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This is a rough draft of Rants for your Maine Private Radio show for April 5, 2015.

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This week marks the 37th year I have been making The humble Farmer radio program just for you.

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1. As you know, the claim that Eskimo languages have an unusually large number of words for snow is an idea widespread first articulated by the anthropologist, Franz Boas. What I didn’t know, is that he also had a PhD in physics. I also just learned that Margaret Meade and Edward Sapir were two of his students. Anyway, do you know the Inuit word for "deep snow with a thin but strong icy crust that catches the tips of snowshoes and pitches white men to the ground like bumbling fools?" A friend asked me this question. I knew the answer inuitively.

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2. You heard me say that I have attended several of the solar workshops given by Dr. Richard Komp. You might have seen some of my television shows where I actually show you how to solder the solar cells together and laminate them on a piece of glass. Perhaps the most difficult part of the entire process is cutting the 45 degree angles in the right place on the aluminum frame so they will fit together neatly. You might agree with me that the person who cuts those pieces with the hacksaw has a much more difficult job than a surgeon who performs an operation. If you don’t cut those pieces of aluminum so they fit together right, everybody knows.

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3. Because I love my wife, she has the ability to say unkind things that cut me deeply. On Saturday I was able to buy a new jacket at a lawn sale. Because they were also selling a large box of Moličre and Tolstoy in the original French, I figured I was in good company. I put on the jacket and asked the woman, "How much?" $2.50 I didn't quibble or hand out two bills and ask, "Will you take two?" but shelled out $2.50 like a man. You can imagine how excited I was when I got home and put it on so I could show Marsha. With my hand on the doorknob I threw back my shoulders, sucked in my gut, tried to pull up my chin and hopped into the room like a banty rooster. She looked up, smiled with delight, and said, "That's a wonderful jacket. Now stand up straight so we can see how you look."

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4. Having only one body, I have only one jacket. What man would need more? I bought a new jacket for $2.50 because my regular jacket was quite worn with the lining hanging in tatters. But the other day, when I took it out of the closet to throw it away, it was in perfect shape. When I made mention of it, Marsha admitted that she had sewed it together. I could see it was in better than new condition. So now I have two jackets which presents a problem. Never before have I had to make a decision about what to wear while emceeing a David Rowe concert.

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5. Do you have friends with so little to do that they send you at least one and sometimes five emails every day? Or write nonsense on your Facebook page? You remember the story about the little shepherd boy who cried “Wolf.” People would rush out to save him and his sheep from the wolf, but there was never any wolf there. One day the hungry wolf showed up but nobody paid any attention to the little boy’s cries of, “Wolf, wolf,” so the wolf ate him up and had his sheep for dessert. Couldn’t this politically incorrect story have a parallel today in all the emails you get that are singularly devoid of content? You know very well that when they do send you a real message you don’t bother to open it. On the other hand, my friend David up in Washington, Maine is usually right on the money and here is a sample of his email: “Never corner something that you know is meaner than you.” Would you agree that that is excellent advice? “Never corner something that you know is meaner than you.” But --- if every man took it to heart, wouldn’t it eliminate the institution known as marriage?

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6. We have talked before about how becoming aware of something for the first time practically ensures that we'll see mention of the same thing the next day. A few days ago Jeremy mentioned Scatman Crothers and today while checking out Janet Leigh in Walking My Baby, here is Scatman Crothers again: Walking My Baby Back Home was the title song from the 1953 film starring Donald O'Connor, Janet Leigh, Buddy Hackett, and Scatman Crothers. Walking My Baby Back Home is featured in a Columbo episode I've enjoyed twice within the past year. Scatman Crothers is a name that you’re not likely to forget in one week.

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7. Have your kids ever done something that you wished they hadn’t done? Did your daughter get drunk and smash up a car? Did your son meet a voluptuous girl who got him to join a cult? Did your daughter put a ring in your granddaughter’s nose or just punch holes in the poor child’s ears? Do your children get so much sun you know they’ll have skin cancer by the time they’re 50? Did your son join the army where he’ll earn $30,000 or so a year and risk having a leg blown off, when he could have signed up with the mercenaries and gone to the exact same place and had his leg blown off for $170,000 a year? Some elderly guests at our bed and breakfast once told me that their adult children now generate more trouble and worry than they did when they were toddlers. When I asked what their adult kids did, I was told, “They have children. They borrow money.” How can your children have such good genes and such a good upbringing and still do such stupid things? Or am I talking about your next door neighbor or your cousin and not you?

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8. They were at it again this morning on TV. They were talking about diets. What kind of diet is best? The kind that makes them the most money. They will sell you pills and fancy food so you can lose up to five pounds the first week. They talk about carbs. Captain Freddy didn't believe in germs and I don't believe in carbs --- unless they are bolted to engines. I don’t know the names of the different diets and I don't want to know about carbs because I'm not going to go on a diet. Diets are for people who don't really care if they lose weight or not. They are the folks who think if they say they are on a diet, they will lose weight. You hear them say, "Ohhhh, I can't eat that because I'm on a diet." And then they go home and sit on a couch before the TV and munch on this and that for three hours before they go to bed. They might even eat candy. They are like the woman on TV I heard one night as I was brushing my teeth. She said, "I have three kids so I don't have time to read so I joined a book club. I still don't read, but belonging to the book club makes me feel a lot better."

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9. You have heard me say it before but I am going to say it again. When I went to the Public Radio Program Managers Convention in San Antonio ten or so years ago, I gained six pounds in three days. If I were the executive director of the American Pork Producers Association, I’d find out what they put on those banquet tables down there at the Riverwalk. When I came home from Texas I was 175 or so pounds and I couldn’t stoop over to tie my shoes. So --- I stopped eating cake, pie, ice cream, cookies, donuts, sausages and bacon. And I don’t mean I cut down --- I stopped. Other than birthday cake and custard pie at two memorable birthdays, not one crumb of a sweet for ten years. I felt sick when I ate the cake. This anything-in-moderation doesn’t work when you are talking about ice cream and chocolate cake. I don’t get any more exercise than I ever did and I eat as much spaghetti and rolled oats and bread as often as I ever did. You know that I don’t drink soda or beer. It goes without saying that soda porks up kids and that beer is famous for putting guts on even young men. And --- because I have cut out the evil sweets --- I weigh around 150 pounds instead of 175. Losing weight has nothing to do with dieting or "anything in moderation." Anyone who wants to lose weight, as I did, simply cuts out sweets. 100 %. And Mother Nature does the rest.

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10. I am proud of my slim-trim waistline, as any old man should be, and the other night up in our bedroom, just before I put on my pajamas, I walked down to the foot of the bed. My wife Marsha was sitting up in bed reading a book. I turned sideways and sucked in my gut, which gave me the profile of a 65-year-old kid, and said, “Ahem, ahem”. My wife looked up. Her eyes opened wide. Her book dropped in her lap. And she said, “Wow, I’ve got to trim your eyebrows.”

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11. You have heard me say many times that I read Harlequin Romances in several languages. For the past few years I’ve been working on Italian. Studying languages is a wonderful hobby because it doesn’t cost anything. It goes without saying that I have never read a Harlequin in English. Harlequins in English are trash reading: the same book in a French translation, however. is magically transformed into world class literature. 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 grandmother or granddaughter read. I have yet to find one that was not full of instruction for the reflective mind. Ecutay: while reading one in Dutch 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, perfect people would like to escape a tedious, uneventful marriage, but some silly unspoken reason keeps them together.

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