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This is a rough draft of Rants for your Maine Private Radio show for December 22, 2013

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1. I’d like to tell you about a Christmas miracle a friend swears is true. But first, if you own a newspaper or magazine, it is a good idea to print the kind of stories that your readers want to see any time of year. Because --- if you don’t you are likely to get a letter that says: “You did so and so… cancel my subscription.” Here’s an example of the kind of stories some people like to see. According to what I read in my AARP magazine, 80 percent of 1300 people surveyed said that they believed in miracles. Some, who were still alive after being treated by a dozen doctors, counted that as a miracle. Forty one percent said that miracles happen every day, and 37 percent said they have actually seen a miracle. We are not told where AARP found the 1300 people they consulted for their report. But I’ll bet you could get an altogether different percentage of people who believe in miracles should you poll university professors who teach physics. Last Christmas one of my neighbors said he’d been married to the same woman for over 50 years which was a miracle. But ---even if my best friend were to win a lottery where the odds were 100 million to one, I would still not believe in miracles. If I were to win a lottery where the odds were 100 million to one, I suppose I’d have to, because I’ve never bought a lottery ticket.

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2. Would you like to hear my observations about Christmas Dinner Guests? While seated at a dinner table you have heard the host say, “Would you like some more spaghetti” or “Would you like some more beans”? But isn’t that another way of saying, “You’ve had two helpings already but would you like some more? So no matter how much of a trencherman might be sitting at our table, we try to say, “Would you like some spaghetti” or “Would you like some beans,” leaving out the “more.” You see, by leaving out the more, we aren’t implying that they have already eaten twice as much as a normal person. There are other nice ways of saying things. My friend Phyllis said that her brother always asked his guests, “How long are you able to stay?” It serves the same purpose and sounds much nicer than, “When are you leaving?”

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3. If you will sit well back and close your eyes, I will tell you a very long story. The name of this story is The Real Meaning of Christmas. --- Everyone now knows that the whole thing started years ago when Dick Jones, overcome by the spirit of Christmas, tied a festoon of holly around the neck of a plastic pink flamingo that ornamented his front lawn. Dick’s wife, Alice, and several of his friends commented favorably on the seasonal decoration, which strengthened the likelihood that Jones would so enhance his art object the following year. His friend and next door neighbor, Bob Smythe, complimented Dick’s creative genius. But Bob’s wife, Jane, was jealous. “Why can’t you ever think of anything nice like that”? she whispered in Bob’s ear. Bob knew that with a year to plan he could top Dick’s Christmas decoration. And he did. The following year, about three days before he figured Dick would wrap his flamingo with holly, Bob dressed the plastic duck family on his front lawn in little Santa Claus costumes. Everyone said that the plastic mama duck and the plastic baby ducks dressed in little red suits tufted with white fur were the cutest things they’d ever seen. Whenever Bob and Jane looked out the window at their Santa ducks, Jane would squeeze Bob’s arm and Bob would stick out his chest with the satisfied feeling that only comes from work well done. Although Dick Jones had to compliment his neighbor, he knew he’d been upstaged and that the cars that would creep by this season would be full of folks who had come over to see the Santa ducks and not his decorated flamingo. Dick and Alice discussed making a Santa costume for their bird but were clever enough to realize that it would look like they were just copying the Smythe ducks. In the end, Alice, who had been around more than just a little bit, bought two strings of Christmas lights and a couple of extension cords. She put a string of lights on a small tree that grew in the front yard, while Dick tastefully arranged fresh holly on their flamingo. He wasn’t about to give up a good thing just because of Bob Smythe’s Santa ducks. Then he crowned his work with a string of colored lights. Dick and Alice went into their home feeling very good about themselves indeed. They knew that Bob Smythe’s eyes would bug out when they turned on their Christmas lights that evening. A year later, Bob Smythe augmented his Santa ducks with two four-foot striped candles which he erected on his doorstep. By then, however, Jones already had small candles with white bulbs in four of his front windows. The following season, Jones outlined his garage door with a string of blinking colored lights. The Smythes added a three foot plastic Santa which sat with a whip in its hand in a sleigh, now harnessed to the plastic duck Santas. Smythe achieved instant local notoriety when a picture of his entourage appeared in the paper. Our editor was unable to think of a caption to run under it. It was about that time that someone called my attention to the collective genius of Smythe and Jones. No holiday could pass without appropriate symbols appearing on their front lawns. I began to study them in hopes of learning something that would make my own place a bit more attractive. I noticed that Jones braces up a 12-foot wooden rabbit at Easter. Strobe lights are cleverly concealed in the creature’s huge basket of eggs. Smythe rolls out plaster pumpkins for Halloween. I enjoy his Halloween witch (with two glowing red lights for eyes) that flies back and forth on wires. Jones wrapped his entire house in eight-foot firecrackers for the Fourth of July. Both men built large barns out back that serve only as storage bins for their props. But I digress, for it is at Christmas that Smythe and Jones are at their unparalleled best. Besides the attractive decorations mentioned above, their homes are now outlined with blinking colored lights. Red and blue blinking lights flash from every window. A life-sized illuminated plastic Santa Claus stands in the middle of a crèche with several live sheep and wooden shepherds and wise men who bob about on wires. Eight ceramic life sized reindeer and a real sleigh loaded with brightly wrapped presents are braced on top of Smythe’s house. Stereo speakers, hidden somewhere within the bowels of a manger, blast the observer with Jingle Bell Rock. On top of Jones’ house is a sign that spells “Merry Xmas” in three foot letters filled with blinking lights. Every year at this time a wide-lens photo of the whole business appears in the local paper, and well it should. Otherwise, many of us might forget the real meaning of Christmas.

