Bill Evans auf Deutsch

You know that reading and speaking and writing and understanding a spoken language are four different things. So, although I can read German on perhaps the 6th grade level, I can’t write it. But, there is a tool out there on the Internet called Babblefish, and every time I want to write something in another language I write it in English and paste it into Babblefish which translates it for me.

Of course Babblefish is only a brainless tool. And this is what I got when I wrote up something for our German friends to read on camera so I could paste the video on my web page.

“There is a piano in the living room and the first thing I did when I got here was sit down and play Bach, Rachmaninoff and Bill Evans.”

Of course you can see what the ignorant translating machine did to Bill Evans. It translated Bill Evans into Rechnung Evans --- Invoice Evans.

By the way, check out our Bed & Breakfast Website and see how the video, which I have not even made yet, comes out.

Oh, and here is the script --- as translated by Babblefish:

Danke für das Klicken. Mein Name ist Rainer Elting. Meine schöne Frau und ich betrachten uns glücklich, die letzten zwei Nächte mit Robert u. Marsha an ihrem herrlichen das bescheidene Landwirtbett u. -frühstück hier auf der Küste von Maine aufgewendet zu haben.

Sie sind warme, freundliche Leute, die in Europa, in Robert in Schweden und in Marsha in Holland gewohnt haben. Sie bilden Sie Gefühlrecht zu Hause.

Sie finden die Nahrung am bescheidenen Landwirt, um zu Ihrem Geschmack zu sein, weil Marsha bildet, was auch immer Sie wünschen. Sie bietet Ihnen einige Arten gewürzter Kaffee, einige Arten Fruchtsäfte, einige Arten Tee an. Und dann gibt es Eier und Speck und Wurst jede mögliche Weise, die Sie sie wünschen. Wenn Sie normales Getreide wünschen, können Sie das haben, auch.

Marsha Marken Haus bildete Blaubeerekuchen heiß aus dem Ofen heraus.

Die Nahrung und die Gastfreundschaft hier ist unglaublich. Ich kaufte einige Hummer und Robert war glücklich, sie für unser Abendessen zu kochen. Ich war glücklich, daß er nur ein aß.

Robert: Bitte Stock zum Index. Es gibt nur wenig mehr.

Ich hoffe so, weil ich hungrig erhalte.

Es gibt ein Klavier im lebenden Raum und die erste Sache ich, als ich war hier hinsitze und spiele Bach, Rachmaninoff und Rechnung Evans erhielt. Kann ich mein Frühstück jetzt einnehmen?

Robert: Ja danke. Sie taten gutes.

Pianist Bill Evans

Once or twice a year a piano player stops in at the farm. You know, of course, that a piano stool is nothing more than a magnet for piano players. No sooner had Rainer and his wife Sabine from Frankfurt walked in the door last night when Rainer rushed over to the piano and started to play a Bill Evans version of I Fall in Love Too Easily. Pat Michaud had just tuned our piano so it sounded pretty good. I grabbed my bass and we played for four or five hours, only stopping when my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, dragged us in to the dining room to eat.

This morning I had just finished power washing mold off the east side of the house so Marsha could paint it when they drove in the dooryard again and Rainer asked if he could send an email to his son in Germany. All this time Marsha is in 7th heaven scrubbing and cleaning the bedrooms upstairs and you can well understand that after Rainer got out his email he couldn’t wait to rush over to the piano and play more Bill Evans. Well, you have heard me say that Marsha goes to sleep at night compiling a list of things that I absolutely have to do the next day and Rainer hadn’t played three changes before she shuts off her vacuum cleaner and yaps downstairs like Old Aunt Shaw, “None of that, none of that.” Scared the poor man half to death. Of course Marsha didn’t know that Rainer was visiting and thought I was slacking off in there.

I feel good about the whole thing.

Does this not indicate that my wife thinks I can play piano like Bill Evans?

Nature Abhors a Vacuum

My neighbor Jimmy Parker built boats with the Dennison boys for years and anyone who has built wooden boats on the coast of Maine with a man named Dennison has bathed in the font of wisdom. I have seen Jimmy Parker take a pile of oak planks and turn it into a --- I don’t know --- a 30 or 40 foot boat right in his front yard.

I stopped in to see Jimmy today because I’d just picked up an oak plank on the dump and I wanted him to have it. After giving it a professional once-over, he said, “It’s a good thing that the road to the dump goes two ways.”

While I had his attention I showed him the pine boards that I’d picked up at the same time by knocking apart a large shelf that had just come out of the general store and I told him I was going to use them to build shelves in the little shed where I store my gardening tools and cow fence posts.

But Jimmy said something that made me change my mind and now I don’t think I will build those shelves.

