November 23, 2008 Stories for 2008 CD #2
A plethora of innocuous commentary
March 23, 2008
1. We have an elderly friend who is forgetful. One morning she called to ask if Marsha remembered that she was going to take her to the store, even though Marsha’s car was already parked in her driveway. Another day she spent quite a bit of time looking for a flag that she had just rolled up and put in the corner while complaining that she couldn’t understand who kept taking her things. As unfortunate as this sounds, the problem is even more acute along some sections of the Maine coast where women in their early 30s go into town for the evening and forget that they already have husbands. 080223
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2. Would you dare run for office in this country today? Think what would happen to you if you did. People you had never heard of would be on the evening news, relating in intimate detail, what you did and said while on a date with them when you were 17 years old. Was your great uncle a drunk? Everyone will know. If you ever lived in an apartment building that was once inhabited by a drug dealer or a murderer, it will be headline news --- just as if you had something to do with it. This is the good news. --- The bad news -- is that if your opponents can’t find something or someone bad to link to your name, they will make something up. (080323)
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3. Have you ever heard of Dead Janitor’s Insurance? I Googled it and found out that it is also called Dead Peasant’s Insurance. Insurance companies have sold millions of these secret tax-free windfall policies to big companies. You might be worth big money dead and not even know anything about it. When you die, your life insurance money can go towards perks and retirement benefits for top management. I read that companies pay 8 billion in premiums each year for such coverage which makes up 20% of the life insurance sold each year. Companies expect to reap more than 9 billion in tax breaks from these policies over the next five years. Hundreds of companies have purchased this insurance on more than 6 million rank and file workers. Hello out there all you peasants. Aren’t you glad that if you die, even though it could impoverish your family, it will enable your boss to take his mistress to Aruba? (080323)
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4. Today we are going to talk about curious present day American customs. Have you ever wondered how our generation of Americans will be viewed by intelligent people 100, 200 and even 1000 years from now? If you can’t see any sense in burning witches or pressing the life out of people with big rocks , it’s a sure bet that in a few years Americans will see our generation as being completely devoid of rational thought. You might know that most of the people in Europe, Asia and Africa put us in that basket now. When you heard me talking about curious present-day American customs, you tell me if this blatant example didn’t come to mind: Nowadays, a man who cheats on his wife is not considered capable of governing the United States --- or even one state. But a man who consistently lies to his constituents while killing 100,000 women and children will discover that people stand and applaud when he enters a room. (080323)
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5. Tom Dennen went to Gorham Normal School with me forty years ago. Now he lives in South Africa and writes newspaper articles on economics. In one of his pieces he names the countries that have stopped using the dollar as their reserve currency or have dropped their currency's peg against the dollar. Among them are China, Japan, Russia, Switzerland and a whole raft of others. On top of that there is a list of even more countries that are thinking about abandoning the dollar as their reserve currency. I don’t know a thing about economics. But even a fifteen year old kid can remember back to the good old days when people all over the world loved Americans -- and American money. After we were attacked on 9-11 by some fanatics from Saudi Arabia, we had the sympathy of almost every person in the world. We were the injured party. But then, without fanfare, something very quietly happened to change all that. Now we are arguably the most disliked nation in the world and the value of our money is dropping. I am only one of many Americans who can’t figure out why bad things are suddenly happening to us. Can you tell me? (080323)
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6. Here’s a letter from Robert in Bath who has things pretty well figured out. You tell me if this also applies to your town. Robert says, “You might not see moose alongside the road, but you will see sofas, mattresses and such. This is because Owls Head now charges a fee to use the landfill.” (080330)
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7. A week ago I sent out an email to some friends, asking them to tell me about the advantages of pre heating my hot water with solar energy before running it through the boiler in the furnace. The roof on one side of my house faces east and the other side faces west. So I said I’d have half of the solar collectors on the east side to catch the morning sun and the other half of the solar collectors on the north side to collect the afternoon sun. My friend Dr. Jerry wrote right back and said, “Thinking about your roof orientation, I would disagree with the idea of putting up one collector facing east and the other facing west: one would always be in the shade, radiating part of the heat that the other one collected, unless you set up a system that would alternate automatically and only accept water from the one that was being heated.” Well --- why not? Why not set up a system that only accepts the water from the side that was being heated? You know, if you don’t know anything, you can come up with solutions to problems that stump experts. I see no reason why I can’t get the maximum amount of heat morning AND night. To be fair, my thinking isn’t original. I got the idea from a story I read about a man who had one wife in London and another one in Paris. (080330)
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8. Tom sent me an email that says, “I was at a wedding this past fall talking to cousin Steve who had recently started a farm specializing in Lavender flowers. He said that one of the difficulties was getting enough hired help during the harvest season. Given that the farm is located in California at the base of the Sierra Mountains, I said he should consider starting a spiritual retreat. He could develop mindfulness exercises that would involve harvesting the lavender flowers. He wasn't sure that this would work, but I reminded him that in India they say ‘There is a seeker born every minute.’” (080330)
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9. Do you get your weather report off the Internet? I do. Right there on one page you can see what the weather is going to be for your zip code for the next ten days. Or you could, until today. Today you might have noticed that they bloated the size of each day so you can no longer see all ten days on one page. Now you have to scroll down to the next page to see all 10 days. Why, you have certainly asked many times, do people change things when they have something good that works just the way you want it to? Of course today you didn’t have to ask why they changed your weather page. It is obvious that they destroyed it and made it bigger so they can get more advertising on it. (080330)
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10. You heard me say that it won’t be long before I’m preheating my hot water with solar collectors on my house. When I mentioned that I’d probably be running the pipes down through my living room, Larz in Boothbay Harbor said, “… if you're going to run pipes down thru the living room, get nice shiny ones. Then you can have exotic entertainment at the humble Farmer B&B with dancers using the pipes like a fireman's pole. Just the thing to keep you in hot water!” (use pix of solar collectors for jacket cover) (080330)
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11. For years I’ve been inviting you and my other radio and television friends to stop by for supper anytime. Having you over for dinner would really be easier because Marsha isn’t home at noon and we could simply put leftovers in the micro. Supper is more complicated because when we have guests my wife feels obligated to make it complicated. If I were alone, making supper for you would be easy because I’d simply say, “Let’s look and see what there is.” You might wonder how I can invite you and Jan and everyman to my house for supper. I can do it because I can only remember one person who took me up on it. He was a professor at Colby, and is this not eloquent testimony to the pay scale in Maine’s institutions of higher learning? Yes, I have sent out thousands of emails that end with, “You are invited to stop by for supper anytime.” And from time to time you and other friends send me an email that invites me to your home for supper. The difference between my invitation and yours, is that I always tell you where I live. (080330)
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12. Here’s a email from George that I had to think about. Please listen closely. George says, “Did you hear about the Massachusetts teenagers who, as a prank, released three pigs in various parts of their high school after labeling them "Pig 1", Pig 2" and Pig 4". It is reported that the administration was able to round up Pigs 1,2 & 4 fairly quickly, But they spent most of the remainder of the day searching for Pig #3.” (080330)
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13. Everybody is sending out emails now. I just got one that said, “I'm a new girl who saw your profile.” Why would anyone who just became a girl be interested in me? (080406)
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14. Opportunivor is a very interesting word that I heard for the first time today from my friend Soni. It warrants rumination. You have heard of vegetarians. But today I learned that some people are opportunivors. I like that word because I am an opportunivor. Single men are probably all opportunivors. When I lived alone between the ages of 34 and 54 I was a full time opportunivor. People who have never had to prepare their own meals for 20 years have no idea of what a great feast a peanut butter sandwich is to an opportunivor. Opportunivors will always be welcome in my home. I would be the first to admit that they should even have their own special week every year. (080406)
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15. A friend of mine is trading in his truck to the people who sold it to him eight years ago. He says that Toyota USA is paying him 74% of what he paid them for the truck in 2000. Toyota knows that my friend probably hasn’t done the math and doesn’t realize what the two most recent republican administrations have done to the dollar since 2000. The way the dollar is presently tumbling on the world market, it won’t be long before Toyota will be able to take in trades, give the owner 120 % of what the owner originally paid for the truck, and still make money. (080406)
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16. Are you hearing words that you never heard before? Well, this can happen from time to time if you’re in graduate school, and perhaps every day if you’re even younger. But now even some of us older folks, who can still remember when Americans could get decorated for shooting a fascist, are hearing words we never heard before. These words usually pop up in the 30 second breaks that infest our favorite tv shows. They are compound words or multi-syllabic words. And when you hear people saying these words, colorful butterflies on the screen flutter around in flower beds. You have already guessed that these words describe diseases. They are diseases that you had never heard of before, but now when they list the symptoms your jaw drops and you know your days are numbered. So why do they open the door to this pantheon of unprecedented afflictions? Only by inventing a new disease can they sell you a pill that will cure it. (080406)
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17. Will we ever outgrow the different way we think about people and animals? When people die in wars defending their country they are respected and we put up monuments in their honor. These people are heroes. But there are those who now think it is terrible when a laboratory mouse dies defending our health. (080406)
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18. Here’s an email from Andy, who writes, “It just occurred to me that, if you were a terrorist who was stopped by an alert Homeland Security operative, you'd be the Fumbled Harmer.” (080413)
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19. My friend Winky called a 24 hours a day 7 days a week call center and asked what hours the call center was open. The woman there said, "The number you dialed works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week." Winky said, "Is that Eastern or Pacific time?" (080413)
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20. One day when Winky was working at the airport baggage area, a woman came over to the counter and said that her bags never showed up. Winky said, "Has your plane arrived yet?" (080413)
21. Winky went in a pizza parlor and asked for a small pizza to go. The cook asked him if he would like it cut into 4 pieces or 6 pieces. Winky said, "Just cut it into 4 pieces; I don't think I'm hungry enough to eat 6." (080413)
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22. You have heard me say that I can bring my wife home by simply thinking about stretching out on a bed or couch. Before my head has had time to sink into the cushion, she comes in the door. If you are a creative husband, you can probably think up dozens of ways to make your wife come in through the door, even though you have iron-clad proof that she is on safari in Africa or is reading seismological meters inside a volcano in Guatemala. Here’s my most recent example from the other night. My wife Marsha went off with her daughter and three grandchildren to take a walk down to Fort Point. At five o’clock, which is supper time, she was not home, so, because I’m not a helpless child, I started to cook my own supper. But, the instant my fingers released a frozen hotdog over a pan of boiling water, the driveway bell rang. Ding ding ding. She was home before the hotdog had time to hit the water. (080420)
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23. How high would the price of gas have to be before you’d stop driving your car? I don’t know. But I do know that you and I are hooked. We have the automobile habit. Someday we will all have electric cars that run on batteries that are charged by solar or wind energy. When that day comes it will be even more painful than the transition from the horse and buggy to the automobile because all of the people who produce and maintain oil fueled engines will be in the same position as the folks who once made buggy whips. (080420)
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24. I’m sure you can find many books and articles on how to save energy in your home by simply changing your habits. We have a nice electric stove with a smooth flat top. It is one of the few rich-kid items we have in our home and we have it because the flat top is easier for Marsha to clean. As I dropped a hotdog into the water that was being boiled on that electric stove the other day, I wondered if it would be cheaper to cook the hotdog in the micro. And then --- I asked myself why I was cooking only one hotdog when it would probably take just as much electricity to cook two hotdogs in the same water. It would be more energy efficient to eat two hotdogs. And if you think about it, wouldn’t a person who is really serious about conserving energy probably cook and eat six or eight hotdogs? I don’t think I should say any more because what I’m saying seems to make sense and I don’t like where it’s going. (080420)
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25. This morning my wife’s youngest grandchild walked through the room while chewing on the handle of a fly swatter. My brother, who saw this and knows more about these things than I do, said that that was the way children immunized themselves against disease. And when you hear this example of what happens to kids who don’t chew on fly swatters, you might agree that he is right. He mentioned mother’s cousin Will Williamson, who lived up near the corner of Gleason Street in Thomaston. Cousin Will perished with some childhood disease back in the 1920s. I can remember going into Uncle Dell’s house 20 years later and seeing a cardboard doll of Charlie McCarthy on the wall and I remember being aware that Cousin Will had died before his time. But it wasn’t until this morning that my brother told me what had killed him. His parents, Uncle Dell and Aunt Eva, were protective. They kept him from ever catching anything from other children or anyone else. When the day finally came when he did catch something, his body couldn’t handle it. Cousin Will was kept so clean and pure that without realizing what they were doing, his parents actually washed him to death. (080420)
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26. How many times have you been working on a project when some lemme show ya boy looks over your shoulder and offers advice? If you are not careful, it is not long before he has pushed you aside and has taken the burden of the entire project upon his own shoulders. It is usually about that time that you notice that there is an alarming correlation between a lemme show ya boy’s ineptitude and his eagerness to help you. (080427)
