+

Rants December 27, 2009

+

1. You might have heard that Anthony Marshall was convicted of looting his mother’s 200 million dollar fortune. It said in the paper that Anthony Marshall was an impatient heir who couldn’t wait for his mother to die so he could get his hands on her money and now impatient Anthony is going to jail. His mother was 105.

+

2. Dr. Rich Komp, who is a good Samaritan who spends a lot of his time in Africa and Central America teaching people how to harness the energy of the sun, sent out an email letter that says: “By the way, the clothes that charity shops like Goodwill and Oxfam send to 3rd World countries always seem to end up in the street markets so that the very poor can buy them from the rich people in their 3rd World country. I don't know the mechanism for that. But somebody defined foreign aid as: "The poor people in rich countries giving money to the rich people in poor countries".

+

3. Today we are going to discuss something relatively new in politics. It is called Clean Elections. Clean Elections is advertised as a practical, proven reform that puts voters in control of elections. Today I got an email from one of the candidates asking for $5 to help us have clean elections, and, because it would be refreshing to have someone in office who wasn’t put there by big money, I tried to send in a $5 donation to the clean election fund. If you’ve tried to contribute to the clean election fund, you are aware that it entails a rather narrow and circuitous route. To begin with, you can’t make this contribution with PayPal but have to use your credit card. So there’s your first downer right there. Then, after you’ve clicked your way through all the hoops, you discover that you are expected to not only contribute $5 to the clean election fund but also $5 to the candidate. And there it is right on the screen: balance $10. Now I might have gone for the $10 if I’d been asked up front, but doesn’t it seem to you that the customer has been thrown a curve ball right there? Get them on board for 5, and then see if they’re good for 10? The old bait and switch. So I clicked to delete that extra $5. But --- when I finished I got a big thank you for contributing $5 to the candidate and nothing to the Clean Election fund. The system was so confusing I had clicked on the wrong button. If you are reading this 10 or 20 years from now doesn’t it help explain why you still don’t have more support for so-called clean elections in Maine?

+

4. If you are a young married person you might often hear someone say, “You don’t hear a word I say. You don’t listen.” And then that person might say some other things that you really don’t want to hear because, you know --- you have no excuse for not listening. This came to mind yesterday when I was hanging up my sweaters. Because it is very cold, I wear four wooly sweater things with zippers on the front when I go for my morning bike ride and when I started to put them back in the closet, I remembered that my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, said to use wooden hangers when I hang up sweaters. Or perhaps it was metal hangers. I remember that she said that I should use or either wood or metal hangers when I hang up those sweaters. You see where I’m going with this, don’t you? --- When you’re my age, you will also warrant the same type of emotional relief. Because I’m old, my wife can no longer blame my crimes against the household on inattentiveness. She knows I listen closely, but now I can’t remember what it was I heard.

+

5. Radio friend Chief Read up in Augusta sent me an email that says, “humble: The neighborhood kid down the street visits me to work for me and several of the neighbors. I was hobbled this summer with a never-ending Achilles tendon repair, and Nick mowed the lawn every week. He was more meticulous than I have ever been. Then, since I'm still not repaired enough, I asked if he'd snowblow. He's doing that too and even came over on his own to clean out the end of the driveway after the plow guy decided to fill it in. (I think the plow guy waits up the street until I'm cleaned out and then comes back and fills in the end with 2 feet of dense, packed snow.) Nick took no money for that cleaning; he just worked his way up the street clearing all the driveway ends of the people he tends to. Pretty neighborly for a 17-year old.” Thank you for that Chief Read. There are many unsung heroes out there like young Nick and it’s to hear about them.

+

6. The best language course you can buy in a box teaches you not only the language but something about the culture. You might recall my saying that Italian tape number 22 taught me how to lure a married woman up to my hotel room. I discontinued Italian right then because I was afraid that at my age lesson 23 would kill me. There is an equal amount of cultural enrichment on the French tapes I’m listening to now. John gets sick from drinking too much wine. The next day when his friend asks him why he is drinking wine again, John says, “Life is too short to waste it feeling healthy.”

+

7. Because I am not going to live forever I went in to see my friend, Lawyer Crandall, about updating my will. Crandall said I had to get an executor I could trust with money. And I said, “When it comes to money you can’t trust anybody.” And Lawyer Crandall said, “It’s a good thing that’s true or I’d be out of business.”

+

8. I’m The humble Farmer and I know an artist in St. George Maine named Wilder Oaks who sells his paintings for a lot of money. Wilder Oaks is so successful when it comes to selling his paintings that he doesn’t even need to say bad things about the Wyeths or the Farnsworth Museum. Wilder’s critics consider him a Christmas card illustrator who has sold out to the establishment. If you need any more proof that his work must be good, listen to this: I like it.

+

What will do more for you in this life: Good genes or good education? When I saw that the fastest six runners in a road race were from Kenya, all I could think was, “Wow, I wonder why Swedes and Italians don’t find out what kind of a training program they have for their runners in Kenya so they’d be able to run fast, too. Imagine what chaos will reign when every country implements the training program they use in Kenya, and 10,000 runners all show up at the finish line at the same time.

+

10. You know how you wonder about things until one day somebody says something that explains it? I built a room on the back of my house for my wife’s father, my buddy Bill. Now that room is our bed and breakfast and one morning the man who stayed there said I’d hooked up the plumbing in the bathroom backwards. He said he turned on the hot water and it came out icy cold. And I thought to myself, “No wonder the old man screamed every time he took a shower.”

+

11. I have visited lawn sales where it is possible to buy good books for a quarter. I can remember finding a spotless brand new book called “Caring for your baby and child.” I mentioned to the woman selling it that the book was in awful good condition. She said, “Yes, after I had the kid, I never had time to read it.”

+

12. I have abandoned my Italian studies and have gone back to French --- for the time being. Now, every time I ride my bicycle or go to exercise class, I clip on my headset and plug it into the dvd player that hangs from my neck in a cloth bag and I listen to French. I now regret that between the ages of 6 and 12 I didn’t learn how to play the piano. I also wish that between the ages of 15 and 25 I had lived in several European countries where I would have learned a few languages and would have also garnered a basic understanding of how many people think. Had I lived about in Europe I could now revel in Voltaire and wouldn’t have to read Boccaccio in Swedish. So, it is very late in life that I am learning French logic --- which would have staggered Aristotle, Alfred Tarski and even David Mumford. If you are unfamiliar with French logic, please listen closely that you may be enriched. In lesson 17 John’s girlfriend tells him that he will have a headache if he drinks any more white wine. So John cries out, “Waiter, a bottle of red wine, see vou play.”

+