Hogs Of War Quotes

Yes, movies! Look at them — All of those glamorous people — having adventures — hogging it all, gobbling the whole thing up! You know what happens? People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them! Yes, until there's a war. That's when adventure becomes available to the masses! Everyone's dish, not only Gable's! Then the people in the dark room come out of the dark room to have some adventures themselves — Goody, goody! — It's our turn now, to go to the south Sea Island — to make a safari — to be exotic, far-off! — But I'm not patient. I don't want to wait till then. I'm tired of the movies and I am about to move!

Cry hamhock and let slip the hogs of war!" - Oberon

He had had to start thirty-two wars and had had to violate all of his pacts with death and wallow like a hog in the dung heap of glory in order to discover the privileges of simplicity almost forty years late.

I don’t remember the whole thing, because it was very long, but Atticus recited it for me once, and there was a line that went like this: “Cry ham hock and let slip the hogs of war!” I know you might not agree, but for me that was the best thing Shakespeare ever wrote." You mean, “Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war” from Julius Caesar? "No, I don’t think that’s it. There was ham in there; I’m sure he was talking about ham. They were going to battle hunger." I think you might have been hungry when you heard it, Oberon.

Happy are those who can relieve suffering with prayer Happy those who can rely on God to see them through. They can wait patiently for the end. But we who have put our faith in the goodness of man and now see man’s image debas’d lower than the wolf or the hog— Where can we turn for consolation? Owen

Here we raise his children for him, cook for him, bring up his crops, butcher his hogs - even fight his wars for him - and he still won't acknowledge our existence.

Katczinsky won’t budge from the opinion which as an old Front-hog, he rhymes: Give ’em all the same grub and all the same pay And the war would be over and done in a day. Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out among themselves. Whoever survives, his country wins. That would be much simpler and more just than this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting.

These boys would be better off hog-tied than playing for a woman!” shouted another. The discordant men gathered at the back exit. Moonshiner opened the door and they poured out, while inside we could hear in the distance the sound of a plane flying into our airfield. We knew another body was likely on board, this time carrying the remains of a soldier from a neighboring town.

Here is your modern American solution. And most people think it worked perfectly. We won the Cold War by living high off the hog. Isn’t that the real story here? We beat the Russians by talk and retreat, by growing softer and softer under a shopping ethic. We let our kids smoke pot, our schools descend into political correctness, while counter-intelligence collapsed — if it was ever there at all. But then, we didn’t really win the Cold War.

There was nothing of the milk of human kindness in old Ambrose; he did not get the nickname of Bitter Bierce for nothing. What delighted him most in this life was the spectacle of human cowardice and folly. He put man, intellectually, somewhere between the sheep and the horned cattle, and as a hero somewhere below the rats. His war stories, even when they deal with the heroic, do not depict soldiers as heroes; they depict them as bewildered fools, doing things without sense, submitting to torture and outrage without resistance, dying at last like hogs in Chicago, the former literary capital of the United States. So far in this life, indeed, I have encountered no more thorough-going cynic than Bierce was.

whenever two people kiss the world is born, a drop of light with guts of transparency the room like a fruit splits and begins to open or burst like a star among the silences and all laws now rat-gnawed and eaten away, barred windows of banks and penitentiaries, the bars of paper, and the barbed-wire fences, the stamps and the seals, the sharp prongs and the spurs, the one-note sermon of the bombs and wars, the gentle scorpion in his cap and gown, the tiger who is the president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty and the Red Cross, the pedagogical ass, and the crocodile set up as saviour, father of his country, the founder, the leader, the shark, the architect of the future of us all, the hog in uniform, and then that one, the favourite son of the Church who can be seen brushing his black teeth in holy water and taking evening courses in English and democracy, the invisible barriers, the mad and decaying masks that are used to separate us, man from man, and man from his own self they are thrown down for an enormous instant and we see darkly our own lost unity, how vulnerable it is to be women and men, the glory it is to be man and share our bread and share our sun and our death, the dark forgotten marvel of being alive;

