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Good morning everyone, and welcome to Radio Free Monday! A quick note before we begin: there will be no Radio Free Monday next week, since I will be out in the wilderness somewhere. You can still leave comments with links and info, but they won't be posted until the following Monday, June 6th.

And on we go!

Ways to Give:

This past week, Slave Lake in Alberta was devastated by fire, with 40% of the town utterly destroyed. snaxcident has noted that the library is gone; if you're into books or getting rid of some soon, you might want to save/buy them to help the Slave Lake library get back on its feet. For immediate aid, imagines sent me a link to the Canadian Red Cross's Alberta fund.

ilyena_sylph let me know about Joplin, MO, which is also suffering this morning after a devastating tornado. In cases like these, the Red Cross is always a good place to give if you want to give aid, but if you have other aid-org links please feel free to drop them in comments.

bluejeans07 linked me to a fundraising appeal for Leah Mange, a talented artist who is currently in danger of losing her house. You can find donation info at the site, as well as links to her portfolio and DA site.

redstapler let me know that Descendants of Erdrick, a video game soundtrack cover band (omg I know right?), need help getting from Austin to LA for E3, a professional video game expo. They have a donation button available on their site.

neonhummingbird volunteers for Chicago's Anti-Cruelty Society, an animal rescue and abuse investigation outfit which is in the final round of voting to win a $500,000 Chase Community Giving Grant. The grant would help them replace old vehicles and provide a year of operational support. Voting ends at midnight, Wednesday, May 25 on Facebook; voting instructions are here, or anyone wanting to donate can go directly to Facebook here.

"Fandoms For FCKH8", which supports the FCKH8 movement for marriage equality, has some AWESOME FUCKING T-SHIRTS for sale.

myemmie wanted to bump her helpthesouth auctions, which you can check out here. BPAL perfume! Myemmie also suggested that people interested in BPAL and especially discontinued/rare imps might want to check out a Queensland Fundraiser specialising in those.

Give For Free:

skelody is looking for people who identify as a nonbinary gender, to take a survey about English pronouns and their usage (non-native English speakers welcome).

If you're in Chicago (or will be on June 2nd), the first thirty Civil Union ceremonies for same-sex couples will be taking place in Millennium Park. You can find more here; I imagine there will be assholes protesting, so I'm sure anyone who wants to see a bunch of folks get married in a gorgeous park would be more than welcome support.

keestone linked me to an article about how school librarians are being berated, belittled, and fired in Los Angeles; the New York Public Library system is also suffering and facing budget cuts. The former is mostly news to know, but the NYPL Take Action site is asking for people to write their elected officials in protest.

News to Know:

Serious Eats had an interesting article on improving food access in "food deserts" this past week, and I thought people might like to see what programs are being implemented.

bluebombardier linked me this week to FriendsList, which seems to be a sort of cross between CraigsList and Facebook, connecting people based on mutual acquaintance rather than random chance.

alicit let me know that Amazon UK is giving away free ebooks. Apparently the most ideal way to find the free books is to go here (guess we're giving Camille LaGuire a boost) and check the "customers who bought this item also bought" section. Happy hunting!

And this has been Radio Free Monday! Thank you for your time. You can always post items for my attention in comments here (or on any post) or email me at copperbadge at gmail dot com. If you're not sure how to proceed, here is a little more about what I do and how you can help. Remember, non-embedded links are love.

Exquisite, Chapter 18

Title: Exquisite
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Brief graphic violence.
Summary: Neal is finding a place for himself, both at the Bureau and in Peter and Elizabeth's life. Unraveling the mystery of the music box might ruin everything -- but that's a risk he has to take.

( Peter woke the next morning from crazy dreams... )

Fake cut takes you to the fic at Dreamwidth.

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I almost hesitate to say it's been a quiet morning, because there's an hour left in which it could become an extremely unquiet morning just to spite me. It has been busy, which is why it has taken until now for me to get to posting Exquisite chapter 18. THE HEAT IS ON.

Well, more like, the A/C is off.

It intrigued and amused me that I got a lot of inquiries in the last chapter about the Queen's Ornament and the backstory I assigned to Neal's emerald ring ransome. I wish it were true, because it's a fun story and would be an intriguing mystery for, say, an A&E one hour special, especially if it hadn't actually been found yet. I talked a little with annemjw about how objects with stories tend to be more attractive; it's a continuing sub-theme of White Collar, that the thing is not just the thing, but is also the story of the thing. It crops up in an S1 episode (I think) when Peter asks why thieves are attracted to historic objects and Neal replies that they have power beyond their value, and the music box's hold on them is only proving his point. You get it again in What Happens In Burma, when Neal and both the gem dealers spin fantasies about the rubies they're hawking.

It's fun to make up stories about objects like that -- I did it earlier with the Heart Of Earth Diamond, too. I suppose they could be considered a sort of super-MacGuffin.

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Over the weekend, I finished reading A Night In The Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny. It's a sort of supernatural pastiche with a reasonably simple core concept: What would happen if a bunch of pop culture spook-show archetypes spent a month preparing to do battle over a portal that opens on Hallowe'en to allow the Elder Gods entrance to our world?

( But it is a bit more complicated than that... )

Final Verdict: It's a decent book, but not one I feel like I need to re-read ever, or really would recommend with any enthusiasm. There are good stories in it, but they're sidelines, paragraphs at best. It always feels like there's a story Zelazny's aiming for that's really great, but he keeps missing it and hitting something else instead. Makes for fun fanfic material, I suppose...

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I thought, it's Monday, it's been kind of stressful, maybe I'll fold something easy today. I know! A tulip! What could be easier than a tulip?

EVERYTHING, AS IT TURNS OUT.

Granted, part of the problem was the paper I was using, but still. That is a SAD TULIP.

(You can find the stem fold here; it does tend to make any flower look much more distinguished and professional, even the really badly folded ones.)