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This is a rough draft of Rants for your Maine Private Radio show for June 14, 2015.

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The humble Farmer's TV show is now on YouTube. Google "Robert Karl Skoglund" and they should come up.

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1. Isn't it amazing how we all have our druthers. A friend invited me to go on a fundraising cruise. "Cost for the cruise includes, wine, beer, cocktails, Hors d'oeuvres, and live music." If five of those things were eliminated, I would find the cruise to be not even tolerable but inviting.

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2. Although I am the last person to flaunt my organizational genius, there are times that it warrants your attention. One morning my doctor friend looked at my knee. I thought it would be nice to go in early so as to be able to get all my in-town errands out of the way first thing, so I eagerly jumped at the offer to come in at 0715. Of course I was there at 0630 and was probably out by seven. I wore my usual shirt and tie and sweater and jacket. But, because my right knee was under consideration, I wore shorts. The secretary told me that she had never seen anyone in a tie jacket and shorts, which would indicate that she has not recently attended a Rugby tournament at Eton. And I should say something about that visit because it contained disturbing elements. I was told that I had skinny legs, which you could say about any of the more recent Kenyan marathon winners. But what bothered me was the paper I had to fill out before being admitted to the inner sanctum. At the bottom it said, "Date of death." A cortisone injection was an option, but when I learned that 20 minutes of ice pack on the knee three times a day might do the same job, I went for that. Well, we're not here to discuss my medical history, but my cleverness in having an early medical appointment so I could attend to all my errands in town first thing in the morning. I made a list so I wouldn't forget one. But although the sun was shining and the birds were singing, and although I drove to four places where I had business, there wasn't a one of them that would be open for another two hours.

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3. How many great musicians have destroyed themselves by doing drugs? I can identify. For years I ran around the country telling funny stories at banquets. I billed myself as a humorous after dinner speaker. About 10 minutes before I was to be introduced, I’d put down two cups of America’s favorite morning drug drink. And I’d be higher than a kite when I got the mike in my hands and my mouth would run like it was on roller bearings. But there is a price to be paid for getting high on Brazilian beans and there comes a time in a man’s life when his body will no longer tolerate it. After doing drugs every day for a week or two, I get a pain in my heart. My wife thought it was my imagination until our friend Susan, who is an RN, said that she gets the same pain and cannot do the caffeine drug. Withdrawal is hard. I'm now on my third day without drugs and am barely able to get out of my tracks. You have heard me say that an RN who went to Haiti with a medical crew had a headache for a week --- as did all the others --- when it was discovered that their usual morning drug drink was not available in Haiti. You know about drugs. How long does it take to get the need for drugs out of your body when you quit cold turkey? There are web pages that tell about it and I posted one on my Facebook page, hoping to garner a bit of sympathy from my coffee guzzling friends. Here are only two of the things listed that destroy your life when you quit drugs. Exhaustion and a lack of interest in doing anything. Tell me about it. Last night I went to bed around 6, right after supper.

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4. My brother came by to show me a newspaper article about guns in Maine. When I was a kid it was not unusual to have boys bring guns to school. I think they left them in the entry way. Then they’d go gunning after school without having to go home first to get their gun. Now there is a push to permit people to carry a concealed gun, and I think the Maine legislature just voted in favor of it. We wouldn’t have thought anything about it 60 years ago, but does this mean that any 22-year-old kid can now legally show up at a dance with a gun in his pants? Can we expect the number of people who are accidentally or intentionally shot to rise? It will be interesting to see if the number of accidental shootings increase. More cars on the road means more accidents. So you would think the same statistics would hold for people carrying guns or people walking around with untied shoestrings. Unfortunately, it is not the Darwin folks who will get blown away but anyone unfortunate enough to be near them when their piece accidentally goes off. The interesting thing about the newspaper article on this gun issue was that it took up half of the front page. The other half of the front page was about a kid who was shot the week before.

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5. One day my wife Marsha went to Holland for a week to say goodbye to her mother in law, The Great & Powerful Oma, who was moved into a hospice. Whenever Marsha is gone, several demanding sociological and domestic problems usually arise which I attempt to circumvent by employing the very little I know about quantum mechanics. Although I don’t fully understand the paradox of Schroedinger’s cat, you and I have talked about it before and I found a use for it on this occasion. The way I understand it, and I know you will correct me, the cat is in the box with a radioactive atom. If the atom decays and the Geiger counter detects an alpha particle, the hammer hits a flask of prussic acid, killing the cat. Before the observer opens the box, the cat must be in a superposition of dead and alive states. Marsha was in Holland and she had no way of opening our bedroom door, the lid on Schroedinger’s box, if you will, which would enable her to learn if I made the bed every morning. So, by the way I understand quantum mechanics, our bed is both made and unmade unless Marsha looks in the door which she can’t do. So, because it really makes no difference if the bed is made or not, guess what?

