The humble Farmer at Bowdoin College, January 31, 2003
Thank you for visiting this page of Rants.
Below are the rants from The humble Farmer
radio show for the week of
March 11-17, 2007
Rants from The humble Farmer radio program -- week of March 4- 10, 2007
+
1. You’ve seen it --- a photograph of an elderly man who holds a pair of glasses in his right hand. He gazes thoughtfully at the camera, chin resting pensively on a knuckle. If you think about it, you have seen dozens of these pictures. Textbooks are notoriously full of them. As medical practitioners or patrons, portraits of these great men in a familiar pose adorn hospital corridor walls. But why this ubiquitous clenched hand --- always three or so inches below the nose? Is it that many of us never outgrow our need to suck or nibble at a pacifier? Listen closely because yesterday, while taking my picture, my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, explained it quite nicely. Marsha said, “Put your hand up there to hide all those ugly old chins."
+ 2. You might have seen on one of those morning news programs, the story on the astronomical cost of incurring credit card debt. As someone who has something in the neighborhood of $40,000 out on credit cards, I feel qualified to speak of my own experience. Years ago while walking through my forest primeval, I was stunned when I saw a survey line running through it. While surveying his property, my neighbor discovered that he owned a good chunk of property that I had been paying taxes on for years. The town changed the picture on their tax map. My neighbor chopped up what I thought had been my land into 8 or so house lots, put in a road and sold two of the lots before I borrowed money, bought the whole thing from the three owners, and turned it back into woodland --- which I hope my conservation and land trust friends will help me keep forever wild. A nice thing to do, you might say. Or you might be like my best friend and say, “What a fool for borrowing money to preserve land for unborn generations.” Banks would charge me 8 percent or so on the money I borrowed to buy that land but, as long as I don’t miss a payment, I am able to take advantage of 1.99 percent interest for 8 months offers from credit card companies, and I do. Listen closely. Anyone who does this knows that they must never, never, never charge anything else on these credit cards that they have out at 1.99%. No no no. And --- a month before the offer expires and they jack you up to 20 or so percent, you pay them off, in full, with funds that you got at 1.99% from another credit card company. If my math is correct, I save around $2400 a year in bank mortgage interest by borrowing instead from credit card companies.
+ 3. If you’ve been watching the news lately this might have a bit more meaning to you. This morning I was singing an old fashioned love song to my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman. The song is from a 1925 show called No No Nanette. And, because this song is a bit dated, I modernized the lyrics.
I want to hear from you
But I won’t hear from you
Because there’s more postage due.
+ 4. Thirteen months ago I sent an email to my friend of 35 years, lawyer Crandall. Because I was writing to a lawyer and because lawyers charge by the hour, my letter was as short as I could make it. I wrote, “Hi Crandall, Fellow in Massachusetts wants me to marry him in October. What do I do?” I think that lawyer Crandall would make a good judge, because he didn’t just snap back the first opinion that came to mind. Thirteen months after I wrote, “Hi Crandall, Fellow in Massachusetts wants me to marry him in October. What do I do?” lawyer Crandall replied, “I wouldn't. First, you are already married, and second, I don't recommend marriage with just anybody….Try to get to know him better.”
+ 5. DJ comes from out in New York State near Cooperstown. DJ used had a driveway hot topping business, but he gave it to his son and retired early. DJ is so old that he told me, with no little amazement, that his son was probably a millionaire. Of course anyone who thinks about it knows that a millionaire today isn’t the same cat that a millionaire was when we were boys, because back then a millionaire was rich. And nowadays hardly a week goes by but you read of someone stealing that much in a week. DJ says that his grandson is going to get the business when his son retires. Of course everything is computerized now. When DJ would go out on a job he’d simply look at the lay of the land and do the math in his head. Nowadays a computer program comes up with a price. DJ says that in the summer he still goes out on new jobs and brings home estimates. A lot of the estimates that DJ did in his head were quite a bit off the mark, but last summer, when his son took him to task for it, DJ said, “Did you notice they were all in my favor?.”
+ 6. You have heard me talk about it. And even though it is really nothing to be proud of, I am not ashamed of it. Three times a week I stand in front of a television set and for an hour I jump up and down and wiggle my arms in time to music. When I say I am in front of a television set that is just what I mean. Even with two hearing aids, if I’m not right on top of the machine I’m not going to hear the skinny woman on the screen barking commands. And because I’m in the front row at this exercise class, I’m really not sure of what the 20 or so ladies are doing behind me. I do know that this exercise class is like most any other exercise class you are likely to see anywhere, because the tiny little bird like ladies who attend this exercise class religiously do not look anything like the people who really should be there. So --- you might well ask --- what motivates ladies to get out of a warm bed early, early in the morning and then show up at a building where they try to jump out of their skins for an hour? I’m going to tell you, because this morning, for the first time, I turned and looked over my shoulder --- and saw them passing around a small tin of chocolates.
