As old as time itself...

Two Different Morals

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 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, MSNBC, 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...'

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 damns the ants.
 
President Biden condemns the ant and blames President Trump 45, President Bush 43, President Bush 41, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight.

Nancy Pelosi & Chuck Schumer exclaim in an interview with CNN & MSNBC 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 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.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2022.

Fwd: Fw: SOME SUPERB PICTURES

 This is called cross sea. A cross sea is a sea state with two wave systems traveling at oblique angles. 

 
 
This is what an eight-ton Orca jumping 20 feet out of the water looks
like. 
 
 
This is what a bubble looks like mid-pop. 
 
 
This is what Wiltshire, England looks like.

 
 
This is what the Seattle skyline looks like. 

 
 
This is what a sunset looks like from above the clouds. 

 
 
This is a volcano in Ethiopia that burns bright blue. 
 
 
This is what lions look like in the rain. 
 
 
This is what a tree farm looks like. 

 
 
This is what a huge rhododendron tree looks like.

 
 
This is how massive Tokyo is, the world's most densely populated city. 
 
 
This is a process called guttation. The plant is expelling water due to a positive root pressure.

 
 
This is what a Russian Red Fox looks like.

 
 
This is what the clovers that cover the floor of the California Redwood Forest look like.
 
 
This is what Jupiter looks like from the bottom. 

 
 
This is what a castle on an island in Ireland looks like.

 
 
This is what Venice looks like from above. 
 
 
This is what the Dark Hedges of Northern Ireland look like.
 
 
This is what the pyramids look like from Cairo street.

 
 
This is what the border of the United States and Canada looks like. 
 
 
This is what an Osiria Rose looks like.

 
 
This is what the turquoise ice formations on Lake Baikal, Russia look like.

 
 
This is how Mt. Fuji cuts through the clouds.

 
 
This is what a snail drinking from a bubble looks like.

 
 
This is what Ice Canyon, Greenland looks like.

 
 
This is what sunset looks like from space. 

 
 
This is what an illegally-taken picture from one of the Great Giza Pyramids looks like.

 
 
This is what the Apollo Metalmark Butterfly looks like. 
 
 
This is what the sun looks like when shot in Ultraviolet.

 
 
This is what an oasis in Libya looks like.

 
 
This is what a collection of blue butterflies look like.

 
 
This is what an Icelandic ice cave lit up by a burning flare looks like.

 
 
This is what a Lenticular cloud over Mount Fuji looks like.

 
 
This is what it looks like underneath a breaking wave. 
 
 
This is how you tow an iceberg. In Newfoundland, icebergs are harvested for their water.
 

The Plan

 

 

Hey, man...I'm sorry you are having trouble resetting your password

From a friend: best photo collection I've seen this year

Some humorous, some serious. all good.

 

#1

It's that easy. Mutual respect.

 

#2

On 27 January 1945 was the liberation of Auschwitz. To forget would be to say these faces, the faces of millions of others didn't matter. Never forget. Teach the children to remember.

 

#3

Just one of the guys. (WWII)

 

#4

Laughter has sounded the same throughout generations and languages.
(Unidentified woman and child, Jemez Pueblo New Mexico, by Jesse Nusbaum)

 

#5

Betty White in her Los Angeles home with her dog, 1952.

 

#6

He aims to please. (1954)

 

#7

Every group has a lead singer.

 

#8

Some of our favorite old photographs are merely everyday people in everyday life.

 

#9

A family portrait. Gainesville, Florida - 1900.

Source: State Library and Archives of Florida

 

#10

This picture circa 1900s shows knife grinders also called ventres jaunes ('yellow stomachs' referring to the yellow dust released by the grinding wheel). By laying face down, these yellow stomachs would save their backs from being hunched over all day. Workers were encouraged to bring their dogs to not only keep them company, but to act as heaters to keep them warm by having the dogs lie on their legs.
(Photo is from the web-site of, French knife maker, Claude Dozorme - " The Wolf ").

 

#11

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." -Anne Frank

 

#12

This simple moment is brought to you by 1930.

 

#13

A very moving caption:

"This is a mass burial at sea, on the USS Intrepid in 1944 following a kamikaze attack. I've never seen this photo, and I figure most of you probably haven't either. I posted so people can see, and remember the incredible sacrifices made on our behalf."

 

#14

There is modern beauty in this photograph of Lota Cheek taken 99 years ago.

 

#15

And then there was the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.

 

#16

Animals bring a type of joy not found in other ways.

 

#17

Timeless photography looks as beautiful now as it did when it was taken.

 

#18

Dressed to impress. (1908)

 

#19

Formal portraits rarely featured smiles, but they can be found in photographs of daily life during this period. (1912, South Carolina.)

 

#20

When do we gain the inhibitions not present in our youth?

 

#21

A boy makes a friend at the London Zoo, 1958.

 

#22

A routine repair.

 

#23

Is it possible the architects had this in mind when they designed Grand Central Station? (1934)

 

#24

Who loved jumping off? (Even though mom told you not to.)

 

#25

Boys will be boys. (Undated)

 

#26

Happy (and very lucky) to be alive - 1917.

 

#27

This 1931 photograph captures the spirit of the season as Santa delivers presents to the children of an adoption home in London.

 

#28

She was born Mary William Ethelbert Appleton "Billie" Burke, but you would know her as the Good Witch of the North in "The Wizard of Oz".

 

#29

104 years ago this fountain in Detroit, Michigan was left running allowing it to build layer upon layer in to this 30 foot icy spectacle.

 

#30

A girl, a dog, a mule. From the 1921 silent film "Through the Back Door" staring Mary Pickford.

 

#31

March 1938: 70-year-old Mrs Elizabeth Arnold, believed to be England's only woman blacksmith, shoes a horse outside the 400-year-old forge in Walmer, Kent. (Photo by Fox Photos).

 

#32

They wear shoes and clothes with holes and dirt upon their faces, yet they are absolutely perfect. (1936)

 

#33

1937: when even ice skating was done in a suit.

 

#34

Fred Messer's life spanned three centuries. He was born in 1792, 16 years after the United States became a counrty and lived to see automobiles roll along roads, dying in 1907. (North Carolina.)

 

#35

A woman on a mission with her baguette and six bottles of wine.

(Paris 1945 - by Branson Decou)

 

#36

Two innocent souls from days long ago.

 

#37

Daddy's office, John Jr's playground.

 

#38

How homework was done before google.

 

#39

An old photograph with a funny twist in today's context.

 

#40

It took more than 15 years to take the Statue of Liberty from concept to reality. Construction is pictured here in 1884, less than two years before she was completed.

 

#41

Be thankful for what you have.
Be thankful for one another.

 

#42

1890s Walmart. So many great details inside this general store. It was a time when you knew your grocer and they knew you. We have more, but we in some ways have less.

 

#43

Its not about where you are, its who you're with. (1945)

 

#44

Rush hour in Chicago didn't look any better 104 years ago.

 

#45

The Cornelia Vanderbilt wedding portrait. (1924)

 

#46

Isn't it interesting that we meet some of the best friends we ever have within the first years of our lives.
(Photo by Edouard Boubat. Paris, 1952.)

 

#47

The right day to hang laundry in New York. (1900)

 

#48

The less you have, the more you appreciate what you do have.

(Western North Carolina 1914-1917, from the William A. Barnhill Collection.)

 

#49

There's nothing quite like getting hand delivered mail. (1900)

 

#50

Today, be thankful.
(Arizona migrant family, 1940.)

 

 

"In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."
                                                                     ― Mark Twain