Below is a rough draft of humble's rants for your Maine Private Radio show for April 3, 2016

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1. I have no idea of what we are going to talk about today. When I look through my notes I see that every time I thought of something I wanted to tell you I was interrupted when I was trying to write it down. Four hours later there is no way I can remember what it was I wanted to say. Here’s an example. One morning after taking my shower I stood before the bathroom mirror and saw several long straight red streaks on my side. I immediately recognized the pattern of red lines because the day before I had seen a map of the most popular South American landing strips for aliens. But before I could take notes on what could have turned into a best-selling book I was told in no uncertain terms to stop admiring my body and carry out the trash. Have you ever been able to finish even the simplest of projects at home before you were interrupted by a phone call or a visitor or someone barking imperious commands from the kitchen? Where do suppose you and I would be today if --- after he had written, “When in the Course of human events…” --- someone had hollered, “You get in here and eat before it gets cold.”

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2. Young people today don’t know about moderation. Back when I was a kid we had neighbors who were moderate. One day Alva Harris who owned the garage down in Tenants Harbor was lying on his back underneath a car 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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3. 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. 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 see the damn thing. I'm reminded of 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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4. Do you ever look at my Facebook page? Have you seen the picture of our 30 solar collectors --- the electricity makers --- at the top of the page? Look closely at the picture. You have heard me say that I have enough solar panels. Every year I added 8 more --- 2013, 2014, 2015. And I wasn't planning to add any more because we have enough power now to even use electric heat in April, May and June. But every time I look at the picture at the top of my Facebook page I think I might extend the rack again and get 8 more in 2016 --- just to hide the shabby looking south side of my henhouse. v 5. You might have heard that a new indoor ice rink just opened in Ellsworth, Maine. We are 100 percent in favor of these indoor ice rinks. Because the water is only ¾ of an inch deep it is much easier to retrieve the snowmobiles.

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6. On page 550 of a psychology book one sees the question: “When is Middle Age?” Reading down, we learn that there is no consensus on when middle age begins and ends. But --- people with low socio-economic status tend to report earlier beginnings of middle age and old age. I was more than somewhat distressed to learn this. If income can determine one’s position on this road of life I died of old age back around 1978.

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7. Everyone knows that young folks do not share the same experiences and expectations of mature adults. When polled, young people were still eagerly looking forward to some nebulous form of improvement in all aspects of their lives. But when older people were surveyed, they tended to be more satisfied with their health, finances, work, and relationships than young people. In other words, older people threw in the towel years ago when they realized that right now, today, this is as good as it gets.

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8. Something to think about. Thank goodness we have whiskey. If it were not for whiskey, you would be unable to buy a present for the man who has everything. But why would a man who has everything want to muddle his mind with whiskey?

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9. Although man no longer has an uncontrollable urge to climb trees and drag his knuckles on the ground, his day to day life is still driven by the powerful genes of his hunting forbearers. If we can believe anthropologists, men once spent their days sharpening spears and planning new hunts --- when not actually killing and carrying home food for their little families. Today this need to venture forth in search of life’s necessities manifests itself in the Saturday morning garage sale. I’m addicted to the hunt. I go every Saturday. Even though there hasn’t been room for a man’s pickup in his cluttered garage for years, vestiges of primeval adrenalin drive him out before dawn with the knowledge that today, for sure, he will find a grieving widow who will sell her husband’s brand new set of Craftsman sockets or his Husqvarna chainsaw for two bucks.

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10. We read that up in Dexter, Maine a 78-year-old man came out of a grocery store, put his groceries in someone else’s car, and drove it home. It was the same color as his car and his key fit exactly. Someone has probably already written a country and western song about not using your key to start someone else’s car so I don’t need to. But it does remind me that men of all ages are easily confused. Years ago when I was playing for dances at the Blue Goose in Belfast, I would often look down from the bandstand and see forgetful men who were only 40 leave the hall with their neighbor's wife. Does the fact that your key fits in the switch entitle you to drive off in your neighbor’s car?

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11. Listen to the caption on this junk mail. “Are you ever self-conscious on a first date?” Self-conscious on a first date? Back when I was a kid I knew people from Port Clyde, Maine who weren’t even conscious on their first date.

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12. David sent me a story in which someone mentions their 3,000 square foot apartment. It reminds me of the Swedish girls I used to correspond with 50 years ago who would tell me that they were a trim 98 kilos and 147 centimeters tall. They might as well have said that when they sat down they covered 3,000 square feet of chair seat because centimeters and square feet mean nothing to this culturally deprived old man. Does this square feet thing mean anything to you? Does anyone care how many square feet there are in your house or anybody else’s house? Can you stand there and look me in the eye and tell me what your house amounts to in square feet? Isn’t it much like saying that the blade on a wind turbine is a long as a football field? There might come a day when I’ll ask Google how many feet there are in a football field, square and linear, but I doubt if I’ll have time to do it today. And suppose someone did crunch the numbers and told you that your house was 10,000 square feet. Does that figure really have any meaning if we don’t know how much of that space your spouse, who collects everything, has allocated to foot paths? Which reminds me that I do know that the original part of my old garage where I keep a couple of Model T Fords is 24 by 24. I know this because I had to saw out some 24-foot two by eights to hold the building together. So that means I have a 576-square foot garage. When the day comes that I’ve stacked Model T parts to a height of 8 feet, my wife will tell you that I have 4600 cubic feet of antique iron that she would like you to haul away.

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