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This is a rough draft of Rants for your Maine Private Radio show for March 15, 2015.

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1. More and more Knox County women in their mid 40s are dating men in their early 20s. A local sociologist, considers this to be a most unusual and unhealthy phenomenon and is hoping to discover what the two groups can possibly have in common. He says, “You would think that a 45 year old woman would seek out a 60 year old man who could satisfy her intellectual needs. Yet we see many of these women, accompanied by no more than children, out on the town six and seven nights a week. One would think that a woman over 40 would know that you can’t trust a man until hair grows in his ears. Whatever do they find to talk about? What is it about these young men that older women find so attractive?”

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2. You know that I listen to Dutch all the time. There is an expression, Onmiddelijk vol begrip, that I like. It means immediately full of understanding or instantly enlightened. I think it is a great expression. I like the Dutch way of saying it as if enlightenment or understanding had an atomic number and could actually be poured or stuffed into a container. Immediately full of understanding.

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3. Nobody in the world has ever heard of Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. A friend mentioned that this was being discussed by some literary or social group in Rockland. No wonder I've never heard of it or the author. It was written 10 years after I baptized classmates in an American Lit class down at Gorham Normal School with water I'd brought home from Walden Pond. I wish people would stop writing things. How is anyone to keep up? Years ago Clifton Fadiman asked people to sign up for a lifetime reading program. Remember that? I wonder if it made allowances for anything that was to be written after 1960? I never joined as it sounded like a grim way to spend one's life. The inevitable end was clearly delineated.

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4. We all know people who plan things days and weeks and months ahead. They write these things down on calendars or in little notebooks. They know exactly what they are going to do every day for days, weeks and months in advance. You do not want to drop in on these people for a visit. Any change in their schedule throws them for a loop. An existence like that is not a life. It is the chronicle of a prisoner in a maximum security federal prison. Some of us are very happy to get out of bed in the morning with nothing more on the agenda than "Eat my rolled oats and take a shower.”

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5. Here’s a letter from Tim White who writes, “My parents told me, "We want you to be happy. We want you to have a better life than we did." So I didn't have kids.”

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6. We read that to walk on ice, keep your center of gravity over your front leg. Lean forward like a penguin. When you are over 75 you naturally walk this way. You look at your feet and you walk as if you could trip at any moment. Which is why some of us rarely fall. All old people are not stoop-shouldered --- we are just keeping our center of gravity over our foremost leg so we don't fall down. OK, I'm naturally stoop-shouldered and have always walked like a penguin, but as a result over the years I've found a lot of coins you dropped on the streets of Rockland. For two days I also tried to think like a penguin. But all it did was give me an uncontrollable urge to take food stamps away from hungry Maine children.

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7. Long time radio friend Robert in Brunswick says, “[I go] 15 miles from my late mother's condo to walk and look for alligators and birds. I see the same one every time in the same location. They have their own lunch time, I guess.” Should we tell Robert that those animals and birds you always see in the same locations have been stuffed by a taxidermist? As are the cute kittens in all the pictures you’ve seen of them playing in the sewing basket. I mention this, of course, only as a public service. People should know about these things.

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8. One morning I said to my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, "Why do I wake up at 5 every morning?" She said: "Well, nine hours sleep plus a two hour nap in the afternoon should be enough rest for anybody."

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9. "Here's some frightening information. I just read that: Every hour of TV you watch after age 25 cuts your lifespan by about 22 minutes, according to 2012 research from The University of Queensland, Australia. They also found that people who average six hours a day in front of the boob tube died nearly five years sooner than people who didn't watch any TV." This reminds me of a bit written by a German nihilist that I memorized 45 or more years ago. Es gibt Jazz und leider was the way it started off. J and Kai were playing Let's Get Away From It All in the background, as this poet said: and the translation is mine --- I have read in an Americanishan newspaper that every cigarette shortens the life by five and twenty minuten. I don't believe it. I think the Americanishan cigarette and Coca Cola industries are behind the articlen.

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10. I have been reading Greek plays to Marsha’s dear little grandchildren --- you know, to set them on the right track academically speaking. And now, were you to ask them to name the fattest king in Thebes, they would shout, “Adipose Rex.”

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11. You know that I have worked for years to write stories that require a bit of thought. That is, I enjoy telling the kind of stories that some people might not understand right off. Some people might have to hear the story again or say it over again in their minds before they get it. This kind of story is called a dry story. I like dry stories and here is an example. If you have young grandchildren who come to visit you from time to time, you might be familiar with the $300 worth of little yellow plastic ducks in the bathtub problem. Do you have grandchildren? Are you familiar with this $300 worth of little yellow plastic ducks in the bathtub problem? Where do you hide them before they come?

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