How to Eat Like A Hobbit
Written By Robert Hutchinson

Quote:They were washed and in the middle of good deep mugs of beer when Mr. Butterbur and Nob came in again. In a twinkling, the table was laid. There was hot soup, cold meats, a blackberry tart, new loaves, slabs of butter, and half a ripe cheese: good plain food, as good as the Shire could show, and homelike enough to dispel the last of Sam’s misgivings (already much relieved by the excellence of the beer).

• “damage to fisheries from oxygen-depleting microorganisms fed by fertilizer runoff...”
  
• “the cleanup of surface and groundwater polluted with... waste...”
  
• “the increased health risks borne by agricultural workers, farmers, and rural communities exposed to pesticides and antibiotic resistant bacteria.”
  

Quote:This environmental destruction [of industrialization] has also destroyed the indigenous culture of the hobbits. They have become industrial serfs rather than agricultural freemen. Now, the hobbits depend upon the industrial work they perform at the new mill for their livelihood rather than enjoying the fruits of their agricultural labor. They also crouch in fear before the big government that has taken over the Shire, for this new government controls the mill, the hobbits’ source of livelihood. Once the hobbits are severed from nature, they are severed from their very essence: they are no longer free and fun-loving. Instead, they have become industrial slaves, both to their masters at the mill and to their bureaucratic masters in government.

What We Can Learn from the Guilds
Written By Russell Sparkes [slightly adapted]

Quote:Historians are almost unanimous in holding that, taking into consideration that less was spent on food, rent, and furniture, and above all on intellectual needs, it was easier for a workman’s family to make both ends meet in those days than it is now ... it is not too much to say that, materially the position of the journeyman was at least equal, if not superior, to that of the workman of today. It was also better morally. He sometimes assisted in the drawing up and execution of the laws of the community; he was his master’s companion in ideas, beliefs, education, tastes. Above all, there was the possibility of rising one day to the same social level... [in the case of] the lesser guilds where the workshop remained small, intimate, and homely. [However], directly we go on to study the great commercial and industrial guilds profound inequalities appear.[note]G. Renard, Guilds in the Middle Ages (G.Bell: London, 1919).[/note]

Quote:One of the most remarkable features of medieval guild life was the way in which it combined secular and religious activities in the same social complex. The guild chantry, the provision of prayers and masses for dead brethren, and the performance of pageants and mystery plays on the great feasts were no less the function of the guild than the common banquet, the regulation of work and wages, the giving of assistance to fellow-guild members in sickness or misfortune.[note]C.H. Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (Sheed & Ward : London, 1950).[/note]

Quote:The medieval city was a pattern of Christian society as we find it in Thomist theory... with its cathedrals and its intensive church life, its religious confraternities and guilds, its care for the spiritual and material welfare of its inhabitants, and its educational charitable institutions (it appears) as the highest point of the medieval spirit.[note]E. Troelscht, The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches (1912).[/note]

Quote:To the extent that medieval man theorized about his society he regarded it not as a Gesellschaft or association like a firm, but as a Gemeinschaft or community like a family: as an organism with the Pope as the head, the warriors as the arms and the peasants as the feet.... The economy of medieval Europe in general, leaving aside a few highly unusual areas, was an agrarian peasant economy which was characterized by a high degree of self-sufficiency within each community.[note]Hodgett, op cit.[/note]

Quote:If the bond of love and friendship is laudable among mere rational men, then how much more is that which is between Christians who are tied by the strongest bonds of faith and religion; but above all by those Christians who form one fraternity bound and linked together by a solemn oath.[note]Quoted in C.H. Dawson, Medieval Religion (Sheed & Ward: London, 1935).[/note]

Quote:The support of chaplain to celebrate for the souls of former guild members and for the welfare of those still living makes it clear that the fraternities can be regarded as a kind of collective chantry, supported in some cases by men who could not afford to endow one on their own account. Behind such foundations was the fundamental outlook of those who established them, the belief that life on earth was but a passing phase of existence, that man’s true destiny was eternity, and that the sacraments which were necessary for salvation could be administered by the priest alone.[note]J.F. Thomson, The Transformation of Medieval England 1370-1529 (Longman : London, 1983).[/note]

Quote:With some variations all medieval guilds were modeled along the (same) lines—the maintenance of lights before images and the Blessed Sacrament, the procurement of attendance, and prayers, of the whole guild at funerals of deceased members, and finally the exercise of sociability and charity at a communal feast associated with the saint’s day.[note]E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (Yale University Press, 1994).[/note]

Quote:With regard to production, the guilds prided themselves on giving an official guarantee to the consumer. Hence the many articles contained in the statutes in which they boast of their good faith, or make a mark of emphasizing the honesty of their trade dealings; hence the complicated regulations for the prevention of bad work; hence the minute instructions prescribing the number of vats into which the Florentine dyer was to dip his materials and the quality and quantity of the colouring matters he was to employ.... The guild prided itself on letting nothing leave its shops but finished products, perfect of their kind; it examined and stamped every article, and further required that it should bear a special trade mark stating where it was made and its just price.[note]Renard, op cit.[/note]

