+

1. My friend Dieter told me that his father survived 9 years in a prison camp in Siberia. I know that you have read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and probably other accounts of prison life, so even if you have been personally spared this particular type of cultural enrichment, you know what was going on in Russian prison camps 50 years ago. You have to be incredibly tough to survive 9 years in most anybody’s prison camp, but can you think of anything that would take more out of you than a prison camp in Siberia? Years later they put the old man in a nursing home in Maine and he died the next day. 050701 In Rants twice

+

2. You might very correctly say that there is no validity in presenting a case by analogy, but there are times when an analogy might help explain a given situation. As someone who has spoken to hundreds of audiences, I sometimes compare entertaining an audience to a boxing match. Boxers and professional speakers both have the skills to give you a great performance. But the boxer doesn’t know which punches he will throw until he is actually engaged in the ring. He has to see how things are going. The boxer and the speaker might hold back a bit at first and save his best for the final round, where other times he might find it more expedient to pound away with the best he has in the first three minutes. But yesterday I realized that living with my Type A wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, might also be compared to a boxing match because even if the boxer has all the skills and is stout of heart, he still might be overwhelmed by a more determined opponent.. The alarm clock rings and before my eyes can open to face a new day she reminds me that I have to take out two windows first thing so she can paint them. Before I can get the windows out, Marsha asks me to carry the wash up the cellar stairs, and while I’m doing that she says that the lawnmower has to be filled with oil and gas. I am not yet dazed but am reminded that I have to attend Sarah’s wedding which is the same grange night that 3 bed & breakfast guests are coming for supper. At this point I have started to stagger but as I vacuum while eating my breakfast I am not yet on the ropes. While taking out the windows I am also filling the lawnmower with gas which is when I learn that the food scrap bucket is starting to stink and has to be thrown in the woods for the wild animals, and because they can eat and digest everything except pita bread, I don’t even dare go down there, and the bottles and paper have to be taken to the dump, which isn’t even called the dump any more and now looks more like a drive through restaurant. I think about this to divert my mind from the fact that I’m being hammered on the ropes and am on my way to the canvas. She is going to visit her new grandchild Maddy in Fort Kent for a few days and please use this bread first for my toast and be sure to do eat this and don’t eat that and don’t forget to make the bed while she’s gone and fix the cord in the fan and take a shower and don’t forget deoderant, and if she says anything after that I don’t hear it because I’m down for the count. 050708

+

3. While clicking through the channels the other day, I heard this exchange between two men dressed in business suits. I have no idea of what the program was or what happened later. All I heard was what the man standing said to the young man sitting in the chair, “Your daddy’s money is not going to keep you out of prison --- well, actually it might.” 050708

+

4. You can cry and wring your hands and gnash your teeth, but there are and always will be class distinctions in every society. Because of genes or environment people are going to find their niche. They are hopefully going to become all they are capable of being. You can pass a law that guarantees us all equal rights. But no amount of legislation or educational programs will ever give us the same ability. Then, once we become adults and find our niche, we tell people who we are by employing the speech patterns of our peers. You know words and things that are exclusive to your social level. This came to mind when I returned a call to Dr. Ralph this morning. I said, “This is The humble Farmer returning a call to Dr. Ralph,” and the receptionist said, “May I tell him who is calling please?” I simply repeated what I said before and she very correctly repeated what she said before. And we might have been at an impasse right there had I not said, “Please, just tell him that The humble Farmer is returning his call. If he doesn’t want to talk with me, he will say so.” --- So you’ll be able to sleep tonight, please know that Dr. Ralph gave me the impression that he was very pleased to hear from me. If you are a skilled professional who lives in Miami or Paris, you know the name of the head waiter at your favorite restaurant and the name of your favorite caddy at your club. If you are a highly skilled professional person in Maine, you not only listen to The humble Farmer every week, but one day in 1998 while on your way to Andy Wyeth’s favorite restaurant in Port Clyde, you distinctly remember driving by humble’s house. 050422

+

5. My wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, recently put a small card on my desk and asked me if I’d look up her friend’s website. Of course the website that her friend sent was wrong and I had to Google around until I found it. In the process I read the note that her friend had written on the card. In this note Marsha’s friend described her husband as open and caring. I showed it to my wife and said, “Open and caring. I hope you never describe me to anyone as Open & Caring.” And Marsha said, “She’s a psychologist --- she talks that way.” 050422

+

6. Do you remember when you could do things that you cannot do today? I’m talking here about man made laws. Are things moving too fast for you in the present world? Are you concerned about your loss of civil liberties? You might remember when a very cheery and contented Santa Claus smiled up at you from your favorite book as pipe smoke curled around his ears. Remember those good old pictures? And, to move up a generation or two, you might remember when the Cookie Monster gorged himself on cookies. Mmmm Coookies. And right there on the television screen the Cookie Monster ate plate after plate of the kind of warm, sugary ginger snaps that my wife Marsha bakes especially for you. But now, no more will the Cookie Monster wolf down cookies right there on the screen before millions of his young fans. Did you know that? First they took away Santa Claus’s pipe. Then they took away the Cookie Monster’s cookies. Where will it end? When will they be coming for you? 050422

