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This is a rough draft of my Rants for the week of October 7, 2007

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1. You know that although I could never afford to have children, I married a widow. And now my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, has three grandchildren. I’m sorry if you are now expecting a lengthy rant on the singular habits or questionable virtues of small grandchildren, but I have instead one simple question to ask you. I’m humble@humblefarmer.com How can children who have to be coaxed to eat their peas, and turkey, and gravy, and stuffing, and squash, and cranberry sauce, immediately seize a slice of watermelon and, if not watched closely, even eat the green rind?

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2. Heather, who visited with us for a few days last summer, sent me five dollars so I could mail back her shoes. Don’t guests usually leave something at your house? Don’t they always expect you to ship it to them? I think I paid two dollars for the shoes I wear around the farm, so having someone ship them to me would be an expensive proposition.

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3. I started out to say that I went to a post office four times while trying to ship Heather her shoes. The first time I went into this nice, rural post office there was a pleasant elderly gentleman at the counter. So, rather than wait, I went up the road, transacted my business there, and then came back --- to find the pleasant elderly gentleman still at the counter. I wasn’t surprised to find the man still there because the last time I was in that very same post office there was another man at the counter, who was obviously telling some kind of story. I can’t remember now what it the story was, but I do remember that I left, went up the road, transacted my business there, and came back again like I did today.

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4. Consolidation is a word you hear often nowadays. We are told that school consolidation is a good thing because it will save school administrators time and money. Much as one farmer can tend out on 10,000 chickens in a huge pen where the chickens can all come out exactly the same, the plan nowadays is to jam as many students into a school as possible so the students will also come out exactly the same. Another part of the consolidation plan is to make sure that you, the parent, have very little say about what happens to your child in a far away consolidated school. And who cares if your kid has to leave home an hour earlier in the morning for a long bus ride? One question you don’t have to ask is, “Who dreams up these grandiose plans to build huge, new consolidated schools? And who prints up and supplies the media with the propaganda that is created to convince you that new buildings are a good thing?” Follow the money.

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5. I started out to tell you that the government took away our post office a few years ago. As I recall, it had been there for 196 years and some bureaucrat in an office far from St. George, Maine felt our post office had outlived its usefulness. Being forced to now drive 10 miles to mail a package is a great inconvenience to me. The cost of the gas to get there and back is now much more than the postage I have to put on the envelope. Used to be I could even weigh the package myself and put the postage on it, but lately it’s been hard to keep up with postal rates which seem to change every six months. I don’t even dare put my own postage on a big brown envelope anymore because I’ve been told that it takes a different rate from little envelopes. Anyway, our old post office was a cheerful place. It always seemed to be open. One year alone I spent over $12,000 in our old post office for stamps. There were benches in there where neighbors could sit and get the news. Back then you better believe I never missed a local public supper or some other momentous local event --- because I heard about it in the post office. Now one of my neighbors could be dead and buried for a year before I’d even hear about it. Anyway, I think one post office near me is open 6 ½ hours a day. You could rush out to our good old post office just before five pm and know that your letter would go out that night. But nowadays I have to drive 10 miles and even then I think the mail goes out an hour earlier. In 20 years those of us who remember when a post office catered to the public will be gone. And the next generation will believe post office officials when they say, “We’ve improved our way of doing business just for you.

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6. So here I am trying to mail Heather the shoes she left at our house two months ago. Because I had an errand to run on a road that I would not ordinarily be traveling, I stopped into a nice little post office on that road. I stopped in on the way up and I stopped in on the way back. And a very nice elderly gentleman was there both times. You know that I don’t want to look pushy and I don’t want anyone to get the impression that I’m in a hurry --- even though I always am. So because I didn’t want the nice elderly gentleman to think he was holding me up, I left quickly. Now, from what I’ve said earlier, you can understand that I was very glad to see that man milking as much comfort as he could out of a United States post office. You’d be glad, too, if you think about it. You can easily believe that this nice man is not getting the amount of social security in his monthly check that is commensurate with what he has paid in to the US government. You know that our government is robbing him and his grandchildren by not giving them the kind of health care that citizens in more advanced countries take for granted. Officials at the company the nice man worked for probably either stole the money from his retirement plan or shut it down altogether. This man’s wife probably just died, leaving him to care for her 6 cats. So if you ask me, you will hear me say, “Yes. Let this poor old soul go to the United States post office, and let him chat with the very pleasant person behind the counter all day if he wants. He’s got that, and a lot more, coming to him.”

