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This is a rough draft of my Rants for the week of August 19, 2007

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1. You know that I read the Encyclopedia Britannica almost every day. I choose a volume at random and open it at random and I read whatever is on the page. Today I read about Francis Hopkinson who was one of the insurgents who signed the Declaration of Independence. It says that he aided the revolutionary movement and the later struggle for the adoption of the constitution by a series of prose and poetic satires which were widely reprinted and most effective. I don’t know why, but the effectiveness and power of satire is something I’ve been thinking about lately. Satire is much more effective than coming right out and pounding people over the head with a fact, because satire makes people think. Because satirists have the ability to make people think, satirists are very dangerous people indeed. Satirists are the first people to be shot or hung or muzzled by their enemies in a totalitarian society. I’m glad I’m not a satirist.

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http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7203633/the_long_emergency

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2. My friend, The Griller Man, just sent me an article by James Howard Kunstler. I have never heard of Mr. Kunstler before and I have no idea of what kind of axe he has to grind, so I read his article, which was about how our lives are going to change one of these days in the immediate future when we run out of oil. From my first, and admittedly superficial reading, Kunstler seems to have missed the mark in more than a few places. He says: “Since the Middle East contains two-thirds of the world's remaining oil supplies, the U.S. has attempted desperately to stabilize the region by, in effect, opening a big police station in Iraq.” I’m sure that made you sit up and take notice, because anyone who subscribes to any newspaper printed outside of the United States reads that the US is attempting desperately to Destabilize the region. Most everyone in the world outside of the United States believes --- that if the U. S. government wanted that hornet's nest to calm down, they'd get out of there today.

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3. I recently read an article about how our lives are going to change when we run out of oil. Although the author gnashed his teeth and wrung his hands about a grim looking future, he said nothing about the present need of birth control. He cried about houses being built on farmland and super shopping centers being built on wetlands and millions of automobiles that are clogging the highways and polluting the air and using up our limited amount of fossil fuel. But --- might not a reasonable person ask why we are building all these houses and, in innumerable other ways, fouling our own planetary nest? Are not these horrible problems with us simply because my great great great grandfather had 10 children? And because my grandfather had 10 children? And because all of their contemporaries did the same? Even in the most recent 100 years only a very few people ever stopped to consider what would happen to a finite planet with finite resources if we continued to breed like rabbits. And nobody with an articulate voice is saying anything today. Why do we not see articles in the newspapers that point out that past wars and disease are the only reason we have as few people on this earth as we have today? If people like Joshua and the children of Israel hadn’t slain their neighbors with a very great slaughter back in the good old days, think of how many millions of their descendents would be walking around today. We read that entire cities of 25,000 people were put to the sword. In one day alone the children of Levi killed about three thousand men. But now, why are they not telling us on television that because we are not killing off as large a percentage of the population in wars as we used to, and because many more children now reach puberty than they used to, that we are going to have to discover a new way to limit the number of people being conceived? I don’t know the answer. I’m humble@humblefarmer.com You tell me.

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4. We are talking about pollution and the fact that we are running out of oil. But the article I read said nothing about a very interesting movie you might have seen. It is called Who Killed The Electric Car? I can’t even think what would happen if we had only electric cars, could you? Our entire society would change. My grandfather was born in 1860 and whenever he went to town, it was in his wagon which was pulled by a horse. He died in 1927 so he saw the transition from horse to trolly and then the buying up and destruction of the trollys by car manufacturers so we’d all have to use cars. Even now, we read that there is a powerful lobby trying to destroy the pitiful railroad system we have in this country so people will have to use cars to travel and trucks to haul freight. My grandfather saw the cars drive out the horses. Can you imagine what people in the 1870s and 1880s and 1890s would say if they could step into our world today and see how their entire lifestyle was gone? But --- the people in your family who are three years old are going to see a change that is even more drastic than the transition of the horse to the car. Unless some very clever people are going to be encouraged to improve alternate energy sources like solar power, the next generation is going to see a transition from the car to the horse.

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5. It is going to be hard to get the government, which nowadays is the same thing as big business, to allocate money to develop solar power technology. And you and I can understand this. Although the development of this technology will benefit everyone, it won't make any money for anybody, so it will be repressed until half the world is blown up fighting over who gets to sell the last drop of oil. When you think how many of your friends and my friends would actually have to find another way to make a living if we had only electric cars, you can understand why very few people are interested in solar power. Of course, when the oil is all gone will there be any alternative but solar power, or power from the wind and tides, or power from the heat deep down in the earth? Whatever we finally come up with for power, you can be sure the government will tax that, just like they do the number of radios you have in your house in some European countries.