My greetings and constant love to Emory and my grandchildren. I am well and continue to make my rounds with the news of the day and as always am well-received in the towns of which we have more than a few now as the Century grows older and the population increases so that large crowds come to hear reportage of distant places as well as those nearby. I enjoy good health as always and hope that Emory is doing well using his left hand now and look forward to an example of his handwriting. It is true what Elizabeth has said about employment for a one-armed man but that concerns manual labor only and at any rate there should be some consideration for a man who has lost a limb in the war. As soon as he is adept with his left I am sure he will consider Typesetting, Accounting, Etc. & Etc. Olympia is I am sure a steady rock to you all. Olympia’s husband, Mason, had been killed at Adairsville, during Johnston’s retreat toward Atlanta. The man was too big to be a human being and too small to be a locomotive. He had been shot out of the tower of the Bardsley mansion and when he fell three stories and struck the ground he probably made a hole big enough to bury a hog in. The Captain’s younger daughter, Olympia, was in reality a woman who affected helplessness and refinement and had never been able to pull a turnip from the garden without weeping over the poor, dear thing. She fluttered and gasped and incessantly tried to demonstrate how sensitive she was. Mason was a perfect foil and then the Yankees went and killed him. Olympia was now living with Elizabeth and Emory in the remains of their farm in New Hope Church, Georgia, and was quite likely a heavy weight. He put one hand to his forehead. My youngest daughter is in reality a bore. There was a pounding on the wall: Kep-dun! Kep-dun!

Hundreds of men crowded the yard, and not a one among them was whole. They covered the ground thick as maggots on a week old carcass, the dirt itself hardly anywhere visible. No one could move without all feeling it and thus rising together in a hellish contortion of agony. Everywhere men moaned, shouting for water and praying for God to end their suffering. They screamed and groaned in an unending litany, calling for mothers and wives and fathers and sisters. The predominant color was blue, though nauseations of red intruded throughout. Men lay half naked, piled on top of one another in scenes to pitiful to imagine. Bloodied heads rested on shoulders and laps, broken feet upon arms. Tired hands held in torn guts and torsos twisted every which way. Dirty shirts dressed the bleeding bodies and not enough material existed in all the world to sop up the spilled blood. A boy clad in gray, perhaps the only rebel among them, lay quietly in one corner, raised arm rigid with a finger extended, as if pointing to the heavens. His face was a singular portrait of contentment among the misery. Broken bones, dirty white and soiled with the passing of hours since injury, were everywhere abundant. All manner of devices splinted the damaged and battered limbs: muskets, branches, bayonets, lengths of wood or iron from barns and carts. One individual had bone splinted with bone: the dried femur of a horse was lashed to his busted shin. A blind man, his eyes subtracted by the minié ball that had enfiladed him, moaned over and over “I’m kilt, I’m kilt! Oh Gawd, I’m kilt!” Others lay limp, in shock. These last were mostly quiet, their color unnaturally pale. It was agonizingly humid in the still air of the yard. The stink of blood mixed with human waste produced a potent and offensive odor not unlike that of a hog farm in the high heat of a South Carolina summer. Swarms of fat, green blowflies everywhere harassed the soldiers to the point of insanity, biting at their wounds. Their steady buzz was a noise straight out of hell itself, a distress to the ears.

Learning to meditate helped too. When the Beatles visited India in 1968 to study Transcendental Meditation at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, I was curious to learn it, so I did. I loved it. Meditation has benefited me hugely throughout my life because it produces a calm open-mindedness that allows me to think more clearly and creatively. I majored in finance in college because of my love for the markets and because that major had no foreign language requirement—so it allowed me to learn what I was interested in, both inside and outside class. I learned a lot about commodity futures from a very interesting classmate, a Vietnam veteran quite a bit older than me. Commodities were attractive because they could be traded with very low margin requirements, meaning I could leverage the limited amount of money I had to invest. If I could make winning decisions, which I planned to do, I could borrow more to make more. Stock, bond, and currency futures didn’t exist back then. Commodity futures were strictly real commodities like corn, soybeans, cattle, and hogs. So those were the markets I started to trade and learn about. My college years coincided with the era of free love, mind-expanding drug experimentation, and rejection of traditional authority. Living through it had a lasting effect on me and many other members of my generation. For example, it deeply impacted Steve Jobs, whom I came to empathize with and admire. Like me, he took up meditation and wasn’t interested in being taught as much as he loved visualizing and building out amazing new things. The times we lived in taught us both to question established ways of doing things—an attitude he demonstrated superbly in Apple’s iconic “1984” and “Here’s to the Crazy Ones,” which were ad campaigns that spoke to me. For the country as a whole, those were difficult years. As the draft expanded and the numbers of young men coming home in body bags soared, the Vietnam War split the country. There was a lottery based on birthdates to determine the order of those who would be drafted. I remember listening to the lottery on the radio while playing pool with my friends. It was estimated that the first 160 or so birthdays called would be drafted, though they read off all 366 dates. My birthday was forty-eighth.

