🥺
Sad news about this restaurant – the only local place I know of that sells Gaeng Hung Lay.
The owners are nice people. This really is too bad.
A GoFundMe page is here.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
I’m re-reading The Fellowship of the Ring. The last time, I was in the fourth grade. I remember being bored while the hobbits made their way through the Shire. Get to Rivendell! I thought. How many hundreds of pages can it take? How many meals must they stop for? And who cares about the sale of Bag End to the Sackville-Bagginses? Now I relish all of this. Each of the four principal hobbits is lovely. The chapter about Farmer Maggot is a delight. The good farmer displays an abundance of “country” virtue: industry, forthrightness, loyalty, hospitality, courage. Also, alas, undue suspicion of outsiders, even of fellow hobbits.
Hobbits who live in different Shire quadrants consider each other “queer.” Eastern Shire-dwellers like to mess around in boats, and some even befriend elves; Westerners … do not. These differences are the basis of their mutual mistrust.
This silly thinking, all too pervasive in the real world, is best corrected indirectly, by way of literature. Consider some real-life rivalry (e.g., Democrats vs. Republicans). Each tribe is prepared to defend every point, almost to the death. Absurd … but it’s hard to see the absurdity once you side with, or against, one of the tribes. The habit of scrutinizing each point reinforces the enmity.
It’s better to approach one’s adversary having first learned to smile at the hobbits’ silly disputes.
I remember my boss at IU saying that most first-year English papers end up arguing, Everybody just needs to get along. Not a bad position to take, until it becomes untenable. It turns out that orcs have real-life counterparts who must be kept at bay.
The problem is, it’s all too easy to mistake Farmer Maggot, a “stout fellow” if ever there was one, for an orc.
I wish I had known you better, Frodo – to his great credit – tells the farmer.
The owners are nice people. This really is too bad.
A GoFundMe page is here.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
I’m re-reading The Fellowship of the Ring. The last time, I was in the fourth grade. I remember being bored while the hobbits made their way through the Shire. Get to Rivendell! I thought. How many hundreds of pages can it take? How many meals must they stop for? And who cares about the sale of Bag End to the Sackville-Bagginses? Now I relish all of this. Each of the four principal hobbits is lovely. The chapter about Farmer Maggot is a delight. The good farmer displays an abundance of “country” virtue: industry, forthrightness, loyalty, hospitality, courage. Also, alas, undue suspicion of outsiders, even of fellow hobbits.
Hobbits who live in different Shire quadrants consider each other “queer.” Eastern Shire-dwellers like to mess around in boats, and some even befriend elves; Westerners … do not. These differences are the basis of their mutual mistrust.
This silly thinking, all too pervasive in the real world, is best corrected indirectly, by way of literature. Consider some real-life rivalry (e.g., Democrats vs. Republicans). Each tribe is prepared to defend every point, almost to the death. Absurd … but it’s hard to see the absurdity once you side with, or against, one of the tribes. The habit of scrutinizing each point reinforces the enmity.
It’s better to approach one’s adversary having first learned to smile at the hobbits’ silly disputes.
I remember my boss at IU saying that most first-year English papers end up arguing, Everybody just needs to get along. Not a bad position to take, until it becomes untenable. It turns out that orcs have real-life counterparts who must be kept at bay.
The problem is, it’s all too easy to mistake Farmer Maggot, a “stout fellow” if ever there was one, for an orc.
I wish I had known you better, Frodo – to his great credit – tells the farmer.