Below is a rough draft of humble's rants for your Maine Private Radio show for March 13, 2016

+

1. Some people don’t like wind generators. You see them all over in Germany and Denmark, especially right by the water, but a lot of people in this country say that they are ugly. Isn’t ugly a relative term? You don’t hear people in Europe calling wind generators ugly. How can we make these wind generators more acceptable to the American public. My old next door neighbor, Gramp Wiley, says there would be no problem with wind generators in this country if Bank of America and McDonald’s could put advertising signs on them.

+

2. Do you laugh when you see trucks coming down the road with Oversize Load written on them? You know what I’m talking about. There’s something hanging out of both sides of the truck like a big piece of machinery or a half section of one of those manufactured houses. Here’s the way that works. You’re driving along. All of a sudden you see this huge truck coming toward you with something hanging off each side of it, and you say to yourself, “My word, what is this in the middle of the road?” And five or ten seconds after that you see a little car in front of it carrying a sign that says, “Oversized Load.”

+

3. Why did you go to college where you did? What was it that made you choose to go to Potsdam instead of Fredonia? Did I tell you about --- I think it was Paul who told me why he went to Stanford instead of Harvard? Harvard sent him pictures of ice on the bend in the Charles River. Stanford sent him a picture of girls in bikinis at Lake Lagunita. Paul said that it was an easy decision.

+

4. One day when we were talking with friends I chanced to mention that my wife does not get as tired as I do. My wife looked at me and said, “No one gets as tired as you do.”

+

5. I read somewhere that you always eat more when you have company. You might believe that and you might not believe that. And your opinion probably depends on where you were born and brought up. Anyone brought up on a farm on the coast of Maine is very likely to believe that you always eat more and you eat faster when you have company. That’s why a Maine farmer always keeps at least two pigs. v 6. If you’ve watched my television program, you might notice that when I show a film of a dog, I have little letters on the screen beneath the dog. And the letters say, “Real dog. Not a paid actor.” What do you think of these letters on the screen that say, “Real person. Not a paid actor.” Don’t you think it is very important for my audience to know that doggie is chasing the stick of his own free will and has not been trained and remunerated to do so.

+

7. When you wake up in the morning and the sun is shining and the birds are singing, what one thing --- more than anything --- makes you glad to be alive? A cup of coffee so you can get through the day?

+

8. At my age, multi tasking is necessary because I have so much to do. For me multi tasking is taking a nap while I have an ice pack on my knee. I didn’t realize that I was really getting along until I went to the doctor and was given a form to fill out in the waiting room. On the bottom of the form it said, “Cause of death.”

+

9. If you used to teach school, you know that not everything about being a school teacher is something you like to think about. If you’ve ever taught school, you know that it has its bad moments. Let me give you an example, and then you tell me if anything like this has ever happened to you. You are pushing a shopping cart through your favorite grocery store when a hunch backed old woman comes teetering and tottering up to you and says, “Hello Mr. Skoglund. I’d like you to meet my youngest granddaughter Alice. Alice is doing post-doc in linguistics at MIT. You know, I’ve told her many, many times how much I enjoyed having you as my third grade teacher.”

+

10. Do you notice things that some people might not see or be aware of? Have you ever been in a place where they had postcards from all over the world pasted up on the wall? It might have been in your favorite restaurant or in your doctor’s office. Take a good look at those postcards the next time you are there and you will see cards from Warsaw, London, The Virgin Islands, Peru, Singapore, Rome, Smogen, Vigiland and Key West. I would like you to notice that nobody but nobody has ever sent a postcard boasting that they just spent a weekend camping in Machias.

+

11. You’ve heard people say about one of your neighbors, “He’s peculiar.” Because you are probably smarter than some of your neighbors, you know that being peculiar might only mean that you are a bit smarter than your neighbors. Yes. You are probably one of these people we’re talking about here so you know what I’m saying. Yes, you knew I was going to give you my example. Mr. Dalrymple, who was 95 or so years old the last time I looked, doesn’t wear a belt. Mr. Dalrymple holds up his pants with a fathom or so of pot warp. You know, the rope that they attach to lobster traps. If you saw an old man running around with a fathom of pot warp for a belt would you say he was peculiar? No, he isn’t. At 95 he’s managed to adapt to these modern times better than any of us. Mr. Dalrymple says when he wears L. L. Bean suspenders or a belt he has to take them off when he goes through the metal detectors at airports. Now no one hassles him and he walks right through.

+

12. Can you speak sign language? When I was 21 I had a deaf friend so I learned how to speak in sign language. I used to be pretty good at it. Like a lot of deaf people, my friend could read lips and knew what girls were whispering to each other across the room. He was like Mel Gibson in that movie where he could hear what women were thinking. That was 60 years ago so I’m not very good at signing now, but last summer some friends were visiting and the son who works at a museum in Norway could talk sign language. We were sitting around a table where his mother, whose name is Fein, was telling a story at the same time he and I were going at each other with sign language. And at last Fein scowled at us and said, “Will you two please be quiet while I’m talking?”

+