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

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1. A friend of mine is home from a week in the hospital, and the first thing he did was fill out their questionnaire on what he thought of the hospital. His only comment was, "If you ever plan to shove that tube down my nose again, you'd better have bigger people there to install it and a lot more of them."

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2. Have you ever turned on your radio and heard, "eee, eee, eee. Quirrrk, Quirrrk, Quirrrk, myaaap myaaap myaaap?" If you have, there's a good chance you were listening to a popular program where they play sounds you are likely to hear at night anywhere in Maine. If you really enjoy that kind of thing you don't want to miss next week's program, because we've invited the entire radio crew down to St. George Grange for our baked bean supper.

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3. If you’ll stop to think about it, there is little difference between reading and getting drunk; both offer an escape from reality. I put myself to sleep by reading. Some of our friends prepare for their hours in the sack by getting drunk. One envies philosophers; they have at their fingertips the wisdom of the ages from multiple cultures. Unless we read, we have to be satisfied with the hit or miss rules for behavior that are dished out by the likes of popular TV shows. What does one read when one does want to enrich one's life? This morning The Bible comes to mind as does The Last Don. Proverbs is an example of the Biblical wisdom tradition, and raises questions of values, moral behaviour, the meaning of human life, and right conduct. So do The Godfather and The Last Don. The Last Don comes to mind, not only because I picked it up yesterday and started to read it for the third time in a year or so, but because I have long considered The Godfather a treasure trove if one is seeking wisdom. Because you know more about this kind of thing than I do, you could easily write an article comparing the philosophy of shepherds of 2,500 years ago with the Mafia. Be slow to anger. Take it easy. My father used to say, "Take it easy." Always remain calm. Never let an adversary know that you are about to put them to the sword. Mind your own business: avoid confrontation. Don't raise your voice. Take care of your chosen people. Yes, one could talk about this for a long time. What do you think? I’m the humble farmer at gmail dot com.

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4. From time to time you see something on television that commands your attention. What would you do if you heard that at least 145 people in 16 states have been sickened by salmonella-tainted tomatoes, and then you looked up at the screen and saw a panic-stricken supermarket employee hauling cases of the deadly tomatoes out of the store on a handcart? I laughed. 145 people get sick and it is prime time national news and they throw the product out of the store? Suppose there was a product on store shelves that killed 400,000 Americans every year. Suppose that the product was responsible for one in every five deaths in the United States? Suppose that the product was sold by our friends who belong to the Chamber of Commerce, and Rotary, and who sit up front in church every Sunday. If there were such a product, what do you think our government should do about it? I bet they’d subsidize the farmers who grow it.

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5. Why would you send a sympathy card to someone who is not one of your favorite people when I don’t even send cards to people I really like? I’m not a fan of cards. I don’t believe in sending cards. Seventy years ago my grandmother had a card that she sent back and forth to some friend. My grandmother’s parents were born in Aberdeen so she was 100 percent Scotch. This card was called a Scottish greeting card and it circulated. Every year grammie would get the same card back from the friend that she’d sent it to the year before. And back when I still sent cards to people I used to take a card that someone had sent me and cross the name off the bottom and send that. Why not? Is there anything wrong with crossing the name off a card someone sent you and sending it to someone else? I don’t believe in cards. One card costs what --- a dollar or more now. Who can afford to spend a dollar for a card that someone will look at and then perhaps throw in the trash and not even the paper recycling bin? Be honest with me. On your birthday or Christmas --- wouldn’t you much rather open the envelope and find a dollar bill instead of a card?