{Excerpt from a message from one of the Cherokee chiefs - Onitositaii, commonly known as Old Tassle} ... 'If, therefore, a bare march, or reconnoitering a country is sufficient reason to ground a claim to it, we shall insist upon transposing the demand, and your relinquishing your settlements on the western waters and removing one hundred miles back towards the east, whither some of our warriors advanced against you in the course of last year's campaign. Let us examine the facts of your present eruption into our country, and we shall discover your pretentions on that ground. What did you do? You marched into our territories with a superior force; our vigilance gave us no timely notice of your manouvres [sic]; your numbers far exceeded us, and we fled to the stronghold of our extensive woods, there to secure our women and children. Thus, you marched into our towns; they were left to your mercy; you killed a few scattered and defenseless individuals, spread fire and desolation wherever you pleased, and returned again to your own habitations. If you meant this, indeed, as a conquest you omitted the most essential point; you should have fortified the junction of the Holstein and Tennessee rivers, and have thereby conquered all the waters above you. But, as all are fair advantages during the existence of a state of war, it is now too late for us to suffer for your mishap of generalship! Again, were we to inquire by what law or authority you set up a claim, I answer, none! Your laws extend not into our country, nor ever did. You talk of the law of nature and the law of nations, and they are both against you. Indeed, much has been advanced on the want of what you term civilization among the Indians; and many proposals have been made to us to adopt your laws, your religion, your manners, and your customs. But, we confess that we do not yet see the propriety, or practicability of such a reformation, and should be better pleased with beholding the good effect of these doctrines in your own practices than with hearing you talk about them, or reading your papers to us upon such subjects. You say: Why do not the Indians till the ground and live as we do? May we not, with equal propriety, ask, Why the white people do not hunt and live as we do? You profess to think it no injustice to warn us not to kill our deer and other game for the mere love of waste; but it is very criminal in our young men if they chance to kill a cow or a hog for their sustenance when they happen to be in your lands. We wish, however, to be at peace with you, and to do as we would be done by. We do not quarrel with you for killing an occasional buffalo, bear or deer on our lands when you need one to eat; but you go much farther; your people hunt to gain a livelihood by it; they kill all our game; our young men resent the injury, and it is followed by bloodshed and war. This is not a mere affected injury; it is a grievance which we equitably complain of and it demands a permanent redress. The Great God of Nature has placed us in different situations. It is true that he has endowed you with many superior advantages; but he has not created us to be your slaves. We are a separate people! He has given each their lands, under distinct considerations and circumstances: he has stocked yours with cows, ours with buffaloe; yours with hogs, ours with bear; yours with sheep, ours with deer. He has indeed given you an advantage in this, that your cattle are tame and domestic while ours are wild and demand not only a larger space for range, but art to hunt and kill them; they are, nevertheless, as much our property as other animals are yours, and ought not to be taken away without consent, or for something equivalent.' Those were the words of the Indians. But they were no binding on these whites, who were living beyond words, claims ...

Dr. Adam Grant, professor of organizational psychology at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, says this is because J. J. Abrams is “a giver,” a rarity in an industry full of takers. No good TV show or film is made by one person, but whereas Hollywood bigshots are known for being credit-hogs, J. J. Abrams is a fantastic collaborator. Grant would know. He wrote the book on the subject. In his bestseller, Give and Take, he presents rigorous research showing that a disproportionate number of the most successful people in a given industry are extremely generous. From medical students to engineers to salespeople, his studies find givers at the top of the ladder. “Being a giver doesn’t require extraordinary acts of sacrifice,” Grant writes in Give and Take. “It just involves a focus on acting in the interests of others, such as by giving help, providing mentoring, sharing credit, or making connections for others.” Abrams is known, acquaintances tell me, for his kindness and lack of ego, in addition to his penchant for mystery. That’s how he attracts the best people to his staff. And that’s how he’s managed to climb so far so fast.* Staffers with whom I e-mailed and met at the “typewriter shop” were eager to keep Abrams away from me because, according to his reputation, he’d probably spend way too much time helping this shaggy-haired writer out when he ought to be, you know, filming Star Wars. Initially, Abrams helped out better-connected people than himself, and doing so helped him superconnect. But once he was the superconnector, he still helped people. That’s how to tell if someone is a giver, or a taker in giver’s clothing. “If you do it only to succeed,” Grant says, in the long run, “it probably won’t work.

