OK, OK I'm going to assume that Gary North on his Y2K outlook. TEOTWAWKI which in my is not too far from the mark. Everybody can't be right. A bump in the road, snag your toe, 72 hours storm like conditions, sleep for 24 hours and most will be over. I'm kinda like the poster that says we are doomed, get on your knees and pray, the the bugs has got us.

I visited an old friend the other day and he's eighty years old and one of the finest wood handlers anywhere. He loves working with wood and can almost a wood stove out of wood. He showed me a string of pices of wood about I thought would measure at least thirty five feet long. Like a string of pearls, all neatly made into pieces about 2" in length and 1 1/2" dia. with the name of the wood and where it came from carefully carved into the wood. He said he never went to a country without bringing back a piece of the trees from that ares. Since I myself works with wood I offered him many hundred of dollars for the string. He laughted, and said maybe one day.

The thing that really revealed himself to me was that that wood was the most important thing in his work over the years.He knew where it was grown and how it would act under ceratin conditions and why The Good Lord Would bother to create such a thing. He is a bibical man and had researched each piece of wood that was in his posession. Some were for buildings, some for medecine, some for enjoyment, some for absorbing disease's to help keep nature free fom sickness and on and on.

Since my time with him was limited to so many hours I wanted to dicuss his outlook of the world in general. So I asked him about Y2k and for him to give me his thoughts about things now compared to when he was younger.

He told me he and his brothers and sisters was brought up very poor. That each one was a hoarder since all feared starving to death before their time, or needed something they needed and couldn't get it. So there fore as they got wealther they spent their money on farms, tools, food, or anything that they thought that they may need in the future. This man has at least a million dolars in tools everything from bowie knife to bulldozers and dinner bells. He said most of the equipment was used for neighbors or just started up to keep them in order.He has never takes for granted the next day as far as someone else seeing to his needs. He said he has been all over the world including WWll and as a prisioner of war .

When I asked him about Y2K and the times, He said I never worry about computers and things like that except to know that they canno't take the place of a mans brain and his and knowledge actions. He told me of a friend of his who is an engineer, that was traveling too fast with one of his trains, and he received a call from Flordia to slow down. Things I think about is things like that. THings like how many millions of tones of dirt did men move in WWll alone, not counting movement of dirt by by equipment? How many miles did a soldier walk throught the war? What make a bird from daylight to sundown to continue to feed her young, rain or shine? Why roaches ants, rats is never in danger of being killed off from the earth and almost everything is, or are they?

Y2K he said will cause peoples around the world to wish they were never born into this world at this time, because everything they need is in someone elses power to give or withhold because people are no longer in control things are. Things are in control and someday will need some oil and none will have any oil to oil it.

This man stands straight and tall and looks to be 65 instead of eighty, and works everyday in his woodshop just making things. Almost everything.

OH, by the way, he said. every tree or growing thing is a link to man and when the last link is broken, That will be all she wrote.

Is he wise or foolish because he don't join in with the rest of us?

Lon

-- Lon (Lon1937@aol.com), April 28, 1999

Answers

Thanks Lon

>>>>>>>>>>>> OH, by the way, he said. every tree or growing thing is a link to man and when the last link is broken, That will be all she wrote. >>>>>>>>>>>>

I have been a stone carver for over 20 yrs and love the ancient art of past times. The ancient cultures saw the animals and life in general as reflections of their own conections to the great mystery. We have evolved from the plants and animals, they are our birthright and the blaitant disregard for this fact is one of the "spiritual" errors of the era we live in. This is of course the result of "mans dominion over the earth and its creatures". We aren't supposed to abuse it but nuture it. Shame really. I have seen clearcuts of trees as far as the eye can see. Whole mountians without a tree on it. Now this is a sin. Of course this was in a place that no one would ever go. I am not a tree hugger as such but there has to be a balance.

It is interesting that Y2K is about greed as much as stupidity. But as is often the case hindsight is the best view. When it comes to nature though we will not have the benifit of hindsight. A million years and the earth will be back to normal and we will be gone. We are an itch on the earth and someday it will scratch.

-- Brian (imager@ampsc.com), April 29, 1999.