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27. The other morning I listened to a humorous fundraising piece submitted to PRX by New Hampshire Public Radio. The summary to the piece said, "Add a little humor to your pitch breaks." I laughed when I read it because not everyone agrees. On April 8, 1978 I was asked to produce my first weekly show for Maine Public Radio. Over the 28 years I spent as a volunteer making this program just for you, my old-fashioned-music and humorous social commentary became an early evening staple for the intelligentsia in Northern New England and bordering Canada. So it was inevitable that I should eventually appear on MPBN television at fundraising time. My spot was sandwiched in between the showing of Hamlet. When they put the camera on me I opened with my usual deadpan: "I hope you'll stay tuned to this Hamlet thing. It is my understanding that it has a very happy ending." I was never permitted to help out with fundraising again. But if you've been in Public Radio for three decades as I have you know that our radio friends have long memories --- and for years afterwards I would occasionally be accosted by a radio friend who would grab me by the lapels of my jacket and say, "humble, that thing you said about Hamlet was the funniest thing I've ever seen on Public television." Yes, add a little humor to your pitch breaks --- our radio friends love humor -- but make sure when you do that you have tenure. (080427)
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28. Here’s an email from radio friend Kip in Bagdad. He included an article about a saint that they just dug up in Italy. I quote: “The cosmetically enhanced corpse goes on display. The church and officials of his hometown hope his reputation as a miracle worker will enhance faith, not to mention tourism. He is also big business, and business in this rustic region of southern Italy has been hurting. Numerous hotels built after Pio became a saint six years ago have gone bust, and a mayor was convicted of absconding with funds. City fathers and church officials are hoping the renewed reverence will give a boost to the economy. Prospects look good: City officials say about 750,000 pilgrims and tourists have made reservations to view the body through June, and hotels are booked full.” End of quote. Kip says, “Dear Humble: I was reading this story on the web and thought we might want to try a similar idea to draw more tourists to Maine.” There might be something to Kip’s suggestion. Can you think of anyone we could dig up and put on display? (080427)
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29. When my father married my mother he was Marianne’s husband. He stayed Marianne’s husband until he became Sonja’s father. For his entire life my father was a non-entity. I thought I had done better than my father until today when I realized that I have fallen lower than Marianne’s husband or Sonja’s father. In fact, I have dropped as low as it is possible to drop in the caste system here in American today. There is a name for American untouchables. We are called --- associates. (080427)
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30. ) Every morning for years I’ve eaten a thyroid pill. A couple of years ago I started eating two Vitamin C pills every morning. Then, last week when I went up to the veteran’s administration hospital in Togus to see if they would give me a hearing aid, my doctor up there mentioned that men of a certain age take a baby aspirin every day. So here I am at the kitchen counter this morning opening pill bottles when my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, says, “Why don’t you let me put your pills in one of those pill dispensers? Then you’d only have to open one thing in the morning instead of three.” I told her I’d rather open the three bottles because, after all, a man my age should be getting some exercise. (080504)
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31. It wasn’t too long ago that I attended a meeting of people who work with community television. Because I’ve been trying to produce a television program every week for the past few months, you can believe that I was paying attention and taking notes. One man said he sometimes had problems accepting home-made videos from his friends and neighbors. Because --- from time to time the camera might dart off and capture someone’s left foot or the sky. In other words, sometimes the photography and editing by people who aren’t pros leaves a bit to be desired. Of course I think they should run all those shows. They make mine look good. (080504)
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32. When you can’t hear what people are saying, it makes you stupid. You sometimes give an answer that has nothing to do with the question. You can’t carry on a conversation. Last November I lost my right hearing aid --- and that was the one that really did the job that needed to be done --- and I’ve struggled along ever since. I don’t even bother to wear my left hearing aid because it really doesn’t seem to make any difference. You do learn to compensate when you can’t hear. You have to focus. You have to concentrate. You can help your brain process auditory input by shutting your eyes and eliminating the extraneous and often irrelevant ocular information. Although it helps me, the system has detractions. The other night at historical society meeting someone took my picture because they thought I was asleep. (080504)
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33. What kind of conversations do you have with your spouse? Great world literature is filled with examples of people with nothing to say who have slowly drifted apart. Agatha Christie’s Harold Crackenthrop comes readily to mind. We are not talking here about people who snarl at each other but the introverts with nothing to say. You will be glad to hear that my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, and I strengthen our marriage every day as our conversations enrich our lives. (M talking) How can you see through those glasses? They are filthy. (080504)
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34. If you have small grandchildren you know how you look forward to their visits. When they are 3 or 4 years old you are always amazed at how much they have grown since the last time you saw them. Even more exhausting than playing with them, is changing your lifestyle --- shifting your bedtime around to accommodate theirs. You know that I’m a creature of habit, so I’ve got to admit that I feel a lot stronger when they’re not here --- so I can get to bed by 6. (080504)
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35. Would you want to run for President of the United States? It might not be a good idea unless you were conceived in a test tube and raised in a monastery, because for some strange reason you will be held responsible the actions of everyone you ever knew. They’d certainly have a great time with me: my first psychology professor committed suicide. (080504)
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36. From time to time you expect me to impart something that can pass as wisdom. Because I’m not an oracle, it is hard for me to come up with these little gems. But, from time to time someone wearing a sad face throws one my way and that’s when I pass it along to you. So. Here’s your wisdom for today. If, for the past five years, you’ve been carrying your bicycle here and there on the top of your car, think carefully before buying an automatic garage door opener. (080504)
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37. You know that Alison, who is my wife’s oldest, used to run marathons. She outgrew that and now does triathlons. You know what that is. They swim for a mile or so, ride a bike that costs more than what I get in social security in a year, and then they run. If you’ve ever dropped in on anyone who enjoys this lifestyle, you’ve seen the walking machine that replaced the bed in their bedroom and the fruit and grains that replaced the food in their kitchen. Were you to give one of their children an M and M, the child would probably exhibit all the symptoms of a diabetic coma. When we visit at Alison’s house, I always bring along food. Because --- there is a danger in eating grains, raw veggies and fruit: You might discover that you like it. (080504)
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38. Did you see that man on the TV news who was in jail for 27 years for a crime that he didn’t commit? Even more amazing is that other man you see every day on the TV news who should be in jail for crimes that he did commit. (080504)
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39. I just got an email that made me laugh. It said, “Government Aid During Recession/Financial Stimulus Package.” I don’t recall starting any recession. And my friends and I certainly didn’t vote for anyone who would start a recession by giving huge tax breaks to the richest 1 percent of the population while waging a meaningless war that only benefits the oil companies and war related industries. But yes, I’ll gladly take a couple hundred of those dollars that have dropped 40 percent against the Euro in the past seven years --- if you can still borrow them from the Chinese. Actually, I’m only doing this to give a certain someone that warm, fuzzy feeling compassionate conservatives get when they claim they’re helping the poor. (080504)
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40. Stephen King raised a fuss when he told some students that if they couldn’t read they’d very likely end up in Wal*Mart or in the army. Let’s hope he learned something from this: Always consider the consequences before telling the truth in public. (080511)
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41. A while back you heard me mention a man who served 27 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Robert in Bath says: “Have you ever met anyone who is not doing time? Everyone is doing time. Where you do it is the only question. I know guys who did twenty years in the merchant marines, or the army. But not me. I stayed at home.” Thank you Robert. And I can identify with serving time because the two years I served in the Coast Guard were the two longest years I ever spent in my life. I could never adjust to having to be somewhere and do something at a certain time. And my wife will testify to that. You will remember that back then we had a draft so I had to do my military time. I couldn’t run off to Europe to acquire a cosmopolitan education like I should have done between the ages of 17 and 25. Everyone knows that you can have a draft during peace time because all the rich kids can serve their time as officers in cushy office jobs. It’s only in time of war --- it’s only when officers would stand a chance of getting blown up that instituting a draft would distress your average congressman who has teen age sons. (080511)
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42. Here’s a letter from radio friend Mark in Portland that says, “I thought you might find this of interest. One of my third cousins, who has done much of our family history, recently delved further into our Swedish ancestors. It appears that our 8th Great grandmother, Margareta Matsson, holds the distinction of having been accused and tried for witchcraft in the only witchcraft trial ever held in Pennsylvania! This occurred in 1683, and she also learned that these people were some of the earliest Swedes to come to the colonies. The trial was conducted by William Penn himself. The accusation was that she had bewitched another’s cow, along with other farm animals and some people. She was found not guilty, and the family immediately moved to New Jersey, where their connection to [our other] clan began through marriage.” Wow. Imagine that. William Penn found her not guilty of bewitching a cow. But --- tens of millions of Americans still firmly believe things that were discredited by science 400 years ago, so wouldn’t you want to bet that a lot of people would still like to appeal that decision? (080511)
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43. If you were to stop and think about it, you would realize that you know an illogical assortment of things that only a few people know. You are unique in that you are the only person in the world who knows what you know and who can do what you can do. You are a specialist in the field, when it comes to being you. Because you take what you know for granted, you don’t realize that a lot of what is in your head is not common knowledge --- until you see or hear something that makes you laugh or shake your head. Case in point. On a recent today show you saw an old 1939 movie of people walking along the street and going into a New York subway. But the background music was from 1923. Wouldn’t you guess that the reason they weren’t playing 1939 background music was because they couldn’t tell James P. Johnson from Benny Goodman if they heard it? It annoys me when I realize that this is the kind of useless esoteric information that has just about as much value to an old Maine man as being able to tell if you are well dressed or if the color of your furniture matches the paint on your living-room wall. --- The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. I know many small useless things. I wish I knew one big thing that would enable me to earn a living. (080511)
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44. Are Hormones to Blame for Your Flabby Abs? Yes, that’s what the email said: Are Hormones to Blame for Your Flabby Abs? How much you want to bet that they’re selling a pill that will take the flab out of your abs and everything else? I personally don’t sit around thinking about my flabby abs, do you? Unless you go to work wearing only a pair of shorts, should you be unduly concerned about flabby abs? We have talked about this before. The purpose of advertising is to make you dissatisfied with that which you have. The only way they can get you to buy more pills, is to invent some new ailment and then convince you that you have it. --- I’m now sorry I mentioned flabby abs. (080511)
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45. The other day I thought about getting tattoos on my arms. But then I realized that I never roll up my sleeves. (080511)
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46. I told my computer guru Richard Bird that I thought about getting tattoos on my arms but figured it would be a waste of time and money because I never roll up my sleeves. Mr. Bird, genius that he is, immediately realized the philosophical potential in my comment and wondered how drunk one has to be to get a tattoo. Fifty percent of the children who get them, want them removed when they become adults. Mr. Bird admitted that during his long and eventful life he had on more than one occasion put away more than a few drinks, but never enough to even consider having pictures or designs stapled to his body. So, I know that you must know someone who can answer this question: how drunk does one have to be to get a tattoo? I’m humble at humblefarmer.com (080511)
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47. Here’s another junk email. This one says, “Don't accept baldness, do something about it.” Well, Yul Brynner certainly did very well with it. And consider superman’s arch-enemy, Lex Luther. In the time Lex Luther saved by not having to dry and comb his hair every morning, he was able to become a master strategist who is expertly proficient in all fields relating to business management. My question to you is: is there anything wrong with being bald? When a bald man comes in the room do you cover your eyes and say, “I’m going home. Here comes a bald man.” Both my grandmother’s parents were from Scotland and because I lived with my grandmother until I was 15, I have a hybrid dialect that really doesn’t belong anywhere. But should I be ashamed of the way my grandmother taught me to talk? Should I want to do something about it? Should bald men want to do something about it? I’m humble at humblefarmer.com (080511)
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48. You might have read a while back that only 28 percent of voters still approved of George W. Bush. But --- 48 percent of voters said they’d vote for McCain --- who ran on the same Bush platform. Yes, that’s right. Twenty percent of voters who didn’t approve of Bush looked forward to walking down that same path with McCain. You will recall that George Orwell wrote a book called 1984 and in this book you read that people with exceptional minds are able to doublethink. Doublethink is the ability to vote for republicans and then not consider yourself part of the problem when republicans bring your country crashing down around your ears. Doublethink is the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and to believe both of them. I have to admit that I’m not clever enough to doublethink, but if you are one of the 20 percent of Americans who can, I’d like to have you tell me how you do it. (080511)
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49. Here’s one more junk email that might warrant your attention. This junk email says, “New hope for dieters from Japanese sea.” There is nothing left. (080511)
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50. Have you ever had a word or a situation that seem to follow you around? The other day my friend Susan said she couldn’t get away from ducks. She’d open a book or a newspaper at random and there would be a mention of ducks. The word ducks would appear in billboards and she’d see a duck walking in her back yard. I seem to be haunted by an incomprehensible yardstick of comparison. I read that when they drilled the oil out of the ground in Texas, it created a sinkhole as big as two football fields. Friends often tell me that they just moved in to a 2400 square-foot house. I don’t think in terms of football fields or the number of square feet in my house. I do know that no matter how many square feet of space you have in your house, it will be exceeded by the cubic feet of the junk you have tried to cram into it. Then, when your house overflows, your insatiable need to buy more is making millionaires out of the people who put up those metal storage sheds. The other morning I opened the Encyclopedia Britannica and chanced to read about Ninus. You might know that after the death of Ninus, Semiramis, his wife who was accused of causing it, erected to him a temple tomb nine stades high and ten stades broad near Babylon. So now I am not only puzzled by the size of a football field and the number of square feet in a house, but have, by my indiscriminate reading, added a temple tomb nine stades high. If two out of three make sense to you, you’re not doing bad. (080511)