Other corporations have asserted Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination as well as asserted that the Fourteenth Amendment—passed after the Civil War to strip slavery from the Constitution—protects their right “against discrimination” by a local community that doesn’t want them building a toxic waste incinerator, commercial hog operation, or superstore.

He had to start thirty-two wars and had to violate all of his pacts with death and wallow like a hog in the dungheap of glory to discover the privileges of simplicity almost forty years late.

You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.” —Al Capone

During that interminable night, while Colonel Gerineldo Márquez thought about his dead afternoons in Amaranta’s sewing room, Colonel Aureliano Buendía scratched for many hours trying to break the hard shell of his solitude. His only happy moments, since that remote afternoon when his father had taken him to see ice, had taken place in his silver workshop where he passed the time putting little gold fishes together. He had had to start thirty-two wars and had had to violate all of his pacts with death and wallow like a hog in the dung heap of glory in order to discover the privileges of simplicity almost forty years late.

Comparing the world's balance sheet to a seesaw, it seems like the 'war' side has been hogging the playground while 'peace' is stuck in detention.

The war had cut the supply of European workers the North had relied on to kill its hogs and stoke its foundries. Immigration plunged by more than ninety percent, from 1,218,480 in 1914 to 110,618 in 1918, when the country needed all the labor it could get for war production. So the North turned its gaze to the poorest-paid labor in the emerging market of the American South. Steel mills, railroads, and packinghouses sent labor scouts disguised as insurance men and salesmen to recruit blacks north, if only temporarily.

You know I won’t be staying there, either. I have things I want to see before I can’t. Like the Grand Canyon. And the Pacific Ocean. A buddy of mine from the war is going with me.” “But can’t—” His fingers squeezed mine. “I want you to remember me like this, Rebekah. And I want to remember you in this place. Don’t worry. You’ll get what you want one of these days. Just be patient.” I drew in a sharp breath. How did he know what I wanted? And how did he know I’d get it? Did God give the dying special messages? “How do you know?” The words blurted out on the breath I’d been holding. “Because I’ve watched you. I can see in your every action that you were made for this.” “This?” I huffed. “It suits you. A house. A farm. Children. The husband who will give it all to you.” I rocked back on my heels and stood. “That’s not what I want, Will.” I backed away from his startled look, my hands fidgeting with each other. “I’m going to the city. I don’t know how or when, but I won’t be tied to the seasons and the sun. Don’t get me wrong: I want a husband and a child or two of my own. But this . . . ?” I nodded toward the yard beyond the house, to the hog now in its pen, the chickens, the cow and the mules, even the fields farther beyond. “This is not what I want. I want adventure. I want . . .” His eyes glazed over a bit. I looked away. The children’s joyful shrieks carried on the cool breeze. I wondered if memories of childhood days invaded Will’s head as they did mine. Such simple days. Days I’d once wished away, wanting to be grown up, wanting my life to begin. Now that I’d crossed that line, I wished I could go back. Will cleared his throat, pushed to his feet, and faced me. “I’m sorry, Rebekah,” he said. “I hope you get what you want. I really do. But be careful. If France taught me anything, it’s that new experiences aren’t always what we imagine them to be.

