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Rants October 7, 2012

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1. Did you know it is illegal to place manure on Maine fields between December 1 and March 15? Doesn’t this pretty well explain why, when you drive past a farm around Christmas time, the cows are always wearing such a pained expression?

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2. Here’s a Platonic Dialogue I wrote years ago. If you think it warrants repeating, please let me know. Xeroxes, my friend. Forgive me for awakening you this early in the day, but I was unable to listen to Gramp Wiley on my CB last night. Lawrence Welk was performing Simonides’ Ram and some other good old songs with the Boston Pops and I chose to listen to that instead. This morning, however, I awoke before dawn suspecting that my choice had been a foolish one. So now I come to you with the first carpool, knowing that you are one of the many sandbaggers who listen to the wisest of all men on channel 20 every night. If you have no present engagement, I would be grateful if you would now sit here by me and relate what he said and which sandbaggers heard his words. Very well, Glaukomus Simian. But before I endeavor to give you his exact words, I will mention those sandbaggers who were attendant upon them. Listening were Paunchamedes, the hedonist; Antihistamines, the physician; Producus Hymen, the marriage counselor; Otippus, the waiter; Peripatetikos, the marathon jogger; Gluteus Medius, the courtesan; and Procrastines, the student. When Gramp Wiley turned on his CB at 8 p. m., the lean Paripatetikos was discussing the merits of exercise with Paunchamedes who, as you know, is quite fat. Gramp sandbagged long enough to hear Prodicus, Gluteus, Otippus and Antihistamines support Peripatetikos’ arguments in favor of strenuous exercise. Procrastines, who had sided with the portly Paunchamedes, was practically convinced to take up jogging when Gramp Wiley broke in. This is what was said: Peripatetikos, this is Gramp Wiley. Why do you run 10 miles every day? Why I run to build my body. I want it to be stronger. And to build your body you have to strain it? Certainly. And the more you strain it, the stronger you get? Of course, if the previous argument holds. Then, Peripatetikos, the man who runs and strains for two hours a day is twice as strong as the man who runs for only one hour a day. Quite true. Then Gramp proceeded to say: Can we equate the strength of the body with physical fitness? Yes. Suppose, however, a busy person cannot spare two hours every day for running. If he were to run with enough weights strapped to his body is it possible that he could get two hours worth of strain in one hour? Indeed, it is possible. And because it is this strain that builds strength which we have agreed is physical fitness, if we harness this person with enough extra weight, he could simply walk for 15 minutes and still be as physically fit as a person who runs for two hours every day. By decreasing distance and speed and adding weight, we get the same results. I agree with you Gramp, said Peripatetikos. What of our friend, Paunchamedes, who carries twice your weight at every step he takes? Does not his huge protruding gut resemble a hundred pound sandbag? Clearly. Does he not pant and gasp whenever he moves his corpulent frame from one dinner table to another? Does he not groan and wheeze halfway up each flight of stairs? Yes, by the gods, he does. Every small movement strains him? True. And we have agreed that it is this strain that builds strength which is physical fitness? Exactly. Then it follows that fat Paunchamedes, who cannot even walk without great strain, is healthier than any of us. Since moving his belt out past the 32-inch notch, he’s been in a constant physical fitness program. And that, Glaukomus Simian, is the purpose to which Gramp Wiley spoke on the CB last night. Ah, Xeroxes, Gramp’s purpose is even clearer to me. Perhaps you know the wisest of all men put on quite a bit of weight this winter. At last week’s symposium it was whispered that his wife wishes him to diet.

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3. Would you like to spend your life in jail for something you didn’t do? How many hundreds of people do you suppose are in jail today for simply being found drunk or stoned at a crime scene? Wouldn’t it be even more annoying to know that the authorities didn’t even check out your neighbor who already has a juicy rap sheet and who actually committed the crime? Is there anything a state attorney general hates to do more than release an innocent man from prison by giving him a new trial? --- Because if that man then even looks at someone cross eyed it will botch the AG’s chance at ever becoming governor. And doesn’t a new verdict of innocent put egg on the faces of the folks who rigged a trial to put him in jail to begin with? Is it better to have an innocent prisoner rot in jail at taxpayer expense and be forgotten than to blab about that mistakes were made? How many innocent people do you suppose are in jail today because they were in the wrong place at the right time? Would a study show that at the time most of them were either drunk or on drugs? Why drink or do drugs when some of us can already find ourselves in enough messes living our entire lives stone cold sober?

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4. The media has a propensity to film trash and garbage in trailers and show it on the evening news as an example of poverty. But you put my wife Marsha in with all that garbage and the place would be spotless before she’d go to sleep that night. Put the clutterers in a spotless mansion, and within a few days it would be a mess. My radio friend Beth says we could solve this clutter problem if every other week the clutterers would change houses with the cleaners. Would you buy into the program to help out?