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51. Public service announcement here. If you’re going to work on your tractor or clean out your henhouse, do not wear your hearing aids. Take them out and put them in their little box before going outside. One frantic afternoon last year, somewhere between cementing up the monument on my front lawn and organizing the junk in the henhouse, I lost my right hearing aid. Although I still have the left hearing aid, it was the very expensive right one that, for 8 or 9 years, was enabling me to understand your basic shouted conversation. Hearing aids are made for people who stare at computer screens or chat over pom fritts and French fries at the supper table. They are not made for people who crawl around under cars. Did you know that when you are working on your back, your hearing aids drop out on the ground? Please pay attention because I am the only person who is going to impart this valuable information. The propensity of hearing aids to drop on the ground when you are working outside on the farm is a closely guarded secret of the hearing aid industry. (080511)
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52. The people who ran the last Democratic presidential campaign are not very smart. They spent money to promote their candidate when all they had to do to win was sit back quietly and let voters watch the evening news. (080518)
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53. Although I cannot consider myself a cosmopolitan on a level with James Bond, I have lived in Sweden for half a year, I can buy a hot dog in several languages, I’ve slept in a roadside ditch in Denmark in a pouring rain, I’ve routed a knife-wielding mugger in Casablanca, I’ve eaten spaghetti in Borgia’s Restaurant on Sicily, and I can speak as much Greek as I’ve ever heard James Bond use in a movie. Barracalau. In other words, I’ve been around long enough to know better than to look down at the ignorant peasants in other countries who have never seen a newspaper or a television set. But after getting this email from Africa, I’m going to make an exception. Listen to this letter and tell me what you think. It says: “Dearest One, It is my pleasure to contact you for a business venture which I intend to establish in your country. There is this amount of $7,300,000.00 which my late Father deposited for us in a leading Bank … before his death. I have decided to invest these money in your country where it will be safe.” Heard enough? If you had 7 million dollars, would you send it to a country that borrows money from the Chinese to wage a war against a faceless enemy for the sole purpose of making a few rich people even richer? Would you send your money to a country where the value of the money drops on a daily basis and where Sarah Palin was a serious candidate for Vice President? Would you? (080518)
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54. If you have a moment, I’m going to ask you a question. You watch the news. You read the newspapers. So, how long do you think a society can exist when common people get only a meager living for themselves because the preponderance of what they produce is turned over to the military? According to my Encyclopedia Britannica, this type of feudal military organization lasted in Eastern Europe for a thousand years. (080518)
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55. Even if you don’t know me, you can tell from my voice that I’m an old man. I am 72 years old. I’ve never smoked. I never drank. In the winter time I attend exercise class three times a week in Florida and in the summer, when I can get away from my computer, there is more than I can do outside here on the farm. Although I love ice cream and pie, I haven’t had ice cream or a piece of pie or a cookie or a piece of cake or sausage or bacon since I came home from the Public Radio Program Directors’ San Antonio meeting three years ago. They know how to feed down there on the Riverwalk and I gained six pounds in three days. I’m not overweight --- only because of the wake-up call I got at the program director’s convention. But still, when I walk up from the garden with 18 pounds of rhubarb and the scale in my arms I puff and I pant and I have sometimes said to myself, “You’re old. You’re gasping for breath. Someday, without warning, you are likely to drop dead with a heart attack.” But --- I no longer worry, my young friend, because --- last night there was a doctor on the evening news who said that old men do not die without warning. He said that old and young men alike have a blatant warning sign two or three years before having a heart attack, and that the heart is the second organ to go. (080518)
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56. Here is a question that immediately came to my mind after seeing a doctor on television say that ED --- I’m so old and prudish I still can’t bring myself to say those two words, which I actually heard on TV and asked my wife explain to me within the past year. Yes, I saw a doctor on TV say that two to three years before a man has a heart attack, he will experience the dreaded ED. The way I understand it, when you smoke, the little blood vessels in your body gradually get clogged up and eventually shut down. And when those little blood vessels get shut down and blood can’t get around in the body like it used to, a man experiences ED. Continued smoking clogs up bigger blood vessels in your body until the big blood vessels in your heart are plugged up and you have what we call a heart attack. Now. Just hearing me talk about this might bring to your mind full page ads in magazines for pills which claim to correct ED. Not being a doctor, and not knowing the difference between an artery and a blood vessel, I would have to suspect that all these little pills must do to work their wondrous magic is momentarily clean out or enlarge all those little blood vessels which permits the uninhibited blood to flow where it will. You of course see where I’m going with this. If the magic pill will undo the clogging damage smoking has done to the little blood vessels, is it unreasonable to assume that the same pill will also clean out the big blood vessels in or near the heart and prevent heart attacks? If I’ve piqued your academic curiosity, you are certainly as interested in hearing a medical opinion on the topic as I am --- even more so if you’re a smoker. I’m humble at humblefarmer.com, and if I get any answers, you’ll be hearing from me. (080518)
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57. Once upon a time there was lonely airport way off all by itself in the boonies. The lonely airport was surrounded by great forests and an occasional field. Then, one day, some contractors built houses on the north side of this airport. And people rushed in to buy the houses. Soon after that, the contractor built houses on the east and west sides of the airport and, sure enough, even more people rushed in and bought those houses too. Well, you know what happened next. The contractor built houses on the south side of the airport and the lonely airport that used to be surrounded by fields and forests was now had hundreds of people living around it on all four sides. And no sooner had hundreds of people bought houses all around this airport, when they began writing letters to their legislators and their newspapers, saying that the airplanes that took off and landed at the airport made a lot of noise and they didn’t like it. (080518)
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58. I didn’t realize that we were in the midst of such hard times until I opened a junk email that said, “Get the funds you need for college” and saw a picture of a ski mask and a short stick to carry in your pocket. (080518)
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59. Last Sunday I drove my 1919 Model T station wagon over to the car show at the Owls Head Transportation Museum. There are seven foot humble Farmer signs on each side of my Model T so even if my radio friends don’t know what I look like, they often see the huge signs and come over to chat. Last Sunday was memorable because Don, who is a dentist down in Cape Elizabeth --- Don came over to say he still remembered a this story he heard me tell several years ago. Ahem. What are you burning for wood in your kitchen stove? What kind of wood is the most efficient and gives you the most BTUs of heat per cord? Is it birch, maple, oak, lignum vitae? This week I set out to visit some neighbors in hopes of answering this question, but didn’t get past Jimmy Parker’s house. Because when I asked, “What are you burning this winter?” Jimmy said, “So far two skiffs and the stern of a dory.” (080525)
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60. We all have embarrassing moments. The theater has capitalized on this down through the centuries, and today small children are exposed to embarrassing moments in television sitcoms. They unfold like this: the protagonist is either doing something he shouldn’t be doing or accidentally finds himself naked and locked out of house or in some other unbearably embarrassing situation. Any friend who sees him engaged in this activity will think that he is a fool. I came close to having it happen to me while I was eating dinner today. About the only time I turn on the television set is when I eat alone. My wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, more often than not prepares a plate for me from supper leftovers which I pop into the microwave for dinner the following day. Today I sat down before the tube, little folding table in front of me with the warm plate of food on that. I clicked until I came to the news, which lasted until I was half way through my second ear of corn on the cob. Are you listening? The news ended, my fingers were all butter from the corn so I couldn’t change the channels or shut off the television. There I was, trapped in my chair. Imagine how I felt, knowing, that at any moment one of my friends could have walked in and thought that I was watching, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” (080525)
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61. Someone once wrote a book called, Things I Learned While Looking Up Something Else and who should turn up when I was Googling psychological evaluations, but Joseph Stalin. Listen to these quotes by Stalin. They are --- what --- 60 or 70 years old --- but you don’t have think too hard to realize that he was on the money when it comes to today. Stalin said, “When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope” Wow. You might have read that more than 70 percent of the goods on Wal-Mart's shelves come from China. Every time you and I buy something that was produced in China or some other country where there are no unions, we might remember this quote by Stalin --- we are buying them the rope they’ll use to hang us. (080525)
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62. It took American workers many years to establish labor unions. Corporate American hired thugs to crush unions. Of course that was back before they could crush unions with television commercials. The original purpose of unions was to give workers a living wage, safe working conditions and job security. Nowadays, with the wisdom that always comes with hindsight, we wonder why employers bothered to pay thugs and police to beat up workers who tried to establish unions --- or stand outside company gates on strike. What a big ado about nothing that was. Why in the world should any employer provide safe working conditions or pay profit-eating wages, when all they had to do was move their operation to some other country? Or pay themselves big wages while bankrupting their companies, just to get rid of the unions. This is, of course, what the big automakers have done now. Can you bring yourself to believe that the companies that haven’t already moved out of this land of the free are presently working on it? A few years back you paid higher prices in your mom and pop stores, but back then your dollars also circulated in your community and you got them back. The higher prices were also a reflection of good wages paid to American workers in union shops. Now, big box stores compound our economic problems by not only selling us foreign goods, but by sucking the dollars you spend out of your area. A casino couldn't impoverish an area any quicker than a big box store. American consumers are now in a lose-lose downward spiral. What are you going to do about it? (080525)
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63. Look where your credit card companies have set up shop. In the states that permit them to charge what --- 20 or 30 percent interest? A while back you certainly heard that defense contractor Halliburton was moving its corporate headquarters to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Dubai's friendly tax laws will add to Halliburton's bottom line which in a recent year reportedly took $2.3 billion of your tax dollars in profits. Have you ever wondered how many other big-name so-called American companies are legally incorporated in other countries or on tiny islands? Who cares and does it matter? Have you ever gone on line and discovered for yourself who pays the taxes in America today? An alarming percentage of most everything I’ve bought over the past 20 years was made in China. I kicked American workers in the pants with every purchase. My purchases also meant that every American in uniform who was ever dropped by a communist or fascist bullet died in vain. To paraphrase Joe Stalin, we are buying the communists the rope they will use to hang us. You know I don't mean the Cuban communists. Because corporate America can't exploit the cheap Cuban labor, we will keep Cuba impoverished and harmless. You’ve been told that the price of food has gone up 20 or so percent in the past year. But think about this --- doesn’t it really mean that for some mysterious reason the value of your dollar has dropped against the Euro and Asian currencies? Why did a woman who just came back from Norway in the spring of 2008 tell me, “They don’t like us.” Why are our overseas friends and cousins almost unanimous in hating and fearing the United States government? Why has the price of gasoline been allowed to more than double since Clinton left office? Why are American boys and girls being mutilated or killed every day without being told that their mere presence in Iraq generates a constantly-growing, faceless enemy (conveniently without nationality) who is simply called a “terrorist?” No matter where you look, the damning evidence is there: You know who has destroyed your America. Aren’t you glad that when your grandchildren whine that they can’t afford college or get a decent job you can at least look them in the eye and tell them that you voted for the other guy? (080525)
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64. Here’s a junk email that made me laugh when I read it: the junk email said, “We Pay Top Dollar For Unwanted Gold.” As anyone who buys groceries or gas or oil knows, the value of your dollar is dropping like a rock. When the history books are written, the two George W. Bush administrations will be compared to post WWI in Germany when Germany borrowed money to fight a war that couldn’t be won. The only difference being, WWI finally ended. Within a short while after WWI a German paid over a billion marks for a pack of gum. If you bought $1,000 worth of gold in 2001, it would be worth around $3,000 today. So, if you have a box of gold buried out back of your house or in a bank vault, would you rush right out and trade them for American dollars that go down in value every day? Gold has tripled in value against the American dollar during the recent Bush administrations. Whereas, you don’t even want to think about what those dollars you put in a savings account in 2001 are now worth against the Euro or Asian currencies. So, wouldn’t you laugh if you read, “We Pay Top Dollar For Unwanted Gold.” When was the last time you had any unwanted gold collecting dust in your house? (080525)
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65. It had just started to sprinkle when I drove into the dooryard so I jumped out of the truck and was yanking the clothes off the line when a squall hit. A fitted sheet was yanked off the line and disappeared over the top of a garage 200 feet away. I’d never seen anything like it. Later in the day, when I mentioned it to Richard, my computer guru, I asked him if he’d ever seen a tornado. He said he’d seen a tornado only once. It was doubly memorable because it was on the day when he divorced his wife. They split their estate between them. Among other things, he got one house and she got another house located a few hundred feet away. Because this was a friendly divorce they had gone out for dinner with a mutual friend and had just returned to the house that now belonged to him, when they heard a noise like a freight train approaching. They knew that something bad was about to happen so they ran down cellar. Whoom. The tornado went by, and when they came out a few shingles had been ripped off his house. But they could see that his ex wife’s house was gone. She said, “Oh Richard, what are we going to do? And Richard said, “What do you mean, we?” (080525)
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66. It just occurred to me that some women may have husbands who give them a list of what they want done every day. Here is what I would like you to do today, wife. Wash dishes, vacuum the floor, make the bed, do the laundry. You have heard me say that should I presume to trespass upon these little chores performed daily by my wife, Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, not only would I hear about it, but I would see her take down the clothes I had hung out to dry and then watch her hang them again the right way. On the other hand, although I don’t have time to do all the things I have to do and things I want to do, every day my wife comes up with several things she wants me to do that should be placed higher on my list of priorities than the things I already have to do. Here is my question to you: does coming up with lists of things to do belong solely to the domain of wives, or do some husbands do it, too? (080525)
