It is with great sadness that I must inform the Archive staff that our annual trip to Chicago for the Wizards and Warbles conference had to be canceled due to difficulties being sustained by the Archive’s means of transportation. Our good auto the Magdalene, simply could not make the trip and had to be taken into the auto fixers for a good going over. We are happy to report it looks as though she will pull through this time, however, enough was not done within time for us to send our representatives to the conference.

In light of recent events, staffers are pooling together resources to hopefully make other conferences taking place over the summer months. In an effort to facilitate this endeavor, we’ve placed a variety of Archive items in Miss Etta Diem’s dry goods shop for immediate purchase by interested parties.

Most Archive staff are familiar with Miss Diem, but for those of you who have not spent an afternoon drinking or nibbling on any one of her strange teas and lunch concoctions, her old Victorian house is just a few kilometers down the road from the Archive. She runs an eccentric cafe and dry goods shop that a good many Archive staffers have used for exotic supplies in a pinch. Now we’re partnering with Miss Diem and allowing her to sell on consignment a variety of our token items. If you happen to have anything you would like to submit to the “auto fund” please feel free to contact any of your chief Archive staff members… with the exception of Professor Zolty, which we wish to continue reminding you that he is dead and should not be encouraged into believing he is still among us.

Anyone wishing to purchase any valued Archive items that have been turned over to Miss Diem’s shop, need only visit her. Below is a short list of a few items we’ve released into Miss Diem’s trustworthy care.

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Babel-Jean and her brother lived a very hard life with their single mother. Originally Josephine lived in a sparse fishing community on the New England coast. This was the type of community were superstition and gossip ruled the common folk rather than hard logic and reason. Because Josephine was well liked in the community, and the Tea family well respected, gossip about the young unwed mother did not delve into the area of promiscuous behavior or an affair that ended in the birth of the twins. Instead many of the townsfolk whispered about Josephine’s unhealthy fascination with the sea and the myths associated with it. Many of the older townsfolk remembered a very young Josephine who liked to tell sea based faerie tales and who wanted to convince everyone she was actually a selkie instead of a little girl. The preposterous idea was spread that Josephine had spent too much time looking into the salty waters and finally garnered the attention of the creatures all the fishermen knew lurked out there. So instead of Josephine finding herself the talk of rude whispers and back room conversations, the foul tales focused more on her strange, babbling twins. Josephine was seen as a woman to be pitied for so foolishly trusting the sea when fishermen knew the sea was not to be trusted. The result of her foolishness and her punishment was the two fatherless children that never seemed to weigh enough or look anything but pale.

Josephine Tea eventually tired of this type of talk and the cruel attention many of the townsfolk directed at her children. Before her twins were old enough to enter school, she packed up and quietly left town in the middle of the night. She found her way inland, finding sweatshop like work at a factory deep within the town of Boston.

Babel-Jean’s young life in Boston is not very well known to her fellow Archive staff. She has a memoir she penned, but has entrusted it to an unknown staff member with instructions that it only be published after her death. Her fussy nature and severe need to follow rules has prompted many of the Archive staff to conclude that Babel-Jean is quite a bore and probably spent much of her life in the rigid environment of the sweatshops like her mother. They reason that her lack of a true childhood before being thrust into the stressful academic world played a big part in her evolution into strict old maid. But contrary to this opinion (and the assertion by most younger Archive staff that she is old as dirt and acts it) Babel-Jean led a very colorful life in Boston that saw her privilege to very unusual things that would come to dominate her academic choices of study.

Only one intern was ever privilege to a Babel-Jean less guarded. On a very nice spring evening, after helping Babel-Jean complete a full sweep of a series of rare books on ancient diseases, said intern managed to goad his elder into a glass of wine. That was followed by another, and then just one more, till the young intern found himself on the roof of the east wing of the Archive toasting the bright spring moon with a very drunk Babel-Jean. The intern claims that this spirits filled old woman lost all control of her tongue and told him a great many tales. She spoke of her father who was indeed some sort of creature that came from the sea. She spoke of the attic she went into that belonged to an old doctor. In there she found vial after vial labeled with names of ailments she’d never heard of. And she shed tears when she told him the story of her dead twin brother. She spoke of a phantom radio broadcast he was obsessed with and shortly after he claimed to have found it, he disappeared.

The following day no one believed the stories the intern told. This group of scholars could believe in the elder gods and creatures that would put your brain in a special canister and sweep it away to Pluto, but they couldn’t believe that Babel-Jean Tea Hymn had ever been young or exciting. Sadly said intern was killed in a freak library accident a few days later. The gossip died with him.

In her everyday role at the Archive, Babel-Jean heads the Rare Diseases and Archaic Germs Department, using much of her time to study bugs and ailments that no one has ever heard of. She’s currently working on her first book, a complete collection of these diseases. She is one of the Elder Staff members and takes her responsibilities as such very seriously. She is an obsessive memo writer, using them as a means to crack the whip and always remind her fellow Archive staff of what is and isn’t appropriate.

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It has been brought to my attention that someone has purchased a sinusoidal bath as part of the replacement equipment for the baths in the gymnasium that were destroyed by that localized storm.

May I remind all staff that all equipment brought into the facility must follow proper installation protocol and be maintained or observed as needed for the safety and well-being of all Archive staff.

The electrified remains of elder archive staff member Mint T. Zloty were found in the sinusoidal bath still smoking early this evening. Consequently, Professor Zloty is said to be in the south wing reading presently. As an added sidenote – please keep in mind that smoking is strictly prohibited anyplace other than the smokers’ lounge, the walk-in humidore, the library, or your own personal laboratory.

If someone would be so kind – please seek out Mint and please inform him that he is dead and we will not be expecting him to show up for work in the morning.

Thank you.

Sincerely, Babel-Jean Tea Hymn

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It has been brought to my attention that someone has allowed a Mi-go into the Archives.

I would just like to take this opportunity to once again refer staff members to our rules and guidelines about the calling forth and summoning of any creature that can be considered a hostile threat to the overall well being of the Archive, its staff and interns.

Our guidelines strictly state that experiments or conjuring of any kind not addressed to and sanctioned by the elder Archive Staff are only permitted within your own dorm or lodgings, where you will take full responsibility for whatever doom you bring upon yourself.

At the time of this writing the Mi-go was last seen in the north wing preparing to operate on an intern. It is a crustacean-like entity that can be identified by any manner of unique traits such as multiple appendages and antennae where its head should be. And if these things are not a good visual indicator, someone was good enough to fix it with a red collar and a tag that identifies it as Fido.

The person or persons responsible for this will be found through proper means or less scrupulous channels and will be responsible for replacing said intern. For anyone needing a refresher on allowed or proper creature conjuring, please see the the bulletin board on the west wall of the library.

Thank you for your attention and any volunteers willing to help with capture and clean up should see me in my office first thing in the morning.

Sincerely,

 Babel-Jean Tea Hymn.

PS It would appear that another of our interns is lacking his brain. Please be on the look out for any brain size containers. A watchful eye and a little team work might help us avoid losing this man’s brain to Pluto and setting us back another intern.

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