Rants January 4, 2009
1. Jeb Bush is considering a 2012 run for the presidency and you can understand why his brother George is his strongest supporter. If Jeb could be elected, George would not go down in history as the worst president this country ever had.
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2. Living on the coast of Maine can be a challenge. Let's take a specific example. What do you do if you live within sight of the famous Olsen house, and 75 yachts from New Jersey anchor beside your back yard? You might look out and think that it's a mighty pretty sight. But if you've seen yachts anchor there before, you know you could be looking at trouble, because most of those people on the yachts are environmentally oriented. That means that they would cut off a hand before they'd throw a can, bottle or scrap of paper overboard. But they've got to get rid of their trash somehow and you know how they do it. They lug it ashore and stack it neatly in your barn. The man who brought this to my attention said that he asked them why they were stacking their trash in his barn. And they said, "What do you do with your trash?" And he said, "I take it to the dump." And they said, "When you go there you can take ours, too." If you've driven through parts of Philadelphia and New Jersey, you probably thought that the people who lived there were responsible for all the ankle deep trash beside the road. But now I can't help but wonder if it isn't recycled yacht trash that some old Maine lobsterman has thrown out of his car on his way to Florida.
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3. I’m pretty much like Greta Garbo. I just want to be left alone. All I want to do is make a happy program to amuse and entertain and perhaps inform my friends. But I just heard that a talented and intelligent young friend of mine will be out of work for the next two weeks and as a senior citizen who has seen much and read even more, I feel I must comment on these economic times which some claim are difficult. Don’t you find it interesting that so many of the people who are out of work eagerly voted for the greedy captains of industry who make a habit of shutting things down and putting people out of work every time they’re in office? Anyone who has been around more than just a little realizes that hard times are created to break up unionized labor and drive down wages and living conditions. Anyone who has lived long enough or who can read a history book knows that it has happened over and over here in America. Youngsters, or old people who don’t bother to read, have no idea that the closing of factory doors is just one more step in that age old struggle between the haves and the have-nots. Many of the jobless who are wailing and rending their garments can’t even see that cause and effect relationship and when the next election comes around, they’ll vote against themselves again.
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4. I don’t want to do it, controversy does not become me, but because of what my friends are telling me and what you’ve been seeing on the news, I’ve got to talk about the economy. What you want to bet that the billionaire Warren Buffett could get along on my Social Security income better than many 35 year old kids could. I don’t make enough to pay an income tax and I’m better off now than I’ve ever been in my entire life. These unemployed people, who are young enough to be my grandchildren, were brought up in a rich kid lifestyle. They pay to go skiing and they go out to restaurants to eat. They buy clothes that they don’t need and they have more than one pair of shoes. You might not believe this, but last week while buying a dollar chicken sandwich in McDonald’s, I heard the clerk say to a man, “That will be twenty dollars” and something. Twenty dollars to take your wife and a couple of kids into McDonald’s? I couldn’t believe that working class people had that kind of money to throw around. What are people thinking? The fact that a working family can come up with $20 for four plastic containers that contain mostly ice indicates to me that the economy can’t be all that bad. Please remember that you are listening to a man who went to school with cardboard and metal covering the holes in his shoes. It would seem that hard economic times is a relative term.
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5. I just heard it on television from a man and a woman who were touted as “experts in the field.” When going out on dates in 2009, the man still pays. You can imagine how this must enrage women whose sisters have fought for equality for generations. I have neither experience nor an opinion on the matter because a 15 year old child probably knows more about dating than I do. When I first became aware of girls, all the kids in the neighborhood, 10 or 15 of us, would walk a well beaten path through the fields and woods down to the shore and go swimming. We’d go at a different time every day because the icy cold salt water was warmest after it had just come in over mudflats heated by the sun. In the winter we went skating on Jerry’s pond out back of father’s house in the middle of the woods. I didn’t date in college. On top of being shy, awkward, and socially inept, every bit of the ten dollars a week I got for playing in a dance band at the Blue Goose went for room rent and food. When I got married at the age of 29, it was to a girl whose father had anchored his yacht in Tenants Harbor. When she and her siblings rowed ashore to absorb local culture, I happened by and gave them all a ride in my funny old Model T truck. And because it was a chance meeting, you can’t really call that a date. Some time later, after she left me to marry a better man, I lived alone in my battered old farmhouse for 20 years. I won’t say I didn’t provide any service to the community during what should have been my most productive adult years, but I wouldn’t consider it dating, unless you think a man can date without leaving the comfort and privacy of his own home. And right after I met my wife Marsha in the cellar of a church in Camden where she was the kingpin in a coterie of widows and divorcees who had taken it upon themselves to provide meals for hungry single men, we spent evenings in my home stuffing envelopes addressed to meeting planners. Yes, I missed out on this dating experience thing, but I realize now that all turned out for the best. You know, it isn’t until a man sees his friend’s grandchildren in jail, that he gives thanks he was once a socially inept, poor boy with bad breath.
