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Rants November 4, 2012

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1. When I was out to the Wisconsin Apple Grower’s meeting I heard some things that you wouldn’t hear in Maine. Two old men talking. Real old men. Older than me. One said, “How come our minds don’t get older like our bodies? How come 19 year old girls still look good to 80 year old men? Tell me why 80 year old women don’t look good?” The other one said, “They do at mealtime.”

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2. Addiction is a terrible thing. I have had no coffee for a week and I know this. Anyone who has to look at their email before their eyes are open in the morning also knows this. Even more insidious is Facebook, which I ignored until it completely overpowered me. Being an educator, one morning I posted a synopsis of An Enemy of The People on my Facebook page --- just in case a couple of my friends were unfamiliar with it. Reading things like An Enemy of the People is part of one’s education. Even if it doesn’t change the way one votes, it might activate some unused thought process that will enable one to finally understand the power of lots of money. And even better than the opportunity to pass along interesting things to one’s friends on Facebook, are the interesting messages that appear there from one’s friends. Wilder Oakes very astutely compares it with getting messages from a trance medium or an Ouija board.

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3. Rednecks hate trains. If they didn't, someone has spent a lot of media lobbying money for nothing. Did you read in the paper that Freeport and Brunswick are getting their “long-awaited” passenger rail service to Boston? I couldn’t believe they’d been waiting too long because if I can remember taking a train from Rockland to Freeport it couldn’t have been all that long ago. I know it was during the war because we went down to visit my father who was building wooden boats in the Freeport shipyard. Years after that, in 1954, I was working in Crie’s Hardware Store where I was introduced to the dry Maine story by Ernest Crie. After the morning lesson I’d walk down to 176 South Main Street where I’d visit and eat my sandwiches with Uncle Ed. Uncle Ed told me that years ago the Rockland train station was where people gathered to get their up to the minute news. As I recall, he said there was a chalkboard at the Rockland train station and when news would come in on the telegraph it would be written on the chalkboard. Now, although many might get the news with their cell phones, they miss the chance to exchange recipes and gossip with their neighbors. Can’t you remember getting on a train in Rockland and not setting foot on the ground until you were in Boston? We children would pass the long ride by trying to talk like our cousin in Medford. We’d pinch our noses shut with thumb and forefinger and say, “I wont uh heam seandwich.” So train rides were usually productive cultural events. My neighbor True Hall told me he also used to take the Rockland to Boston train during the war when gas was scarce. True said, “That train stopped in every town between Rockland and Portland. You never thought you were going to get there.” True’s mother had relatives in Weymouth and they’d go down on the train and visit for the weekend. Of course taking the train was a lot easier than driving down and then trying to navigate in Boston. True says, “My father went the wrong way in the Sumner Tunnel. Some fellow in an ice truck hollered, ‘Where you going?’ It was his brother-in-law. One time his brother-in-law was stopped by the police at the entrance to the Sumner Tunnel. They said there was a car burning up somewhere down there. He said, ‘look, I’ve got an ice truck. What’s going to catch afire in an ice truck?’ so they let him go and he went right through.” You live in Boston long enough and you learn how to talk your way out around things. Wouldn’t it be nice to once again take a train out of Rockland? Do you suppose Eisenhower really did put $400,000,000,000 in present day dollars into our interstate highway system? Should he have put some of that money into improving our rail service? Because now some folks are finally asking if it would be cheaper and easier to move some people and freight by rail than by trucks and cars over roads. Unfortunately, like everything else that costs money, this issue has been politicized. One party is all for rail service, and most working people in the other party, who would benefit the most by rail service, have been conditioned to be dead set again' it. Many of your neighbors don’t know that in 1949 General Motors and other companies were convicted of conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses. Do you remember when they bought up street cars all over the country and junked them? --- Much as years later GM junked its very popular electric car? It might be my imagination, but I seem to remember trolley car tracks among the cobblestones in Rockland. Uncle Ed told me… but I digress. Sixty and more years ago the plan was to make us dependent on our cars. Nothing easier with gas at 19 cents a gallon. But now we have been married to the automobile for so long that we are way behind our European neighbors when it comes to public transportation. And what kind of trains are they building now in China and Japan? Is it possible that a train in China averages over 200 miles per hour and that it makes a 600 mile trip in less than 3 hours? Rockland to Boston on a train in 45 minutes? Can you guess which powerful companies are opposed to this kind of public transportation here and why they want us to use our cars and trucks? Is it time to properly fund passenger rail service in the United States? The last time I spoke in Philadelphia I went every bit of that distance I could on the train because it was quicker and easier. You don’t even have to look at New York City.

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4. Here’s a letter I read on a newspaper blog. “My adult kids in their 20s moved out of Maine and have full fledged careers going on, they have never seen a day of unemployment. When they come back to Maine, they can only stomach the place for 3 hours, then they cant wait to get the h-- out .” On the other hand, many people who lost their homes to rising sea waters will rebuild on the same lot. Their insurance companies will howl with righteous justification because, as any fool knows, the sea waters they are a rising at least 8 inches every hundred years and there will be less and less time between the inevitable future inundations. But if you are attached to the piece of ground where you were born and brought up you can understand why people will continue to rebuild on a lot until they themselves are carried away by flood waters. I could never be happy living anywhere except where I do now. I live less than a mile from where my ggg grandfather is buried. He was wounded in the Battle of Harlem in 1776 which was the same week the British hanged Nathan Hale. And my ggggg grandfather lived five miles from here in 1734. My brother lives on the other side of the road from me in the same house our great great grandfather lived in over 210 years ago. Some people are very much attached to their farms and the towns they live in. Do you know what I’m talking about?

