Below is a rough draft of humble's rants for your Maine Private Radio show for September 4, 2016

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While checking a friend’s Facebook page for syntactic irregularities, I chanced to see a link for a recipe for tartiflette. I can’t tell you how upsetting this recipe for tartiflette is to an old Maine man who won't eat anything he can't pronounce. Is this recipe for tartiflette not an example of how our Maine eating habits are being undermined by culinary insurgents? Yesterday quiche. Today tartiflette. Where will it end?

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2. Please don't read my column in the Portland Press Herald and then point your finger at me and tell me I'm getting bitter in my old age. I’d rather believe that I’ve become more insightful.

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3. Are you an old timer? I just realized that I am an old timer. I’ve got to admit it. An old timer is not only someone who was born and brought up in a home that had no refrigerator or telephone or indoor toilet, but who was pretty well along in high school before his mother learned to drive a car.

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4. If you are lucky you have a good neighbor. If you have a good neighbor, how would you describe him or her with words? Although it is a hard thing to do, I’m going to try. Back when I was young two couples got together several evenings every week to play cards. And it came to pass that three out of the four found themselves very much attracted to their friend’s spouse. --- So much so that they wanted to swap. One young man, however, was very pleased with his wife. But, because the other three were all in favor of the swap, he went along with it and married his friend’s wife just to be agreeable. Down on the coast of Maine where I come from, they point at him and tell you that you couldn’t find a better neighbor.

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5. Perhaps you’ve noticed that movies on TV are getting bloodier and bloodier. When someone gets shot, you see half their insides sprayed across the screen in color. Children watching movies are not expected to be distressed by this. But if a rat is shot in the movie or run over and squished by a truck, there is a disclaimer at the end of the movie that the rat was not actually hurt so the kids won’t feel bad. When these little kids get big enough to drive automobiles, will you feel safer on the crosswalk as a human being or a rat?

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6. We all know what we know. And what we know is probably of no interest to anyone else. One day I got to thinking that I am probably one of only three people in St. George, Maine who knows the difference between J. J. Thompson and J. J. Johnson and can tell you what they did. (If I say I am the only one, I risk getting a call from David Mumford.) --- Or I’m probably the only person in town who knows what Stottlemeyer, Japp and Lestrade all have in common. Have you ever stopped to think that the only things we know are the things that matter to us? One night I climbed up into bed and reviewed 1,000 Italian flash cards. I missed about 200 of them, but before I went to sleep I probably knew all but 5. Many would not consider this an exciting way to spend an evening. So --- 100 years from now will it matter if you smiled at your friend who was guilty of the greengrocer's apostrophe?

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7. There are no snowmobiles in Florida or Arizona. So what’s to do for young people who live there who are bent on destruction? Just as sure as snowmobiles go through the ice in Maine, during spring break a girl or two will “go missing” never to return to her books again. We will be told that “She had been at Googin’s Bar until 2 A. M. and told her friends that she was going to crawl back to their room.” One or two of the jocks on spring break will drown or die from alcohol poisoning. It is a statistical fact that if tens of thousands of kids get drunk for five nights in a row, too many of them will not survive. As far as I know, I was the only student at Potsdam State Teachers College to go south during winter break in 1959. Back then, at a state college, it wasn’t the thing to do. But I hated the cold. With next to no money and a lot of unread books in my $5 a week off-campus room, early one morning I stood out on the road and hitchhiked to Florida. I had no place to stay when I got there and a night in a motel was an unthinkable luxury. Hitchhiking was easier 60 years ago. A veteran could put on one’s white sailor hat and a pea coat and go most anywhere there were roads. I can’t remember what I did when I got to Florida although it is probably recorded in my diary for that year. I do know that I didn’t drink and I didn’t go to the beach. If you figure 48 sleepless hours to get down, I probably had just time enough to turn around and came back. Reading my diaries for the years between 1955 and 1965 and seeing what I did when I was 19 gives me very little hope for the survival of the animals we call the human race.

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8. A woman has written a book about what is called vanity sizing. I think the name of the book is Size Matters, and I was very hesitant to look for it in Google. Here’s the plot: Women want to wear a smaller size dress, so the manufacturers are accommodating them. They are putting a smaller size tag on a bigger dress. Women are willing to pay more for a big dress with a small size written on it. Some women, they say, cut the size tags off their clothes so they won’t have to look at them. I don’t know anything about women’s dress sizes but it said that the size 12 that Marilyn Monroe wore 50 years ago would be called a size six now. I read on line that men’s sizes are accurate. If you wear a size 62 suit you can order one through the catalog and you will get a 62. But a woman who orders a size 12 dress over the phone has no idea what will come in the mail. It is costing companies money, because so many women now have to return clothing that they buy through the mail. One man said that his wife didn’t bother to return the dress that she’d ordered from a catalog over the phone. She took it out in the garage and used it as a tarp for her car.

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9. Do you remember Go dog, go? Have you ever read Go Dog Go? I had already served in the military, flunked out of music school and was living in Europe when Go Dog Go was written. But I heard about Go Dog Go because my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, used to teach little kids how to read. So when someone in our home is doing something the others appreciate, we cry: "Go dog go." And now that I think of it, I’ve heard teen age boys call each other “dog” in those movies where they steal cars in front of a hidden camera. They probably got that from reading Go Dog Go. Does this not indicate that our present educational system can boast of at least a modicum of success?

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10. An age is reflected in its literature. Edward Arlington Robinson, who 100 years ago was probably related to almost everybody where I live, wrote about whiskey. Gustaf Fröding wrote about poverty. Poets have written about bubbling brooks and whippoorwills and malleable young men who march off to die. My question to you is, how can any contemporary bard aspire for immortality when our present culture can be summarized in an essay about Viagra and plastic toys from China?

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11. Here’s a rare email that came my way a while back. The heading was, “Courier delivered Viagra.” Yes, it said, courier delivered Viagra. Can you envision in your mind a situation so critical, so pressing, that one would pay extra to have Viagra delivered by courier? Look closely and you’ll see vague specters, huddled miserably on the front steps. Their faces brighten at the distant drumming of hoof beats. A dispatch rider, leather bag over his shoulder, gallops into the dooryard. Without dismounting, he throws himself forward in the saddle, extends a clipboard, and says, “Please sign here.”

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