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1. If you are happy with your spouse, you are one lucky human being. If everybody were happy with the person that they married --- perhaps even in a moment of reckless abandon --- half of the world’s great literature would cease to exist. There is nothing as pleasant as liking to be with the person to whom you are married, unless it is having a secretary who knows which things to throw away.

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2. I never thought I’d open an email that said, “Read on for Big beautiful women” but I did today. My interest was academic --- you knew that--- and perhaps even endemic. I suspected that I knew what kind of man wanted a big beautiful woman --- a young, inexperienced boy-child whose brains had not yet moved up into his head --- and I thought I’d be able to confirm my suspicions by looking at the web page. Although I was not rewarded with empirical evidence --- that is, I don’t know any more than I did before I looked, let me tell you what I saw. I saw an average looking girl between two chains. When I was a kid we had swings supported by chains. So an old person --- who had never visited museums in Paris --- would immediately realize that the girl must have been sitting on a swing. She had short, uncombed stringy hair which might be fashionable in some circles, but on the coast of Maine is a sure indication that she just came in from 14 hours of hauling traps in salt spray driven by a brisk southwest wind. So if you are looking for a woman who earns well up into the six figures, she’s probably a good candidate.

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3. We were talking about an email ad for Big Beautiful Women. If you’ve lived in Maine for the past 40 or so years, you might know that I got my start in radio, television and newspapers by running one line advertisements every week in a paper called The Maine Times. A typical humble Farmer ad might say, “Antique dealer seeks attractive young woman interested in one night stand.” Or, “Ornithologist seeks attractive young woman, willing to sacrifice everything for a few ‘cheep’ thrills.” These silly ads were instrumental in getting me on the radio and in newspapers, as well as introducing me to dozens of the most depraved women with graduate degrees in the state of Maine. So because I was a single man between the ages of 34 and 54 I realize there is value in a well written personal ad and I would be the last person to disparage anyone who advertises.

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4. One of the most difficult things a 40 or 50 year old single man has to learn to do is to stay away from beautiful women. We are talking about the email I got advertising Big Beautiful Women. What mature man in his right mind would want, first and foremost, a big beautiful woman? Many things are more important than looks. Yes, I think that my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, is very, very pretty, and she gets better looking every day. But, my young friend, do you know that some of the most breathtakingly attractive women you will ever see might not be playing with a full deck? Take a good look at her mother before you even bother to ask her to go out dancing the second time. Has her mother’s mother ever been institutionalized? Did her great grandmother used to perform miracles with a weasel skin? These are things you want to know before you become entangled in an emotional net which is the most extreme form of irrational and extremely painful insanity a man can experience. Know what you’re getting into. I was not afraid to become emotionally involved with Marsha after I learned that her mother was the valedictorian of her college class who worked three jobs until she collapsed from exhaustion.

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5. A big beautiful woman? Does it do any good to tell your son about the inherent dangers in a beautiful woman? Does it do any good to print the aggressive political follies of past generations in history books? Anyone who has lived through two or three wars and who has read about dozens of other wars in history books might well wonder why the present generation can’t seem to learn from the hundreds of generations of mistakes. The past mistakes of all societies are certainly written down and available for all to read and study. So why does every generation have to make the same mindless mistakes for itself? Is it because so many young people can’t read? Is it because they can’t understand what they read. Can people not think logically? If it has been proven for generations that if King X says A and does B that C will always follow, why can’t everyone recognize that very dangerous but popular old formula of tyrants that has inevitably resulted in disaster? Nothing is new. Everything has been done before --- many many times. I don’t understand it and I ask you now, why is every generation so easily led to commit the same folly? Why does every generation have to learn for itself when so much could have been learned just by listening while sitting on grampy’s knee? Hang her picture on the wall if you want, my young friend and let it go at that, because in 30 years you just might be grateful you don’t have to live with her.

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6. I have lung disease. That means that I am very sensitive to smells. When my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, cooks anything in a frying pan, I almost die coughing. If I go to a public supper I’m very likely to have to leave because the smell from the perfume or food makes me cough. The other day I was talking with my neighbor Faustini who has smoked cigarettes for years. I told Faustini that it wasn’t fair that I had never smoked but had lung disease. Of course, I destroyed my lungs many years ago living in a small kitchen with a wood stove. But Faustini said that he had also lived with a wood stove for years. Faustini said, “But I had a better draft.”

