Ok, here is the unedited 70 plus pages of what I thought were the best things I said on my radio program in 2004.

I then selected about a quarter of what I thought were the best in these 70 pages and recorded them on two CDs which I call: The humble Farmer's Most Memorable Rants of 2004.

Over the next year or so I'll sell these two CDs for $10 each to Radio Friends and people from away who would like to know what the world of today looks like through the eyes of a well educated old Maine man with a low IQ. Thank you for looking.

PS. If you have nothing to do but edit this page for me in html in your Notepad, that is, insert

(p br in brackets) in every place where you see a + below, and then email it back to me so I can use it to replace this page, you will earn my undying thanks. Twould make it easier to read. Thank you for looking. humble

So you’ve moved up to Maine to retire and have discovered that it is difficult for poor old retired people from away to get a fair shake here. Your taxes are certainly higher than they should be and the natives take advantage of you as you suffer along on a fixed income. Cheer up. I can sympathize. Newcomers have felt uncomfortable here since my great great great great great grandfather, Moses Robinson, moved to Thomaston in 1734. So remember that you are not the first newcomer to find himself freezing to death beside the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by hostile strangers who don’t even try to understand your problem. You are breaking new ground, however, when you complain that your taxes are $2.37 higher than they should be on your $950,000 house. + At 6 o’clock in the morning I was the first person in line at the Bangor International Airport. The baggage inspectors had just assumed their stations and, as I saw one snap on a pair of rubber gloves, I shuddered and said to myself, “My, these fellows certainly intend to be thorough.” + The kids were coming to stay with us over Christmas so Marsha needed to borrow a granddaughter crib from one of the neighbors. The neighbor got the message and called the next day and asked me how tall the kid was. I said, “The kid isn’t old enough to stand so she has no height. She’s at an age where she only has length.” + Gramp Wiley and I were fishing way up the northern part of the St. George River when we heard a small voice saying, “Help Me!” We looked around and saw a little frog hopping up toward us. Gram bent down and picked up the frog. And the frog said that she was really a beautiful woman turned into a frog by an evil witch. She said that if Gramp would kiss her she would turn back into a beautiful woman and do anything he wanted. And then Gramp Wiley put the frog it in his pocket. And I said, “What are you doing?” “That frog said it would turn into a beautiful woman and do anything you wanted.” And Gramp said, “At my age I would just as soon have a talking frog.” +++ Are you ready for The humble farmer question of the week? Listen closely. A minister who is about to officiate at an outdoor marriage ceremony (which is being held next to a lighthouse) finds that a stiff off shore breeze is blowing his tunic wildly around his head. He solves his problem with 18 or so inches of duct tape. This marriage ceremony took place in A. West Palm Beach, Florida. B. Malibu, California or, C. Port Clyde, Maine. + When I was sitting in the Knox County Courthouse hoping to be selected for jury duty, people were asked to stand if they or a close family member had been involved in an incident involving alcohol. 20 or so stood. The judge asked one man, “Was it you or a family member who was involved in this incident,” and the man said, “It was me and I still think I was innocent.” + It is possible to buy good books for ten cents or a quarter at a lawn sale. I can remember finding a brand spanking new book called “Caring for your baby and child.” I mentioned to the woman selling it that the book was in awful good condition. She said, “Yes, after I had the kid, I never had time to read it.” + My wife Marsha works hard and I thought it would be nice to take her on a little winter trip down to Key West where it is warm. I opened the AAA tour book and read the motel prices: 599, 279, 498. I says to her maybe we can’t go. But then --- I looked further down the list and said, look at this. Here are some motels we can afford: $24, $25, She said, “You are looking at the prices of meals in low class restaurants.” + My friend Dieter told me that his father survived 9 years in a prison camp in Siberia. I know that you have read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and probably other accounts of prison life, so even if you have been spared this particular type of cultural enrichment, you know what was going on in Russian prison camps 50 years ago. You have to be incredibly tough to survive 9 years in most anybody’s prison camp, but can you think of anything that would take more out of you than a prison camp in Siberia? Years later they put him in a nursing home and he died the next day. + Do you get more worked up over little insignificant things than you used to? I seem to. Last week I went to the store to buy some CD envelopes. They were $9.99 per box and I took two. When I got home I noticed that I’d been charged $10.99 for each one. I have the feeling that I was overcharged $2. Today I went to the store to buy a gallon of milk and a $2.29 pink bottle of Pepto-Bismol. At the register I was charged $4 plus for the Pepto-Bismol. I said, “I looked at the price tag on the shelf long and hard before I picked up this bottle, because your pricing was very confusing and hard to read, but I think it was $2.29.” So four people behind me in the less than 10 items lane had to wait while the very nice check out woman went up to see for herself. I said to the people who were waiting behind me in the line, “We’ll see what comes of this.” The check out woman came back and said, “You were right. Because we made a mistake, we’re going to give it to you free.” I said, “Madam, if it weren’t for this kind of thing happening to me, I wouldn’t NEED Pepto-Bismol.” + Every day I dip into my world class library of Harlequin Romances and read either Dutch or French. I often underline the words I don’t know and put them on little flash cards. Thirty five years ago I dropped out of graduate school to be with my mother as she slowly died from second hand cigarette smoke, and if that hadn’t happened I’d probably still be a full time college student studying languages. No matter how old I get, I still enjoy studying. For two weeks I’ve had quelque part, which is one of the hardest words in the French language, printed in one inch letters, taped on the light in my bedroom. In an effort to memorize quelque part, which means somewhere, I go around singing, “Quelque part, over the rainbow.” It is a terrible thing to realize that I’m in the same category as Boxer, the horse, who planned to devote the rest of his life to learning the remaining twenty-two letters of the alphabet. + A question for you coming up here on eating. The other night we went out to supper. Outside of Moody’s Diner, and grange suppers, there aren’t too many places where I will pay money to eat. Did you ever stop to think that at most restaurants most of what you are paying for is the décor and the privilege of being seen there? A very small percentage of your inflated tab will pay for anything that you have eaten. And if you are one of those people who is rich enough to go out to a restaurant for supper a couple of times a year, I want you to think about that the next time someone slides an oily menu into your hand. But Marsha and I went out to supper, because, although the friends we go with could buy several restaurants, he is the closest man I know --- unless I count my brother. So my friend isn’t going to eat anywhere unless it is a buffet style where you can go back three times for cranberry sauce on chicken that melts in your mouth, and a salad bar with carrot salad plus green and yellow melon. And after that there is all the ice cream you can eat topped off with hot butterscotch or chocolate goo. My friend is going to get more than his seven dollars and forty nine cents worth because he is going to stuff himself like a coyote in a henhouse. When we had finished off the second heaping plate of chicken with all the fixings, my friend pushed aside his plate and said, “You can feel full, but there is a special place in your body for dessert.” I’m humblefarmer@midcoast.com Where do you keep it? + Without productive, culturally-transmitted language, the proliferation of human culture as a whole would never have taken place. But how did language ever start? For years linguists advanced theories that would account for this singular human phenomenon. We have the ding dong theory, that is, that there is a mystic harmony that exists between sound and meaning. Man was able to give a vocal expression to every external impression. And we have the bow wow theory. That is, that man created language by imitating the sounds of animals. Others believe that man acquired language as the result of evolutionary changes in the structure of his mind. Now, I would like to advance the even more plausible itch theory. That is, that language evolved out of necessity when a man needed to tell his wife where to scratch his back. The first words ever spoken, were probably, “Up, up, over, no, the other way to the right, to the right, up, down just a bit, yah, yah right there. Go round and round right there.” + Two buzz words you might hear today are quality time. Parents are constantly urged to spend quality time with their children. One of the reasons this is difficult to do is because nobody seems to know what quality time is. The term has even overflowed its original parent childhood banks, and now is even used to express some mysterious relationship between married couples who have no children. A St. George woman, who seldom sees her 68 year old husband, complained that they never seem to share any quality time. The only time she sees him is when they go to bed. + A Rockland man is resting comfortably in Pen Bay hospital after a $52,000 heart bypass operation, and will be returned to the county jail in a week, according to jail administrators. This man experienced severe chest pains last Thursday afternoon and knew that he was having a heart attack. Realizing that he could never pay for his medical expenses, he quickly dialed 911, dragged himself out of the house, and, with his last ounce of remaining strength, emptied his pistol into the windows of the vacant house next door. He was immediately arrested for illegal discharge of a firearm and taken to the hospital. Because he was a prisoner at the time, taxpayers will be presented with his medical bill. According to my friend lawyer Crandall, case law indicates that the county is responsible for these types of bills. Look for more of them in the immediate future. + Last Thursday Sheriff Dan Davey responded to a 911 call from a housewife in St. George who was being crushed up against her wall phone by an oven that had overflowed with Fudge Brownie Mix. It seems that the woman was confused by the directions on the back of the box, which were in the metric system. That is, the pan is supposed to be 33 by 23 by 5 cm’s and you will need 110 ml of water and 55 ml of Vegetable oil. The only thing she found in common with the metric system was the 1 egg. It took Sheriff Davey and Deputy John Carroll several extra hours to free the woman because, according to the directions on the box, the brownies had to be cut into 4 by 5 cm squares before eating. + People in Knox County have never had it better. One hundred years ago, people in Spruce Head knew how to save. Ralph Cline says that his great-grandmother Bennett was so thrifty that each spring when she cleaned out the cupboards she’d swallow any medicine that was left so as not to waste it. To appreciate the extent of great-grandmother Bennett’s suffering, one should remember that back then most popular medicines were black, gooey and 85-percent alcohol. ++++ My wife Marsha and I were standing in the check out line at Hannaford’s so we couldn’t help but hear one very old woman say to another one, “I can’t stand in this line. My right leg is so stiff I can hardly get it off the ground.” And the other one said, “It’s my arms that bother me. In the morning I can hardly eat my breakfast. And my hand shakes so I can barely get the spoon in my mouth.” And the first one said, “I don’t have no trouble lifting the spoon to my mouth, but it’s getting awful hard to see the dish.” “See the fish?” “No, dish, dish, see the dish.” I blame it on my pills. I’m taking 12 different pills which is probably why I’m always dizzy. Well, we’re getting old and these little annoying things are going to happen. But let’s be grateful --- we can still drive.” + And now. The humble Farmer strange and mysterious question for the week. How come you can now buy your ticket on line and print out your airplane boarding pass at home, but if you show up at the airport without your boarding pass, they won’t give it to you until four hours before your flight? + Have you noticed that TV news people like Joe Cupo, Cindy Williams, Pat Callihan and Jennifer Rooks are more than human? I have never seen one of them scratch. Don’t they ever itch? Watch them closely. When they are not rattling a sheaf of papers, they sit with folded hands. You have seen David Letterman rub his nose or his ear from time to time. But most professional TV people sit like grade school kids who have been told that they can’t go out for recess until everyone is sitting up quietly. Por que es eso? One thing for which there is no match, is when you itch to up and scratch. On the back of our chairs let our shoulder blades rub, let the drawing room now be as free as the tub. Ogden Nash. + Here’s an announcement I heard down at the Portland Jetport. “Someone has left a belt at security. Please come and claim your belt.” Does this concern you? If they’ve already got your belt, can there be any question what they’ll have next? + It is not very often that a political commentator says something that makes both democrats and republicans stand on their chairs and cheer. But I just heard Mary Matalin say that George Bush plans to run on his record. + You know that I enjoy learning to read several languages. Because I won’t live long enough to read Voltaire or Thomas Mann in the original, my elementary texts are Harlequin Romances. You can write to an author and she will often send you the same book in 7 languages. My friend, the great sculptor Steve Lindsay, is going to Italy soon. Steve is fluent in French and tells me that he has read one of my Italian Harlequins twice. Some of this world literature is suitable for high school language classes and you have often heard me encourage language teachers to at least investigate the Harlequin Romance for classroom use. Some of them are funny, well written, and contain nothing that you would be ashamed to have your grandchild read. Besides learning vocabulary, simple conversation and idiomatic expressions, the advanced student finds items worthy of reflection. Listen. My translation from the French: “She contemplated her painted toe nails and wondered how long she could maintain her sophisticated image.” To an old Maine man, painted toe nails shriek out shameless hussy. Isn’t it interesting that this 21 year old girl had the impression that sophistication comes from dress or things like painted toenails. Wouldn’t it be possible to find a woman living in a jungle tree house who possessed more sophistication drinking out of a cocoanut shell than you’d find in the painted toenail refugees from the Jerry Springer show? Please tell me what sophistication means to you. I’m humblefarmer@midcoast.com + + When it was 10 below zero I watched a lot of television and listened to the nails in the walls going off like firecrackers. Ten below will do that. On television I saw a movie star who had apparently said something bad about a weasel and he got hundreds of