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4. Although I’m not an economist, common sense seems to say that if the minimum wage in Maine were $15 an hour, there would be so much more money in circulation that the local Hortons might not have closed because of lack of customers. You give people on the lowest income rung on the ladder more money, and they are going to spend it within a week which boosts every business in your town. You give people on the top rung of the economic ladder more money, and because they have nothing left to buy they salt that extra money down in foreign banks where it is never seen again. Which is why you might see a lot of Hortons across this great country closing down.

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5. Everything is relative. One day my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, spent 5 or more hours on her knees cleaning out and trimming back a hedge with her bare hands. She pulled at the grass and weeds and tried to cut the bushes with a dull pair of bush cutters. She put all the clippings in plastic bags or piled them beside the road. She's so weak from her MD that she can barely hold up the bush shears. She can't even twist the cap off a jar of pickles. But you can’t keep her from rearranging the landscape. Her hands and arms usually look like she'd just separated two rutting tomcats. Do you like that kind of work? After teaching for 25 or so years, my wife thinks that grubbing on her hands and knees is fun. Alles ist relative.

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6. Have you ever seen a Christmas ghost? Have you ever met anyone who has? While visiting an elderly neighbor in a nursing home not too far from here, I was sitting in a chair near the door when a couple of nurses out in the hall started talking about ghosts. When one of them said that psychic phenomena can explain many things, I really started to pay attention. You know, you wonder if people who see ghosts are capable of taking care of our old friends and neighbors. She said she'd run into this psychic phenomena on her first job out of nursing school. She said, "We had a ward of 12 elderly ladies. They were all very sweet, and after the tough old birds I'd worked with at school, the job looked like a snap. "Then, early one morning, one of them whispered to me, 'My husband was here last night.' Well, you know how they tell you at school that we should not humor elderly people when they hallucinate. I told her that her husband was not with us anymore. "But she just smiled at me, a real warm smile, and said, 'My husband was here last night.' "I told the head nurse about it and she said it was one of the most common things you hear in nursing homes. Some old people are always being visited by a parent or a loved one who hasn't drawn a breath for 20 or 30 years. "So I didn't think anything about it when the woman in the next bed started in with the same thing about a week later. And with two of them saying it, none of us was surprised when 'My husband was here last night' was the only thing we heard in the entire ward from breakfast until noon. Even two ladies who had never been married picked it up. "Appetites improved right down the line. The doctor said it wasn't unusual for people to eat more when they were in good spirits. And although he reminded us that we had an obligation to keep the patients in touch with reality, their imaginations had really done them a lot of good. Ladies who had been tired and had long been content to gaze at the ceiling for hours took a new interest in reading and knitting. Some began to write letters to friends and relatives. They visited with other patients and grew stronger from walking about and eating so well. The minister who visited the patients every day said we were witnessing a Christmas miracle and preached a special sermon on it the following Sunday. No one thought of it as being spooky at the time because everyone was so content and happy. The shock came on Christmas morning: I noticed that not one of the patients had finished her breakfast. When the other nurse in my ward mentioned that not one of them had said, 'My husband was here last night,' the hair stood right up on the back of my neck. "You talk about your psychic phenomena. No one on the entire hospital staff was ever able to explain it and I guess I asked all of them about it. "All except our old night watchman, that is. The batteries in his pacemaker had melted down on Christmas Eve and he'd spent the night over in intensive care."

