Our culture has changed so much in the last 50 years that so-called timeless parables may no longer apply. Case in point: consider the classic story of the ant and the grasshopper.

The 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 STORY : Be responsible for yourself!
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NEW 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 ant is 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 Easy Being Green...'

ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome." Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight.

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 drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the 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 Czar and 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 grasshopperdoesn'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 once peaceful, neighborhood.

The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.

What Price Those $5 Sweatpants?

I was recently involved in a discussion about the evils and the virtues of shopping at Walmart. One person said, "I just bought $5 sweatpants from Walmart today, I'm pretty darn happy." For me that sums up the problem with Walmart right there!

If you think about it, how can anyone expect to buy sweatpants for $5? We couldn't buy sweatpants for $5 twenty years ago! How is it possible now? Think of the people involved in making those pants (cutting, sewing, packaging, labeling), shipping them to the store, stocking the store and selling them. How much money did each of those people earn?

A lot of our economic problems have been caused by this mindset that we need to have EVERYTHING and have it NOW and have it as CHEAPLY as possible. Walmart has convinced us that we need $5 sweatpants! US companies can't provide them for that price (they have minimum wage standards to follow), so Walmart gets them from another country (China, India) and there goes another US manufacturing company out of business. Then people lose their jobs - not just those that work for that manufacturer, but support people that provided services for those people - local stores, restaurants, gas stations, etc. Unemployment goes up and the cycle continues. Who is the winner in this scenario? I don't think there is one unless it's the corporation of Walmart. They are laughing all the way to the bank.

I would rather pay $20. for a pair of sweatpants and live in a town where people can earn a living by doing an honest day's work. I would rather pay $20. for a pair of sweatpants and wear them for five years instead of getting them from Walmart and replacing them in three months because they fell apart. And I would rather buy only what I need (do we really need 6 pairs of sweatpants in every color of the rainbow to do our daily jog? or will one good, well-made pair suffice?) and pay a fair price for it and know that I am supporting our economy in the only way I know how to.

Low-Cost Bookends

This is such a brilliant idea! I love unique and quirky decorating ideas, and I am always on the lookout for bookends that are heavy enough. (A light-weight bookend is useless for holding up a stack of books!) I saw this on HGTV and couldn't believe the ingenious simplicity of it!
Use classic Campbell's tomato soup cans (or other attractive cans) as book ends! I am not as fond of the bag of sugar on the next shelf up, but to each his own!

Taking Pictures for Selling or Swapping Items Online

I have learned a lot about taking pictures to post online from my experience with eBay and my jewelry website. Taking pictures of jewelry is especially hard, and the part of making and selling jewelry that I hate the most! But I have learned a few tips that I thought I should share.

When taking pictures of small items, use the Macro mode on your camera. If you don't know how to change the setting, look it up in the manual that came with your camera. It helps that camera to focus on a small item close-up.

Don't always use the flash. Experiment with turning it off and on with the same photo and see which one works better. I have found that it is better to have the flash turned off when taking jewelry photos because the flash always makes a glare on the shiny surfaces of the jewelry and makes the picture almost useless for showing any detail.

When taking pictures of clothing, it is usually best to lay it out flat. Try to show the whole item so people will know how it looks. When you take a picture of a pair of pants folded up, no one can tell how they really look! Try to use a contrasting background, too, so that the item shows up. A solid colored bedspread is a good background for clothing.

Last, but not least, don't forget to describe your item! If you put a picture up with no description, some potential buyers will ask you the details, but some will just move on to the next item. It is less trouble for you and them if the information is available to them right then! Some details that might need to be included are: size (of clothing or most anything else), brand, condition, materials (is is silver, cotton, wood, etc.). Sometimes you need to explain what it is or what it is for.

Have a Drink of Water!

One glass of water shuts down midnight hunger pangs for almost 100% of the dieters studied in a University study.

Lack of water is the #1 trigger of daytime fatigue.

Preliminary research indicates that 8-10 glasses of water a day could significantly ease back and joint pain for up to 80% of sufferers.

A mere 2% drop in body water can trigger fuzzy short-term memory, trouble with basic math, and difficulty focusing on the computer screen.

Drinking 5 glasses of water daily decreases the risk of colon cancer by 45%, plus it can slash the risk of breast cancer by 79%, and one is 50% less likely to develop bladder cancer.

Are you drinking the amount of water you should every day?

