War I. Formed at Kelly Field in Texas, it was the first American pursuit squadron to fly in combat in the war, and the most famous thanks in large part to the exploits of highly decorated flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker and his fellow flying aces.**
Aviators from the Hat in the Ring Squadron
I must admit, I am not a serious aviation buff, though I am aviation-buff adjacent thanks to My Own True Love. The things that caught my attention about the squadron were
1) the nickname, which referred to the fact that the United States had finally tossed its hat in the ring of the war, and
2) the insignia painted on the nose of each of the squadron’s aircraft, a literal representation of Uncle Sam’s red, white and blue top hat going through a ring.
Together they make a powerful statement about the role played by a small group of volunteers.
Image courtesy of the Air and Space Museum
If you look closely at this version of the insignia, which is from the plane flown by flying ace H. Weir Cook, you will see seven representations of the German Iron Cross on the inside of the hat band, signifying the three aircraft and four observation balloons that Cook shot down. How cool is that?
*My Own True Love tells me that though most readers know what the phrase “hat in the ring” means, you may not know where the phrase comes from. It’s a boxing term from the early nineteenth century. Anyone who wanted to take his chances in a bout would literal throw his hat in the ring, which was not the roped-off square of modern boxing but simply a circle of spectators around the combatants.
**It’s worth noting that “flying ace” or “air ace” is the technical term for a military aviator who shot down five or more enemy aircraft. It is unclear to me if Snoopy qualified.
Before the GI Bill: The American Expeditionary Forces University
As far as I’m concerned one of the joys of poking about in the historical record is stumbling across tidbits that don’t make it into big picture accounts of historical events. Sometimes they don’t even make it into the smaller-scale stories that I am working on. This is one of those tidbits. It caught my imagination. I hope it catches yours, too.
American doughboys looking at Paris from the Pavillon de Bellevue
In 1918, as World War I drew to a close, the YMCA and the United States Army joined forces, so to speak, to provide educational opportunities for members of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF).
The program had come together quickly. The YMCA began exploring the “needs and opportunities for educational work among men in the military service in connection with the American forces—not only using the war but during the period of mobilization” at the end of 1917. The Army approved the program in February, 1918. Six months later, the first stage of the program went into effect. [Rather than making a judgmental comment, I will simply suggest you insert your own experience with government or other complex bureaucracy here.]
The initial stages of the program were the military’s version of a junior year abroad. Doughboys with an academic bent and a few college credits in hand were able take classes at Oxford, Cambridge, the London Fellowship of Medicine, and the Sorbonne. Several thousand soldiers received vocational training in fourteen trades in French technical schools. (I am curious how language barriers were overcome. )
But the most ambitious element of the project was the creation of the American Expeditionary Force’s own university at Beaune, on the site of a former Red Cross hospital twenty miles south of Dijon,* and of 1,000 army post schools scattered across France and the occupied portions of Germany. The program provided a wide range of courses, 200 in all, including a full high school program, a agricultural college, a fine arts school with departments in interior design, painting, sculpture and city planning,** a medical school, and classes to prepare a few soldiers for admission to West Point. (It also had a Phi Beta Kappa chapter.)
The program was short-lived. The university opened its doors on March 17, 1919, and closed three months later thanks to the rapid demobilization of the AEF. But while it lasted, ten thousand soldiers attended the university at Beaune and more than 200,000 took classes at the post schools.
One student in the painting program told his instructor that his three months in the program “had made up for the loss of two years’ work while in the Army.” Sounds like a successful experiment in public education to me.
*The heart of the hospital was the Pavillon de Bellevue, which Isadora Duncan had used for her dance school before the war. I think it makes for a nice symmetry: from training one kind of corps to educating another.
**I have no idea why city planning was part of the arts school. And I am ashamed to admit that the thought of war-hardened soldiers who had fought in the trenches of Normandy taking classes in interior design gives me the giggles.