Introduction: The Cabbage-flavored Kool-Aid

…You must discard the word Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact. You don’t walk upon flowers in fact; you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don’t find that foreign birds and butterflies come and perch upon your crockery; you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls. ‘You must use,’ said the gentleman, ‘for all these purposes, combinations and modifications (in primary colours) of mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste.’

— Thomas Gradgrind in “Hard Times,” Charles Dickens, 1854

I’m no tenant farmer. I didn’t grow up in a feudal system where my family had to forfeit a large part of our harvest to a petty lord or local bishop. In fact, …