Our Thing
Created | Updated Apr 24, 2002
Since it doesn't exist, you might be wondering why I'd write about La Cosa Nostra (Our Thing). However, any self-respecting galactic hitchhiker ought to know something about Our Thing just so she/he can avoid being taken for a ride by a non-existent load of chimeral thugs (imaginary friends) in an armor-plated Alpha Romeo (Italian sportscar).
Sicily, the large island between Europe and North Africa that looks like a deflated American football about to be kicked into the groin of Catalonia, has been colonized for over 2500 years and that's only the part that's documented more or less. During Roman times, Sicily became something of a breadbasket for all the unemployed farmers of the former Roman Republic.
Vast estates owned by absentee landlords covered the fertile valleys bordering the sea, all worked by thousands of slaves. These concerns required overseers to provide day to day management not to mention coercion and intimidation to keep the slaves working diligently and profitably and it's probably among these overseers that we can see the first faint glimmerings of Our Thing in the history of Western Civilization.
... to be continued whenever I get time to do it...
Sicily, the large island between Europe and North Africa that looks like a deflated American football about to be kicked into the groin of Catalonia, has been colonized for over 2500 years and that's only the part that's documented more or less. During Roman times, Sicily became something of a breadbasket for all the unemployed farmers of the former Roman Republic.
Vast estates owned by absentee landlords covered the fertile valleys bordering the sea, all worked by thousands of slaves. These concerns required overseers to provide day to day management not to mention coercion and intimidation to keep the slaves working diligently and profitably and it's probably among these overseers that we can see the first faint glimmerings of Our Thing in the history of Western Civilization.
... to be continued whenever I get time to do it...