emails from weasel lovers saying what an ignorant rat fink he was. Why are people so defensive about their pets? You can understand you don’t want people saying unkind things about your wife or your mother – even if they might be true. But why should a true observation about the uselessness of your pet raise your hackles? You know that I have three wonderful pets, but wouldn’t it be a compliment if someone said to me, “Robert, you can’t believe how I’d like to slice up your pet on my dinner plate.” If someone were to tell me that my pets are about as useful as a stiff elbow should I get all defensive and point out how they graze quietly in the assigned areas – generating a pastoral ambiance while holding back the relentless and ever encroaching Maine forest? Years ago in a course called psycholinguistics at the University of Rochester I was given a rat to train so I know that people can get attached to furry little animals. My rat Vilkus, which as you know means wolf in Lithuanian, was a true rat and it didn’t bother me to have Vilkus rat sit on my shoulder or crawl down inside the sleeve of my sport jacket. One time Jack Neubig was building me a fireplace and Jack was sitting across the table from me eating his dinner. Jack was from Friendship and just about as tough as any mason you’d find anywhere. I went in the other room and put Vilkus rat down inside my sleeve, came back in and sat down at the table. And when Vilkus rat stuck his head out of my sleeve at the dinner table and wiggled his nose and smiled with his big yellow teeth --- well, Jack said it was the worst thing he had ever seen in his life. You might have seen that famous movie star on TV try to make up to his distressed public by kissing a weasel right there on camera. But I’ve never seen even a rat that was worthy of my lips. How about you? + Wouldn’t you like to find it in airports when you travel? I’m talking about a little hole in the wall where you could stick your head outside and breathe clean air. Here in Maine we now have clean air in restaurants and our airports and we now take clean air for granted. But I was unable to draw a comfortable breath for several days after spending four hours in the Pittsburgh airport. There was an ironic automatic announcement that came on every few minutes: “Welcome to Pittsburgh, a smoke free terminal. Smoking is only permitted in eating and drinking establishments.” Isn’t that nice? When you walk up the gangway from the plane you get hit by a blast of cigarette smoke. And you can’t draw a breath of air until you fly out of these third world country terminals where people smoke in restaurants and bars. You know very well that employees are also smoking out back in kitchens and utility rooms. Think of the millions of people who will get sick and perhaps even die before their time just because there are still places in this enlightened country where people still have to work in smoke all day. How many politicians have you heard say, “If I’m elected, I’ll do everything I can to improve the health of people in our great country by working to ban smoking in public places.” You could promise to blow up the world, make us hated by billions of people, and rob the poor, but- if you had banned smoking in public places the last time you had held an elected office, I would plaster your name on my Model T and work for your reelection. My irrefutable argument would be, well, here’s the only candidate with a great health program. Anyway, in third world country airports you can buy food and books. If people are still going to be permitted to smoke there, why not also a ventilated room where, for $20 an hour, you could huddle with others seeking fresh air? + The advertising community has been cheating American business out of billions of dollars annually. For the past 20 or 30 years, the smiling people who appear in ads have been beanpole thin. All this will change this fall when glamorous models who weigh 350 pounds will appear in ads. They will be surrounded by 350 pound men who are witty, wealthy and wise. In the background you will see yachts, fancy cars, mansions and a promise of romantic adventure --- if she buys what the ad is selling. Of course most people will never be able to weigh 350 pounds no matter what they eat and drink. But many will be willing to destroy their health trying to look like this new smart set. This has been proven today by the countless women who are starving themselves in hopes of getting down to the anemic 95 pound models shown in ads now. It has been estimated by the advertising community that if each woman in America gained only 20 pounds, they could sell an extra two billion dollars worth of cloth each year. Profits are expected to double in beer and spaghetti. Dry skin, which was invented by Al Peel in the 1950s, will still be promoted, however. Thanks to Al, women all over the country have discovered their dry skin. They now spend billions on creams, salves and lotions to keep their skin moist. Maine men don’t want their wives to have moist skin. Up here we call it sweat. + Here’s news. Albert Pertinen, a football player for the Boston Redskins, made the Guineas Book of Records last week by completing the past season without a serious injury. He will be awarded a trophy at the sports hall of fame banquet in September for being the first football player in America to play an entire season without having broken knees or cartilage repaired by an orthopedic surgeon. A disgusted spokesman for The American Medical Association has named Pertinen Wimp of The Year. + When my father first came to this country and started to learn English, he read a sentence about a man who went up on a hill to get something. To get in Scandinavian means two goats, so my father thought the man went up on the hill with two goats. In 1960 my aunt sent me to the store in Hogsater Sweden to get some gron saker which is green vegetables. I came home with stro saker which is sugar. These things happen when you are only starting to get a grip on a new language. If you have learned two or more languages as an adult these silly things have happened to you and I’d like to hear about the ones you remember. Jack, my 69 year old cousin from Sweden, spent 10 days in Fort Lauderdale where he wandered about like a bewildered but sober college student. Jack is too old to know English well but is old enough to have gleaned lasting impressions of American culture in the 1950s and 60s, and when he saw a sign on one of those beachfront Ft. Lauderdale bars that said, “No Coolers Allowed” you’ll never guess what he thought it meant. + Do you have friends who are always boasting? I’ve done this --- I’ve done that. I can do this. I can do that. Do you get any satisfaction out of discovering that there are countless other people who have done and can do the same thing – and maybe even do it better? I’m asking you right now for your help. So send me a note at humblefarmer@midcoast.com if you’ve got a story that will put this boaster in his place. My friend Dave claims to be the only man in Aroostook county to get his head caught in a hydraulic potato barrel hoist. + What can you tell by TV ratings? The way they understand it, some company calls around and asks a certain percentage of the population what they are watching on TV at any given time. I can’t stand game shows, shows where there is inexplicable canned laughter after every sentence, shows where big animals eat little animals, exercise machine demos and shows where they are selling something. I also click to another channel or put on the mute button when any commercial comes on --- and that even goes for my car radio. I hear, “You are listening to…” and click, they’re history. Well, from what I’ve said, you know that the only thing that I haven’t excluded is Keeping up Appearances, Cops and Jerry Springer. And if I wasn’t always studying half a dozen languages, I wouldn’t know what to do with my spare time. But I started out talking about TV ratings. My friend Dave told me that he used to have a TV show that got the highest ratings of any show in his time slot. Wow. I’m still impressed. Cable show in Aroostook County that ran from 4 til 6 every morning. + Do you keep a notebook? You’ve probably seen the little notebook I carry on my right pant leg. I write down interesting things I hear or see that I want to tell you about. Of course taking notes is simply taking notes. When you take notes you don’t want to miss a scrap of the scintillating conversation so you quickly scratch down just enough to jog your memory later. So sometimes you find notes in your notebook that make no sense whatsoever. What a great loss we all experience when I can’t enrich you with some salient comment or observation, just because I can’t remember the point of what I wrote in my notebook. Here’s an example. If it makes any sense to you, I’m humblefarmer@midcoast.com We’d love to hear your explanation. All it says is, “Their name was spelled out with toilet plunger heads on the border of Aroostook and Washington County. + Some friends invited me to attend their party at the Alumni House at the University of Maine. It was a great party, and you can see pictures of it on my web page. Although I don’t know the politically correct name for one of the games we played, all it amounted to was getting 150 people to work together on a project. The people at each table were asked to glue together and decorate a gingerbread house --- a challenge indeed for Maine men who find themselves without duct tape or WD 40. Of course when 6 people work together at one table on a project there is usually at least one who is content to sit back and watch and at least one who has to manage the operation. That’s just the way things are. At one table I saw a strong argument for those of you who believe that environment shapes behavior. The house built by the Washington County crowd had a chainfall hanging from a tripod out front, a yellow police “do not cross” tape, 2 dogs chained to an outhouse and a Bait For Sale sign on the front door. + end January 2004 W&S + My wife, Marsha, is the Almost Perfect Woman. When you’re been single for 51 of your 68 years, you know how scary some women can be, because you’ve had the opportunity to read the service manuals on several different models. For some reason that I’ve never understood, some women can’t just say what they have to say. They look at you and say, “We’ve got to have a talk.” So one day I thanked Marsha because she had never said to me, “Robert --- we’ve got to have a talk.” And she said, “Talk. What good would it do to have a talk with you? You don’t hear half of what I say --- and I can’t tell what you do hear because you don’t say anything. You always say that nothing is worth discussing unless it’s a life or death situation or if somebody is going to lose a limb. You’re just like my father.” That can happen when you marry a younger woman --- her father usually is just about your age. + Have you heard the ad about the vitamins that stick? I heard it. And I wondered about it. This company claims that ordinary everyday vitamins get flushed out of your body without doing you any good. But --- you want to buy their special vitamins because they stick. I’m like you. I thought it was funny, too, when I first heard it. An organic vitamin is the same as a vitamin that’s spent the winter in a chair inside a nuclear power plant.. But then I thought about it. And if you compare these stickable vitamins with some of those donuts you used to get when you were in the service, it does make sense. When I was stationed on the Cutter Laurel in Rockland in 1955, the cook made donuts that would hang around in your stomach for four or five days. + Bill Dickey was telling me about one of the local Camden characters who always used to walk around with a paper bag full of whatever he thought he’d be needing to get through the day. And every time this character would come in to visit one of the local businessmen who owned a store, the businesman would grab the paper bag and empty it on the counter to see what was in it --- just trying to be funny. Well, you don’t have to know too much about characters in Camden or anywhere else in Maine to figure out what was going to happen – sooner or later. And it did. One warm spring day this character walked into the store with his paper bag, like he did every day, and the merchant grabbed it, like he did every day, and tipped it upside down on the scale on his counter. And he looked at what he had dumped on that scale, and he looked up at his friend, and he looked back at the scale and said, “It looks like.....” And then he said, “It smells like....” And then he said, “It is....” + I hang onto the banister when I go down stairs. A friend laughed at me and said, “Getting old?” “Living smart.” At sixty eight, most people know that although they can still run down a flight of stairs, one day, they are going to wish that they hadn’t. It was in writing over 3,000 years ago. There will come a day when the pitcher will be broken at the fountain. You might run downstairs for years, but sooner or later you’re going to trip on a shoestring or the cuff or your snowmobile suit and break yourself in pieces. Kids do it all the time, but their bones are made of rubber so you seldom hear about it. But a horrible adult example comes quickly to mind. A man on crutches with his leg in a cast said to his friend, “I don’t need your help getting down these stairs.” And it was true. He didn’t. But he was glad that his friend was there to call an ambulance to take him back to the hospital to reset his broken leg. The only man in Rockland to break his leg one New Year’s Eve did so without the help of drink. He was walking down a flight of stairs with both hands in his pocket, according to an ear witness. By ear witness, I mean that Charlie Graham told me that he heard step, step, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump. So even if you’re ten years old, hang onto the banister when you come down the stairs. Then, the worst thing that can happen to you is an incurable infection from the wood splinter in your hand. + Remember the good old let boys play with dolls and girls play with trucks? They found out that that program was a hoax and a fraud. It seems that boys and girls are pre-wired and the environmental and cultural factors are negligible. I thought I was a very destructive child, but discovered on a web site that by taking an axe to old cast iron parlor stoves, and concrete steps, I was manifesting normal little boy behavior. The next level of difference between boys and girls has to do with gender-specific personality traits which affect how children learn. First, a word about gender-specific personality traits. In the 1960's and 1970's, it was fashionable to assume that gender differences in personality were "culturally constructed." Back then, psychologists thought that if we raised Johnny to play with dolls and Sally to play with trucks -- then many of these gender differences would vanish. However, cross-cultural studies over the past 30 years have provided little support for this hypothesis. Here is one of the most challenges teachers face: the girl who gets straight A's but thinks she's stupid and feels discouraged, and the boy who's barely getting B's but thinks he's brilliant. Consequently, the most basic difference in teaching style for girls vs. boys is that you want to encourage the girls, build them up, while you give the boys a reality check: make them realize they're not as brilliant as they think they are, and challenge them to do better. --- For all the good it will do, I might add. -- If you want to get 8th-grade girls interested in chemistry, show the girls how chemistry can be used to improve the world. Let them build natural biochemical filters to clean dirty water, so they can see how the water becomes fresh and clean. If you want to get 8th-grade boys interested in chemistry, teach them about dynamite. Can’t you see yourself standing before the schoolboard the following week saying, “How was I to know…” + Here is some news that was emailed to