Below is a rough draft of humble's rants for your Maine Private Radio show for October 23, 2016

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1. I read a web page entitled, “How to Make Your Home Unattractive to Thieves.” Well, that’s an easy one. How to make your home unattractive to thieves. Be poor.

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2. Speaking of the law of inverted averages, have you noticed that every day there seems to be more and more famous people that nobody has ever heard of? You can’t turn on your TV but what they are interviewing some famous baseball player or movie star or singer that seems to have materialized already famous like Venus on the half shell. Thousands of people show up to see these famous unknown people perform outside in blizzards or in theaters that collapse or in other venues where people carry guns to protect themselves and end up shooting two or three of their neighbors who throw popcorn or make too much noise texting. I don’t know about you, but I now live in an unfamiliar world where going to bed when the sun goes down looks more and more attractive.

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3. Suppose a good old friend said to you, “Spend two weeks with us in our condo in Portugal. We’ll help with travel.” Sound like an offer you can’t refuse? My wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, did. --- Because she knew that if she left her post, ships would founder on the rocks --- there was no way on this green earth her boss could get along without her for fourteen days. But one thing led to another and it was determined that she would find time to rendezvous in Holland with our generous friends at a later date. Which is why, on a recent cloudy day, I found myself driving a rented car from Holland to Sweden. We think trains are the easiest way to get around in Europe, but the last time we were there visiting friends and relatives, Marsha was already having trouble navigating steps. So we drove the 612 miles from Niekerk to Falkenburg. As usual, Marsha had her eye on the speedometer so she could constantly remind me that the speed limit was 45 and that I was only going 40. --- And, “When it is 45 you can really go 50.” But alas. On many German roads there are no speed limits. So she said, “You should keep up with traffic. Everyone is passing you.” I said, “My dear, we’re going 154.” It is just as well that she still doesn’t know that 154 translates as 95.69115 mph or the next time we go to Portland, I’d hear, “Can’t you at least go 85? You did in Germany.”

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4. If you have driven in Germany you know that you are not as concerned about the road ahead as you are with the NASCAR aficionados who are about to blow you off the road from behind. When I was driving through Germany last week I kept saying to Marsha, “Lookit this one coming lookit this one,” and a car would swoosh by us at 140 plus miles per hour. Have you ever driven in Germany? What happened to you the last time you did?

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5. Perhaps you know that there are only a few stop signs in Northern Europe. They have been replaced by yield signs at traffic circles which facilitate a smoother and more rapid flow of traffic. --- Saves gas. Saves brake linings. True, Maine stop signs might just as well be yield signs as few people ever stop at them. The crumpled back bumper on my truck testifies to the penalty paid by silly folks like me who do. Over the past 40 or so years I’ve probably been struck from behind 6 or 8 times. Just because I stopped at a stop sign. In Maine you might be taking your life in your hands if there is someone behind you and you stop at a stop sign. They expect you’re going to run it and they are always looking left to see if anything is coming so they can run it too.

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6. Years and years ago --- in her halcyon days --- Marsha worked for “Time” in Amsterdam and, in 1960, after flunking out of music school, I hopped a freighter and spent several months sponging off my aunts in Sweden. So, although we are familiar with the languages and customs, every time we go back to Sweden and Holland we see significant changes. If you’ve been running back and forth to Europe to visit relatives for the past 60 years you can understand that too many of our old friends and relatives are no longer there. But some of their great-great grandchildren speak perfect English and think nothing of flying to Hong Kong on business or to Boston to deliver a scholarly paper on language acquisition. Last week when we were there, Marsha’s brother in law, who used to teach Greek and Latin, was about to fly down to Budapest for four days to hang out with friends. I asked some of my young relatives in Sweden why they never came to Maine to visit us. Oh, they’d rather go down to the Canary Islands. Another one of Marsha’s great-nieces in Holland, who was only 17, was going to Thailand to volunteer for something. People who live in Europe are travelers.

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7. Marsha was impressed by the supermarket in Hilversum where her niece shopped. This niece teaches linguistics at the University of Amsterdam. She goes to work every day by bicycle, foot and train. In this grocery store each grocery cart is equipped with a hand scanner. You scan each item as you take it off the shelf and drop it into one of the two large grocery bags you brought from home. At the check-out (there is never a line) the clerk wipes your bank card through your scanner and you are out the door. Should there be a line at the register and there are three people ahead of you, I was told that there is no charge for anything in your cart. Get em in. Get their money. Get em out. The stores where we buy our groceries in Rockland, Maine have got a long ways to go.

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8. We flew in and out of Schiphol. You’ve probably been there and you know it’s where most people land when they go to Holland. You might have experienced, or at least heard of, the endless lines and hurdles one must navigate before being allowed to board an airplane. Did you know that if you request a wheelchair for your spouse when you buy your ticket, it comes equipped with a knowledgeable, smiling minion who whisks you past the lines and through forbidden gates marked “diplomat?” Time is tip money to these sprinting youngsters, so your biggest problem will be trying to breathe as you trot along behind.

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9. The security at Schiphol is strict. When we last went through there in 2009 Marsha was relieved of a Swiss jackknife that had lived, forgotten and previously undetected, in her bag since she worked with Rod Stacey at Maine Teen Camp in South Hiram. Have you been patted down at an airport lately? Because I am 80 I didn’t have to remove my shoes. But you should know that the adroit fingers assigned to my case massaged places that have not been seen by man, woman or child since I was potty trained. Every cubic centimeter of the hidden follicles on my body were caressed with a professionalism that would easily earn that man 30 million votes in any presidential election.

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10. Years ago my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, and I boarded an airplane in London and flew to Boston. There was a nice young man sitting next to Marsha, and naturally she had to ask him what he did. There was always a chance that he might ask her to do something fun and exciting like scrape and paint his house. --- Or clean out his stables. He was not a spy. We used to go to Europe on airplanes from time to time, and I think it is interesting that we never got to sit next to people who say, “I am a spy” when you ask them what they do. Statistically speaking, wouldn’t you think you’d get to meet a spy at least once in every forty or fifty international flights? If you’ve watched any spy movies at all, you know that half of every spy movie consists of a spy-infested airplane taking off in Istanbul and landing with smoking tires at JFK. You know how it always shows the tires smoking in spy movies when those planes touch down. I once mentioned to Marsha that I thought that I would make a good spy. I’m such an inconspicuous, plain looking old man that no one would ever suspect me. I could get away with anything. She said, “What are you talking about? You’re the only person I’ve ever heard of who has had a sandwich bag checked by security.” Marsha should be in the security business. You can’t get nothing by her.

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