Ever thought of fire, and your TV? Or of setting your TV on fire?  Or simply of firing your TV?  Read on and see my reasons, and my whys.

I spent most this last weekend as I so often do, frantically trying to catch up on work about the house and garden. This weekend’s project entailed cleaning up a massive woodpile generated from the City enforced removal of three ash trees slain by the Emerald Ash Borer Beetle. A tragic loss of tree life, and a lesson in the necessity of bio-diversity that I am sure many will ignore. Many suburban roads that were exclusively lined with Ash trees now have no trees. {I’ll leave that lesson to the reader.}

At our house we like to try and use the things that fall into our hands.  Perhaps, to be correct, I should say the things that were felled into our hands?

I created a border between our property and our neighbor with some of the “better” shaped Ash stumps.

A border from Ash Spines, and from Ash Limbs, a grave?

Some of the uglier stumps we split, entirely by hand.  There is nothing quite as stimulating as a contest of manhood between a man, his son, and a maul. {It was also a great way to get my boy working, for free!}

We, are lumberjacks

and we’re okay,

our blisters bleed,

and our muscles bray!

An itty-bitty Ash pile that doesn’t justice do.

I lined a recently created bed in the backyard with some of the better samples of neatly sawn Ash limbs.

ash bone borders, in back yard beds.

And another one too.

ash bones, as borders

Though double stacked, the lumber pile shown a few pictures above is a minor part of the enormous amount of excellent firewood we created. We offered it free to our neighbors, and our son and his friends hauled away at least ten cartloads.  We’re hoping they’ll take more.

one cart, of at least ten drawn away

Yet we still had a monstrous pile of “useless” bark and wood. So we lit up our outdoor fire pit and started burning it.

Ash burns hot,

ash burns clean,

and though I’d love to see it rot,

it seems my neighbors certainly,

would not.

A hot, clean, safe, secure, and trustworthy Ash wood fire

Which finally brings me to the point of this post….

My wife commented on how nice it is to gaze into a fire. This got me thinking as to why.  These are my thoughts, which tie in nicely with a post I saw on twitter today that reads:-

stare into the screen & buy what man is selling stare into wilderness and be

— David (@DaveGrigger) June 15, 2014

stare into the screen & buy what man is selling stare into wilderness and be

Man, as a beast, is a particularly pathetic physical specimen.

Save for our horrific weapons, many predators will gladly eat us. {I hail from Africa, where predators do indeed still devour humans.} Unfortunately for us, our horrific weapons don’t do us a bit of good at night, when we’re asleep.  And night is the time many predators prefer to hunt…

-But-

Man is the only beast that does not fear fire. {I’m not going to try and back up this statement, but to the best of my knowledge, reinforced by my personal experience, this is true.} With a fire burning, we feel safe. With a fire burning, we feel secure. We trust a fire burning close before us to protect us from the monsters of the night.  Though we’ve completely forgotten the origins of our contented feelings toward fire, the passage of millennia has ingrained this knowledge into our essence.

Fire encourages us to trust that we’re safe and secure.

Fire lulls us into mellow serenity.

Enter the Television. It is also a flickering image around which the primitive clan we will forever be gather close, and stare. Mistaking the TV for fire, we let our guard down.

BAM!

The new predators strike.

Danger!?  What!?  Where!?

The new predators are the corporations who advertise their wares to those rendered unwary by TV, a simulated fire before which billions are lulled into a false sense of safety, security, contentment, and trust.

Put your guard back up if you don’t want to be eaten alive {figuratively, not literally} by unscrupulous monsters far worse than any predatory African beast.

Or better yet, just stop watching TV.  Period.