Welcome to Erin Mankie's Cabinet of Curiosity's, a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm

and Mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display,

just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosity's.

What makes for a stereotypical librarian?

Personally I tend to picture a cozy sweater, ink stained hands and tea.

So much tea.

Of course, these kinds of stereotypes are left over from a time when the librarian might

be a woman who is thought to be a bit doubty.

Bell the Costa Green certainly did not fit that mold.

In fact, Bell the Costa Green didn't fit really into any mold in the early 20th century.

She was born Bell Mary and Greener in 1879 in Washington, DC to parents who were prominent

and well liked in their community.

Her mother, Genevieve Ida Fleet, was a music teacher from a prominent local black family,

and her father, Richard Theodore Greener, was the first black graduate of Harvard in

the class of 1870.

Her father was an activist in every sense of the word and wielded his education and

intellect with pride, passing on a keen hunger for knowledge to his children, especially

to Bell.

Admittedly, she had a complicated relationship with her father.

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