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Rants June 13, 2010

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1. For over 8 years I produced six or so television commercials every week for businesses in the Rockland and Camden area. The hardest part of selling my service back then was convincing store owners that humor sells. Of course everyone knows that now. The best commercials one sees on national tv now are very funny, but I was ahead of my time so selling these funny tv spots was an uphill battle. You know that I never boast or brag about myself, but you should know that I am proud of one presentation I made. And I think I'm justified in saying to myself, or to you, because you’ve been a close friend for many years --- "Robert, you are fantastic. You really outdid yourself on that one." I'm talking here about my visit with a woman at her shoe store. I want you to know that that was powerful advertising. Because --- as soon as my show went on the air, someone who couldn't even wait for them to open, broke in and stole two pair of shoes.

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2. If you’ve ever written letters to a newspaper, please know that for years your letters to the editor have contributed to my education, and for that I thank you. Have you ever wondered why so many letter writers think like they do? For example, I’ve always wondered why so many hard-working Maine people, whose houses and barns are falling down around their ears, vote for the political party of the New York billionaires who land their helicopters on their yachts. I could never figure out why a person who can’t afford health insurance or visits to the dentist votes for the same political party as the folks who buy the legislation that keeps health costs high and wages as low as possible. For years I asked myself, --- why should a person who is locked into a lifetime of car payments belong to the same political party as a person with a Swiss bank account who pays no US taxes because his corporation is registered in the Cayman Islands? --- A person who constantly lobbies for any legislation that will keep your wages as low as possible. Over 100 years ago when corporate America impoverished farmers, the farmers banded together for their political and economic well being and fought back to regulate the grain warehouses and railroads. Today when corporate America walks it to the farmers, the farmers express their frustration by protesting gay marriage or picketing at abortion clinics. Foreclose on their farms and they become teabaggers. How has corporate America managed to channel the frustration of so many struggling Americans into economically irrelevant activities? --- Or activities that only benefit corporate America? How has corporate America managed to refocus all that rage --- all that latent power --- into meaningless protests and movements that do nothing to increase a working person’s standard of living? You might find some answers to my question in historian Thomas Frank’s book, What’s the Matter with Kansas. If you’ll bother to read even a synopsis on line, you’ll see that although the book doesn’t solve the problem, it helps us to understand it.

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3. Many years ago I conversed for a few minutes with a young man I met down near the dock in Camden, Maine. And although you can come to my house for supper tonight and tomorrow have me look you in the face and swear that I’ve never seen you before in my life, I can remember a conversation I had with that young man 15 or more years ago. He said he wintered in the Caribbean while being paid $1,000 or so a week for cooking on a yacht. It is a smart boy who can earn $1,000 a week doing anything and his story impressed me so much that I have probably run it past you several times. Now this young man has a growing business with several employees and he recently showed up at my house, in person, when a mutual friend asked his company to help me with a problem. When he told me he had spoken to me years ago about cooking on a yacht, I remembered him at once. He said he was a long time radio friend. And he said that when he listened to me on the radio, he always felt as if I were sitting across the table from him having a conversation. Wasn’t that nice of him to say that? He said that years ago when he was in Athens he sent me a postcard from the Oracle at Delphi. He wrote that the Oracle had told him that if he had any questions to ask The humble Farmer. It’s a wonder we ever got to the business he’d come down to take care of because we talked about so many things. --- And because every few minutes his cell phone would ring. He’d look at it, but never answered it, so I knew right then it must have been a customer and not his wife calling. We talked about this --- cell phones ringing --- Stamford students sitting in a class but looking at their portable computers or texting messages on their cell phones instead of listening to the lecture. He said that professors discovered that students are so bombarded with stimuli that they can’t do anything. Young people are starting to hardwire their brains so they can’t think. I know my young friend’s phone rang over a dozen times, and although, as I said, he never answered it, he told me that that modern young people have become so connected that they have become disconnected from the people across the table they are trying to talk with.