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67. Back around the time I started college fifty years ago, I’d hear that the United States was sending aid to poorer countries. I was lucky enough to live in a rich country, so earning 100 dollars or so every summer to pay my yearly college tuition was not a problem. Then, all winter, every Saturday night I’d play for a dance at the Blue Goose in Belfast and half of the ten dollars I got for that paid for my room for the week and the other five bought my food for the week. But today’s high school graduates no longer live in a rich country. Unless they are in the business of foreclosing on unpaid mortgages, there is no way a summer job can pay a student’s tuition for a year of college. And, unless they are one of the Grateful Dead, there is no way four hours of playing in a band is going to pay their room and board for a week. Like it or not, America, which in the past has done so much for others, has changed - and is no longer willing to do anything for its own. This week we heard that the University of Maine has eliminated 80 or so positions. Perhaps you have recently noticed that our government has its own priorities for your tax dollars and that education is not one of them. But don’t despair. There is a college education out there available for you young people not blessed with rich parents. Did you know that in Sweden and Finland education is 100% free for everyone, regardless of where you come from? Google will help you discover that colleges all over Northern Europe are welcoming students from backward, third world countries. American high school graduates would do well to get in the line. (080525)
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68. There are some very clever characters in Maine. They are people who know how to get things done. What would you do if you were annoyed by the amount of valuable clutter your neighbors were accumulating in the weeds and bushes around their homes? Would you complain to the officials in your town? Make your neighbors haul the clutter to the dump? If you were smart you wouldn’t, because then you’d be considered a nut or a crank, or even worse, someone from away. Let me tell you how one man single handedly cleaned up his entire town. He dragged stuff home from the dump and artistically decorated his yard with old bicycles and bedsprings much as someone in Camden would plant flowers or shrubs. Old washing machine here. Comfortable sofa there. A few broken chairs and a dozen or so lawnmowers for parts. Weeds in between. At last some of his neighbors couldn’t stand it any longer and got up a petition which led to an ordinance. The selectmen then came to this man’s house and said that they were sorry but because of a new regulation everyone had to haul off their junk. (080601)
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69. “Dear humble, I have been listening to you since I was a kid. I (among many other young jazz musicians from the state) consider you and your show to have had a significant influence on my development as a musician.” This is singed: Matthew Fogg. You should know that Matthew Fogg is an accomplished piano player and that I will cherish this testimonial from him. Matthew says he’s been listening to me since he was a kid. Being a kid is a relative thing, isn’t it? When I was a sailor in the Coast Guard I thought that 19 year old girls were too young for me. It wasn’t until I was single and 41 years old that I had matured to the point where could appreciate how charming 19 year old girls can be. You might think of me as a kid because I wasn’t old enough to serve with you under McArthur or Patten. And you will remember in the movie What About Bob that Siggy, who is 12, says, “It seems like I was 6 only yesterday.” Matthew says he has been listening to this show since he was a kid. But I would consider Matthew’s parents young kids. What is old? Is old a relative thing? My wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, is only 58. When I tell her that I’m a tired old man, she says, “Not if I have anything to say about it.” (080601)
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70. You know that I consider my radio and television programs to be something of a public service. I really try to talk about things that I hope will benefit you, so listen closely. Although I have received almost as many letters from Nigeria as you have, I recently got one from Barrister Frank Smith asking me to present myself as next of kin to his deceased client who had deposited forty five million dollars in a bank in Holland. Think about this. A man who has somehow managed to scrape together 45 million dollars probably has more than a little bit on the ball. Would you agree with me that he probably knows how to handle and manage his money? And this man deposited 45 million of it in a bank in Holland. You and I might do well to find out what they are paying for interest over there. (080601)
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71. (prx) You know that I’m more likely to tell you what I do like than what I don’t like. I don’t go out of my way to tell you that I don’t like something --- although I will mention it if it jumps out and squirts water in my face. My present topic is country and western music. Inflicting any kind of unwanted music upon customers who have called your business and are placed on hold is a crime against humanity. You might argue that the changes, being somewhat predictable, keep country and western music from being interesting. But that is not my present thesis. I have reached a stage in life where I do not find myself empowered by song lyrics. While on telephone hold for the Ford garage I heard, “I ain’t as good as I once was.” (080601)
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72. (prx) My brother recently told me that Quakers won’t take an oath. I didn’t know that. And when you think about it, why should taking an oath be necessary? Isn’t it silly? You might explain this oath taking to me. Doesn’t it imply that we take it for granted that you can lie to your friends and business associates and customers in the normal course of business, but when you’re under oath all of a sudden you have to tell the truth? I don’t know, which is why I’m asking you. Doesn’t taking an oath strike you like a vestige of some pagan ritual? I was told that people in New England are not as likely to lie as people from other parts of the country. Do you believe that in New England lying is considered to be as bad as adultery? I think that might be true --- at least in the community where I was brought up --- because I do know that the circumlocutive prowess of people who can’t lie are often severely taxed. (080601)
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73. Every day in the last days of the Bush administration you heard on the news that so many republicans were so ashamed of what George W. Bush has done to America and the once economically conservative Republican party, that even the mention of some topics makes them blush and look down at their feet. Here’s your example. A neighbor from up country called me the other day and said that he was interested in attending the hands on solar energy workshop that Dr. Richard Komp held at my farm. I told the caller that I had been thinking about getting hot water and electricity from the sun for 20 or so years, but was finally pushed over the edge last winter by the tremendous surge in oil prices. And the man on the phone who had called me said, “I don’t talk politics.” (080601)
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74. Here’s a riddle that you can solve with hardly any thought at all. What’s the difference between Brad Pitt and his wife and The humble Farmer and his wife? Brad Pitt and his wife are breaking up. (080601)
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75. (080611 PRX) From time to time you see something on television that commands your attention. What would you do if you heard that at least 145 people in 16 states have been sickened by salmonella-tainted tomatoes, and then you looked up at the screen and saw a panic-stricken supermarket employee hauling cases of the deadly tomatoes out of the store on a handcart? I laughed. 145 people get sick and it is prime time national news and they throw the product out of the store? Suppose there was a product on store shelves that killed 400,000 Americans every year. Suppose that the product was responsible for one in every five deaths in the United States? Suppose that the product was sold by our friends who belong to the Chamber of Commerce, and Rotary, and who sit up front in church every Sunday. If there were such a product, what do you think our government should do? I bet they’d subsidize it. (080608)
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76. Why would you send a sympathy card to someone who is not one of your favorite people when I don’t even send cards to people I really like? I’m not a fan of cards. I don’t believe in sending cards. Sixty years ago my grandmother had a card that she sent back and forth to some friend. My grandmother’s parents were born in Aberdeen so she was 100 percent Scotch. This card was called a Scottish greeting card and it circulated. Every year grammie would get the same card back from the friend that she’d sent it to the year before. And back when I still sent cards to people I used to take a card that someone had sent me and cross the name off the bottom and send that. Why not? Is there anything wrong with crossing the name off a card someone sent you and sending it to someone else? I don’t believe in cards. One card costs what --- a dollar or more now. Who can afford to spend a dollar for a card that someone will look at and then perhaps throw in the trash and not even the paper recycling bin? Be honest with me. On your birthday or Christmas --- wouldn’t you much rather open the envelope and find a dollar bill instead of a card? (080608)
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77. I didn’t start to learn French until I was around 65 years old and at present I can read French on perhaps a sixth grade level. In other words, I can read, with a startling amount of comprehension, Harlequin Romances and the French subtitles we get on three television channels. Of course I can’t understand spoken French --- unless it is on a tape or CD or, even easier, an American speaking French. Because no one can understand a French person speaking French. But --- I started to learn French after accidentally getting off a train in a small town in France, being trapped there overnight, and almost starving to death. Right then, when I came home, I started to learn French. Knowing what a cheerful, friendly person I am, it might surprise you to hear that I was studying French just to be spiteful. I was learning to speak French just to be nasty. I was resolved to learn some French just so --- the next time I was in France --- the French would have to listen to me talk French with a Maine accent. (080608)
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78. An editor friend of mine says he’s doing a feature on me for his magazine. On one hand I’m flattered that he would think of me, and on the other hand I’m amazed that the general public would be interested in what I eat or at what time I get up in the morning. For over 30 years my life has been an open book. For over 30 years I have written newspaper columns about things that I hoped you would find interesting and entertaining. For over 30 years I’ve blabbed on the radio, hopefully in an entertaining manner, about what I’ve been doing and thinking. In recent years an enquiring public has been able to review my life and observations on dozens of humble Farmer web pages. I only mention this because of an email from this young editor friend who writes, “Robert, do you have any idea of how many stations are actually airing the show?” Don’t you find it interesting that we live in a quantitative society? One might well ask how much money I earn or how many women I’ve kissed over the past 60 years. My young friend wants to know how many stations are airing my radio and television shows. Wouldn’t you be more interested in a discussion of the quality of the material I scrape together each week? You and I could name a man whose radio show is carried by well over 1,000 radio stations. But is what he says likely to enrich the life of any intelligent person who hears him? (080608)
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79. You get them if you own a computer --- these emails that try to get you all excited about some horrible social injustice. The email that motivated me to talk with you about this today was about illegal immigration. Oh my. What a terrible thing this is. People sneaking into the country and then availing themselves of social benefits without learning our language or becoming citizens. If you ever bother to read through one of these emails, you realize that although what they are saying might be true, they are directed at uneducated people --- our friends and neighbors who can read but who have never been taught how to evaluate what it is they are reading. The real purpose of these inflammatory emails is to keep a good percentage of the population from thinking about America’s real problems. That well-known Nazi, Joseph Gobbles, who was in charge of Hitler’s Nazi propaganda, fine tuned this technique of keeping uneducated Germans in line. A repressive or failing government has always tried to divert the attention of uneducated citizens from that country’s real problems. The only thing new is doing it by email. (080615)
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80. Adolf Hitler was a fascinating person who warrants our study. In fourteen years a funny looking crazy little man with no money, no education and no friends, talked his way into running an entire country. The only thing he had going for him was an inordinate amount of determination, a fantastic memory, a belief that his country was the greatest in the world, and his mouth. Once in charge of the army, Hitler started World War II. Hitler thought he could win a war by simply sending in more men or more tanks. And then, as anyone who has read about the way Hitler ran WWII knows, he stood over a map and moved men and equipment around on that map --- although he had no understanding of what it took to feed and clothe an army and give them the supplies that they might need on a hot summer day or during a freezing cold winter. Germans are very smart people so you can believe that Hitler had many very smart generals. Can you guess what happened to those smart generals when they told Hitler that what he wanted them to do with their armies couldn’t be done? He replaced them with “yes men” generals who were not so smart. --- Or generals who knew it couldn’t be done but were willing to go along just to get a promotion. One of the good things about having generals who are more interested in being promoted than the well being of their troops, is that the day their last soldier is blown apart, they will continue to report that all is well. Thank goodness Americans are too smart to let anything like that happen here. (080615)
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81. One of the things I enjoy most about doing stage shows around Maine is getting to meet you. You more often than not have a story for me and this was true at a recent show in Portland. Only the names in this story are changed to protect the innocent. When a friend in the audience came up at intermission to introduce herself, I asked her if she were familiar with the Sneadly family in her town. I recall hearing that some of them used to ride to school on the back of a cow. She said, “Sneadlys. Don’t talk to me about Sneadlys. My mother and I were driving somewhere and we saw a cardboard box in the middle of the road. --- We stopped to move it and one of the Sneadlys was in it.” A day later I mentioned this to a friend who said that years ago there was a market for leeches. He said he heard they’d get one of the Sneadly boys drunk and set him out as bait in the Sheepscot River. Every hour or so they’d haul him ashore and pick the leeches off him. Don’t you have to believe that these stories have to be true? Don’t they transcend anything you could invent? (080615)
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82. If you were going to have a television show about animals what would you call it? Would you have a contest just to see what kind of quirky names people would come up with? And what would you call your guests --- the pet lovers? Petaphiles? You can be sure someone would suggest that you call your show: Meat the pets. That’s m e a t. Which reminds me, you’ve heard me ask many times, why would anyone spend time and money feeding and raising and getting to love a pet that you can’t eat? (080615)
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83. There are people who are worth listening to. These people are wise. I whined and sniveled to my wife’s granddaughter’s grandfather the other day that there were geniuses that I couldn’t stand to listen to. We’re talking here about genius that is detached from the realities of everyday life. We are talking about the kind of genius that has no understanding of what one might call social intercourse. These people are very often retired university professors who enter a room and then, without even realizing what they are doing, take possession of a captive audience and deliver a fifty minute lecture. After ten or 15 minutes of hearing these people run on, I get up and go out, sometimes with tears in my eyes because I don’t have the kind of patience it takes to tolerate or evaluate words that gush forth like water from a faucet. --- Especially when the topic is of no interest to me. And my wife’s granddaughter’s grandfather said, “If that person only came up with one great original idea in a year, he would be worth listening to.” You can believe that I have given this some thought. I respect the man who said it and I know that he is right. So --- the next time I hear an acknowledged genius talking talking talking, before I get up to leave I will whisper to the person sitting next to me, “Please listen closely so tomorrow you can tell me if he said anything important.” (080615)
