The Secret Society for the Preservation of Tulips:
because a flower is a terrible thing to waste

If human history has shown us anything, it's been that those who lack power can be absolutely certain they'll get screwed by those who have it. Witness, for example, the Christian persecutions in the early centuries AD. The exploitation of serfs in feudal Europe and Asia. The accidental genocide of Native Americans by European colonists. The horrors of the Nazi concentration camps.

Chilling as all these instances may be to the collective memory of our species, there is a similar injustice that, until now, has gone largely unaddressed. It is perhaps among the more shocking atrocities of this sort, due to the incredibly swift, covert, and complete methods of the oppressors, and the utterly pathetic helplessness of their victims. Yes, my friends . . . the victims to which I refer are tulips.

For some years now, small decorative gardens at Loyola College in Maryland have sprouted tulips every summer thanks to some wonderful, magical force. We at the Secret Society for the Preservation of Tulips (SSPT) suspect that faerie dust is somehow involved in this process, though we do not yet know how much is needed or where the faeries come from. Whatever the answers to these questions, it seems that the dust does not provide enough mystical protection to keep the tulips safe from the LC Grounds Crew. With alarming precision, some two weeks after their sprouting, as the tulips are just barely in full bloom, just beginning to display their true natural splendor, the authoritarian Grounds Crew enforcers sneak around in the dead of the night and brutally slice each and every beautiful tulip halfway up the stem, leaving them lifeless, stripped of their intrinsic radiance.

As mentioned previously, this slaughter is particularly inhumane due to the extreme inability of the tulips to defend themselves. Anyone who knows tulips will understand what I'm talking about. I mean, they're flowers. They can't move, they can't talk, they can't do anything but remain perfectly still and wait as their antagonizers end their all-too-short lives without a second thought. Even for members of the vegetable kingdom, the tulip's natural defense system simply falls short of the standard. It lacks the sharp thorns of the rose, the powerful poison of nightshade, the swift jaw of the Venus Fly-Trap. Without intervention on the part of a more mobile species--preferably a member of the animal kingdom--the tulip finds itself up the proverbial creek. And that, my friends, is where we come in.

(Some saved tulips and a makeshift advertisement. Names blurred to protect the anonymous.)

We are the Secret Society for the Preservation of Tulips. We make it our business to save imperiled tulips, wherever they may be. Particularly if they're on the way home and it's late at night. It is our mission to further the interests of tulips worldwide, and to uphold the sanctity of their right to life.

This web page is devoted to the promotion of the SSPT and its goals, the organization of anti-LCGC forces, and the distribution of pro-tulip information and resources. Partake of our flowery goodness, and remember: tulips are only as safe as you make them!