Not so long ago, during the housing boom, wood could be found readily alongside the road especially here in the Metro-west area of Boston, where developers seemed determined to cover every last acre of semi-buildable land with a dwelling. They’d clear cut a lot and leave the trees piled up curbside. So it would have appeared that the wood was free, and should be used with abandon. We tried this one winter, running the stove hot and fast to get the quickest and most intense heat it could possibly make, sometimes even leaving the door slightly ajar for a bit of blast furnace effect. Mid February, we ran out. With nowhere to turn, in the thick of the cold, there was no choice for us but to buy some wood. I picked up the Pennysaver and dialed some folks who said that they delivered seasoned cordwood. The “cord” arrived in back of a Toyota pick up truck. We haggled a bit over the price, and then I loaded it off and stacked it up. Next morning, the first armful went into the stove. Nothing happened. I put in more kindling, and heard only a loud hiss…
Of course, the wood wasn’t at all free to start off with. Considerable time was spent on cutting, hauling and stacking it,
Of course, the wood wasn’t at all free to start off with. Considerable time was spent on cutting, hauling and stacking it,
time which could have been spent on more productive pursuits. Perhaps all of us are a bit guilty of burning wood which seemed free while we were setting it ablaze. Huge credit cards limits, easy to obtain home equity lines, securities made of mysteriously bundled mortgage loans-- how could any of those fail us when the value of our homes and all other indicators seemed to be headed constantly upwards?
But now failed us they have, and we’re forced to buy a bit of wood elsewhere, in the form of more debt, and debt ultimately must be accepted on someone else’s terms. Not a good situation for a nation to find itself in, so we must choose a wise way to burn this next load of wood to make it last long and provide a slow, steady heat. Since this may be our last chance to fire things up, it would behoove us to take just a few moments and do it right.
The way to avoid a fizzle when you’re looking for a fire is to plan ahead for how much fuel you’ll need, and this means knowing the rate at which it will burn. Then again, it helps to have wood that’s high in heat content, as not all wood is created equal. We have only so much fuel to throw on the economic hearth. Give it to Detroit, the folks who brought us an SUV for every driveway? In the short term it might save some thousands of jobs, but they’ll burn through that money mighty fast, and then what? An ad campaign to make us buy more Suburbans? I think not. Let’s do something which will give us a long, slow burn, with high dollar output on all sides. And while we’re at it, why not aim for an economic stimulus which will reduce our output of greenhouse gases rather than augment it?
Ninety years ago, right here in the US of A, we had inter and intra-urban mass transit which would have done any European country proud. Now they have it, and we don’t. Let’s rebuild our transportation systems to be on par with those in Italy or France. Jobs will be created to manufacture light rail cars, to lay track, to string wires and manufacture all the infrastructure required for rapid transit. And speaking of transit, let’s power the whole system with renewable fuel sources. Of course, the technology to do this exists only on the drawing board, so we’ll need more labor to turn it into bricks and mortar or wire and rails as the case may be…
Are there other projects we could undertake which would achieve the same end? There are myriad, but if you leave a soap box in the middle of the town square, any fool is liable to step up there and start to rant. That’s my rant for today.
But now failed us they have, and we’re forced to buy a bit of wood elsewhere, in the form of more debt, and debt ultimately must be accepted on someone else’s terms. Not a good situation for a nation to find itself in, so we must choose a wise way to burn this next load of wood to make it last long and provide a slow, steady heat. Since this may be our last chance to fire things up, it would behoove us to take just a few moments and do it right.
The way to avoid a fizzle when you’re looking for a fire is to plan ahead for how much fuel you’ll need, and this means knowing the rate at which it will burn. Then again, it helps to have wood that’s high in heat content, as not all wood is created equal. We have only so much fuel to throw on the economic hearth. Give it to Detroit, the folks who brought us an SUV for every driveway? In the short term it might save some thousands of jobs, but they’ll burn through that money mighty fast, and then what? An ad campaign to make us buy more Suburbans? I think not. Let’s do something which will give us a long, slow burn, with high dollar output on all sides. And while we’re at it, why not aim for an economic stimulus which will reduce our output of greenhouse gases rather than augment it?
Ninety years ago, right here in the US of A, we had inter and intra-urban mass transit which would have done any European country proud. Now they have it, and we don’t. Let’s rebuild our transportation systems to be on par with those in Italy or France. Jobs will be created to manufacture light rail cars, to lay track, to string wires and manufacture all the infrastructure required for rapid transit. And speaking of transit, let’s power the whole system with renewable fuel sources. Of course, the technology to do this exists only on the drawing board, so we’ll need more labor to turn it into bricks and mortar or wire and rails as the case may be…
Are there other projects we could undertake which would achieve the same end? There are myriad, but if you leave a soap box in the middle of the town square, any fool is liable to step up there and start to rant. That’s my rant for today.
No comments:
Post a Comment