+

Rants February 10, 2008

+

1. You have already read that things are popping at Camden high school. Weren’t you proud to see that in this day of long-winded meaningless essays, that a few bright scholars in Camden finally rendered a report significant enough to command instantaneous national attention? Isn’t breaking barriers what education is all about? I heard that so many people wanted to read up on the incident that it crashed the Camden newspaper’s server. "What a lesson in the instantaneous spread of news over the Internet and the power of the written word," a school official wrote on the school’s Web site. Adding, "Hopefully, it will also be a lesson in journalism, because much of the article was untrue." But anyone who has ever listened to AM radio already knows that news and commentary don’t have to be true to command a large audience and capture the public’s interest. Although telling the truth is no way near as interesting, it can be just as exciting when you are assassinated or burned in effigy or fired.

+

2. Robert in Bath writes: Dear humble, The only time I ate at a Parisian restaurant, I was seated at a table where I could see into the kitchen. There appeared to be laundry hanging from a clothes line type rope…. Wonder why I never ate at another Parisian Restaurant?

+

3. I have in my hand one of those nice roadmaps that my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, gets from AAA. This is a Florida map and on the front of this map it says, Florida…. Including: Miami, Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville. Did we think a road map of Florida would include Damariscotta, Wiscasset, Wytopitlock and Fort Kent? Who writes these things?

+

4. My friend Doris says that she went to a one room school. There were 35 students there in grades from one to 12. Doris says she was the only student in her class. I also went to a one room school where I was the only person in the class. A radio friend writes: I went to a one room school. So did my Dad. He used to say that he thought it was a superior teaching environment, as by the time you entered 8th grade you had already heard the lessons 7 times before. I think there's something to that - something that is missing in this age of 'no child gets ahead'. My sister and her husband are teachers, and of course have many teachers as friends. Recently I chatted with several of them who were visiting, and one related all the problems her son is having now that he is teaching at the college level. It seems that in any given lecture he gives, at least a third of the students were either sending text messages or having full conversations on their cell phones, and phones rang regularly throughout the period. They were all aghast when I suggested that, as the son had found his way into the lecture hall, he ought to have been easily able to show the disruptive ones the way out of it. "You can't just throw the student out of the class!" I was told. Evidently, this is one of those areas of education I don't understand: if the instructor isn't in charge, who is?

+

5. I have a letter from a good friend who will remain nameless. He writes: The Supreme Court says that the Ku Kux Klan has a right to adopt a highway for litter control. The state can't stop the KKK. The Klan has more power in this matter than the state because --- are you listening? --- the Klan has more power in this matter than the state because, unlike the state, the Klan is not a recipient of federal funds. You've seen this emasculating state and federal funding operation for some time in your schools. You pay your tax money to the state and federal government. Then some of your short sighted neighbors apply for matching state or federal funds to help build your new school. Oh goodie. We can have a new school and we don't have to pay for it. State money will pay for it. Federal money will pay for it. As you well know, then the state or federal government has the power to set the standards in your school --- which really makes it their school. Anyway, if you're looking for the only organizations in America that are free from government control, the KKK is now right up there along with the Mafia. To be sure, these organizations have their detractors: one man says he's never seen the Klan show up once to pick up litter. Why does he think they are called the Invisible Empire? These people are like theater critics as they only come out at night.

+

6. 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 woman, it might have been my wife, was about to be visited by her daughter who was coming home from college for the weekend. And Gladys said, “That’s nice, she’ll have someone to help her around the house.”

+

7. We were talking about my old neighbor Gladys who was a master at irony. My friend Doris from Nova Scotia is 93 and Doris also warrants our attention. Doris is sharp. I told her --- that I wanted to tell you --- what it was she said yesterday that made me laugh but I forgot what it was. She said, “Let me see --- oh yes, it was about the….” And then she went over it again, real slow so I could get it. --- If you’re ready --- I was telling Doris about a clarinet player who played for dances back around 1910. But his wife didn’t like it because he was very popular and he was always going home with one of the girls. And Doris said with her very proper 93-year-old voice, “Wasn’t that nice of him. He wanted to make sure they got home safely.”

