Modern People Are Pansies-Ice The Old Fashioned Way

That blog title says it all.

Yesterday, I ventured out to Bristol, Maine with my wife and son Kevin to see ice harvesting—the way it USED to be----and for those at the Thompson Ice House, the way it still is.
Below is a short video clip of how the process works-at the very place I visited yesterday:




Here is the link if the player is not visible:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0NteN2zDtk

Nowadays, when we want ice, what do we do? We put down the TV remote, muster the strength to pull ourselves from the couch and walk ALL THE WAY TO THE KITCHEN.
The freezer stores all the ice we need, in convenient little cubes that rattle into our glass.

THANK GOD for whoever invented the refrigerator with an ice dispenser on the OUTSIDE! Now, we don’t even have to OPEN THE DOOR (too exhausting!)

It was an amazing process to watch-and fun, too…but that comes from the perspective of me, basically a gawking tourist in this endeavor. It made me realize how soft, flabby and LAZY we have become. Take the issue of ICE and multiply it by the hundreds of tasks that are either:
1) done by others or
2) automated for us by machines/technology

and it becomes EMBARRASSING to realize that we have so much “discretionary time” (usually spent on entertaining ourselves) that we fail to comprehend how tough life was “back in the day”.

Work has value beyond the task completed—and that sense could be lost in our modern age, where so much is done for us. Perhaps there is no going back, but maybe instead of focusing on our leisure time, we could use some of it to CREATE WORK that needs to be done---community building, environmental cleanup or helping others.

Now, you’ll excuse me….I have to put the popcorn packet in the microwave—only minutes before “American Gladiators” on TV!!!

If you’d like this blog in your e-mail daily (a task that won’t be taxing for either you or me), just click the link and tell me! tim.moore@citcomm.com

Happy President’s Day!