Garrison Keillor Movie, John McCoy, Jedi, Spain
Unedited Rants for July 21, 2006 The humble Farmer radio program
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I have been thinking about Sharon lately. A year or two ago I told Sharon that my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, could outwork two 19 year old boys. Sharon has two sons in their early 20s, and Sharon laughed and said that most anyone could outwork two 19 year old boys. I used to walk around in the skin of a 19 year old boy and I would read my diary for 1955 if I thought I could stand it. You know that I could never afford to have children --- remember that my degrees are in the humanities --- but this month 19 year old Victor from Barcelona is living with us as surrogate son so I am able to study the species up close. You’re right. It’s probably not fair to compare a native speaker of Catalan with a boy from Maine because when you are eating breakfast on your balcony in Spain, you can see and hear the revelry which has not petered out from the night before. So because of his background, it is to be expected that even though he revels in our home alone, Victor revels at night and sleeps until noon. Having studied his habits in the pantry, Marsha is of the opinion that his parents employ not only a maid but a cook. If you have had any experience with 19 year old boys, if you have ever lived with one as an observer, will you please send me a paragraph that outlines their habits? I’m humble@humblefarmer.com and, like Henry Adams, weighed down by the rubbish of sixty-six years' education I’m still desperately hoping to understand.
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You will recall that Jimmy Parker advised me against putting shelves in my garden’s tool shed. Jimmy said that if I picked all the stuff off the floor and put it on shelves, it would only create a big empty floor which would cry out to be covered with more stuff. I would be locked into a never ending cycle of building more shelves and accumulating more junk. I would end up like the man in Fort Kent who built 24 rental storage units but discovered that he needed them all for himself. But, with the help of Victor, my Spanish professor, I put in the shelves anyway. My father was a carpenter and I inherited my father’s radial arm saw so making shelves is really no big deal. My tool shed started off as a Finnish sauna and was probably made by Victor Korpinen around 1925. The building might have been square 80 years ago, but today it is crooked. What do you do when you put shelves in a crooked building? Do you make them conform to the ship-like contours of the bulkheads or do you try to make everything square and level? My father didn’t like to work in old houses because everything was crooked. I can remember when he put clapboards on John McCoy’s house 40 or 50 years ago that John McCoy wanted the clapboards to run uphill to conform with the contours of his house, but papa want to put them on level. You’ve heard me say that the south end of my 195 year old house is 9 inches lower than the north end of my house. Did you try to straighten your old house when you moved in or is one end of your kitchen counter one inch higher than the other? Even if you haven’t written a book on old houses, I’d like to know if you consider crooked floors and walls to be a problem. I’m humble@humblefarmer.com
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Marsha and her buddy Donna Doo and I went to see the Prairie Home Companion movie. Even with the extra hearing aid they gave me at the box office, I missed some of the jokes, but it was still worth seeing. You would like it and I suggest that you go see it. I have only listened to Prairie Home Companion a few times in my life, but the last time I heard a show I was in my truck coming home from a meeting in San Antonio, Texas. I liked the program very much. I laughed. I admire his way with words. Garrison Keillor is very perceptive --- he sees, he knows, and because he tells the truth you can be sure that there are a lot of big money people out there who would like to shut him up. His movie reminds us that people who are permitted to talk into radio microphones have the ability to change lives. And if you think about that you probably wonder why more radio people aren’t using their power to do good --- to help people --- to help people laugh at themselves --- to make suggestions as to how, if we just did this or that, your life and the lives of your grandchildren could be so much better in this great country. Garrison Keillor also clarified my thinking on something that I have struggled with and that is the topic of death. So many times I have mentioned or have wanted to tell you about the passing of a long time radio friend and I have always wondered if I should do it. I have been wanting to mention how shocked and saddened I was by the passing of Tom Rowe, the monster bass player with Schooner Fare. Tom had the ability to put the note on that exact split millisecond where it lifted you onto your toes. You can learn changes and you can learn technique but you can’t learn that gift Tom Rowe had for putting that note down where it belonged to get the most powerful lift I have ever heard underneath any band. So here I have just done what I said I just learned from the master himself that I shouldn’t do and that is mention the d word. How do you feel about that? Are occasional two or three sentence memorials out of place on a program dedicated to making you dance and smile? Anyway, in the movie you can see Garrison Keillor calmly talking while fumbling for his script, which he really has no excuse to be doing because he doesn’t even have to push his own buttons. Imagine how smooth and articulate my rants would be if I only had to rant and didn’t have to be thinking, at the same time, which buttons I was going to have to push when I finished talking. Has listening to Garrison Keillor changed your life? Tell me about it. I’m humble@humblefarmer.com
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There are movers and shakers and then there are just plain movers. Every time I go away for two or three days, when I come home my wife Marsha has moved around some furniture. It doesn’t seem to matter if things were nice and comfortable when she started. I get the impression that she moves just for the sake of moving. The Booger Boy told me that his grandfather used to tear the shingles off the garage and put them back on just to have something to do. We’re talking here about that nervous Type A energy. Marsha can’t even open windows or unscrew bottle tops but she can move a couch with the power of her mind. Wouldn’t you expect anyone with this kind of power to sprout long green ears? Why do they do it? Why do bureaus that are upstairs have to be moved downstairs? If you live with it I’d like to know how you survive. I’m humble@humblefarmer.com To give her credit, my wife Marsha does not carry this moving business as far as her father Bill. One time Marsha’s mother came home from a trip and discovered that Bill had sold their home on the lake and had bought a place next to Burger King.
