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1. May I start out this show with a bit of humble wisdom? Never ask a professional photographer to take your portrait --- after eating corn on the cob.

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2. There are crafty people in Maine. Jim down in Cushing can make you a birdhouse that looks just like your own house. Sherry can make picture frames out of driftwood. But Donna can make pictures out of driftwood she picked up on an island called Matinicus. I saw one of these little pictures made of driftwood, it was made perfect to scale and it was beautiful. You could see the dock, all painted in meticulous detail, the little houses, the trees, the dock, the boats. It was so realistic that when you got right up close to it you really expected to see someone stealing the battery out of his cousin's truck.

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3. While speaking out in the great southwestern part of the United States ---- ok, while speaking in New Hampshire I met some very interesting people. Sitting next to me at the banquet table was a woman who was some kind of psychologist or social worker or perhaps both. And because I was 30 or so years older than she was, she used some words that I didn't understand. Developmental disabilities was one of them. But saying that I have a developmental disability doesn't make me feel better about the fact that I do some incredibly stupid things. "Why," I asked my young friend, "do you now say that some people have a developmental disability instead of calling these people retarded?" She said something to the effect that it's bad to put people in pigeon hole categories and that people feel better about themselves if you saddle them with some monstrous new euphemism. But after ruminating on that for a long time I’m suspecting that people who invent these clumsy circumlocutions are not trying to make handicapped people feel better. By employing these new terms they feel better about themselves. Only one thing hasn’t changed: handicapped people should be expected to do the same work for less money. Ever since language developed, people have felt the need to tax their circumlocutive prowess with new words. Abraham Lincoln once asked how many legs a sheep would have if you called a tail a leg. Someone said, "Five." Lincoln said, "Four, for calling a tail a leg doesn't make it so."

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4. Speaking of circumlocutive prowess, and who isn’t these days, I Googled circumlocutive prowess to make sure I’d spelled it correctly . Google brought up five examples of circumlocutive prowess. Four of them were attributed to me.

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5. One of my favorite television shows is --- well, it’s a type of television show. I like television shows where they sell something, be it how to get rich books or religion. Because if you write down what they are saying and read it later, very often you will see that they really aren’t saying anything and that they are obviously counting on the sincerity of their delivery to make the sale. This morning a man was selling a book to four young women, one of whom was oozing out of a dress that immediately commanded my attention. What I heard of his patter went something like this: “The government is giving away billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars. Are you getting any of it? No? Well, you have to ask for it. If you don’t ask you are not going to get it. This book tells you what kinds of grants are available that you can ask for. Did you know that you can get $30,000 that you don’t have to pay back to study abroad?” And that’s when I started to laugh because some of your best friends don’t know that college tuition is next to nothing in many progressive countries. It is a great system because educated people earn more money and therefore pay more taxes. It’s a win-win system for everyone. Tell them to check it out. Google “Tuition Free Universities in Europe” and read about it. Why graduate from Gorham State Teachers College owing the banks $40,000 for four years of tuition, when you can emerge, debt free, with an education in Europe? People who got their entire formal educations in Europe include Voltaire, Leonardo Da Vinci, my father, and perhaps your grandparents.

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6. While looking up something else I chanced to read that a man in Saudi Arabia was beheaded and crucified for murdering a young boy and the boy’s father. You can believe that no one would be beheaded in a civilized country. In a civilized country even criminals guilty of the smallest crime are kept in jail as long as possible. Especially in a civilized country where prisons are run for profit.

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7. We read that a man borrowed some money from his club and used it to gamble in a Maine casino. Well, doesn’t that make sense? Isn't it common knowledge that in one afternoon you can double your money in a Maine casino? There is a class of people who would consider betting "borrowed" money in a Maine casino a very sound investment. Being able to double your money in one afternoon in a Maine casino must be the only reason we voted to let them in because on the negative side everyone knows that a casino is a great tax burden to any town where they set up shop. And nothing raises property taxes as it sucks money out of an area like a casino. If you don't believe this, talk with anyone who has lived next door to and worked in the famous Foxwoods casino for a few years. I have.

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8. Here’s a woman who left her diamond ring in a tanning booth and never saw it again. Someone observed that "She'll have a much more serious problem on her hands if she continues tanning at those salons. Indoor tanning is linked to skin cancer in a big way." This is worth repeating --- not that anyone will listen. A good friend of mine who was a lifeguard on the Jersey shore had most of his nose cut off because in his younger days he got too much sun. One of the biggest causes of skin cancer might well be the thoughtless folks who compliment their friends on their "healthy looking tan." About the only part of my body I've exposed to the sun for over 50 years are my hands, my ears and my nose. And a couple of years ago the end of my nose was removed by a surgeon because for many years it got too much sun. Kids will tell you that having a sick part of your nose removed only happens to old people. They don't intend to get old.

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9. I just got to thinking which usually is not good. I just got to thinking that in 1776 a large percentage of the people in this country were self-sufficient farmers who lived off the land and kept two oxen, a cow, a pig, and some chickens. Self-Reliance used to mean living like back-to-the-land organic farmers do today, not buying up companies (like the protagonist in Pretty Woman), breaking them up and putting people out of work to make money at the expense of others. When people say they believe in a strict adherence to and interpretation of our great Constitution, how much do you suppose they know about the people for whom that Constitution was written? Do you think that they realize that to live that way today most of us would be farmers living off the land, scratching in the dirt for a living and those who were rich and educated would own slaves?

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10. The email said: How CIA spies master 7 languages. Upon opening it I learned it was an ad for the Pimsleur Approach. The ad says it is quick, fun and easy. Please notice that nothing is ever said in these ads about the correlation of intelligence and the amount of time required to learn something. If you have ever studied languages, or anything else, haven’t you ever thought to yourself how nice it would be if your mind was like a computer? You know, so that for fifty bucks you could go out and buy another 500 gig of up front IQ?

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11. You have heard many sparkling wits say that growing old beats the alternative. Please notice, if you will, that these perceptive philosophers are very young and that when they acquire the aches and pains that complement three score and ten, if they don’t change their tune, they will very likely be singing it in a minor key. Yes, you knew I was going to give you an example. The east wall rotted out of my three-walled tractor shed and the building collapsed. With the help of my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, I was able to restore it to better-than-new, replete with Typar, in three days. But there is a price to pay for climbing up and down a ladder, dragging 12-foot boards out of storage and nailing them in place. Yes, at the end of the third day I dropped into bed and you can’t believe the numbing piercing pain that I experienced between my shoulder blades. I was lying on my glasses.

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