A man who read stacks of books needed a new bookshelf.  After some thought, he found the a space for the shelves on one end of a room.  They fit perfectly.  He put the shelves up and filled them with books.

But he had put them up in front of cupboards, which he could no longer get to.

Moral: Think about the problems you could be creating, not just the problem you are trying to solve.

A castle builder decided to get really analytical.

“Statistics show,” he said, “that 95% of the part of the castle defenders use in combat is the top 5 feet.  But the lower parts of the castle are the great majority of the time and the expense of building.”

He mused.

“Think of how much more effective I can build if I skip straight to the only useful part instead of being blinkered by hidebound traditionalism.  I will call it The Castle in the Air ™!”

Moral: Numbers are no substitute for wisdom.

A troop of monkeys occupied a copse of trees one day where a path led down to a river.

A pride of lions used to take the path every day and were shocked when suddenly they found themselves under a rain of flung sticks, monkey poop, and rotten fruit.  Ducking, dodging, and growling, they  hustled off.

The monkeys loudly congratulated each other on their victory.  They then started to discuss the lions’ countermeasures.  Some said the lions would lie in wait at night and slowly try to pick off the monkeys.  Some said the  lions would sprint through in terror.  Others said they would just suffer the monkeys’ abuse.  The trees soon rang with the angry chatter of a hundred different arguments.

The next day, the lions came casually along the path as normal.  When they came close to the copse they cut away from the path and made a beeline for another point on the river, equally convenient.  Their new route kept them out of range of the trees.

Moral:  ???

Comment: This fable is meant as a companion to the fable of the Harassed Aurochs.  The lions were too strong and too indifferent for what they did to be considered a surrender.  It was masterful indifference. (more…)

A particular hunter took it into his head that if he could bell a few aurochs, the herd would be easy to find whenever he wanted.

The hunter persisted in his efforts for days. And mostly for nights. Night after nights the aurochs would find the hunter slowly creeping up on them with muffled bells and would have to flee or drive him off.

The nuisance wore on and on.

One bright morning an auroch cow made her way through the herd to the lead bull. She had a complacently bovine look on her face. Indeed, she looked smug.

“At least we can get some sleep,” she announced to the bull. “I have the answer.”

“Go on,” said the bull.

“By the hunter’s village there is a large pen. Let us go into that pen every night. The hunter will always know where to find us, so he will have no need to harass us with his sneaking and his bells.”

Moral: Surrenders are not solutions.

Then the voice spoke from the high mountain, commanding, “Build!”

And so they built. (more…)

An old man had spent his life building his acres into a beautiful home. He had fruit trees, a house, some pasture, and everything cunningly laid out to be more productive and more beautiful. He had done it all himself. He had raised his children there.

One day in the warmth of the sun he was walking in his orchard and started to weep. His wife found him there. “What’s wrong,” she said.

“I was thinking about how our sons have left and don’t want to come back,” he said. “They’ll sale this place. Strangers will take it when I am gone.”

She loved him and wanted to cheer him up. “Well,” she said, “maybe they’ll love this place as much as you do.”

But he was not comforted.

The buffalo calf told his cow, “Mother, isn’t it kind of those wolves to always go with the herd, protecting us from our enemies?”  The buffalo cow upbraided him, “Son, they are looking for the old and the sick to kill and eat.  They are not protecting us.”  “Then they are the enemies,” he said and straightaway charged out to trample them, whereon he was slaughtered and devoured.

Moral: Know your enemies.

This is the story that came to my mind.

The hero is one of us. An American in our world. Probably a teenager or young adult.

Something happens, and he is called out of our world into a land of villages. It is a real world, but it is also something like a game. He is a Level 1 Hero with stats. He gets little notifications and can see popups giving basic information about the people he meets.

He starts doing small favors for the villagers, fights animal pests, and grows in level. He unlocks achievements and new skills. He becomes more capable and faces larger and larger threats. The villagers cooperate with him and eventually he even acquires the ability to recruit them as militia and watchmen. But it bothers him that so much depends on him. Granted, he is a Hero and they are Villagers, but they aren’t just props in a game, they are real people, and it bothers him that they are so oddly unconcerned about their own safety. So willing to just leave it to him.

But one Christmas Eve he is out in the lonely moonlit snow on patrol. And he looks down from the slope he’s on, and through the firs he can see one of his villages, windows lit, the people spilling out into the streets singing and rejoicing together, the little church, post out over fires cooking good things, and he feels that it is all worth it. He feels their happiness, and he wants them just they way they are.

Achievement unlocked: love.

(more…)

It’s a story that has been told many time before.  Page 1 is a peasant boy living an ordinary life; he and his friend are away from supervision hewing wood and drawing water and being comically boyish.  Imagine that this book is copiously illustrated, so on the facing page there is a warm, funny line drawing of two boys hanging upside down from branches trying to wrestle.

Page 2, they come back to their village to see it in ruins.  There had been a sudden raid by evil creatures out of legend destroying and burning.  Horribly, they also kidnapped.  The drawing is a view from behind the boy as he stands looking at the shattered hamlet.  The drawing is smudgy and chaotic.

Page 3, he discovers his parents are dead and his younger sister was kidnapped.  Here we have a picture of a young girl with her head turned to look back to us–she is distressed and sad–while a dark and inhuman arm pulls her into a brooding forest.  This drawing is detailed.

Page 4, he runs off into the local woods to boyishly grieve.  The drawing is him alone, dejected, and crying.

