The Village, the Fence and the Sign: a Fable

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Brian H. Gill's rendering for 'The Village, the Fence, and the Sign'. (September 2025)

I called what I'm sharing this week a "fable". That's a misnomer.

It's a very short story, about twelve hundred words. But since it doesn't have talking animals, I gather it should be called a "parable".1

I'm calling it a fable anyway. That's because in my dialect of English, a "parable" is what we call the super-short stories Jesus told.

George Bellows' cartoon for Metropolitan magazine, illustrating Billy Sunday's preaching style. (May 1915)The word, again in my dialect, has "Biblical" connotations — and I sincerely don't want to sound like someone trying to be "Biblical"....

More at A Catholic Citizen in America.

(A story about a sign that kept villagers from having fun, and a fence that hurt them. Or so they felt.

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