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84. Here’s the science part of this program and being a professional do gooder, I am eagerly presenting it for what it might be worth to you. My email is humble at humblefarmer.com and I wouldn’t be surprised if you might have something to add. You’ve heard me say many times that I’ve been exhausted since I was a little boy. Exhaustion has kept me from writing books or looking for speaking jobs or pruning trees. When I’ve been on my feet for a morning, right after dinner, around one o’clock, my body shuts down. My body wants to go to sleep and an exhausted body has been dictating my life for as long as I can remember. Then, quite recently, one of my friends said that he had a sleep test at the hospital and that after flunking it he was given a face mask to sleep in. In some manner that I do not yet understand, this mask pumps air into him while he sleeps so he is not constantly waking up in the night. He says he is no longer exhausted in the afternoon and that the mask has changed his life. I sent out an email to several hundred select friends about this sleep problem and was amazed to learn that many people I’ve known for over 20 years would never get a good night’s sleep if it were not for this mask that enables them to breathe normally. I learned that this horrible affliction called sleep apnea is very common. From what I have just read on line and from what my friends who have sleep apnea have told me, when I consider my symptoms there is no doubt in my mind but what I have it. I am now on the list of people my doctor plans to see soon and expect to revel in boundless energy within a month. One of my friends with sleep apnea told me that after getting the mask, he required a harem. He also admitted that he lies. (080615)
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85. You have read of people who have gone from doctor to doctor until they finally found one who listened to them, took them seriously, understood the problem and straightened them out. Perhaps it has even happened to you. I agree, doctors are only human, but wouldn’t you think that some symptoms would be so common that a doctor could say, “Oh yes. Half the people I’ve seen today have complained about the same thing. Here’s what you do.” For years I have gone in for a blood count check up, hoping every time that it would reveal that I needed to have my thyroid medication doubled so I wouldn’t be tired. But my blood always comes out all right. For years I have suspected that when I died and they performed an autopsy, they would say, “Ah hah. Two of the arteries on his heart were plugged right solid. It’s a wonder he could move. No wonder he never amounted to anything. --- Now --- a friend just told me that I could be tired every day because I might have sleep apnea. Wouldn’t you think that years ago one of my doctor friends might have at least mentioned it? We Google and read on line that sleep apnea is an extremely common condition in older persons, occurring in at least 50% of persons over 60 years. Next week you won’t have to ask if I’ve been fitted with a breathing mask. You’ll know I’ve been cured if I occasionally have strength enough to say something funny. (080615)
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86. For many, many years one of my pet peeves was getting letters from radio friends that did not contain their contact information. If I wanted to send them a little token present for their kindness, which I often did, I didn’t have their address or their phone number. Years later we started using computers and nobody bought stamps when they could send an email message for free. After a year or two a friend showed me how to have my computer automatically append my contact information to the bottom of each of my emails as a courtesy to my friends. Ever since I learned that my computer would do that, I have waged a largely unsuccessful campaign to get my friends to do the same. As a matter of fact, the process of putting solar panels on my house was changed drastically simply because one of my solar guru friends didn’t have his telephone number on the bottom of his emails. As a result, while trying to contact him I called a wrong number which changed the face of the entire operation. I mention this because I recently begged a friend, who had contacted me by email, for his mailing address and telephone number. He replied with his post office box and a note that said, “Just for you, no one else --- please. Can’t handle masses of people.” Can’t handle masses of people? I replied and asked him if he would be inundated with friends if they knew how to find him. Would people be beating down his doors? For years I’ve invited my friends to stop by for supper. And on the bottom of every one of the thousands of emails I’ve sent out over the past few years is an invitation to stop by for supper anytime. How many people do you think have taken me up on it? I can remember one retired Colby professor and his wife who stopped by for dinner one noon. I found apple dumplings in the refrigerator and we warmed them up in the microwave and sat down and ate them. What do you think would happen if people knew where you were? Would the paparazzi be camping out in your back yard? If too many visitors do keep you from getting anything done, going without a shower or brushing your teeth for a week should alleviate the crunch. Even better, get a cat and put the litter box in your kitchen. (080615)
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87. People who claim to be in the know say that if we drill and drain the earth of its last drop of oil, at the present rate of consumption we have enough to last forty years. Forty years ago I was in grad school and it wasn’t all that long ago. Can you believe that in that same short amount of time --- the blink of an eye --- every drop of oil on the planet earth will be gone? We’re talking here about draining it all --- off shore, Alaska, Florida, Iraq. All of it. All those past and future wars for nothing. There are people who would like to quit smoking, they know they have to quit smoking and they want to quit smoking, but before they do they still want one last drag on that last cigarette. Compare the smoker to the most conservative republican who knows that right this very minute we have to develop a new oil-free society --- but before we do let's screw our children and grandchildren by squeezing every last cent of profit out of that last drop of oil. How greedy and how short sighted we are. We thought nothing of having children and now we think nothing of using up the last gallon of gasoline on the planet. Never mind that the children we brought into this world or our grandchildren or our great grandchildren’s children might find a more practical use for that oil other than heating homes or running engines. Solar energy is, of course, the solution. We read that, unlike energy derived from coal, oil or nuclear power, solar energy will not pollute the planet. We also read that the sun is likely to be pushing this clean energy our way for the next five billion years. There is only one great problem with solar energy: unlike coal, oil and nuclear power which pollute the planet, solar energy is free. Nobody, up to a recent date, has figured out a way to tax it or sell it for a profit. (080615)
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88. You have heard me mention that some solar guru friends are helping me install solar collectors on my farm. I will get free electricity from the sun with one type of solar collector and I will heat my water with another type of solar collector. Bottom line? Until the rain wears out the glass in the panels, I’ll be paying relatively little for energy. Solar energy has been a long time coming. Up until the most recent administration, most of us were able to cope with our heating and electrical bills so we didn’t seriously consider the solar alternative. But the corporate American wolf is at our doors and a few of us are taking out a second mortgage to put in a home-made solar system. When I spoke to my banker about extending my credit line, he said that people were coming into his bank to borrow money just to buy oil. Can you think of a better illustration of a lose-lose system? So --- everything about the solar operation on my farm looked promising until my electrician, a very intelligent friend of 50 years, came back from his first solar energy workshop and told me that what I was doing couldn’t be done. He had a folder full of glossy pamphlets with facts and figures that proved it. Later in the day I Googled the company and read up on the folks who presented the solar seminar my electrician friend had attended. They sell gas furnaces. (080622)
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89. Are you getting too many phone calls? Phone calls don’t bother me, because I enjoy hearing from you and my other friends. But --- if you would like people to have a quick change of heart and hang up on you when you answer your phone, here’s what you can do. I answer the phone on the first ring and say, “Robert Skoglund. Sorry to keep you waiting.” Most people in the world have no idea of how to carry on a conversation on the telephone so they will not respond to your cheerful greeting with, “Hello, my name is So and So and I’m calling about the unused exercise bike you have advertized in Uncle Henry’s.” They simply say, “Hello?” I don’t know why they won’t tell you who they are and then briefly tell you why they called, but they can’t. If you don’t believe it, try it yourself. I’m passing this along to you as a public service. And, again, this is the way it played out today. The phone rang. I answered before it even stopped ringing and said, “Robert Skoglund. Sorry to keep you waiting.” The woman on the other end said, “Hello?” I repeated, “Robert Skoglund. Sorry to keep you waiting,” and she hung up. This is Guess who, in St. George, Maine (080622)
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90. Call them what you will --- crazy --- mentally ill. There are people out there who, for reasons best known to themselves, will follow you around. They typically appear out of the blue. Completely unknown to you, one day they call or they knock on your door and they won’t go away. These people are called stalkers and they can change your life. By the way, unlike many of our topics of conversation, I didn’t get this from my daily random reading in the Encyclopedia Britannica. There is a stalker in St. George, Maine, and if you are an inveterate gossip, your day just got brighter. Let me pass along what I have learned so far. She is quite attractive by local standards, and local girls might consider her a slacker when it comes to putting away chips, Cool Whip, beer and fries. She has money. No one told me she has money but isn’t it obvious? The price of gasoline has put your average stalker out of business. (080622)
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91. Why do they send us countless junk mails that nobody ever reads? Because from time to time there is a headline there that grabs our eye and we read it. The headline that suckered me in was The 10 Worst Foods You Can Eat. You know that I am not a health food nut. I’m sure I eat many bad things --- although --- you have heard me say that since gaining 6 pounds four years ago at the Public Radio Program Managers Convention in San Antonio, I have not had ice cream. I have not had sausages or bacon. I have not had donuts or cake or pie or cookies or banana bread. As a result, I lost 15 pounds. But now --- here are the 10 worst foods you can eat and because I saw it in print you know it must be true. Donuts, Sausages, Fried Chicken --- already long gone on my list. But then here are potato chips, which I might eat once every 60 days or whenever anyone puts them in front of me. Bad bad bad. French fries, which I might have twice a year when we are on a boat traveling from country to country. Ok, we can give up chips and French fries. That’s five down. Spongy white bread. Another easy ok. I only ask for nutritionless white bread when I order a Subway sandwich, and that is only when I’m on the road far from home. I can change that to a bread that crunches. Nobody ever heard of Fried Wontons so that’s seven and number 8 is something I don’t even dare to say because it looks like an Italian word for an obscene act. Number 9 is imitation cheese in a can, which I’ve never heard of. But here’s number 10 --- the one that hit me hard because my wife Marsha slathers Cool Whip on the Jello I eat for dessert perhaps four nights a week. So --- not one of those ten worst foods will I ever eat again. Nor will I ever again open a junk mail that tells me what I shouldn’t eat. My morning rolled oats and grape juice might be on the list and that would be asking too much. (080622)
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92. People from away don’t know how to get things done. One day I had an old 2 car garage hauled in on a truck. Jerry came in with his back hoe, dug off the top soil, put down gravel, I built a form and cement was poured and setting up before the sun went down. It would take someone from away a month or so to facilitate an operation like that. Today I wanted an inspection sticker on my truck. The girl in the office said that the boss was away and I’d have to try to catch him some time tomorrow. I said that when I saw him I was going to tell him that he ought to double the salary of everyone in his office. She said for me to come down at 4 the same afternoon. (080622)
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93. I don’t know about you, but I don’t need to attend a seminar on how to succeed. You know the secret of success just as well as I do. Get out there and work. You might know a successful, self-made person who didn’t work 18 hours a day --- and still felt good at the end of the day --- to get there, but I doubt it. You might have also heard the tip I’m about to give you on how to succeed, but I really doubt that because nobody ever told me. You have heard me say that was recently diagnosed with sleep apnea. I’ve been exhausted ever since I was a little kid but, although I’ve complained to my doctor for years about being exhausted, I had to go to my doctor and beg to be tested for sleep apnea. By the way, I was told about sleep apnea by a good friend who might weigh 300 pounds who has sleep apnea. But, the doctor said, “Oh no. You are a wimpy little guy and only overweight people have sleep apnea.” But, I prevailed and the results of the test showed that I wake up 27 times every hour. My brain has not had any neurological sleep for 60 or so years. Because I’ve been exhausted for 60 years, I’ve never been able to do anything like a normal person. This is why I’ve never amounted to anything. For my entire life I’ve been running on only half my cylinders. But now they’ve given me a mask to wear when I sleep. It pumps air in my nose when I sleep so when I get out of bed I’ll now be awake all day and feel as good as you and any other normal person. For the first time in my life, I’ll be able to do a day’s work. So --- good news --- if you’ve been a dubber like me all your life and have never been able to get out of your own tracks, forget about those seminars on How To Succeed. Visit your doctor and beg him to let you be tested for sleep apnea. (080622)
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94. When I spoke to my radio friends about my newly diagnosed sleep apnea, 20 or 30 people wrote to tell me that they had sleep apnea and that breathing through the air mask eliminates the problem. If you wear the sleep mask you discover that you are not exhausted all the time and, as a result, you finally have a life. You will recall my saying that one friend said that after sleeping in the mask for one night, he required a harem. When I mentioned this to my 80-year-old friend Gene, he said, “Do you suppose he’d loan it out for a weekend? (080629)
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95. Over the years hundreds of my letters have been published in newspapers. Two of the three letters I sent to USA Today were published, not only because of their import, but because they were only two or three sentences long. Newspaper editors like short letters and I flatter myself to think that if I have a good idea, if I spend two or three hours playing with it, I can often squeeze it down into two pithy sentences. Here’s an example: “When some fanatics from Saudi Arabia crashed a plane in New York City, President Bush invaded Iraq. Today there are people in Ecuador who are grateful the pilots were not from Peru.” Don’t you agree that those two sentences say more than many long articles you’ve read on the topic? But now let’s talk about Public Radio Exchange where producers are not paid by what they’ve said but for the amount of time it took them to say it. Too many of the pieces I’ve submitted to PRX to be played on the radio are 53 or 57 seconds long --- just below the one-minute cutoff point where wanna-be producers start to get into the really big bucks. Of course there is an answer. I will continue to submit these rants to PRX bbbut they will be rrrread by my fffriend who sssss ttt u utters. (080629)
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96. You might recall hearing me say that one day I looked out the window and told my wife Marsha that 10 generations of my relatives had lived next door and that I knew 7 of them. She said, “Only seven?” So you can believe what she said when I told her I hadn’t had any neurological sleep since Roosevelt was president. She said, “Which Roosevelt?” (080629)
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97. I don’t know how you feel about going to the hospital for treatment but it doesn’t bother me a bit. As a matter of fact, I feel rather good about it because I know that I am getting something back for the more than $7,000 a year I pay in supplemental health insurance. --- Which is, by the way, two or three thousand dollars more than I get in a year in Social Security. Yes, I feel good about going to the hospital, especially for some procedures where they give you a little happy pill to start you on the road to la la land. If you don’t drink or do drugs, that happy pill can be the highlight of your entire year, because it relaxes every muscle in your body and there is no way in the world to explain it. So, my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, was somewhat surprised when it took two neighbors and a lot of her Type-A persuasion to get me in the car to go. You see, for this particular medical procedure, it was necessary for me to fast for an entire day before going to the hospital, and after fasting for an entire day all I wanted to do was climb a mountain and meditate. (080629)
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98. The other day someone told me about a language comprehension study. The men in the study only heard every fifth word but it still made sense. If you’ve been married for over 20 years this is probably no surprise. (080629)
