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1. Back in the 1950s when I was working in Crie’s hardware store in Rockland for $25 a week, if you had told me that I would live to see the day when I would pay $48 for a tank of gas, I would have said that there was no way in the world that my neighbors would ever go to the polls and vote to give the Republicans that much power.

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2. Do you ever wake up at 2 AM and stagger into the kitchen like Dagwood looking for a sandwich? Do you sit down by the television and turn it on at 2 AM while you are eating your sandwich? Dagwood would be surprised at what one sees nowadays on television at 2 AM. I was. If you were there, you saw four young women sitting on a couch talking about their boyfriends. They laughed at their boyfriends and said unkind things, and when I finally realized that this was not a talk show but a commercial for a product that I have never heard of, their credibility collapsed. As I walked back upstairs to bed I got to thinking that in 1951 I was working in a garage for Russ Thomas. Back then you’d have to grind the valves on your car every 10,000 miles so I removed a lot of cylinder heads. And I changed a lot of flat tires. And when a front end would shimmy, and you took it apart, you usually discovered that the bushings were more worn than the king pins.

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3. I was pleased, proud and very excited to see a story “I had written” on the glossy pages of Portland magazine. Unless it was in the court record or obituary, you were probably pleased the last time you saw your name in print. I don’t think you can be so famous as to be indifferent to it. Andy Wyeth, whom I encountered in our post office once day, gave me a magazine that had one of his paintings on the cover. I think the name of the publication was Art & Antiques and I produced a best-of-show prize winning television commercial based on one of Andy’s paintings that I saw in that magazine. Andy was proud of his painting of one of our neighbors on that cover and I was proud of the television commercial I could never have made had Andy not given me that magazine. And this is the way it should be. Creative people should be proud of their work and pleased that their friends and neighbors (who have contributed to the creative process) like it. But to get back to “my” story that appeared today in Portland magazine. I laughed when I read it because it was funny. Of course, all I did was write down what some of my friends and neighbors told me. It was really a collection of their funny observations and I was no more than the conduit that presented it to the public. Today I rushed out and showed this magazine to all the people who contributed. In the story I mentioned that one neighbor said that he never ever had a complaint from a customer. My observation was that this is not surprising when you consider that he owns a brush chewing machine that can pulverize bone. When one of my informants read that, she said that she once owned a small restaurant where musicians gathered to play. One day a man from a New York company that licenses music came in and said that she had to pay him $2,000 because she employed musicians who played from sheet music. And although I won’t repeat their discussion here, she said that the fellow left abruptly and never came back when her boyfriend smiled at this man from away and asked, “How many people in New York know that you’re here?”

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4. I would not deserve to sit behind this microphone if I did not occasionally enrich your life with salient commentary. My next observation will save you money, so listen carefully. This morning my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, came down the stairs, walked over to the sink, and with her tongue hanging out panted, “I’m hot. It’s too hot here. I’m dying from the heat.” I walked over beside her and pointed at the thermometer on the wall. I said, “It is 57 degrees here.” Even a Type-A woman can’t argue with the figures on a thermometer and she said no more. But --- I very astutely said, “It is not hot in here. But when I just came downstairs I cranked up the heat to 65. Your nose smelled those heating pipes starting to warm up which gives your brain the impression that your body is hot.” So, there is obviously a lesson to be learned here. There are probably people in monasteries in Tibet who have been heating their rooms with mental power for centuries. But I claim to be breaking new ground by suggesting that it would work here in Maine. I’m able to produce beads of sweat on my wife’s brow in an ice cold room just by giving her a sniff of dust on a warm copper pipe. Wouldn’t you consider the ecological and financial benefits of heating your home with the power of your mind? There is an organization in Maine that will give you --- I think they call it seeder money --- to produce and market your invention. There is no reason why the smells of burning cedar or pine can’t be canned and marketed to everyone’s advantage. Look for it at the Common Ground Fair.

