Below is a rough draft of humble's rants for your Maine Private Radio show for September 11, 2016

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I seem to recall printing on my Facebook page one of my radio rants in which I mentioned Viagra. I now see Viagra ads popping up on the side of my screen. Speak of the devil and he walks in. Have you given this any thought? Write on your Facebook page about racing cars or expensive violins and that’s what you’re going to see in ads on your computer screen. Guess what. I'm going to mention van Gogh paintings on my Facebook page every time I think of it. That way the ads in my sidebar will only contain colorful post-impressionistic paintings. And if you know the difference between impressionistic paintings and post-impressionistic paintings, you know more than I do.

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2. Yes. Here’s the radio rant in which I mentioned Viagra. You might have heard this on last week’s show. I said, 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.” And --- ever since I printed that rant on my Facebook page, Viagra commercials have been popping up on my computer screen. Be careful what you say. Everything can come back to haunt you.

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3. My wife would like me to get rid of a lot of valuable metal I store in and around my barns. I recently tried to sell my 1949 Chevrolet that is in back of the henhouse rusting into the ground. It is a wonderful 1949 Chevrolet. I used to drive it to Rochester in 1957 when I was taking clarinet lessons from Mr. Ossick at the Preparatory Department at the Eastman School of Music. You can see on my Facebook page a picture of me, the salesman, and the two young people who don’t seem to be all that interested in what I have to sell. But my wife has to give me credit for trying. It is obvious to anyone looking at the picture that I am trying to make Ezra Sassaman an offer he can't refuse. So if my wife says anything to you about all the junk on this farm, you can tell her, "Well, he's trying."

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4. There are 4 or 5 men working on the house next door and I'll be glad when they have finished and move on. One built a new chimney, which surprised me because when I owned that house I had that chimney lined at great expense. It makes me wonder if the contractor is doing work that really doesn't need to be done. The chimney might have looked old from the outside, but it had a new lining on the inside so it was a safe chimney. Yes, I'll be glad when they have finished and have moved on because it is very distracting. No work is getting done on this farm because hours are spent simply standing around or lying around and looking at the men who are working. There are acres of fields here that need to be grazed, but every time I look out the window I see all of the cow friends, right up as close to the north fence as they can get, all hanging out, standing in a row, watching the men work on the house. Anyone who knows anything about cows will tell you that cows are very nosey people.

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5. After relishing Slim Galliard on Youtube, I opened a link beside it that said Lindy Hop which is obviously a dance for accomplished acrobats. The man throws the woman over his head and some women can even flip the men upside down. The Lindy Hop is no more than a maniacal frenzied version of what we used to call jitterbugging. The Lindy Hop was so interesting I watched three or four more clips and even posted one on my Facebook page. Well, David wrote right back that he loved the dancing but the band was most unfortunate. Hey, that’s OK. Turn off the sound and just watch it. The Lindy Hop films are just the opposite of The humble Farmer television program. The humble Farmer television program is better when you wrap a blanket around the screen and just listen.

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6. The email said, “She tore her ACL this summer but still managed to travel. … in France, she proceeded to break her wrist.” If you’re a parent who has a kid involved in sports you already know what an ACL is. Because I could never afford to have children I had to look up ACL to learn that it is a ligament in the knee. If you have an opinion on sports you shouldn’t be surprised to hear that I do, too. The man who gave me the garage door I open every morning shuffled through life on injured knees. He told me he hobbled because his knee joints had been destroyed playing football in high school. This is neither surprising nor worthy of mention. But --- he said that given the chance, he would do it all over again which still amazes me. Being a spindly, wimpy little kid I was always the last one chosen to be on any team if I were tolerated at all. As a result, I was never injured by others. The only time I felt accepted by the group was when I accidentally cut off my right shin bone while chopping down the tree that had eaten my kite.

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7. Have you ever been fumbling around with some project, not really knowing what you were doing, or simply wondering why what you were trying to do was not happening? Just about that time one of the Lemme Show Ya boys looks over your shoulder, and if you are not careful, you will be elbowed aside and someone who thinks he knows more about the project than you do will be digging you deeper into the hole. To be sure, there are some very clever people like my brother who intentionally fumble just so the person looking over their shoulder will finally scream, “For heaven’s sake --- give me that wrench and let me do that for you.” For over 50 years my brother has polished this skill and long ago mastered the art of standing back while some hapless dubber of a Lemme Show Ya Boy sweats himself deeper and deeper into some inextricable mess. You know as well as I do that it is hard not to want to get right in there when someone asks you how to fix the catch on the dishwashing machine so it won’t unhook itself and shut off half way through the rinse cycle, but today we are going to salute those who are strong enough to turn their backs and walk away. I recently witnessed an example of the powerful IQ and maturity it takes to do this. Please listen closely. I handed my digital camera to Steve, who was sitting next to me at the breakfast table, I said that there were 172 pictures in that camera that I’d like to erase and asked if he knew how to do it. Steve, who used to teach psychology at Penn State, proved that he is a brilliant man, because he handed the camera back to me and said, “I don’t know a thing about it.”

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8. Almost every day I treat myself to a newspaper blog. Although the newspaper articles are not that interesting in themselves, they are carefully chosen with the intent of pushing the reader’s buttons and therein lies their value. We often read on these pages that child molesters should be shot or put in jail for life. --- Probably because very few of the people writing the letters admit to being child molesters. But we have yet to read in any letter on this blog that people who drink and drive --- and endanger entire families --- should be shot or put in jail for life. Can you tell me why?

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9. It is no secret that I read Harlequin Romances. To the best of my knowledge I have never read one in English and would consider it a waste of my time to do so. But, read anything in Dutch, Swedish, French or German and you’re talking world literature. Anne Eames sent me one of her Harlequin Romances in five languages. I have read it many times in all of those five languages. Did you know that Italian is easier for An American to read than Spanish? One winter I read the Italian version, paragraph by paragraph with the Dutch version to help me with my Italian vocabulary, which still needs much work. This came to mind when a professor friend at Bowdoin mentioned Moliere. I told him that I envied his ability to read Moliere in the original because I love Moliere. I read French on the sixth grade Harlequin Romance level and you know that we must lose a lot of Moliere’s subtleties and cleverness in the English translation. Because you have read the same work in two or perhaps three languages, you know that books are not translated word for word. From reading this same book and practically memorizing it in five or so languages I have also learned that translations even differ in their cultural and social nuances --- so much so, that should any young Dutchman read the Spanish version of the one I’m working on now he would be on the next train to Madrid.

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10. Here’s a follow up on my comments about the terrible tight shoes that women and even some men, feel obligated to wear. It’s an email from a professional speaker, a woman who appears on stage several times a week in front of many audiences. She writes: “My chiropractor has advised me to take a golf ball to my speaking engagements -- to make my feet feel better in high heels. He suggests that I put the golf ball under one foot, put slight pressure on it and roll it back and forth lengthwise, and then do the same for the other foot. He says this exercise stretches ligaments and loosens up joints in the 22 bones that play a role in pain associated with wearing heels. Since I've been going to him and using this exercise, my feet do feel better in dress shoes -- although I would still prefer to wear sneakers if I could get away with it!” Here’s an educated, intelligent professional woman who pays a chiropractor to help her eliminate pain when there would be no pain if she would wear a pair of sneakers. I’m the humble farmer at gmail dot com. Will you please tell me, what in the world is she thinking?

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