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`Rants November 18, 2012

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1. Your buddy humble here. You know me. I am not an alarmist. But I want to read for you one of the most terrifying things I've ever read on my Facebook page. Tinuviel says: "i found ibuprophen horrible in its side effects. i had nearly every side effect except death (dizzy, nausea, hallucinations, inability to stand, difficulty breathing)" Wow. If word of this gets out they'll be selling it in $15 bags in every high school in Maine.

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2. You will remember that when the Count of Monte Cristo went into the Roman catacombs to rescue Albert, Luigi Vampa was sitting there reading Plutarch’s Lives. You might agree with me and Luigi Vampa that it is difficult to open Plutarch without reading something of interest. I see that I bought the book 52 years ago in 1960. 52 years before 1960 would have been 1908. There was as much time between 1908 and 1960 as there was between 1960 and now. Hard to come to grips with that. I was I was 24 when I bought it and 1908 minus 24 would be 1884. Anyone who was the age I am now when I bought my copy of Plutarch would have been born in 1884. I don’t know what this proves but it is frightening to think about.

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3. I enjoy going to concerts because it is an opportunity to meet you. If you were at the Lenny Breau Scholarship concert in Lewiston on November 18th you might have heard me voice the only complaint I have about my guitar-owning friends who play the blues and --- what is it called? --- country and western music? They might have mastered their instruments and be able to play just as well as their mentors did two generations ago when I occasionally ventured into smoky dungeons on Saturday nights to seek out companionship. But they have not captured the genre --- the persona --- of their early heroes. They lack this persona --- they don’t know how to come across like the good old-time country and western guitar player and singer. Tell me if I’m not right. Think back 50 years ago and walk into that smoke filled room with me. Back in those days didn’t the tall man in the black cowboy hat and boots idle up to the mike, give the audience an appraising look and say, “Friends, I have not had a drink for three years, six months, four days, 47 minutes and 15 seconds. To be honest with you I don’t even think about needing a drink any more.”

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4. If you’ve been paying attention you know I started to tell you about Plutarch’s Lives. Good reading. Fun reading. Like Boswell’s Johnson you can open Plutarch to any page and read something that tells you that nowadays people think just like they did 2,000 years ago. Today I was reading about Crassus. Plutarch says his only fault was avarice and becoming too familiar with one of the vestal virgins. Of course, it made Crassus a very rich man. The avarice, not the vestal virgin. Whenever a house caught afire, he’d rush over there and buy all the houses around it. Those houses were going to burn down too, so the owners would take whatever they could get for them. As soon as Crassus owned them, he’d have 500 or so of his slaves who were standing by with a bucket of water in each hand rush in and put out the fire. He became one of the best speakers in Rome and because of his bucket brigade at one time or another owned most of it. He’d loan out money at no interest, but called it in exactly on the day it was due so his kindness was often thought worse that it would have been to pay the interest. I don’t remember if Crassus kept his money in Rome of if he sent it up to a Swiss bank. What do you think?

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5. Some of the most enjoyable moments in my life were spent playing bass in a band behind Claude Noel and Brad Terry and Dick Cash. Because I can’t even hold up a bass now it’s hard for me to understand how I was tolerated in such august company. It was my understanding at the time that I knew all the changes, played low, bass notes , played the right notes and didn’t get in anyone’s way. Back then there was a lot of hollering and dancing going on in front of us while we were playing. Now Claude and Cash are gone, I don’t play anymore, and Brad, who is a unique artist, can no longer bring himself to play for dances and parties. Now he’ll only play concerts where people can quietly sit and listen to what he’s doing. No hollering. No dancing. Brad wants absolute silence, like you’d expect to get at a concert. The day before I was to be emcee and introduce Brad to the audience --- which is just about as necessary as it was to have Ed McMann say, “Here’s Johnny” just as if the audience was wondering --- who is this dapper man who just walked out on stage? The day before I was to introduce Brad to the audience at the Lenny Breau concert, I saw a cartoon on a Facebook page that I used in that introduction. It went something like this. “I just saw a cartoon that showed a man tied to a chair. On one side of him there was a mobster with a club who said, “Tell us where you buried the money or I’ll pound you.” The man in the chair said, “Pound away. I won’t talk.” Whereupon --- the other mobster said, “I know what we can do. I’ll go get Brad Terry to play. Everybody talks while Brad is playing.”

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6. You like to know when people appreciate something you’ve done for them and I am no exception. At that Lenny Breau fund-raising concert one fellow came over to tell me that when he was in the service he took a whole box of taped humble Farmer radio shows with him and listened to them all the time he was way off on the other side of the world. He asked me if I’d come up to Naples next June and emcee the blues festival. I asked him what I’d have to do and he said, “Just be yourself.” And another man up there in Lewiston told me that he had been making a Maine radio program for years and that I’d been a great inspiration to him. You never know when you might say something on the radio that someone needs to hear and people appreciate that. You can also say something that someone needs to hear that will make them so mad they’ll shoot you. I think the job description of making a radio program is providing entertaining or interesting company. Just a couple of weeks ago a woman at our Bed & Breakfast said that on Friday night her ex husband would claim their son and drive off with him for the weekend. And for an hour I’d keep her company while she ate her supper. Even now, 6 years since I last did it, people still come up to me and tell me how much they enjoyed my company Friday nights and how much they miss it. When I hear so many people telling me about how much the show means to them it makes me try harder.