me by Marsha’s aunt. Keep a watch out for people standing near you at retail stores, restaurants, grocery stores, etc., that have a cell phone in hand. With the new camera cell phones, they can take a picture of your credit card, which gives them your name, number, and expiration date. Identification theft is one of the fastest growing scams today, and this is just another example of the means that are being used. So... be aware of your surroundings. Now, do you think that the media should broadcast warnings about these scams? Does it put people on their guard, or does it outline in detail exciting new opportunities for scammers who aren’t bright enough to think up techno-crimes on their own? + end Feb 6 + Thirty or so years ago when I was in graduate school studying linguistics at the University of Rochester, I was forced to buy several books on generative grammar that were written by the linguistic guru Noam Chomsky. I went to school hoping to learn useless fun things like how to read Greek and Old Icelandic and Latin, so Chomsky’s books didn’t interest me. On top of that, I couldn’t understand any of them. They were just about as interesting as a chemistry textbook or section 47 from the 4th edition of Prosser on Torts. Only a genius could read and claim to understand Chomsky’s books on generative grammar. Because I’d heard so much about Chomsky when I was a child in graduate school, I recently opened my ears and paid close attention when I ran across him while clicking through the channels --- just to see what he was up to nowadays. Chomsky has apparently used his encyclopedic mind to become a very astute social commentator and he was taking questions about his Hegemony or Survival book from an international crowd of journalists --- the Tim Russerts from all over the globe. These are people who know what is going on in the world and who write about it in dozens of languages. And when Chomsky finished they gave him a medal for --- I think it was for speaking out or having a social conscience for mankind. You might not believe this, but I can now understand Chomsky --- perhaps because he is finally saying something that I already know. + Did you know that there are 10 or so different kinds of electronic voting machines? I came across a booth where two women were demonstrating one called ESS. I got to push the buttons on ESS and have to admit that it is a very simple operation. Electronic voting machines are so easy to use that I wouldn’t be surprised if over 90,000 votes came in from Wytopitlock. + Just about the most exciting thing a 68-year-old man can do is to take the AARP driving class for old people. So I did. I admit that I’m not a good driver and that I have caused somewhere between 6 and 8 accidents over the past 40 years. I seem to get in the way at stop signs. Here’s the big red stop sign. I ease up to it and stop. I look in my rear view mirror and see someone closing in, not looking at me but to the left at oncoming traffic, so they can run the stop sign, because they figure that I’m a typical driver and that I’ve already run the thing, and wham, before I can move I’ve had my rear bumper in the way again. You don’t know what it’s like to be chewed out for being a stupid driver until someone who has rammed you in the rear end screams in your face. When you hear some old dubber say, “I’ve driven 50 years and never had an accident,” you might want to remember that it is not the same as, “I’ve driven 50 years and never caused an accident.” + When I took an AARP driving class for old people it reminded me of a television commercial I wrote, produced and narrated for the Maine Seatbelt Coalition many years ago. It showed my friend Stanley French next to a car in his junkyard and Stanley was crying. One of his friends had hit a pole and because he wasn’t wearing his seatbelt he’d gone right out through. You don’t see me in this commercial, but you hear my voice and I’m saying, “This is my friend Stanley French who owns this junkyard here in South Thomaston. There’s nothing that bothers Stanley more than seeing a car brought in here that one of his best friends was driving without wearing a seatbelt. You know, Stanley could have sold that windshield for 65 dollars.” + Those television commercials I made for the Maine Seatbelt Coalition were so successful that Betsy Frederick, who was running the thing, got me to speak at the National Seatbelt Coalition meeting in Washington. Although I was kind of new to the speaking business back then, I knew I had to have a great first line, so just before I was to go on, I called my friend Richard Warner in Rockland and said, “Richard, in 10 minutes I’m going on before the National Seatbelt Coalition in Washington DC. Quick, give me an opening line.” And Richard said, “Washington, DC is an excellent place to hold the National Seatbelt Meeting. I can’t think of a town in the entire country where there is a greater need for restraint.” + If you’ve driven Route 131 between Thomaston and my house you’ve been past the old green Finnish schoolhouse where Gary Akers now has his art gallery. When I tell you that I went to one of Gary’s shows, I don’t want you to think that it was for the free food, because there was nothing there that an old Maine man would eat. Who should I see there appreciating art but Gerry Colson from South Casco. And Gerry admitted that he listens to this program and that he loves to go to Monhegan. So Gerry and I have one thing in common. But Gary Akers is a crafty artist and I like his stuff even more because he paints things that everybody can recognize, like the houses in Port Clyde or the lighthouse on Southern Island. If I were rich, I’d get that painting of Southern Island for my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, because she mows the lawn around that lighthouse all summer and paints up inside the light tower on rainy days. But I was talking about Gary’s art show. Can you tell me why the only people with money enough to buy first class paintings seem to be attracted by tiny tomatoes wrapped in bacon or spinach sandwiches? + It can be statistically proven that people come in three sizes: large, average and small. Because most of the women used in television commercials are no more than skin stretched on very small bones, the American woman has been conditioned to place herself in the large category. You can’t look at a television commercial without realizing that someone is trying to make women dissatisfied with the way they look, smell or feel. This is why even the most sensible woman might be tempted to lose weight --- to diet. Have you ever lived with a person who eats nothing but salad? After a week you beg them to wolf brownies or at least put enough chocolate sauce on their lettuce to make them sociable. A St. George man tells me that his wife dieted faithfully for three weeks without losing a pound. She got so cranky that he started avoiding her --- he even fell asleep drinking his nightly hot chocolate in front of the TV and stayed on the couch all night. And night after night, his wife lost weight. It was two or three weeks before a doctor figured out why. The television ads for weight loss had made her so sensitive to calories that she’d been gaining half a pound every night just by smelling the hot chocolate on his breath. + I like spaghetti. Back before I married Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, I ate spaghetti every day. You can read my recipe in the Maine Writers Cook book or on my web page. I don’t like to wash dishes so I started eating spaghetti so I wouldn’t have to wash pans and dishes after eating. I simply poured the cold meatless Ragu spaghetti sauce right out of the bottle onto the hot spaghetti right there on my dish on the counter beside the sink, and when I finished I just rinsed everything off and left it there where it would be ready for the next meal. You know, after ten or fifteen years of spaghetti sometimes twice a day, you really get to like it. + You probably heard about the man who has been trapped at Charles de Gaulle Airport since 1988. His passport got messed up so he can’t enter France and yet he is unable to leave it. It was written up in the newspaper because the reporter thought it was such a strange and unusual thing. But if you compare this unfortunate fellow to a man who doesn’t get along with his wife, yet has six kids so they can’t afford a divorce, we could probably find several hundred similar cases right here in Maine. + I saw a few minutes of the Thorn Birds on TV where the hero was being punched out by Nazis in Italy. But when I walked by the screen later he was riding a horse in Australia. I asked my wife Marsha how he got to Australia and was told that he was working there with the wretched bees. Wretched bees? What’s he doing with wretched bees? And she said, “Refugees, refugees. I wish you’d wear your hearing aid.” + I once read about a mother, who was playing with her three year old. She asked, “What sound does a cow make?” And the kid said, “Moooo.” “What sound does the doggie make?” “Woof, woof.” “What sound does the froggie make?” And when the kid said, “Budweiser,” she knew it was time to stick with PBS. + Here’s more about my AARP driving class. If you Google Road Rage, you might be as surprised as I was to discover that California is not the number one Road Rage state. Yes, I think that San Bernadino is right up there with the number one road rage places, but San Bernadino not a state. San Bernadino is probably a state of mind, like Harrison, New York. My first father in law Bill Galey always said that Harrison was a state of mind. New Jersey is not near the top when it comes to Road Rage nor is --- you won’t believe this --- nor is Massachusetts. The only way I can explain this is that people in Massachusetts and New York and California are not so likely to carry loaded guns in their cars as people in red neck states. And I don’t think that road rage counts unless somebody actually gets blown away. Tailgating, light flashing, tooting your horn, obscene gestures with your hand, screaming --- everyday Massachusetts driving behavior doesn’t count. So the top states when it comes to measurable road rage are those where our red neck friends carry a cocked and loaded gun in the car. You remember the movie Easy Rider where the guy on the motorcycle got blown away? That kind of thing is becoming more and more common in some states. If you think about it, a lot of road rage could probably be blamed on a condition called hypoglycemia which means that some people snap quickly and get mad and do nutty things if they don’t eat on a regular basis. I was over 40 before I learned that if I ate on a regular basis the chemistry in my brain would change and I wouldn’t have these little senseless rage attacks, like a spoiled child, when things didn’t go just the way I wanted. Are there some people you don’t even dare talk to until they’ve had a good meal? They go wild over nothing. You know it. You live with it. You know that when they’re hungry no matter what you say they’ll start an argument or snap at you. You know who they are. Point at one of them right now. + Since my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, escaped teaching, she has spent some time as a waitress, which she finds much more relaxing. I’ve seen Marsha at work so I think of a waitress as someone who trots up to your table with a big smile and does everything possible to make you feel comfortable and at home. But my friend Marilyn said she went to Paris and met a rude waiter. Which made another world traveler say, “Paris? I’ve had more rudeness in New York City.” You have been everywhere and done everything. You come from that class that thinks nothing of throwing down $7.49, plus tip, for an all you can eat buffet. And perhaps even doing it every month. So, where have you encountered the worst waiters and what did they do to make you swear you’d never come back? And, where are the best waiters and what did they do that earned them your approval? I admit that when I travel I’m partial to McDonalds. You know what you’re going to get, and a 99 cent chicken burger will keep you going --- as long as you aren’t going very far. I’m humblefarmer@midcoast.com + You might have heard that Congress is holding investigations because something that children shouldn’t see recently flopped out on several million tv screens. Congress is going to put a stop to the incessant amount of sex and violence we see on television. I don’t know about you, but I’ll miss the evening news. + I was riding with a crowd of friends in a car. We pulled into a driveway so we could turn around and go back the way we’d come. And someone sitting in the back seat, who noticed that the coast was clear both ways, said, “If you want to back up, go ahead.” What do you say when the driver asks you, “Do we turn left here?” You can’t scream, “Right, right, right.” You have to say, “Correct” or “Ayuh.” And even a professor of English at Colby would have to admit that if Ayuh is not correct, at least it’s safe. + I just bought a book called Frog and Toad Are Friends. It is a book written by a very good and talented man whose name was Arnold Lobel and I bought it because I recall enjoying Frog and Toad Are Friends back when I was very young, probably in my mid thirties. But now, thirty years later and hopefully a more discriminating reader, I found a couple of disturbing things. To get an exhausted Toad out of bed after only half a winter’s nap, Frog tears the February, March and April pages off Toad’s calendar. Seeing May on his calendar Toad thinks that spring has arrived, gets out of bed, and goes for a walk with the crafty Frog. The message to young people is clear: if your friends will not listen to reason, you can get your own way by employing deceit. Not that Toad himself would be able to cast the first stone, because when he couldn’t find his button he jumped up and down and screamed. Do you want your youngsters to learn that a temper tantrum is an acceptable response to frustration? However, on the positive side of Frog and Toad Are Friends, your children will preview the shameful reality we live with in the United States today, because when Frog mailed his next door neighbor a letter, Toad didn’t get it until four days later. + Do you bother to read your kid’s report card? There are a dozen or so printed comments the teacher can choose to check off: "He is not trying," --- "She is not doing her homework." One of my friends told me the comment his son brings home the most is, "He is a delight to have in class." He says it kind of worries him, as it is obviously not the same kid he has at home. + You've heard about body language --- that you can tell what a person is thinking by the way they stand. The body language experts will tell you that anyone who has his arms folded across his chest is aloof and uncommunicative. That might be true in Boston, but on the street in Rockland, Maine it could mean that you slopped clam chowder on your sweater. + Have you ever heard of an adult who didn't mind growing older, slower and more forgetful? You might have seen the one who grabbed headlines in the paper last week when he crashed his small plane. The sheriff found a very large amount of cash scattered around the crash site but the poor old pilot couldn't remember where he got the money or what he was going to do with it. The drug enforcement administration and the income tax people have been looking into the situation. The most reasonable explanation anyone has come up with so far, is that he was on his way to Lewiston to make his monthly health insurance payment. + Did you hear Tom Brokaw telling about the poor kids in Afghanistan who have no running water or indoor plumbing in their school? Did tears run down your cheeks for these unfortunates until it loosened the floor tiles in your trailer? On my webpage under “Pictures of you at shows” you can see where I went to school. And even though I went to a school that had neither indoor plumbing nor running water, it didn’t keep me from representing Harvard and MIT at an international