RetroRevolution

I’ve known the story of The Ant and the Grasshopper since I was little.  I remember reading it in a big book of stories along with the tales of the Huckabuck family.  I hadn’t thought about it for a long time and then I saw a Pixar film back in 1998 called A Bug’s Life.  The film was basically a retelling of The Ant and the Grasshopper, with a bit of Three Amigos thrown in for comedy and a bit of Seven Samurai or The Magnificent Seven for a touch of class.  Again this classic fable by Aesop faded from my mind, until it was brought back to the forefront in a podcast by Jack Spirco.

I had just been through another 4th of July weekend storm and our small town had lost a bit of power.  There were people milling about the grocery store wondering how they would cook without power.  There were people wondering how they would get gas with the gas stations closed because of a power outage, even though 5 miles down the road there were stations open with power.  That’s when I decided that this was ridiculous.  I had been a subscriber to Backwoods Home Magazine for a few years and occasionally visited their forum.  Someone had posted a link to something called The Survival Podcast. I had never listened to a podcast.  I assumed they were about things like bands, TV shows, and which Star Trek cast was the best.  Boy was I wrong. Jack’s Podcast back then had only just started.  He recorded it in a car and talked about being prepared so you didn’t need to worry about being surprised. A couple months later in September he posted a podcast about The Ant and The Grasshopper. He went out of his way to point out that in the original story the grasshopper dies.  I cheered.  I hate sanitized stories.  But the tellling reminded me of the power of fables and parables.  Jack and the crew at The Survival Podcast have adopted The Ant as their unofficial mascot, so I don’t go more than a couple days without thinking of this fable anymore, but I saw it on another blog today and made me think it was time to talk a bit about it myself.

The story was retold today over at Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op: The Ant and the Grasshopper.  I’m not sure where the story posted there was sourced from, but the finale is the sanitized version where the grasshopper sees the ants handing out food and realizes how wrong he was.  I’m torn over the effort. I’m glad that the message is getting out, but I’m saddened that there is the possibility of people reading the fable and thinking that everything will be all right n the end because of he kindness of strangers.  But more on the positive.  The Simple Green Frugal Co-op is in my opinion a mainstream Green blog.  It’s at the other end of the spectrum from the Guns and MRE blogs of the survivalist community.  One of their contributors gets it.  Several of the comments to the post get it.  I see it as a coalescing of different agendas all with a common end in sight.

Remember the story of The Ant and the Grasshopper.  Checkout The Survival Podcast.  Read The Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op.  Learn the lessons of the grasshopper and be an ant.