May 13, 2012

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1. When I heard Marsha coming down the stairs on her stair chair I tried to finish up what I was doing so I could get out of the house. Here’s the stair chair coming down the stairs, hum, hum, hum and I’m trying to finish up whatever it was I was doing so I could get outside and put out rhubarb on the chrome plated farm stand or do something else. --- Because I knew that every time my wife has gone over 4 minutes without seeing me the next time she sees me she will be barking out some command. And I couldn’t help but wonder if that is typical in your marriage. When you hear your wife coming down the stairs on her stair chair hum, hum, hum do you get out of the house as quickly as you can, just because you know that the minute she walks into the room she’ll have something for you to do that you have to do before you do whatever it is that you want to do? Just asking.

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2. I don't know who would ever read a book called The Naked Sun or The Caves of Steel but I'm working my way through Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. I see I have 12 of the 14 books which I've read several times but never in order. He is a fantastic social commentator. On one planet the dirty words are "love" "children" "affection” and people live alone and scream or pass out if they have to look at each other. The man who visits that planet lives in NYC and has never seen the sky so he almost passes out from fear when he has to step outside into the naked sun. Also, the people on this planet don't feel they need to have clothes on when chatting by way of a TV screen with their friends, because that is "different" from actually being there in person. How silly are our little customs and habits and the taboos in our languages. Isaac Asimov is a great social commentator. You can say most anything you want if you employ satire. --- If you don't mind being hung by a mob who consider you a danger to society.

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3. On the night of the annual Schooner Fare, Denny Breau concert in Lewiston a young man came up to me at intermission and told me how his army buddy who was stationed in Afghanistan used to listen to my show that was streamed live. He got all his buddies in Afghanistan to listen. Isn't that great? All those boys missing home wanting to hear a show made by a real person talking and acting like a real live person. Made me feel good to hear that my program was the one thing that these lonely, homesick boys in a far-away country had to look forward to. It’s hearing things like that that keep me going.

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4. I shower in the cellar. Anyone who looks at the picture on my Facebook page knows that I sleep in four shirts and sweaters. One morning just after I took my t shirt and my drawers and my socks out of the bureau and headed for the cellar, Marsha asked me to carry down the laundry. As I moved toward the cellar door I looked at my hand and noticed that I must have put my t shirt down somewhere so I walked back into the back Bed & Breakfast Executive Suite room where we are staying this month, and said, "I can't find my t shirt.” And Marsha said, "It's on top of your head." She says it's sad. I told her that one has to laugh at these things.

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5. If you can generate fear you can generate business. Fear is good for business. How does one go about generating fear in a population? A good way to start would be to invade or flaunt some military muscle in or next to any country. Or get serious and bomb the place. Send troops in there to kill the family and girlfriend of some 19-year-old boy. Kill his mother, his father, his father’s mother, his two sisters and his two brothers. By doing this you have motivated him to be your enemy and you have created a walking and thinking being who will get back at you any way that he can. When he does shoot back at the invaders, you have created a terrorist. This is a fairly simple economic concept that can be employed by any corporate state interested in wringing more dollars out of taxpayers. If you run short of terrorists, it’s easy enough to get in there and bomb or shoot up more families and create a few more. Start a media campaign that warns people that the terrorists are very likely to start blowing up things in your own country if precautions are not taken. Two or three bad guys could even be encouraged and permitted to sneak in so you could then point a finger and say, “See. What did I tell ya?” Americans are easily manipulated. Ask yourself if you are more likely to get blown up by a terrorist in your courthouse or struck on the highway by a kid using his cell phone. Anyway, it is this ability of the business community to generate fear that explains why your tax dollars are now being lapped up by a security company that has posted guards to prevent terrorists from entering your County Courthouse.

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6. There are several ways to boast about your wealth. The most common way to tell everyone that you have more money than you know how to spend is to complain about taxes. The other most popular way is to say that you hate to wear a necktie. Telling people that you don’t have a television set is also a sure way to let people know that you come from a long line of old, old money.

