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Rants January 3, 2010

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1. Fifty or so years ago, after goofing off for an entire week of semester break, my brother would often write his term papers in the back of a friend’s car while car pooling back to school. He was using what was, even then, an antique typewriter and when under pressure he often typed only one draft of his paper and that was the one he handed in. One time he wrote something like this: “The Indians dried fish on the rocks which they ate in the winter.” But his amazing almost total recall enabled him to transcend little stylistic slips like that and he was selected by the faculty as the outstanding student at Gorham and was awarded a free scholarship for his junior year. All this came to mind when a radio friend replied to my email that said, “You are welcome to stop by for dinner anytime,” with: “Geez…. Is that on the menu?” Before this was called to my attention I’d never realized that, “You are welcome to stop by for dinner anytime” could be interpreted in more than one way. But while I was trying to think up a response, I heard a choir on the radio singing, “Holy infant so tender and mild.”

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2. While seated at a dinner table you have heard people 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. Do you read Facebook? I read on Facebook that a Chinese plane filled with yak dung crashed in Tibet this morning. Republicans are holding the Obama White House responsible and have scheduled hearings.

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4. Years ago they caught a crazy in an airplane trying to light a bomb in his shoe. So now millions of people have to take off their shoes before they get on a plane. More recently they caught a crazy in a plane who set his socks on fire. My friend David says that flying would be a lot safer if everyone got on nude.

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4.b. Upcoming events Event: Dave Rowe Trio House Concert
What: Concert
Start Time: Friday, January 15 at 5:30pm
End Time: Friday, January 15 at 9:30pm
Where: PineCrest Inn B&B, South Street, Gorham, ME

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5. Every discipline has its own in-house humor which nobody else understands. Forty years ago, when I was at the University of Rochester struggling with Zupitza’s Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, I found time to front a band that played frat parties and homecoming dances. This came to mind when I got a letter from Karen Grosz, saying that my old classmate, her husband Oliver, was mastering the art of painting on the iPhone. Please don’t even try to tell me what painting on the iPhone is because I wouldn’t be able to understand it. But I can believe that Oliver Grosz would quickly become an iPhone painting master. Without any seeming effort, Mr. Grosz learned to read Old English while I never got past the Dream of the Rood. One of the most memorable experiences I had at the University of Rochester was at a homecoming dance when Mr. Grosz approached me on the bandstand and asked if we could play, “Frumsceaft.” This was probably the first time anyone had requested Frumsceaft since it dropped off the Top 20 English Hit Parade charts in 665.

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6. Here’s something I recently learned on You Tube. In Africa they are using teams of rats to detect TB bacteria in saliva samples from four clinics serving slum neighborhoods. So far this year, the 25 rats trained for the pilot medical project have identified 300 cases of early-stage TB - infections missed by lab technicians with their microscopes. If not for the rodents, many of these victims would have died and others would have spread the disease. Forty years ago when I was a grad student at the University of Rochester I learned how to train rats. But I had no idea then that rats could be trained to sniff out land mines or to sniff out disease. Have you heard anything about using rats to sniff out disease in this country? I doubt if they’d use it here because it’s simple, nobody would make any money selling it, and it works.

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7. Several years ago a most unpleasant man moved up here to St. George, Maine from Boston. After putting up with his foolishness for two or three years, one of the local boys thought he’d encourage this guy to move back to Boston. So late one night this kid came up behind the man as he got out of his car, stuck a gun in his ribs, and robbed him of three dollars and fourteen cents. The next day that man moved back to Boston. We were all glad to see him go, but none of us were pleased with the way the kid had gone about it. And the next time I saw him I chewed him out for scaring the man to death. He said, “Scared? You don’t know nothing about city people. They aren’t afraid of holdup men. When he felt my gun in his ribs, he got just plain homesick.”

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8. The young man couldn’t believe me when I told him that I don’t argue with my wife. After all, isn’t some disagreement inevitable between two people who have lived together for countless years? Yes. Of course we disagree but I don’t argue. It’s a waste of time when you’re married to a Type A woman. If you are married to a Type A person you know that they have to have absolute control and that only they can make a decision. When something new or different interrupts our usual schedule, I point out what action I plan to take and Marsha will say just the opposite, and that settles it right there. This morning was typical. After hearing what I planned to do, she stated her case, giving valid and reasonable reasons for doing exactly the opposite, and that was the end of it. She turned on her heel and rushed out of the house and off to work. Now, a younger, inexperienced man who knows nothing about Type A women might have tried to reason with her, but I knew better, because --- before she could even get to her car, she turned on her heel, came back to the house, stuck her head in the door and said, “You were right. We’ll do what you said.”

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9. Digression on hitchhiking to CA in 1957.

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10. In a small town way down in the eastern part of Maine, which is Washington county, two friends were talking. And one allowed as how social opportunities were somewhat limited there. He said, “You know, I have dated every woman in Washington County except my mother and my sister.” And his friend said, “Well, you ain’t missed much.” (Clyde Folsom)

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11. My friend Ken asks, “What do you make of the couple that were evicted from their lot for collecting junk? Is this not the end of a long standing Yankee tradition? I would like to hear your thoughts on that matter. Is it true that a man is only as well off as the number of old fire trucks in his yard?” Thank you Ken. This certainly warrants our attention. Only an arrogant, presumptuous, inordinately provincial Maine native would claim that the need to collect junk originated with his tribe. Anyone who has traveled knows that one collects things that might have some value because of an innate frugality or a socio-economic system that makes collecting junk necessary for survival. You can travel over much of northern Europe and never see as much clutter as is found in one back yard in Washington County. An unbiased observer might assume from this, that there are countries in Northern Europe where people have adequate incomes. They have single payer health insurance. In these countries people have never developed the need to stockpile scraps of plywood or car parts. In parts of Africa, I am told by a distant cousin who has been there, people crouch around fires on city street corners, cooking over cut up automobile tires. In these countries it is impossible to collect junk, because your neighbor would steal it. So, although the need to save junk may be genetic, there is an excellent possibility that it is economically driven. There are affluent countries in Europe where it is not necessary to hoard junk. There are poor countries in Africa where it is impossible to hoard junk. Maine fits somewhere in between.

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12. Have you ever heard of a Time Warner cable box? The last time I paid my monthly Time Warner bill, it showed up in my checking account as credit for a TWcable box. I never heard of such a thing and only because I Googled TWcablebox do I know that it is a new service offered by Time Warner that I don’t want. How much time do you spend on the phone with companies because their robotic employees push computer buttons at random? Sometimes you have to call twice or more. The first customer service representative tells you that all is well, but a week or two later you get a printed communication which puts you right back where you started from. You call again and customer service tells you that nowhere is there a record of your first call. Let me know if this has ever happened to you.

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13. I never heard of Charlie Sheen until he was arrested for domestic violence allegations. I’ve seen Charlie Sheen’s picture on billboards and his face on TV while clicking through the channels, but I never watched his show to find out what he was all about. But a quick Google revealed that Charlie Sheen is the highest paid TV actor in captivity and that he was once turned in to the authorities by his father after a cocaine overdose sent him to the hospital. Another article said that Charlie Sheen had some strange ideas, but nothing that couldn’t be blamed on an overdose of cocaine. As I said, I never heard of Charlie Sheen until he was arrested for domestic violence allegations. Isn’t it amazing what some actors will do to make sure that even people like me know who they are?

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14. How do you know when the honeymoon is over? What made you realize that you had been married a long, long time? Yesterday morning when I woke up, before I could even groan and get my eyes open, my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, whispered in my ear, “Will you put the windows back in so I can finish painting them?”

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