[HPFGU-OTChatter] Ebony...

[Aberforth's Goat]

Hey Eb,

Everybody else has already said so too, so I'm being senselessly
repetitious--but heck with netiquette. THANKS FOR THAT POST!

I'd just got around to joining the chatter group, and it was the second
thing I read (the first being a discussion of Neil in a hairnet and bunny
slipper ... ) I'm afraid the excitement of those bunny slippers paled a bit
in comparison!

I spent my adolescence and teenage years in a town in southern Sicily, where
my parents worked in a small church. While the violence was no where near
what you describe (well, my next-door neighbor *was* gunned downed by mafia
friends he had crossed ... ), well over half of the local economy functioned
on a black market basis, unemployment was astronomically high, and it was
impossible to get so much as an identity card with oiling a palm or two. The
city was dirty, the streets were ruined, and the half-built skeletons of
municipal building projects dominated the skyline till they crumbled and
collapsed.

But what your post got through to me is the worth, and even the beauty, of a
harrowed culture. My parents never managed to connect with the people of
Sciacca (they weren't very successful missionaries, either), and I never
learned to see and love the town for what it was instead of despising it for
whatever ideals it wasn't. My Sicilian friends certainly had a burning
desire to survive, to savor every minute of life they could get, to
improvise melodies that defied a life filled with jarring chords.

Now I live in Switzerland; my wife is Swiss. It's perhaps the most perfectly
manicured land in history. The beauty is easy enough to see. Yet they have
some of the highest suicide and drug addiction rates in the world. They long
considered themselves one of the most strictly moral countries in Europe (it
is still illegal to wash your car on Sunday), yet they allowed the worlds'
greatest tyrants to hide billions of dollars in anonymous bank accounts. Do
I really love my charming Zrich suburb or do I just dig the scenery?

One of my jobs (I juggle three) is as a youth worker. I often wonder what I
am doing to help my kids love their culture yet see through its
contradictions and dream of something truly beautiful.

But I ramble! Anyway, thanks again for your post!

Baaaaaa!

Aberforth's Goat (a.k.a. Mike Gray)
_______________________

"My own brother, Aberforth, was prosecuted for practising
inappropriate charms on a goat. It was all over the papers,
but did Aberforth hide? No he did not! He held his head high."