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Rants June 20, 2010

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1. A man from North Carolina who saw the sign in front of my house and came in to investigate told me that he was spending the week in Camden. I asked him what he’d been doing in Camden and he said, “Waiting for the sun to come out.”

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2. As you’ve probably heard me say, one of my horrible habits is turning on the television every time I sit down alone to eat. This is a horrible habit because sometimes I see something so interesting that I’m glued to the tube until the thing is over. This morning it was the 1951 film, The Day The Earth Stood Still. Two doctors are discussing an alien who looked 38 years old but who claimed to be 78. He told the doctors that the average lifespan on his planet was 138. As one of the doctors offered the other a cigarette, he said, “I wonder how they do it?”

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3. You might have read that the high school in Greenville High with 87 students is on Newsweek’s list of America’s best high schools. For this I congratulate them and encourage them to hang in there. Greenville’s superintendent of schools reportedly said, “It’s really, truly a reflection of the teaching staff, specifically how much they work to prepare students to be able to take those AP courses and be successful with them….That’s just a testament to the high school teaching staff.” Anyone who has taught elementary school or high school or university courses probably smiled or even chucked while reading that. “--- they work to prepare students to be able to take those AP courses and be successful with them.” Would it not defeat the purpose of education if all teachers only taught students how to get high test scores? --- But isn't that what No Child Left Behind was all about? Serious educators long ago saw that impetuous bit of foolishness for what it was and put it aside. The best teacher in the world can do no more than help a student become all she or his is capable of being. To paraphrase in the vernacular, you can dig in the flats for a long time and never earn a dollar if there ain't no clams.

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4. I just got an email that said, “The eight-year occupation of Afghanistan just became the longest "war" in U.S. history. Combined with the occupation of Iraq, we've now added $1 trillion to our national debt to accomplish absolutely nothing.” Accomplished absolutely nothing? Let’s remember that your war tax dollars made a handful of rich people a lot richer. Isn’t that something?

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5. You might have heard that the police shot a biker down in Old Orchard Beach. The way I understand it, the biker and his nationwide club were charged with conspiracy, racketeering, drug trafficking and other crimes to numerous and insignificant to warrant our attention. Can you believe that a few law-abiding people who ride motorcycles and have little or nothing else to do but write letters to newspapers, were upset when they read that a “biker” was shot by the police? I feel their pain. There are bikers and there are bikers. Years ago I spoke to 5,000 bikers at their annual rally in Moodus, Connecticut. Perhaps you were there. The only acknowledged crime for the entire weekend was when a biker tried to tighten a bolt on his spotless BMW R1200 with a pair of pliers.

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6. I know of a 92-year-old man heading south who turned into his field in front of a bicycle going north. The professional biker, who went over the top of the car, now wears protective clothing. Twenty or so years ago I looked both ways, pulled out of my driveway, and saw an oncoming car right on top of me. A near miss. You know that these things can happen, especially if your driveway is near a curve in the road and people are on their way home from work. If you think carefully about two vehicle accidents you have seen, it very often takes two inattentive or careless operators to cause an accident. The TV ads about taking that extra look for motorcycles have impressed me. At 74, even though I take that extra look both ways, I still worry that someday I might not see something that I should.

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7. We read that The United States just found a trillion dollar mineral deposit in Afghanistan, making it the largest known deposit of minerals in world. In the past, corporate magnates and their military lackeys in powerful countries have initiated “preemptive” strikes against smaller entities, just for the privilege of controlling only their agriculture, hotels, oil fields and fast food concessions. Small potatoes indeed when one now considers Afghanistan’s endless source of lithium, necessary for the batteries in your grandchildren’s laptops and BlackBerrys. This alone would be more than enough reason for any powerful, imperialistically oriented country with a history of economic domination to invade Afghanistan and keep troops stationed there until the country had been sucked dry. Luckily, we are already there. As the commander of the US Central Command reportedly said, "There is stunning potential here.” --- I would add, “Obviously --- for endless generations of profitable war.” Stay tuned.

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8. How do you delete the emails in your junk email folder? Do you dump all 248 of them every morning, or do you go through them one by one, just in case a note from a friend got misdirected? Yes, I go through them, and although I usually find one I want to read, rarely do I see anything in the subject line that I enjoyed as much as this one I quickly deleted this morning. It said, “Realize your fantasy as a sex god.”

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9. We read in the newspaper that a man in Machias, Maine who broke into 40 places stole wood splitters, generators, outboards, tools, a boat and other items. Having read the Rockland Courier Gazette for over 50 years, I’m not surprised that one dedicated person could command so much newsprint. If you live in Miami you know what I’m You might remember hearing a few years ago that when one transient family moved to Lewiston, crime in the Rockland area dropped around 30 percent.

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10. Did you see it on TV? Fish are now exhibiting male and female tissue because of some estrogen chemicals that get pumped into the water. The scientist who is studying the situation said that this is the first time he has ever been scared. These sex changing chemicals have been outlawed in some countries, but they are still being pumped out of sewage plants into the rivers in this United States. Any Senator who voted to outlaw these dna altering chemicals would be blacklisted by every chamber of commerce in America for being anti-business, so the chemicals will probably be around for a while. Think about this. If fish can be genetically altered to be both male and female, why couldn’t humans? We are talking about something pretty scary here when you stop to think that it would effectively make marriage illegal in at least 11 states.

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11. Many years ago I bought old houses that were full of old things. When I’d sell one of the houses, I’d incorporate all the old things into my own home. And, by the way, this house is 199 years old, I bought it with the contents, and even I don’t know what’s in some of the corners in our attic. Back then I was a bachelor so I could do pretty well what I wanted. One time, when this house got so crowded with old pine bureaus that I couldn’t get into some of the rooms, out of pure desperation I advertised a lawn sale and listed some of the items to be offered. On the day of the sale, long before the sun came up --- I mean it was dark outside --- there was an antique dealer camped in my dooryard. This was brought to mind this morning when I took a large plastic bag from my wife and offered to carry it out to the trash. Knowing my wife, I untied the bag and looked inside when I got outside. Big mistake. Don’t ever look at anything your wife has thrown away in a plastic bag unless you want to cry. You have heard the old saying, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” But my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, doesn’t know about that. If she doesn’t want it she can’t believe that anyone else would be fool enough to want it, let alone pay money for it. She’s the kind of person who would toss out her great grandmother’s letters containing a first person account of the Battle of Bull Run. So. Antique dealers have long memories. When they see something in a house that they want, and they know they can’t do business with the old codger who owns it, you can believe that they keep a close eye on the obituary column so they can quickly move in on the hapless grieving heirs. But they’re going to get a surprise should they show up here with a roll of cash and a truck the day after I die. Because they will be told that my wife burned everything they wanted the day before.

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12. 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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13. 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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