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Rants February 5, 2012

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1. Baseball has probably killed and disabled more Americans than any other sport in history. You’re right, as usual. It’s not playing baseball that has killed and disabled millions of Americans but watching it from the couch with a can of beer in each hand.

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2. I just read of a new study that attempts to determine if teachers have a lasting effect on students’ lives. Unless you’ve got something to say, that item seems to transcend commentary.

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3. We read that at least three women who met Newt Gingrich were so captivated by what we will have to believe is his emotional energy, that they married him. The last two were swept off their feet while he was already somewhat involved in meaningful relationships. You will recall that Ted Bundy and Charles Manson also possessed those intangible sterling qualities that make innocent little hearts beat faster, and that the social phenomenon of women falling for a man who has committed an outrage is well documented. And here the parallel ends, for whilst those already incarcerated are somewhat confined by the parameters of Meet An Inmate dot com, Newt has in his camp the awesome power of corporate America's talk radio and Fox “News". Newt was born a bit too late --- back in the good old days he could have piled all his wives into wagons and gone to Salt Lake City --- and still run for president.

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4. Do you think of Newt Gingrich when you hear liberals whining that corporations can now buy elections? Anyone who is honest knows --- that the presses would burn up, all hot and smoking, before anyone could print enough money to put Newt Gingrich in the White House.

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5. Sometime if you have nothing to do and want to strain your eyes, check out the webpage for Eliot, Maine. I was trying to look up Moses Farmer who is one of Eliot’s famous citizens and although I found the web page, I couldn’t read it. Doesn’t it make you wonder if anyone has ever written to the town fathers in Eliot to ask them who in the world created their web pages and what it cost them? From time to time you’ve run across web pages that you can’t read and when you saw the black background with flashing red letters you knew the page was constructed by a 12-year-old with a shaven head and a bone in his nose who never leaves his mother’s cellar. Who else could make these fancy, expensive web pages that people can’t read? Black ink on a blue background? Blue ink on a gray background? Anyone who looks at my web page will tell you that I don’t know anything about making web pages. It’s not colorful, it’s not well organized. About the only positive thing you might say about my web pages is that you can read what is written on them.

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6. Here’s a gee-whiz fact I read on line. A Mississippian earning $38,000 can live about as well as a New Yorker in Manhattan with a salary of more than $93,000. A $50,000 salary in Manchester, New Hampshire is roughly equivalent to a salary of $38,000 in Tupelo, Mississippi. For years I’ve marveled that my wife’s teacher friend in Connecticut earned twice as much as my wife did for doing the exact same thing in Maine. And, unlike my wife, her Connecticut friend got a nice pension when she retired because Jock McKernon didn’t get his hands on the Connecticut teacher’s pension system. But I always kept in mind that to earn all that money her friend had to live for 30 years near Glastonbury, Connecticut.

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7. We read that no state has suffered from the Bush recession more than Nevada. Between 2006 and 2010, home values plummeted 44.5 percent, the poverty rate increased 26 percent, and the median income dropped 3.8 percent. We also read that Nevada has been ranked the most dangerous state 7 years in a row. When you stop to think that Nevada is famous for its gambling, doesn't it make you wonder why our Maine neighbors aren't clamoring for at least one more of those economy enhancing casinos in their home town? You've seen the TV ads --- don't they tell us how much casinos contribute towards the education of Maine children? My brother-in-law runs two casinos and the last time we visited him, one noon he took us upstairs to dinner. You know how they seat you next to the window in Camden restaurants so you can see the pretty boats bobbing about in the harbor. My brother-in-law seated us next to the window so he could enjoy watching the Brink truck loading up at his front door. Would Maine be an easier place in which to live if we had a state bank like they have in North Dakota? Would a Maine State Bank keep money circulating in Maine instead of flushing it off shore through casinos and international banks?

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8. Well, as Americans let's be proud that it's been over twelve years since anyone was dragged to their death behind a pickup truck in Texas and two years since we've had a president who is afraid to travel to Europe for fear of being tried as a war criminal. --- You might have heard that many people blame Bush for destroying the economy and starting wars. But shouldn’t each and every person who voted for GWB shoulder just a scrid of that guilt? One would hope that most people who voted for Bush must feel an occasional twinge of guilt by now --- unless they’re wearing sheets. Would the education derived from foreign travel go a long way towards eliminating many of our problems? If more of your neighbors had lived for a year in Northern Europe couldn’t you believe that the likes of George W. Bush and Newt Gingrich would be laughed off the ballot?

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9. Here’s a nice letter from John Leeke, who is an expert at restoring old windows or old houses. John says, “I never read your rants in the newsletter though, I'd rather hear them "fresh" when I listen to the show, which is usually a few months later. I download several of your shows from your website to my cell phone, and then listen to them when I am traveling on work trips. I got a cold this week and so I was watching TV at unusual times and caught your show on cable channel 5, here in Portland. It was the one where you show building the [solar] heated floor in your new cellar, which was fascinating. I was so sick I don't remember what day or time, but discovering and watching it made me feel much better. take care, and keep making those shows! yer pal in Portland, John Leeke. --- Isn’t that nice that someone enjoys watching me puttering around the house, working on projects as Garner and Django play in the background. I’d like to hear from you, too. I’m the humble farmer at gmail dot com. I have been told by several friends that they prefer my radio program to my television program because they don’t have to look at me. Who says that to enjoy a music program you have to look at a television screen? Wrap a blanket around it.

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10. Here’s another gee-whiz fact. We read that a recent survey found that Americans now ranked conflict between rich and poor as stronger than timeworn clashes between immigrants and the native-born, blacks and whites, or young and old. Whatever do you suppose could have caused people to abandon their favorite time-tested conflicts and finally conclude that today it’s the super rich against small business owners and workers?

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11. Were you offended by that thoughtless comment in Newsweek? I’m talking about the one that said that in 1917 when American women donated their steel corsets to the war effort, the 28,000 tons of steel they saved were enough to build two battleships. Hard telling what it would take fast food America to win a war now.

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12. People in Knox County understand children. They are not intimidated when little visitors appear in their kitchens. When a certain two year old comes to call on a friend of mine in St. George, she simply takes a handful of raisins, scatters them on the floor and says, “There, that’ll keep him busy.”

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13. Do you think that some posted speed limits are unreasonable? Is the twenty five miles an hour you drive through downtown Camden on a hot afternoon in July reasonable for the strip in front of the old Thomaston high school at 2 o’clock in the morning? Interestingly enough, nobody complains about unreasonable speed limits --- they simply drive 10 or 20 miles an hour faster. No one is inconvenienced, no one is annoyed, no one complains and asks that it be changed. Of course, there is a chance that you can get arrested for doing 40 past the old Thomaston High School building at two in the morning. But not enough people get nailed to make it a community problem. I protest these speed limits that I believe are unreasonable and by so doing I have become one of the most dangerous drivers in Maine. I have the potential to cause more accidents than a high school student on prom night. When it says 25, I go 25. Can you imagine the chaos I cause with 10 or 20 cars behind me, bumper to bumper at 25 miles per hour? Can you imagine the hate that boils in their hearts? Some drivers get so annoyed that they pull out of line and roar past me, and perhaps even half a dozen cars behind me, getting back in line just in time to avoid hitting oncoming cars. Should I be arrested for my foolish behavior? The only other way to cause more accidents is to stop at stop signs. My neck is still bothering me from the last time I got hit from behind.

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