In Sweden, gruel is often given to small children, but is rarely eaten among adults. In the Western world, gruel is remembered as the food of the child labour slaves in Charles Dickens' Industrial Revolution novel, Oliver Twist. The eponymous character asks the master of the workhouse for some more, and is struck a blow to the head for it. Also, in The Simpsons episode "Kamp Krusty", Bart and the other children are forced to eat "Krusty Brand Imitation Gruel" as their only meal, punctuated by the comment "Nine out of ten orphans can't tell the difference."Congee is a popular Asian preparation of gruel made with rice.
BUT -- "Mommies what is an Asian?"SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) -- Many of the children have seen little or no television. They have been essentially home-schooled all their lives. Most were raised on garden-grown vegetables and twice-daily prayers with family. They frolic in long dresses and buttoned-up shirts from another century. They are unfailingly polite.
The 437 children taken from the polygamist compound in West Texas are being scattered to group homes and boys' and girls' ranches across the state, plunged into a culture radically different from the community where they and their families shunned the outside world as a hostile, contaminating influence on their godly way of life.
The state Child Protective Services program said it chose foster homes where the youngsters can be kept apart from other children for now.
"We recognize it's critical that these children not be exposed to mainstream culture too quickly or other things that would hinder their success," agency spokeswoman Shari Pulliam said. "We just want to protect them from abuse and neglect. We're not trying to change them."
The children were swept up in a raid earlier this month on the Yearning for Zion Ranch run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a renegade Mormon splinter group that believes in marrying teen girls to older men. State child-welfare authorities said there was evidence of physical and sexual abuse at the ranch.
The youngsters are being moved out of the crowded San Angelo Coliseum and will be placed in 16 temporary facilities around Texas -- some as far away as Houston, 500 miles off -- until individual custody hearings can be held.
Those hearings could result in a number of possibilities: Some children could be placed in permanent foster care; some parents who have left the sect may win custody; some youngsters may be allowed to return to the ranch in Eldorado; and some may turn 18 before the case is complete and will be allowed to choose their own fates.
Thanks to Bryan MooPig correspondents:
4 comments:
"We recognize it's critical that these children not be exposed to mainstream culture too quickly or other things that would hinder their success,"
437 lawyers
yeah, mainstream culture -- in San Angelo? uh, oxymorontia.. hehe
In Central Asia they take lentils and cook them into gruel called "dalbot" and pour it over rice, which, by the way, is running somewhere near the $100.00 a bushel price that we have feared since well before we all grew up with a "Snap,Crackle and Pop" for breakfast.
Seriously folks, does it look like we are headed for the "Big One" or what?
There seem to be many incongruent signals coming through the media. A new charismatic Islam preacher is on the scene from Egypt, Ahmed, I think. Someone has decided to build a dryer that will save billions. Whirlpool and Maytag couldn't get it, but Joe Everyman from Schenectady could and did. Smart Cars, from Sweden...is that right? are darting to and fro. Wind generation farms are appearing in the Texas panhandle alongside cattle. Does that speed the methane to the ozone faster?
Gruel for the masses. Soylent green? Oh the horror, oh the horror!
Pray tell, where were the Feds when Brittany needed to be rescued? Where was the swat team that should have busted into Lindsey Lohan's parents house and freed her from the emotional and sexual abuse a few years ago? Or were they safe in the nurturing arms of "mainstream culture"?
CMPSTHLSTY -
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