convention of linguists in Romania. Unless you count my inability to remember your name and recognize your face, I can function in society. In 1941 the oldest boy in that one room school was Tommy Baum, who was a grandson of one of my third cousins. I can remember seeing Tommy sitting up back trying to keep a teddy bear in the air by batting it with a ruler. And going to a school that didn’t have running water didn’t keep Tommy from being president of that great huge Pratt and Whitney plant in South Berwick. As a matter of fact, when I spoke at Tommy’s Pratt & Whitney retirement party I mentioned that going to a one room school actually honed Tommy’s administrative skills. It taught him how to run meetings. Because in January, when Tommy went into that little unheated back room that was attached to the school, he knew why he was going in there. And when he did get in there he didn’t waste any time attending to the business at hand and getting back out again. + Did you attend a school that didn’t have running water? Do you remember days in November when boys might bring a shotgun or a pistol to school? Do you remember wearing your father’s cut down dress pants to school? Do you remember how cleverly you covered the hole in your shoe with a piece of tin because cardboard got wet and fell apart? And you weren’t even one of the poor kids. Do you remember when showing high school students a multi reel movie like Song of Bernadette or Our Miss Brooks was a big once a year deal? We thought we got to see the life of Stephen Foster because the teacher didn’t know that Foster was a drunk who came to a bad end. Years later we realized that was the only reason he showed it. Do you remember when a trim little 20 year old English teacher could keep a 17 year old high school boy out all night without seeing herself on the evening news? Do you remember when mothers still mended socks? Do you remember that before you had an icebox your grandmother kept the milk and butter down cellar where it was cool? Do you remember seeing your grandmother fry doughnuts in a big back kettle of grease over a woodstove? Do you remember those hard molasses cookies she kept in that round tin can in the cellar way? Do you remember putting your hand on the big round water tank behind the stove to see if the water was hot enough to take a bath? Do you remember when you had to go next door to see a telephone? And when you finally got yours the bell worked on a generator and even your mother couldn’t crank it fast enough to make it ring right. Do you remember the first time you made a phone call? And the first words you said? Do you remember that every time you’d pick up the phone, one of your neighbors would probably be on the line? And from time to time some neighbor, who was listening in on your conversation, would get so excited that without thinking she’d but right in. Tell you what really happened. Do you remember when your father put a white receptacle in your bathroom that saved you the trip out to that little unheated room on the back of the shed? Do you remember getting on a train to go see your father who was working in the shipyard in Freeport or Boothbay Harbor? Do you remember little white signs hanging from the ceiling in the store that said, OPA ceiling price. And you thought it had something to do with the ceiling? Do you remember when you had to put black coverings over all your windows before you could turn on an inside light at night? Do you remember seeing your father paint the top part of his headlights black? Do you remember hearing the shed door rattle when they dropped depth charges on German submarines? Do you remember seeing splintered pieces of gray boats washed up on the shore? Do you remember running inside when a plane went over because you had heard that planes dropped bombs? Do you remember not being able to hear your radio program because the president had died and they were playing organ music? Do you remember going to Boston in a Model A and nobody even looked or waved at you when you drove by? Do you remember the first time you saw a television screen and the green little dancing rolls of toilet paper? Do you remember the lamp on the shelf behind the kitchen stove? Grandfather had put in power 15 years before, but the lamp was still there just because it had always been there and that was where it belonged. Do you remember the old original clear light bulbs in the cellar? They’d been there since the house was wired and back then they didn’t realize that there was no money to be made if light bulbs lasted 20 years. I’m humblefarmer@midcoast.com and if you’re as old as I am, you might remember some of these things. And speaking of making money, times have changed, so I hope your kid is studying plumbing, computer repair or law. Because, even if you are 20 years younger than I am, even you can remember when a Maine teacher could buy a full-sized, completely furnished house on a respectable piece of land for less than one year’s salary. + + My wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, has brown eyes. She is not old enough to know the song, Beautiful Beautiful Brown Eyes which I sang to her the other day. Chorus: Beautiful, beautiful brown eyes, Beautiful, beautiful brown eyes, Beautiful, beautiful brown eyes, I'll never love blue eyes again. Willie, oh Willie, I love you, Love you with all my heart; Tomorrow we might have been married, But liquor has kept us apart. Seven long years I've been married, I wish I was single again; A woman never knows of her troubles, Until she has married a man. Down to the barroom he staggered, Staggered and fell at the door; The last words that he ever uttered, "I'll never get drunk any more." You might find it interesting to learn that I found the words to this song on an Arkansas Family Tradition Web Site. + end Feb 2004 ++ Although it is very nice to be able to grind your teeth and make growling noises in your throat every time you look at your spouse, as I am able to do, we understand that looks are not all that important when it comes to living with someone year after year in a successful, happy marriage. Even the young people who create the reality shows on TV realize that a high IQ and a nice personality are more important than looks when it comes to choosing your life’s partner. If you only see the IQ and the kindness and the generosity and the industry, the plain container that it comes in can be beautiful. Love is blind. This was recently brought home to me as I clicked in and out of the last few minutes of a TV program called the Bachelorette. I assume that the bachelorette had gone through a whole raft of guys who weren’t concerned with this superficial looks thing and must have been interested in her as a person, and when I clicked in she was putting the skids under number two. Number two looked like the kind of guy you probably won’t see your granddaughter dragging home at spring break. I would guess that he had a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Harvard and that he worked for Chase Bank. Mother probably modeled face cream, grandfathers and great grandfathers on both sides probably doctors who loaned money to Ford or Thomas Edison. He had probably broken at least one leg while skiing in Switzerland. I doubt very much that this guy had ever, in his life, asked a girl for a date. Just a look in her direction would have been enough and after a movie and pizza he would have had to beg her to let go of his arm so he could go home. This last part sounds like my old buddy Red Minzy. Anyway, he wasn’t wiping the tears from his eyes as he turned and slowly walked down camera. But when Mr. Big Number One Winner Man came on and got the thumbs up, he hauled out a piece of metal that looked like the code a graph ring you used to get in a 1949 box of Wheaties and squeezed it on her finger. I truly hope that they will be happy and that he never finds himself in the position of the young man who married the very homely opera star. You will recall that on the third night of their honeymoon, he looked at her and said, “Please sing something.” + Strange and seemingly inexplicable situations sometimes have very simple answers when you analyze them with a bit of common sense. You might have asked yourself why you see so many people with cell phones pressed to their ears while driving cars at high speeds. Here’s the answer. My wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, wanted buy something over the phone and put it on her credit card. Our phone was out all day yesterday. No problem because my friend, Booger Boy Davis, was standing by with his state of the art cell phone. The Boy dialed the number on his little phone and handed it to Marsha. She got half way through the business when she looked up and said, “I can’t hear her. She keeps cutting out. And she can’t hear me.” The Boy said, “Quick go outside.” So Marsha ran outside and after turning around two or three times, like a dog getting ready to lie down in thick grass, she was able to transact her business. Cell phones have a long way to go. No matter where you are, you can only hear about half of what the other person is saying, but --- if you get in your car and drive like a bat, you might find a spot that’s just a little bit better. + I saw Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 movie about Birds the other night. Remember when Hitchcock had a TV program? There was a cartoon profile of him on the screen. He would say, “Good evening.” And then he would make some witty observation. So even though I’m not into scary films, I watched Birds because I always thought that Hitchcock was great. The blonde heroine got in a skiff and rode across a small body of water, and the first thing you notice is that she is pounding through a two foot chop when they shot her from one angle and a flat arse calm when they shot her from another. So here is 5 seconds of bobbing up and down and 5 seconds of skimming along like an iceboat back to 5 seconds of bobbing up and down. It was like reading a sentence with past tense and present tense in the same sentence. And you wonder why a genius like Hitchcock would insult us like that until you see the heroine playing piano. You can see her hands romping up and down like Garner but what you hear on the sound track are tinkling arpeggios and you wonder why they bothered to show her hands at all. Even worse was when she went upstairs with a flashlight all by herself. Here they are barricaded in a house so you know that something bad is going to happen when she goes upstairs and opens that door. In real life no one would be that stupid. What? I don’t know your son-in-law? Of course she goes in the room looking for trouble, and once she is in there and the birds attack her, she hasn’t got brains enough to turn around and walk out again. If that movie were made nowadays, every blonde in the United States would sue Hitchcock for slander. + Have you noticed that if you pay your telephone bill one day late, they tack on a couple of extra bucks? And you pay it and you don’t say anything about it because you know that you did pay the bill late and you know that the system is set up to squeeze every possible cent out of you, the customer. But when water gets into the telephone company wires so you have no phone service for a day, and you lose a lot of business because your customers were unable to reach you, does it say on the bottom of your next bill: “here’s a couple of bucks rebate you’re your service that was suspended for a day.” It is my understand that telephone companies will start giving rebates when their equipment breaks down --- on the same day that insurance companies start giving refunds on cancelled policies. + If you enjoy a challenge, you will love this. Find the worst telephone hold music in the state of Maine. While put on hold hoping to talk with Harry at the YMCA, I listened to what I would believe to be the worst telephone hold music in the State of Maine. Most telephone music is so bad that it would be difficult for you to point out the one that is the worst. Hence, the challenge. Who has the worst one? Where do these shrieks and howls come from? How does it get into telephone machines? What do the people who put it in there look like? Do they really stuff their corpulent frames with inch high greasy hamburgers and dripping fries? What are they thinking? What are they hoping to achieve by inflicting such pain and suffering upon us? What does anyone who is not producing a surrealistic horror movie have to gain by playing this music in the background? I’m humblefarmer@midcoast.com and “I’ve got you babe….” + Hannah Pingree tells me that some of my friends in high places in Augusta have not yet made up their minds on voting machines that do not leave a paper trail. Because I do not own stock in the company, I'm suspicious of voting machines that don't leave a paper trail. Listen very closely to what I’m about to say. Think to yourself that a voting machine is no more reliable than your computer, and if that doesn't make you want to put pencils and paper into the voting booth, nothing will. + A friend writes: Dear humble, You heard of the "golden-handshake" people get when they retire? But my brother calls it the "golden handcuffs" when you are married with three kids. He is referring to the fact that he has a good-paying job but can't quit, due to wife and kids. Humph Thank you for writing. I’m not even going to say who sent me that letter. But this golden handcuffed man with three kids wakes up every morning delirious with joy. If I can believe what I see on television, his children serve him Cheerios in bed at 5. The one great tragedy in my life is that I could never afford to have children. I have neither the smarts nor the strength that one needs to stay afloat during our occasional planned recessions. Having a child is just another way of flaunting your golden handcuffs. --- Look at me. I have such a wicked big income, even during this recession, that I can afford to have one more child. --- You know the people weighted with heavy golden handcuffs in your neighborhood. They have a new pickup truck, a boat on a trailer and two snowmobiles in the front yard. And if that doesn’t get out the message that they simply don’t know what to do with all their excess cash, they have children. My heart cries out for these golden handcuffs when I see my many friends flaunting an upward mobility that I will never experience. There will be no squabbling to get a fair share of my estate. + When my wife Marsha, The almost Perfect Woman, came home, I greeted her at the door and said, “Mike has written a movie and if, by any chance, he is able to sell it, he wants me to narrate some of it because he needs a real Maine accent.” Marsha said, “Can you fake it?” + In response to my comments about road rage, a radio friend sent me a table that ranks the states due to aggressive driving. The ultimate measurement is deaths per 100,000. Here are the 24 most aggressive states. It starts out with the most dangerous one, South Carolina, where 15 drivers out of 100,000 got blown away because of road rage. 1 South Carolina 15.1 2 Wyoming 13.9 3 Alabama 13.7 4 Kansas 13.7 5 Oklahoma 13.6 6 New Mexico 12.9 7 North Carolina 12.4 8 Arkansas 12.4 9 Idaho 11.9 10 Florida 11.7 11 Missouri 10.8 12 Mississippi 10.5 13 Tennessee 10.2 14 Montana 10.2 15 Texas 9.9 16 Arizona 9.8 17 Utah 9.7 18 Nevada 9.7 19 North Dakota 9.6 20 South Dakota 9.6 21 Georgia 9.4 22 Colorado 9.3 23 Kentucky 9.0 24 Nebraska 8.7 Blow them away. Yippi Ki Oh Ki A And here are the six states where you are least likely to get shot because of road rage. 45 Connecticut 4.5 46 New Jersey 4.1 47 New Hampshire 4.1 48 New York 3.7 49 Massachusetts 3.3 50 Rhode Island 3.1 You just heard two lists of the states where enraged people are or are not likely to whip out a gun and shoot you. Did you notice that it might also give you a hint of how they might vote in a presidential election? + Why would anyone in their right mind take 6 or 8 college courses in Shakespeare? You can get straight A’s and when you hit the street