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7. Here’s a letter I wrote to the Maine Attorney General. I’m reading it to you now as a public service. It has to do with a scam that entails the scammer sending me a worthless check for $6500 and me sending the scammer back his change with hard cash. If the scam is not clear from what I’m saying, please look it up. Don’t let them scam you. “To the Attorney General: Hi, I've read of these scams and now I have one to brag around. This one is in response to a Ford Van I have advertised in Uncle Henry's and Craig's List. Can you tell me --- Does someone actually come around to collect this money? Or will they expect me to mail it to someone? It comes from blltm3@aol.com which does not turn up on Google. It says, “Hello, Thanks for the mail, I have already contacted a shipper to help me pick up the item. All you just need to do for me now is that once you receive the payment you will deduct your money for the item then send the shipping funds to the shipper via western union money transfer. am sending you a check of ($6,500) and deduct your money for the item ($3500) and deduct the bank transfer charges then send the rest to the shipper because she'll be picking up other items for me before coming to your location for the pick up of the item...i want you to know i am someone you can trust, as soon as you send your full details the check will get to in a couple of days, so keep other buyers off.. thanks for your understanding...if is ok by you pls kindly mail me the full details so that the payment can bee send in as soon as possible......... 1....your full name to be on the check 2..your full contact address to send the payment to 3..your zip code 4.your mobile and land number to reach you. i will I will be expect your mail. asap Regard

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8. What would you do if for the past 10 years or so every fruit tree you planted and every garden you planted were destroyed by 150 pound rats? I contacted the greatest bow hunter in Maine and asked him to help me out. From talking with this great hunter, I learned that the only way he can get close to these animals is to climb a tree and hide in a tree stand. He told me that he can’t wear after shave or deodorant and the wind has to be blowing the right way so the animals won’t smell him and be frightened away. I also suggested to him that if he wants to lure them in close so he can get a clean shot, he should also surround the entire area with freshly cut human hair. He should also soak down the parameter with human urine, refreshed every day to make sure it is strong. And lastly, he should buy a quart bottle of that stuff called “Animal fence” and squirt that around liberally. Hang bars of soap from all the tree limbs. And then --- if he can’t get a shot at one of them after doing all that, I don’t know what to tell him --- because it’s been luring them into my garden for years.

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9. Sometimes I wake up at 2 in the morning. This morning I woke up at 2 and read my favorite French Harlequin Romance until I fell asleep. Reading relaxes me. It takes my mind out of gear so I can fall asleep at 2 AM. Interestingly enough, I can fall asleep in most any position most any time during any day. But. This morning my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, said to me. “It is one thing if you wake up and read in bed all night. But when you fall asleep and leave the light on all night, it is something else.” Some day, when she comes home to find my dead body lying in the middle of the kitchen floor, can’t you hear her saying, “Why didn’t you call 911 when you fell over?”

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10. Little humble observation coming up if you are ready. If I were old and famous, this kind of comment would be called wisdom. “It is not until one puts down a blue carpet, that one realizes – that most of the dirt in the world is white.”

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11. We have talked at length about that natural law that says that no matter how big your barn is, you will soon accumulate enough valuable items to fill it. But because of the magnitude of this phenomenon the topic can never be exhausted and I hope you will forgive me for bringing it up again. I remember hearing tell that the Hill boys tore down their barn because it was the only way they could get rid of all the stuff that was inside. But now I want to talk about another natural law that has to do with children. If you have ten big boxes of small toys in your house in ten different rooms, why do small children have to empty all ten boxes on all ten floors in all ten rooms? Isn’t this abundance of toys something relatively new to our culture? Wasn’t it just 80 years ago that a child’s only toy would be a small, home-made wooden horse? To make the amount of clutter worse, nowadays a modern day child might easily have six or even eight affluent grandparents. You will notice that parents of small children are seldom overweight. They spend most of their waking hours every day stooping over to pick up hundreds of plastic toys.

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12. Oh? You’ve been listening closely this hour and you can’t figure out why I had to go to the post office four times to mail Heather’s shoes? You count two times in that nice rural post office and one other stop to actually mail it in a larger post office. But why four visits, you say? You got me there. On my third stop, when my post office friend weighed the shoes, I discovered I only had $6.65 on me. I had to go get more money.

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13. Did you hear it on TV? 1.6 million Boy Scout merit badges made in China have revealed high levels of lead. Why can’t Boy Scouts earn another merit badge by making their own merit badges?

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blltm3@aol.com Scammer who replied to my ad on Craig's List

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