+

7. Remember the good old let boys play with dolls and girls play with trucks? As recently as 1957 even the famous anthropologist Ashley Montague subscribed to it. But now they know that the program was a hoax and a fraud. It seems that boys and girls are pre-wired and the environmental and cultural factors are negligible. I thought I was a very destructive child, but discovered on a web site that by taking an axe to old cast iron parlor stoves, and concrete steps, I was manifesting normal little boy behavior. The next level of difference between boys and girls has to do with gender-specific personality traits which affect how children learn. First, a word about gender-specific personality traits. In the 1950s and 1960's and 1970's, it was fashionable to assume that gender differences in personality were "culturally constructed." Back then, psychologists thought that if we raised Johnny to play with dolls and Sally to play with trucks -- then many of these gender differences would vanish. However, cross-cultural studies over the past 30 years have provided little support for this hypothesis. Here is one of the challenges teachers face: the girl who gets straight A's but thinks she's stupid and feels discouraged, and the boy who's barely getting B's but thinks he's brilliant. Consequently, the most basic difference in teaching style for girls vs. boys is that you want to encourage the girls, build them up, while you give the boys a reality check: make them realize they're not as brilliant as they think they are, and challenge them to do better. --- For all the good it will do, I might add. -- If you want to get 8th-grade girls interested in chemistry, show the girls how chemistry can be used to improve the world. Let them build natural biochemical filters to clean dirty water, so they can see how the water becomes fresh and clean. If you want to get 8th-grade boys interested in chemistry, teach them about dynamite. Can’t you see yourself standing before the school board the following week saying, “How was I to know…” 050429

+

8. My wife, Marsha, is the Almost Perfect Woman. When you’re been single for 51 of your 69 years, you know how scary some women can be, because you’ve had the opportunity to read the service manuals on several different models. For some reason that I’ve never understood, some women can’t just say what they have to say. They look at you and say, “We’ve got to have a talk.” So one day I thanked Marsha because she had never said to me, “Robert --- we’ve got to have a talk.” And she said, “Talk. What good would it do to have a talk with you? You don’t hear half of what I say --- and I can’t tell what you do hear because you don’t say anything. You always say that nothing is worth discussing unless it’s a life or death situation or if somebody is going to lose a limb. You’re just like my father.” That can happen when you marry a younger woman --- her father usually is just about your age. 050429

+

9. Steve Dennison brought my cows over today. They will be 2 years old come July and they are getting to be big boys. I can’t keep them over the winter so Steve, who already has 20 or 30 head, has wintered them for me for the past two years. The grass was getting pretty green when I went over to see him and said, “Steve, I don’t want to rush you, but you’re welcome to bring them cows over to my house any time you get around to it. And Steve says, “That reminds me. Do you remember selling me that wood loading conveyor 30 or so years ago?” And I remembered that I’d sold it to someone but I couldn’t remember who it was. And Steve says, “I came by your house one day and asked you if you’d like to sell that wood loader and you said you’d think about it. Three years later I came by your house again and said, ‘Robert, I don’t want to rush you, but do you want to sell that wood loader?’” 050527

+

10. Booth Tarkington wrote Penrod in 1913. Chapter 19 is a litany of the things Penrod consumed in one afternoon. Candy, lobster croquettes, an extrodinarily large pickle, a glass of raspberry lemonade, a box of sardines, and a half pint of lukewarm cider. Mug in hand, a gentle glow radiating toward his surface from various centers of activity deep inside him, he then ate a slice of watermellon, a bag of peanuts, a box of popcorn larded with partially boilded molasses, three waffles thickly powdered with sugar, a slab of Neapolitan ice-cream, and two and one half weniers. Because you might be having supper right now, I’m not going to tell you what happened next. But Penrod’s lack of intestinal fortitute came to mind last night when, for the first time in our marriage, my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, was suddenly struck down. She never gets sick, so I couldn’t believe it was the flu and I asked her what she had eaten since supper. Do you believe peanuts, popcorn, a large Dairy Queen chocolate sundae that a friend had left in our freezer, and a diet coke? Just the diet coke would have finished me. 050527