you discover that there is absolutely no market for people who can rattle off the descendents of Edward the Third. But your classmates over in any of the engineering buildings are immediately snapped up for a salary generally reserved for school superintendents. Do you remember writing term papers for all those worthless courses you took in Shakespeare? The assignment might have been, compare the Comedy of Errors with Troilus and Cressida, if Henry the Fifth, that mirror of all Christian Kings, had played the two roles of Cressida's uncle Pandarus --- and --- Dromio of Syracuse. Because this was long before computers, just before the paper was due you sat up all night typing and retyping your manuscript so that even if you didn’t have anything to say, you would at least get a good grade for handing in clean copy. And then, only a few short months or years later, you realized that only a brainless twit would waste his valuable college years studying literature instead of learning how to drain swamps or design nuclear power plants. --- Do you think there is any value in studying Shakespeare? I’m humblefarmer@midcoast.com and if you can come up with only one good reason why anyone should study Shakespeare, I’d like to hear from you. --- I do hope that I get several scholarly letters from my academic friends who are already formulating their articulate defenses of the Bard of Avon, because every letter will confirm what I am about to say. You already know that any Shakespearian scholar who watches TV today immediately recognizes his favorite characters and age-old plots from the comedies and tragedies. You’ll see a Dromio who says that everyone beats him. And you actually see them trying to do it. Kick, kick, punch, punch. Here’s an Othello who is destroyed by senseless jealousy. Here’s a Lorenzo who has eloped with Jessica. Here’s Doll Tearsheet and more than you want to know about the beast with two backs. Here’s a tamed Katherina telling the world how to be a good wife. And here’s a very common one: Lysander loves Hermia. Hermia loves Lysander. Helena loves Demetrius, who used to love Helena but now loves Hermia. I’m amazed that Puck has any magic love drops left because every Queen seems to be in love with a donkey and there are more Bottoms than you can count. Human nature doesn’t change, so all of Shakespeare’s lovesick, indecisive and self destructive characters are still walking the streets. And if you can see any value in watching people interact in Shakespeare’s plays, you will really enjoy watching people loving and fighting and scheming on the closest thing television has to a Shakespeare play today. It’s called the Jerry Springer Show. + My next door neighbor Etta just celebrated her 96th birthday. Etta was only 28 and living in the same house where she lives now when I came into the world across the road. Etta’s youngest grandson, The Great Ronald, who flies an airplane, was there. I knew Ronald’s grandfather was something of an innovator because he used to fly over the water in a pontoon airplane looking for fish. And when he’d find two or three boatloads of fish, he’d sell them for $10,000 and then he’d use some of it to buy a 40 acre point of land in St. George right on the ocean. And I can remember that all the fishermen laughed at him when he cut up a good section of Tenants Harbor ocean frontage into little lots and tried to sell it to people from away for $7.50 a front foot. And I was thinking about this when I asked Ronald what he did with his airplane because they don’t fly around looking for fish anymore. And Ronald said that he took aerial pictures of houses and sold them. And when I asked him how that worked he said he’d simply fly over a house and take pictures and then try to sell them to the man who lived there. Ronald said they’d look at the pictures and say, “Eyuh, eyuh that’s my house, them’s my traps on the dock, but that ain’t my pickup truck in the yard.” + If you have ever offered me a bowl of pea soup or a dish of potato salad, you know that I politely refused as I explained that pea soup and potato salad are thrills I’m saving for my 80s. When you are 70 and 80 and 90 there are things that you should be able to do for the first time with the same reaction an 11 year old experiences with his first cigarette. After all, when you have done everything, what is there left to live for? Listen closely, because I’m about to confess to something I did this morning that I have never, ever done before in my 68 years on this planet. I did something that I was sure I never would do. I did something I never thought I could do. I have sneered at others when I have seen them do it because I knew I was above such foolishness. I have even written snotty newspaper columns about it just so I could flaunt my superiority before my friends and neighbors. But when I found myself in their situation, I was powerless. I had no control over my actions. Without thinking, like a mindless puppet yanked by a string, I reacted exactly as they did. I hope you’ll tell me that it’s just part of being human, and that I shouldn’t let it bother me. Anyway, I might not be a better man than I was yesterday, but it shook me to the innermost core of my being and I’m certainly wiser. Are you ready? This morning my best friend, The Booger Boy, stopped in for a visit. He was no sooner through the door, when I took Marsha’s one year old grandchild by the hand, and said to her, “Come over here and show The Boy what you can do.” + Why do some girls fall in love with bad guys? Does it run in the family? Is it because their mothers did the same thing? Every rational person in the community can see that he’s as bad as they come, but nothing you can say to her and nothing he does ever changes her mind. Love is irrational. Love is blind. He might be a mafia chief or the leader of a street gang. He gives orders to kill people. Tell her that nice guys don’t send out hit men and she’ll say that he’s really a wonderful man who has evil enemies. He’s only defending his neighborhood. Supposing it does have rather indefinite parameters. They are to blame because they make him do the things that he does. Ask her why he and his band of robbers, who already have so much, feel they need to steal even more. She’ll tell you that he’s a family man who provides for his friends and his family: they are simply engaged in a more equitable redistribution of wealth. --- You realize, of course, that there would be no country and western songs if every community did not have at least one of these very messed up wives who blindly stands by her very bad man. Your community survives in spite of her. But can you imagine what would happen if over 51 percent of your neighbors were like that? + At the age of 68 I’m learning about children. At 68 I’m learning things that too many people learn before they’re old enough to make an intelligent decision. Marsha’s only grandchild, Sydney, who lives in Fort Kent, recently spent a week with us. I admit that I don’t know the first thing about children, so I would never, never offer a bit of advice to the child’s mother. It’s not my place to make suggestions. But something bothers me and I’m going to tell you what it is. Every morning when I come out of my bedroom, the child and her mother are up. No matter how early I get up, they are already there. Six thirty. Six o’clock. Five thirty. And although this child only weighs 20 pounds, when she runs the house shakes, boom boom boom boom, like a stampede in an old Tom Mix movie. And she is opening up drawers, taking out things and anything that won’t go in her mouth goes on the floor. So before six o’clock in the morning you would think our house had been in the path of Haitian looters. So here’s my thought. Wouldn’t you think that that child’s mother would let the poor little thing sleep in until 7:30 or 8? + One of my distant cousins, who is smart enough to work for an oil company, has sent me some letters from Nigeria. So I looked up Lagos on the Internet. And in the process, I stumbled across some newspapers that weren’t printed in the United States. If you are an international traveler you know how interesting foreign newspapers can be. You can read about little insignificant things that aren’t important enough to get into the Wall Street Journal. According to one foreign newspaper, the Pentagon is investigating some United States company that was billing the army for cleaning some offices up to four times per day. I’ve lived with Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, for 16 or so years, so I don’t see anything unusual about cleaning an office four times a day. Would you dare stand up at town meeting and say that the brave men who are defending our country don’t deserve clean offices? You’d be putting your patriotism on the line. Should any American company be suspected of criminal activity just because they bill the army for cleaning an office four times a day? Our present system depends on this kind of thing. Where else would all that political campaign money come from? + My friend John Cushing, who belongs to the Kiwanis Club in Dover Foxcroft, just had supper with us after three months in Mississippi. And when he went home I went on line to look up hate crimes in Mississippi. I found a United States map with little KKK hoods and swastikas on it. And down south was right peppered with hate crime clubs. Did you know that you only have to spray paint a swastika on the sidewalk or on a wall and it goes on the record books as a Neo-Nazi hate crime? And when you figure how many people have mental illness or are drunk at any given time, it’s surprising that we don’t see more of that than we do. On the map there was one little swastika symbol on North Dakota and one in Maine. One in Maine! When I saw that it was on Matinicus, my first thought was, “How are we going to contain it.” + When was the last time your wife said, “Yes, you’ve already mentioned that --- several times.” Do all husbands say the same things, tell the same stories, make the same observations to their wives over and over and over, or is it only the senile who are afflicted? If your husband sounds like a scratchy record and you don’t think it is because he is senile, I’d like to know about it. Perhaps saying the same thing over and over and over is a husband thing that has nothing to do with age. I’m humblefarmer@midcoast.com + When was the last time your wife said, “Yes, you’ve already mentioned that --- several times.” Do all husbands say the same things, tell the same stories, make the same observations to their wives over and over and over, or is it only the senile who are afflicted? If your husband sounds like a scratchy record and you don’t think it is because he is senile, I’d like to know about it. Perhaps saying the same thing over and over and over is a husband thing that has nothing to do with age. I’m humblefarmer@midcoast.com + You have heard people talk about Maine humor. And New York City humor. And Louisiana humor. And you might have heard me say that humor does not have geographical boundaries. I have taken a story out of a 1922 Swedish book, changed Skane and Haparanda to Fort Kent and Portsmouth, and waa laa, pure American humor. I have always maintained that the only boundary humor has is an intellectual one. Change the accent or the language of the person telling the story, and most stories will pass for a story in that region. There are levels of humor, however. Like it or not, there are several classes of people in society and each class enjoys its own level of humor. Sam Collins once told me something that was so dry I didn’t get it for six months. People like Sam Collins who are the wittiest people in Maine will never be appreciated because most of us are not smart enough to understand what they said. Only a handful of stories do not apply to this humble universal rule for humor. The funniest story I heard two years ago cannot be understood by people in Augusta or Ashland because they would not know that some lobster catchers steal from their neighbor’s traps. Tell the same story in Port Clyde or on Beals and people would fall off their chairs. And I just heard a story that wouldn’t work in Maine. A farmer comes down to his pond and sees two college girls swimming without a stitch on. In Maine they would come out of the water with a big tin pan in front of them and the punch line would be, “And you probably think there’s a bottom in that pan.” But in Florida the farmer says, “Don’t mind me girls, I just came down to feed my alligators.” + My friend the Booger Boy is like so many of us in that he goes off on different kicks. His present kick is Kariokie. The way I understand it, you stand in front of a computer screen that has the words to songs on it and you sing the words into a microphone while the sound system plays music to the song in the background. He told me that he went some Kariokie place the other night and went up in front of a crowd and sang a song that he dedicated to his wife. I understand that a lot of people do this, but I’m surprised that the Boy did it because he doesn’t drink. But now it only takes a word, and he’s off to someplace where he can stand and sing. Last week his wife took advantage of his new weakness. She asked him if he’d like to go with her and stand and sing another song for her. Of course he said he would, which is why the Booger Boy went to church last Sunday. + Do you listen to language tapes? I spent half an hour this morning listening to my French tapes. I walk at the same time so as to do two things at once. My best friend, who is rich, gave me the nice little rich kid CD player that I carry around my neck in a little cloth bag so I can listen to French. But if he were to see me walking and listening to French, he would say, “How much money did it make you?” No matter what I do he always says that. How much money did it make you? And he is right. He is rich because everything he has done all his life has been geared to making money. He has been the ant who has worked hard all his life and succeeded, and I have been the grasshopper who wasted 9 years of his life going to college, studying literature and history and languages, which is absolutely worthless if your IQ is low and you live in St. George, Maine. Studying history is especially worthless, because every time you read the news you see governments still doing the same unfortunate things they’ve been doing since history began --- trying to take something away from somebody else. And studying languages is a rich man’s hobby. 