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January 9, 2011 Rants

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1. One of my friends, who plays senior softball, said, “Fifty years ago I played to win. I now play in a manner that will enable me to walk into the house when I get home.”

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2. When you turned on the tube and saw all the ambulances you thought you were watching the dénouement of just another typical children’s show. Earlier, cars had flown through the air and exploded in flames. The hero, gun and girl in hand, surrounded by a hail of bullets, had already leaped through a plate glass window. And now the camera had moved in on the bloody scene of a massacre about to be evaluated by a modern day Sherlock Holmes. Ho hum. But then it slowly dawned on you that a few folks really had been gunned down on the street. You had to admit that you live in a land where fiction is indistinguishable from reality. They say the suspect, who was wrestled to the ground, is only 22. The interesting thing about this incident is that the many prominent people who eloquently promote and support this kind of activity now have to keep their personal thoughts to themselves and can't chortle in print --- or on television: "I'd like to see a lot more of this." But, I’m opposed to shooting people, so here’s what came to my mind: “Well, the kid’s obviously got the stuff they want, but it’ll a while before our military-industrial party can run him for President.”

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3. A German orthodontist who visited us a couple of years ago sent me a message on Facebook. I didn’t know how to reply but Heather, whom I consulted, said, “If the message is the lower right hand corner of your Facebook page. I think that person is trying to chat with you. You write your message in the little box and then hit return. If they are no longer online then the message box will say so and will send your message as a message rather than a chat. If the person is still on line and wanting to chat, your message will be added to the persons above it and you can have a dialogue back and forth with them. When the other person is typing there will be a little symbol showing they are typing. I hope this is helpful.” Well, Heather’s note was informative but not helpful because I couldn’t find the aforementioned return button. That’s ok, because I have no business Facebooking anyway. The technology gurus make these things for their peers who are not yet old enough to shave. My brother borrowed a car the other day and sat in it --- in my dooryard --- getting uglier by the minute because he couldn’t figure out how to turn on the radio. I couldn’t help him. What has our society come to when it can’t even produce a radio with an on/off knob and a volume control?

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4. You might have heard that a lot of birds died suddenly. We are told that it’s only a coincidence that a lot of fish also died suddenly. A friend writes, “Luckily so far there has been no correlation whatever between anything ugly in the world and something stupid people do. That probably means they will keep right on doing it.”

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5. What would you do with illegal aliens? The headline read: “Baldacci grants final pardons.” Although a few of us old fogies still recall reading somewhere that Christ was remarkably liberal when it came to extending pardons, there must be a lot of hot young blood out there because a synopsis of the letters to the editor responding to the Baldacci headline would look like this: “$@#%@*@^@!” One of the last official acts of a governor or president is granting pardons. If the official signing the pardons is a democrat, there will be howls of rage from republicans --- and a few working people who entered the country illegally will be permitted to continue doing jobs that nobody else wants to do. If the official signing the pardons is a republican, there will be howls of rage from democrats --- and a lot of fat cats who should be in jail will continue to do illegal things that nobody should do. Baldacci’s pardons might have brought to your mind a poem by Emma Lazarus that is engraved on a bronze plaque inside the Statue of Liberty:

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

For years all good Americans have subscribed to these powerful words and refugees have always been welcomed --- with the possible exception of a boatload of Jews who were sent back to be exterminated in Hitler’s Germany. When some of my ancestors first arrived here, yearning to breathe free, they were not welcomed by the legal residents. But great grampy shot the ones that complained and, even if I'll never be fully accepted in this country by the natives, so far they have pretty well ignored me.

