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This is a rough draft of Rants for your Maine Private Radio show for September 6, 2015.

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

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1. Over the past 15 years, my wife Marsha has hopped or crawled into a boat hundreds of times and has gone to Southern Island where she works all day. Over the past 15 years we might have gone to a swanky restaurant overlooking the ocean three times. And it amused me to see the hostess seating my wife by the window so she could have a view of the water and the lobster boats in the harbor. --- Which she has to look at all day when she’s working. You certainly remember the apocryphal tale about the man who had his office in the Eiffel Tower. He said that it was the only place in Paris where he could look out the window and not see the cussed thing. Did you know that there is a lobsterman in Spruce Head who planted a hedge of cedar trees between his house and the harbor so he wouldn't have to look at it?

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2. How do you email a picture with an ipad? That’s what our Florida friends, Len and Rene Scheinhoft, wanted to know. Rene was here in my solar radiant heated cellar/office and took a picture of me smiling. I naturally wanted the picture because a picture of me smiling is so rare. I can’t fake smiling for a camera. They said that their thing that took the picture is an ipad. We looked at their machine and Len could send me an email, but there was nothing in the email that you could poke to add an attachment like a picture. My wife Marsha or Rene could ask their grandchildren how to do it, but, as Rene said, "Grandchildren have no patience." I went on line and read that picture sending with an ipad is counter intuitive. Instead of writing a letter and attaching a picture, you designate a picture to be sent and then add a letter. I told Shine that as soon as he learns to work that ipad they will have something that is even more complicated and he'll be right back where he started. I'm glad I'm not in the socio-economic class of people who have these electronic toys. I can barely work the new XP computer my friends made just for me because only XP will run the ancient program that I use to make my television show.

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3. When I was a little boy I used to visit Percy Jones who lived in a house about 700 feet to the southeast from where I was born and brought up. I was probably 10 and Percy might have been 70 at the time. He had a mule and a wagon and, even though I was allergic to the mule, I used to ride in the wagon with Percy and we’d go down to his back lot and I’d gasp for air and he’d limp about and cut alders for firewood with a very sharp axe. When I’d drop in I’d say, “How are you today, Perce?” and his standard answer would be, “Purdy sore.” And then there came a time in my life when I could only go up or down a flight of stairs one step at a time because my right knee was purdy sore. My knee expert, Marie, said I could help my knee by putting ice on it. But I could never remember to do it, so, weeks later, I went back and asked for a cortisone shot. She also drained my knee. What does cortisone do? Cortisone not only took away the discomfort in my knee within hours but it fixed my hip at the same time. I can run up and down stairs now like a squirrel. But it is my belief that you can’t pump something into your body to fix one thing, but what it messes up something else? So, what does cortisone do? I’m only asking you because you know about these things. Does cortisone lubricate the joint so it doesn’t bind up or does it enable you to destroy your joints without pain?

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4. I read somewhere that a Harvard report showed that an estimated 1 million people declare bankruptcy each year. Of that, 50% are thought to be due in part to medical expenses. You know, people who don’t bother to have medical insurance. I know someone with a new car who says she can’t afford medical insurance and that it is cheaper to pay the fine --- until you get sick and the community has to put on a baked bean supper that will just barely give you enough money to buy gas to get to the hospital. My brother said that he went to have his teeth cleaned. He couldn't get an appointment to have his teeth cleaned unless he paid for a set of x rays of his teeth that they said they had to do for starters. I checked it out and my vote goes with the dentist. I have my teeth cleaned once or twice a year and they always want to xray them. But I put it off for two or three years. But five years is pushing it and in this case I’m voting in favor of the dentist. Besides the medical issues, there seem to be some unpleasant legal issues that can arise if x rays are not taken and you encounter problems. How do you handle things like this?

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5. One of my friends says that Lonely Planet guides are indispensable on one's first visit to a foreign land. She says that a Lonely Planet guide will tell you what words/phrases/gestures are offensive to the natives. Wouldn’t you think that any average American could come up with enough of these things on his own?

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6. I recently found a hubcap that was on my first car. A 1932 Ford coupe convertible. Over the past day or two I've been thinking a lot about that car. I seem to recall that we opened an umbrella inside on rainy days because the canvas roof leaked. That 32 Ford was only 19 years old in 1951 when I was driving it. My pickup truck with 303,000 miles on it is 24 years old. When I bought my 1919 Model T in 1951 it was 32 at the time and I thought of it as being a very old car. My 1974 Mercedes that I bought in 1974 is already 41 years old. When I was a kid Russ Thomas wanted an old car. But he didn't think of a 1919 car as being old because he was born November 7, 1906. To him, an old car had to be one built in 1910 or so. As I recall, he finally bought an old car that had belonged to a sea captain down below Tenants Harbor. The captain had secured the car to the floor of the garage as if he was taking the car on a voyage. --- Just like you see Larry Oakes secure a car fore and aft to his car carrier with torqued down steel cables.

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7. If you have been in a hospital lately, you might have noticed that the old photographs of doctors smoking pipes that used to be on hospital walls have been replaced by a printed notice that says “Patient’s Rights.” I’m not as concerned about my rights as I am with getting the best medical care possible, so it would appear that the hospital and I now have a different agenda. And can this equality thing be carried to extremes? You might have heard about the constipated man whose hospital roommate had diarrhea. On the average, there was nothing wrong with either one of them.

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8. You probably heard that they quickly caught that armed robber who held up the fried chicken restaurant. Although he escaped with an armload of cash and fried chicken, within an hour he showed up at the emergency room and asked to have his stomach pumped.

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9. Once upon a time some friends who were coming for supper called earlier in the day to tell my wife Marsha that they didn’t eat dessert. At the time, I didn’t eat dessert either. There was a 9 year period in my life when I did not eat cake, pie, ice cream, cookies or donuts. I am not boasting, nor am I complaining. I simply thought you might be encouraged to hear that even a weak person can give up a few of the foods that make life worth living. I stopped eating dessert after a Public Radio Program Managers convention in San Antonio where, in the remarkably short time of three days, I gained six pounds and was no longer able to tie my shoes. You know as well as I do that for some of us “everything in moderation” does not apply when it comes to smoking, drinking and blueberry pie. One bite, one puff, one sip, and we are undone. My wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, is a first class enabler. She loves to cook juicy apple pies and bake fluffy white cakes which she buries beneath thick layers of chocolate frosting, and although I never weakened in nine years, she still put these works of art on the table and she still asked me if I wanted a piece. Years ago I had supper with a very famous jazz musician --- one of Woody Herman’s Four Brothers --- who finished off the meal with one or two bottles of wine. Because he had once been addicted to heroin, a couple of bottles of wine wasn’t really drinking to him. This came to mind when our friends who came for supper told Marsha not to bother to make dessert. And she said, “Oh, I wasn’t planning on any dessert. We’re only having ice cream and ginger cookies.”

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10. Young people today don’t know about moderation. Back when I was a kid we had neighbors who were moderate. One day Alva Harris was lying on his back underneath a car in his garage down there in Tenants Harbor when he saw some boots walking around the car. So Alva hollers out, is that you George? And George says, “Yes, you awful busy today Alva?” And Alva says, “What you need?” And George says, “My house is on fire.”

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