Marsha and humble September 30, 2007




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Below is a rough outline of the rants from The humble Farmer radio show week of September 15, 2013. The week of April 7 marked 35 years or 1820 radio shows I've made just for you. Can you send me just one penny for each one of them? Thank you for supporting your Maine Private Radio.


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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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Rough draft of Rants for your Maine Private Radio show for September 15, 2013

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1. I like to think that when I go somewhere, I am the ideal guest. I take off my shoes by the door so I never track in filth. Marsha and I bring our own food and we wash our own dishes. We bring sleeping bags and put them down on the beds. We have our own pillow covers and towels so there is never any laundry to pick up or wash up after us. We don’t drink. We don’t smoke. We go to bed early. And then, we do the most important thing of all. When we leave, we take all our belongings so you don’t have to tie up something in a bundle and mail it to us. And the next day when you look around in your house and see that nothing is out of place or destroyed, you can turn to your spouse and say, “Well, they weren’t much fun.”

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2. I am addicted to Facebook. Facebook is no better than the friends you permit to educate you on your Facebook page. Isee that Nick and I have 27 mutual Facebook friends. If we were to sell drugs we’d already have a fantastic distribution network.

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3. How do you identify genius? I think of genius as being able to do things that I can’t do. Things that very few other people can do. Genius is being able to think outside of the box. I think that’s what they call it. Thinking outside of the box. There are people in my neighborhood that can do things that nobody else can do. Their minds don’t work like mine. They can look at a broken machine and see how to repair it. They seem to innately know everything of importance that there is to know. Some people of genius can also see opportunity where you and I would see nothing. Yes. You know I’m going to give you an example. Yesterday I went up to Jimmy Parker’s house to get some pictures of his boats and his house to use on my television program. When I talk about something on my television program I try to show pictures of it if I can. Jimmy pointed out a bit of sculpture he had nailed to his house. He asked me if I knew what it was. I could see that it was a beautiful metal dragon about 18 inches long. It has smooth, perfectly executed lines. He said it was a metal strainer that was in the tall grass. He’d accidentally hit it with his lawnmower. He says that next summer he’s going to bring more strainers home from the dump and run over them with his lawnmower. He’s going to put a big Gallery sign in his front lawn. He’s going to put a big enough price on these things so they will be admired and bought by summer people. Jimmy Parker is a genius.

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4. My old neighbor, Gramp Wiley, told me that back in the 1930s he was in the fertilized hen egg business. Gramp said, “I had a few hundred hens, and a dozen roosters to fertilize the eggs. I kept records and we ate any rooster or pullet that didn't perform well. But watching them took so much time that I got a set of tiny bells and attached them to the roosters. Then I could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report just by listening to the tones of the different bells. My favorite bell ringer was old Brewster, but one morning I didn’t hear his bell ring once and I was afraid he’d given his life for the cause. I went out in the hen pen and saw several roosters chasing pullets, and their bells were ringing. But Old Brewster had his bell in his beak so it couldn't ring. This way he was able to sneak up on a pullet, which saved a lot of running. I showed him off up at the Common Ground Fair where he took top honors --- Which probably makes me the only farmer in Maine who has ever brought home a No Bell Prize.

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5. 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 about their boyfriends, 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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6. I have a neighbor who says that he never ever had a complaint from a customer. This is not surprising when you consider that he owns a brush chewing machine that can pulverize bone. When I mentioned this complaining business to another neighbor, she said that, speaking of complaints, 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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7. One morning in early fall 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. The pipes haven’t had any heat in them for months since the last killing frost last June. Your nose smelled the dust on 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 next Common Ground Fair.

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8. 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 85-year-old 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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9. 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 two short months the price of gasoline can go up 50 cents a gallon and no one says a word.

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10. From time to time my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, tries to grab extra credit by preparing one of my favorite gourmet meals. So she opens a can of B&M beans and warms it up in the company of two hot dogs. But although my wife is the greatest provider in captivity, she considers me to be no more than a disposal unit for nutrients. After I’ve eaten she’ll look at whatever she has prepared for a meal and say, “You can eat this little bit that’s left.” You see, it has nothing to do with what my body can comfortably accommodate. It has to do with disposing of the food that is left. Is there someone in your home who says the same thing to you? -- Years ago I had an animal that rooted around in a pen out back and that animal would eat anything that was left over. The next time someone tries to scrape a little extra food on your plate, don’t bother to ask her what she thinks you are. You already know.

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Robert Karl Skoglund
785 River Road
St. George, ME 04860
(207) 226-7442
thehumblefarmer@gmail.com
www.TheHumbleFarmer.com

© 2013 Robert Karl Skoglund