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4. We recently voted on a certain issue here in Maine. If you live in Maine, you might have been surprised to see that so many newspapers which lean far to the right suggest that we vote no. And you might have been surprised to see that some chambers of commerce which lean far to the right suggest that we vote no. Is it possible that corporate America is offered us a legislative choice which would rob working people if they voted yes, and also rob working people if they voted no? Forced to choose the lesser of two evils, one would imagine that poor working people grit their teeth, if they have any, and voted NO. Doesn’t it make you wonder if there is any situation so bad but what it can’t be made worse?

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5. You might remember my whining and snivling that it takes me over 24 hours to upload one television program to my distributer. Last year, with the same Time Warner service, I could do it in around 5. Here’s a letter from radio friend Abbie who writes, “It is possible that your upload slowdown is due to your having been "fapped" for too much internet use? It has to do with the "fair access policy" - i.e. FAP. Bandwidth_cap) When we still had a Hughes satellite internet connection, it started to happen to us, and we are just ordinary internet users. It happened without warning or explanation, and we were "punished" with the slower speed for a full week if I recall. I think they were trying to get us to sign up for a more expensive "commercial" plan, but we dumped Hughes and signed up with a local service called "premium choice broadband." No problems so far, and it's been a couple of years, but we shall see. Then, on Wikipedia, we read: “One type of bandwidth cap, administered by an Internet service provider (ISP), simply limits the bitrate or speed of data transfer on a broadband Internet connection. The purpose of bandwidth capping is to prevent individual users from consuming the entire transmission capacity of the cable, a shared resource. Critics have charged that it is a method to charge consumers more by introducing tiered bandwidth caps.” I don’t know anything about being fapped. It might be an urban legend, for all I know. What do you know about bandwidth and uploading speed? I’m humble at humblefarmer dot com. Oh, one of my computer guru friends said, “Time Warner is not the best deal across the country in terms of performance, but that’s what we are stuck with in Maine.”

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6. If friends count for anything, I’ve had a wonderful life. Because of my Public Radio show, I got to know many of the most intelligent people in Northern New England. Whenever I’ve asked questions, usually at least one person with expertise in that area was able to give me a reasonable and well-thought out answer. For years I wondered why you see Republican signs in front of shabby houses with collapsed barns. Why do you see Republican stickers on battered car bumpers that are about to fall off? When I asked radio friend Harris how the super rich got poor people and --- the middle class --- to vote for a party that passes legislation that benefits only the super rich and impoverishes the poor and middle class, he mentioned a book called, What's The Matter With Kansas? Even owners of small Maine businesses don't seem to understand, that by voting for a party that will cut their employees’ wages they are impoverishing their customer base. Henry Ford might be the last businessman in America to understand that people have to earn more than enough to buy food and shelter if they are going to buy cars.

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7. Do the words you use always say what you mean to say? The other day I drove 5 miles back to where I thought I dropped a hat off my Model T. When I got almost to where I thought I dropped it, I saw a woman walking toward me on the other side of the road with my hat in her hand. I stopped and she asked if it were my hat. We chatted. She knew me and I had heard of her husband. Very nice woman. I asked her if she’d like a lift back to her car and she said, no she was walking. And I said, “Well, you need it.” I thought about that afterwards. I suppose that’s why people who meet for the first time on the phone or face to face often say, “How are you?” It’s fairly safe and it doesn’t require any thought.

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8. Parents, attention. There are things out there on the Internet that your kids shouldn’t see, and if you kids will go in the other room, I’m going to tell your parents about a horrible thing that showed up in my email last week. It is a message titled: Attract Females Easily. It said that thousands of years ago men used to attract females simply by the smell of their bodies. You might even know one or two guys who are still doing it. Anyway, that was all I read because this Attract Females email letter was obviously directed at younger men. At my age I'd rather see an article that would tell me What To Do With Them once they have been attracted.

