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

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Rants April 23, 2017

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1. Many years ago, when people were still killing each other with the jawbone from an ass, governments were formed to eliminate anarchy. Even if one king at the top made all the rules, at least there was some semblance of order. With anarchy, people constantly fight among themselves. With government, people are organized so entire countries can constantly fight among themselves.

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2. Whenever I write a word Facebook hasn't seen before, it is underlined in red. If I write habitit it is underlined in red. If I write habitat, it is OK. What I'm trying to say is that the spell checker in Facebook gives me tat for tit.

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3. I am grateful for this letter from Carl who writes: Dear humble started listening to you in 2002 on your Friday night radio show and listened to you until you went off the air on Maine public and occasionally saw you on TV but that was very seldom and until today April 22nd 2017 I hadn't heard you in years and just now messing around with my smartphone found your latest website and think it's absolutely great and I'm looking forward to hearing your programs from now on glad to hear you're still on the radio thank you Carl and my wife Patti listeners from way back ! take care now, catch you later ---- I have to thank Carl for that wonderful letter. But 2002 is not way back. In 2002 I’d already been making The humble Farmer radio show for 24 years.

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4. Have you ever seen a ghost? Have you ever seen a stone statue cry? I have seen something that fits in the same category and I am going to tell you about it now. This is not something I would say in a room crowded with strangers, because it would immediately destroy my credibility. But I can tell you what I saw out on the highway yesterday because you have listened to me for years and know that however improbable my story, it is the truth. Listen to this. Yesterday, out on the highway, I saw a Volvo station wagon with no ski or bicycle racks.

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5. Facebook friend Williams says, “I once knew a man who, in his youth, had thrown a live rattler into a group of religious snake jugglers. He said they defied gravity in their haste to exit the premises, thus demonstrating divine intervention.”

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6. Last week I was a bit dizzy and called my doctor for an appointment. Because it was nothing serious, I was told they could see me in a couple of days. When you have an appointment to see your doctor, someone sometimes calls you the day before to make sure that you don't forget it. I just got a call from my doctor’s secretary. Because I'm 81 she was just checking in to see if I was still alive.

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7. My goodness. I just got a friend request from the great-great granddaughter of one of my relations, a man I used to see all the time, lived down the road from just a little bit from here. He was a man I liked. Can you believe this? She’s the great-great granddaughter of one of my old neighbors, a man I knew well, and she’ll never see 50 again. I used to deliver his newspaper. He smoked cigars. When you're 81, it is easier to know who people are if you know who their great-great grandparents were. Around here where I live most anyone is very likely to be a distant relative.

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8. The other day a man well past 70 told me that a woman told him that he was nice looking. He told me that if he'd told her she was nice looking, nowadays it would be constituted as sexual harassment. Years from now social historians will recognize 2016-2017 as the period when the hugging and grabbing activities of a couple of very famous men gave US mores a complete overhaul. I used to hug more women than I do now. My heart would fill with joy when I'd see them and I'd hug them much like you’d hug a good old friend. Nowadays, even though my heart might burst with joy when I see some of my women and men friends, I don't dare hug them anymore. It’s just as well, because even though I might be very fond of them and very glad to see them, they might be just as glad to have me let it go.

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9. I got a copy of one of Terry Pratchett’s books in German and had difficulty reading it. Then I got a copy in English and understood why I couldn’t read it in German. I got the German book from a man from Switzerland who gave it to me when I asked him in my Maine German if he'd take a quarter for it. Europeans are always amazed when an American can even say howdy in their language. You can imagine how surprised and delighted a Lithuanian piano player was when I walked over to her in the Camden Opera House and told her, in Lithuanian, that my father was a wolf. Why did I tell her that my father is a wolf? Well, there isn’t much that I can say in Lithuanian so I have to make do with what I have. As I said, Europeans are always amazed when an American can even say howdy in their language. Of course the most important phrase to know in any language when you are in Europe is, “My friend will pay.”

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10. At 81 years of age I no longer believe in time. I've been thinking about this for a long time. What's past is prologue. Time is an illusion. Time was invented by the leisure class when slavery was abolished and they had to start paying their workers by the hour. If there were such a thing as time, it would not be a almost the end of April. If there were such a thing as time, you would have had time to do the things you wanted or needed to do at the beginning of April. And, because everything takes longer than you thought it would, if time existed we would have 48-hour or 72- hour days so you could accomplish something. But, because you will agree with me that you didn't have time to do the things you wanted or needed to do the first three weeks in April, time cannot exist. The next time someone says to you that they didn't have time, you can reply, "Of course you didn't. Time doesn't exist." We live in a constant state of "Too Late." If time ever did exist, it was whisked away by procrastination. Everyone knows that procrastination is the thief of time --- and so is every other big word.

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11. We read that: As of April 18, about half of Florida --- an area including an estimated 10.2 million residents – was classified in drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor analysis. The worst of the drought was a swath of central and southwest Florida, including Tampa/St. Petersburg, Fort Myers, Naples, Melbourne, and parts of the Orlando metro area. The swamps are drying up. It’s as if they’ve been drained and the airboats are running aground. If they can hang on for a hundred years or so, the rising sea level will put more water in those Florida swamps than they'll need.

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