Maine Reality TV --- The humble Farmer's TV show on YouTube.

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In February, 2017, I paid ASCAP $200. or so for the right to run this radio show for you on the Internet. Although we are not starving, if you would show your appreciation by donating a small contribution to my PayPal account, you would earn an inedible spot on The humble Farmer's wall of fame.

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Rants February 19, 2017

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1. One of my friends, who plays senior softball, said, “Fifty years ago I played to win. I now play in a manner that will enable me to walk into the house when I get home.”

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2. If you are lucky, you have some very clever and accomplished people among your Facebook friends. One of my friends is an artist who says that he destroyed one of his paintings when he discovered that he --- well, let me quote him --- “ended up destroying the thing after I really found out how little I knew about painting.” Destroying your own work is the mark of a dedicated and accomplished artist. I can't believe that I would destroy anything I wrote, no matter how bad it was, if some editor would pay me $25 so they could print it.

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3. Do you know how to tell if your friend who paints pictures is a real artist? You frame their Christmas cards and hang them on the wall of your office. I wouldn’t want to be an artist in St. George, Maine. The competition is too fierce. Over the past few years two of my artist neighbors in St. George have been asked by the President of the United States to paint his White House Christmas card.

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4. Yesterday I posted two simple sentences on Facebook: I wrote: "Did you know that puppies have a critical socialization period that only lasts until they are around four months old? This is an interesting thing. I'd never given this any thought. It seems to approximate the language acquisition window of children." You would think that only a Philadelphia lawyer could misconstrue the key word "it" and extract another meaning from the sentence. Not so. This is why you get five or ten page contracts written in fine print when you buy anything. The people doing business know that if it is possible to find two meanings in any sentence, someone will be clever enough to do it. I do know that when I told stories on the stage, many of my stories were open ended and each person in the audience was left to come up with their own punch line. I intended to leave the story open ended. But if you're going to make a comment on Facebook or write a newspaper column that can't be turned into something other than you intended, forget trying to explain it. Give up. You don't have five pages of fine print to explain what you are trying to say.

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5. I read that the English and Dutch eat too much meat. Some scientists have figured out that eating meat is not as good for the planet as eating veggies because you have to put too much valuable grain and hay into the cow to produce the meat. In Holland you can’t turn around but what you see a small farm sporting half a dozen fat cows that chomp here and there on carefully manicured fields. But in Maine you can’t think in those terms. I see the cow as a friend that eats small trees and bushes and converts into protein things that would soon grow into wild unmanaged forest.

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6. For many years I jumped and wiggled in the front row at exercise class. But because the TV screen is right next to a window which is like having a spotlight in your face, I finally moved back to where I can see the screen but not the window --- which made it easier on my eyes. There, behind a few people for the first time, I noticed that every time the skinny woman on the screen who was conducting the class said to raise a right hand, everyone raised a left hand. Everything on a TV screen is perceived as a mirror image and for most people the visual stimulus is obviously stronger than the verbal. Much to my distress I discovered that I was doing the exact opposite of everyone else in the class. My confusion was a simple matter of conditioning: Any man married to a Type-A woman quickly learns to do what they say and disregard what they do.

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7. When my friend Winky took his wife to the emergency room, the doctor came out and said, “I don't like the looks of your wife At all.” And Winky said, “Me neither, but she's a great cook and really good with the kids.”

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8. When my friend Winky went to the dentist, the dentist said, “Now --- I want you to relax. I’ll have that tooth out in five minutes.” And Winky said, “What’s it going to cost me?” “$285." Winky said, “Wow, $285 is a lot of money for just five minutes.” And the dentist said, “Well, if it would make you happy I can pull it out very slowly.”

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9. 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 and realized long ago that this is as good as it gets.

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10. One day I happened to be standing in the kitchen and I looked at my wife and I said to my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, “Let’s fight, let’s argue about something to see what it’s like.” What do you think she said? “I don’t have time.”

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11. My friend Winky and his wife were in a store and she asked him to help her pick out a bathing suit. She asked him if she should get a bikini or an all-in-one and Winky told her to get the bikini --- because she’d never get it all in one.

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