Ruination & Despair

A small but carefully chosen shipment of Archelaus cards is on its way to the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1927, Higgins is “the only museum in the Northeast entirely devoted to the study and display of arms and armor.”

This morning we shipped a first order of cards to Enjoy, an Urban General Store, located in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on Chicago’s North Side. We disclaim all responsibility for any public disorder that may result.

Given the success our series on the cartoons of the Great Depression has enjoyed in these difficult times, I thought our readership might also wish to see this mordant work by Rodney F. Thomson (1878-1941) from Life magazine, February 6, 1913.

In 1539, the parish clerk of Hastings demanded that the New Testament be burned as heretical, after he read in 1 Corinthians 9:5 that the apostles had wives, a pernicious notion he considered to undermine the compulsory celibacy of the clergy.

Source: David Daniell, The Bible in English (2003), 269.

We sent a lackey with a first order of fine cards to Washington’s renowned Politics & Prose bookstore today. Since he returned to base without any cards, I have to assume he delivered them, but with lackeys you never can tell.

No doubt the matter will be sorted out by Friday, when the store begins its Spring/Summer Member Sale (June 5-7, 2009). Members of Politics & Prose will reportedly receive 20 percent off almost everything in the store, including Archelaus cards! That isn’t something that happens every day, so some of you might want to take advantage of it.

This morning, after a two-year hiatus, we once again shipped an order of cards to P-Town Pulp, in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Assuming minimal cooperation by the postal authorities, one might reasonably expect the cards to arrive by Wednesday. The local police have been notified.