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6. The way you wear your hat, the way you sip your tea. What is it about that special someone in your life that gives you a warm fuzzy feeling and brings the tears to your eyes when you think about it? Songs have been written about that uniquely human emotion, but I’m under deadline and it’s easier to stick with purple prose. Just this past week someone said it bothered them to hear me refer to my life’s companion as “The Almost Perfect Woman” but that’s too bad. You can’t please everybody and I don’t care because my only goal is to please you. Sometime, if you’re interested, you might ask me why I call my wife Marsha The Almost Perfect Woman, and I will tell you. But now we’re going to discuss what it is about her that endears her to me and makes her special. For years her favorite toy was a Snapper lawnmower. I’ve seen her come home from work at five and walk behind that mower without stopping until the sun went down. She resists and resents my attempts at hand delivered nourishment. She sets the blade down as low as it will go and cuts the grass right down to the dirt. If I have mowed a section of lawn that afternoon so it looks lush and green, she mows it again. You can find the phenomenon in the literature under compulsive neurosis. For my entire life I admired women who lived to scrub and cook and clean and, guess what, now that I’m married to one? You’re going to think I’m making this up but if you look on my web page you’ll find photographic verification. One day my wife Marsha hit our ancient privy or toilet or whatever you want to call it with her John Deere rider mower and moved it about a foot. Oh, if she has to be at a certain place at a certain time, she will not leave the house until it is impossible for her to be on time. I’ve seen her take a shower at midnight and then clean the shower stall just the way she came out of it, and then go in the other room and scrub down the shower in there, too. Yes, before she got the rider mower, her favorite toy was the Snapper lawn mower. Every piece of metal or plastic on it has been bent back like your hair in a high wind because it’s been driven into every piece of granite and every building on the property. The living bark has been ripped from all my big apple trees and even when surrounded by stakes of metal, small fruit trees don’t stand a chance. She’s knocked the wooden finish board corners off several of our outbuildings. Bolts are continually being snapped off the motor, and the carburetor and muffler are left dangling after encounters of a granite kind. And here’s the funny thing. I don’t know why, but every time I am called out to restore that lawnmower, I choke up, my eyes get all watery, and I think how much I love that woman. It might help that I think she is pretty.
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7. While deleting the 30 or so junk emails that come in every hour or so, my eye caught the words “so bored.” One might suspect that this is an invitation to engage in an exchange of emails. But is not “so bored” an indication that we have heard from someone who cannot read or think? We understand that people who are dyslexic cannot read, but my dyslexic friends are among the smartest and most creative people I know. So we might assume that the “so bored” email is not from one of them. This leaves us with no alternative but to realize that the “so bored” email comes from someone who might be able to read but who cannot think. Well --- if you were trying to attract anyone’s attention for any reason, would you preface your remarks with the announcement that you were not too terribly clever?
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8. My friend Julian, who has sold more than a few things in his day, says that the time to sell is when you have a buyer. I take that to mean that even though you might not be thinking about selling your grandfather’s 1932 Plymouth sedan with “floating power, set in rubber”, if someone makes you an offer you can’t refuse, he or she owns it. I was thinking of that while out lawn sale ing the other day. Like a woman who knows the price of everything in the grocery store, I know that bicycles are 3 to 5 dollars, books (and we are talking classics or science in hard cover) are a quarter, a handful of Craftsman wrenches are a dollar and pyrex dishes are half a dollar. So when I walk up a driveway and see prices on items that are ten times higher than they should be, I laugh out loud and think to myself that optimism for the economy is alive and well. Thank you for tolerating this digression. Now to the point. We said that the time to sell is when you are visited by someone who wants to buy. You might turn that end for end and say that the time to buy, is when you find someone who WANTS to sell. But if you have been to enough lawn sales, you know that the time to buy is when you find someone who HAS to sell.
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9.
http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/cost.html
Wow. Is it true that people in Maine pay more for electricity than just about every other state in the Union? Why don’t we hear about this kind of thing on the news? According to the chart I saw, Maine people pay about twice as much for electricity as they pay in seven other states: we’re talking Idaho, Washington, Nebraska, North Dakota, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia. In looking at the chart quickly, it seems that only Vermont and New York pay more than Maine. What better reason to buy a windmill that will generate electricity or make some solar panels. Of course, if you think that your power company is all set to slash your electric bill by a third just to bring it into line with most of the United States, you wouldn’t think that generating your own power with the sun or wind is even worth investigation. And while I have your attention, if you think your power company is going to cut your electric bill, you might be interested in hearing about a little private hedge fund that is paying returns in the double digits.