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6. A while back I gave a demonstration of how, for 50 years, I’ve shaved in the shower without shaving cream. And, as I had hoped, you had something to say about it. I read from a letter: “Hey Humble, my husband shaves in the shower, too. He likes it because the hot water and steam really soften up his beard for an easier shave. He has one of those little mirrors that has suction cups to attach it to the shower wall so he can see what he is doing. As for women and nebulous cooking instructions, do you think cook until tender or bake till golden brown are sufficiently clear? How's this instruction that I give for baking custard, remove from oven just as the center swells (if you wait till after the swelling falls you are doomed to watery custard with holes in it). Here are a couple of time honored cooking instructions - pour one glug of..., stir in a handful of..., add a pinch of... I think that these are quite clear to understand. I guess the question would really be, do you? The one I have a hard time with myself is the test for loaves of bread - tap the loaves and when they sound hollow, remove from oven. I tap and tap, and man it just does not sound hollow. I gave up long ago on that one. Now I just bake till done. Keep whining and sniveling. It's hard work, but someone has to do it.” And that was from Sydney. I’m humble at humble farmer dot come and although it’s really none of my business I’d like to know what you think about shaving in the shower.

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7. Rich sent me a link to what I think was a NYTimes video commemorating the famous musicians who died in 2010. Although there must have been a couple dozen listed the only one I had heard of was Lena Horne. Their birth dates were listed under their pictures and I can only guess what wiped out all these talented people, most of whom weren’t even born when I was playing for high school dances. I do know that 20 or so years ago I had to give up playing bass because the smoke in just about every place we played was killing me. And therefore --- it is pretty certain that if I’d been paid what all those famous musicians had been earning, I would have hung in there and wouldn’t be telling you about this now.

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8. Why are we able to remember things we heard fifty years ago and still have to see the dishes in the sink before we’re sure we’ve had breakfast? You can give me many examples of this. I remember sitting in Dr. somebody’s classroom at Gorham Normal School listening to a lecture on lizards when an older classmate raised his hand and asked if lizards were viviparous. Thinking about that this morning made me wonder how many words you have heard me mispronounce over the past 30 years. Of course, you might still think I’m doing it on purpose and give me the benefit of the doubt, but with me you can never really be sure. Years ago when I was writing for a lot of tiny newspapers, I used to misspell at least one word on purpose in every article. That was back before computers and spell checkers when I would have to look up at least three words in every article. As I recall I used to put that misspelled word in there every week just so when I really missed one I’d get the benefit of the doubt.

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9. Even before recorded history, man celebrated the winter solstice to the best of his ability. And every culture in each and every age produced a symbol that attempted to adequately commemorate this important event. The Druids are still whooping it up at Stonehenge. And what a work of art Stonehenge is with its carefully aligned 50-ton stones. For the first couple of centuries of Christianity, several dates were given for the birth of Christ, but --- perhaps to encourage people to forget the good old pagan solstice feasts --- December 25th was the date finally adopted by some branches of the church. Churches and mosques, symbols of faith (and also aligned with the winter solstice sun), were built of wood and stone. And for centuries Stonehenge and countless magnificent churches bore witness to mankind’s need to honor and celebrate the coming of a new life. But the art of a truly civilized society will always transcend the endeavors of any previous age. If you checked out your neighbor’s lawn in December you might have noticed that nowadays the most popular symbol to herald the winter solstice is an inflated three-foot yellow plastic duck.

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10. The headline read: “Man critically injured in snowmobile accident” Years ago Captain Mac said he crossed a picket line to haul some New York City garbage out to sea. As he was merrily steaming along some fellows on the shore got out of a pink Cadillac and put a few bullets through his wheelhouse. Cap Mac dropped to the deck, called the Coast Guard, and said he was taking fire from shore. With no one at the helm, the tug and the barge loaded with garbage grounded out. The next day there was no mention of the incident in the New York papers. When I told this story to Kendall Morse, Kendall said, “Well --- in New York that ain’t news.” I think of Kendall every time I read that someone in Maine was critically injured in a snowmobile accident.

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11. For many years I jumped and wiggled in the front row at exercise class. But because the TV screen is right next to a window which is like having a spotlight in your face, I finally moved back to where I can see the screen but not the window --- which makes it easier on my eyes. There, behind a few people for the first time, I noticed that every time the skinny woman on the screen said to raise a right hand, everyone raised a left hand. Everything on a TV screen is perceived as a mirror image and for most people the visual stimulus is obviously stronger than the verbal. Much to my distress I discovered that I was doing the exact opposite of everyone else in the class. My confusion was a simple matter of conditioning: Any man married to a Type-A woman quickly learns to do what they say and disregard what they do. +

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