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This radio show now goes into around 700,000 homes in the United States on cable television. You have but to ask to have it run on your cable station in your home town. Please call humble at 207-226-7442 or email him at thehumblefarmer@gmail.com

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The television show is distributed by http://www.pegmedia.org/

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Rough draft of Rants for your Maine Private Radio show for July 28, 2013

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1. Here’s your humble Farmer shred of wisdom for today. Never become engaged in a written discussion with friends who don’t know the difference between its and it’s. Because logic, reason and grammar mean nothing to them, you are certain to lose.

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2. What would happen if you wrote two email letters every day complimenting the author of some article you had read in the newspaper? I thought it would be a very nice thing to do. What would happen if you wrote two email letters every day complimenting the author of some article you had read in the newspaper? John Hammer says, You would run out of material in 9.7 days.

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3. A retired newspaper editor sent me an email in which he referred to Rush Limbaugh as a “loudmouth.” I reprimanded my friend because I think one can say what needs to be said without name-calling. Wouldn’t you have to admit that any man who has earned over $50,000,000 by simply talking or talking simply is extremely clever? If I could earn only half that much by telling all my friends that President Obama was born in Africa, there would be no doubt in my mind but what the man was found in a basket hidden in the bulrushes somewhere on the upper Nile. A man does what he has to do to put bread on the table.

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4. Here’s a letter from solar guru friend John Burke who writes, “Thank you for the hospitality and communal group time at the 'solar picnic' ! Rich did appreciate your greetings and the 'lobstah' you sent him. We made a lobster bisque.” Lobster bisque? Had I known John and Rich were going to do something so blatantly un-American with the lobsters I gave them, I would not have been so generous.

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5. We read in the paper that a man shooting rats in a Maine henhouse accidentally killed someone. Dick Cheney is not the only person who has inadvertently shot one of his friends. I don't have to go very far from home to find a very smart man who could also climb in that wagon. Guns are much like ATV things, snowmobiles and marriage. You get thousands of people messing with them every day and it won't be long before you can get a headline out of it.

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6. For years I’ve had a hearing aid apparatus on my telephone. I can’t hear what people are saying on a regular telephone so years I got this wonderful magic black box that amplifies the sound. It is a very expensive $100 or so, but I can’t use a telephone without it. I have to put batteries in this amplifier thing and batteries in my telephone and I have to keep changing them every other month or so when they run down. When the phone rings I simply reach over and put on some earphones that cover both ears. So there’s quite a bit to talking on the phone when you can’t hear. The other day my magic box shut down on me and I’m afraid it needs more than new batteries. We also have in our home for general consumption a new telephone system that the kids gave us last year. There is the patriarchal home base telephone answering machine, and all the little auxiliary telephones are strategically placed around the house on their little racks. They have warm black plugs about the size of a matchbox and glowing red lights that eat electricity 24/7 but that’s the way things work today so you give thanks for your solar panels that are generating that electricity and live with it. You know that I am not telling you this just to boast that we have a state of the art telephone system in our house so please listen closely. Last week when a call came in I picked up one of those new cordless phones upstairs and said, “This is Robert but I can’t hear you on this phone.” And someone who was standing beside me ---- I can’t remember now who it was --- said, “See that little button there below the green button? Push it.” I pushed it and --- you won’t believe this --- that handset telephone has a speaker on it so you can hear the caller half way across the room. Some of the phones didn’t work right until I discovered they also have a volume control that you can crank way up. Now, with these little cordless telephones, I can push that speaker button and carry on a conversation with someone as if they were in the same room. Young people know all know about these things but I’m sure there are still a lot of old folks out there who don’t. I’m telling you about the speaker on that phone now as a public service.

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7. Halfway through a heated argument on how to live forever, someone pointed out that nursery school children often lie down and rest for a few minutes every afternoon. If you’ve been paying attention, you have noticed that in spite of the proven regenerative properties of a nap, planned rest periods are not acceptable in the workplace. When I was making radios for Edsel automobiles in 1957, I would collapse on a piece of cardboard and spend the dinner hour sleeping on the floor. In this country an afternoon nap has acquired somewhat of a wimpy connotation. Management has done nothing to correct this impression. However, when we read of people 95 years old who run to work every day on shoes made from old automobile tires while chewing betel nuts, somewhere down around the third or fourth paragraph we learn that a two hour siesta and perhaps a quart of Kickapoo Joy Juice is an integral part of their daily regimen. For 35 years I’ve made a radio program every week. I play music and I give my radio friends something to laugh about or think about. Now I’m adding a whole new dimension to my show. I call it Nothing Considered. From now on I’m going to simply have a blank space in my program where we consider nothing. Remember, when you consider something you have to think. And if you think, you might be tempted to say what you think. And nowadays it is not a good thing to say what you think. Someone might ask you to write for a newspaper.

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8. You might have read of the little girl who keeps running away from home. When her folks returned from church, she was gone. This might tell us about the family life of this girl who has a habit of running away from home. But what about her physical condition? Sometimes bizarre behavior can be corrected by diet. Some people need to eat every three hours. If they don't, they do things that only someone drunk or on drugs would do. They can get along nicely until something rubs them the wrong way and then they suddenly snap and get mad and do something that is very irrational. If they had eaten, that same thing that annoyed them on an empty stomach would probably only make them laugh or simply shrug their shoulders. You don't need to be a psychologist to know this but it helps to have lived the first 39 years of your life without knowing that what's in your belly can determine what goes on inside your mind. I once mentioned this on the radio and eight or ten people wrote in to tell me that they lived with someone who went crazy when they didn’t eat and knew exactly what I was talking about. Perhaps you do, too.

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9. A man who hasn’t lived in our neighborhood for perhaps 70 years writes, Your words on Lou Robinson and the paintings brought back memories of Lou and his horse… Back in the 1930s when we were kids watching him unload a wagon full of alders, he’d often say that if he could find the last piece in the load he would unload it first and be finished. But he’d never find it until he’d taken off all but the last stick.

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10. If you are a typical American, you have a box full of old computer wires and unidentifiable antiquated computer parts. Every time you have a lawn sale you put the box out and hope that someone will give you a quarter for the whole mess. My brother, who understands these things, heard me say that my telephone amplifying machine had died. He said, “Throw it away quick before you forget what it is.”

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11. It's hard to do things on line. I tried to pay our $39.95 Time Warner bill for our Internet cable. I tried it twice and the computer screen jumped and jiggled. I called the 888 number and was told our account was paid. But the next day I checked again and they said I still hadn't paid. Name on account was the problem. I thought they meant checking account, because right below that they wanted the checking account number and routing number. Because Marsha's name is on the Time Warner account and her name is also on the checking account, I then put her name in. And the computer clucked with contentment. Later I found out I paid the same bill twice. That’s ok. Let’s see if they give me a credit for paying ahead next month. My question to you is, why don't these kids who write these programs specify on the form if they want the name on the bank account or the name on the Time Warner account? How is anyone supposed to know which account they are talking about? Do you know what I'm talking about?

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