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99. No matter how old you get, no matter how much you think you know about people, your most fundamental beliefs can be shattered by a most casual happenstance. You’ve seen young people wearing t-shirts that advertise most anything. And, if I’m doing an exceptionally dirty job around the farm, you might see me wearing a hat that says Baltimore Orioles. Of course, you’d have to catch me unawares to see me in that hat, because I always feel apologetic when I wear it and I’d never put it on in front of polite company. Which is the point of this rant. While out on Monhegan the other day I saw a woman wearing a shirt that was covered with pictures of birds. I said, “I see you like birds.” The woman said, “No, it was on sale.” (080629)
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100. If you have never heard of Monhegan, I suggest that you Google it. Monhegan is an island way, way out -- 10 or so miles out from St. George, Maine where I live and Monhegan is one of the most interesting places in the world. When I was a little kid I would occasionally go to variety shows at the Odd Fellows Hall in Tenants Harbor where fishermen with guitars would sing this song. “Now when you go down to Monhegan, Put your money in your shoes, Cause them women on Monhegan got them Deep Monhegan Blues.” And of course it goes on with many verses about what happens when one goes down to Monhegan. --- Which, by the way is never called Monhegan Island. It is Monhegan. I was 52 years old the first time I went down to Monhegan, and, yes, it was a woman who has a house out there who persuaded me to make that first trip. In recent years I’ve gone out there three or four times every summer to tell stories in the Monhegan schoolhouse. I go out on the morning boat at 7 and sit on a rock under an apple tree and sell tickets to my evening show. I sleep in a friend’s woodshed and come home on the first boat back in the morning. It’s a long day because there is only one public toilet on Monhegan and it’s a long way from my rock. The toilet operates on the honor system and as you leave you see a sign that asks you to drop two quarters into an inch and a half piece of white plastic pipe that sticks up out of the floor. Curiously enough, although there are no signs on Monhegan directing daytrippers to that one public toilet, before the day is out, every single one of them manages to find it. Does that not very clearly explain to you how young people can come into a strange town and, within a few minutes, buy a package of dope? (080629)
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101. North Haven and Vinalhaven are two islands not too far from here. When my brother was in the Maine State Legislature North Haven and Vinalhaven were in his bailiwick, so he was out there often. One day he asked someone about the young man he saw cutting bushes out by the island’s small airport runway. It seems that when this man was a little kid, he cut bushes and ran errands around Tom Watson’s summer estate, and because the kid was very bright and was a good worker Tom Watson took a liking to him. And it came to pass that Tom Watson sent this young man off to Harvard where he graduated with honors and came back to the island which is where my brother saw him doing what he likes to do which is cutting bushes. He’s very good at it. (080629)
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102. They were at it again this morning on TV. They were talking about diets. What kind of diet is best? I don’t know the names of the different diets and I don’t care because I’m not going to go on a diet. You have heard me say it before but I am going to say it again. When I went to the Public Radio Program Managers Convention in San Antonio three or four years ago, I gained six pounds in three days. If I were the executive director of the American Pork Producers Association, I’d find out what they put on those banquet tables down there at the Riverwalk. When I came home from Texas I was 175 or so pounds and I couldn’t stoop over to tie my shoes. So --- I stopped eating cake, pie, ice cream, cookies, donuts, sausages and bacon. And I don’t mean I cut down --- I stopped. Not one crumb of a sweet for three years. This anything-in-moderation doesn’t work when you are talking about ice cream and chocolate cake. I don’t get any more exercise than I ever did and I eat as much spaghetti and rolled oats as often as I ever did. You know that I don’t drink soda or beer. It goes without saying that beer is famous for putting guts on even young men. And --- because I have cut out the evil sweets --- I have lost more than 15 pounds. I am proud of this, as any old man should be, and the other night up in our bedroom, just before I put on my pajamas, I walked down to the foot of the bed. My wife Marsha was sitting up in bed reading a book. But I turned sideways and sucked in my gut which gave me the profile of a 55-year-old kid, and went, “Ahem, ahem”. And my wife looked up. And her eyes opened wide. And her book dropped in her lap. And she said, “Wow, I’ve got to trim your eyebrows.” (080720)
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103. Do you have time to listen to the radio? I don’t. Even when I drive and would have time to listen to the radio, I plug in any of half a dozen languages on CDs. This year it’s Italian. Those of us who have made radio programs for over 30 years don’t want to admit it, but it is true. If you are an educated person with an average IQ, there really is not much of anything of interest on the radio. I don’t even care to listen to my own program, because I’ve already heard the punchline to most of the stories. So --- you might like to know that out there in radio’s intellectual wasteland there is an excellent 50 minute piece about language on PRX. It is called Speaking Klingon. You can believe that Speaking Klingon is a product of MIT and Berkeley. Check out Speaking Klingon on PRX. And, now, without even hearing the program, how would you communicate with an alien? Probably at a respectable distance if it were green and slimy. You’ve seen the science fiction movies where the space ship lands, a door opens, and a weird looking thing comes out and says in a mechanical voice: “I am Gar from Klingon.” I have always wanted to make my own version of that scene. The space ship lands. The door opens. A weird looking thing comes out and says, “Hi. I’m Peter Smith from Scarsdale.” (080720)
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104. You hear it all the time: “We must eliminate our dependence on foreign oil.” Does it make you laugh? All the oil will be gone in 50 years. You might not realize how silly their chatter is unless you have lived long enough to realize that 50 years goes by in the blink of an eye. I got out of high school in 1953. I got out of the Coast Guard in 1957, and I got out of the Coast Guard because I didn’t want to wait until 1975 to retire. Yes, I could have retired 33 years ago --- when I was 39 -- but when you are looking at 39 when you are 21, the next 18 years seem like a wicked long time. When you are 21 your 39th birthday is so far in the future that it will never come. --- Or it is so far away that it doesn’t warrant your attention. And that is why some young people might believe the grown men --- who stand up and say, with a straight face, that we have to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. The joke, of course, is that we have to eliminate our dependence on any kind of oil --- we have to get all our heat and electricity from wind and geothermal and solar energy, because if you drill every blessed drop of oil in the world, every single bit of it will be gone in less than 50 years --- a blink of an eye, from the standpoint of anyone over 70. You know there are powerful oil and nuclear lobbies out there holding back the wind and solar technologies. But --- my ancestors kept cows in their homes so the places wouldn’t freeze up in the winter. Think about this --- when the oil is gone, we could be heating our homes with animals again. So, the next time your neighbor says, “We must eliminate our dependence on foreign oil,” ask him if he is an advocate of the four-dog-night. (080720)
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105. My friend Julian said that he read that a recent wind in Aroostook County blew down a barn. It picked up two pigs which a neighbor saw going through the air past his house. You might agree with Julian that seeing two pigs fly by would go a long way towards reducing alcohol consumption most anywhere. (080720)
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106. I read the Encyclopedia Britannica every morning, which can only get you in trouble if you go on the radio and tell your listeners what you have read. As I recall, this morning I read that Cezanne’s father had a bank, so you can imagine how pleased the old man was when the kid said he wanted to go down the road and paint a picture of the house where the man hung himself. I could never afford to have children, and I have not suffered for it. One does not miss the children and grandchildren one never had. And, do they ever turn out exactly the way you want? Even children who are schooled in the home might, when released, suddenly turn on you and attend a liberal arts college. I recall mentioning this to you before but here it is again. Some elderly guests at our home once told me that their adult children now generate more trouble and worry than they did when they were toddlers. When I asked what they did, I was told, “They have children. They borrow money.” (080720)
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107. What have your kids done that you wish they hadn’t done? Did your daughter get drunk and smash up a car? Did your son meet a voluptuous girl who got him to join a cult? Did your daughter put a ring in your granddaughter’s nose? Do your children get so much sun you know they’ll have skin cancer by the time they’re 50? Did your son join the army where he’ll earn $30,000 or so a year and risk having a leg blown off, when he could have signed up with the mercenaries and gone to the exact same place and had his leg blown off for $170,000 a year? How can your children have such good genes and still do such stupid things? (080720)
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108. I can tell you that when you are 72, you don’t feel a bit different than you did when you were 22. When I was 22 I was so tired I couldn’t get out of my tracks then, either. But --- some things do change when you get old and I’m going to tell you about one of them. Last night when my wife Marsha cleaned the dishes off the supper table, she said, “Are you going to finish eating the rest of the salad that’s on your shirt?” (080727)
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109. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to talk about sleep apnea again. On Monday morning I emailed Bob and asked him if he’d like to go to the television meeting with me later in the day. He called back very quickly to tell me that the meeting was on the following day --- Tuesday. Bob didn’t need to tell me that the meeting was on Tuesday. I knew that. It is on my calendar right here by my desk --- Tuesday, television meeting. But I was going to go the day before --- on Monday. I’ve had a couple of other scary things along that line happen to me recently and it might have to do with getting a normal mind. You certainly know I'm now sleeping with a sleep apnea mask. Last month when I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, they said my brain had received no neurological sleep for 65 years --- I've never been hitting on all of my cylinders, and I’m very excited about having my IQ raised and my memory improved by the sleep mask so I can be a normal human being. But my improved, new lifestyle seems to be moving me in another direction and I've made some silly stupid and frightening mistakes since sleeping in the mask. In its process of making me into a normal human being, the cure seems to have lowered my IQ. (080727)
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110. My wife Marsha has 47 first cousins and one of them was here last week. She said they had an exchange student in their home for two weeks. Of course, they asked for one who didn't smoke. He was a French kid from Zieer and they picked him because his picture looked so sweet, and they figured he'd be less worldly than a French kid from France. But when he arrived he showed them some nude pictures of himself and told them that his father and grandfather had taken him to a brothel to get him drunk on his sixteenth birthday. Of course, you go down way east on the coast of Maine and that kind of party wouldn't be necessary. But then they found a heap of cigarette butts underneath this kid's bedroom window. I'll bet he'll think twice before he lies on his application again, because they punished him. They made him drive a car in Boston. (080727)
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111. If you're on the Internet, you know about junk email. Someone is always mailing you a scheme that will make you rich in two weeks. Another common piece of junk mail asks if you are interested in his or her background. They claim to be able to find your old friends, lost loved ones, dead beat parents, or your debtor's assets. They claim to be able to find safe deposit boxes, social security death records, non-published numbers and driver's license records. They will search vehicle records and pre-trial comprehensive reports. They will verify education, employment and professional licenses. One of the most curious things about this service, is that although they claim to be able to find out anything you want to know about anyone else, they also claim to be able to change your records so that people can only find out good things about you. (080803)
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112. You have heard of compartmentalized thinking and that is my topic now. When I got out of college I bought a completely furnished house with a garage on an acre of land for $5,000. A year or two later I bought another house with an attached barn on an acre of land for $3500. Back in those days a Maine schoolteacher could buy a house with one year’s salary. Today a Maine schoolteacher would have to work around five years to buy those very same houses, which are now 40 years older and should have depreciated. I can’t tell you how it happened, but the salaries of working people in the United States have been seriously eroded. You might have heard old people wonder aloud how a young couple could even think about buying a house nowadays. But then --- you turn on your television and see that there is a crisis in America: the value of houses has dropped umpty ump percent. In other words, if the value of houses continues to drop, they might get back down to where they relatively were 40 years ago and teachers right out of college might once again be able to buy a house with their first year’s salary. You tell me --- is this good, or is it bad? (080803)
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113. I went down to Monhegan where I did a benefit show for the Wharf, which needs repair. The only way you can get to Monhegan if you don’t have a helicopter is to swim ashore and crawl up over the rocks or bring your boat in to the wharf or dock. Call it what you will, the dock is important to the people who live on Monhegan. I use the dock myself when I go out there, which tells you two things about me, doesn’t it? I don’t have a helicopter and I do not choose to swim ashore and crawl up over the rocks. Chris Rollins lives on Monhegan. Ten or 11 generations of his ancestors are buried up on the hill so you have to assume he feels very much at home out there. I’ve known Chris for several years, but just met his wife, who, through the eyes of this 72-year-old man, is a pretty young thing from away. He met her on Monhegan when she was 18, but Chris says that after that she had two husbands before he married her. I was surprised to hear that such an attractive and well-spoken woman was already on her third marriage and suggested to Chris that perhaps she had made some poor choices. And he said, “Nah, I think she just takes what comes along.” (080803)
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114. Children speak the truth. I can remember sitting in the back of a fifth grade classroom while Paul Strout, who was probably 11 years old, stood at the blackboard and did an imitation of me, the teacher. He had everything down --- my mannerisms --- my speech. The stage lost a consummate master when Paul decided to work instead. Adults who speak the truth are likely to be avoided in good company. You will remember one of Agatha Christie’s adult characters who spoke the truth. Everyone was terrified to be in the same room with her. She was eventually murdered, which was probably just as well. Mastering the art of circumlocution is a rite of passage for children. Those who can do it, are accepted into adult society. Those who do it well, write books. Our topic came to my attention on a tour last week when our guide raised a hand without a thumb and asked anyone had a question. A small boy said, “I see that you have an unfriendly dog.” (080803)
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115. In the fall of 2008 a friend of mine who is an employee of the US Forest Service, had to sign a “loyalty pledge” to defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. He says that only the Secret Service keeps him from doing what he has sworn to do. (080817)
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116. We have a bed and breakfast. And on top of that we have many friends. It is not unusual to see ten or more people eating at our table at any given time. So we find more than our share of things scattered about the house that people have left behind. Today I am dealing with Sally Tuttle’s shirt or light jacket which she left draped over a dining room chair. Because it says, “Made in the USA” on the label, I think I’ll keep it as a curiosity. (080817)
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117. Radio friend John Doucette over in Nova Scotia sends us this news item about a mechanical gorilla that was stolen from outside a store in Machias, Maine. The mechanical gorilla turned up in a cornfield in Swanton, Vt. According to this news article, Ken Booth, who made the thing, helped them find it by posting a YouTube video offering a reward for the gorilla’s return. Then --- another video turned up on YouTube, showing a hooded person demanding a $1 million ransom. You know, I probably wouldn’t believe a story like this, had I not just finished watching the Republican National Convention. (080914)