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7. I told my next door neighbor, Gramp Wiley, that I wasn’t sending out any Christmas cards this year. “Cards cost wicked now and the postage is right out of sight. I can’t do it anymore." Gramp Wiley pounded the arm of his rocker and said, "Saving on Christmas messages is nothing new. Andy Wyeth did it for years and years." For over 50 years every day in the summer Andy Wyeth loaded a couple of dogs in his car over in Cushing, drove up to Thomaston, and then went right by my house here in St. George on his way to Port Clyde where he worked in his father's old studio. And he was driving a gold plated Stutz with musical horns. So I didn't figure he could be much of a scrimper and saver, and I said so. My old neighbor leaned back in his rocker, closed his eyes and spoke like the Ghost of Christmas Past. "Fifty or 60 years ago Andy pounded at my back door and asked if I'd give him a hand. You know how he was always driving around back roads looking for some young girl lying in a blueberry field he could paint. Well, he'd gone across a soft spot out in my field and sunk right out of sight. "It was pouring rain and he was soaked to the skin, so I got him over against the stove and made some hot coffee. Andy decided he could get along without his car for a day, so I gave him a ride back over to Cushing. "The next day he came over and we pulled him out with my old truck. It was no trouble, but Andy was grateful --- for over 50 years every Christmas he sent me a card." I said, "But that doesn't sound like Andy was trying to save." "Gramp said, He was trying to save. Anybody else with his amount of money would have bought me a nice Hallmark card, but all I ever got from him was these huge homemade things he painted himself."

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8. When it was 10 below zero I watched television and listened to the nails in the 200-year-old walls going off like firecrackers. Ten below will do that. On television I saw a movie star who had apparently said something bad about a weasel and he got hundreds of emails from weasel lovers saying what an ignorant rat fink he was. --- So now I ask you. Why are people so defensive about their pets? You can understand you don’t want people saying unkind things about your wife or your mother – even if they might be true. But why should a true observation about the uselessness of your pet raise your hackles? You know that I have wonderful pets in my pasture, but wouldn’t it be a compliment if someone said to me, “Robert, you can’t believe how I’d like to slice up your pet on my dinner plate.” If someone were to tell me that my pets are about as useful as a stiff elbow should I get all defensive and point out how they graze quietly in the assigned areas – generating a pastoral ambiance and adding valuable nutrients to the soil while holding back the relentless and ever encroaching Maine forest? Years ago in a course called psycholinguistics at the University of Rochester I was given a rat to train so I know that people can get attached to furry little animals. My rat Vilkus, which as you know means wolf in Lithuanian, was a true rat and it didn’t bother me to have Vilkus rat sit on my shoulder or crawl down inside the sleeve of my sport jacket. One time Jack Neubig was building me a fireplace and Jack was sitting across the table from me eating his dinner. Jack was from Friendship and just about as tough as any mason you’d find anywhere. I went in the other room and put Vilkus rat down inside my sleeve, came back in and sat down at the table. And when Vilkus rat stuck his head out of my sleeve at the dinner table and wiggled his nose and smiled with his big yellow teeth --- well, Jack said it was the worst thing he had ever seen in his life. You might have seen that famous movie star on TV try to make up to his distressed public by kissing a weasel right there on camera. But I’ve never seen even a rat – or a cat or dog or horse -- that was worthy of my lips. How about you?

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9. There are people who impress me with their dry wit and after I laugh, I write it down because I know you’d probably like to hear it, too. Gladys, who lived next door to me for years was a master when it came to irony. The process entails saying something so ridiculous – something that you know means the exact opposite of the face value of their words, that you have to laugh. Yes, there are well known people, who appear from time on the evening news, who say the exact opposite of what you and everybody else who can read knows they are actually doing, but I’m not talking about blatant equivocation. I’m talking about people who know that they are delivering up first class irony and who know that it will be appreciated. I remember telling Gladys that some college girl neighbor was coming home to visit her mother for the Christmas holiday. And, without cracking a smile, Gladys said, “That’s nice, she’ll have someone to help her around the house.”

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