Marsha and humble September 30, 2007




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Below is a rough outline of the rants from The humble Farmer radio show week of December 2, 2012




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December 2, 2012 Rants

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1. Long, long, long time radio friend Robert asks what it’s like being married. Any married man can tell Robert that it is nice being married: it frees a man from the bother of having to think.

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2. A friend mentioned how beautiful it was in such and such a place. There are people who lack the ability to appreciate beauty in landscapes or sunsets and I am one of those unfortunates. One place looks very much like another to me. I am, however, aware of and appreciative of temperatures conducive to my personal comfort and 78 degrees wears well. The same applies to travel in Europe. People say how nice it must be to go there and see all the things we’ve all heard about. But my interest is in languages. I go there to hear, not to see.

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3. You have heard me say many times that my hobby is learning how to read languages. K lastimme --- esta mala el tocadiscos. If you can think of any hobby that costs less to pursue, yet constantly invigorates whatever you are fortunate enough to have for a mind, please let me know what it is. Years of research has taught me that the ideal language learning vehicle for reading is the Harlequin Romance. This is because you can get the same story in 5 or 6 languages, and the language is at the level of what you would find in an elementary school reading book. What you do is memorize the story by reading it constantly in Dutch or French for several years, and then it is easy to figure out in German or Italian. Do you remember my saying that if you write to 10 or 12 women who write Harlequin Romances and ask, many of them will send you one of their stories in 4 or 5 languages? Yes. They will. Sometimes they permit you to pay. Sometimes they simply give you these odd copies. Ann Eames, who has sent me many books, has done so well writing that she is now working as a nurse in Africa. Besides reading, over the years I’ve also listened to half a dozen languages in my car or in the shop or on my bicycle. Because I have not yet moved up to the little ipad thing that fits in the pocket, I tie a nail apron around my neck and put my cd player in that. You know that those cd players look like flying saucers and are about the size of a whoopie pie so they just fit in one side of a nail apron. Anyway, if you know two or three languages or have lived in two or three countries, you know that there are cultural distinctions that are reflected in each language. This was forcefully brought to my attention again one morning while listening to a conversation in Italian. Listen and repeat. Ascolti an repeata: A man knocks on a hotel room door to keep a business appointment with a woman. Before getting down to business they have a drink and exchange a bit of information about their families and home towns. There is another knock at the door. And here is the interesting part. If you are studying one language, it translates into English as, “That must be my husband with the plans.” In another language the woman says, “Oh my goodness --- it’s my husband.” In yet another language, the woman simply says, “Oh goodie, now my husband is here, too.”

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4. For years you’ve heard me tell kids to go to Northern Europe and bum around for a summer. You’ve heard me say that a young person should not consider a career in teaching and you’ve heard me tell them to go to law school. Now I read letters from lawyers telling kids that there is no future in law school. Things have changed over the past 50 years. My first teaching job in Lee, Maine paid me four times as much as I earned in the military. That would be like giving someone who earned $20,000 yesterday $80,000 today. --- A $60,000 raise. When I was in grade school and high school, Maine teachers had new cars and were in a higher socio-economic class than most families in town. I admit that when I started college in 1958 so I could be a teacher, it was for the big bucks. In 1958 my brother and I wrote on the inside of the barn door that in 1962 when we graduated we expected to be making $3,000 a year as teachers. --- More than twice what I was getting for clerking in a store. But when we went into School Administrative Districts it was a license for some people to spend more money. In spite of all the slick words, taxpayers found it cost more to run a huge consolidated school two towns away than it would have cost had they kept their schools in town. Now, seeing their mistake, towns are struggling to get out of these SAD situations. And when they came up short for all the bussing and administrative costs, they cut the salaries of the teachers, who have the smallest voice. Go to law school, my child. Let rich trust-fund kids from away who don’t need to earn a living move to Maine for Life The Way It Should Be and let them teach school.

