THE OTHER DAY I was sitting in our "breakfast nook" making newspaper pots for seedlings when Chad came in to tell me some widely reported news that affects us personally. I was using the New York Times obituary section to make my seedling pots, which felt appropriate, circle of life and so on, cue the elephant chorus. One of the obituaries was for Virginia Giuffre, who bravely spoke out about her experience as a victim of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's sex trafficking ring. I thought back to when I had first heard of Giuffre, back in 2019, and how little attention I paid to her story, and the only thing that shocked me about that whole terrible unraveling of Epstein's empire was that Epstein was caught and sent to jail.

Anyway, the news that Chad shared was not shocking, not even surprising, it only reinforced our going position on purse string and belt tightening, and I went back to making seedling pots out of obituaries.

Reading Giuffre's obit now, I feel sorry for her. I had not known that she had been recruited for Esptein's services when she was 14 and working as a towel girl at Mar-a-Lago. I had not known that when she was 17 she had been trafficked to Prince Andrew and photographed with him, and that he nonetheless vehemently denied any "impropriety with underage minors." I could not imagine what it would feel like to go from living on the streets in Miami and working as a towel girl to nightclubbing with royals in London, and I thought, looking at the picture of Prince Andrew with his arm around this radiant, smiling, healthy teenager, what a wild ride that must have been, a true Cinderella story, with Ghislaine Maxwell playing fairy godmother, and maybe now I will think differently about Cinderella's flight from the prince's embrace, that what seemed like an escape from a bleak life of servitude was really only a ploy to become enmeshed in a different kind of servitude, and not the happily ever after we've all been conditioned to believe is true.

Three Things That Kept Me Going This Week

1. Anticipation of reading "Dracula Daily" with Nicole. Please join us!
2. Discovering that there is a Reddit for actually useful 3D-printed objects, which is how I found this paper pot tool.
3. Seeing Mahler's 3rd Symphony performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Finnish wunderkind Klaus Makela.

This Week in Mushroom News

Now playing in theaters: Francois Ozon's "When Fall is Coming," in which poisonous mushrooms play a lead role.

P.S. Last week I shared a link to my review of the Gertrude Abercrombie exhibition, but it was paywalled even to those who registered for the site. It looks like it is free now, but if not, let me know, and I'll send you a pdf.