Quote:Their most potent economic function was to control entry into the craft or ‘mystery’, thereby preserving a local monopoly and by the enforcement of apprenticeship, maintaining both the standards of the work and the level of wages. Full membership of the guilds then became a formal path to the “freedom” of the town and thus the right to carry on business there.[note]D.C Coleman, The Economy of England 1450-1750 (Oxford University Press : London and Oxford, 1977).[/note]

Quote:The Doctor, in short, still exists as a roughly recognizable figure. The Dyer has totally disappeared.... The reason why the Doctor is recognizable, and the Dyer is unrecognizable, is perfectly simple. It is that the Doctors not only were, but still are, organized on the idea of a Medieval Guild.... The British Medical Council, which is the council of a Guild ... does what a Guild was supposed to do. It keeps the doctors going; it keeps the doctors alive, and it does prevent one popular quack from eating all his brethren out of house and home. It sets limit to competition; it prevents monopoly.[note]G.K Chesterton, Chaucer (Faber & Faber : London, 1932).[/note]

Quote:The merchant or craftsman found in his craft guild security in times of trouble, monetary help in times of poverty, and medical assistance in case of illness. At Florence the carpenters and masons had their own hospital. When a member died, shops were shut, every one attended his funeral, and masses were said for his soul.[note]Renard, op cit.[/note]

Quote:Apart from the obligatory assistance at certain offices and at the funerals of its members, the fraternity owned a chest, that is to say a fund maintained out of the subscriptions and voluntary devotions of the members, as well as the fines which they incurred. Of these funds, collected from various sources, part was given to the poor, to the hospitals, and to the expenses of worship. Thus at the Rennes the fraternity of bakers ordained that in every batch of bread one loaf of fair size should be set apart, called the tourteau-Dieu, which brings to mind the portion for God or the poor.[note]Renard, op cit.[/note]

Quote:When the royal commissioners went out in 1546, and again in 1548 to survey the colleges, chantries, obit land, guilds and fraternities which the crown was about to seize, they were interested in institutions with permanent endowments of land and property—that was what the government was after.[note] J.J. Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People (Wiley Blackwell; 2nd edition, London, 1985).[/note]

Quote:If any of the forsaid brotherhood falls into such mischief that he hath nought for old age or be able to help himself, and have dwelled as the brotherhood for 8 years and have done thereto all duties within the time, every week after he shall have of this common box 13 pence for the term of his life or he be recovered of his mischief.

when he accepts the logical justice of damnation and undeserved privilege to repent.


Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present look through a window at the Crachet family around the hearth.

Quote:“Now for St. Francis nothing was ever in the background. We might say that his mind had no background, except perhaps that divine darkness out of which the divine love had called up every colored creature one by one. He saw everything as dramatic, distinct from its setting, not all of a piece like a picture but in action like a play. A bird went by him like an arrow; something with a story and a purpose, though it was a purpose of life and not a purpose of death. A bush could stop him like a brigand; and indeed he was as ready to welcome the brigand as the bush.”

Quote:“Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of London, even including — which is a bold word — the corporation, aldermen, and livery… Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change — not a knocker, but Marley’s face. Marley’s face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead… and its livid color, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part of its own expression.”

Quote:“There are details in the Dickens descriptions — a window, or a railing, or the keyhole of a door — which he endows with demoniac life. The things seem more actual than things really are. Indeed, that degree of realism does not exist in reality; it is the unbearable realism of a dream. And this kind of realism can only be gained by walking dreamily in a place; it cannot be gained by walking observantly.”

Quote:“The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh’s daughters, Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts…” 

Quote:“But the strength of religion was that it did not care for Cromwell; did not care for him, that is, any more than for anybody else. He and his footman were equally welcomed to warm places in the hospitality of hell. It has often been said, very truly, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary.”

Quote:“Dickens was a mythologist rather than a novelist; he was the last of the mythologists, and perhaps the greatest. He did not always manage to make his characters men, but he always managed, at the least, to make them gods.”

Quote:“The beauty and the real blessing of the story do not lie in the mechanical plot of it, the repentance of Scrooge, probable or improbable; they lie in the great furnace of real happiness that glows through Scrooge and everything around him; that great furnace, the heart of Dickens. Whether the Christmas visions would or would not convert Scrooge, they convert us. Whether or not the visions were evoked by real Spirits of the Past, Present, and Future, they were evoked by that truly exalted order of angels who are correctly called High Spirits. They are impelled and sustained by a quality which our contemporary artists ignore or almost deny, but which in a life decently lived is as normal and attainable as sleep, positive, passionate, conscious joy. The story sings from end to end like a happy man going home; and, like a happy and good man, when it cannot sing it yells. It is lyric and exclamatory, from the first exclamatory words of it. It is strictly a Christmas carol.”