Page 5, he makes a vow by a spring to get his sister back and a supernatural experience ensues.  Some holy presence in the spring witnesses his vow and rises up to bless him and prophesy of his destiny.  The drawing is the boy in awe at the angelic being rising above him.

Page 6, he heads back to the village, but it is now night.  He hears noises and grapples with his own terror.  This scene is played comically.  The threat is no threat at all.  The drawing is a little boy with a stick clutched in his hand, marching truculently and grimly towards a skunk.

Page 7 onward, he is back helping the village.  We meet other friends and neighbors and we learn some of the lore of who the evil raiders may have been, what it portends, and our first hints about the meaning of the boy’s prophecy at the spring.  The drawings are scenes of ordinary life; they are calm and hopeful.

Page 38 onward, the boy’s first quest, something minor to help the hamlet.  Perhaps he and a companion or two (including his friend from page 1) are sent to plead with a Lord  for help for the hamlet.  There is the comedy of him and his bumbling companions being fish out of water, the touching simplicity of an overmatched lad still determined to do his mission–and succeeding!–and the warm personal relationships between him and his companions.  One of the pictures  shows the reception scene at the Lord’s hall.  The Lord and his court are shown very straight and graceful like a pre-Raphaelite painting while the boy and his companions are drawn more in a Norman Rockwell or Peter-Breughel peasant key.

Page 54 onward, on their way back they have an encounter with danger.  It is small but real, and requires them to fight.  Afterwards they have a second encounter with the supernatural beings of Light.  The boy receives more direction and his companions are recruited to help him.  They discover there is a rising Dark Lord who cannot be defeated by ordinary means.  A final drawing in this segment is the three of them kneeling humbly.

Page 75 onward, he decides he has to leave to discover a source of power that will help him fight the Dark.  He and his companions leave for good this time.  The drawing of the village farewell is touching.

They have major and minor adventurers.  He acquires an animal companion, a very comic older friend, probably not exactly human, he grows in skill and power.  There are long segments where he is being closely hunted by the Dark and must flee and lurk and hide.  He wins fights.  He meets with the King.  There is an unexpected treachery.  There is also a peril that he only escapes through the brave sacrifice of a friend and he weeps.  He discovers that his own nature can betray him, that he himself has bad flaws that holds him back, and he has to face his own fears and weaknesses.  He discovers more about the Light, what it is, and why it relies on him and others like him. The peril grows and becomes suffocatingly menacing.  The hero’s plan fails and he is badly defeated and wounded.

All copiously illustrated.

But when all seems lost, some weak and helpless friend gives him unexpected aid and the prophecy is fulfilled in a surprising way.  The boy’s own weaknesses and unsophistication turn out to be his greatest strengths, and the ruthlessness and malice that gave the Dark Lord his power turn out to be the Dark Lord’s downfall.  In a dramatic confrontation, the boy and the Light defeats the Dark.

The Light chooses and honors him in front of all the people.  The drawing shows the boy now become a young man, full of strength and nobility.

But what comes after that? (more…)

They were all poets and cavaliers.  If you asked them a question, they would respond with a flight of fancy. 

“What is the weather like?” 

“Whether the weather likes what the weather is like I am not disposed to say.  Yet I vow my sunny disposition is brightened by this sun, which steadfast glow shall never be put out, be it enclouded or endarkened to our view.” 

You could not break them out of it.  If you pressed them hard enough for a straight answer on some practical point, they simply switched and let their other head talk to you. 

You see, all these creatures had two heads. (more…)

We live in a vast charnel house, a morgue, a knacker’s yard . . .  Dead people, dead animals, odd ends of decaying meat are just laying around, heaped up there, rotting here, a stray piece rolled into that corner.  Its easy to get sick.  A little cut can swell into a great putrid infection.  A little carelessness with your food, you can be puking for  a week.  Its easy to die.

If you want to thrive, you have wear masks at all times, have to be careful where you step, have to follow careful rituals, can’t afford to slack off.  You and your whole house.  You can’t do it by yourself.  Every one with painstaking care when they are outside, at all times.  Everyone following the most stringent procedures when they come back inside the House.

But not enough do it.  Too many live diseased, crippled, and high-mortality lives.  It is difficult not to.  It is very difficult.  And there are agitators who wander through the decay without mask or glove, proclaiming their freedom.  No one else can shout as loud as they can, as they wear no mask.  No one can easily refute their lies that careful living is joyless, because the joy is in the Houses, and no one can go to one, not really, until they have joined it and are washed and cleaned and passed through quarantine.

The strict rules of hygiene are hard, but now with the agitators they are harder.  We can be mocked and attacked for our masks and our gloves.

Some of us wonder why we have be so extreme.  (Those of us are getting the infections and dying off.) Some Houses wonder if they could not spread the word of hygiene better if they weren’t so rigid about it. Masks and washing and stuff appears so alien, we need a hygiene that speaks to today’s youth. After all, the message of hygiene is ultimately a message of health and hope, not despair and grimness. So these Houses wash without washing and ward off disease without warding it off, and perish.

A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.

And by chance there came down a certain woke priest that way; and when he saw the man he returned to Jerusalem and launched a campaign for travel control, so only licensed travelers with adequate provision to defend themselves against robbers would be allowed out on the road. Those he met were impressed with his compassion and wealthy caravanners donated to his campaign. #CareforTravelers

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