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9. I took a risky chance down at the last lobster festival, and hugged a sweet little 80 year old woman. Of course I didn’t realize that it was risky at the time, but now I know that I was leaving myself wide open for a charge of sexual harassment. There’s big money in that now. There are experts who will come into your school or your Rotary Club meeting and tell you what sexual harassment is --- because, you know, where it’s rather new, the boundaries are still somewhat fuzzy and ill defined. You might be sexually harassing someone and not even know it unless an expert came in and told you what you’d done that was wrong. You might recall that little six year old first grade kid down in North Carolina who got a lot of coverage for giving in to the little girl who asked him to kiss her. Wouldn’t you think that even at six years old he would know that kissing is an unnatural act which is not condoned? Where do you suppose he ever learned a nasty thing like that? It’s quite unlikely that he sees his father kiss his mother on the cheek, because if we may believe what we see on television shows, it would be much more likely if his parents were fighting all the time, or divorced and separated. Anyway, I’ll bet that six year old kid learned his lesson and he’ll think twice before he lets some morally depraved little girl sweet talk him into kissing her again. You must admit that we live in interesting times. Had he smashed the little girl in the face with his fist, his name would be unknown in America. And, had he kissed a boy, nobody would have thought it strange.

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10. How many of your friends are Type A’s? As you know, the Type A individual has to run everything. They are the original lemme show ya boys. Two of them cannot exist in an organization or a marriage without destroying it. Type A’s cannot rest until they and only they have the power. Being married to or working for a Type A is like living on the edge of a tornado: you cringe well back from the swirling clouds of dust. They and only they know where pictures should be hung on the walls. They have to arrange the furniture in the house. Ever see man and wife out in the driveway standing toe to toe screaming at each other? Type A’s. Their marriage doesn’t stand a chance. On the other hand, you’re lucky if you work for a Type A because he or she is unable to delegate authority. Nobody can do it as well as he can, he trusts no one to do it right, so he is not only the conductor of the band --- you will also see him playing piano, blowing the trombone, beating the drums, applauding from the audience and then writing a review of the performance --- after he’s swept up the hall. All the other performers have to do is stand in line as he signs their checks --- the secretary can’t be trusted to do it right. The Type A manager knows how many rolls of toilet paper his organization uses in a year, month or day. His computer prints out charts and graphs which he hangs on the wall and collects in thick, well thumbed books. When I was in Orlando a while back, I met Charles Ware, who is a healthcare engineer at a hospital in Perry, Florida. I mentioned to Charles that my wife was a Type A and he said that his was, too. I asked him if he knew what my wife did after I made the bed. I almost cried when he said, “She tears it apart and makes it right.” I’d found a soul mate, you see. Charles said that he couldn’t understand why so many men have to be macho. He’s been married for over 30 years and he says that he tells his young friends that it is much easier to swim with the current --- go with the flow. Then he told me that old story about the preacher who had a dozen hens of all colors. He said that he would give one to any man who would stand up and admit that he was the boss in the house. When one man jumped up, the preacher said that he could have any hen he wanted. And there was silence. So he asked again, “Which one do you want?” And the man said, “She says she wants the brown one.”

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11. Down in Florida people don't have the right jobs. I called for an Alamo rent a car. The woman talked like a machine gun and I couldn't understand her because I didn't have my hearing aid on the telephone. She was wound right up like she was selling on commission. On the other hand, I went into a fast Burger place in West Palm Beach off Pelican and I ordered a burger. Burgers will keep me alive until I can get on a plane to Portland. I never order anything special because I don't want to wait, so I have even learned to eat burgers with raw onions and catsup. I could see the burger sitting right there waiting for someone to put it on my tray. You don't know what slow is until you've gone into a Burger place on the east coast of Florida and ordered a burger. You've seen them bring a suspect out of the courthouse on video, and then they slow the video down so it looks like the fellow is barely moving so you can get a good look at his face and the handcuffs. That's like a snowmobile race in Fort Kent compared to the way the people move behind the burger counters in Florida. There were five or six people behind the counter all looking at each other or nothing in particular and it was at least five minutes by my watch before one of them got around to reach over, pick up the burger, and put it in front of me. Why can't they get these burger people to answer the phones at Alamo and get the Alamo people to serve the burgers?

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