--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Kirk" <kirk_bernha...@...> wrote: > > QUOTATION OF THE DAY > > "If we give the money to the widows, they will spend it unwisely > because they are uneducated and they don't know about budgeting. > But if we find her a husband, there will be a person in charge of > her and her children for the rest of their lives." > MAZIN al-SHIHAN, director of a city agency in Baghdad, on his > plan to pay men to marry Iraqi war widows.
Not to play down the sexism and idiocy of this idea, but to point out that Islam is not the only entity that has "war widow problems" and has developed curious "solu- tions" to those problems, I present the history of that curious institution in France called the concierge. If you've ever lived in Paris, you know that pretty much every building has a con- cierge -- someone who looks after distrib- uting the mail and maintenance and stuff like that -- and that the concierge is almost always female. You also know that they are *snoopy* as hell, and know every- thing about you. Well, a historian told me the "back story" on this. It started with Napoleon. *His* wars created so many "war widows" that he had to find some way to take care of them. So *he* instituted the tradition of each building having a concierge, and he gave those positions to the war widows. But the "snoopy" part? That's the kicker. All of the newly-created concierges were expected to be Napoleon's spies, and to keep his staff up-to-date on any secrets or hanky-panky going on in the buildings they managed. This tradition carries on to this day. The French police credit a high percentage of their arrests to reports they have got- ten from the concierges of the buildings in which the perps lived. Go figure, eh?