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7. You have heard me say this before but it hits home with so many people you might forgive me for saying it again. You know that I read Harlequin Romances in 7 Indo-European languages. With varying degrees of facility, to be sure. Because Harlequins are written for people with a grade school vocabulary they are ideal reading for beginners trying to learn another language. You have heard me say that some of them are funny and contain nothing that you would be ashamed to have your aged grandmother or little granddaughter read. I have yet to find one that was not full of instruction for the reflective mind. Ecutay: while reading one in Dutch at 5:30 one morning I realized that although it helped me maintain my linguistic skills, the plot --- the story --- was just the opposite of what one finds in real life. In Harlequin Romances we find two beautiful, perfect people who want to live together, but some silly, unspoken reason keeps them apart. In real life two beautiful people would like to escape a tedious, uneventful marriage, but some silly unspoken reason keeps them together

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8. The more I think about it, the more I believe that if I had my life to live over, as soon as I got out of high school I’d live abroad for six or eight years. You’ve heard me say that a kid could work for room and board in France for 6 months while learning French and the art of repairing washing machines. At the same time he could develop contacts for his move to other countries. At the end of 6 months, he’d go to Germany or Spain and work as a go fer in a garage for six months. Then on to Italy to work for an electrician for six months. Computers in Sweden, plumbing in Portugal, woodworking in Finland, agriculture in Russia, perhaps even a bulldozer mechanic in Israel. Imagine what an education you’d have before you were 30. You’d have a conversational ability in a dozen languages and you’d be able to fix most anything. You might even be able to amaze your grandchildren by being able to program the answering machine on your telephone or the clicker for your television set without their help. You’d be a wizard. For the rest of your life you’d be able to amaze a Frenchman with your facility with his language --- as long as you were clever enough to direct the topic to repairing washing machines. I got to thinking about this again one morning while watching half a dozen good neighbors helping a man repair his home. I should say they thought they were helping. After you’d watched for a couple of minutes you’d realize that things would go much better if three of the “pound it with the sharp edge of a two by four and it will fit” fellows were to go home. And that’s what got me thinking about this. Even earning high honors in your PhD exam in chemical engineering won’t help you know how much torque you can apply to a nut before you strip the threads.

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9. It is no secret that I read Harlequin Romances. Far from hiding them from your view when you come to visit me I even boast about it. To the best of my knowledge I have never read one in English and would consider it a waste of my time to do so. But, read anything in Dutch, Swedish, French or German and you’re talking world literature. Anne Eames sent me one of her Harlequin Romances in five languages. Same book. Same story in five different languages to be sold in five different countries. I have read it many times in four of those five languages and worked on my Italian copy for two winters. One winter I read the Spanish version, paragraph by paragraph with the Dutch version to help me with my Spanish vocabulary, which still needs much work. All this came to mind when a professor friend at Bowdoin mentioned Moliere. I told him that I envied his ability to read Moliere in the original because I love Moliere and I have to read him in English. I read French on the sixth grade Harlequin Romance level and you know that we must lose a lot of Moliere’s subtleties and cleverness in the English translation. Because you have read the same works in two or perhaps three languages, you know that books are not translated word for word. From reading this same book in four languages I have also learned that translations even differ in their cultural and social nuances --- so much so, that should any Dutchman read the Spanish version of the Harlequin Romance I was talking about he would be on the next train to Madrid.

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10. Click here for Free CD it said. And because this Free CD would tell me how to build a better web page and thereby make me rich beyond my wildest dreams, I clicked. The notice was in a newsletter I get every week called Speaker Net News, a respectable publication with a reputation for honesty, so I had no reason to doubt but what the CD was free. So --- instead of simply deleting the offer, I clicked. Of course they got my email address before letting me click, so I can expect to be hearing from the clickee for the rest of my life, but I figured that if they would deliver the goods they could add me to their mailing list. You’re smarter than I am. You’ve gone this road before, so you knew there would be a charge of $5.77 for handling and shipping. You’re right. Even though I didn’t learn anything about web pages, I did learn how anyone can get rich beyond their wildest dreams: Get two million suckers to pay you $5.77 in shipping and handling for your Free CD.

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11. You might have seen this news item: “VASSALBORO, Maine --Vassalboro's planning board has approved an application for a coffee shop with topless waitresses despite opposition of most residents who showed up. More than 50 residents showed up for Tuesday night's meeting and most of them voiced disapproval of the idea. A Ellsworth businessman plans to open the topless cafe within 30 days at the site of the former Grand View Motel on busy Route 3. Planners said the central Maine town has no ordinance to regulate businesses' uniforms -- or lack of them. They say the proposal met the town's 10 performance standards, which are mostly related to safety, parking, traffic and signs.” My obvious question is the same question that is in your mind right now. Would health insurance pay for any colds caught by waitresses during working hours? You can well believe that any waitress submitting such a claim would get a form letter back from the company, saying that she wasn’t covered.

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12. My friend Jim sent me a few web sites where I was able to read up on the use of surveillance cameras in a Maine High school. Listen to this: “While [the principal] said at the board meeting that he is sensitive to the intrusive nature of cameras, he sees them as a matter of safety, whether officials are grappling with unwelcome visitors arriving on campus, parking lot situations or evacuation procedures.” What do you think? Is this proposed use of cameras in the toilets going a bit too far?

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