45 years ago I might have rationalized the need of knowing many languages, because om man kan snakka norsk, det hjalpa att traffa Norsk piga. 45 years ago it helped me pick up Norwegian girls. But of what use are several languages to a doddering 68 year old man? The only thing I need to say now in French is je suee fatigay. + I have before me a ragged and much handled paper that says: “The Post Office has stated that material sent to you is undeliverable at the address that appears in your records.” And they asked me for an address correction. Yes. Although I live in a house that was built in 1811 --- a house that has not moved since 1854 when oxen dragged it up there, the post office has changed my address three or four times over the past 10 years. Some people still haven’t caught up with me. If you live in rural Maine, your address has probably been changed, too, so you know what I’m talking about here. You can mail to one of your 7th cousins in a metropolitan area like Cushing or Wytopitlock, he might live in the same house where his family has lived for 200 years, but if you don’t have the latest address assigned to his house by the post office, it will come back to you; UNKNOWN. If you can remember when your postmaster knew and was related to everyone in town, you are probably still wondering how post office efficiency, improvements and progress, can cause anything like this to happen. There’s more. Hear this. I got this address correction paper from my brother. Although it said Robert Skoglund on it, it was delivered to the box of my brother, James Skoglund. Because I very often get things like my brother’s bank statements in the mail, I have called my good friend at the post office to ask why this happens. I don’t really understand it, but it has something to do with a machine in Portland where the mail is sorted. One of the blessings of the present system is the enjoyment of opening an occasional Christmas card in the middle of March. Although there are only two Skoglunds in St. George, Maine my brother gets my mail and I get his. I’m humblefarmer@midcoast.com. If your name is a common one like Smith or Jones please tell me how it’s going with you. + Do you always read the instructions? I can’t bring myself to read instructions. I’m so numb that when I think I’m doing what the instructions say, it doesn’t come out right. I like having someone show me how to do something, but I don’t have the patience to read instructions. --- There is a penalty to be paid when you don’t read or can’t understand the instructions. My neighbor Mike has only one arm and one leg that work properly. He figured it was about time to quit smoking so he went to his doctor who gave him some ZyLan. He ate the ZyLan and stopped smoking for 30 days. When he went in to the doctor for his follow up appointment, the doctor asked him if he’d been able to cut down. You see, Mike, who had quit cold turkey, didn’t understand that the ZyLan was only supposed to help him reduce his intake and that he could have been enjoying those wonderful cigarettes for the whole month. + I recently read on a Monhegan web page that there are only four kids in the Monhegan school. Prices for the smallest houses on Monhegan start at half a million dollars, so Monhegan is really not a place where your average young family could go to start out in life. The way I understand it, some residents on Monhegan, probably young parents, are trying to encourage young couples with kids to move to Monhegan and live out there year round. The way Monhegan is heading now, they say that soon it will be only a place for summer people and a handful of winter caretakers. Monhegan is only 10 or so miles from where I was born and brought up and although I have no business saying what should or should not happen on Monhegan, I would hate to see the community die off and fade away. I like Monhegan and I like the people out there. I understand that they are trying to make year round housing affordable for young people with kids. If you are a writer or an artist, a woodworker, or any kind of craftsman, or even if you are just rich so you don’t have to work --- but I repeat myself --- I would think that Monhegan would be a good place to live. There are no cars on Monhegan. When the sun goes down, it is very very dark on Monhegan. And although I go out there several times every summer to do shows, I have no idea what people do on Monhegan after dark. There are no pre school children living on the island which suggests that everyone falls asleep immediately. Which reminds me that Marsha and I spent our honeymoon out there. I do know that one morning last summer I awoke on Monhegan and looked out the window to see 13, I think it was, artists on the horizon painting the sunrise. And anyone who is up at sunrise must go to bed early. I’d like to know more about this project to bring young people to Monhegan, wouldn’t you? I’d like to know if everyone out there is in favor of bringing young families to Monhegan and setting them up in affordable housing. Would you want to live on Monhegan? I’m humblefarmer@midcoast.com + Here’s news. Uganda Becomes World's 6th Smokefree Workplace. Uganda has eliminated tobacco smoke pollution in all workplaces and public places, including restaurants, educational institutions and bars. Uganda joins Ireland, Sweden, Norway, New Zealand, and Bhutan among the world's first smokefree workplace countries. Uganda? If I lived in Uganda I’d be saying to myself, “What’s the matter with Uganda? Why has the tobacco lobby forsaken us? Aren’t we worth bothering with? Are we too poor to buy cigarettes in the first place? In Nigeria everyone understands that they want a thick smoky haze in bars so you can’t identify the gunman who robbed you. But that shouldn’t apply in most of the United States. If you can figure out how they were able to squeeze smoke free legislation by the tobacco lobby in Uganda and Bhutan and still can’t do it in the United States, a lot of people would like to know how they did it. I’m humblefarmer@midcoast.com + A woman has written a book about what is called vanity sizing. I think the name of the book is Size Matters, and I was very hesitant to look for it in Google. Here’s the plot: Women want to wear a smaller size dress, so the manufacturers are accommodating them. They are putting a smaller size tag on a bigger dress. Women are willing to pay more for a big dress with a small size written on it. Some women, they say, cut the size tags off their clothes so they won’t have to look at them. I don’t know anything about women’s dress sizes but it said that the size 12 that Marilyn Monroe wore 50 years ago would be called a size six now. I read on line that men’s sizes are accurate. If you wear a size 62 suit you can order one through the catalog and you will get a 62. But a woman who orders a size 12 dress over the phone has no idea what will come in the mail. It is costing companies money, because so many women now have to return clothing that they buy through the mail. One man said that his wife didn’t bother to return the dress that she’d ordered from a catalog over the phone. She took it out in the garage and used it as a tarp for her car. + How do you feel when immigration quotas are raised so that your town can be flooded with kids who are willing to work for rock bottom wages? If you have a payroll --- of you own a hotel or motel or restaurant you probably think it is pretty nice. I were looking for someone who would rake away the rocks the snowplow put on my lawn and pick my apples in the fall, I’d think that importing this cheap child labor was an absolute necessity. If you are a local someone who has been doing these very necessary chores and think that you should keep your job and even get a raise for doing it, you’re not going to be happy. If you have your ear to the ground you have heard two boo hoo stories. One is a big boo- hoo from hotels and motels and restaurants that claim they can’t find people to wash dishes and make beds. The other boo hoo is that so and so and a few of her friends who were washing dishes and making beds at the big resort got fired so they could be replaced by cheap imported child labor. That’s what I heard and I can’t say a thing about it, one way or the other. But if it weren’t for people willing to come here and work cheap, cheap, cheap, my great grandfather William Williamson would probably have stayed in Arberdeen, Scotland, my father would have probably stayed in Boras, Sweden, and I wouldn’t have gone to school in St. George, Maine with dozens of kids who taught me to say, “Mitta Kulu, A playa mitta. Huvva.” Listen closely. Knowing what I know now, if I were 50 years younger I’d be washing dishes for slaves wages in Marselles, Rome, Athens, Oslo, Koblinz, Smogen, Fungerola, Vilnius, and Rovaneimi, and I wouldn’t even come home to start college until I was 27, had learned a bit about people, and could speak 8 or 10 languages. + end march 2004 + I like my wife, Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman. And, although it might surprise you if you are only 40 or 50 years old, from time to time I like to hug my wife. Yes, old men like to hug their wives just like young men like to hug their wives. But I have a hugging problem because ours was a planned marriage. When you get married at 54, it is your brain that makes the decision. I wanted the kind of woman who would get down on her hands and knees and scrub the floor the first time I brought her home. Not because she wanted to --- but because she had to. As Marsha’s father Bill told me, “It’s in the genes,” There are women, just like the true princess in the fairy tale, who shriek at the sight of a speck of dust. And if you are willing to wait, you can find a scrubber and cleaner in the same skin as the woman who has to cook tasty, nutritious meals from scratch three times a day. This is why I see nothing unusual or criminal in that company that billed the army for cleaning an office four times in one day. I live in a blizzard of cleaning and cooking. My nose has lost any sensitivity it might once have had after 16 years of living in a blue haze generated by roasting turkey and Lestoil. I’m talking about a woman who started to take a before-bed shower last night at midnight and ended up wandering around in her bare skin scrubbing down two shower stalls in two bathrooms with a brillo pad. My friend. Have you ever tried to hug such a woman? This morning, halfway between the sink and the stove, I tried. All I got was a bit of a shoulder when it went by, and I said, “Don’t you have time for hugs?” And she said, “Not while I’m busy.” So I grasped her firmly by the shoulders --- if you’ve ever tried to stop a Type A woman or a runaway horse, you know what a challenge that was. And I said, “Look me in the eyes.” And I said, “Will you please tell me a time --- when you’re not sound asleep --- when you are not busy?” She said, “Something’s boiling over on the stove.” + My buddy Bill, The Almost Perfect Woman’s father, used up thousands of my frequent flier miles to subscribe to magazines and newspapers. When he was called to walk on the golden sands in the sky we cancelled everything and got what little money we could back on all of them. And I haven’t paid much attention to newspapers since. But my buddy just gave me a subscription to a newspaper and here’s what’s on the front page. Some very capable medical people, but I repeat myself. Some medical people have just revealed that lobstermen who smoke cigarettes while melting plastic twine and painting buoys beside wood stoves in tiny workshops have an unusually high incidence of lung problems. Cancer, bronchitis, pneumonia. It took a study by a doctor on Vinalhaven and a Harvard health expert to see the pattern. Lobstermen come to the doctor and wheeze, “I’m having trouble breathing and I can’t figure out why.” Can you believe that? It is interesting that if you or I had made the same observation, everyone would have sneered and said, “What do they know about the effect paint fumes and burning plastic rope and wood smoke have on the lungs?” I know about lungs. Over 50 years ago my grandmother had TB and they put her in the San in Fairfield. The thinking back then might have been, get them out of the house, get them away from the wood smoke that filled every house back then, and they might recover. Go ahead. Tell me that there is nothing cheerier on a cold winter day than a crackling fire in a woodstove. And I agree with you. But you know as well as I do that there is nothing deadlier than the inevitable invisible poison that escapes from a crackling, and eventually smoldering, fire in a woodstove. Back when I was in my 30s and 40s, I was an old batch who slept in a tiny room where the only heat came from a kitchen cook stove. Oh, it was wonderful to smell the little sprigs of green fir that I used to sprinkle on the stove. But now I have a beautiful brand new wood burning furnace that takes 3 foot sticks in my cellar, and I can’t use it because just a puff of smoke now makes me sick. So. The lobstermen have been told and, because they are not stupid, we can anticipate their next move. This is not the first time people have got sick and died because of an unhealthy workshop, so there is an economic precedent for what you can expect will happen. Lobstermen will bring in low paid foreign help. + What do you know about big deal movie companies from Hollywood that breeze into your town with a hundred people, trumpets blowing, shut down every business on Main Street for a month or two of shooting, and then leave without paying their bills? My friend Jim rented out his boat in Camden to one of those famous movie companies what --- 20 or 30 years ago, and while I was at his house yesterday I heard some mumbling about how some movie people don’t pay their bills. Got me to wondering if this is this the way everyone in the movie business operates. I believe there is an organization in Augusta that helps bring Hollywood movie people up here to make movies. They want to bring Hollywood movie companies to Maine, probably to publicize our wonderful state and also help the economy, and someone in that organization might have something to tell us about it. You might remember that I had to hitchhike home from a speaking job in Montreal on 9-11 because my flight was cancelled, and I got picked up by some movie people in Wiscasset. And they said they never got what was coming to them by some movie company out of Hollywood. So if you’re still waiting for money that some movie company owes you, I’d like to hear your story, too. I’m humblefarmer@midcoast.com You know, if you were a carpenter who could prove that Mel Gibson hadn’t paid you for something you built for him with two planks, I’ll bet you could get on 60 Minutes. + While eating my morning rolled oats I read on the TV screen --- I can’t hear television, but I can read the words on the bottom of the screen --- I read a woman saying “I don’t believe in zero tolerance because zero tolerance implies zero wisdom.” And if that’s not what she said, that’s what I think she said. And, as you know, it is not what you say on the radio that matters, it is what people think you said on the radio that matters. “I don’t believe in zero tolerance because zero tolerance implies zero wisdom.” Do you agree that there can be extenuating circumstances for unintentionally or inadvertently disobeying written or unwritten laws and social customs? You have read the oldest books and plays extant so you can rattle off the names of good people who found themselves in hot water, not because they did something bad, but because something unthinkable happened to them that had never happened to anyone before. You immediately think of Billy Budd. So for over 2,000 years much of the world’s notable literature has dealt with good people who went about minding their own business who, through no fault of their own, violated some zero tolerance rule, and suffered accordingly. If even a whit of common sense or wisdom had been applied to their particular situation, there would have been no story and therefore no book or play about it. Aristophanes and Melville would have been out of business. So anyone who can read learned early on what happens when zero tolerance takes the place of common sense. Unfortunately, there aren’t many of them walking our streets today. The zero tolerance problem is exacerbated today because people who can’t read have created our quantitative society. They have saddled us with things like Learning Results. You can measure Learning Results. People who can’t think love learning results because they can measure it. And then they can distort the study in any way to give them the results that they want. On the other + What do you think about zero tolerance? I’m not sure about this, but there seems to be two basic schools of thought when it comes to prisons. One is that a prison should try to rehabilitate criminals so that they can be productive members of society when they are released. Get a job. Stay straight. Pay taxes. Some folks think that if prisons can turn people around, teach them a trade, give them a new life, prisons are worth the money. The other philosophy is that a prison only exists to keep bad guys off the street and to punish them for their crimes. I’m sure we can find examples that will support each position. But the other night, while clicking to get away from a commercial in the middle of the Jerry Springer show, I saw a news story about a man who had killed three people. There was no reason to kill these three people. It was a senseless, needless stupid act by a very young boy on the run. Three