{"id":963,"date":"2013-02-16T22:30:18","date_gmt":"2013-02-16T21:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/saber.comule.com\/?p=963"},"modified":"2016-01-27T18:02:21","modified_gmt":"2016-01-27T17:02:21","slug":"long-handled-spoons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/saber-benmimoun.com\/?p=963","title":{"rendered":"The long-handled spoons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>That night, Edna Poppy and Mrs. Virgie Parsons, two elderly neighbors, come to Lou Ann\u2019s house for dinner and to\u00a0<\/em><em>watch Mattie, who is scheduled to appear on TV. Esperanza and Estevan also come over. On television, Mattie talks about human rights, the United Nations, the concept of asylum, and the violence visited upon immigrants who are forced to return to their countries of origin. Edna and Virgie do not understand Mattie\u2019s remarks, and neither does Taylor.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> Mrs. Parsons assumes that Turtle is Esperanza and Estevan\u2019s child, and calls her a naked wild Indian. Estevan, who works washing dishes at a Chinese restaurant, has brought chopsticks to eat dinner with, but Mrs. Parsons turns up her nose at them. She goes on to remark that immigrants should \u201cstay put in their own dirt\u201d and not take American jobs. Turtle tries to put a piece of pineapple in her mouth with her chopsticks, but cannot. To make her feel better and to chasten Mrs. Parsons, Estevan tells a story.<\/em><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>\u201cThis is a South American, wild\u00a0<em>Indian\u00a0<\/em>story about heaven and hell.\u201d [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-964 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/saber-benmimoun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/03-feed-them-with-a-long-spoon-performance-doc_web-300x253.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"253\" srcset=\"http:\/\/saber-benmimoun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/03-feed-them-with-a-long-spoon-performance-doc_web-300x253.jpg 300w, http:\/\/saber-benmimoun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/03-feed-them-with-a-long-spoon-performance-doc_web.jpg 796w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you go to visit hell, you will see a room like this kitchen. There is a<\/p>\n<p>pot of delicious stew on the table, with the most delicate aroma you can imagine. All around, people sit, like us. Only they are dying of starvation. They are jibbering and jabbering,\u201d he looked extra hard at Mrs. Parsons, \u201cbut they cannot get a bite of this wonderful stew God has made for them. Now, why is that?\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>[&#8230;] They are starving because they only have spoons with very long handles. As long as that.\u201d He pointed to the mop, which I had forgotten to put away. \u201cWith these ridiculous, terrible spoons, the people in hell can reach into the pot but they cannot put the food in their mouths. Oh, how hungry they are! Oh, how they swear and curse each other!\u201d he said, looking again at Virgie. He was enjoying this.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow,\u201d he went on, \u201cyou can go and visit heaven. What? You see a room just like the first one, the same table, the same pot of stew, the same spoons as long as a sponge mop. But these people are all [&#8230;] perfectly, magnificently well-fed, and very happy. Why do you think?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He pinched up a chunk of pineapple in his chopsticks, neat as you please, and reached all the way across the table to offer it to Turtle. She took it like a newborn bird.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>[The Bean Trees by\u00a0Barbara Kingsolver]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That night, Edna Poppy and Mrs. Virgie Parsons, two elderly neighbors, come to Lou Ann\u2019s house for dinner and to\u00a0watch Mattie, who is scheduled to appear on TV. Esperanza and Estevan also come over. On television, Mattie talks about human rights, the United Nations, the concept of asylum, and the violence visited upon immigrants who&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,4,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lecture","category-contes_philosophiques","category-reflexions","category-5","category-4","category-37","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/saber-benmimoun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/saber-benmimoun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/saber-benmimoun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/saber-benmimoun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/saber-benmimoun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=963"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/saber-benmimoun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1642,"href":"http:\/\/saber-benmimoun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963\/revisions\/1642"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/saber-benmimoun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/saber-benmimoun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/saber-benmimoun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/saber-benmimoun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}