Children of the Days Read Free Page A

justify this implacable gluttony, complete with property titles granted by the Bible.
    Persecuting Jews had always been a European sport. Now the Palestinians are paying the bill.

May 15
M AY T OMORROW B E M ORE T HAN J UST A NOTHER N AME FOR T ODAY
    In 2011 thousands of homeless and jobless youth occupied the streets and squares of several Spanish cities.
    Their outrage spread. Healthy outrage turned out to be more contagious than disease, and the voices of “the indignant” crossed the borders drawn on maps. Their words echoed around the world:
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  They put us in the fucking street and here we are .
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  Turn off the TV and turn on the street .
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  They call it a crisis but it’s a rip-off .
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  Not too little money, too many crooks .
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  Markets rule. I didn’t vote for them .
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  They decide for us without us .
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  Wage slave for rent .
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  I’m looking for my rights. Anyone seen them?
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  If they won’t let us dream, we won’t let them sleep .

May 16
O FF TO THE L OONY B IN
    Groupers and other fish,
    dolphins,
    swans, flamingos, albatrosses,
    penguins,
    buffaloes,
    ostriches,
    koala bears,
    orangutans and other monkeys,
    butterflies and other insects
    and many more of our relatives in the animal kingdom have homosexual relations, female to female, male to male, for an encounter or a lifetime.
    Lucky for them they aren’t people or they’d be sent to the loony bin.
    Until this day in the year 1990, homosexuality featured on the World Health Organization’s list of mental illnesses.

May 20
A R ARE A CT OF S ANITY
    In 1998 France passed a law that reduced the workweek to thirty-five hours.
    Work less, live more: Thomas More dreamed of this in Utopia , but we had to wait five centuries before a country finally dared commit such an act of common sense.
    After all, what are machines for if not to reduce the time we spend working and to lengthen our hours of freedom? Why does technological progress have to come bearing the gifts of anguish and unemployment?
    For once, at least, a country dared to challenge all that nonsense.
    Sanity did not last. When the thirty-five-hour week was ten years old, it expired.

May 21
W ORLD D AY FOR C ULTURAL D IVERSITY
    In 1906 a pygmy captured in the jungle of the Congo arrived at the Bronx Zoo in New York.
    He was named Ota Benga and was exhibited to the public in a cage along with an orangutan and four chimpanzees. The experts explained that this humanoid might represent the missing link, and to confirm their hypothesis they displayed him playing with his hairy brothers.
    Sometime later the pygmy was rescued by Christian charity.
    They did what they could but it was hopeless. Ota Benga refused to be saved. He would not speak, broke dishes at the table, hit anyone who tried to touch him. He was incapable of working any job, remained silent in the church choir and bit whoever tried to have a picture taken with him.
    At the end of the winter of 1916, after ten years of domestication, Ota Benga sat down in front of a fire, took off and burned the clothing he had been obliged to wear, then trained the pistol he had stolen on his heart.

May 22
T INTIN A MONG THE S AVAGES
    On this day in 1907 Belgian cartoonist Hergé, the father of comic-book hero Tintin, was born.
    Tintin incarnated the civilizing virtues of the white race.
    In his best-selling adventure, Tintin visited the Congo, still owned by Belgium, and there he laughed heartily at the ridiculous doings of black people and entertained himself hunting.
    He shot fifteen antelope, skinned a monkey for a disguise, blew up a rhinoceros with a stick of dynamite and stuck a gun into the open mouths of many crocodiles and pulled the trigger.
    Tintin said that elephants spoke much better French than black people.