I read Chapter 23 from the Sci-Fi novel 1632, also called Ring Of Fire, by Eric Flint. This passage is about choosing life -rather than death. Instead of focusing on Death, and having as our primary Standard Operation Procedure -planning to deal out death to protect our food supply, etc. We can focus on being Choosers of the Living -Instead of being Valkyrian Choosers of the Dead. http://www.baenebooks.com/10.1125/Baen/0671578499/0671578499.htm?blurb Chapter 23 Melissa Mailey ate with the refugees, still wearing her own robe. She felt foolish and awkward in that garb, eating in the same cafeteria where, over the years, she had shared thousands of meals with thousands of students. Dressed properly! Ed Piazza had obtained fresh clothes for her, but Melissa had refused to put them on. Not, she insisted, until the refugees were settled for the night and it was time for the committee meeting. The same stubbornness which had once sent a young Boston Brahmin to share a lunch counter with black people in the Jim Crow south, caused her older self to eat a meal in a robe with German refugees. Barefoot, just as they were, even if her own toenails were painted. She had intended, also, to be there in order to guard against the inevitable danger of the half-starved refugees overeating. But there was no need. Not with Gretchen there, watching like a hawk. Gretchen imposed food discipline with an iron hand. Melissa winced, several times, at Gretchen's methods of imposing that discipline. She had been opposed to corporal punishment all her life. But she did not protest. Melissa Mailey was undergoing a conversion, as it were. Her mind was roiling, as she stolidly ate her meal. She still did not approve of corporal punishment. But Melissa Mailey was not a fool, and could recognize reality when she saw it. Her eyes flinched, but she would not close them. Gretchen, not she, had seen people eat grass to stay alive. Gretchen, not she, had seen those same people gorge themselves when unexpected plenty arrived. And then seen them die of surfeit, writhing in agony. She watched Gretchen buffet another child, stuffing food into his mouth with both hands, forcing him to sit with his hands in his lap for three minutes before he took another bite. She winced—the child's little face would be bruised tomorrow, and he was weeping bitterly—but she did not protest. Gretchen had kept that boy alive, again, in a world which would have slaughtered Melissa Mailey like a chicken. The boy was not even hers. Gretchen's baby was perched on her lap, feeding happily at her breast. Her own child was a rapist's bastard. The other—who knows? Nothing. Nobody. A piece of dust, sent swirling across a raging landscape by the hooves of noble chargers, until by good fortune it rolled against the dirty feet of a camp follower. Melissa winced, too, seeing the glances which Gretchen continually sent to Jeff, sitting at the other end of the table. The glances were demure, in a way. Which only made them all the more effective. Jeff was a well-bred country boy. A leering, garish, raucous street prostitute would have scared him off. A young woman in a robe, poised, self-confident— her breast exposed only to feed a child—guiding her family through a meal— Sending glance after glance—soft, shining, promising— to a boy only two years younger than she in age, but eons in experience— Melissa almost laughed. Leave aside that incredible figure! The conclusion was foregone. Given. By now, Jeff would be nothing but a raging mass of hormones. Burning with desire. Would he take advantage of the offer? Ha! Melissa had a sudden image of herself, standing on a beach, ankle-deep in seawater. Queen Melissa—imperious, righteous—ordering the tide to retreat. Melissa was opposed to sexual harassment. She was opposed to men taking advantage of the weaker position of women in society to satisfy their lust. She was. She still was. But—Despair washed over her. The world she had been plunged into was so far removed from the one she had known that no answers seemed possible. How could she condemn? How could she could reprove? And, most important of all, how could she point a way forward?

• published: 11 Jan 2015
• views: 36