+

11. You know that ever since I found out who you are, I have been in awe of you. Thank you for listening. It is an honor and privilege to chat here with you every week. You have earned the respect of your intelligent friends who can recognize and appreciate ability. One of the other things I’ve learned about you, is that you have a remarkable mind. It is like a steel trap. You never forget anything so I know you remember our recent chat about the words we casually let drop to indicate our status in the community. We mention our clubs and the famous people we might have met over the past ten years. I wonder if social commentators like John Steinbeck or Michael Moor or Sinclair Lewis, who had to go to Europe to be appreciated for their genius and collect their prizes, needed to mention it to their friends? --- Anyway, aren’t these awards that you have had thrust upon you the ones that count? You didn’t go looking for it. You didn’t ask to be teacher or citizen of the year. You went about minding your own business and you were amazed when the award came looking for you. I remember the first time it happened to me. It was 1952, I was sitting next to Roy Swanson in the Tenants Harbor Baptist church, and they were about to announce the high school manual training woodworking award for the year. Roy and I both knew that it would go to our very clever classmate Ralph who was the best carpenter in the entire high school. When they called my name I can still remember that Roy and I looked at each other with our mouths open. Fifty three years later, I was once again startled and flattered by yet another unearned honor. This morning, by first class mail from Machias, I was awarded an honorary life time membership in the Maine Black fly Breeders Association.

+

12. My wife Marsha’s friend Donna is very generous, and I mentioned it to her one time. Donna was raised on a hen farm over in Waldoboro by Seidenspacker Pond. She had four or five brothers and sisters and Donna said, “I learned to share at an early age. If I didn’t give them what they wanted, they took it anyway.” 050422

+

13. My wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, and I were looking at a DVD movie on one of those little computer disks the other night. Marsha is a charter member and fanatical supporter of our local video rental store. And I read on the screen that if you copy the movie on this DVD computer disk the FBI will batter down the doors to your home, you will be fined $250,000 and you will go to jail for five years. A good friend of mine got in a drunken brawl and blew a man away. Bam. He only served three years for killing a man but I would have to serve five if I copied a movie. Years from now, people will think of our era as that transitional period when a man’s life was no longer worth as much as a plastic disk containing a Spiderman movie.

+

14. I got a very interesting email from Glenn who writes: It is said that 86% of Americans believe in God. Therefore I have a very hard time understanding why there is such a mess about having "In God We Trust" on our money and having God in the Pledge of Allegiance. Why don't we just tell the 14% to Sit Down and SHUT UP!” I was thinking about this just before I got Glenn’s email, and although I’m the last person to tell anyone to sit down and shut up for any reason, I am one of the millions of people who don’t think it hurts a thing to pay lip service whether you believe or not. Lip service don’t cost you nothing --- and you aren’t hurting anyone. It is just like having compassion for poor people. Why shouldn’t you and I have compassion for unfortunate people? Compassion is not like universal health care. Having compassion for poor people doesn’t take a minute of your time. And think how good it makes you feel to stand up there and say that you have compassion when it doesn’t cost you or any of your friends a cent. 050415 in rants twice

+

15. will be glad to hear that we finally caught Knox County’s infamous peeping Tom. We used video cameras to record everything he did all day from the time he got up until he went to bed, until we finally got him.

+

16. Everyone knows that “How Are You?” is no more than a formal standardized form of, “You are in my space. This is what my voice sounds like. What does your voice sound like?” The amount of space in which one feels comfortable before one feels obligated to speak differs from place to place. Russell Baker claimed that New Yorkers walk about like zombies, never making eye contact for fear of being accosted. Crocodile Dundee, on the other hand, is a classic example of a rural person who speaks to everyone he sees. You know of cultures and countries where this How Are You I Am Fine type of conversation can be carried on by simply raising an eyebrow and shrugging a shoulder. Many suprasegmental phonemes employed by the French and Italians are body language. To end the conversation, all you’d have to do is tie their hands. My wife Marsha comes into the room and I know I’ve done something wrong just from her posture and the expression on her face. Remember Jiggs and Maggi in Bringing up Father? Maggie always had one hand on her hip and her chin down with one eye looking up at the ceiling. You probably know of married couples who have refined their ability to communicate to the point where they haven’t said a word to each other for years. On the other hand, I was once asked to contribute my Spaghetti For The Single Person recipe to the Maine Writers’ Cookbook. And, because I was born and raised on the coast of Maine, I was genetically and culturally programmed to unload my whole life’s history before even listing the ingredients: You will remember from Mark Twain’s Jumping Frog story, that years ago, way out there in the wild west, there were people who would back you into a corner and then talk for hours without saying anything. Today you’ll hear many of them hosting talk shows on AM radio. 012805

+

17. Do you miss the good old songs you used to hear? I don’t see any sense in these rap songs they sing nowadays, do you? Back when I was a kid they sang songs like, Chickery Chick, chala chala, chekala romy, in a bananica, bolika wollica – and they made sense. This morning I got to thinking that it had been a long time since I had heard I’m a Ding Dong Daddy from Dumas. You know you’re old when you realize that you miss the good old songs. Old people have always cried that they no longer hear the good old songs. You probably recall Aristophanes’ story about the young man who sneered at his father when the old man requested someone sing one of the good old songs called Simoides' Shearing of the Ram. The kid had to explain to his father that Simoides’ Ram was a corny old song. Do you hear the same thing from your children and grandchildren? Do they listen to music that you can’t understand or appreciate? You might have seen a TV program advertised on which they promised to play the 40 worst songs from last year. Did it make you wonder how they could be sure they got the right ones?

