I've walked past the Lloyd Library at 917 Plum Street in Cincinnati so many times and always wanted to take my book club (the Book Babes) there. Becky Shundich, who paints with us every Thursday, told me she'd taken hers to the Lloyd, Mercantile and other libraries in Cincinnati. So I called to schedule a tour and I think everyone was delighted by this "hidden jewel" in our city.
The current show in the museum was Flora Mania and the botanical illustrations and typography in the books being displayed were breathtakingly beautiful to me. Christine Jankowski's stories of the local Lloyd Brothers and their forays into botanical medicine, mycology, and their pharmaceuticals business come alive for us.
I was thrilled to see a copy of a medical journal published in the 16th century. Intrigued to learn about the inventor of Benadryl, George Rieveschl. And having just read Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, the story about the cancer drug made from the bark of yew trees really resonated with me. They had to find a way to make it without destroying hundreds of thousands of trees in the Pacific Northwest.
Gardening is not my gift but several of those with me are avid gardeners and there were lots of books we could peruse on subjects they were interested in. If the program "Building Your Herbal Library" were not already sold out, we'd all have wanted to go to learn what herbal remedies we could be growing or stocking up on at home.
The next exhibit is "Pick Your Poison" opening May 31. I started laughing about how Rhoda and I thought the "yellow wisteria" at Blarney Castle was so pretty: we kept standing under it and taking pictures. Later we found out the flowers gave off spores in the air that were poison and people kept their children away from these flowers for that reason. The garden we were in at Blarney was clearly marked "Poison Garden" but we were oblivious. Typical! ha ha
