Mr. D.N. Mark part 1 - WHEN GIANTS MEET

By Katz - 26.02.2010

Short story: Mr. Denis Nelson Mark, his name was too long and all members who were from that general area found it hard to pronounce. To make easier to pronounce Mr. Noren, Mr. Sweeten, Mr. Jermain, Mr. Finnsand they all agreed to shorten his name to Mr. D.N. Mark. At first this upset Mark because he had a long history with his name. The length of his name had a lot of personal meaning to Mark; he took pride in his full name.

This is why: On the day of his baptism three elders wanted to be Mark’s God father and this caused a conflict. In order to settle the conflict they all agreed to share the obligation by naming him after their own names, Denis, Nelson, and Mark. On that very day, he also received gifts that brought much wealth and pride to him. One of the gifts given to Mark was a pasture of land, more than what he would actually use.

The men at the general assembly all had many estates and a lot of pasture land. This was why they would all sit together on one common table. They all had a common problem as well and that was that there were many animals that were coming from distant estates that wanted to graze on their lands.

As the general assembly began, they all sat down with large cups of beer on a large wooden table, the room was dark because the host of this particular assembly was Mr. D.N. Mark who was rather a very close-fisted gentleman who opted not to use too much lighting, or central heating. He would rather have the meeting held in a cold, petroleum lamp lit room. He was a short chubby hairy fellow who spoke with a hoarse voice.

As a custom at the beginning of each meeting a creed was always said in honour of the host. So they all stood and Mr. D.N. Mark stood up and spoke:

"There is a lovely estate, it stands with broad beaches near the salty eastern beach, it winds itself in hills, valleys, I call it by my names Denis Nelson Mark and now D.N. Mark ."

They all then took their seats and the meeting was set to begin.  Mr. Sweeten was chosen to be secretary of the assembly. The agenda for the meeting consisted of focusing on their problem of animals from far off that were coming to graze on their estates. Mr. Jermain stood up and said:

“Gentlemen, we are all faced with this problem that doesn’t look like ending even in the near future. We shall need to classify these animals into groups and know which sort of animals are allowed to graze. Those that do not meet our set requirements will have to be sent back the way they came.”

Mr. D.N. Mark also suggested that, “we need to isolate these animals from our own because they may carry diseases that may become a problem to our own animals, more so we wouldn’t wish these animals to mate with ours so we need to isolate them and keep by themselves and under strict supervision”.

There after Mr. Finnsand disagreed with Mr. D.N. Mark and said “Maybe we should allow these animals and welcome them and allow them to intermingle with our own animals, besides we have got enough land that is even more than what we can use.

To this Mr. Noren stood up and said “I do agree with you Mr. Finnsand, we have all this vast wealth and at times we have what is just too much for our animals to finish. Why not allow these animals to stay with us no matter how many they are that come. They bring will more wealth to us in the long run.”

“No!” said Mr. D.N. Mark. “Some of these animals might overtake our farmlands and our own may become the minority, so we do need strict laws against these animals that are coming to our estates”.

“What sort of laws should we set up then?” asked Mr. Sweeten. “Good question,” responded Mr. D.N. Mark, “we should only allow animals that seem to have been wounded or ill fed by their owners and there should be physical proof. They should also have ear tags that would identity of their original estates and proof of being mistreated by their owners.”

Mr. Jermain suggested: “And if they have proof of physical mistreatment but lack ear tags, then we can not have them because we will not be able to know whether the mistreatment was self inflicted or it was done by their owners.”

The laws that were proposed were warmly welcomed by all the members and a toast was made and they all drank beer to their new law. Mr. Sweeten handed out a copy of the set laws to each of the members and then adjourned the assembly.

As the men went on back to their individual estates Mr. D.N. Mark was left alone in the conference room still looking at the laws. It seemed as though he was not so satisfied with everything - maybe because he felt that more animals were coming in to his estate more than it was with the rest of the members…

What happened next? Follow up of this story in our next issue - and later on at this site!

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