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Srta. Mc Millan

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Abby Assou

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“Our landlord, Mr. Duggan, ran a nearby saloon. He got in trouble with Father for helping himself to the rhubarb which we were growing in the garden. I remember the grey summer dusk in which this happened. We were at the supper table, when the bended Mr. Duggan was observed, like some whale in the sea of green rhubarb, plucking up the red stalks. Father rose to his feet and hastened out into the garden. I could hear indignant words. We sat at the supper table, silent, not eating, and when Father returned I began to question him, and to endeavour to work out the morality of the situation. And I still remember it as having struck me as a difficult case, with much to be said on both sides. In fact, I had assumed that if the landlord felt like it, he could simply come and harvest all our vegetables, and there was nothing we could do about it. I mention this with the full consciousness that someone will use it against me, and say that the real reason I became a monk in later years was that I had the mentality of a medieval serf when I was barely out of the cradle.”

RhubarbSerf
Author:Thomas Merton
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“We used to have rhubarb," Olivia said. "I mean, not like you've got rhubarb... Our mother used to warn us about the leaves." She remembered how she used to pretend they were fuzzy green elephant ears. Every year she used to pull up a stalk and snap it in two and force herself to take a great bite, even though she knew it would screw her tongue and cheeks into knots and tweak her salivary glands until water rushed in her mouth. She felt a rush of water now, just remembering, and had to swallow. "Used to make strawberry-rhubarb pie," Mrs. Kilkenny said, "and rhubarb-apricot jam, and sour cream rhubarb cake.”

RhubarbOlivia TschetterWinnie Kilkenny
Book:Starting from Scratch
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“It is a natural propensity to attribute misfortune to someone’s malignity. When prices rise, it is due to the profiteer; when wages fall, it is due to the capitalist. Why the capitalist is ineffective when wages rise, and the profiteer when prices fall, the man in the street does not inquire. Nor does he notice that wages and prices rise and fall together. If he is a capitalist, he wants wages to fall and prices to rise; if he is a wage earner, he wants the opposite. When a currency expert tries to explain that profiteers and trade unions and ordinary employers have very little to do with the matter, he irritates everybody, like the man who threw doubt on German atrocities. (In World War I) We do not like to be robbed of an enemy; we want someone to have when we suffer. It is so depressing to think taht we suffer because we are fools; yet taking mankind in mass, that is the truth. For this reason, no political party can acquire any driving force except through hatred; it must hold someone to obloquy. If so-and-so’s wickedness is the sole cause of our misery, let us punish so-and-so and we shall be happy. The supreme example of this kind of political thought was the Treaty of Versailles. Yet most people are only seeking some new scapegoat to replace the Germans.”

HateBlameWorld War IScapegoatVersaillesTreaty Of Versailles
Book:Sceptical Essays
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