eil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman (born Neil Richard Gaiman, 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, nonfiction, audio theatre, and films.  His works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book.  He has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie medals.  He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work, The Graveyard Book (2008).  In 2013, The Ocean at the End of the Lane was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards.  A lifetime fan of the Monty Python comedy troupe, as a teenager he owned a copy of Monty Python's Big Red Book.  During a trip to France when he was 13, Gaiman became fascinated with the visually fantastic world in the stories of Metal Hurlant, even though he could not understand the words.  When he was 19–20 years old, he contacted his favourite science fiction writer, R. A. Lafferty, whom he discovered when he was nine, and asked for advice on becoming an author along with a Lafferty pastiche he had written.  The writer sent Gaiman an encouraging and informative letter back, along with literary advice.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Gaiman 

Raphael Aloysius Lafferty (1914–2002) was an American science fiction and fantasy writer known for his original use of language, metaphor, and narrative structure, as well as for his etymological wit.  He also wrote a set of four autobiographical novels, In a Green Tree; a history book, The Fall of Rome; and several novels of historical fiction.  Lafferty was born in Neola, Iowa to Hugh David Lafferty, a broker dealing in oil leases and royalties, and Julia Mary Burke, a teacher; he was the youngest of five siblings.  R. A. Lafferty lived most of his life in Tulsa, with his sister, Anna Lafferty. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1942.  After training in Texas, North Carolina, Florida, and California, he was sent to the South Pacific Area, serving in Australia, New Guinea, Morotai, and the Philippines.  When he left the Army in 1946, he had become a 1st Sergeant serving as a staff sergeant and had received an Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal.  Lafferty did not begin writing until the 1950s, but he wrote thirty-two novels and more than two hundred short stories, most of them at least nominally science fiction.  His first published story was "The Wagons" in New Mexico Quarterly Review in 1959.  His first published science fiction story was "Day of the Glacier", in The Original Science Fiction Stories in 1960, and his first published novel was Past Master in 1968.  In March 2011, it was announced in Locus that the copyrights to 29 Lafferty novels and 225 short stories were up for sale.  The literary estate was soon thereafter purchased by the magazine's nonprofit foundation, under the auspices of board member Neil Gaiman.  Lafferty's work is represented by Virginia Kidd Literary Agency, which holds a cache of his unpublished manuscripts.  This includes over a dozen novels, such as In The Akrokeraunian Mountains and Iron Tongue of Midnight, as well as about eighty short stories and a handful of essays.  Find list of selected works at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._A._Lafferty

Black limes are Persian dehydrated or dried limes packed with intense citrus flavour.  Use them to liven up soups, stews and sauces.  They are simple to make at home and can keep for months in the pantry!  Get some fresh Persian limes.  Blanch the fresh limes, i.e. briefly boil in salted water.  Plunge in an ice bath to stop the cooking process.  Dry until the limes are rock hard and dark brown to black.  Link to black limes recipes at https://www.nonguiltypleasures.com/how-to-make-black-limes/  © Copyright 2022 | Non-Guilty Pleasures All Rights Reserved

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.  Oscar Wilde  (1854-1900) The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) ch. 1            https://libquotes.com/oscar-wilde/quote/lbd6f9v

In 1896, the Lumiere brothers released a 50-second-long film, The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, and a myth was born.  The audiences, it was reported, were so entranced by the new illusion that they jumped out of the way as the flickering image steamed towards them.  The urban legend of film-induced mass panic, established well before 1900, illustrated a valid contention if the story was, in fact, untrue:  The technology had produced a new emotional reaction.  That reaction was hugely powerful but inchoate and inarticulate.  Nobody knew what it was doing or where it would go.  Nobody had any idea that it would turn into what we call film.  Today, the world is in a similar state of bountiful confusion over the creative use of artificial intelligence.  Already the power of the new technology is evident to everyone who has managed to use it.  Artificial intelligence can recreate the speaking voice of dead persons.  It can produce images from instructions.  It can fill in the missing passages from damaged texts.  It can imitate any and all literary styles.  It can convert any given authorial corpus into logarithmic probability.  It can create characters that speak in unpredictable but convincing ways.  It can write basic newspaper articles.  It can compose adequate melodies.  But what any of this means, or to what uses these new abilities will ultimately be turned, are as yet unclear.  Stephen Marche  https://lithub.com/does-artificial-intelligence-really-have-the-potential-to-create-transformative-art/ 

Rock gardening is a very popular style of gardening that uses small growing plants to create miniature landscapes.  A majority of these plants come down from the mountains and other high elevation regions of the world.  And these hardy little plants often have deep growing tap roots that need a fast draining soil.  For many parts of the US, providing excellent drainage can be a challenge.  Ample rain and snowfall keeps soils moister than many rock garden plants prefer.  Well, leave it to the Czechs, who are some of the most avid of the European rock gardeners and whose ranks include some of the most accomplished wild plant seed collectors, to come up with a fantastic new rock gardening technique known as the "crevice garden."  Instead of placing rocks into the soil berms (mounds of soil) from the side like stepping stones up the side of a hill, they use flat stones (such as pieces of flagstone or slate) that are pushed down into the soil vertically from the top.  These vertical pieces are closely spaced leaving deep, narrow channels of soil that for planting.  See graphics at https://www.highcountrygardens.com/gardening/rock-gardening-creating-a-crevice-garden 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2549  August 8, 2022