Havruta for chapter 6
Jun. 23rd, 2020 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pobble_readsI’ve gotten out of the habit f writing here (I’m not being great at keeping to any kind of schedule particularly with assorted health annoyances). But I was reading Casper ter Kuile (from the HPST podcast)’s new book (The Power of Ritual which came out today and the first chapter is about Sacred Reading (and observing some kind of Sabbath) which has inspired me to try to write here again. Let’s see if I can keep it up...
I have actually been thinking about this Havruta question on and off since I did the chapter write up but not in a disappointed and intensive way. My question is why does the Cook always make a full cauldron of gruel each morning when she knows that the orphans will eat very little of it (we know this because after a Gobbolino magics sugar-plums into the mixture and the children eat it all she’s surprised). It seems like a waste of food and stirring a full cauldron of porridge and then carrying it into the dinning hall must be hard work for her.
I’m wondering if her portion sizes might just be habit - perhaps she is not much better in the mornings than the Porteress and just gets the orphans breakfast made on autopilot? If that’s the case I have a certain amount of sympathy thinking of the number of mornings when I’ve blearily tried to put my jar of coffee back in the fridge instead of the milk!
Or is it something she does deliberately so as to have spare food for the pigs. Presumably there is a budget for pig food and other supplies as well as the children‘s food (the Porteress has told her to make good porridge so we have to assume there’s money available for the ingredients for that - is she embezzling that or is she having to look for ways to cut corners because the funding isn’t enough? If she is embezzling is that her main motivation for treating the children so poorly - doing everything for the lowest cost possible without thought for their welfare? Or has her bitterness towards them promoted her to think of herself as more deserving than the orphans and she’s ended up feeling she has more right to any money than them?
Or from a different financial angle is she making the full cauldron of gruel because she’s concerned that if she doesn’t spend her whole departmental budget it’ll be cut in the future? Which would be an example of a problematic/thoughtless structure encouragIng bad behaviour from people within its system....
Do you all have any ideas about this? Or other questions about this chapter that you’d like to explore together?
I have actually been thinking about this Havruta question on and off since I did the chapter write up but not in a disappointed and intensive way. My question is why does the Cook always make a full cauldron of gruel each morning when she knows that the orphans will eat very little of it (we know this because after a Gobbolino magics sugar-plums into the mixture and the children eat it all she’s surprised). It seems like a waste of food and stirring a full cauldron of porridge and then carrying it into the dinning hall must be hard work for her.
No wonder their eyes shone with pleasure as theI’d little bowls were filled, no wonder that they scraped them clean and shining so that the cook could hardly believe her eyes were in the cauldron came back empty into the kitchen. She was accustomed to giving most of the gruel to the pigs.
I’m wondering if her portion sizes might just be habit - perhaps she is not much better in the mornings than the Porteress and just gets the orphans breakfast made on autopilot? If that’s the case I have a certain amount of sympathy thinking of the number of mornings when I’ve blearily tried to put my jar of coffee back in the fridge instead of the milk!
Or is it something she does deliberately so as to have spare food for the pigs. Presumably there is a budget for pig food and other supplies as well as the children‘s food (the Porteress has told her to make good porridge so we have to assume there’s money available for the ingredients for that - is she embezzling that or is she having to look for ways to cut corners because the funding isn’t enough? If she is embezzling is that her main motivation for treating the children so poorly - doing everything for the lowest cost possible without thought for their welfare? Or has her bitterness towards them promoted her to think of herself as more deserving than the orphans and she’s ended up feeling she has more right to any money than them?
Or from a different financial angle is she making the full cauldron of gruel because she’s concerned that if she doesn’t spend her whole departmental budget it’ll be cut in the future? Which would be an example of a problematic/thoughtless structure encouragIng bad behaviour from people within its system....
Do you all have any ideas about this? Or other questions about this chapter that you’d like to explore together?