+

18. You might have seen that documentary on Sammy the Bull who ratted out his Mafia buddies in return for a new life. How does that work? Does the FBI give informants a pension and a new house where they can spend their golden years pining away in repentance? Psychologists could have told the FBI that Type A individuals who are really good at what they do often long to go back to work, and that Sammy the Bull was one of them. Before he has unpacked his suitcase, Sammy the Bull was back in the business he understood and enjoyed. Of course because he had immunity from his past crimes, the police had to put together a whole new case from scratch. Will you tell me why it is so difficult to collect and present evidence that will put bad people in jail? Let’s go back to the program called Cops. The camera is on a fellow in a stolen car that the police are following at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour. A police helicopter in the air also has a spotlight and a camera on the car. Suddenly, the car crosses the median strip and heads the wrong way on an interstate highway. An hour later, after riding on no tires and sparking, smoking rims, the car catches fire and stops. A dozen or more police cars involved in the chase converge on the burning vehicle, someone smashes out a window in the car, and the driver is dragged out and handcuffed --- at which time we hear a voice over that says, “All suspects are presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law.” 012805

+

19. One of the most flattering letters I ever got from a radio friend said something like this, “Please, humble, don’t get into social issues. Everything you say makes sense and I don’t want to believe it.” --- But if I don’t occasionally try to say something that makes sense here on public radio, where else can you hear it? You have heard me say that if I do not have at least one meaningful comment for you every week, I do not deserve to sit behind this microphone. My function is to educate as well as to entertain. Last week I know I said something that you needed to hear --- two people asked to be removed from my Whine & Snivel mailing list. 020405

+

20. While Googling Mad Cow Disease, I stumbled on a web page that not only told me about Mad Cow Disease informed me that Ann Veneman, a recent U.S. Secretary of Agriculture for 4 or so years, was a former lobbyist for Monsanto and Dole, two giants of corporate agriculture. Isn’t that like making the owner of an ammunition factory the Secretary of Peace? I wish I hadn’t seen this. It is not the kind of thing you or anybody else wants to know about, because it is very unsettling. It reminded me that I haven’t read 1984 for at least a year and I’ll have to read it again tonight. Talk about asking the fox to watch the hen pen. You know, real life is getting to be stranger than fiction. How did we come to live in such a surrealistic society? How much longer can we survive? 050722

+

21. Galileo made a number of important astronomical discoveries which convinced him of the validity of Copernicus's geocentric theory, which, as you know is that the earth moves around the sun rather than that the sun moves around the earth. In 1632 when Galileo published his Dialogue on Two Chief World Systems The Inquisition promptly summoned him to Rome, where he reluctantly recanted and was sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his life. Are teachers now allowed to tell their students that the earth moves around the sun, or would teaching these controversial new scientific discoveries in your school stir up unnecessary and unwanted trouble? If you really wanted to teach kids that the earth moves around the sun, you might be able to keep your job if you suggest that it’s only one of several unproven new theories. After all, three or 400 years really isn’t too much time when it comes to getting something new to be accepted by the general public. And, by the way, make sure that you don’t tell third grade students something that they aren’t supposed to know until they’re in the fifth. It raises the devil with learning results if smart kids do two years in one. One of my radio friends is on a school board in New Hampshire and while reviewing the curriculum he noticed that there was nothing in there about teaching evolution. The superintendent said that it was an intentional omission as he didn’t want to stir up trouble. I wouldn’t push it, would you? Just sit back and wait quietly for another couple of hundred years. 050722

+

22. Yes, I admit to recycling. Some weeks I have more rants than I can work into a 55 minute radio program, but some weeks either I never get to talk one on one with you, my friends who educate me with your comments about life in Maine, or I don’t have time to copy your comments from my workbook, so I recycle. I once saw Angus King stand on a stage in my back yard and tell an audience that he could see that democrats believed in recycling: they were supporting Governor Brennan for another term. I thought that was very clever. And I should mention here that Angus King is one of the two most articulate men I have ever seen speak from a platform in Maine. And if I had some heavy agenda I wanted to push, I’d try to get Angus to be the spokesman. And all this came to mind only because Steve told me that his minister admitted that he recycled his sermons. The minister said that the only thing he changed was the jokes because that was the only part of his sermon the congregation remembered. 050722

+

23. For some reason that I have only recently begun to understand, my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, and I get invited to a lot of art show openings. Although the art world certainly realizes by now that we are not patrons, we apparently provide the extra bony elbows that are required at a well-packed successful show, so we go just to help out at as many as we can. I especially like shows at Linda Bean Jones’ art gallery in Tenants Harbor because all of the people stand in the middle of the floor drinking wine which makes it easy to walk around the four walls and look at the paintings. 050729