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5. My wife Marsha has an ipad. It was a gift from her rich brother and she uses it for email. She could have had a real computer to use for her email because people give them away when they get old and don’t have enough space on them to do the job that needs to be done. But she said that a real computer was too complicated. I personally think that she wanted an ipad even though she had no idea or what it was just because she’d heard about them. So her brother gave her an ipad toy which can only be operated by computer gurus and people not old enough to shave. And there isn’t a week goes by but what the chickens come home to roost. The other day she wrote a letter which she promptly lost. I told her that on a real computer you wrote letters in the letter writing part of the computer and then when you had them the way you wanted them you simply cut and pasted them into the email part of the computer. Learned friends assured me that the ipad toy does have a place where letters can be written and saved so one day I thought I’d flaunt my wizardry before an admiring wife and find out how to write a letter on the ipad thing. It should be easy enough to do because everything that has happened in the world over the past 10 or 15 billion years turns up on Google. So I Googled, “how do i write on my ipad?” You might be surprised to hear this, but the answer is in apps. You might be even more surprised to hear that apps cost money. From what I understand, apps for an ipad may be compared to the parts of an automobile and we can compare a first-time ipad user with a cave man who buys a car. You tell cave man that the car is $50. He pays the $50 and for a few weeks enjoys telling his friends that he has a car. But then, as he learns more about the car, he asks the dealer if there is an easier way to get it around He is told that the car will move easier if it has wheels. So cave man buys wheels and finds that the car does indeed go like a shot --- down hills. But he lives in Colorado where hills go up as well as down so he returns to the dealer where he learns that if he buys an engine the car will go up hills as well as down. And here’s why the ignorant end up paying more for everything they buy. Because should cave man sue the car company for selling a car that does nothing but afford the owner bragging rights he would be laughed out of court. After all, doesn’t everyone know that unless you’re looking for a dry place to sleep, a car is just about worthless without wheels and a motor? And that these apps cost extra?

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6. In a Swedish Mickey Spillane book Kerstin Ostlund gave me in 1962, we read of a wino who bought whatever the kids wanted to drink and took payment in kind. If you can't buy alki yourself, isn't that the way it still works today? In the movies and books we learn that during prohibition everybody could buy whatever they wanted. And how about drugs today? We read in the paper that, “More than 70 percent of Aroostook businesses fail compliance checks, sell liquor to minors" A reader replies to this headline: "Does it really matter in Maine, a State where half it's population is under the influence of one drug or another, where most of those are involved in criminal activity. "I'd have to say the Zumba Queen is looking like a Saint at this point and the john's as simply worthy of anointment."

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7. I keep seeing something that says "Three people on Facebook unfriended you." If it's only 3 I can't be writing enough of the things that need to be said in Maine today.

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8. Here’s one of the most astute things I’ve read in a long time. You might have read in the paper that some mentally ill man was sentenced to jail for three years for threatening to shoot a public figure. Someone said, “good thing he didn't have any weed on him, he'd be doing 20.”

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9. We are told that we have a new legislature in Maine and my neighbor Bill says, “Well...one thing is for sure....higher taxes are on the way...thank a democrat for that gift!” Do you get the impression from his words that neighbor Bill espouses that radical totalitarian political philosophy that combines elements of corporatism, extreme nationalism, anti-liberalism, militarism and authoritarianism? You’ve heard me say this many times but I’m going to keep saying it. I suspect that even if Bill were to travel the world and see all these things with his own eyes, he wouldn’t believe it. And of course he wouldn’t believe me if I told him what I have seen with my own eyes, but I feel I’m doing you a favor every time I say that the countries in this world with the highest standard of living have the highest taxes. Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Holland and so on. You know the list. In countries with the lowest standard of living (where only foreign corporations have the money to pay taxes) the natives cook their food over rubber tires on street corners. Plastic garbage fills their waterways and canals. In some of these areas, machine gun toting guards escort Americans who work there to and from their jobs. I spoke with one of these Americans two days ago. Most rational people would rather live in countries where there is no poverty, excellent education, the best of healthcare, nice homes and new cars. And the reason there are no unpainted buildings or falling down barns is because taxes are high. Everyone pays his share. Nobody wiggles out of paying his share of taxes by gimmicks or tricks or fancy tax loopholes. All these good things cost money. But here, some Maine people buy another home in Florida and change their residence to get out of paying the Maine state taxes that the rest of us pay to repair Maine roads. People who have been to Africa and Europe --- as well as Maine --- have a fairly decent comprehension of the purpose of taxation and why it is necessary. My friend Nancy in Camden wrote to me today and said that her son wants to move to Finland. My father moved here from Sweden over 80 years ago thinking he'd find a better job. Most of us are only here because our ancestors thought the same way. Now that the economic situation has turned 180 degrees it might be time for young people who are looking for opportunity to move to Sweden or Finland where taxes are very high.

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10. We read in the paper about some character who was showing children how he burned himself with a cigarette. "The children were informed that when you clear your mind, you are no longer susceptible to pain, according to the police report." The last time I heard anything as unbelievable as this a man on television was asking me to send him $1,000 in seed money.

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11. Did you hear about a state police woman who came to work drunk? Someone said that she “was holding the dog’s choke collar as he tried to get away, petting him, repeating words and also kissing the dog’s head." No need of a breath test here. If you saw me kissing a dog or cat or cow or a pig wouldn’t you have to figure I was legally drunk? I’ve always thought of myself as a very open minded person, but I’ve had to draw the line when it comes to animals.

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Robert Karl Skoglund
785 River Road
St. George, ME 04860
(207) 226-7442
thehumblefarmer@gmail.com
www.TheHumbleFarmer.com

© 2012 Robert Karl Skoglund