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6. Can you say anything good about fast food? Is fast food 100 percent bad or does it have a redeeming feature? You will have to admit, that no matter how bad something is, you can find at least one good thing to say about it, and fast food is no exception --- because --- they say that fast food cuts down on your sex drive. So, although most everyone in the upcoming fast food culture will be overweight, can you see that it will help us with the population problem?

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7. Can you believe what my friend Sharon wrote on my Facebook page? Should I admit it? Yes, seeing as it’s you, I’ll admit that I met Sharon 40 or so years ago through a personal in the Maine Times. Anyway, Sharon is now also a Facebook friend. Listen to what she wrote on my Facebook page. “There's a lot to be said for being an early bird. I went for a 4 mile walk at 5:30 this morning and didn't encounter another person at all.” Think about this. The only reason muggers even read my Facebook page is to get this kind of information.

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8. Here’s a letter from Sally who writes: Purchased two bunches of rhubarb on our return from the Herring Gut open house yesterday. May I say - wow! What beautiful stalks And you collect and trim the right way - even I was instructed as a child in the proper collection of this fine foodstuff. I will make a 'crumble' tonite for myself and hubby and then a strawberry rhubarb pie to follow. P.S. -- Do you want your rubber bands returned? I reply, Hi Sally, The rubber bands are part of the price of doing business. Thank you for stopping. You have piqued my interest. I didn't know there was another way to pick and trim rhubarb. I have only been able to figure out one way of doing it. Will please stop in and show me another way it might be done? It would make an interesting topic for my TV show. I missed the Herring Gut open house because I went to Brunswick to attend an affair that had been held the night before. Neighbor humble This looks very exciting. If there are several ways of picking and trimming rhubarb I might get an entire series out of it. I know that there are many ways of getting the meat out of a lobster. I have made a study of lobster eating and could lecture on it for perhaps an hour. At present, only a person using the method I use could get the maximum amount of meat out of a lobster. Most people don't care and throw away or destroy half of it with their ineptitude. It is nice to sit at a table with these people. I can get an entire meal out of what three of them throw away.

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9. Aaron in Portland sent me a web page that talked about a man called Tel-Oren. Many people flock to his seminars to hear him speak on skin care or some kind of health issues. The web page said that he was a hoax and a fraud. Don’t you love to read about folks like Tel-Oren? There is something about a con man that everybody loves. Unless they are the party who has been conned. They make movies about these people. Let me ask you --- is there anything bad about taking money away from people who seem to have nothing else to do with it but buy pills or salve or exotic juices? On the other hand, a decent diet would probably cure many of this country's health problems today. Most of my friends and neighbors have chosen to eat things that have, over the years, made them 50 or more pounds heavier than they would like to be. I wish I had the enthusiasm and smarts to sell a magic pill that would enable people to eat cake and ice cream and still lose weight. It wouldn't matter if it worked or not. Their having faith in my product is all that matters. Faith sells a lot of products that have nothing behind them except the faith of the person using them. My father read Steinbeck. Steinbeck wrote of rich women who were given exercises by their doctor that approximated the same workout they'd get standing over a scrub board washing clothes. Was there anything wrong with the doctor charging for his services? He knew what people wanted and he knew what people needed and he gave it to them and charged accordingly. Don't get me started on con men. At one time Lawyer Strout in Thomaston had a library dedicated to books on con men. Years ago I enjoyed reading some of them. I love con men. Don't get me started on con men.

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10. My next door neighbor True was at grange tonight. True was in the class of 1947 and will probably be 85 years old next month. My cousin Rose-Marie Blomqvist has always been petite and pretty and although she must be about True's age, she is still very good looking. Jewel Stone is also in a remarkable state of preservation. I told True that I'd seen Jewel Stone down at the dump and that she told me she was older than he was. True said that he was dancing with Jewel one time at the Harpoon in Port Clyde when she suddenly screamed. Later someone asked him what he did to Jewel to make her scream. Hall said, "I told her I knew how old she was."

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11. While reading a Swedish Facebook page touting the splendors of vacationing in Southern Spain, I read that it had great restaurants and tapasbarer. Tapasbarer is a Swedish word I didn’t know. I do know that tapit is carpet in some language and bar is berry but it could also be bear so it could be carpet bearer or carpet seller. But why would they advertise carpets? Swedes wouldn't go to Spain to buy a carpet. Now I remember the Swedish word for carpet is mattor, because I used to have to piska Faster Alva's mattor. I used to hang my Aunt Alva’s rugs on the line and beat them with a carpet beater. So I look up tapasbarer in the Swedish English online dictionary, and see that tapasbarer is tapas bars. Tapas bars? An abbreviation for topless bars? I still don't know what a tapas bar is and because it sounds esoteric it is certainly out of my price range so I’m going to let it go. Please tell me that you don't know what a tapas bar is.

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