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Rants June 17, 2012

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1. One day The Almost Perfect Woman and I went down to Boston to watch Alison, her oldest, run the Boston Marathon. We left a day early so as to be sure to get a parking place. But Alison didn't know we were coming a day early, so she wasn't at the Boston apartment where we stay. We sat in the truck for 6 or so hours and finally drove 40 miles until we found a motel. The man behind the desk said, "Smoking or no smoking?" And here I should mention if you've never been in a smoking room, you should know that there is a difference. I said, "No smoking." He said, "We have only one room left, it is a smoking room, and because of the Boston Marathon it is probably the only available room left in Massachusetts." So we took it. Every dark and smoky cloud has a silver lining, and this room was no exception, because the next morning when we woke up, my wife rolled over on her pillow, smiled in my face and, for the first time since we got married many years ago, said, "Your breath is the sweetest smelling thing in this room."

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2. Oh, about that Marathon. Nothing happens for the first couple of hours, but then it gets quite exciting when the first runner comes in. He's wearing white pants and he's got the longest, skinniest arms and legs you've ever seen. People scream and holler and jump up and down. And then you wait two more hours. And at last here comes Alison and you jump up and down and scream, "Alison, Alison," and other people start screaming, "Alison, Alison," and she does that Boston Marathon in four hours. But the best part is the next day when you get back to Maine where you can brag to all your friends, that your stepdaughter can run twice as long as that skinny guy with the white pants.

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3. When I went into the Maine State Automobile Registration office to get a paper for a friend, I was surprised by the large crowd of people waiting there. There was a sign that said, "Take a number." Then you wait for them to get around to you. This is a result of downsizing. You've heard about downsizing. Downsizing means getting rid of useless bureaucrats to save the taxpayers money. Most people feel good when they hear about it. But now we are downsized to the extent that when you call a government office to try to find out about something, you get an answering machine which refers you to yet another answering machine. So it is now virtually impossible to find out about anything, and when we go in to register a car we take a number and wait. Perhaps you're not old enough to remember when it was fashionable to laugh at the long waiting lines they had in Russia. We always saw pictures of the people waiting in long lines, and underneath it would say, "This is what it's like to live under Communism." The next time you have to stand and wait, remember that it is downsizing that has advanced our country to the kind of lines that the Russians were complaining about 40 years ago.

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4. I’m 76 years old and ?62.4 % of my monthly social security check goes to pay for our monthly supplemental health insurance. That’s supplemental insurance. We have to have supplemental insurance because although the Medicare program for old people might keep you from losing your house, it doesn’t cover everything. A two day stay in the hospital now costs more than our two combined social security checks for a year. In spite of this, this week we have to go one-on-one with the insurance companies to beg them to pay two medical bills that they don't want to pay. We call them up and whine until they discover a profit-generating “computer” or “billing” error. It is a nuisance and a bother and you can believe that if you’re not already overdrawn the easy way out is to simply write them a check. Don’t be ashamed to admit you’ve done so. You can be sure that many people do. They count on this. Did you know that if you eat the pill that medics put in your hand in the emergency room when you're brought to the hospital in an ambulance, the Republicans have cut the expense of administering that pill out of your insurance policy? I was billed $124. or so for mine. Of course you learn this 7 months later because that’s how long it takes the papers to work their way through our antiquated, gutted “health care” insurance system. My left heel is so sore I can barely walk on it when I get up in the morning. And now the insurance companies tell me that they are not going to cover my visit to the podiatrist. The elderly spend too much time fighting with insurance people --- begging them to pay legitimate medical claims for necessary and ever-increasing services. Yes. They walk it to old folks when they can for therein lies extra profit. We are easy marks because so many of us are either too tired or indifferent or uninformed to do anything about it. Don't talk to me about the present retirement crisis. Talk to your children and grandchildren. Although the kids don’t want to hear about your aches and pains, they might raise an eyebrow should you mention that your lack of adequate medical coverage is quickly gobbling up their pitiful inheritance. Tell them why this is happening. Young people who are presently voting against their own economic interests will have a rude awakening in 30 or 40 years when their turn comes to be shafted by the corporate America that they are enabling by their votes today.

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5. Because I’m sometimes allergic to the smell of food in my mouth, unless I brush and waterpick and scrape my tongue immediately after eating, I’m likely to cough, cough, cough. One noon I was finishing up my postprandial routine before the mirror when I noticed that I was scraping green slime off my tongue. And the thought immediately flashed through my mind, “Well Robert, just remember that a bit of green in your saliva is not the worst part of eating a pound of fresh asparagus.”

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6. One morning I got dressed, went outside, fed the bee friends some sugar water and put 8 bunches of rhubarb on the chrome farmstand. Nice sunny day but blowing hard out of the NNE. And while I was picking the rhubarb with that coastal Maine breeze whipping around my ears, I said to myself, "Robert, it's June 14th in Maine, old people all over the United States are dying from the oppressive heat, summer will be just about over in 60 days, and you are still wearing your snowmobile suit."

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7. The good news is that Dave Smith was here from the state bee inspection people one morning and he looked at the three hives of bees I caught two weeks before. There is a queen in one of them. We combined two of the hives and I'm going to bring them 4 miles up the road from where I caught them to my back yard. I'm going to then put the super of queenless bees I have here on top of that, with a sheet of newspaper between them --- by the time they’ve chewed their way through they’ve acclimated themselves to each other. I'm very excited about having bee friends here on the farm again. Bees are too expensive to buy when you have to figure that you might lose them over the winter. I heard that many hives of Maine bees starved to death in May and June because it was so wet and cold. I learned a better way to feed bees today. Ask me to tell you about it.

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8. I recently learned how to feed bees. You take off the metal cover. I drilled a round hole about 1 1/2 inches across in a piece of plywood and put it over the inner cover. I put an empty shallow honey super on top of it to press the plywood down evenly on the cover and put a piece of railroad track on top of that. The bottle of 50% sugar 50% water goes over the hole. There are small holes punched in the cover of the bottle so a small amount of sugared water can seep out, providing nutrients for the bee friends. I put the plywood down in case it rains, the rain won't ruin the inner cover by making it warp or swell. I'll go down after dark when the bees have gone to bed and I'll wrap a strap around their hive so the whole thing won't fall apart when I move it. I'll put it on the truck and haul it up to beside the henhouse where the bee friends will set up shop. If you ever haul a hive of bees on a truck, be sure to shut the tailgate before you drive home. I’ve heard people say that there is nothing more bothersome than driving down a Maine highway and dropping a box filled with 60,000 bees.

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9. You heard about the man in the county jail who gained 80 pounds since Christmas time. The newspaper and television people have had quite a time with it. But what you probably haven't heard, is that the warden of that jail has been offered a job in Washington DC as Executive Director of the National Association of Pork Producers.

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10. And it came to pass that I got a card in the mail, thanking me for my pledge to the University's Annual Fund. Because I could not recall making any such pledge, I called them. The woman in charge did not sound surprised. Instead, she asked me the name of the student caller who had signed and mailed me the pledge card. When I told her, she said that he was one of their third-world exchange students, and that mine was the second call she'd had on him. She explained that to get these students to make calls, the University offers them small premiums, a pizza, or something like that, if they can get a certain amount of pledges. I was not home when he called, so he obviously filled in an amount that would earn him a slice of pizza. Please notice that I have not mentioned the student's name, his home, or his university. Had I done so he would have an assured future with some big oil company making television commercials.

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11. Did you read that in just one year 22 percent of former students defaulted on their government student loans? Looks like some young people have promising futures as Wall Street bankers.

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