Here's a humorous systems story about unintended consequences.
>From Abigail Van Buren
My mother never read to me. Instead, she'd tell me bedtime stories that
were more or less true.
The one I liked best was the one about how she and her cousin Alice tried
to make whiskey.
They filled a large crock with water, wheat, oats, grain, raisins, raw
potato peelings and any other garbage they could find. After a couple of
weeks, the mixture in the crock smelled so bad my grandmother insisted
they get rid of it. Mom and Alice carried the crock down by the river and
dumped it on the bank Naturally, Grandma's geese followed them and gobbled
it all up.
A while later, Grandma looked out the window and saw her geese lying about
in the yard. She thought they were dead, so she instructed the girls to
pluck all the down from the geese and told them as soon as their
grandfather got home from the lumber mill, he'd have to bury those dead
geese.
The next morning, the geese were running around the yard stark naked.
The geese were not dead; they had been stone drunk. So, Grandma had to
crochet little jackets for them to wear. That was the last time my mother
and her cousin Alice ever tried to make whiskey
(Joe Eastman, Colorado Springs)
Take care,
John Dicus
--John Dicus <jdicus@ourfuture.com>
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