families were devastated. While serving 13 years in jail, the killer managed to earn 2 college degrees suma cum laud. 4 Point average. When he got out, he earned two PhDs, got married, and got a job teaching in a college. Everybody loved him. He was a great teacher. He was a valuable contributing member of society, until the state of Texas came up with a new policy that said employers and neighbors deserved to be notified of an excon’s whereabouts. Certainly a prudent thing to do if you are releasing a pedophile. But is it a nice thing to do to a killer who has been a valuable contributing member of society in the 20 or so years since his release? How do you feel about this? Would you rather have this man teaching at a college or would you rather see your tax dollars supporting a washout on welfare? I wonder what Solomon would have to say about zero tolerance. I’m not Solomon, but I’ll bet that after that TV show that man had to hire an agent to handle his book and movie offers. + Do you see grown people face their palms and then drive their hands up inside a steering wheel before they make a turn? Back in 1970 I went to --- I think it was the University of Maine in Orono for two weeks to learn how to teach driver education. And you do not stick your hand up inside a steering wheel. You keep your hands on the outside of the steering wheel. But some Maine people learned how to drive a tractor before they could ride a bicycle. They were so little that they had to stand up and put both feet on the clutch to push it down. And they got in the habit of turning their hands around and sticking them up inside the steering wheel because before the days of power steering, it was the only way they could pull the wheel around. So the next time you’re riding with someone who sticks a hand up into a steering wheel to help make the turn, remember that they’ve lived a hard life. Before they got on the schoolbus in the morning they already had in two hours of collecting and grading eggs. + + Polly Writes: Dear humble, Friday’s show included the discussion of taking a shower before going to the hospital. I thought it was quite a coincidence, as I remembered my uncle's response to a heart attack. One of my uncles, at that time a 70 year old bachelor, called one of his sisters to say he thought he was having a heart attack. He was going to drive himself to the hospital. My aunt and her husband, picked up another sister, and proceeded to meet him there. They parked near my uncle's car, where he was still behind the wheel. My aunts got out of the car, rushed over to their brother's car, and to the amazement of the other uncle, jumped in. The car sped out of the parking lot, and returned a little while later. After Uncle Ed was finally installed in the hospital, his bewildered brother-in-law asked about the detour. The reply was that Ed wanted to take the dog to the boarding kennel, before he was admitted. Uncle Ed lived happily with his dog for another 3 years. From Polly . Polly, do you realize that if he had gone directly to the hospital he might have lived with his dog for another 8 years? + From time to time my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, agrees with me that it is time for a quick trip down south where it is a bit warmer. So we rushed down to Key West. We stayed in the Big Pine Motel. I have been to the Maine Innkeepers annual meeting, and because around 90% of Maine Innkeepers and motel owners listen to this radio program, I’m going to pass along these Big Pine Motel guest rules. You might want to type them up and paste them on the wall next to the other guest rules at your own establishment. Guest rule number one. No cleaning fish on the premises. Now this wouldn’t bother me as long as they did it on the back steps. Before morning the back steps would be licked clean and the guts, bones and feathers would have been swallowed whole by who knows what. If you live in rural Maine, as I do, and if you’ve seen the Beware Sign on my web page, you know that you might even worry about young children overnighting in a backyard tent. Guest rule number two. Do not store your gasoline cans in your room. And here’s where a Maine B&B’s guest rules are different from the rules in Florida. No matter how attached Maine tourists might be to their gas cans, most people are able to leave them home. They’ll ask a neighbor to keep an eye on them. But in Florida people who travel with their gas cans know that any gas cans left outside will probably be gone in the morning. In Maine the fish heads would be gone. If you have a motel or a Bed and Breakfast, what’s the most horrible or unbelievable thing a guest tried to drag into your building? I’m humblefarmer@midcoast.com I couldn’t stand it on Big Pine Key. When I saw the tiny island deer eating the buds and green leaves off something that looked like my little apple trees I got so homesick I almost cried. + Talking about things that creep out of the woods at night to eat whatever they can find, reminds me of one of my favorite stories about my annual lobster picnic. For 14 years or so I invited the world to my back yard to eat lobsters, their own picnic lunch and to enjoy a stage show by Gary Crocker and Jackson Gilman and Michael Michlon and Nick Appolonio and Brad Terry and dozens of similarly talented friends who are the top performers in Maine. My wife Marsha, the almost perfect woman, hated this little informal gathering of 1,000 or so of my closest friends, and by firmly employing various and sundry measures she finally got me to put an end to it. But here’s what used to happen. When my friends had gone home, and while Roan Buck was packing up his huge lobster cooker, I sorted the contents of several trash and garbage barrels. Papers and such in one pile, lobster shells in another to be dumped in the woods for the little forest animals. And right there on my back lawn I threw the bread scraps because I knew that they would be gone before the sun came up the next day. What kind of beady-eyed animals creep into your back yard under cover of darkness to eat the scraps of food you might have dropped there? I had cats for sure, skunks and raccoons, an occasional dog and coyotes, who were always tolled in by the smell of hundreds of lobster bodies rotting on the edge of my forest. Can you think of anything these animals won’t eat? I once read of an elderly woman who was eaten by her cats before neighbors found the body. Dogs often eat pencils, canning jar rubbers, and shoe tongues, as anyone with normal vision has verified countless times. Unless you walk daily on little paths in the woods, you might not be as conversant with the gastro-intestinal prowess of skunks and raccoons, but I assure you, they are formidable. And then we have the wily coyote who can make a meal on an ossified ox jawbone. My point is that, given enough time, a collection of the aforementioned creatures would be able to eat your town’s entire landfill, tinfoil, storage batteries and all. Now I don’t need to tell you that I’m a 68 year old Maine man with a definite opinion on what is fit to eat and what is not fit to eat. So you can understand the great amount of enjoyment I got one morning when I stepped outside and saw that the only scrap left on my lawn was one of those hippie bean sprout holders they call Pita Bread. + Who did I run into the other day who told me that he enjoyed something I said years ago? I’m sorry that I can’t remember who it was so I could give him credit, but it had to do with the way a Maine man deals with trash. Even monks who live in mountain top caves in Tibet generate trash --- things that have to be burned in the stove or hauled to the dump to be recycled. Some people generate more rubbish than others. But any dump keeper in Maine will tell you that there is a basic difference between the Maine native and people from away. For example, if someone from away hires a carpenter to remodel his house, he will instruct that person to haul all of the left over doors, planks and boards to the dump. And if you happen to be on hand when a truck full of these goodies shows up at the dump, you can do rather well. But Maine men feel that they have to age their trash before they haul it away. They’ll tear out the cracked old 1790 doors and put in nice new sliding glass ones. Or they might put in doors made of laminated fiberboard. But even though they know those old 1790 doors are worthless they can’t throw them away --- until they’re properly aged. So they pile them out beside the barn. Fifteen or 20 years later, they’ll load the rotted remains onto a truck and it down to the burn pile at the dump. A Maine man will do the same thing with old iron. Look behind any native’s barn and you’ll see a pile of twisted, rusty iron. Junk men don’t buy iron any more, and you might need a piece sometime to weld onto your bush hog to hold it together, so that old iron has to lay right there until grass grows over it. Only after you’ve ground it up with the bush hog for 20 or so summers do you haul it away. The Maine universe is governed by inviolate natural laws, and a Maine man’s inability to haul off trash without first aging it is one of them. If you ever see a native hauling load after load of trash to the dump before it has been properly aged, you can bet your bottom dollar that he just married a beautiful young widow from Connecticut. + Did you ever realize that everything is relative? If you go to Fort Kent, you are in just about the coldest, most miserable northernmost point in Maine. But if you simply cross the river, you are in just about the warmest, most pleasant southernmost point in Canada. + A kid who graduated from college almost 10 years ago says that she will not have her college loans paid off for another five years when she is 35. You can understand that she is a teacher. Are there other professions that require a life of poverty for 15 years while they pay off college loans? I’m humblefarmer@midcoast.com and I’d like to be able to at least wave a warning flag to young people contemplating a life of hardship, not that it will do any good. My 6th cousin once removed, John Robinson, does very well working for an oil company. I think he is a logistics manager. Cousin John writes: I never could understand why some people go to college and take a course of study that doesn't prepare them for a real job. I reply: Do remember that when I started college in 1958, a teacher could expect to earn three times as much as a person in the military and that one year's teacher's salary would buy one a furnished house on an acre or so of land. Back then, a teacher’s salary moved one into the upper middle class. Back then tuition at a state teachers college was $50 or so a semester. It took me 5 Saturday nights playing bass in a dance band at the Blue Goose in Belfast to earn that $50. In my nine years of college I never lived in a dormitory. I would have forgotten this if several people had not enjoyed reminding me of it over the years, but I was known to bring home American chop suey that was destined for the school kitchen garbage can and heat it up in the driveway in a gallon can over a fire of dry twigs because we were not allowed to have hot plates in our rooms. Back then, $5, or half my week’s bass playing salary, paid for my room and the other half went for food. Cousin John continues: “I'm not talking about the people who are enough of a self starter to be writers or artists, but people who take Liberal Arts courses only to find nobody in the business world cares. But I guess these types prefer to be perpetual students.” I reply: I actually did enjoy going to college, and would still be going if I could. But trying to educate me was like pouring water into a bucket filled with holes. Now to reiterate my point and ask you a question. 45 years ago you could work your way through teachers college, emerge debt free, and in one year earn enough to buy a furnished house and barn on an acre of land. Does the same situation exist today in other fields? Today there are college graduates who are about to enter rich kid professions that will enable them to buy a furnished house on an acre of land with one year’s salary. But, thirty years from now will they discover that times have changed so much that their rich kid profession isn’t paying squat and that even their retirement plans have been snatched away? I’m glad that I will never know. + Perhaps you have noticed that our new skills with scanners and email have turned up moldy pictures from old friends. A couple of years ago Jack Alley from Calais sent me a picture of a 17 year-old Robert Skoglund frolicking with New York high school girls on a sandy Jones’s Beach. I probably met Jack and the girls at the summer music camp the University of New Hampshire used to put on for high school kids. And yesterday Jazz Man Ames sent me a picture of Dick Cash that must have been taken in Rochester, New York around 35 years ago. I immediately forwarded it to Dick’s sister Rita in Rockport. She wrote back, “Thank you very much for sending the nice pictures. They are the only really nice ones I have of fairly recent times.” When someone refers to 35 years ago as fairly recent times, I recognize a contemporary. + Although I don’t really know what Habitat for Humanity is, I think that it is an organization that builds houses for people who are unable to earn enough money to build or buy a home for themselves. I understand that Habitat for Humanity is actively supported by some organizations that constantly lobby to bring in foreign labor and constantly lobby to defeat any increase in the minimum wage. You will see pictures in the newspapers of these people, who are always on deck when it comes to grabbing credit for helping poor people, putting in an 8 hour day, hammer in hand, building these Habitats for Humanity. And when they get home at night they write letters to their congressman, urging him to vote against at a destructive $7 an hour minimum wage, when even a $14 an hour minimum wage wouldn’t enable a worker to buy or build a house today. I know it’s not nice, but I can’t think about this without laughing. Wouldn’t top writers like Edgar Allen Beem or Jay Davis have had fun with that in the old Maine Times. + This evening’s topic is non verbal communication. My friend, Walter Lilly from Dresden, is an expert on body language. How you walk and throw your body around says more about you than what you actually say. With actors, this is known as stage presence. You know some very nice people who walk around looking like sneaks. And if you didn’t know them you’d say, “I don’t trust him, or her.” I remember one of my neighbors who always had a big happy smile on his face. A likeable man, but he’d steal the pants off you. He was a crooked miserable man who always smiled and looked happy. My father was a master of non verbal communication. I don’t remember that he said much. My father came from Sweden so he didn’t have to say much. Somewhere, early on way back in the forgotten past, one got the general impression that he meant business, which eliminated all of the empty words you hear parents sprinkling on their children today, and saved us both a lot of time. When I was little, my father wouldn’t say anything when I was doing something bad, but he’d whistle da da dad a dad a da, dad a da. And now that I think of it, that’s probably why he was such a good whistler. I’ve probably only raised my voice two or three times in the past 10 years. My good friend George Page from Gilmanton, NH, was in my driveway one day and saw one of them. There is usually no need of hollering. When someone calls and says, “Is Marsha there?” I clap my hands three times, and she’ll pick up the other phone. When I want her I walk from room to room, saying, “wife, wife, wife.” And now that you’ve brought it to my attention, a voiceless labio dental fricative is about the worst phoneme anyone could use to attract someone’s attention, and from now on I will attempt to attract her attention with, “bang, bang, bang.” How do you communicate with members of your household when words are unnecessary