Below is a rough draft of humble's rants for your Maine Private Radio show for February 7, 2016

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1. If you were lucky, a few years ago you might have seen Red Mitchell and Roger Kellaway and Brad Terry at some club in Manhattan. You know who I’m talking about, anyway. Brad Terry was rehearsing for a concert with a group of high school kids, and one trumpet player couldn’t get the intro right on Fascinating Rhythm. So when everyone else had left, Brad worked with this kid for two hours, and finally said, “Well, you’ve got it perfect for the concert tomorrow. And the kid said, “I’m not playing the concert. I only came in to help out with the rehearsal.”

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2. I was just looking at a little lizard/salamander thing clinging to the side of the garage. It had two eyes and a mouth and two front feet and two back feet and I couldn't help but think that when all is said and done we haven't come all that far. And Billy Anderson said, “did you notice how big the mouth is in comparison to the rest of the animal?”

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3. A friend of mine, who lives with his two daughters, told his sister that he was looking for someone special. She said, "I don't know why my brother needs somebody special. He's already got his two kids --- he could round out that little group with anybody for a weekend."

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4. Dr. Olga says: we keep people in their place through humor. We also advance our cause and make friends through humor. Abraham Lincoln was a master at making people laugh to get his way. My brother could make my mother laugh when he was only 3 or so years old. He used it to the people's advantage when he was in the Maine State Legislature. You probably already know that no matter what their topic, speakers usually start their presentations with at least an attempt at humor. Over the past 33 years I’ve spoken to hundreds of audiences. I wonder why I never thought of starting off with something that would make people laugh.

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5. St. George, Maine is right infested with artists so I wasn’t surprised to hear that Winky’s daughter had posed nude for an artist all last winter. I asked Winky why in the world he had ever let her do that and he said, “Why not? He had a stove in the studio.”

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6. If you’d like to check in with us at the farm in St. George Maine --- see the cows and apple trees and how I plant my garden --- you should be able to find the televised version of this program by Googling Robert Karl Skoglund YouTube. Thank you for not only listening but looking. --- Not many women do it, but Winky told me that on the day before their marriage his bride-to-be told him about all of her previous affairs. I said, “That took a lot of courage.” Winky said, “It took a lot of memory.”

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7. Years ago while talking about the necessity of having seatbelts on trains and busses, I was drawn into an on-air discussion that dragged on so long that even my friends threatened to turn me off. When several Russian tourists were recently killed on a bus that rolled over in Israel, I got back on my soapbox again. Seatbelts would have probably saved all of those people. Can you imagine living in a country so backward that children would be permitted to ride to school in busses not fitted with seatbelts? Dr. Rich Komp, the well-traveled solar guru, told me that each country has its own rules for riding on busses. I remember seeing live chickens being brought on a bus in Morocco. And fifty years ago when, as an inexperienced traveler, I boarded a London bus with two huge suitcases, the conductor said to me, “You may put them up there. Try to do so without injuring anyone.” Rich says that one time while riding a bus in Nicaragua, he was half way to his destination before he was able to get all the way in through the back door.

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8. What are you doing right this minute? I’m the humble farmer at gmail dot com and I’d like to know what you do when you listen to this program. ---- My friend solar guru Rich Komp is in demand at universities all over the world. He has helped people in England, Europe, Africa, Central America, South America, and even me here in St. George, Maine. Very soon he’ll be going to Rwanda and, as a result, he gets more than a few emails from Africa. You can well believe that some are hoax emails and some are viruses. Rich says he knows which emails are real because they don’t offer to pay him.

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9. Do you know about Facebook? What has Facebook ever done for you? Introduced you to new friends? I’m a slave to my Facebook. Because I have many well-educated friends, some of whom are also very intelligent, and many intelligent friends, some of whom are also well-educated, I already have more mentors on my Facebook page contributing to my education than I can handle. So when friends suggest that I add one of their friends I check out his/her qualifications rather carefully. Unless there is someone out there who is of the caliber of my present mentors and teachers I don’t need any more.

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10. Do you know several languages? For the past couple of months, my bedtime read-myself-to-sleep reading has been detective books in Dutch. The detective’s name is de Cock with see oh see kay. I read these Dutch detective books over and over. When I don’t know a word, I put it on a flash card and I learn these words on the flash cars out of context. One word I've learned is the Dutch word for baby cows. Every time I go through the flash cards and see that word I visualize baby cows. My father, who was brought up in Sweden, told me that when he was a little boy the Swedish word for disciples was close to that of lion cubs, so when he heard the Sunday school teacher talking about Jesus and his disciples, he saw a man surrounded by lion cubs. When I was little, I can remember singing, "Sleeping heavenly peas" because when I was five I knew what peas were but had never heard of peace. Last night while reading in de Cock with my newfound knowledge --- that is, the Dutch word for baby cows --- I came to the part near the end of the book where, because he does not yet know who the murderer is, de Cock gets a pain in his feet that moves slowly upwards into his baby cows. --- oh, his calves.

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11. My cousin Truman Hilt tells me that there are so many people named Jimmy Smith that they even have a Jimmy Smith convention down south somewhere . Perhaps North Carolina? Hundreds of people show up. Cousin Truman says that could be awful confusing, unless everyone wore a name tag. (951207)

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