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Rants Week of May 27, 2007

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1. You have heard me say that I would like to put my 80 acres of woods into conservation. If I wanted to be rich so I could spend my winters in southern Italy, I could sell off my woods for house lots now. The only reason I owe money today is because I bought an 8 house development that was contiguous to the property and annexed it to my farm. Shutting down that development was my contribution to the town of St. George, Maine and the people who will be living here for the next hundred or so years. I think it would be nice to leave the farm to Marsha’s oldest grandchild with the stipulation that it will always be passed along or sold intact. In 100 years my farm might be the equivalent of New York City’s Central Park. It will be the only place in St. George where you can go to get mugged or ravished. When I mentioned this to my friend Lawyer Crandall, he said, “What? Are the closing down the town office?”

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2. I was pleased when a couple of friends asked if they could run this radio show on their television stations. As a result, some of my neighbors now listen to this show on TV --- which I think is an indication of the level of TV options we enjoy here. Corrine said that she enjoyed hearing one of my comments on TV, and in case you missed it I’m going to repeat it now. I recently attended a humor convention in Panama City, Florida. It was put on by the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor. While standing at one of those elbow high tables they have in hotel lobbies, an attractive young girl pressed herself up against me and took me by the hand. I am 71 years old and it has been a long time since young girls have pressed their bodies up against me. I said to her, “What do you do?” And she said, “I’m a hospice nurse. When old men are dying I comfort them by holding their hand.”

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3. Let’s say a word or two about surviving. You have heard people say, “He’s a survivor.” It means a lot of different things in different contexts, but I think the bottom line is that a survivor has the ability to adapt to changing conditions in any environment. My wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, will probably ask to be buried with her lawnmower, much as a Viking chieftain was buried with his best boat and favorite slave girl. To say that Marsha loves to mow the lawn would be like saying that a 17-year-old boy occasionally thinks about girls. Marsha lives for the time she can be out there on that lawn. And she doesn’t just mow it. She sets the mower down to the lowest level so the blades grind in the dirt. And only when there is a barren waste of brown dust all around the house is she happy. But I’ve been mowing lately and I set the mowing deck up higher. And when I do the dandelions are back the next day. So I set the deck down one more notch. But still --- the dandelions are back the next day. Have you noticed that every time you cut dandelions lower, the blossoms appear on a shorter stem? You might keep the dandelions’ ability to survive in mind the next time you see trouble coming and pull your head in.

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4. I almost cry when I think of how I wasted the first 30 or so years of my life. Of course, they had compulsory draft then, so a young man couldn’t do much of anything until he got that out of the way. But sometime between the ages of 16 and 30 I could have lived in 15 European countries for at least six months each and could have acquired at least a basic conversational ability in 15 languages. And then I would have been able to reap the benefits of those social and linguistic skills for the rest of my life. As it was, I didn’t even learn to read Dutch until I was over 50 and French until I was over 60. At this point my best friend would ask, “Is it making you any money?” No, but you have to admit that linguistic skills enable one to enjoy a better quality of life. Let me give you an example. After learning to speak Swedish with a Maine accent at the age of 24, I enjoyed a distinct advantage over most American men when it came to picking up Norwegian girls.

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5. Our thesis is that one is able to enrich one’s life by enjoying a reading or conversational ability in other languages. Kienne son los dos chiquas que estan en la sala? Que bonitas. Kes kay vous alley fair cet apre middee? Deutsch is einer schooner sprache. Ich wunscte ish kund deutsch better sprachen. Yes. When you are young, being able to say a few words in her native tongue gives a young man the same advantage as a monarch butterfly would enjoy with an extra pair of beautiful wings. But even when one is married or old or, even worse, both, an old married man still finds alternative routes to fruitfully employ his erudition. Fortunately for me, when you subscribe to the basic TV package in St. George, Maine you get three or four French channels. So last night I spent an enjoyable hour reading French subtitles as Columbo stopped in the doorway, turned and said in dubbed in French, “Oh, one more thing,”

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6. You might listen closely because I have a mystery for you. I’m going to give you the clues and ask you if you can solve the mystery. I almost deleted this email from a radio friend that I’m about to read to you. I’ve suggested that when you write to a friend you put your name and your friend’s name in the subject line. I almost deleted this email because what I saw in the subject line made me think it was a junk email from someone trying to sell me a medical product. If you were Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot, you’d be able to figure out what was in the subject line from the content of this letter. Listen closely and see if you can solve the mystery before I give you the answer. Arthur, who was voted the organic inspector of the year, writes: “Your discussion on postponing certain pleasures until old age, brings to mind a remark attributed to Scott Nearing. When asked if he would like to enjoy a game of miniature golf, he (presumably) snorted: "When I have lost all my mental abilities, I will play golf. When I have also lost all my physical abilities, I will play miniature golf." On another topic, the federal law governing organic foods was recently amended by lobbyists hired by some manufacturers. This will allow synthetic ingredients to be added to organic-labeled foods. If this is important to you, please visit my website, www.RestoreOrganicLaw.org Thank you, Arthur. Now, can you guess what was in the subject line that made me think this email was an advertisement for a pill? It was, ”Elderly enjoyments.”

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7. And now we are going to talk about the importance of asking the right question. If you don’t get the answer you want, it is because you are not asking the right question. Have you ever seen someone drop by your house and get out of their car, only to hear them say that they had important business that had to be attended to right that minute and that they had to leave? I left my truck at the repair shop. You remember me telling you about this. I had to get the back bumper fixed where the woman ran into me when I stopped at a red light. And here I might warn you against stopping at red lights. The person behind you expects you to run the red light so she can run it right behind you. I’m talking about the kind of person who has been right on your back bumper so you couldn’t even see her headlights for the past half mile. So I left my truck at the repair shop and Julian gave me a ride home. But he didn’t have time to visit. He did look at my apple trees and told me what I could do to help them do better but he didn’t have time to look at my bees. But --- just as he was about to get in his truck I said, “Julian, would you like some asparagus?” And you might not believe this but when I said I’d give him some asparagus, Julian had all the time in the world.

