Animal Farm

Once upon a time, long ago, there was a charming hamlet in the sweeping green country side of Europe, named the Kingdom of Zinn. The hamlet was the center of the kingdom, with other small towns and villages surrounding it, and was known as Morningsong. It was so named because its’ beloved rulers, King and Queen Zinn, were lovers of nature and artistic expression, and their intention was to create a land and community that encouraged the flourishing of the arts. From their union, a son was born, and he was named Sean, and sadly, no other children followed. Because of this, the couple poured great effort and dreams into the education and environment they provided to their child, with the intention that he would one day carry on the legacy they had envisioned. The Zinn family lived in a beautiful castle on a hill above the hamlet, with grand estates and fine homes surrounding them, with many relations of the Zinns, along with musicians, artists, actors, and writers , that lived with them. In the valley below, with a river running through it, was the busy town center of Morningsong, where merchants and shopkeepers, the blacksmith, and the laborers lived, in small bungalows and thatched huts. On the outskirts of town were the large farms and open spaces, where food and animals were raised and and cared for, mostly by peasants and families that had worked the land for many years before the Zinns had inherited the kingdom, and brought their ideas of a different sort of life to the place. A few elders, grandmothers and fathers mostly, remembered a time before the Zinns, when only hard labor and a grim determination to survive, got the small village through the seasons. Many people, including children, were lost to sickness and starvation. In much of Europe, a new ruler often meant that people would lose their land or be driven off the land, but the Zinns allowed the peasants to stay and to work , so long as they gave part of their labors and goods