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10. My wife buys most of her groceries at Wal*Mart because she pays less and I don’t like it. I’m a suspicious old man and I would like to know where my food comes from. Used to be you could read on the can that B&M beans were baked and put in the can in Portland, Maine. Now you read on most any can in your cupboard that it was packaged for a company in Arkansas without a hint of whose grubby little hands filled and sealed it. Yes, you and I know that the standards which govern the inspection of food processed here in the US have dropped intentionally and drastically over the past 8 or so years. We understand that profits are lost when food packaging lines are halted to remove substandard items. We read that food inspectors are penalized for inspecting. Can that be why we are hearing all these stories about so many poison things that come from China? Point out the flaws in Chinese products and you won’t have time to think about the problems we have with the quality of the food that is being produced here at home. Along the same line, if you start a war in some other part of the world, the press will find neither time nor space to report on your domestic shortcomings. Oh, I started out to ask you. Can you tell me why it is no longer necessary to print the country of origin on the cans of food sold on store shelves today?
http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/wayoflife/07/26/china.products/index.html
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11. I recently got a chain letter from a dear friend. It was one of those “do you remember the good old days” chain letters. In one place it says, “I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of the 60s & 70s…” One usually remembers the songs that were popular when one was in grade school up through high school and the friend who sent me this chain letter which waxes nostalgic over the great tunes of the 60s and 70s was in grade school in 1929. She was over 55 years old in the 70s, and by then her children had long since graduated from college. On June 22 she will be 87 years old but if she still has the strength and ability to dance to those wonderful tunes of the 60s and 70s I say, go for it.
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12. A few of the top teachers over at the high school started a program which introduces freshmen to the history and occupations here on the coast. They brought in my brother, Jim, to tell the students about local history, Sherm Hoyt to tell them about fishing, clams and lobsters, and me to talk about humor and storytelling as a natural resource. I’ve spoken at hundreds of banquets and have learned not to eat before I speak because if I eat, I'm likely to fall asleep. So I told the students that I never eat before I speak and asked them if they knew why. A young man named Shannon said, "Because you'd spit crumbs all over the audience." I once made my second appearance for a Connecticut company that had been forced to cancel the Christmas bonus. The overall mood was gloomy at best. I told the students that I'm very often asked back to speak to a group two or three times and that sometimes the second response is very different from the first. I asked them if they knew why. And Wayne Hilt's granddaughter said, "Because they had heard you before?" So fear not my friend. From what I heard from those high school freshmen, humor and storytelling will continue to be one of Maine’s most valuable resources.
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humble, I attended the MPBN public "hearing" in Waterville last Monday. I make a series of remarks - we'll call them "constructive criticism" - in the course of the evening, but I prefaced my first comment with the fact that I had been a public radio listener for over 25 years, and a member right up until they biffed off the humble Farmer. I got an immediate response from two heads in the audience that turned in my direction, a "hear, hear!" and further flogging of that dead horse. I was going to bring up the disclaimer thing again, but others were hammering it into the ground so I didn't need to. Beck got an earful, trust me. Makes me proud to see what good company I'm in.Pegg in Palmyra
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Those who miss laughing at my dry, surrealistic commentary might find an acceptable substitute in MPBN press releases.
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260 Hamlin Drive
Fort Myers, FL 33905
207-226-7442
humble@humblefarmer.com
Hear humble's radio show on his web page
http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/ThisWeek.html
See and hear humble tell stories on his web page:
http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/
Hear dozens of humble's rants and even his radio show on PRX:
http://www.prx.org/Enjoy humble's music/humor program on Maine cable television stations:http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/TvTowns.html
Fort Myers, FL 33905
207-226-7442
humble@humblefarmer.com
Hear humble's radio show on his web page
http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/ThisWeek.html
See and hear humble tell stories on his web page:
http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/
Hear dozens of humble's rants and even his radio show on PRX:
http://www.prx.org/Enjoy humble's music/humor program on Maine cable television stations:http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/TvTowns.html
Did you know that Robert Skoglund, The humble Farmer, stands on stages and tells funny stories?Ask humble to entertain you and your friends with dry stories like these:http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/PortlandA.html
You can visit humble and Marsha at their Bed & Breakfast on the coast of Maine.http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/BaB.html
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