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8. Here is a letter that says: humble, When I "googled" Debra Yoo - we will be exhibiting her art at the BackStage Gallery at Deertrees this summer - I was referred to the "The humble Farmer's 2005 CD #2." In searching for the quote I had to read through thirty-four of your "rants." I had forgotten how good you are! Randolph, parker, House Manager, Deertrees Theatre. Thank you Randolph. Because I couldn’t remember ever writing anything about Debra Yoo, I googled Debra Yoo and, just as Randolph said, this is what came up: 35. You have probably never seen any paintings by Debra Yoo. This is because, as far as I know, Debra Yoo is not famous. But then, I only recently heard of James Taylor and Jimmy Buffett ---Boufay so Debra Yoo might be famous, too. Be that as it may, I met Debra Yoo at the Common Ground Fair where she thrust a postcard into my hand. On the back was a painting of an old quarry. As you know, I know nothing about art. Don’t you have to admit that if Wassily Kandinsky and Jackson Pollock had been selling stocks and bonds instead of paint on canvas they would have been indicted and locked away for fraud? To my ignorant and uneducated mind, an artist is one who can reproduce on canvas something that exists in the real world. I like Bradley Hendershot’s pictures. I like Barbara Ernst Pray’s pictures. I like the Wyeth crowd because --- even if I am unable to fathom the depths of whatever it was they were trying to say, I can at least recognize Hen Teel sitting in his kitchen and the quilts out on my clothesline. So I was shocked when Debra Yoo gave me a post card of her painting of a quarry. I said, “But Debra, This is a quarry. This isn’t real art. --- I can tell what it is.” And Debra hung her head and said, “I’m sorry. I can’t get past that.”

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9. My goal is to say this sentence in as many languages as possible. Blank is a beautiful language. I wish I could speak blank better. Ute said this in German into my recording machine and when I say it, it comes out like this: “Deutsch is einer schooner sprache. Ich wunscte ish kan deutsch besser sprachen.” The next time I saw Ute, I had had time to practice saying this 70 or 100 times. And I was ready to have it fine tuned, as it were. So I asked Ute listen to me say this German sentence. And I asked her if I said it right and she said I did --- all except for the accent. And I said I wanted to learn how to say it without an accent and Ute said, “You can’t. I’ve been here 20 years. And Kissinger came to this country when he was 12.”

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10. While waiting to pick up some visitors at the Portland airport, I was wandering about, talking with people like you do in airports when you have time on your hands, and a woman told me that she taught school here in Maine for years. But lately this thing called No Child Left Behind got to her and she couldn’t take it any more. You have already read about No Child Left Behind and know what it has done to our schools so we won’t talk about that. But I do want to pass along this quote from a 13-year-old kid in her class who had just finished 17 hours of tests. That’s what she said. I find it hard to believe, but I wrote it down in my notebook. 17 hours of tests. This 13-year-old kid staggered out of the last of 17 hours of tests and said to his teacher, “When are they ever going to have time to teach us anything?”

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11. Here’s your humble Farmer question of the week. Ready? How would one determine which items no longer have any utilitarian or esthetic value in a society? How would you ever get a collection of these items together where they could be photographed as a matter of historical record? Go to any grange rummage sale in Maine and look at the table.

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12. So your kid is going to college. Good for you. How do you know that the job your kid is training for will exist in 10 or even 5 years? In 1957 I was working in a factory making radios for an automobile called the Edsel. Great future there. But who knew it then? And how could you beat a dollar 26 an hour? I was saving $30 a week and living higher than I ever thought possible. I even had money enough to buy a suit. But how about your kid? The way it looks now, Wal*Mart will soon be selling electric cars made in China and real estate and might even have a staff of doctors who would poke and prod you at cut rate prices. You can’t think of an occupation that won’t soon be taken over by big box stores. My friend, the day is coming when you won’t have to go to a world class hospital in India to have your hip replaced. The day is coming when you will have an operation and your spouse will wheel you home in a shopping cart. But we’re talking about your kid here. How can your kid get into an occupation today that will still demand every minute of their time until they retire? Listen closely. If I were a kid and wanted to be sure that I was into something that would still require a vast number of employees when I retired, I’d learn how to design US postage stamps.

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13. You have heard me say over and over again that I would never knowingly say anything on the air that would offend someone or cause trouble. But there are exceptions and right now you are going to hear one. I just went to see my doctor. And my doctor had his assistants check me here and his assistants poked me there. He himself even poked me. And all of the data was compiled and sorted on computers and when it was printed out the doctor read it and saw that it was good. And then --- the doctor said, “Mr. Skoglund. The only thing I am going to prescribe for you is a half hour of exercise every single day.” My friend. Do you realize that if I were to say that doctor’s name on the air --- if I were to reveal his identity --- within a month a coalition of pharmaceutical associations would probably have him stripped of his credentials for malpractice?

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Brad Terry will play a special anniversary recording session /concert at the Maine Sound Stage in Brunswick Maine on his birthday, June 9 2007. This will feature pianist Fred Fischer with whom Brad played his first gig ever! Brad's Birthday concert will be the first in a septuagenarian series, hopefully continuing for the next 12 -18 months. On the list of future collaborators are Joachim, Mateusz, Bob Winter, Triology & notably Roger Kellaway with Steve Swallow. Saturday June 9th at 7:30 p.m. Maine Sound Stage, Ft. Andross, Maine St., Brunswick $14 at the door $10 Students & Seniors