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118. My friend Doreen tells me that once upon a time there was a religious commune. It was a friendly commune and everyone got along very well. But one day tragedy struck. A young man fell and hit his head so hard that he didn’t wake up that day. Nor did he wake up the following day. The members of the commune prayed for the young man and every day two or three people stood by his bed singing hymns --- all day long. Then, one day, after 16 weeks, a miracle. The young man opened his eyes and he looked at the people standing by his bed --- and he raised his hand and they could see that he was going to speak. And he said, “Please turn off the music.” (080914)
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119. Back in the 1920s and 1930s you’d hear people say, “He’s coo coo.” Coo coo is an old term that meant that people or things were about as crazy as they could get. Coo coo came to mind today when I heard someone on television mention the war on terror. The war on terror. We are being told that we are waging a war on terror but you really have to be capable of some mental gymnastics to believe that we are waging a War On Terror. See if you can hang here with me as I walk you through it. A while back, some fanatics from Saudi Arabia crashed an airplane in New York City. Immediately, people all over the world who might not have even liked the United States for one reason or another, felt bad for the United States, because these crazy men from Saudi Arabia had killed a lot of innocent people in New York City. But --- soon afterwards, ostensibly to get revenge on this handful of crazy men from Saudi Arabia, the United States attacked a country called Iraq and all that good will we had earned by being the injured party was wiped away. But, before we could attack Iraq, our propaganda machine had to turn things around. We couldn’t call the men who crashed the plane Saudis because we were attacking Iraq. So we had to call them terrorists instead and just hope that Americans who couldn’t read wouldn’t notice the difference. And when you think about it, all those guys over there have brown faces and wear funny looking hats, so one is probably just as bad as another. So it really doesn’t matter if you are blowing up people in Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan or India because you are fighting people you call terrorists. The bad news for poor working people is that although there might have only been a handful of these crazy terrorists back on 9-11, every time an American bomb accidentally kills someone, every one of the dead person’s brothers and children and cousins and friends all of a sudden has a reason to hate Americans. So every day the American war machine is creating more people that they can call terrorists. This is a great improvement over the old days when we could declare war on Japan or Germany, because back then when the Japs and Germans were pounded into the ground the war stopped. But our military industrial war machine has smartened up a lot over the past 60 years so now they don’t go after Saudis or Germans --- they go after terrorists because the war against terror is a self-sustaining war that can go on forever against an endless and faceless enemy. And because a few very rich people are getting richer by running so-called security and war related industries, you might suspect that it is going to be very difficult to stop this thing they call the war on terror because a war on terror knows no national boundaries. Our American war machine can stagger about like a blind 800 pound gorilla and wipe out people anywhere. What got me started on this so-called War On Terror, anyway? Oh yeah, we were talking about that old term coo coo. Coo coo means that things are just about as crazy as they can get. (080914)
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120. 4. My wife’s brother Steve runs a gambling casino in Colorado. The last time I visited him I noticed that his office was only one of many small offices. He doesn’t have a big office. So I asked him if he really were the boss, and he said, “You sit down in a room with five women and say that you’re the boss and see how far that goes.” (080914)
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121. No matter where you live, you are proud of your town and the things that your town is famous for. Here on the coast of Maine when you go into a restaurant, the best seats are those overlooking the harbor and all the lobster boats. When I visited my brother-in-law Steve who runs a gambling casino in Colorado, the hostess in the casino restaurant very proudly seated me by the window overlooking a Brink’s truck. (080914)
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122. No matter what you do for a living, there are certain questions that you hear over and over so many times that you finally develop a standard answer for it. My cousin Truman Hilt is an antique dealer and when people come into his store and ask, “Hey, do you buy antiques?” he always says, “I have to --- I can’t steal enough to stay in business. My brother-in-law Steve runs a gambling casino in Colorado and when people come in and ask him, “Hey, what’s a good machine?” he always says, “The ATM. You can’t lose.” (080914)
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123. When I was five or six years old, way back before the Indians cornered the gambling market in Maine, most anybody could set up a slot machine. Alvah Harris had a slot machine in his garage in Tenants Harbor. One day my grandfather Skoglund gave me a nickel to put in that slot machine and I got back thirty-five cents. That was back around 1941 and to the best of my knowledge, since that day I have never put money in a slot machine. When I mentioned this to my brother-in-law Steve who runs a gambling casino in Colorado, he wanted to put my picture in his front window with a sign underneath that said, “This man has a lifetime profit of 700 percent from playing slot machines.” (080914)
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124. You’ve heard me say that I read the Encyclopedia Britannica every day. There must be 30 or so volumes on the shelf by the bathroom door and I just pull out one at random, open it at random, and read for ten minutes at random. The name Karl Follen recently turned up. His activity for civic freedom in Germany kept him from teaching at German universities so in 1824 he came to the United States where he became Harvard’s first professor of German language and literature. While at Harvard Professor Follen was instrumental in establishing the first US college gymnasium. But, in 1835 his appointment as a professor at Harvard was not renewed, probably because he spoke out against slavery. It took a few more years and a Civil War before we were ready to give up slavery. Our 2008 presidential election will probably be considered a turning point as critical as the Civil War: --- it certainly indicated that the people in this country were getting tired of fascism. (080914)
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125. Post office employees are about the only people who know how to talk on the telephone. When you call the post office, someone will pick up the phone and tell you who they are. When I answer the phone I also identify myself. I say, “Robert Skoglund, sorry to keep you waiting.” Then, instead of telling me who they are and what they want so we can have a conversation, the mysterious caller on the other end will say something like, “Hello Robert. Is that you?” That brings us back to the beginning, so I’ll repeat what I said, “Robert Skoglund, sorry to keep you waiting.” I’m polite about it. I don’t say, “You called Robert Skoglund. I answered and told you that I am Robert Skoglund. What is it about this conversation that you don’t understand? Now -- I’m trying to be calm while I’m telling you about this although it annoys me terribly --- and you’re in impartial observer, so let me ask you. They are calling Robert Skoglund. I have already mentioned my name twice, but they’ll ask again, “Hello, hello. Robert, is that you?” Are people idiots? Why this, “hello, hello. Is that you Robert?” I want to cry, but I control myself and never reply with “No, I’m Spiderman. Who do you think answers the telephone in my house?” Why can’t people simply tell me who they are and what they want so we can get down to business? I’m Robert Skoglund in Tenants Harbor, Maine, sorry to keep you waiting. (080921)
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126. Over the past few months I’ve been seeing a specialist for the coughing problem I’m having with my lungs. Unlike my regular doctor, I don’t know anything about this doctor. I don’t know if he has children, if he is married, where he lives, I know nothing. But when I left his office one day in October, he asked me how I thought the election was going to go. I didn’t say a thing. I kind of shrugged my shoulders and slipped out the door. Because --- well, you think about it. Would you discuss politics with a person you don’t know who has a license to inject substances into your body?
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127. You remember the old The Cat’s On The Roof and She Won’t Come Down story. This story is an example of how to give someone bad news a little bit at a time, so they won’t be overcome by the sudden shock. I suspect doctors employ the same technique when they have a patient who is suddenly struck down with some incapacitating disease. And this bothers me --- because --- I’ve been coughing a lot lately and I’ve been in to see a lung specialist about it several times. There is a box of Kleenex in the waiting room. And if you really stretch your mind you can understand why a lung specialist would have a box of Kleenex in his waiting room. What worries me, is that the last time I visited, he gave me a full box of Kleenex to take home. (080921)
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128. The Common Ground Fair is the most impressive gathering of people to be held in the state of Maine. They have this Common Ground Fair every year, the last weekend in September, and I’m always there. My favorite event is the sheep dog demonstration. They put these little dogs out in a field with a dozen sheep and when the dog’s trainer whistles, these dogs jump up and herd the sheep into a pen. Every organization in Maine that might be in favor of some positive political or social change is represented at the Common Ground Fair. My friend David Bright said that the most shocking thing he saw there in three days was the endangered species booth. David went over to check it out and there was no one there. (080921) USE ON COVER
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Skipp 129. I figure that besides entertaining three audiences at the Common Ground Fair last week on three different days, I talked with 450 radio friends one on one at my booth. Of course, the reason I enjoy the fair so much is because it’s the only chance I have all year to actually meet you and my other friends who have listened to me on the radio for 30 years. Here’s a story one of those young friends just told me. He said he had listened to me on the radio for years but had never had a chance to hear me in person. So, a couple of years ago he was very excited when he looked at his schedule of events at the Common Ground Fair and discovered that if he hurried he’d be able to see me telling funny stories on stage. So he ran all the way over to where I was performing and got there just in time to hear a great roar of laughter from the audience. “And when the laughter died down, you said, ‘That’s the funniest story I know,’ and walked off.” (080921)
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130. I had never heard of patchouli soap until last September when someone up in Unity told me about it. I might change that to say that although I might have smelled patchouli soap many times, as far as I know I have never heard of patchouli soap until a radio friend named Robert told me that a bar of patchouli soap got him stopped by customs at the border. When he rolled down the car window and the officer got one whiff of what was inside, he ordered Robert to pull aside. The customs officer said he knew Robert had marijuana in the car so he might just as well tell them where it was. Robert denied it so they pulled everything out of his car and combed through everything until Robert remembered that he had a bar of patchouli soap in the glove compartment. I don’t recall why he had it or what he was going to do with it, but if you Google patchouli soap you will learn that marijuana smokers keep it around because it masks the smell of marijuana. Here’s what turned up on line when I Googled patchouli soap: “An oil worn as perfume by dirty hippies in lieu of showering or bathing in any way. Used to mask the scent of marijuana and week old body odor, but usually it merely mixes with the scent to form a new, BO/Patchouli combo that can repulse even those who are olfactorally challenged.” So --- the next time you smell it, at least you’ll know what it is. (080921)
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131. The wheel was invented when man needed to transport material over a great distance. Fire was first utilized when man moved north out of Africa and needed to keep warm at night. Bills or invoices evolved when Maine inn keepers started charging so much that they couldn’t look the customer in the eye when it came time to squaring accounts. (080928)
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132. You might have read in the paper that during a typical deer season in Michigan, about a dozen hunters die with heart attacks. That little furry head sticks itself up out of the brush, and these grown men get so excited that they drop right over. Shock from the unexpected can kill. Think of all the teachers who would probably drop dead, if that certain student ever cleaned out the rat's nest in his desk and handed in a paper that didn't look as if he'd blown his nose on it. Yes, the shock from the unexpected can kill, which is why I don't dare risk coming to supper the first time my wife calls me. (080928)
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133. There are those of us who trust in science and there are people who don’t. Even back before there was such a thing as science, people wanted answers. And because human nature doesn’t change, ten thousand years ago, people asked themselves the same questions that we ask today. You can well believe that one of the first questions that came to a philosopher’s mind was, why am I here? How did life start on earth? Because people needed answers to these questions, they invented Zeus and Ra and anyone who might have had a different slant on things was hung up by the thumbs. Of course, Zeus and Ra now have more adherents than ever and probably never will be superseded by science. Another question that delves even deeper into the innermost recesses of the human psyche has been asked by your rude mechanicals since the dawn of civilization. If you have ever stood by a bench in any kind of repair shop or office you’ve wondered how it happens, too. No matter how many tables or flat working surfaces you bring into your work area, they immediately get covered with clutter. (080928)
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134. My wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, left off scrubbing and polishing for two days and went down to Connecticut last weekend for her 40th high school reunion. I took advantage of her absence to put two supers full of honey on the dining room table and to set up the honey extractor in the kitchen. When you extract honey, you cut the wax cap off the little honey cells. If the caps are too shallow in the frame to be cut off, you have to scratch them off with a tiny steel rake. And no matter how carefully you cut off or scratch off the caps, you do some damage to the cells. Fortunately, I knew that when I put those frames back in the hives, the neurotic-compulsive bees wouldn’t rest until they’d cleaned up my mess and made everything as good as new. Which is why I also didn’t worry too much about the mess I made in the kitchen. (081005)
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135. Whom do you hate today? When I was a kid, a grandmother who lived not too far from me was upset when her grandson married a Finn. When we went to war against the Japs and Germans, things changed and we didn’t worry if grandchildren married Swedes or Finns. You might even be old enough to remember when the fear and hatred we had of the Japs and Germans was shifted over onto the Communists. I was already out of high school when just saying that someone was a communist was enough to put them out of business. Then we started doing business with the communists and we couldn’t get enough good things from these people who magically became our friends --- just as the Japs and Germans had done when I was a kid. You should know that I was too young to shoot Chinese communists in Korea and too old when we found an excuse to shoot them in Viet Nam, which, by the way, did fulfill its intended purpose of making a few people very rich. You might have recently been getting redneck email urging you to hate Muslims. If you’ve lived long enough and have a good memory, you realize that it isn’t really important whom you hate and fear as long as you hate and fear someone. Hate and fear are good for big business. And --- if you’re old enough, or if you have read any history, you know that you can pretty well tell who is running things in any given country by what you are allowed to say about whom. During the Bush administration it was difficult for some Americans to find work if they had recently spoken out against fascism. (081005)
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136. In September I took 8 quarts of honey from my bees. Yes. I stole from my workers. First time in my life I ever felt like a republican. (081005)
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137. Every week they have a husband's marriage seminar out to our grange. At the session last week, the councilor asked Winky’s father, who was approaching his 50th wedding anniversary, to tell everyone how he had managed to stay happily married to the same woman for 50 years. Winky’s father said, "Well, the best thing I ever did was take her out to Monhegan Island for our first wedding anniversary. You know, for our 50th anniversary I think I’ll go out there and bring her back." (081012)