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7. Here’s something I didn’t know. Carl, who was visiting, happened to mention some boundaries being no more than “lines in the sand” and when I googled lines in the sand this is what I read: “Taking a look at the modern map of the Islamic world reveals a rather strange picture. In North Africa and the Middle East, actual boundaries of states hardly correspond to the historical, cultural and ethnic make-ups of these regions. The prevalence of straight lines on the map that cut the Saharan or Arabian Deserts into independent states is just that -- lines in the sand. They divide tribes, clans, families and their corresponding histories and aspirations in an arbitrary manner. “In some cases, all that is required to cross from one North African or Arabian state to the next is to walk over a sand dune. In a region where natural boundaries such as mountains, rivers, valleys or seas are largely absent, the new "borders" came to represent independent Libya, Egypt, Algeria or Jordan. People living on the border areas of these states are hardly aware of the fact that they live across another country. Likewise, in South Asia, Pakistan and India are divided by hastily-designed borders that have been the source of conflict between these two states for the last five decades.” Unquote. I Googled up that information. Now that we have Google, the reasons for and answers to the world’s problems are available in seconds.

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8. Marsha and I were flattered to be invited to a neighborhood cookout. Our friends who invited us live in a secluded little house back in the quiet woods. They have deep roots in the local art community, so we were not surprised to see many people there with deep roots in our local art community. Do you think of artists as being a bit laid back by nature? I suppose that being innately creative people, they don’t choose to take time to get too excited about things that don’t matter. There were also laid back children at the cookout and laid back dogs. The dogs knew that they’d soon be eating hotdogs out of the smaller laid back children’s hands. The children and most of the dogs were imported. This is good. If you have a dog or children you know that they enjoy picnics perhaps even more than you do. Because these people were quiet, well spoken people I was surprised to see that one of them brought a very aggressive dog who soon backed one of the other dogs into a flower bed. And this dog not only snarled and growled, this dog set his savage teeth into the neck of that poor peaceful dog and hung right on, and then there was painful whining along with the savage growling until three or four men and a bucket of cold water pried that wicked attack dog loose. Don’t you feel a little bad for that bad dog’s owner? Isn’t it sad --- and unfortunate that no matter how carefully you instruct your children and your animals, they very often turn right around and join that other political party?

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9. My wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, is young. I notice it the most when popular songs from 1929 are playing on television and she doesn’t know them. My mother was 13 in 1929 and when I was little my mother would go to the piano and play all the songs she had learned as a teenager. So I know a lot of songs from the 1920s and 1930s. Marsha knows songs that I’ve never heard before that were on the radio in the 1960s and 1970s. Of course I would argue that nobody else in the world knows all that each one of us knows as an individual. What each one of us knows makes us as individual as our DNA. And yesterday Marsha told me something that I had never heard before. She said something about the five second rule. You probably know all about it, but if you haven’t the five second rule says that if you drop something on the floor you can eat it if you can pick it up within five seconds. You know, you’d have a struggle to make converts among those of us who have ever worked in a hen pen.

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10. We were talking about going to New Orleans. Of course, we --- that is, Marsha and I and some friends are always talking about going to New Orleans. Years ago I stood on a stage in New Orleans and played jazz so I’ve been there. And years ago a professor from Maine --- I think his name was Ronnie Banks --- got shot in New Orleans. So there are many things to do in New Orleans. I understand that the New Orleans murder rate is 10 times higher than a lot of other cities and that one of my distant cousins who lives there doesn’t go anywhere without a couple of guns in his car. But the good news is that the people in New Orleans usually shoot each other and not tourists. When we discussed the crime rate in New Orleans, my friend said that if he were running things there he would put a stop to all this murdering foolishness. He’d have more jails and a tougher death penalty. I think that’s what it amounted to. I said that if I were running things, I’d see that people had decent wages. Up in Sweden and Holland and places like that the people are so busy taking vacations and running around spending all their money, they don’t have time to shoot their neighbors. What do you think? What’s the best way to stamp out crime? I’m undecided. You tell me. Bigger jails and longer sentences or decent wages and education? I’m humble@humblefarmer.com

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11. The shower stall in my cellar keeps getting moldy. It’s black mold, and Marsha can’t seem to get rid of it. I shouldn’t complain because as I got this shower stall out back of my brother’s barn years ago and I don’t know where he got it. But I’m in the market for a new shower stall. A new one shouldn’t have those black mold bugs living beneath the surface. When I went into the store I was told that I could get $30 off on that shower stall if I signed up for a credit card. I’m pretty sure I’m going to do it, because if it is like some others, I can cancel it in a month and $30 is almost as much as my Anthem health insurance payment went up just this month. Imagine how rich we’d all be if our social security went up as much as our health insurance every month. But I’m talking about credit cards here. How many ways or gimmicks have you seen lately to get you to sign up for a credit card that you didn’t want or need? I was going to lose 50,000 or so Delta Sky miles if I didn’t do something quick, so I signed up for a credit card to preserve them. Of course, I’ve since cancelled the card, but isn’t it annoying to have to jump through these hoops? I’m humble@humblefarmer.com Tell me what you’ve had to do lately that you didn’t want to do, just for the sake of money. And please don’t tell me that you went to work.

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12. At a meeting of Maine Community Television Managers someone said that you knew when you were doing what you, the media, were suppose to be doing when three people called your station to complain. I’d like to add to that. If you are really, really doing what you, the media, are supposed to be doing, big money shuts you down.

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