+

24. To understand this, if it is possible for anyone to understand this at all, it would help to know that in 1988 they released a movie called Mystic Pizza. I mention this because I had never heard of Mystic Pizza. Listen. My friend Sally, who delights me with her conversation, said, “I went to see Mystic Pizza and it catapulted this woman --- what’s her name? --- Made what’s her name so famous that she’s now a household word. 050729

+

25. You might have heard somewhere that the National Rifle Association is pulling its 2007 convention out of Columbus, Ohio because Columbus has banned some kind of gun. We can of course understand and respect that decision. Would you want your favorite organization to hold its annual meeting in any town where you couldn’t buy an assault weapon? 050729

+

26. When I make a mistake, I’m the first person to admit it. And I made a mistake. A while back a leaky inner tube on my bicycle refused to accept any more patches and I spent 3 or 4 dollars on a new tube. Yesterday I was down to the dump and when I saw a bicycle in the trash pile I said to myself, “I will take that bicycle home with me for spare parts and I will buy big fat bicycle tires and inner tubes no more.” And when I got the bicycle home I said to myself, “The only thing this bicycle needs is a nut on the rear wheel. I wonder what will happen if I put a nut on the rear wheel?” So I pumped up the tires and I put the nut on the rear wheel and I got on it and rode around in the dooryard on this 5 or 10 speed bike and the gears worked and it went slick as a whistle. And it reminded me that back in 1943 or so my grandmother had to cook for Prince Nicimi up on Chestnut Street in Camden --- lived right across from Dougie Green --- and my grand mother had to cook for two weeks or so to earn money enough to buy me a second hand bicycle. So what am I going to do with this bicycle? I did not plan to keep this bicycle, I brought this bicycle home from the dump because the tires looked ok, but now I have no idea of how I am ever going to get rid of it. There is a lesson to be learned here but the only person who knows what it is is a bachelor who has invited a desperate young divorcee into his home for just the weekend. 050729

+

27. Because I have many friends and many guests from all over who are kind enough to visit our Bed & Breakfast and farm, I constantly hear strange and mysterious things. Of course, being the most uncompromising gossip in Maine, I can’t wait to pass these items along to you. Richard said that after entering a Parisian restaurant he noticed that there was a dog seated on the lap of the person at the next table and that the person and the dog were both happily munching away – probably on a plate of escargo or pom fritts. Being a very uptight and narrow minded person, Richard asked to be moved to another table. Which was not really any better because from his new seat he could see that the cook had a dog in the kitchen helping him prepare food. It has been years since I have idly roamed the streets of Paris and when I was there I never went into a restaurant, but I’d like to hear what you have to say. Dogs. Paris. Hearing this story reminded Victoria, who was at the other end of our table, that the last time she was in Paris she heard a sucking, slurping sound. It was a man in a white uniform who was driving some kind of mobile vacuum cleaner. He was sucking up all the hunder poop, I think that’s a French idiom, this man was vacuuming all the hunder poop off the sidewalks. You know about these things. I’m humble@humblefarmer.com Please, tell me what it is that lends Paris its charm --- and would you want it tracked into your home. 050805

+

28. You might remember that a few weeks ago that I asked you if it were necessary for the speaker at a funeral to convey a message or if unloading an assortment of disjointed phrases was enough to fullfill some psychological need. You will not be surprised to hear that since then I have heard a minister speak very well. And since then I have also attended a funeral where I found myself sitting up so I wouldn’t miss one word. I don’t cry at funerals and I don’t laugh out loud at funerals, but this speaker made me do both --- at the same time. Powerful powerful speaker. He is one of those rare, commanding personalities who is able to stand before a group and motivate and educate his listeners with a few well-chosen unforgettable and meaningful words, and if you’ve had the pleasure of hearing him, you know what I’m talking about. He is actually one of the two best speakers I’ve ever heard in Maine. Unfortunately for organized religion, he isn’t a minister. He’s my brother. 050805

