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This is a rough draft of Rants for your Maine Private Radio show for March 16, 2014

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1. A Houlton woman was driving through Canadian customs with 9 screaming kids when the officer at the window asked her if she had any drugs or alcohol. She said, “If I had I would have used it by now.”

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2. Here’s a letter that contains an interesting observation from a radio friend whose name I will not mention for a reason that will become obvious. He says, “Let me start by saying I do like hamburgers and french fries. Now then, do you remember Vasily Alekseyev? He was the Russian weightlifter who broke world record after world record in the 1970s. My brother pointed out to me that Alekseyev was careful to only beat the record by just a little bit of weight, and what drove the incrementalist behavior of this vaunted Soviet hero was the profit motive. He was handsomely rewarded by The State for every world record with privileges and luxuries undreamt of by the typical poor comrade. So although he was strong enough to set a record at, say 20 kilos more than anyone else could lift, he was smart enough to break the world record by only one or two kilos every time he entered the contest. So he was able to hang in there and break record after record over a period of several years. Yesterday I had my annual weighing. I weighed 175 pounds. I asked my wife if she remembered what I had weighed last year. 180 or more said she, and congratulated me on my healthful progress. And then it hit me... so many burgers and fries needlessly forgone because I was not as smart as Alekseyev. Thank you for that letter. I am going to point out here that my friend, the writer, was obviously also not as smart as his brother, who called his attention to what the Russian was doing. Over the past 70 years I have had hundreds of similar experiences. I know what it’s like to not be the smartest brother.

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3. Someone named Clay Shirky says“For the last hundred years the big organizational question has been whether any given task was best taken on by the state, directing the effort in a planned way, or by businesses competing in a market.” The question could be easily answered by anyone who visits several countries, looks around, and sees in which countries they find the most people who have health insurance, the fewest people in jail and the fewest number of people who are getting food stamps. Can you understand why the way to go should be a big organizational question when Clay Shirky or anyone else with the price of a plane ticket could see it with their own eyes?

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4. Although this winter has been unusually mild, January and February in Maine are usually times of poverty, hopelessness, discomfort and frustration. If you have any wood it is either frozen in the ground or covered with snow. A carpenter ant could starve to death on the wood a typical Maine man has in the barn by March 20th. That which is a ten minute job in the summer is either impossible or a career in the winter. Then, to add insult to injury, we have dozens of neighbors, who just couldn't stand the winters anymore, who send us postcards from Florida or Arizona, telling us how they miss Maine and how we must be enjoying the Maine winter. The newly fallen snow is so pretty. You think about how your truck slid off the edge of your driveway and you tried to call your friend who has a four wheeled drive but you can't because the lines have been taken down by the ice storm. On the bottom of their postcard they say they'll be back for the Friendship sloop races after the fog and black fly seasons have gone by. And you smile because that means you'll never see them again.

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5. Listen to what I just read about this man named Saul Alinsky who was a master organizer. “In one of his puckish moods Saul talked the president of a university into letting him anonymously take an examination being administered to candidates for a doctorate in community organization. ‘Three of the questions were on the philosophy of and motivations of Saul Alinsky,’ writes Saul. ‘I answered two of them incorrectly.’” And, you’ve probably heard this. “To prove how hard it is for new writers to break in, Jerzy Kosinski uses a pen name to submit his bestseller Steps to 13 literary agents and 14 publishers. All of them reject it, including Random House, who had published it.”

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6. This week my computer keeps telling me that I haven’t paid my Internet bill. I am asked to click on a link so I can give them my credit card information. Do you think this email could be from a crook who is phishing for information? You know the old saying: Give a man a fish, and he'll enjoy a good meal. Teach him how to phish and he'll scam the public for millions.

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7. Did you know that as a cultist you can take classes in how to bring depressed people into your fold? I recently read a book by Chris Hedges who apparently took a several-day workshop with a cult guru. Chris tells, step by step, how they rehearse the speeches that will bring the sick, the sad, the suffering and the sorrowful into line so they will henceforth do exactly what the cult leaders want them to. If you are a drunk who has lost everything or a child who has recently lost a parent or a rejected lover, you are at a point in your life when you will quickly embrace the feigned friendship, attention, sympathy and a promised path (that will free you from worry) that is offered by these skilled professionals. One would imagine that top salesmen have taken similar courses that teach the steps to consummating a sale.

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8. Speaking of cults reminds me of a very good and intelligent man I used to go lawn-sale-ing with. A natural salesman, he followed almost the exact steps I saw outlined in the book on how to get people to join a cult. After listening to my friend’s cheerful patter for a few minutes, instead of selling him something, the person running the lawnsale would go in the house and bring out something that they wanted to give him. I’ve seen him do it over and over. It’s all in the patter. It is to my credit that I do have the ability to learn. No better than the cultists I read of in the book, here's how I soften up a potential seller. The seller, or man and wife, or seller and companion, are often sitting in the shade behind rows of tables of assorted junk. As I walk up their driveway, they often say, "How are you today?" I say, "Today I am trying to boost the local economy. I am going to spend as much money here as possible. Please tell me how I can help you." Of course I say this real slow so they don't miss a word. I drawl it out. They are now at ease and on my side. I’m a delightful and somewhat foolish old Maine character. After chatting a while, I might say, "That is a very nice looking chain," as I extend a hand holding a dollar bill. It is a 25-foot logging chain with heavy links and hooks on both ends. "I'd really like to have that wonderful chain. Would you take a dollar for it?" Her husband has stepped into the house for a drink. The woman knows a sucker when she sees one and takes the dollar. Feeling somewhat guilty, I give her another dollar. If it wasn't for that final weakness I might have been heading up my own cult a long time ago.

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9. I read that Martin Heidegger had extramarital affairs with two of his students. Do you think that is worth mentioning in a professor’s biography? Wouldn’t it be more remarkable to find a famous professor who did not marry or have an affair with one of his or her grad students?

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10. I stumbled across some newspapers that weren’t printed in the United States. If you are an international traveler you know how interesting foreign newspapers can be. You can read about little insignificant things that aren’t important enough to get into the Wall Street Journal. According to one foreign newspaper, the Pentagon investigated some United States company that billed the army for cleaning some offices up to four times per day. I’ve lived with Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, for over 20 years, so I don’t see anything unusual about cleaning a room four times a day. Would you dare stand up at town meeting and say that the brave men who are defending our country don’t deserve clean offices? You’d be putting your patriotism on the line. Should any American company be suspected of criminal activity just because they bill the army for cleaning an office four times a day? Our present system depends on this kind of thing. Where else would all that political campaign money come from?

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