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7. Professor William from up Searsmont way sent me something that makes me proud to be an American. He says, “who cares if the countries that have single-payer health care have much longer life expectancies, and more small businesses per capita than we do? After all, we have John Wayne's grave, and an national myth of self-sufficiency.”

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8. You might have noticed that the format of the weather map you look at several times a day on the Internet has changed again. You just get used to looking at one weather map and then they change it. Older people don’t like change. I would suspect that kids don’t mind it as much. Of course it has nothing to do with what anyone likes, be they young or old. The only reason they change the weather page is so it can contain more advertising.

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9. The bad news is that even if 95 percent of what a high school drop-out has heard on Fox "News" is removed from his brain, he can still vote.

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10. Fifty or so years ago, the educational fad was to consolidate Maine schools into districts called SADs. Now people will admit to being Nazis before they’ll confess that they voted to enter a school district. This is because by their very nature, school districts encourage spending contests between themselves and even between the small towns within districts. How did such foolishness ever gain a toehold in Maine? Most anyone can convince your average citizen that bigger is better. And the basic premise of any con game is something for nothing. Fifty years ago the taxpayers were convinced that te state was going to pay. Anyone who could expect great financial reward by sending in money to a chain letter could also see the advantages in bussing kids thirty or forty miles every day to a bigger school. In each case, the sucker is convinced that someone else will pay. It is absolutely impossible to fleece people unless they expect to get something for nothing. Here’s the way the SAD con works. First, you get the state involved. That cuts off the local control. Then the state puts all your tax dollars into a big barrel and the towns are left to scramble to see who can spend it first. But now, much to the surprise of the folks who first voted for this ponzi scheme, the barrel has gone dry. It was an ingenious system. It made millions for contractors. People in one town, who would never vote to replace their good school buildings or give up the local control of the educational system that they had, now feel that they’d better spend every cent in the barrel before their sticky-fingered neighbors get it. The construction industry and every conceivable type of educational paper shuffler milk it for all it’s worth. They want out. SADs also introduced the big henhouse system of education. That is, when you’re raising chickens for market you want them to be as plump and as near alike as possible. The cheapest way to do that is to build big henhouses which are efficient to run. Big henhouses make it easier on the mother hens, too. They can hatch their chicks, put them in the farmer’s hands and never have to bother with them again.

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11. At a meeting in New York City I once heard Mort Walker say that he couldn’t go to a funeral without getting three Beetle Bailey panels out of it, and I can identify. Almost everything I see or hear is conducive to thought. One morning there was a young boy with his parents and sister on TV. They were making a bid deal of this kid because his family had lost 80 collective pounds or so after the kid got them to stop eating the things that made them fat. And it occurred to me that obesity must be a boon for those who can come up with a pill that will enable people to eat anything that they want without getting fat. And I can easily understand why anyone with the financial resources would rather pay $5 a week for those pills rather than adopt this no-fun diet this kid was recommending that is conducive to one’s health and well being. My friend owns an ice cream store and he kept my freezer packed with things that I dearly love to eat. But I was porking up so I couldn’t bend over to tie my shoes and I figured, “What a fool you are. Packing on pounds just because you like to eat ice cream and other good things that make life worth living. Enough of this.” I quit sweets cold turkey. But--- now I’d have to ask myself if it would be worth $250 a year --- more than half a month’s income from Social Security --- to buy some kind of pill that would enable me to eat a huge butterscotch sundae every day for the rest of my life. Remember that the ice cream is free. And I have to admit that it would be financially prohibitive. I still couldn’t swing it.

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12. Have you ever lost your keys in the sand at the beach, had your credit cards stolen from your gym locker, or left your wallet at the tennis court? If these unfortunate situations sound familiar, then perhaps you ought to give up sports.

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