Choices, Choices ...

Well, this week-end I can either blog, or finish reading The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck. Hmm. I'll have to think about that one...

Update: I suppose I can split the difference, since The Moon is Down is very short and I already finished it. I highly recommend it. The funny thing is that my mother just encouraged me not to read the story (in lieu of blogging), even though it's in a book she gave me for Christmas a year or two ago.

The story is about the Nazi occupation of a small village in an Scandinavia. The villagers are so stunned by the sudden attack that only six people are killed in the invasion, and the story details how they eventually learn to resist. In a great scene, two men are about to try to escape to England and ask for help. The mayor gives them instructions:

"This is no honorable war. This is a war of treachery and murder. Let us use the methods that have been used on us! Let the British bombers drop their big bombs on the works, but let them also drop us little bombs to use, to hide, to slip under the rails, under tanks. Then we will be armed, secrertly armed. Then the invader will never know which of us is armed. Let the bombers bring us simple weapons. We will know how to use them!"

Winter broke in. "They'll never know where it will strike. The soldiers, the patrol, they'll never know which of us is armed."

Tom wiped his forehead. "If we get through, we'll tell them, sir, but -- well, I've heard it said that in England there are still men in power who do not dare to put weapons in the hands of common people."

Orden stared at him. "Oh! I hadn't thought of that. Well, we can only see. If such people govern England and America, the world is lost, anyway."