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5. As everyone knows, I live in poverty by choice. It was 10 or so years ago that I borrowed around $100,000 to buy a "development" contiguous to my property to shut it down as a public service to the future residents of my town. If it were not for that onerous debt, which I will not be able to pay off in my lifetime, we would be able to winter in Italy. But you know, outside of making a larger contribution to Maine Family Planning, that's about the only thing that would change in our lifestyle because we live a very simply. The land is to be placed in conservation so the grandchildren and great grandchildren of my neighbors will be able to see what woods and trees look like. One hundred years from now they'll still be able to wander about in a forest primeval and accumulate ticks, as I did yesterday. For yesterday my friends who run the conservation association walked some of the property lines with me and photographed the pins. However, there was one pin we couldn't find. It is marked on the map. I remember well when the surveyor put the pin in the ground because there was a small hardwood tree right exactly where that pin was supposed to go. So at xx dollars an hour, instead of driving a pin in the ground and moving quickly on, the surveyor sawed off the tree with a handsaw and drilled a hole in the hardwood stump big enough to accommodate the pin. And because I was standing there watching the clock throughout the entire painful operation, I remember it well. So I was more than a bit surprised yesterday when we wandered about for an hour without finding that pin. But this morning when I woke up I suddenly realized why we could not find the pin. We were looking in the wrong place. + 6. Is petty crime more prevalent in a free society? Have you ever read that petty crime is not tolerated in a totalitarian society? There, those in charge of law enforcement make an arbitrary decision and you are simply shot on the spot. If you’d like to rid your neighborhood of petty crime you might take a good look at our two presidential candidates and vote for the one you think leans the most to the right.

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7. Because, in spite of all my good intentions, I am not going to live forever I went in to see my friend, Lawyer Crandall, about updating my will. Crandall said I had to get an executor I could trust with money. And I said, “When it comes to money you can’t trust anybody.” And Lawyer Crandall said, “It’s a good thing that’s true or I’d be out of business.”

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8. We read somewhere that the people over Waldoboro way have voted against joining a larger school district. Why would they do that? Can it be that bigger districts and bigger schools mean less and less local control over what is being taught and spent --- and higher and higher property taxes in Waldoboro to pay for it?

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9. Radio friend Erik down in Woolwich says, “Recently I drove up to Litchfield on a beautiful afternoon to play at a course called "The Meadows." It's the kind of course where men wear faded blue jeans as opposed to slacks. I was playing alone, and waiting to tee off. There was a slow group of golfers ahead of me in the fairway. Another fellow was nearby, on the practice green. "You're gonna be waiting a while," he said. "Them guys in front of you are practically deaf and blind. They'll never let you play through." "Well, that's all right," I told him. "It’s a beautiful day, and I'm not a very good golfer anyway." He … scratched his chin… and replied. "If you were good, you wouldn't be here."

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10. My friend Mike sends an email that says: With the presidential bearing down us like an overloaded pulp truck with bad brakes (and with likely similar results), I have to admit to once again puzzling over how to vote. To be a responsible citizen I feel obliged to cast my ballot for the best candidate for the job. Unfortunately, that individual has again decided not to run, leaving me to try to discern which of the available choices is the "least worst", if you'll pardon me using that terminology. Given the level of discourse that seems sufficient to arrest the attention of the majority of voters, I feel safe in predicting that the American public will once again get the president it deserves - not the one it needs.” I might add to Mike’s letter that too often voters don’t dare vote for the best candidate in any election and must vote for the second best candidate. If they don’t, they are helping to put the worst candidate into office.

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11. Have you seen the man on TV who does drugs because he is allergic to some woman’s cat? My friend --- wouldn’t any rational person who didn’t own stock in the drug company get rid of the cat? Over 20 years ago my wife Marsha got rid of her beloved cat to alleviate my suffering and thoughtfully replaced it with a cardboard cat we could all love. By the way, I’m happy to be the second most important person in our home. I’m number two. But if she wouldn’t marry you unless she could keep her worthless cat, what number does that make you?

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12. You have read that prisoners are used to make phone calls for telemarketing companies. One employer said, “Why not, I need someone who is going to be there every day.” And of course prisoners work cheap. Some people think that telemarketers should be in jail anyway. Some say that prisoners are taking away jobs that could help some unemployed Maine person to get off food stamps. Please note, however, that our incarcerated neighbors are not doing jobs that would eliminate the profit some company makes by feeding them. The last I heard Maine prisoners are no longer raising their own beef, potatoes, and eggs as they were on the Warren farm --- back before corporate America discovered there was money to be made by shutting down the prison farm and privatizing the delivery of nutrients to inmates. In response to this, someone wrote, “a friend of mine who was in prison 2 summers ago for driving infractions worked on a farm planting potatoes outside of Augusta. He ended up getting a shorter sentence because he grew up on a dairy farm & knew about planting & farming & helped run the crew. Then, they turned around & asked if he could stay all summer -- as a paid employee. He preferred to go home."

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13. And it came to pass that I was out on Monhegan and went into the little store to get a subway type sandwich. When the very nice girl from somewhere in eastern Europe took my order she said, “Large or Small?” And I held my hands out in front of me and indicated the size with my hands and said, “About that big.” And she said, “I don’t understand inches.” I said, “I’m showing you centimeters.”

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