An image of our society's incalculable wealth (and consumerism): Sara Corbett in the Sunday New York Times magazine of 1 Apr 2001 wrote about the "Lost Boys", young orphan refugees from Sudan. They survived years of war, animal attack, starvation, thirst, and disease during their thousand-mile trek to Ethiopia and Kenya in search of safety. Finally a few of them found their way to a new life in the United States.

Corbett described the amazement with which one of the boys observed the mountains of things to eat in a modern supermarket, and in particular his reaction to an aisle of pet supplies. He held up a can of dog food and asked, quite logically, "Tell me, what is the work of dogs in this country?"

TopicSociety - 2002-09-16

(correlates: BuechnerMagic, SelfStorage, KarmicRebalancingAct, ...)