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Rants March 30, 2008

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1. Here’s a letter from Robert in Bath who has things pretty well figured out. You tell me if this also applies to your town. Robert says, “You might not see moose along side the road, but you will see sofas, mattresses and such. This is because Owls Head now charges a fee to use the landfill.”

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2. A week ago I sent out an email to some friends, asking them to tell me about the advantages of pre heating my hot water with solar energy before running it through the boiler in the furnace. I was told that my solar collectors have to face south. What am I to do? You’ve seen my house and you know that the roof on one side of my house faces east and the other side faces west. So I said I’d have half of the solar collectors on the east side to catch the morning sun and the other half of the solar collectors on the north side to collect the afternoon sun. My friend Dr. Jerry wrote right back and said, “Thinking about your roof orientation, I would disagree with the idea of putting up one collector facing east and the other facing west: one would always be in the shade, radiating part of the heat that the other one collected, unless you set up a system that would alternate automatically and only accept water from the one that was being heated.” Well --- why not? Why not set up a system that only accepts the water from the side that was being heated? You know, if you don’t know anything, you can come up with solutions to problems that stump experts. I see no reason why I can’t get the maximum amount of heat morning AND night. To be fair, my thinking isn’t original. I got the idea from a story I read about a man who had one wife in London and another one in Paris.

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3. How do I make a podcast? Jenny writes and asks me why I don’t have a podcast. She said she’d subscribe if I had one. What am I missing out on? What do I have to do to get on board? Do you listen to podcasts? What is a podcast? Where do you get a podcast? What is in a podcast? How do you listen to a podcast? I suppose it is hard to explain things like this because you can’t bring yourself to believe that there is someone who really doesn’t know what a podcast is or how it works. Explaining podcasts to me would be like telling a cave man how to drive a standard shift car through downtown Boston. http://web.mit.edu/ist/podcasts/makepodcast.html

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4. Tom sent me an email that says, “I was at a wedding this past fall talking to cousin Steve who had recently started a farm specializing in Lavender flowers. He said that one of the difficulties was getting enough hired help during the harvest season. Given that the farm is located in California at the base of the Sierra Mountains, I said he should consider starting a spiritual retreat. He could develop mindfulness exercises that would involve harvesting the lavender flowers. He wasn't sure that this would work, but I reminded him that in India they say ‘There is a seeker born every minute.’”

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5. Do you get your weather report off the Internet? I do. Right there on one page you can see what the weather is going to be for your zip code for the next ten days. Or you could, until today. Today you might have noticed that they bloated the size of each day so you can no longer see all ten days on one page. Now you have to scroll down to the next page to see all 10 days. Why, you have certainly asked many times, do people change things when they have something good that works just the way you want it to? Of course today you didn’t have to ask why they changed your weather page. It is obvious that they destroyed it and made it bigger so they can get more advertising on it.

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6. You’ve heard me say that I haven’t been able to go to the movies for years. 25 or so years ago I went to the movies with Julian and his wife Peggy and every time some character would say something important, they’d bring up that background music so neither Julian nor I could hear what was said. We’d both ask Peggy and she’d repeat it first on one side and then on the other, and I’d very likely laugh and look up just in time to see someone being strangled. Why do they put that background music in movies so you can’t hear what people are saying? Now you might have noticed that some producers are putting background music behind the stories they tell on the radio. If I want to hear people telling a story that I can’t understand because of the music in the background, I’ll listen to La Bohème.

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7. You heard me say that it won’t be long before I’m preheating my hot water with solar collectors on my roof. When I mentioned that I’d probably be running the pipes down through my living room, Larz in Boothbay Harbor said, “… if you're going to run pipes down thru the living room, get nice shiny ones. Then you can have exotic entertainment at the humble Farmer B&B with dancers using the pipes like a fireman's pole. Just the thing to keep you in hot water!”

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8. For years I’ve been inviting you and my radio friends to stop by for supper anytime. Having you over for dinner would really be easier because Marsha isn’t home at noon and we could simply put leftovers in the micro. Supper is more complicated because when we have guests my wife feels obligated to make it complicated. If I were alone, making supper for you would not be complicated because I’d simply say, “Let’s look and see what there is.” You might wonder how I can invite you and Jan and everyman to my house for supper. I can do it because I can only remember one person who took me up on it. He was a professor at Colby, and is this not eloquent testimony to the pay scale in Maine’s institutions of higher learning? Yes, I have sent out thousands of emails that end with, “You are invited to stop by for supper anytime.” And from time to time you and other friends send me an email that invites me to your home for supper. The difference between my invitation and yours, is that I always tell you where I live.

