Summer Folk Tales

Dear Friends,

The Hard Taco song for July is called, "Fighting Weight." I dug deep to find that special sauce that turns regular white music into white funk.

Summer is for campfires, and a good campfire invokes memories of camp counselors telling stories on a dark night. In particular, I think about folk tales about anthropomorphic animals and the lessons they teach us. For this month's digest, I've written three such folk tale, and I hope one of these makes it to your summer campfire.


The Ring of Life

One morning, a young farm girl awoke to learn that her father had butchered a baby pig that she loved. Her father, the farmer, looked all over for her, and eventually found her in the barn, weeping.

"It's true that we eat the pig," he told her, "but when we die, our bodies go the earth and feed the grass. The horse eats the grass, and the horse's manure becomes the breeding ground for flies. Then bats eat the flies and leave their droppings on the field where we grow the soybeans that feed the pigs."

"So life is kind of like a big circle?" she asked, feeling somewhat comforted.

"Not really," the father continued.

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