Gullible Gulls

I read this story from an article in the Ensign when I was on the plane flying to Florida. It's been in my head ever since then, and many of you have probably already read it, but for those of you that haven't, it's something to think about.

It is from a magazine our Church puts out, called the Ensign, and it is a reprinting of a talk that a man named Marion G. Romney gave back in the eighties sometime (he died in 1988), and he is quoting a story he read in the Reader's Digest. I hope that is not too confusing. Anyway, here is the story (first sentence in Marion G. Romney's words, the rest taken from the Readers Digest):

"I clipped the following article from the Reader’s Digest some time ago. It reads:

“In our friendly neighbor city of St. Augustine great flocks of sea gulls are starving amid plenty. Fishing is still good, but the gulls don’t know how to fish. For generations they have depended on the shrimp fleet to toss them scraps from the nets. Now the fleet has moved. …

“The shrimpers had created a Welfare State for the … sea gulls. The big birds never bothered to learn how to fish for themselves and they never taught their children to fish. Instead they led their little ones to the shrimp nets.

“Now the sea gulls, the fine free birds that almost symbolize liberty itself, are starving to death because they gave in to the ‘something for nothing’ lure! They sacrificed their independence for a handout.

“A lot of people are like that, too. They see nothing wrong in picking delectable scraps from the tax nets of the U.S. Government’s ‘shrimp fleet.’ But what will happen when the Government runs out of goods? What about our children of generations to come?

“Let’s not be gullible gulls. We … must preserve our talents of self-sufficiency, our genius for creating things for ourselves, our sense of thrift and our true love of independence.” (“Fable of the Gullible Gull,” Reader’s Digest, Oct. 1950, 32.) For the rest of this article, click here.

side story: While I was typing this Hallie found a Hershey's kiss from I don't know where. I looked down and saw her holding this melting lump of chocolate. Of course I grabbed her hand to take it from her a. because it's too much chocolate at one time b. because it's messy - when all of a sudden, she jerked it straight into her mouth. The whole thing. She's fast, and strong, and really loves her chocolate.

Anyway, we have a wonderful system of government in this country, and if you listened to Obama's speech last Tuesday then you know that he has lots of plans to make things better. I hope they work. In the meantime, I know that Devin and I are going to do what we can to make sure that we have what we need if/when hard times come to us. We are buying extra cans of food each week to begin our food storage, and of course we're saving money each month.

That's my two cents.