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9. The other night my friend Bill Miller called and talked for over an hour. Bill Miller is a third generation canoe builder in Nictau, New Brunswick who is responsible for the great Fiddlers On the Tobique festival in June. Sixteen people live in Nictau, New Brunswick and when Bill Miller called it was snowing and there was already 8 or 10 feet of snow on the level ground. If you’ve ever plowed you know that when you get a 12 to 15 foot bank of snow on either side of your driveway, it gets harder and harder to find a place to put it. Bill says that he loves winter but when he tried to plow the 20 inches that came down yesterday he started to get a little snow rage. Bill says that for the past month his dog Rusty has been walking on the roof and not even thinking anything about it. Bill says that if it hadn’t rained off three feet of snow in January, he would have to leave his house from the second story window. Bill has been a friend for at least 25 years so I know that although several women have tried to help him overcome his penchant for solitude, he is happiest in his cabin with his dog Rusty. Bill was reminiscing last night, as a man in a snowbound cabin with no TV might well do, and he said that when he first heard me on the radio 25 years ago he had the impression that I was right there in his canoe shop having a conversation with him. This might come as a surprise to you, because for all these years you probably thought that I was right there in your house or car talking things over with you.

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10. I’m humble at humblefarmer.com and I’d love to hear from you. Here’s a email from George that I had to think about. Please listen closely. George says, “Did you hear about the Massachusetts teenagers who, as a prank, released three pigs in various parts of their high school after labeling them "Pig 1", Pig 2" and Pig 4". It is reported that the administration was able to round up Pigs 1,2 & 4 fairly quickly, But they spent most of the remainder of the day searching for Pig #3.”

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11. Here’s another letter, this one from Dr. Jerry, who replied to my request for information on a solar hot water heater. Dr. Jerry says, “Wow, Robert, I'm flattered that you would ask me about solar showers. I consider myself a neophyte and have been designing a solar water heater but have not actually built it yet though it's on my top priority list because I hate to hear the oil furnace come on during the hotter six months of the year. In fact, to save money I have started using a plan suggested by a friend in Ellsworth. He lets the dishes pile up (rinsed in cold water) and for the three times a week that he plans to shower he turns on the oil furnace, lets the water warm up (until the furnace shuts itself off) and then takes his shower. Gets out, towels off, and shuts off the furnace. Does a few days' worth of dishes with the residual hot water.” From Gerry. Thank you for that, Gerry. But it reminds me that back in 1960 when I lived in Sweden for six months, not only in the country but also in the city apartment buildings, you only got hot water during certain hours or certain days. At the time I thought it was quite a primitive system. Now that the price of oil is going up, up, up, what do you think? I’m humble at humblefarmer.com

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12. You might be horrified to think that an old man on social security, who has put up decent buildings and messed with electrical and plumbing, would bring in hired help to put up a solar collector. But I’m not going to pay for it. I have an equity account on the house that will stand it. And the kids will have to pay it off with my life insurance when I die, so why should I risk my neck up on a roof? --- Or be frustrated trying to work out the best way to run the pipes through my living room? And then seeing that it would go better somewhere else after I’ve already drilled the holes? You know very well that a professional will go with his original holes, even though he sees that he should have put them somewhere else. Some neighbors not consider what I am about to do to my 197-year-old house esthetically pleasing. But that house was already 14 years old when Jefferson died. It has seen and tolerated a lot, and these solar panels will only be up there 10 or 15 years at the most. Within 30 years, for sure, we will have solar panels the size of a bottle cap that will do the job 100 square feet of solar collector does today. A few friends have crunched the numbers and have said that what I am about to do is not economically feasible. You know that I know nothing of economics. But I do know that if the solar panel salesman tells me that my unit will pay for itself in 10 years, it will pay for itself in oil savings in 5. --- In less time than that, if McCain is elected.

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Why the US is collapsing

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