Linden Tree Leaves

Chef Boyardee is known today for his cheap out-of-the-can pasta, but in his native Italy he was a renowned expert chef. He was reduced to the face of microwaveable eateries after his death.

“Proud of his Italian heritage, Boiardi sold his products under the brand name Chef Boy-Ar-Dee so that his American customers could pronounce his name properly.“

In 2002, a flood in Prague caused some streets to collapse into a series of unknown underground tunnels. And just like that, a legit 16th cent. alchemist laboratory was discovered.

10 years of discovery, repair, and restoration later, it’s now open for tours.

On the outside, only a house was visible and it was used as a pharmacy in its time. Alchemists were notoriously secretive, so none but those on the inside knew about the tunnel system below where potions were made.

A room dedicated to herb storage. Many of the herbs in the potions came from China and India. The house was conveniently located by major trade routes.

Notice an alligator (or croc/caiman) above the left side. There were lots of stuffed animals, bottles, and books. Since few people in Europe had ever seen alligators/crocodiles, they were said to be the bodies of dragons, and were thought to guard the alchemists.

The alchemists were so secretive, they did everything themselves, down to making the glassware for their elixirs.

A stone in the wall that covered a hidden vault in the underground tunnels. Historians uncovered that it held a single bottle of ‘The Elixir of Life’ and the recipes for it, and the elixirs of love and memory.

This bookcase is an exact replica of the original, which was too damaged to restore. A statue on the right side (in the dark area on the third shelf from the top) is the door knob/switch to a secret sliding door.

Monks now recreate the elixirs exactly as detailed in the instructions and each of the elixirs (and blends!) are for sale in their shop. The only change is that the Elixir of Life does not contain opium as is instructed, since it’s now illegal.

But an underlooked proponent on why some people are nearing homeless and crowdfunding heavily rn is bc society has failed you by making it as inconvenient as possible to learn about social systems and programs that already exist to help your situation as well as not having enough programs and aid.

Lemme give some examples. I have been unemployed for 10 months. My mom told me about a paying job training program a month ago after I already decided to mive in with her to find work, because nothing was coming up in my own city. My best friend didn’t know about affordable housing assistance in my state until she talked to my dad about it on a chance encounter. Some people on here have to see posts about much cheaper alternatives to their current prescriptions or medical plans because its not in the interest of their doctors paychecks to tell them about it. I would have waited to get vaccinated and not have crowdfunded for Uber money if I had known they were going to give free vaccine rides the next month. But I wouldn’t have really known this until I opened the app once that program started, because it is in their interest to keep taking my money until its their desired time for me to reap their “generous” services.

The year is 2014. She has been given a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Awards. Neil Gaiman puts it on her neck in front of a crowd of booksellers who bankrolled the event, and it’s time to make a standard “thank you for this award, insert story here, something about diversity, blah blah blah” speech. She starts off doing just that, thanking her friends and fellow authors. All is well.

Then this old lady from Oregon looks her audience of executives dead in the eye, and says “Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.”

She rails against the reduction of her art to a commodity produced only for profit. She denounces publishers who overcharge libraries for their products and censor writers in favor of something “more profitable”. She specifically denounces Amazon and its business practices, knowing full well that her audience is filled with Amazon employees. And to cap it off, she warns them: “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.”

Dear Neil

Heroism isn’t exactly my thing, so please just look at me as your fellow writer, OK? Two grunts in the great war of Art against Insentience, or something.

Anyhow, yes, I did have a question:

I’m told I have 3 to 5 minutes to say thanks. Having sat through 5-minute thankyou speeches that seemed to last 3 hours, I thought I’d enliven the gratitude with some very brief remarks about (for one thing) the big publishers’ practice of grossly overcharging public libraries for ebooks, limiting access, etc. I know you’re a true library lion. So I wanted to check if you’d welcome this, & if so we could maybe kind of strike the same note – or at least tell you, so that if I do say some things that our publishers will perceive as ungrateful, subversive, unladylike, etc., it won’t take you by surprise.

very best wishes

Ursula

(And because I suppose some people might want to know what I replied, I said,

Dear Ursula,

I’m very happy to be a fellow grunt in the war.

I think that anything you want to say is going to be good, because you mean it. I don’t think chiding publishers etc is out of place from a public platform - it may even change things - and the world of five (or is it four?) monstrous huge international publishers us not the one either of us grew up with. (I’m with one giant in the UK, another in the US, in each case because they engulfed and devoured my original publisher.)

And we neither of us got where we are, or indeed, anywhere, by toeing any party line.

Love