+

29. My friend Sandy has a beautiful daughter who is getting married soon. I said that the daughter is beautiful, and she is, but she also has that extra long term lasting inner beauty that you can’t see and that you only become aware of after you’ve known her for a while. Which makes Sandy’s daughter very much like my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman. Sandy said that they are presently planning the wedding, and because Sandy is a very smart man I have no doubt that his daughter’s wedding will be just like the one Marsha and I had 14 or so years ago. Perhaps you were at our wedding, but in case you weren’t, and in case you are also getting ready to get married, you should know that there is lot of planning and actual on-site preparation that can exhaust you. This is what you have to do to prepare for a wedding. First decide where on your backyard you plan to have the ceremony. We were lucky, because Gramp Wiley had just built a new doorstep for his trailer and had trown the old one away. So we simply dragged the old doorstep over to our back yard so we could stand on that. Next we wrote up an invitation that said that we were getting married, I can’t remember now what day it was, but you put the date and time in there. And you say that everyone is invited to a pot luck wedding and to bring food. And of course you have to put your address in there so your friends and the idly curious can find it and then you run that wedding invitation in all the newspapers so that everyone knows about it. People who say that weddings happen by themselves and require no planning don’t know what they’re talking about. You have to put your ad in all the newspapers to invite everyone to come and to bring food and you have to get a minister. Because I married a widow Marsha simply recycled the minister she’d used the first time which saved us a bother. Then you get a mess of sawhorses and 4 by 8 sheets of plywood and that makes your tables which you put out on the lawn to hold the food. 200 or 300 people showed up at our wedding and everyone seemed to have a great time. If you have the right kind of friends, you’ll have enough food left over to last you a couple of weeks. You can see why more and more people are doing it that way. It doesn’t cost you anything. No one feels slighted because everyone is invited. We even had an auction afterwards, that was written up the the Maine Antique Digest with photographs, and what we sold at the auction paid for the ads in the newspapers, so we broke even on the deal. Oh, and our marriage has already lasted 14 years. I’ve been to some expensive weddings that didn’t produce a marriage that lasted past two children. Tell me if you had more fun at your wedding. 050805

+

30. For a month or so I’ve been draining some honey frames into a plastic tub. But I finally scraped the honey from the plastic tub into a steel pan and put that inside of a larger steel pan that was full of boiling water. And I soon had over a quart of honey that was warm enough to run through a funnel and a cloth which strained out all the visible impurities. While I was doing this, I asked my wife Marsha if warming up the honey would destroy any of its goodness. You know, destroy the molecular structure or break down any of the chemical properties. And she said that I didn’t need to worry about what I did to honey because honey had been found in Egyptian tombs. Why is it that the Egyptian tombs are usually evoked as a symbol of reniassance or everlasting endurance? Suppose you asked Heron Breen if the 1998 cucumber seeds that you got at FedCo were still good. What you want to bet that he’d say, “Well, Mort Mather planted some cucumber seeds that he found in an Egyptian tomb and the cukes that were small enough to fit through the door won prizes at the Common Ground Fair.” I wouldn’t eat one of those cucumbers because I can believe that anyone who did would probably had an uncontrollable urge to clutch an asp to his breast. But --- do you think you could find an 11th dynasty tomb in Thebes today where you can’t walk in and stumble on a bundle of papyri revealing lentils, garlic or sesame seeds that are eager to burst forth into vigorous production? What do you know about the value of old seeds? I’m humblefarmer@midcoast.com and unless I hear from you I’m not going to say another thing on this topic because I just remembered that my grandfather was 57 when my mother was born. 050805

+

31. If I were you, I would watch out for people who aspire to garner the hearts and minds of men. Because only by going through your heart and mind can they get their hands on your wallet. 050805

+

32. My project for this week is hooking up the telephone line in our bedroom for my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman. There is a telephone outlet in the bedroom but it doesn’t work and I can’t remember how that outlet got there. Our house was built in 1811 so the outlet isn’t part of the original construction, I know I put that outlet in there, but I can’t figure out how I did it. I’m probably going to have to run another line in, but I’m going to sleep on it for a while. If you are lucky, you are able to think about projects without rushing into them, because very often there are household members, who wield great power, who want it done now. Do you know who I’m talking about? Don’t think about it --- just do it. John told me that he started to restore a Volkswagen for his daughter’s high school graduation. But John hasn’t finished it yet and she’s now 29 and has a three year old son. Does that tell you something about a man’s propensity for procrastination --- or is it an indication of his daughter’s struggle with our educational system? 050812

+

33. Some people never learn. This evening my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, heaped my plate with chicken and rice and gravy. My plate was so full that eating it became an onerous chore rather than a delightful gastronomical experience. I looked at it and felt full before I even started. The only way I can get a small, comfortable amount and then perhaps go back for just a smidgin of seconds is to load my plate myself. Wouldn’t you think that after 17 years I would know enough to snatch that plate from her hands? She always puts more on my plate than I can eat, but I never seem to learn. Which reminds me of something you might have recently seen on the evening news. Old men who were trying to kill each other 60 years ago are now shaking hands and talking about old times. I almost said, “Sharing memories.” I wonder if 80-year-old Civil War soldiers from both sides ever got together at Manassas or Petersburg to talk about their war. You might know about historical perspective and I’d appreciate having you tell me a little bit about it. From what little I’ve seen and been able to remember over the past 65 years, within 30 to 40 years after a war, soldiers from both sides will find an excuse to walk together over old battlefields or to talk over old times over coffee. You might have also noticed that anyone who goes into a small country and trains the young folk in military ways and provides them with the latest hardware, only has to wait a year or two before they wish they hadn’t. Jan 28

