Below is a rough draft of humble's rants for your Maine Private Radio show for November 15, 2015.

+

1. Was it Kendall Morse who asked Nick Appolonio, “What's the difference between a violin and a viola?” Nick, who heats his home with wood, said, “The viola burns longer.” You know that I played bass in jazz and dance bands for years. Think of all the extra heat I can get out of my bass.

+

2. Little public service announcement here. Beware of the clothing donation scam. Our friend David just received a call from a charity asking him to donate some of his clothes to the starving people throughout the world. He told them to buzz off! Anybody who fits into your average American’s clothing isn't starving!

+

3. Dr. Rich Komp, who travels to some very remote rural places on this planet to teach people how to build photo voltaic solar panels, says he visited one place that had a very practical religion. They had a big religious ceremony just before they first activated the solar panels, and everyone brought gifts for the gods and piled them all around the unit. After the ceremony, the people picked up all the gifts that the gods hadn’t taken and took them home.

+

4. You have seen movies where the hero and the girl struggle up out of an ash filled volcanic crater. As they reach the summit, they gaze into each other’s eyes and, unable to control themselves, snap together like the waist band in a new pair of pajamas. You have seen movies where, after crawling through a million gallons of spilled crude oil, the hero and the girl meld into one glorious black glob. To bring it closer to home, perhaps you have welcomed your spouse in a similar manner when he comes home from 12 hours of baiting lobster traps. But --- today when I walked up to my loving wife, held out my arms, and said, “Can I have a hug?” she looked me up and down and said, “Are you clean?” Should I assume from this that the honeymoon is over?

+

5. This may interest you if you eat a pill every day for any reason. A few minutes ago I realized that my sight was quite clear. Nothing fuzzy on the sides. Since my operation last month my sight has been clear. It took me all this time to notice it. When Dr. Cobean patched the extra hole in my gut, he told me to stop eating those pills that are supposed to curb stomach acid. Omeprazole, they are called, I think. I haven't eaten one of those omeprazole things since a week or so before my stomach operation, and since then that fuzzy feeling you get when you know something is not quite right in your head has been gone. I've had that fuzz in the head for at least a year now and perhaps longer. And now, the fact that I no longer have it, must be because I no longer eat those omeprazole pills. When Marsha and I were live-in caregivers for 94-year-old Doris, we had to make sure she ate 15 or so pills every day. It was my impression at the time that she was over medicated. Anyway. If you are eating pills for this or that and more pills for something else --- well, I suppose we should all thank you for keeping our economy strong. I'm no longer doing my fair share, and I'm seeing things a bit more clearly because of it.

+

6. One day I had trouble peeling the paper off some sticky tape at Window Dressers where I volunteer some mornings. The girl working next to me offered to do it for me and showed me her very sharp thumbnail. While she was picking away at the paper, I held up my two hands and said, "Look at my nails." After a while she determined that the nails on my left hand were short, and the nails on my right hand quite a bit longer. "Do you know why the nails on my right hand are longer than the nails on my left hand?" "You play guitar?" "No." This is why the nails on my right hand are longer than the nails on my left hand. That morning, while the clerk at the hardware store was looking up the part for my pump, I rushed out on the back steps and clipped the nails on my left hand. I didn't have time to cut the nails on my right hand because the clerk had completed his chore and was waiting for me inside. The next time I am outside and have nothing to do, I'll cut the nails on my right hand. If you have read any number of detective novels you know that the solution to many murder mysteries has turned on less.

+

7. Longtime radio friend John Hammer points out that one of the good things about driving through any retirement community in Florida is that you will very rarely get caught behind a school bus. Here’s another benefit. If you should happen to get rammed in traffic, you are likely to be in a much larger and heavier car.

+

8. Do you heat your domestic hot water with an oil boiler? We used to. Now our domestic water is heated by the rays from the sun. We have an 80 gallon electric hot water heater that is powered by the PV panels on our henhouse. And we pre-heat the water in that with solar water heaters on the side of the house. Two ways to save. Yes, we save money because we don't have to buy much oil nowadays. And we have so much solar energy left over, I also use it as radiant heat in my cellar/office floor. How can you beat getting something for free? Why don’t more people do it? Old Maine men are notoriously stingy. The stuff they build with their own hands looks very Mickey-Mouse. And they might have had to tear it apart four or five times and put it back together again before they could get it to work. You can laugh at it. But it always works.

+

9. Something I just said reminds me of a story I heard 30 or 40 years ago. It concerned a man and his adult son who were sailing into Tenants Harbor on their yacht, looking for a chance to tie up. The skipper asked his son, who was up in the bow, if he saw a mooring that they could tie up to. The son said he saw a few moorings up ahead but they were all kind of shabby. And the old man said, “Get used to it. Everything in Maine looks shabby --- but it always works.

+

10. Imagine how startled you’d be if you just learned that Johnny Cash did not do time in Folsom Prison. Did the fact that I’m probably not the only person who was misled help Johnny Cash sell 90 million records? On the same page on the Internet I also learned that Merle Haggard wrote Okie from Muscogee as a satire. Everybody knows that song, Okie from Muscogee, and it is only now that I realize why I have heard of Merle Haggard. I don’t see how you could not have heard Okie From Muscogee because it was on top of the popularity charts fairly recently --- 1970 or so. I’ll bet you didn’t know that Okie from Muscogee was a satire, either. Listening to songs by Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash, is there really any way to tell?

+