Men were odd creatures. The ones with war injuries could ride and dance more gracefully than they walked; the ones who’d never laid an improper hand on her could bestow a first kiss more sweet and intriguing than she’d ever imagined. The ones who bore the scent of home and happiness could be untitled, socially retiring, and raising orchard hogs in the shires. She

I’m here to make it up to you, Sarah. Run away with me, and we’ll get married, and I’ll introduce you to th’ boys. We’ll have a fine life—you’ll see. A couple of ’em are married, too, or they have lady friends here ’n’ there that ride along with us from time to time.” She couldn’t believe her ears. “You think I’d even consider leaving with you to live an outlaw’s life, always on the run?” “Aw, Sarah, we have a grand time, livin’ high off the hog. We’re free to do whatever we want, whenever we want. We eat the best food, drink the best wine—our ladies are drippin’ in jewelry and fancy clothes. But I’m willin’ to leave it all if you insist.” “‘Leave it all’?” “Sure. That’s how much I love you, sweetheart. If you don’t want to live free as a bird, I’ll come back and have that ranch with you. We’ll let Milly stay there, too, of course, but it ain’t fittin’ for no lady to be runnin’ a ranch anyway.” “I told you, Milly’s married now,” she managed to say, in the midst of the temper that was threatening to boil over into angry words. “I think her husband might take exception to that idea.” “We’ll buy him out, then,” he said grandly. “They can go find some other ranch. I know you always set great store by that old place.” She was conscious of the handful of other diners in the restaurant, and remembered again that her mother said ladies did not make a scene in public. She folded her hands in her lap and looked away. “I’m sorry, Jesse. I loved you, and I prayed every night during the war for your return, but now—” He straightened. “Loved me? You don’t love me any more? There’s someone else, isn’t there?” he demanded, his narrowed eyes twin smoldering fires. She looked away from his glare. She didn’t want to tell him about Nolan, didn’t want to hear his reaction to the news that his former fiancée was in love with one of the very Yankees he hated so much, especially since she and Nolan hadn’t even had the chance to explore their new feelings for one another yet. But she wouldn’t lie, not about the relationship that had come to mean so much to her. She just wouldn’t say any more than she had to. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’m sorry, there is. I wish you well, Jesse. And now I’d best be getting home.

Army Air Corps planes

Just as a fish doesn’t know it’s in water, the typical Baby Mama doesn’t know that she’s a liability. Baby Mamas are shortsighted, low educated, self-entitled incubators who are complicit in perpetuating this HoG epidemic. Despite burdening the conceived children with a dim future and taxpayers with another mouth to feed, their multi-partner birthing marathon thrives.

Cry ham hock and let slip the hogs of war!” I know you might not agree, but for me that was the best thing Shakespeare ever wrote.> You mean, “Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war” from Julius Caesar?

The war had cut the supply of European workers the North had relied on to kill its hogs and stoke its foundries. Immigration plunged by more than ninety percent, from 1,218,480 in 1914 to 110,618 in 1918,

The planter himself was of a type then common in the South. He was a large, coarse looking man, with an immense paunch, wore a broad-brimmed, home-made straw hat and butter nut jeans clothes. His trousers were of the old-fashioned, "broad-fall" pattern. His hair was long, he had a scraggy, sandy beard, and chewed "long green" tobacco continually and viciously. But he was shrewd enough to know that ugly talk on his part wouldn't mend matters, but only make them worse, so he stood around in silence while we took his corn, but he looked as malignant as a rattlesnake. His wife was directly his opposite in appearance and demeanor. She was tall, thin, and bony, with reddish hair and a sharp nose and chin. And goodness, but she had a temper! She stood in the door of the dwelling house, and just tongue-lashed us "Yankees," as she called us, to the full extent of her ability. The boys took it all good naturedly, and didn't jaw back. We couldn't afford to quarrel with a woman. A year later, the result of her abuse would have been the stripping of the farm of every hog and head of poultry on it,

She looks up at me with misty eyes. ‘Talking of boys- are you eager about tonight?’ ‘About what?’ I say acting like I don't know what is going to go down, or don’t even know what she’s talking about. I play dumb! Her words are all running past me, faster than how she drives, everything is distorted together. Jenny always talks like that when she gets upset. Her words go into overdrive. I’m holding on to the bedpost, trying not to fall over, or on top of Jenny, I would love to sit down yet, Jenny is hogging up my single bed. She said- ‘I think you should back up with Ray or do him already.’ She throws me a condom from her purse. I said- ‘Who do you think would be my type then?’ ‘You, Marcel, some worm Bud Lite, and his Star Wars sheets. OMG that would be perfect and she giggles. ‘How romantic,’ she shouted. Though, I was thinking OMG Jenny you’re always right. Like it would be so romantic, yet little did she know I felt that way, already… I never realized how much of a weirdo I am. I have fallen to a complete nerd, on the outside, I have completely changed, but on the inside, I am one too! We all try to be something we're not in high school, even Jenny has everyone fooled. Nevertheless, the ones that seem the most put together are the ones that are falling apart the most. No one’s life is as good as it seems, and it’s even worse when you’re like Jull’s and Madilyn that have us throwing crap in their faces. I stand here feeling like such an ass hole, not even hearing what Jenny is rambling on about, because it’s nonsense, compared to what I have done in my thoughts. -White teeth teens are out- #- Hashtag: (unperfect girls, the charmed life, we want real love) I go pee one last time, and Jenny flows me in the bathroom and sits on the edge of the tube looking at me as I go. Then after I got up, she went, I was thinking like we didn’t need to do this together, yet how Jenny is we have to do everything together. That is when my sis walks into my room and says- ‘I have to Ba-bath Karly, would I get my stuff Re-ready and help me take a bath?’ I try to close the door saying get mom to bath you, but she wedges her hand in at the last minute and pushes into the bathroom.