Right now that building is so full that you can’t get in the door. And Jimmy very astutely pointed out that if I built shelves and put everything away, it would create a very inviting huge empty space on the floor and unless I changed my way of thinking and doing things it wouldn’t be long before I’d cart home more junk to fill up that space and I’d need even more shelves.

You can see that I’d be in the same situation as a state that builds more prisons. Even before your friends in the construction business finish building you a new prison you discover that there is a waiting line to get in and you need yet another prison.

I’m humble@humblefarmer.com and if you can explain why nature abhors a clean, empty space, I’d like to hear from you.

The Value of Education

Unless you are Bill Gates, you might have to admit that a friend of mine has done very well when it comes to piling up treasures here on earth. He has difficulty spending all he earns and, to make matters worse, he has a thrifty, sensible wife who really isn’t spending a fraction of what should be expected of your average dedicated homemaker. Please remember this, because we will attempt to tie it in later.

You have heard me say that for a few precious moments almost every morning I place a red bound volume on my knees and read at random from the encyclopedia. This morning I noticed that, outside of being tagged with an $18,000 campaign fund scandal so typical of his ilk, the 1970 edition gave President Nixon a review that, by today’s standards, would make him look like Washington or Lincoln.

And a few days ago I learned that 'Verner von Heidenstam was a Swedish poet who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1916. Strindberg called Heidenstam Sweden’s most unintelligent man. The name Heidenstam only attracted my attention because Nils Heidenstam is the hero in one of my favorite Harlequin Romances. The author needed an aristocratic Swedish name, and it was not by chance that she employed Heidenstam in her bodice ripper.

My particular well-worn volume happens to be in Dutch, and I like it because it is set on the same rocky coast in Sweden where I went to dances 45 years ago. I hope that you do not know that by definition contemporary bodice rippers feature unrestrained romantic passion, and a heroine who initially dislikes and actively resists the hero's seduction, only ultimately to be overcome by desire. We read that the term bodice ripper derives from the covers of the books, which generally depict a female whose bodice being ripped by a muscular, often shirtless man.

For the record, 45 years ago very little muscle or ripping was necessary in Sweden.

In case you tuned in late, for years I have maintained that a carefully selected Harlequin Romance is a much more suitable text for high school language classes than Caesar's memoirs, although I would yield to Plutarch on Cicero. My favorite Harlequin Romance is in French, it is funny, it is written to be understood by anyone with a grade school vocabulary, and there is not one word or incident in it that could not be read to a Baptist congregation or a girl scout troop.

Anyway, the other day I mentioned to my friend, who worships at the shrine of Mammon, that I was tickled to discover that an author who used the name Heidenstam in a Harlequin Romance got the name from a 1916 Nobel prize winner. And, as always, he asked me, “Did it make you any money?”

I had to admit that it didn’t. But every day I derive a certain satisfaction in being able to read my junk email in 7 languages.

Robert Karl Skoglund -- Unedited Rant for June 30 Radio Show

I’m an academic. When you take the time to sit down with me and tell me mysterious and interesting things about whatever it is that you do, I appreciate it. If I hadn’t dropped out of grad school to come home to be with my mother when she died, I’d probably still be going to college. You might be able to identify with me if there is something that you really enjoy doing, even though it is obvious to you and everybody else that you really aren’t all that good at doing it.

And are you not also fascinated by these ubiquitous polls that clearly point out what the world’s citizens feel is today’s greatest threat to world peace and security?

But wouldn’t you rather see the results of polls taken in this country?

Even more than that I would like to see the results of polls taken in this state.

And even more than that I would like to see the results of polls taken in my town, because --- I would like to know the most propitious hours to take my trash down to the dump. Recently, while I was down there, I chanced upon two excellent small bicycles for Marsha’s grandchildren and at present I’m looking for a door to replace the one that rotted out on the grange hall. Too many times I have arrived at the dump --- please forgive my use of that anachronistic lexical item, but I still put things in the icebox --- too many times I have arrived at the dump to see one of my neighbors loading up with 2 foot wide wainscoting boards 18 feet long and the kind of beat up 200 year old doors you only see in Andy Wyeth paintings. My neighbors who are into home improvement are always replacing their dirty old doors with nice new plastic ones from Home Depot. And I’ve been needing tires for my rider mower for a year but one of my stingy, greedy, selfish neighbors always throws them on his truck before I can get there.

Bottom line? I don’t know the best time to arrive at the dump with my stuff --- which I feel gives me a right to root through the abandoned goodies that everywhere abound --- and I’m ready to settle for a state wide average. I’m humble@humblefarmer.com You tell me. What’s the most rewarding time of day to haul stuff to the dump?