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5. Here’s a headline in a newspaper blog that says: “Website still ranks Maine among worst for making a living” The coast of Maine where I live resembles the west coast of Sweden. Trees and abandoned granite quarries. About the same climate. People vote in both places. Yet, in one of those places people have voted for a political and social system that has not only eliminated poverty but has given them one of the highest standards of living in the world. No rusted cars. No salt on the road to rust out cars. Excellent healthcare for everyone. Excellent retirement for everyone. No veterans sleeping on the streets. Excellent education for everyone. Excellent roads. Excellent jobs for everyone. No poor people. No fallen down barns or unpainted houses. In both countries there are wealthy people who do everything they can to make all the money come their way. The only difference between the two areas is that in the one infested by fallen down barns and low wages, a media owned by the richest people in the country has convinced uneducated working people and small business owners to vote against their own economic interests. Would making it economically possible for each child to complete graduate school without a crushing debt change the outcome of future elections? --- Would a young educated population vote for a government that serves them and not some billionaire in Vegas?

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6. One morning we turned on the news to discover that the ocean had wiped out a few low lying neighborhoods along the Atlantic coast. Even though we read that the sea level is predicted to rise even more over the next 100 years, we were told that boardwalks and houses will quickly be rebuilt in the same place. Should houses that are being built on land that will soon once again be inundated and washed away by sea water be required to pay a higher premium for their insurance than those of us who live on high ground? Or should our premiums be raised to help pay for homes built on sand by the shore? In some parts of the world people are already perching their houses on top of 10-foot steel poles. If people build houses on land that is about to be washed over by sea water, should they get aid from the government as well as our best wishes for their health and happiness? Or should they be encouraged to move to higher ground right now? Luckily we don’t have to vote on it. The rising sea water is eventually going to make that decision for them.

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7. Here’s a letter from radio friend Kip in Houlton: Thanks for your words, all true by gory. I’m a surveyor. I called one of my suppliers recently. The delighted girl that answered asked me where I was calling from. Maine I said. She said wonderful! now what state was Maine in? No wonder we have low self esteem. I talked to a guy in Texas today. Of course he asked about the Frankenstorm. I had to explain nothing ever lives up to the hype around here. I like Texas food and Texas music. Their politicians are another story. Remember when you were a kid and all the lists of states that accompanied various order blanks or directories never seemed to have Maine on them? How did it make you feel. Now everyone wants to be a native. Sorry pal. Your reference to temporary repairs is so true. I went shopping for a blue tarp to put on my green house frame for the winter. A lady working at Mardens recommended the green tarps. She said the green tarps last longer. They got one to cover the hole in the side of their trailer where they were gonna put a sliding glass door and it lasted five years! I get what your sayin about how to make your wife suddenly appear. Reminds me of a surveyor joke. If you get lost in the woods pound in a grade stake, a dump truck will show up immediately to run over it. I think your rants are better than ever. I enjoy them. I think there’s something extra in there for Mainers. Best of health to you old friend. Your friend Kip in Houlton

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8. We read that Chicago teachers went on strike, protesting the evaluation of teachers and schools on the basis of student test scores. We are immediately reminded that some of the greatest teachers who ever lived were poisoned or crucified or arrested or shot by people who didn’t like what they had to say. Even Gregor Mendel failed his qualifying state examination for teacher certification and Bill Gates is a college dropout. We also know that many excellent teachers have the misfortune to work under administrators who prove that they know nothing about education by sitting in an office and covering their walls with charts and graphs. The program proposed by the administration in Chicago --- which mirrors many across the country --- is scary and is understandably eyed with suspicion by many teachers who have seen 25 years of students come and go and then have observed how former students performed as adults in the community. This present fetish with testing, which is no more than a scam, sounds like a repeat of GWB's infamous "Houston Miracle" that was exposed by Dan Rather on national television. You will recall that teaching for the test was nothing more than a strong incentive for the school administration to fudge the numbers. Teaching for a test eliminates the need for a “teacher.” Why have colleges teaching people how to be teachers if thought, the evaluation of concepts, and creativity no longer have a place in the classroom? Teaching for a standardized test is not the path to an enlightened society. It does ensure that certain programs and concepts will be embraced in a totalitarian state.

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9. How high would the price of gas have to be before you’d stop driving your car and walk, take a bus or ride a bike? I don’t know. But I do know that you and I are hooked. We have the automobile habit. Of course, someday we will all have electric cars that run on batteries that are charged by the sun. The batteries will be improved so you’ll get more than 100 miles between charges. You have probably read that Saudi Arabia plans to abandon fuel oil and be completely shifted over to solar power within the lifetime of the present ruler. He is 67. The Saudi’s plan to use solar energy themselves and sell every bit of oil they have left at the highest price they can get to the last sucker still addicted to gasoline engines and oil fired boilers. Guess who that will be? When the world finally runs out of oil it will be even more painful than the transition from the horse and buggy to the automobile. All of the people who produce and service oil fueled engines will be in the same position as the folks who once made buggy whips and wooden wagon wheels.

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10. A woman I met down in Portland airport told me that her father traveled a lot. The night before he’d go anywhere he’d put out a pile of the clothes he figured he’d need to take with him. In another pile he put all the money he figured he’d need to take. The next morning he’d take half the clothes in the pile and twice the amount of money in the other pile, and it always came out just right.

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11. While I was in tbe Atlanta airport, I chanced to see on the front page of a NY Times, that swabbing out someone’s mouth to get a DNA sample has been ruled unusual search and seizure. Ordinarily I’d say that they could swab out my mouth any time they want, because I don’t mind if they poke around in my mouth. But I’m going to oppose this mouth searching business, because --- if they find they can legally poke around in your mouth, and they don’t find anything, it don’t take much imagination to figure out where they’ll be looking next.

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