It's getting to be that time of year where all the grasshoppers are wishing they were ants. Lots of people scrambling to get their wood piles done and in some cases, started. There is a firewood processor seen along the highway and man, has that guy been busy the past three weeks! Can't keep firewood on his lot! Just reminds me of the fable of the ant and the grasshopper http://www.umass.edu/aesop/content.php?i=1&n=0
Yeah, the wood dumps have been plenty busy around here. I'm scrambling too, but not for this years wood. I got a nice scrounge of Mulberry, Maple, and Oak this year that need to get drying if their going to be useful in a couple of years. It feels good to be an ant, just wish I was that way in all aspects of my life.
Because of the weather we had lots of people get their firewood real late, I'm thinking more chimney fires this year, I hope not.
I just gave a lead to my dad this past weekend when a buddy called and said he had an ash down in his yard. I've got enough split and stacked for more than 2 years, and enough standing ash behind my house for at least another 4-5 years. Dad might have had enough for this winter, but he should be good now. He and my little brother (who still lives there) like to cut it close every year.
This borders on political but I'll take a chance and throw it out here. The nice Mods can decide if it needs to go and take the appropriate action. OLD VERSION The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold. MORAL OF THE OLD STORY: Be responsible for yourself! MODERN VERSION The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the antis a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.. CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN,and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not EasyBeing Green...' Occupy the Anthill stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the SEIU group singing, We shall overcome. Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper's sake, while he damms the ants. President Obama condems the ant and blames President Bush 43, President Bush 41, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and thePope for the grasshopper'splight.. Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share. Finally, the EEOC draftsthe Economic Equity &Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning ofthe summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czarand given to the grasshopper. The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house,crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again. The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood. The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.