Robert Karl Skoglund - Brunswick Maine Air Base Closing

When our government shuts down a military base, people have meetings and show up with posters to protest.

And when our government builds a military base, people have meetings and show up with suicide bombs to protest.

This would seem to indicate that either our government is incredibly insensitive or that people are impossible to please.

Unedited rant for June 23, 2006 Radio Show

Did you ever hang a Maybasket? Remember how you’d sneak up to the door, knock and then turn and run as fast as you could? Ever wonder what ever happened to all those people who used to knock on your door and run? They are still out there in formidable numbers, but nowadays they jump in their cars and peel out. Dozens of them play that trick on me every summer, and once again they are in season.

If I have ever accepted a challenge in my life it is to answer the door before visitors can leap in their idling cars with open doors and leave. By the time I could get to the door today, all I could see was the receding end of a tiny red car with a Florida plate. They beat me. You have heard me say that I’d like to have a button that I could push that would drop an iron gate that would hold visitors captive in my dooryard until I could get out there to see what they wanted.

For years I had a big sign by the driveway that begged visitors to please give me the five seconds that it would take me to get to the door and out of the house. Because I installed a driveway bell that goes Ding Ding Ding when a car comes in, I can sometimes catch some of the careless ones before they can scratch gently on the door, leap in their cars and leave. A few have caught onto the bell trick, so they leave their cars down by the road and slither up to the house on foot. My friend, The Goose, has a sensor that peeps when people invade a certain area and I’m going to investigate that.

I’m humble@humblefarmer.com What heroic mechanical measures have you implemented to hold people in your yard until you could rush through your house and greet them at the door? Or do you simply have a sign out there that says, "Go Away."

Intro for The humble Farmer June 23, 2006 radio show

http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/storiesAudio.html


Do you ever listen to that radio program where you can call in with a problem about your car and the experts tell you that all will be well if you replace the knuckle joints on the exhaust manifold or put sawdust in the rear end?

Here’s a question you might ask:

“When I turn on the switch in my Ford pickup, what is that whining sound that comes out of the dashboard?”

“It’s probably The humble Farmer. If you can stand it for an hour, it will go away.”

The Charity Navigator and MPBN

Things you probably won't hear me say on the radio.

On a web page called Charity Navigator, you can locate MPBN radio. And right under Maine Public Broadcasting Network it says: engaging minds and enriching lives in our community. From that wouldn’t one get the impression that anyone worth his or her salt who sits behind an MPBN microphone would be encouraged to engage the minds and enrich the lives in our community?

Hi there, your buddy humble here, engaging minds and enriching lives in our community --- being on my guard, of course, to not enrich them too much. [I have been forbidden to say anything derogatory about Adolph Hitler in any of my MPBN broadcasts. The rationale behind this censorship seems to be that if one wasn’t listening carefully, they might think I was talking about another world leader with a propensity for invading other countries, rushing through laws that would “protect” the rights of citizens, and making his country hated by most of the rest of the world.

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http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/search.summary/orgid/4037.htm

Ever hear of the Charity Navigator? I stumbled on it this morning while trying to find a contact person at Hawaii Public Radio. As you can see by clicking on the web site, in 2005 the president of Maine Public Radio earned $137,843 a year in wages and benefits. [Who did you think got the money you contributed to "Make great shows like The humble Farmer possible."] Anyway, I'm glad the boss earned $137,843 a year in wages and benefits in 2005. Everyone in Maine should earn at least $137,000 a year. That’s not much when you figure that MPBN would have to write me a check for over $145,000 if they would pay me $100 for every program I’ve ever made for free for you over the past 28 years. Remember that it was your kind letters that made it fun for me and kept me going.

You know that I really enjoy making this radio program for you. Thank you for your cheery encouraging letters that have kept me going all these 28 years. The thing that pleases me the most is knowing that the folks who enjoy the music and chatter here on The humble Farmer radio show are just like you in that they are your typical next door neighbor. Two of them chanced to drop by the farm yesterday. Nick, from up in The County, is a commercial pilot and Craig is the Media Director at the Library of Congress.

Bob Larson, The Exorcist -- Unedited Radio Rant

Unedited Rant for June 23, 2006 The humble Farmer radio program.

Did you see Bob Larson, the exorcist, casting out devils on the History Channel? Although Bob Larson’s web page won’t open on my computer, Googling “Larson exorcist” turns up material for the reflective mind. I quote: “Once the demon enters in, they usually always bring in other demons with them. Demons usually travel in clusters or groups. When they enter into someone, there will always be one demon that is the ‘chief demon’ and the others will be under the control and authority of that chief demon.”

I hope a chief demon never gets into me. I like my constitution just the way it is.