A film crew was filming in the highlands in Scotland
when an old Gaelic seer came hobbling by and said, “Tomorrow rain,” and hobbled on. Sure enough, it rained the very next day. Again he hobbled past and said, “Tomorrow sunshine.” It was indeed a fine sunny day the next day.
The director was mighty impressed and got the crew to hire him, and every day, the wise old sage predicted accurately what the weather would be. But after a couple of weeks, the old man didn’t show up and eventually the director found him in a bothy and said, “Hey, we need your predictions; why aren’t you showing up?”
“Radio broken,” the old man replied.
It was autumn, and the Indians on the remote reservation asked their new Chief if the winter was going to be cold or mild.
Since he was an Indian Chief in a modern society, he had never been taught the old secrets, and when he looked at the sky, he couldn’t tell what the weather was going to be.
Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he replied to his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect wood to be prepared.
But also being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea. He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, “Is the coming winter going to be cold?”
“It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold, indeed!” the Meteorologist at the weather service responded.
So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood in order to be prepared.
One week later, he called the National Weather Service again.
“Is it going to be a very cold winter?” he asked.
“Yes,” the man at National Weather Service again replied, “it’s going to be a very cold winter.”
The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of wood they could find.
Two weeks later, he called the National Weather Service again.
“Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?”
“Absolutely,” the man replied. “It looks like it’s going to be one of the coldest winters ever.”
“How can you be so sure?” the Chief asked.
The weatherman replied, “The Indians are collecting firewood like crazy.”