Asparagus: A Miracle Cure??

I received an email about the benefits and nutritional qualities of asparagus. This is what it said:

"My Mom had been taking the full-stalk canned style asparagus that she pureed and she took 4 tablespoons in the morning and 4 tablespoons later in the day. She did this for over a month. She is on chemo pills for Stage 3 lung cancer in the pleural area and her cancer cell count went from 386 down to 125 as of this past week. Her oncologist said she does not need to see him for 3 months."

Her evidence included an article entitled, 'Asparagus for cancer' printed in Cancer News Journal, December 1979 which stated:

"I am a biochemist,and have specialized in the relation of diet to health for over 50 years..Several years ago, I learned of the discovery of Richard R. Vensal, D.D.S. that asparagus might cure cancer.

Since then, I have worked with him on his project. We have accumulated a number of favorable case histories. Here are a few examples:

Case No. 1, A man with an almost hopeless case of Hodgkin's disease (cancer of the lymph glands) who was completely incapacitated. Within 1 year of starting the asparagus therapy, his doctors were unable to detect any signs of cancer, and he was back on a schedule of strenuous exercise.

Case No. 2, a successful businessman 68 years old who suffered from cancer of the bladder for 16 years. After years of medical treatments, including radiation without improvement, he went on asparagus. Within 3 months, examinations revealed that his bladder tumor had disappeared and that his kidneys were normal.

Case No.. 3, a man who had lung cancer. On March 5th 1971, he was put on the operating table where they found lung cancer so widely spread that it was inoperable. The surgeon sewed him up and declared his case hopeless. On April 5th he heard about the asparagus therapy and immediately started taking it. By August, x-ray pictures revealed that all signs of the cancer had disappeared... He is back at his regular business routine.

Case No. 4, a woman who was troubled for a number of years with skin cancer. She finally developed different skin cancers which were diagnosed by the acting specialist as advanced. Within 3 months after starting on asparagus, her skin specialist said that her skin looked fine and no more skin lesions. This woman reported that the asparagus therapy also cured her kidney disease, which started in 1949. She had over 10 operations for kidney stones, and was receiving government disability payments for an inoperable, terminal, kidney condition. She attributes the cure of this kidney trouble entirely to the asparagus.

I was not surprised at this result, as `The elements of materia medica', edited in 1854 by a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, stated that asparagus was used as a popular remedy for kidney stones. He even referred to experiments, in 1739, on the power of asparagus in dissolving stones. Note the dates!

For the treatment, asparagus should be cooked before using, and therefore canned asparagus is just as good as fresh. I have corresponded with the two leading canners of asparagus, Giant and Stokely, and I am satisfied that these brands contain no pesticides or preservatives.

Place the cooked asparagus in a blender and liquefy to make a puree, and store in the refrigerator. Give the patient 4 full tablespoons twice daily, morning and evening. Patients usually show some improvement in from 2-4 weeks. It can be diluted with water and used as a cold or hot drink.

This suggested dosage is based on present experience, but certainly larger amounts can do no harm and may be needed in some cases. As a biochemist I am convinced of the old saying that 'what cures can prevent'. Based on this theory, my wife and I have been using asparagus puree as a beverage with our meals. We take 2 tablespoons diluted in water to suit our taste with breakfast and with dinner. I take mine hot and my wife prefers hers cold.

For years we have made it a practice to have blood surveys taken as part of our regular checkups. The last blood survey, taken by a medical doctor who specializes in the nutritional approach to health, showed substantial improvements in all categories over the last one, and we can attribute these improvements to nothing but the asparagus drink.

Asparagus contains a good supply of protein called histones, which are believed to be active in controlling cell growth. For that reason, I believe asparagus can be said to contain a substance that I call cell growth normalizer that accounts for its action on cancer and in acting as a general body tonic.

In any event, regardless of theory, asparagus used as we suggest, is a harmless substance. The FDA cannot prevent you from using it and it may do you much good. It has been reported by the US National Cancer Institute, that asparagus is the highest tested food containing glutathione, which is considered one of the body's most potent anticarcinogens and antioxidants."

I know that there are many tonics and teas and foods that are supposed to cure or prevent cancer, so it is hard to know whether to believe any of them. I thought it was an interesting theory, though, and one worth trying!

Need a new title

I have decided that I need a snappier title for my blog. Does anyone have any suggestions?