The Rise and Fall of the Gimmee Gimmee Birds

By Louis Philippe Goldman

They don't write many fables these days. We have Aesop and LaFontaine, and nothing significant since George Orwell's ANIMAL FARM, but look out! Here comes Lou Goldman's RISE AND FALL OF THE GIMMEE GIMMEE BIRDS which is destined to take its place beside its erstwhile predesessors.
Fables are uiversal tales of human truths thinly disguised as animals, and we quickly realize that the Gimmee Gimee birds are ourselves and or neighbors living in the world of over-consumption, of amassing "stuff". It also touches on economics, politics, psychology and even theology"!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503531178

Louis Philippe Goldman

Prof. Goldman has published widely in such magazines and journals as the ATLANTIC, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS, JOURNAL OF THE PRINT WORLD., EDUCATIONAL THEORY and EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP. After receiving degrees from the University of Michigan and Columbia University he taught at Brooklyn College and then at Wichita State University for 35 years. He is now retired in Ashland, OR and continues to write OpEds and poetry.

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by Louis Philippe Goldman.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2014922865

ISBN:               Hardcover                978-1-5035-3118-5

                          Softcover                  978-1-5035-3119-2

                        eBook                      978-1-5035-3117-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 01/08/2015

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CONTENTS

A Fable

by Louis Philippe Goldman Wichita State University

AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE TO THE TYPEWRITTEN VERSION PRIOR TO ITS DIGITALIZATION

The first thing you will notice as you turn this page and begin reading this fable is that errors and changes are made with handwritten notations. How strange! Why would the author do this, instead of deleting a misspelled word and inserting a correct one?

The answer should be obvious to anyone who grew up before there were computers or word processors: the manuscript was typed on what used to be called a manual typewriter. No, the author did not search antique stores to find such a relic; he wrote this thirty years ago, before there were desktop computers.

The significance of this is that most readers of this fable see it as a description of the situation we find ourselves in today, with environmental degradation acceleration caused by consumerism on the one hand, and economic collapse regarded as inevitable and imminent, on the other. It couldn’t have been written so long ago! But it was. The handwriting has been on the wall for a long time!

Being a FABLE for Everyman on such matters as American management practices, the Origin and Nature of the state, Human Rapaciousness, Idolatry, Eschatology and the IMMINENT COLLAPSE OF THE AMERICAN ECONOMY

By

Louis Philippe Goldman

705 Grandview Drive

Ashland, OR 97520

541-488-1153

[e-mail]

1983

A FABLE

by Louis Philippe Goldman Wichita State University

Once upon a time, on a far-off tropical island, deep in a lush and fertile valley, lived a beautiful and unusual breed of birds. In many ways they resembled the hummingbird, a distant cousin, in their continuously frenetic activities, darting from one fruit or nectar-laden blossom to the next; doing this not because all the nectar had been extracted from the first but because the neighboring blossom or fruit would catch their fancy and seem to promise a sweeter and more bountiful offering. This fickleness, as it were, goading them on to sample new blossoms, on the one hand, while never surfeiting their appetites, on the other, enabled them for the most part to retain the agility