7. If you have listened to this program for any amount of time, you know that my primary purpose in chatting with you --- my goal in life—is to tell you things that will make your life more pleasant. What better employment can one find than to be able to educate one’s best friends and do it in a manner that might bring a smile to their lips? If I can’t smooth out the bumps in your road of life I can at least prepare you for the fact that they are waiting for you. If you have ever married, I would like you to listen closely to what I am about to say. If you have never married, I would like you to listen even more closely. How much anguish and unnecessary suffering could be spared in this life if, during the wedding vows, the performing magistrate would say, “Do you, Alison, promise to go through Stephen’s pants and remove the Kleenex, loose dollar bills, his ipod and notebook BEFORE throwing them in the wash?”
+ 8. You have no idea how much I enjoy talking with you here every week. No matter what we talk about, no matter what problems or questions I might present to you, you always have a good well thought out answer for me. So, yes. Brace yourself. You know, that when I butter you up like that, I’m looking for your opinion. I’m humble@humblefarmer.com Please tell me what you think about this. Listen closely. Last month I went to a wonderful four-day convention and learned more about the benefits of therapeutic humor. We all wore name tags and they were not pin on name tags but the kind that hang around your neck on a string. I like name tags. Whenever you see me out at a public gathering, you will probably see me wearing a name tag. I wear it as a courtesy to you and my other friends. I am so bad with names and faces that your name tag is a great help to me, so I’m displaying mine as a courtesy to you. You can always tell the most important person at a convention because they transcend the name tag. They think to themselves, “I’m quite an important person. Everyone knows who I am. I don’t need a name tag.” Watch for this the next time you go to a meeting and tell me if I’m right. Anyway, one evening at this humor meeting while sitting at a banquet table, I was joined by a very attractive and very well endowed woman who was wearing a dress cut so low --- well, this dress would have made Jennifer Lopez blush. [if she hadn’t shaved, she would have been arrested.] Every country in the world has its own singular customs concerning eye etiquette and every adult in every country knows their own unspoken rules to this universal game. In our country the well endowed woman wears a low cut dress and displays, on a small gold chain six inches below her throat, some beautiful decoration that cries out, “Look at me – look at me.” But, although men enjoy looking at these beautiful things, they cannot be caught doing it. So here I am at the banquet table, shaking hands with and looking straight into the eyes of this woman who has just sat down. She knows that, like any man, my mind is saying, “Wow. Wow. Wow,” but she might have been surprised at what I said out loud. “Hi, You can see that I’m Robert, but I don’t dare look at your name tag.”
+ 9. At the therapeutic humor convention, a very old speaker, who happened to be a psychiatrist, said that there was once a 95 year old man who won 10 million dollars in a lottery. His grandchildren were afraid to tell him that he had won 10 million dollars for fear that the shock would kill him. So they very wisely consulted with their good friend, the family doctor, who agreed to break the news to the old man in a very gentle fashion. The doctor said, “Joseph, what would you do if you won 10 million dollars.” The old man said, “I’d give half of it to you.” And the doctor dropped dead.
+ 10. You email me a lot of stories. I don’t know if they are true or not, and I suppose it doesn’t matter. One afternoon a cop saw a bum leaning up against a building drinking something out of a bottle he had hidden in a paper bag. And the cop said, “What are you doing there?” And the bum said, “Just what it looks like. I’m holding up the building.” The cop took the bum by the arm and led him off and the building fell down.
+ 11. What’s the saddest thing in the world? A one-armed fisherman who just caught a two foot fish.
+ 12. You have just about heard the last of the stories I picked up at the therapeutic humor convention, but here is one more. I listened to the speakers very closely and I took a lot of notes. But there was one nice looking woman there who spoke to us as she darted about the stage and I have to confess that I have no idea of what she said. You see, although I kept my eyes on her, I couldn’t get myself to listen to what she was saying. I was thinking about something else. Every minute I expected that she was going to topple off a hideous pair of high heeled shoes and break her leg.
+ 13. Somebody told me a story about a man who came home and collapsed in the middle of the kitchen. When his wife asked him what he had to say for himself, he raised himself up on one elbow and said, “I don’t have any prepared remarks but I’m prepared to take questions from the floor.”
14. You know you’re getting old when you’re watching the TV advertisements for weight loss and the girl in the “before” picture looks better.
Thank you for reading my rants. Come have supper with us at the St. George farm when it gets warm enough to travel. Your buddy humble
785 River Road
St. George, ME 04860
(207) 226-7442
humble@humblefarmer.com
www.TheHumbleFarmer.com
© 2007 Robert Karl Skoglund