or impossible? Do you have your own private signs and signals, like a secret order? Do you whistle or make faces? I’m humblefarmer@midcoast.com + The people in ancient Rome were pretty tough. They could go to the Coliseum and watch people kill and mutilate each other non stop for an hour. The people who produce the evening news shows know that modern man couldn’t stand that kind of constant pressure, which is why we have commercials telling us how we can help our dogs lose weight. + The people running the Democratic presidential campaign are not very smart. They spend money to promote their candidate, when all they have to do win is sit back quietly and let voters watch the evening news. + You might be surprised to hear that in a few short days I will put on my tuxedo and emcee a variety show. Because my late lobster picnic was nothing more than a variety show and because I have worked on stage elbow to elbow with entertainers on many other pleasant occasions, I know what happens at these things. It is like marriage. The dominant party soon establishes herself and from then on she determines who will do what, when he will do it, and how long he will do it. I am of the breed that humbly stands aside on stage, so if you were to take out your watch and clock me while up there with any other person in my business, you would notice that my mouth would be running perhaps only 30 percent of our allotted 100. This is good. I don’t mind giving ground, and the person who happens to be there with me probably figures the lion’s share his due. The audience is so busy laughing that they don’t notice me sulking there on the side, so everyone is happy. I mention all this so that you will understand that while working with others in stage shows, performers labor beneath the onerous yoke of time constraints. It boils down to is courtesy. Do unto others. Stop on the tick. Do your seven minutes and get out of there. By running 2 minutes over you are saying, “What I am doing is much better than the act that follows.” But while on stage, performers become intoxicated with the audience response. Of course, if that didn’t happen, we wouldn’t do it. That fantastic high, that interaction with all the smiling faces, that great roar of laughter --- when they finally get it --- is what makes it worth while. Makes me wonder why anyone would want to tell a funny story on the radio. But no matter how good it feels out there, we have to force ourselves to stop, even though, as Pogo so nicely said, we are inebriated by the exuberance of our own verbosity. Diana, who is managing the aforementioned variety show, recognizes this inherent weakness in performers and writes, “Your right about the time thing. I have already unleashed the whip and explained to everyone that if they are not off the stage in time, the lights go down and they get off. Diana.” I smiled when I read these words from an innocent, and wrote back, “Hi Diana, How fortuitous it is that I will be on hand to guide and advise you on the finer points of running a variety show. One does not turn the lights down --- one pulls the plug on their sound.” Enquote. Ha. I know what you’re thinking. You’re quicker than I am. The first thing that came into your head when I said pull the plug on their sound, was --- what if there’s a mime out there? Smarty pants. Mimes never run over. They stop right on the tick. Mimes know that for them, we have the fire hose. + I read that about 50% of patients do not follow their doctor’s advice. I blame it on doctors for not giving us the kind of advice we want and am surprised that the figure is not closer to 95%. Who is going to take a doctor’s advice when he tells us to quit smoking, quit drinking, eat a pound of salad and walk a mile every day? Children already know these things by the time they’re in the fourth grade. Do men and women with IQs of 140 need to study medicine until they’re 34 to learn that smoking and fast food kills people? “Hey Dave, congratulations on finally graduating from medical school. Now that you’ve got a license to heal the sick tell me the most important thing you learned over the past 15 years.” “Well, humble, you’re not going to believe this, but smoking, lack of exercise and those hamburgers and fries that you get through the take out window, will kill, or even worse, incapacitate you.” Ask yourself if doctors really want us to take their good advice. Think how many of them would be unemployed if we did. + After being invited to a sixth grade stage presentation of Romeo & Juliet, I replied: Len, I would be careful if I were you. Is there any place for subversives in our present quantitative bottom-line someone-must-be-held-accountable school system? Would you want your child to waste his valuable time in school learning the need to respect others or how to be a good neighbor when it can’t even be measured on a test? Is your school going to qualify for federal and state funding if they teach children how to cook or build bookcases? How do you measure courtesy, love, respect or a pleasant smile? Ask yourself if your students will be able to survive in Yale if you teach them that it’s not nice to lie and cheat. If Maine teachers want to do the job that is presently expected of them, they had better be teaching kids how to become mindless obedient workers who all got good grades. + Some of us in St. George haven’t gone very far. I live only a few hundred feet from where my ggg grandfather lived over 200 years ago. Over 190 years ago he warmed his feet at the fireplace that was in my house. Some of his descendants who are my third cousins live right next door. The other day, in a moment of deep refection at the dinner table I pointed at the house next door and said to my wife Marsha, “Ten generations have lived right there --- and I knew 7 of them.” Marsha said, “Only 7?” + Here’s a letter from my friend Richard, who is the funniest man I know. For years he provided the substance for many newspaper columns that appeared above my name. Listen closely. Dear humble, I read your letter in the BDN. It's a very nice example of wasting no words to convey a message...the value of which came to me too late in life. One might wonder how I ever managed to avoid learning the value of minimalism in all endeavors, given the fact that I was raised among people so frugal that they spoke while inhaling, as well as while exhaling, so as not to waste the air going in and out of their lungs. I see in today's BDN a story entitled, "Fires shot, begs police to shoot him." It seems that a 28-year old Rockland man appeared in front of Rockland's public safety building and fired off a round from a shotgun, in an effort to attract the attention of the police inside. Once the attention of the Rockland constabulary had been sufficiently obtained, and police officers from both near and far had arrived on the scene, he "began yelling for someone to kill him." He most be a newly-arrived resident of Rockland to believe that getting yourself killed by the police will get you off the city's tax rolls. Why, if it were that easy, we'd all be doing it. + I'm reading a scholarly treatise on laughter. This morning I read that people seldom laugh when they are alone. I laugh all the time when I'm alone. How can anyone think, without laughing out loud? Hear this. Before I’d read ten pages the author insulted me twice. He used two very common words: onomatopoeia and glossolalia, and after each of these words he defined them for me in brackets. He is assuming that you and I don’t know what onomatopoeia and glossolalia mean. Do you think that anyone who talks down to you deserves your attention? I’m humblefarmer@midcoast.com + I’m an old man and one of the bad things about being old, is that I get itchy ankles when I wear socks. Who ever heard of such foolishness? Fortunately, I have discovered that if I slather on a bit of bag balm, the itching goes away. If I walk the Bag Balm to my ankles every morning, I don’t even have itchy ankles. I don’t know about you but I can’t get through the day without bag balm. For years I’ve carried around just enough in a little glass container in my pocket. It’s much better for the lips and much cheaper than anything you can buy in a small tube. Bag balm comes from Lyndonville, Vermont, where my wife’s father Bill Paradis was born, so even the writing on the can provides me with meaningful soothing comfort. I put Bag Balm right up there with duct tape, when it comes to defining the Maine man’s all purpose tool. Bag Balm is the comfort to me that whiskey has been to others in ages past. Which reminds me of a song about whiskey that I must have heard from my father. This is roughly translated from the original Swedish: There’s a wonderful drink that has come to our land To strengthen the mind and to aid the shaking hand Helps the cripple to walk and the blind man to see And now I’m going to tell you what it’s done for me. Although I do not approve of the sentiments, it is a very nice schottische. My mother and father used to play that tune at the Swedish dances when I was a little kid. But I want to get back to my original topic, if you’ll remind me what it was. I think I read that thousands of years ago the average life expectancy of human beings was only 28 years. I would not be surprised if that was because they didn’t have Bag Balm. + You might have heard a poem that contains the words, “When a man gets old.” Perhaps it’s a book. When a man gets old, things that never used to work right continue to run down. I have had hearing aids for a few years, but in some situations I figure I’m guessing at 30% of the English language. At grange, where acoustics are bad, I sometimes don’t hear anything at all. I have recently been haunting the Penobscot Language School in Rockland. You should check out The Penobscot School on the web and drop by at least once just for fun. Every noon several friends sit around a table and munch lettuce leaves and granola as they converse in French, Spanish, German or Italian. Although no English is allowed around the sacred dinner table, I did ask someone a question in English in another part of the building, and when she replied, I couldn’t figure out if she were speaking French or Italian or what it was because I couldn’t understand a word of it. I finally got right up close to her and asked her where she was born, and looked at her lips so I could semi-read her answer, and she said, “Houston.” Houston, we have a problem. It is with my hearing. You have heard me say many times on this program that the first sentence anyone should learn to say in a foreign language is, “My friend will pay.” Now I am convinced that the second sentence anyone learns in a foreign language should be, “We are all friends here. There is no need to whisper.” + Not long ago my brother and I were looking out the window at the snow, and I said, “Why do you suppose our people never went south. How could they live in this cold and misery all winter?” And my brother, who knows more than anybody about St. George history and the daily lives of our ancestors who lived here, said, “They would have died.” And then he rattled off a list of people who had gone down south on boats who had come back sick. Ed Gilchrest, a brother in law to my great grandmother and who, in 1854, was living right next door to where I live now, was one of them. Alex’s grandfather. Captain Freddie’s father. And he told me that even our grandfather who went ashore in Key West in the 1880s, got malaria and was bothered with it all his life. I didn’t know that. Many people out back of our church died, just because they went south and got some horrible tropical disease. My brother said that one fellow wrote home from New Orleans that it was a city of pestilence, mosquitoes and vice. It is my understanding that they have pretty well licked the yellow fever and malaria problem in New Orleans. Now, if you’d like a short winter vacation down there, about the only thing you have to worry about are the pickpockets at Mardi Gras. + My friend Winky hates the cold so much, he hates the misery of Maine winters so much, that he finally moved to Key West where he could be warm and comfortable. Last I heard, he found a good job down there working in a meat locker. + At the risk of sounding un-American, I’d like to learn to say and understand a few simple things in French and German. Please remember that because the brain contains several compartments that do not seem to be connected, the ability to read another language does not mean that you can speak it or understand simple conversation. As far as I know, anyone is welcome to show up at noon at the Penobscot School in Rockland, munch lettuce leaves or granola while seated around a dinner table, and listen to one person, usually an American, speak French or German non stop for an hour. Their words are sometimes punctuated by grunts of agreement by the others in attendance. The other day I was one of the only two people there, so I got to not only contribute my grunts, but to also articulate my sentiments. This is what I learned. Did you see that ram they made to test the safety of side airbags in little cars? The ram is as high as the bumper on those big black station wagon cars that you always see the bad CIA guys driving in Mel Gibson movies. I think they call them SUVs. The great big simulated SUV bumper hits the little car broadside --- at only 30 miles per hour, the side airbag drops down, and the dummy flops around inside with a simulated broken neck. Some little cars survive better than others. The man on TV said that little car makers have got to beef up the amount of steel or structural support so passengers in little cars can survive being hit broadside by an SUV that has run a red light. Wouldn’t it make more sense to outlaw SUVs? Sehr schlim, oder? + I read in a letter from a friend that pollution from coal-fired power plants has contributed to Maine’s children having the highest asthma rates in the nation. Before you cast your first stone, ask yourself if you are free from environmental sin. Exposure to cats, horses, hay or smoke makes me gasp for breath. You love your horse and your cat but your new baby might have inherited your great grandfather’s allergy genes. Just being near the clothing you wore out in the horse barn might make your kid sick. Why do Maine children have the highest asthma rates in the nation? Can it be because 8 months out of the year they might come into a warm and cozy home heated by a woodstove? If you have ever run a wood stove in your home, or if you have a wood furnace in your cellar, you know that 100 percent of the smoke does not go up the chimney. The microscopic particles in whatever is left over is filtered through your lungs. Yes, we like to see you out there on the street with signs protesting coal generated pollution, because we know that before you left home to point a finger at others, your own household was in order. A couple of years ago I mentioned on this program that when I first met you at the common ground fair, I asked if you had a cat. If you didn’t, I would give you a hug. If you did, I would step back because there is no way I could survive the cat dander on your clothes. The next year at the common ground fair I noticed that just about every friend I met said they had cats. + A young Portland friend, whose produced-in-Maine television program is presently available to 35 million viewers, writes to me that “We are losing the best and the brightest kids because they don't have the opportunities that we at People, Places & Plants are building ourselves.” Both his fear and the answer to this ubiquitous but hollow mantra are incorporated his sentence. Maine’s best and brightest kids are able to build their own opportunities. He is one of them. Your kid is another. If you consider money to be an index of success, I know a man who lives on the same land in the town of St. George where he was born and brought up who earned a million dollars last year. It ain’t where you go --- it’s what you know. Being a Type A individual who can work an 18 hour day without even feeling tired helps,