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138. Two lobster catchers from Down East were talking: “If I were to have an affair with your wife and she had my baby, would we be related?” “No, but we’d be even.” (081012)
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139. I just saw a commercial on television that said that my brain might be undernourished. Then, to drive home the argument, it gave a printed quote on the screen from some medical association that said that the problem was ubiquitous. And after ubiquitous it had the word widespread in brackets. I suppose they defined ubiquitous just in case anyone with an undernourished brain were watching. (081019)
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140. Who do you think cries out for new schools? Can you honestly think that there are a few concerned citizens who have nothing to do except think about what we as a society can do to give our children a better education? If you do think about it, you know that any move to consolidate schools is driven by big money. There is money in constructing buildings. Which, by the way, is why you’ll see big construction money also buying ads on television to bring in casinos. They don’t care if the casino destroys your town and impoverishes your immediate area. They just want to build the thing. Anyway, wouldn’t you think that the officials in the state legislatures who are on the education committees would be people with actual experience in the classroom? Would it surprise to you discover that the people who purport to be serving the educational needs of our children are actually looking out for the business community? Money rules. (081019)
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141. Scientists have discovered that chewing gum helps you remember. The experts found that of the people tested, 35% who were given gum to chew found it easier to remember words. They hypothesized that it might be because chewing increases the speed of your heartbeat, so more oxygen is pumped round your body. Or it could be because chewing gum helps your body make insulin because it thinks food is coming. Even more plausible is the fact that because many of us can’t walk and chew gum at the same time the chewing keeps our mind from wandering and forces us to focus our attention on whatever it is we are trying to remember. (081026)
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142. Our celebrity friends on television recently reported that some doctors give patients placebos. Patients might feel better, even though the pill does nothing, because they think that they are receiving treatment for whatever ails them. Doctors know that a positive and cheerful attitude is conducive to healing. Laughter heals. But the question seems to be, “Is it right, or even legal, for doctors to play with the minds of their patients?” Then you change channels and see a huge auditorium, crowded with people, who believe that the man on stage can heal with his hands. (081026)
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143. This morning I Googled “how to adjust the pressure switch on a water pump.” We have a new water pump and for several days I’ve heard increasingly louder complaints from management that there is not enough water pressure. I know that there are two little nuts on the water pump switch. In years gone by I’ve twisted both of them at random until the pressure was where I wanted it. But times have changed. Nowadays I can find out anything I want to know about anything or anybody --- in a matter of seconds --- right at my desk. I Googled, “how to adjust the pressure switch on a water pump” and two minutes later trotted down cellar, fully informed, and tightened up the big nut. Yes, times have changed since I walked to our one room school. Imagine walking to that friendly neighborhood school today and sitting down before a computer screen with the world at your fingertips. A few parents have already figured out that there is no longer any need to bus children out of town to an expensive consolidated school where they can sit down at a computer screen. Every day more and more parents realize that a computer screen can be set up anywhere, and before long you will once again see children walking to your small local school. (081026)
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144. You know that for many years I have studied the life and times of Hitler. But I just learned that two years after many of Hitler’s top generals knew the war could not be won, they continued to paint rosy “progress” pictures. To admit that the war was a lost cause would mean they’d be replaced or demoted. Can you believe that even though their leader also knew that he couldn’t win the war, he wasted his country’s lives and resources for two more years? Yes, perhaps you can believe that. (081026)
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145. You have read 1984 and you are familiar with the concept of “doublethink.” Doublethink is the ability to hold two completely contradictory beliefs in your mind simultaneously, and accept both of them. An example of doublethink is the political ads that one sees on television before an election. Senators, who have always voted with corporate America and against the people they are supposed to represent --- Senators who have been no more than a rubber stamp for the President’s illegal war and tax breaks for the super rich, run warm, fuzzy ads on television. Although uneducated poor people without health insurance and no way to pay their heating bills this winter know that their Senator has voted against them for years, enough exposure to these warm, fuzzy ads just before the election convinced many that their Senator is also working for them. The television ads you see before an election could easily have come out of the Ministry of Love where people learn to believe that two plus two are five. (081026)
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146. Americans think differently than Europeans do. When I was a boy --- back around 1939-1940 --- a crazy man started a war which destroyed his own country, and not only did he have to answer for that war --- the people who supported him were also considered culpable. They had to stand in shame before a world court for giving their leader the votes or legislation or support that enabled him to bring their homes and economy down around their ears. But here in the United States we don’t see things that way. Here, many of a discredited leader’s most ardent supporters are returned to state legislatures and Congress. (081102)
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147. Little public service message here. You have heard me say that I’m putting in solar collectors and a solar hot water heater. Now, Aaron, my son–in-law, says I should put in a windmill that generates electricity, because it is cheaper and more efficient than the solar collectors. So I’m now investigating the cost of installing a windmill to generate electricity on my farm. But, and this is the important part --- Aaron also went on line and brought up a web page that told how much electricity each refrigerator takes. Aaron said that it was silly to generate all kinds of electricity from the wind and the sun when I could cut down on the amount of electricity I need by buying a better refrigerator and other more efficient appliances. I didn’t know that one brand of refrigerator might use ten times as much electricity as another model. Go on line, find out which refrigerator uses the least electricity, crunch the numbers, and you might find that a new refrigerator would pay for itself in two or three years just by the amount of electricity you save. I can tell you about this now without shame because times have changed and we live in a new era. If I’d told you about this thirty years ago, you’d accused me of being a hippie. (081102)
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148. Uncle Jack lives on a piece of sand called Nags Head. Uncle Jack says that a recreational diversion at Nags Head is watching the sand wash away around the brand new house next to yours. Of course the water washes away the brand new house, too, and when the sun comes out after the storm there is nothing blocking your panoramic view of the sea. If you are truly innocent, you might ask why people are permitted to build 2 million dollar houses on sand that is certain to be washed away. If you have been around as long as Uncle Jack and The humble Farmer, you know that the realtors and developers sit on all of the zoning and planning boards so they can do anything they want. Why should a realtor care if a new house with five bathrooms washes away after the place has been sold? It’s all about quick and easy money. Uncle Jack says that a big construction company with connections recently wheedled eight million out of an agency called FEMA to put up a protective sand berm 30 feet wide and 12 feet high. One end of it washed out before they had finished the other end. It’s all about money. (081102)
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149. Funerals have changed. Back in the good old days when a man died, his friends sat around drinking for a few days before ravishing his favorite slave girl, and setting him off to sea in a burning boat. When I was young, funerals were solemn affairs. You sat up straight in a black suit and black tie and black shoes and black socks and you didn’t dare breathe. But now those in attendance are asked to come forward and “share.” I don’t know about you, but this “share” business grates on my sensibilities. You aren’t asked to stand up and say something. You are asked to “share.” It is my belief that this kind of wimpy language is moving in from California and you can correct me if you think otherwise. Of course, I’m old and old people are always uncomfortable when they are asked to give up their old ways. Nowadays at funerals we see children and grandchildren who stand in front of the assembly and cry as they read a carefully prepared piece. I suppose it is even worse for people who can hear what it is they’re saying. (081102)
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150. Please listen closely because I’m about to say something that might make your life easier. You know that I could never afford to have children. But when I married the widow Marsha VanZandbergen she had two daughters. And now my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, has three grandchildren. The oldest one was six this week, and although they live in Fort Kent way up by the Canadian border, they drove five hours to get here because the child wanted to celebrate her birthday here with us. I was out in the barn working on my hot water solar collectors during the party, but looked up often enough to notice that the dooryard was full of cars. You know how gobs of cake and partially masticated cookies get ground into the floor at these things, so you can believe that I rushed right in to vacuum up the mess as soon as they were gone. And here is the tip that could save you a lot of bother: At this party --- not one crumb on the floor. Someone had brought a dog. (081102)
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151. One evening when my friend Winky was reading the newspaper he said to his wife, "Here's a man up in Rangeley who was shot for a moose." And Winky's wife said, "Any man who can be mistaken for a moose is better off dead." (081109)
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152. A man I respect recently called my attention to the inevitability of plastic cars. I might mention that this man is in the business of improving plastic computer chips, so his thinking is even a bit beyond that which the layman might consider to be the cutting edge of science and technology. This scientist told me that cars made out of plastic would be as strong as steel. Plastic would not rust out. Plastic, being lighter than steel, would require less energy to move from place to place. If you Google plastic cars you will read that this lightweight car could be powered by electricity or solar energy. Oil is a finite resource. Every last drop of it will have been pumped from the earth in 40 or so years, and there will soon be a day of reckoning when the electric powered plastic car will be the only vehicle on the road. Can you guess why our American corporate giants are putting off this inevitable transition?
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153. You probably heard that some militants over there on the other side of the pond captured some Humvees. Big mistake. A week later they had to capture an oil tanker. (081123)
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154. My friend John told me that he was standing around outside chatting with a woman when he chanced to look at the scratches in the ledge underfoot and said, “Look where the glacier went through here.” And the woman said, “Recently?” And of course John said, “No, years ago.” And the woman said, “Well, I wouldn’t know. I live over in Friendship.” (081123)
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155. I can remember reading a book called 1984 years and years before 1984. It is one of those hit-the-nail-on-the-head books that anyone who even pretends to be educated should read every 5 years or so. If you read 1984 way back in the 50s or 60s you might have also wondered if in 1984 we really were going to be living in a society where the state spied on you and where continual war was the norm. But 1984 came and went and in 1984 there wasn’t continual war and the state wasn’t spying on you. That was because George Bush was not yet in office. (081123)
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156. Are computers more efficient than people? Thank back to Y2K. For years we were told that when the year 2000 came in, a computer failure called Y2K was going to shut down banks and railroads and big companies and bring the country to its knees. But the computers didn’t fail and the year 2000 was ushered in with our country still standing strong and proud. It took the republicans almost 8 years of concentrated effort to do what computers and Y2K was expected to do in a millisecond. (081123)
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157. My friend Julian is a connoisseur of fine men’s clothing. He buys shirts and pants from specialty houses that cater to the upscale outdoor crowd. It is my understanding that some of that clothing is so durable that it will stand alone. One man put a canvas jacket in his driveway and drove over it all summer to soften it up just so he could wear it. (081123)
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158. It is not uncommon to go out in the woods in the town of St. George, Maine and see a little wooden platform twenty feet up in a tree. I think they call this a tree stand. My friends who are hunters climb up the tree and sit or stand on this tiny wooden platform, sometimes for hours, until an animal comes close enough for them to shoot it. By that time, the hunter is so stiff from just sitting that he can barely climb down the tree. This is why there is hardly a hunter alive who has used one of these tree stands who has not fallen off the thing and dropped kerplunk on the ground. Perhaps you have chanced upon those Wipeout television programs where people crash snowmobiles and skateboards and water skis. But if you have never seen a hunter fall out of a tree stand you realize that Maine’s number one sport has been denied valuable promotional coverage. Are not producers of Wipeout shows remiss in not adding footage of falling Maine hunters to prime time television? (081123)
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159. Sometimes I see 20 wild turkeys on my back lawn. A friend of mine told me that he has taken several wild turkeys home for dinner. He says that the breasts are good eating but that the drumsticks are so tough they could be used for Marimba mallets. I asked him, “How often do you shoot a turkey?” He said, “Until he falls down.” (081123)
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160. Have you ever seen something on the evening news that made you wonder if we will ever create a civilized society? Let me give you an example. Tonight on the evening news they showed a woman in the Philippines who had 8 hungry little children. There wasn’t enough rice to go around. The focus of the program was: What can we do to produce more food? (081130)
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161. You can get great books for a quarter at lawnsales. The best books are found when someone has died and the heirs are simply trying to clean out the house. They have no idea of what the books are or the interesting things you can find in them. Here is a comment from one I just got called The Little Brown Book of Anecdotes. On page 76, one reads, “Victor Biaka-Boda, who represented the Ivory Coast in the French Senate, set off on a tour of the hinterlands in January 1950 to let the people know where he stood on the issues, and to understand their concerns --- one of which was apparently the food supply. His constituents ate him.” (081130)
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162. Have you ever met an old neighbor in a store or on the street who extended a withered hand and said, “My word. I thought you were dead.” If it hasn’t happened to you yet someday it will so please listen closely. Every day I record a bit of innocuous social commentary and email it to Public Radio Exchange. PRX, as it is called, might be described as a huge warehouse filled with bits and pieces of radio programs. Young wanna-be producers as well as grizzled used to be producers write and record pieces we hope intelligent people will find interesting and deposit them electronically in this warehouse called PRX. We hope that an enlightened Public Radio program manager might someday actually listen to one of our pieces and deem it worthy of broadcast. Well, there is a new PRX and I was updating my profile on the appropriate PRX web page. While posting my work experience, which was with the Treasury Department between the years of 1955 and 1957, I clicked on the little year box that you are so familiar with and saw that it only went back to 1968. Yes. If you were working in 1955, the kids who are now creating web pages have no idea that you’re still alive. Better get used to it. (081207)
Labels: funny, humor, Maine, Robert Skoglund, St. George, The humble Farmer
