Picture this: It’s a really cold old fashioned Maine winter’s evening. You remember, the kind where you can see the smoke rising from your lips. The kind where you used to wear long underwear all day, and a warm fire was a necessity after twelve hours of hard work getting the wood out. This particular winter evening you are taking your sweetheart by the hand and running into the Bangor Auditorium to see such headliners as Aerosmith, Rascal Flatts, The Marshall Tucker Band, ZZ Topp and Neil Young.

Actually, the show of support from various artists is so overwhelming that the concert is scheduled to start at 4pm. All the proceeds will go to support the struggling loggers who have wood to get out….but can’t. Low interest loans to help them through this rough spell. Large businesses have paid big bucks to have their names associated with Log Aid. Tickets are going for a good price, and all the proceeds are stacking up taller than the tallest pines. Then we pull into the landowner’s driveway and our dreaming comes to a halt…no there isn’t a concert, and no it’s still not a cold old fashioned Maine winter…not yet.

As we were driving to pick up another signed contract, my boss and I fantasize about ways that the loggers can get relief here in our home state of Maine. Kate Albert from Master Loggers Certification, (www.masterloggercertification.com )shares with us on speakerphone that some of the independent loggers are throwing in the towel, giving up, hoping to work for larger contractors who are also struggling with the weather, and still laying people off. She tells us how they are getting a lot of calls on the 800 number. If you think fighting City Hall is impossible, try fighting Mother Nature! She will always win. I guess that’s why they call her Mother.

Pete Tracy, a Forester who posted to my last entry, shared how he no longer uses the term “winter ground” in his contracts, but frozen ground instead. Pete, what happens when we can’t even use the term “frozen ground” any more? What will next year bring? We know that we are riding the wave of great change in the industry, but will we be able to embrace those changes while finding the harmony we need to work with the changing weather patterns.

We are all feeling the pain, the backlog of jobs and the sad faces of the guys who have to go home because we just can’t get the wood out. So we keep getting business, securing as much time as we can to do a job, and just keep on praying for that freeze.

When my daughter was younger, or when we had snow in the winter, she used to get on the phone to all her friends and have them put their pajamas on inside out. They believed that if enough kids put their pajamas on inside out, they would get a snow day. Everyone in our house had to support the cause by wearing their seams on the outside. So from now until it freezes all the logging professionals in the state of Maine should put their pajamas on inside out…and if you don’t wear any, start wearing them. Collectively, as my daughter and her friends did, we could will a snow day…a freeze, or maybe a concert.

Does anyone have any connections with the Bangor Auditorium, or any of the above mentioned artists in this fantasy?

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