There is a (believed to be) century old superstition that when the smoke from a campfire blows in your direction, you must repeat these words aloud to change it's path:I hate white rabbits,I hate white rabbits,I hate white rabbits.Some variations require hopping on one foot while reciting the verse. Either will make your not-so-informed friends laugh. Was anybody else taught this growing up?
ON TECHNOLOGY
From Edward Abbey's book A Voice Crying in the Wilderness..."High technology has done us one great service: It has retaught us the delight of performing simple and primordial tasks - chopping wood, building a fire, drawing water from a spring..."More Abbey wisdom from this 1982 PBS interview,Watch Abbey's Road: Part I, Part II, Part III
THE FIREWOOD POEM
Memorize it! Just in time for the holidays:"Beechwood fires are bright and clearIf the logs are kept a year,Chestnut's only good they say,If for logs 'tis laid away.Make a fire of Elder tree,Death within your house will be;But ash new or ash old,Is fit for a queen with crown of goldBirch and fir logs burn too fastBlaze up bright and do not last,it is by the Irish saidHawthorn bakes the sweetest bread.Elm wood burns like churchyard mould,E'en the very flames are coldBut ash green or ash brownIs fit for a queen with golden crownPoplar gives a bitter smoke,Fills your eyes and makes you choke,Apple wood will scent your roomPear wood smells like flowers in bloomOaken logs, if dry and oldkeep away the winter's coldBut ash wet or ash drya king shall warm his slippers by."by Celia Congreve
Land Of The Free
"Here’s to the hearts of that cold, lonesome track,To the life of the wanderlust … free.To all who have gone and have never come back,Here’s a tribute to you and to me.With our feet in the dirt we’re the grit of the earth,Heads a-ridin’ the heavens o’erhead.And they won’t find a nickel of value or worth,When our fortunes are tallied and read.But no richer clan has there ever been known,Since the times of all ruin and wrack;Than those of us lost to the dust outward blown,Who have gone and have never come back."Watch: Nimblewill Nomad (M.J. “Eb” Eberhart)