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6. My brother lives in a house that our great great grandfather built over 200 years ago. He has no furnace and he has no water pump. Water runs into my brother’s house from a spring up on the hill. He heats his house with a wood stove. Outside of the electric lights, my great great grandfather would find pretty much the same house that he lived in in 1801. Would it be possible to live on that farm today without electric power or a car? My great great grandfather lived there like that and my great grandfather lived there like that and my grandfather lived there --- without electricity or a car. So I suppose it could be done. Even when I was a little boy there was no telephone or refrigerator or flush toilet in our house, so I know it is possible to live without these things. There was no running water in the school I attended for five years, so I know it is possible to have a school without running water that is heated in the winter with a wood stove. I’ve heard of a lot of smart people who were great scientists and even presidents who attended schools with no electricity or running water, so I know that the lack of sanitary facilities in no way detracts from the IQ. Yes, it would be kind of hard to go back, and I’m sure anyone doing it would grumble for a year or two, but don’t you have to admit that it could be done?

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7. You have heard me say that St. George, Maine is infested with artists. There are people here in St. George who sustain themselves for the entire summer just by browsing on the cheese, wine and crackers that everywhere abounds at art show openings. Because there are so many artists in town, most of us have, at one time or another, posed for one or more of them. I recently read in an article in the Los Angeles Times, that my neighbor Jimmy Parker considers posing for St. George artists a civic duty. I have to agree. Without even thinking about it, I can name four artists who live in this town who have asked me to pose for them. I read that one of them once sold a painting for seven million dollars. The other three I posed for don’t charge that much for their work, but then their financial situation is such that they don’t have such an urgent need to market. So you can understand that these are not your Sunday afternoon artists. These are serious, full time artists who are out there in front of your house at sunrise, dobbing away, trying to capture the cold morning light seven days a week.

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8. We were talking about the artists who live in St. George, Maine. It is hard to live here without knowing someone who has posed for a portrait that has warranted a full page reproduction in Life Magazine. I can remember seeing one time, in a glossy art magazine, a portrait of one of my neighbors standing in a field of grass. He didn’t have a stitch on. Can you imagine that? A man without a stitch on standing in a field with waving grass almost up to his knees? Some woman who saw the picture said the artist should have put more fertilizer on the grass. I made a Xerox color copy of the picture and sent it to the editor of the magazine. I enclosed a little note that said that I’d been asked to pose for that picture, but when I took my clothes off the artist discovered he didn’t have enough paint.

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9. You know me. I start to tell you something and I forget what I was going to say and end up saying something else. We were talking about all the artists in St. George, Maine and how, if you live here, you know a lot of the people who pose for artists. So when we go to a museum and see these paintings of our friends and neighbors and our houses in these paintings, we don’t look at the painting like an art critic. And even though we might like the painting, we don’t look at it like someone who appreciates art and the clever things the artist has done. We say, “That’s my house or Jimmy’s house.” And we notice if the tv antenna was left off or if an extra window was put in. And we notice if the gravestones in the cemetery have been moved around in the painting. And if we sign up for a guided tour in a museum where all these wonderful paintings of our friends and our homes are hanging, we listen to what the docent --- I think that’s what they call tour guides in museums. When we sign up for a guided tour in the museum and the docent says this and that about people and places we’ve known all our lives, we might have occasion, from time to time, to raise our eyebrows. Let me tell you what I learned about guided museum tours. Giving a guided tour in a museum is very much like writing an article for a newspaper: Never let facts get in the way of an interesting story.

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10. What do you have to do to be a great man? If you open the Encyclopedia Britannica at random every day and read whatever happens to be on the page you will soon see that many great men spent a lot of time in jail. Some died in jail. Many were hung or shot or burned. Some of them got fired and couldn’t get work because they came up with a wonderful innovation or philosophy that conflicted with prevailing dogma. Years and years later, when their bones were under ground and current thought patterns caught up with what these great men had been saying all their lives, they were hailed as brilliant innovators. --- Men of perception, foresight, and inordinate ability. Many great men failed in business. --- --- Well, you can believe how good I felt when I thought about these great men who were silenced for their opinions. These great men who failed in business. Because I fit into that category, how could I help but think that I, too, might someday be recognized as a great man. But then today I got to thinking that most men who fail in business or are thrown in jail really are worthless bums.

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