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I have been thinking about Sharon lately. A year or two ago I told Sharon that my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, could outwork two 19 year old boys. Sharon has two sons in their early 20s, and Sharon laughed and said that most anyone could outwork two 19 year old boys. I used to walk around in the skin of a 19 year old boy and I would read my diary for 1955 if I thought I could stand it. You know that I could never afford to have children --- remember that my degrees are in the humanities --- but this month 19 year old Victor from Barcelona is living with us as surrogate son so I am able to study the species up close. You’re right. It’s probably not fair to compare a native speaker of Catalan with a boy from Maine because when you are eating breakfast on your balcony in Spain, you can see and hear the revelry which has not petered out from the night before. So because of his background, it is to be expected that even though he revels in our home alone, Victor revels at night and sleeps until noon. Having studied his habits in the pantry, Marsha is of the opinion that his parents employ not only a maid but a cook. If you have had any experience with 19 year old boys, if you have ever lived with one as an observer, will you please send me a paragraph that outlines their habits? I’m humble@humblefarmer.com and, like Henry Adams, weighed down by the rubbish of sixty-six years' education I’m still desperately hoping to understand.
+
You will recall that Jimmy Parker advised me against putting shelves in my garden’s tool shed. Jimmy said that if I picked all the stuff off the floor and put it on shelves, it would only create a big empty floor which would cry out to be covered with more stuff. I would be locked into a never ending cycle of building more shelves and accumulating more junk. I would end up like the man in Fort Kent who built 24 rental storage units but discovered that he needed them all for himself. But, with the help of Victor, my Spanish professor, I put in the shelves anyway. My father was a carpenter and I inherited my father’s radial arm saw so making shelves is really no big deal. My tool shed started off as a Finnish sauna and was probably made by Victor Korpinen around 1925. The building might have been square 80 years ago, but today it is crooked. What do you do when you put shelves in a crooked building? Do you make them conform to the ship-like contours of the bulkheads or do you try to make everything square and level? My father didn’t like to work in old houses because everything was crooked. I can remember when he put clapboards on John McCoy’s house 40 or 50 years ago that John McCoy wanted the clapboards to run uphill to conform with the contours of his house, but papa want to put them on level. You’ve heard me say that the south end of my 195 year old house is 9 inches lower than the north end of my house. Did you try to straighten your old house when you moved in or is one end of your kitchen counter one inch higher than the other? Even if you haven’t written a book on old houses, I’d like to know if you consider crooked floors and walls to be a problem. I’m humble@humblefarmer.com
+
Marsha and her buddy Donna Doo and I went to see the Prairie Home Companion movie. Even with the extra hearing aid they gave me at the box office, I missed some of the jokes, but it was still worth seeing. You would like it and I suggest that you go see it. I have only listened to Prairie Home Companion a few times in my life, but the last time I heard a show I was in my truck coming home from a meeting in San Antonio, Texas. I liked the program very much. I laughed. I admire his way with words. Garrison Keillor is very perceptive --- he sees, he knows, and because he tells the truth you can be sure that there are a lot of big money people out there who would like to shut him up. His movie reminds us that people who are permitted to talk into radio microphones have the ability to change lives. And if you think about that you probably wonder why more radio people aren’t using their power to do good --- to help people --- to help people laugh at themselves --- to make suggestions as to how, if we just did this or that, your life and the lives of your grandchildren could be so much better in this great country. Garrison Keillor also clarified my thinking on something that I have struggled with and that is the topic of death. So many times I have mentioned or have wanted to tell you about the passing of a long time radio friend and I have always wondered if I should do it. I have been wanting to mention how shocked and saddened I was by the passing of Tom Rowe, the monster bass player with Schooner Fare. Tom had the ability to put the note on that exact split millisecond where it lifted you onto your toes. You can learn changes and you can learn technique but you can’t learn that gift Tom Rowe had for putting that note down where it belonged to get the most powerful lift I have ever heard underneath any band. So here I have just done what I said I just learned from the master himself that I shouldn’t do and that is mention the d word. How do you feel about that? Are occasional two or three sentence memorials out of place on a program dedicated to making you dance and smile? Anyway, in the movie you can see Garrison Keillor calmly talking while fumbling for his script, which he really has no excuse to be doing because he doesn’t even have to push his own buttons. Imagine how smooth and articulate my rants would be if I only had to rant and didn’t have to be thinking, at the same time, which buttons I was going to have to push when I finished talking. Has listening to Garrison Keillor changed your life? Tell me about it. I’m humble@humblefarmer.com
+
There are movers and shakers and then there are just plain movers. Every time I go away for two or three days, when I come home my wife Marsha has moved around some furniture. It doesn’t seem to matter if things were nice and comfortable when she started. I get the impression that she moves just for the sake of moving. The Booger Boy told me that his grandfather used to tear the shingles off the garage and put them back on just to have something to do. We’re talking here about that nervous Type A energy. Marsha can’t even open windows or unscrew bottle tops but she can move a couch with the power of her mind. Wouldn’t you expect anyone with this kind of power to sprout long green ears? Why do they do it? Why do bureaus that are upstairs have to be moved downstairs? If you live with it I’d like to know how you survive. I’m humble@humblefarmer.com To give her credit, my wife Marsha does not carry this moving business as far as her father Bill. One time Marsha’s mother came home from a trip and discovered that Bill had sold their home on the lake and had bought a place next to Burger King.
posted by The humble Farmer at 7:23 AM
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