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6. How often do you have a good laugh? I mean really roaring? I was really laughing the other day. Richard Sassaman sent me a tape of this radio program for January 6, 1993 and I laughed and laughed at the things the man was saying between Serge Chaloff and Bob Baird. You understand that I can’t very well remember telling, on January 6, 1993, about the gorilla who saved a zoo keeper by performing the Heimlich maneuver, so this was like listening to 60 minutes of great music and very funny commentary that I was really hearing for the first time. I was reading you excerpts from a paper called the Tabloid Tattler --- a paper so good that it could not possibly succeed. Years ago when I used to make this program --- way back when Maine Public Radio’s studios were still in Orono --- I used to make myself a little cassette tape to save. I never listened to any of them but I’ve got a couple of hundred of them in a cardboard box in my office. Do you have a box of old humble tapes under your bed? For many years a lot of people did. If I ever live long enough I’d like to burn my old cassettes onto CDs so I can play them when I need a laugh. In 1993 I was telling about Liz Taylor giving advice on how to be happy with your spouse. A parallel in the animal kingdom would be a fox giving a lecture on the merits of vegetarianism.

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7. I didn’t start to learn French until I was around 65 years old and at present I can read French on perhaps a sixth grade level. In other words, I can read, with a startling amount of comprehension, Harlequin Romances and the French subtitles we get on three television channels. Of course I can’t understand spoken French --- unless it is on a tape or CD or, even easier, an American speaking French. Because no one can understand a French person speaking French. But --- I started to learn French after accidentally getting off a train in a small town in France, being trapped there overnight, and almost starving to death. Right then, when I came home, I started to learn French. Knowing what a cheerful, friendly person I am, it might surprise you to hear that I was studying French just to be spiteful. I was learning to speak French just to be nasty. I was resolved to learn some French just so --- the next time I was in France --- the French would have to listen to me talk French with a Maine accent.

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8. It can be statistically proven that people come in three sizes: large, average and small. Because most of the women used in television commercials are no more than skin stretched on very small bones, the American woman has been conditioned to place herself in the large category. You can't look at a television commercial without realizing that someone is trying to make women dissatisfied with the way they look, smell or feel. This is why even the most sensible woman might be tempted to lose weight --- to diet. Have you ever lived with a person who eats nothing but salad? After a week you beg them to wolf brownies or at least put enough chocolate sauce on their lettuce to make them sociable. A St. George man tells me that his wife dieted faithfully for three weeks without losing a pound. She got so cranky that he started avoiding her --- he even fell asleep drinking his nightly hot chocolate in front of the TV and stayed on the couch all night. And night after night, his wife lost weight. It was two or three weeks before a doctor figured out why. The television ads for weight loss had made her so sensitive to calories that she'd been gaining half a pound every night just by smelling the hot chocolate on his breath.

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9. If you were going to have a television show about animals what would you call it? Would you have a contest just to see what kind of quirky names people would come up with? And what would you call your guests --- the pet lovers? Petaphiles? You can be sure someone would suggest that you call your show: Meat the pets. That’s m e a t. Which reminds me, you know I’ve got cow friends and you’ve heard me ask many times, why would anyone spend time and money feeding and raising and getting to love a pet that you can’t eat?

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10. Did you see that documentary on TV about the commando who had always wanted to be a woman who became a woman? He gave up the commando business and was accepted for a job at the Library of Congress. I think this got attention from the press because when they found out he’d become a woman, the job was no longer his --- or hers. If you are a man who enjoys being a man or a woman who enjoys being a woman, be thankful. From what I saw on TV it is painful to have a brain that wants to be in another body. Anyway, the man in this documentary was not only a tough commando, he was in charge of the toughest commandos -- and I’m talking about the high IQd highly educated tough tough tough James Bond or Steve Waterman type of men who go into places where nobody can go and do things that can’t be done. I saw a clip of this commando being recognized for his service by the top people in our government today. I also saw clips of her walking along with long hair and a dress and you would really never suspect that this quiet, well-groomed woman could, in a matter of seconds, kill six football players with her bare hands. Wouldn’t you like to be peeping out from behind a car in a dark parking lot and see two punks come up to her and say, “Lady, if you don’t hand over your purse we’re going to take it away from you.”

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11. The other morning I was shocked --- no, I was actually horrified when I looked into the wash basin and saw half a dozen hairs in there about three inches long. --- I’d just finished washing my feet.

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