+

34. My friend Sally paints pictures of lighthouses. It is not unusual to find people on the coast of Maine who paint lighthouses, but Sally lives far from the ocean in Virginia. What makes Sally unusual among artists is that she doesn’t display her pictures. She doesn’t try to sell them. I think she should because she did one painting of a fish factory that is so good that you can smell it. Which makes me wonder how many Maine artists have rubbed bait on the back of a painting just to give it some intangible salable organic ambiance. I’m going to see if I can’t get Sally to put some of her pictures into a Maine gallery next summer. Linda Bean Jones has got a nice gallery down the road from me in Tenants Harbor and Sally would fit right in there. Of course I wouldn’t want anyone who knows about art to know that I like Sally’s paintings because that would destroy her right there. I like artists like Barbara Ernst Pray and Bjorn Rundquist and Andy Wyeth and Bradley Hendershot which proves that I don’t know anything about real art anyway. I’d never make a good critic because I admire artists who paint houses and places I recognize. And I admire artists who actually get paid for their work. And when Sally showed my photos of her paintings it reminded me that Priscilla Adam’s daughter --- I think she was a sculptor --- was offered something like $600 for her first work. She wouldn’t sell it, which upset Priscilla, her mother. And the kid said that this was her baby, her creation and she said, “Would you have sold me for $600?” And Priscilla said, “I never had such an offer.”

+

35. Two or three years ago I had around 700 Nigerian letters in my computer. I can’t remember why I was saving them because they’re sad letters. They are letters written by lawyers or ministers --- family friends of a lonely someone without children, aunts, siblings or cousins. This person died in a plane crash or was poisoned by his business partners. And what makes it really sad is, every man jack of them had from 20 to 78 million dollars in a big black box. I know what you’re going to say. Of course you probably don’t want to die even if you haven’t got a cent to your name, but think how much worse someone feels about dying when they have 28 million dollars in ready money lying around in a box. It would be just like dying with five cord of dried and split birch stacked neatly in your barn. You did all the work and next winter somebody else is going to be toasting popcorn over your crackling fire with your wife. But --- I have been studying these Nigerian letters for several years now, and I’m noticing a pattern here. The landscape is littered with hundreds of thousands of people who died in a plane crash or a car crash or a train wreck and every single one of them left umpteen million dollars behind and no heirs. Nigeria must be a strange place, indeed, because the minute you stop breathing in the state of Maine, the man in charge of selling your trailer is going to be mobbed by relatives you haven’t heard from in years. 021105

+

36. Jem Voyaga. That’s French for “I like to travel.” The first time I went to Europe I was 24 years old. I had just flunked out of The Crane Department of Music in Potsdam, New York, because I couldn’t learn to play the clarinet, so having nothing else to do, I went to Sweden and sponged off my aunts long enough to learn to speak Swedish with a Maine accent. Det vet la du som har vart dar, Olle. After I married a beautiful, young, widow named Marsha Van Zandbergen, who is on very good terms with her first husband’s relatives in Holland, I have even more reasons to go to Europe. If you’ve been abroad a few times, you probably know that Europeans think that all Americans are loud, obnoxious and bossy. So many Americans have bragged about how much better and bigger everything is in The United States, that the French and Germans really expect you to do it, too. They’ve kind of got their guard up, so to speak, and when they show you something they’ll say, “Well, this is pretty good, we like it, but you’ve probably got bigger or better ones in America.” I saw an example of this last month in a museum in Holland. Four hundred years ago this museum was a torture chamber and the guide showed me all kinds of horrible devices they used to torment people. We were almost all the way through the place when the guide smiled and said, “Can’t you hear people screaming, ‘Enough, enough. No more. I can’t stand it any more.’ You’ve got to admit you don’t have anything as bad as this in America.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him about Imus in the Morning. 050318

+

37. July 29, 2005 I had a great time at the WERU fair in Blue Hill, thanks to you, and was pleased to meet so many friends there. I really enjoy meeting you. You can always recognize lawyers or people with PhDs in sociology because at fairs they always dress a bit shabbier than the rest of us --- doing their best to fit in. So because I got a chance to talk with you, Blue Hill was a pleasurable as well as valuable learning experience for me. As I was leaving the fair I was greeted by a handsome young man, I believe his name is Ken. And Ken was dragging a huge cart through the fairgrounds. Ken said that he last saw me at the Common Ground Fair, and that I said something there that embarrassed him tremendously. You know that I would never intentionally say or do anything to embarrass or offend you, although I must admit that if you do want to press me to the limit --- if you really want to yank my strings, you can light up a cigarette in my dooryard or else ask me for something without giving me your mailing address that tells me where to send it. Graaa. Please put your mailing address on each and every email. Anyway, Ken said that I shook his hand at the Common Ground Fair --- but when I shook hands with the girl who was with him, I looked at him and said, “How in the world can you sleep with a girl who has such icy cold hands?” And he said that embarrassed him tremendously --- because he wasn’t able to answer my question until the next morning.