+

8. Here’s another letter from a friend who mentioned that you don’t see many graveyards in Florida. He wonders if the dearly departed are just left at the tide line for nature to take its course. He says at least the Vikings provided their deceased with an old boat and some kindling. Just try to imagine the permitting process that would be required to burn a Viking at sea today. There would be the usual state and municipal burial permits, federal and state licenses for the transportation of human remains, fire permits, proof of insurance, the submission of environmental impact studies to various municipal, state, and federal agencies, and then there's the boat itself, with the myriad of state and federal licensing requirements and the U.S. Coast Guard safety regulations that would have to be met prior to any vessel setting sail for Valhalla, or anywhere else for that matter. It's a good thing that Vikings no longer exist as such, because they'd be all over the place, stacked up like cordwood, awaiting permitting approval. I personally expect to be picked up by a cab. Here's a hundred bucks, the little woman will say, "take him as far as that'll get him." Thank you for this letter. I’m humble@humblefarmer.com and I welcome more of the same.

+

9. You are so good to listen to this show that from time to time I feel obligated to tell you something that might come in handy some day so please listen closely. It is my understanding that I am allergic to milk. I think they call it lactose intolerance. Hopefully, you will never become allergic to milk, but it is my understanding that this can happen when you get older and it happened to me. Years ago I remember going to the hospital, thinking that I’d had a heart attack, because my heart didn’t feel as if it were working right, and I remember the doctor going over my stomach with a stethoscope saying, “Gas, gas.” He was a Greek and he pronounced it “Gahs.” And years later I was in the hospital for three days, thinking I’d had a heart attack, but as I recall it was deep fried chicken. I mention this because yesterday I was unable to function. My heart didn’t feel right and my stomach had a great big bulge right under my rib cage. I couldn’t get out of my tracks and I didn’t care. The day before, and the day before that --- both days --- I’d eaten a cheese pizza. Which I understand is made from milk. The milk I put on my rolled oats every morning now is --- I think they call it lactose free. And from time to time I can eat a cheese pizza. But don’t push it. Two days of pizza in a row and on the third day you get hammered. I’m not suggesting that you don’t see a doctor if you don’t feel right because I’m one of those people who thinks you should see you doctor for every little thing. But you might want to Google lactose intolerant and read up on it. If you’re a hypochondriac as I am, within a week you’ll probably firmly believe that you’re afflicted.

+

10. While we’re talking about disease and rogue bodily functions, we should also mention that some of us become irritable and irrational if we don’t eat something every three hours. There are people who claim that they can go all day without eating. They can, but how can you stand to live with one of them? When I mentioned this cranky business a few years ago, I got around 8 emails, all saying that they lived with someone who was cranky because they didn’t eat when they should. I can go without eating. Sometimes it makes me very high. I feel very good, and this can happen when I’m working on a project that is so interesting that I forget to eat. But if you do it too, you know that the next day you feel rotten. There seems to be a time lag in there. If I were to go without eating from breakfast until 3 in the afternoon, I might feel ok until someone said something to me, even joking, and then I’d snap like a rubber band. Apparently when your body doesn’t get nutrients, it even changes the chemical properties of your brain so your brain doesn’t operate in a rational manner. I can speak with authority on this because I’ve been afflicted since I was at least in my teens. I wasn’t aware that eating a small something every two or three hours would take care of my irrational behavior until I was well over forty. If someone had pounded this fact into my head when I was 15, it would have saved me a few bumpy roads. So I hope you’ll file this away in the back of your mind. Even if it doesn’t apply to you, someday you might be able to help out a friend. Half a dozen crackers could save your marriage.

+

11. Computer gurus are, of course, eager to attack any problem. The fact that they don’t know the answer and hope to beat the machine excites them. It does not excite me, because I realize that they are trying to learn something on my time. Don’t you have to admire those gurus who come in and don’t have to figure out the answer to your problem because they already know it?

+

12. Have you ever seen the television program Cops? Cops are always pulling over cars that are full of trash and drugs and scruffy, half drunk unwashed people. Sometimes the cops chase those who are stupid enough to run and I’ve seen them snap the cuffs on some scruffy bum so many times I could probably now do it myself. The Cops program features crimes of lower class, uneducated people, because crimes committed by educated upper-class people --- like robbing your company or stealing the pensions of your employees --- don’t make for good TV [CD 2007]

+

13. If you have listened to my radio program for any amount of time, you know that my primary purpose in chatting with you --- my goal in life—is to tell you things that will make your life more pleasant. What better employment can one find than to be able to educate one’s best friends and do it in a manner that might bring a smile to their lips? If I can’t smooth out the bumps in your road of life I can at least prepare you for the fact that they are waiting for you. If you have ever married, I would like you to listen closely to what I am about to say. If you have never married, I would like you to listen even more closely. How much anguish and unnecessary suffering could be spared in this life if, during the wedding vows, the performing magistrate would say, “Do you, Alison, promise to go through Stephen’s pants and remove the Kleenex, loose dollar bills, his ipod and notebook BEFORE throwing them in the wash?” [CD 2007]

+