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5. When I told my brother that I was able to produce sweat on Marsha’s brow by simply letting her smell the heat on a hot pipe it reminded him of something he read in a book by William James. And because I was able to Google up the exact quote, I will read William James here. It concerns a man called The Cure of Ars: "He imposed it on himself that he should never smell a flower, never drink when parched with thirst, never drive away a fly, never show disgust before a repugnant object, never sit down, never lean upon his elbows when he was kneeling. The Cure of Ars was very sensitive to cold, but he would never protect himself against it. During a severe winter one of his missionaries contrived to heat his confessional. The trick succeeded, and the Saint was deceived: 'God is very good,' he said 'This year, through all the cold, my feet have always been warm.' "

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http://www.btinternet.com/~glynhughes/squashed/james.htm

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6. When my old friend and neighbor Georgie Pease was 85 or so he went to the hospital. And when he came out of the hospital they put him in one of those half-way houses where they put people who are too well to be in the hospital but are still not well enough to take care of themselves at home. And when Georgie Pease was restored to health and happiness and went back to his home on the ocean in Martinsville, he discovered that his pension --- I think it was his social security pension, stopped coming. And after three months of no pension Georgie Pease asked the people in charge why they had shut off his pension. And after much research and deliberation it was determined that after he came out of the hospital Georgie Pease had been put in that halfway house to recover. And then he had left that halfway house. And to the best of anyone’s knowledge, Georgie Pease was the first resident to ever leave that place alive.

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7. You can learn a lot by reading just the subject lines in the hundreds of junk emails you get every day. You will recall my telling you about one that said, “View available singles in Tenants Harbor.” When I read it to my wife Marsha, she said, “Oh, I wonder who that is?” So you can see that junk emails have generic titles and only half of them can be expected to appeal to men, while women like my wife, who seem to have an inordinate desire to learn more about their neighbor’s grandchildren, would eagerly open them, hoping to learn what Sarah named her new baby. I know I’m behind the times when I see a junk email that says: “Playstation to be shipped to” --- I’m humble@humblefarmer.com What in the world is a playstation?

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8. If you think about some things, they contradict themselves, so why cause yourself unnecessary distress by thinking? In the book 1984 people were taught the art of doublethink. Doublethink is the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time and accept both as true. Please tell me if you think this might be an example. One of the great propaganda lies of our generation is the phrase, “Tax and Spend.” The phrase Tax and Spend is supposed to carry the connotation of evil. But it would be even easier to come up with a phrase like “Borrow and Bomb” that would describe a really evil practice. Of course, unlike bombing, taxation is a necessary evil. It is the means by which you and I raise money to pay for our schools, our roads our police and fire fighters and all the other services which we have come to think of as being essential in our society. So consider this: Every day on television we now see an ad run several times. It encourages us to vote to spend money that will repair roads and bridges. I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t want good safe roads and bridges. But isn’t it interesting to realize that the people who own these construction companies and are paying for all these road-building television commercials that encourage us to tax and spend, are the same people who would blow a blood vessel should anyone mention tax and spend? You see, it makes a difference who gets to put in their pockets your tax dollars that are being spent. And here’s another thing that you don’t even want to think about. I heard that Maine State Legislators were afraid to raise the tax on gasoline by one cent a gallon. Individual legislators, thinking about an upcoming election, were afraid to levy this one cent a gallon tax that would repair roads and bridges -- for fear that some conservative watchdog group would record their vote as being anti-business. Meanwhile, in the past two months didn’t the average price of unleaded gasoline go up 50 cents a gallon?

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9. Over the past month a couple of dozen newspapers have carried profiles and editorials about The humble Farmer. Dozens of letters about me have appeared in many more newspapers. Reporters with television cameras have solicited my opinion. A newspaper publisher and two television stations have asked for permission to broadcast my radio show. A surprising number of people who wrote to the newspapers referred to The humble Farmer as a literary icon – a philosopher whose words are to be venerated. All of this fuss surprised me because for 29 years I’ve been doing the same old thing. But then I realized, that at the age of 71, I must have finally said something worth repeating.

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10. My wife says that she just saw a television show about getting your body ready for summer. They showed a bathing suit that cost $475. If your bathing suit cost $475, it might be a little late to get your body ready for this season. But, if you’ll lay off the calories and drink a lot of water and eat a bit more salad, you might be ready by next year.

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