+

38. Public service announcement here. "A bystander may be able to spot someone having a stroke by giving the person a simple, quick test to see if they can smile, raise both arms and keep them up, and speak a simple sentence coherently. The test, which takes less than one minute, has helped healthcare professionals accurately identify stroke patients. If bystanders can relay results of this test to an emergency dispatcher, it could speed treatment to stroke patients. Time is crucial in treating stroke." My father had a stroke, so I know that people who have had a stroke are very much like those who are having a heart attack. The first thing they want to do is take a bath, shave and put on their best clothes before even thinking about calling 911. You might remember the man we recently talked about who had a heart attack but wouldn’t go to the hospital until he first drove his dog to the boarding kennel. Please listen closely. Time is crucial in treating stroke. If they get you in time, you might live to shave and put on clean clothes another day. 1. *Ask the individual to SMILE. 2. *Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS. 3. *Ask the person to SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE. If he or she has trouble with any of these tasks, call 9-1-1 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher. After discovering that a group of non medical volunteers could identify facial weakness, arm weakness and speech problems, researchers urged the general public to learn the three questions. They presented their conclusions at the American Stroke Association's annual meeting last February. Widespread use of this test could result in prompt diagnosis and treatment of the stroke and prevent brain damage. 050513

+

39. Nice letter here from John, who says, Dear humble, You know, the test for stroke that you announced as being something new isn't new at all. It must be almost 30 years ago that I saw a man on TV being tested. He was entering a helicopter at the time, turned around just before going on board and did the test. He 1. raised his arms in the air; 2. smiled; and 3. spoke a simple sentence: "I am not a crook!

+

40. I think about things. If you also think about things, it might be because you don’t have enough to do and I suggest that you find something to occupy your hands. This is why they say idle hands are the devil’s workshop. If you are busy you can’t think and thinking does not always give you a productive feeling of well being. This morning I was thinking about James Bond, which you might agree is about as unproductive as you can get when it comes to thinking. Because you have never wasted your time thinking about Bond, James Bond, you should know that James Bond is a good guy who zips about the globe while fighting powerful evil men. And for years I wondered how evil men like Dr. No and Goldfinger could find seemingly expendable cadres of people to aid them in their bloody pursuits of world domination and economic gain. I hope you won’t think about this, because if you do, you will realize, as I just did, that there are millions of people out there who honestly like them.

+

41. I can’t remember who sent me this news item, but I want to thank you. Senators William B. Spong of Virginia and Hiram Fong of Hawaii sponsored a bill recommending the mass ringing of church bells to welcome the arrival in Hong Kong of the U.S. table tennis team, after its tour of Communist China. The bill failed to pass, which deprived us of the Spong-Fong Hong Kong Ping Pong Ding Dong Bell Bill.

+

42. Are we born incompetent or is it thrust upon us? After 15 years of being married to Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, I now wonder how I survived my 20 years between 34 and 54 as a bachelor. I might now be compared to an appendage that has atrophied from lack of use because I no longer know how to do anything. What do you suppose would happen to me if I ran through a load of wash and hung it on the line? There is no way on this green earth that I would do it right. If you’re married to a Type A woman you know what happens when you try to help by making the bed. Yes. She tears it apart and makes it right, with the corners tucked in and the sheet folded down at the top --- even though Martha Stewart couldn’t tell the difference when the bedspread is on. You finally give up because she says it is easier for her to do it the first time than it is to tear your work apart and then do it over again. Mow the lawn and she mows it again the same evening with the blade set down to the dirt. Help her with the dishes? Only if you do want trouble in your marriage. You might have heard some of our young so-called experts bleating the mantra, “You have to work at a marriage. Marriage takes a lot of work and effort.” This is not true. I never worked at our marriage and I never will. For 15 years I have simply stood back and got out of the way. 050624

+

43. Here’s a letter from long time radio listener Kevin Barnard in Ogunquit, who has also been a good personal friend now for almost 20 years. Kevin made most of those beautiful redwood signs all inlaid with gold leaf that you see down in Ogunquit. Kevin just wrote me this about his handsome brother Mark, who is a famous womanizer: “Mark has been down to one woman for some time now. I had to pick him up at the York Hospital yesterday.” Good luck Mark. I’m married to one like that myself. 021105

+

44. My brother in law Mark Sisco recently called to tell me that in a Mark Trail comic strip, Mark Trail is standing on an oyster bar ankle deep in water, surrounded by hungry sharks. Mark Trail is saying, “I’m in big trouble. I’m surrounded by sharks on this oyster bar and the tide is going out.” My brother in law thought that this was funny and said that Mark Trail wasn’t going to get in trouble as long as the tide was going out. But anyone who thinks about this knows that although only a very few men have been eaten by sharks, many men have been undone after eating a few oysters. 050225

+

45. You can learn a lot about a man by simply going into his bathroom and seeing how many extra holes he had to drill in the wall to put up his towel racks. 050225

+

Direct inquiries to humble@humblefarmer.com.