Since its founding in 1941, the Academy had training ships that were furnished by the U.S. Maritime Commission. The first one was the training ship TS American Seaman and then the TS American Sailor. Both ships were loosely termed “West Coast Hog Islanders,” which meant their hulls were raised in the bow, stern and amidships and they had a counter-stern. This gave them the same basic appearance as the well-known “Philadelphia Hog Islanders,” though they were somewhat smaller. These ships were designed as freighters to be used during the First World War. Their construction was completed in Seattle, Washington, in 1919, just a little too late for the war. Had they been preserved, they would now be museum pieces, but this was not to be the case. Instead they were towed to the breakers, where they were converted into razor blades. A mural of the TS American Sailor was painted onto the dining room bulkhead. Later when we got a new ship, the training ship TS State of Maine, I painted her likeness on another Bulkhead.

In Maya culture, the holy lords had a responsibility to keep the cosmos in order and appease the gods through ceremonies and rituals. The commoners were willing to support this privileged class as long as they kept up their end of the bargain with effective rituals. But after 650, deforestation, erosion, and soil exhaustion began reducing crop yields. The working classes, the farmers and monument builders, may have suffered increasing hunger and disease, even as the rulers hogged an ever-larger share of resources. The society was heading for a crisis. Diamond writes: “We have to wonder why the kings and nobles failed to recognize and solve these seemingly obvious problems undermining their society. Their attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all those activities.” (If this sounds familiar, I would note that archaeology is thick with cautionary tales that speak directly to the twenty-first century.)

I cannot describe the change nor do I know when it took place, yet I know that there is a change for I look on the carcass of a man now with pretty much such feeling as I would were it a horse or hog.

The Great War reduced western Europe to a shambles but proved to be a boon to American farmers. Desperate for basic agricultural products, war-ravaged countries turned to the US market, sending prices of cotton, corn, wheat, beef, and other commodities soaring. Between 1914 and 1918, the price of a bushel of corn rose from fifty-nine cents to $1.30, a bushel of wheat from $1.05 to $2.34, and hogs from $7.40 to $16.70 per hundred pounds.1 To meet the demand, farmers acquired more land, expanded their herds of livestock, and invested in new equipment, taking out loans on easy credit to bankroll their purchases. In the years following the armistice of 1918, however—as European nations recovered from the catastrophe—US farm exports plunged so dramatically that one scholar describes the market collapse as a “price toboggan.”2 By 1921, the price of “wheat, corn, beef and pork [had] all plummeted by nearly one-half.”3 Farmers, who had enjoyed unprecedented prosperity just a few years earlier, now faced financial ruin, defaulting on equipment loans, tax payments, and mortgages.

Don’t hog your journey,’’ Duane recalled telling her. “Share your journey with others, and you’re a power of example. Think of what you are able to accomplish.

to support this privileged class as long as they kept up their end of the bargain with effective rituals. But after 650, deforestation, erosion, and soil exhaustion began reducing crop yields. The working classes, the farmers and monument builders, may have suffered increasing hunger and disease, even as the rulers hogged an ever-larger share of resources. The society was heading for a crisis. Diamond writes: “We have to wonder why the kings and nobles failed to recognize and solve these seemingly obvious problems undermining their society. Their attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all those activities.” (If this sounds familiar, I would note that archaeology is thick with cautionary tales that speak directly to the twenty-first century.)