Transcript for the Piece Audio version of The humble Farmer, March 16, 2010

1. A local Realtor has finally sold a drafty 12 room Victorian mansion in Rockland. When the prospective buyer mentioned that the furnace seemed to be running constantly, the Realtor smiled and replied, "That's OK, you can hardly hear it."
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2. My wife’s buddy gave her a subscription to Netflix. Now you may well ask why a woman married to me needs to live in a fantasyland only provided by movies, but she does. The other day while looking on her Netflix page called Membership At A Glance, I saw that there is an option for Gender. They have her down as a female. But next to it is place she can click that says Change. You and I are aware that such a process exists, but did you realize it was all that simple?
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3. Fifty or so years ago, the educational fad was to consolidate Maine schools into districts called SADs. Now people will admit to being Nazis before they'll confess that they voted to enter a school district. This is because by their very nature, school districts encourage spending contests between themselves and even between the small towns within districts. How did such foolishness ever gain a toehold in Maine? It was easy, because most anyone can convince your average citizen that bigger is better. And the basic premise of any con game is something for nothing. The state was going to pay. Anyone who could expect great financial reward by sending in money to a chain letter could also see the advantages in bussing kids thirty or forty miles every day to a bigger school. In each case, the sucker is convinced that someone else will pay. It is absolutely impossible to fleece people unless they expect to get something for nothing. Here's the way the SAD con works. First, you get the state involved. That cuts off the local control. Then the state puts all your tax dollars into a big barrel and the towns are left to scramble to see who can spend it first. But now, much to the surprise of the folks who first thought up the scheme, the barrel has gone dry. It was an ingenious system. It made millions for building contractors. People in one town, who would never vote to replace their good school buildings or the educational system that they had, now feel that they'd better spend every cent in the barrel before their sticky-fingered neighbors get it. The construction industry, companies that supply school services, and every conceivable type of educational paper shuffler milk it for all it's worth. SADs introduced the big henhouse system of education. That is, when you're raising chickens for market you want them to be as plump and as near alike as possible. The cheapest way to do that is to build big henhouses which are efficient to run. Big henhouses make it easier on the mother hens, too. They can hatch their chicks, put them in the farmer's hands and, knowing that they’ll all come out exactly the same, never have to bother with them again.
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4. You heard on the Today show about the two men in Waldoboro, Maine who worked together for several weeks before they figured out that they were brothers. And when these two new-found brothers appeared on the news, a sister soon appeared. And a day or two later, even another sister. Discovering lost or unknown siblings who were farmed out at an early age is neither new nor unique, and you can be sure that there are hundreds of similar cases that nobody hears about, only because they don’t make the national news. Let me give you an example. A few years ago I continued working on the Gilchrest family tree that my grandfather Gilchrest started back in the 1920s. I called relatives I knew and asked them to send birth and marriage dates of their siblings and children and before long I had collected hundreds of relatives. I live on the farm that once belonged to my great-grandfather’s cousin, Larkin Gilchrest. And when I called one woman, who was a granddaughter or great granddaughter of Larkin Gilchrest, she said in so many words that I should mind my own business. But I continued my research. Years later one of her daughters showed up here at my farm and was looking at my computer screen over my shoulder when I said, “And this is your sister.” She said, “But I don’t have any sisters.”
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5. A somewhat ample Rockland woman was overheard to say that she'd like to have a coat made of coyote skins. The immediate consensus of those in attendance was that it would be impossible --- the animal would become an endangered species before the coat could be finished.
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6. Every year hundreds of Maine people are fined in court for not having license plates or inspection stickers on their cars. Most of these people are horrified and embarrassed when brought to justice. And yet no allowance is made for their absentmindedness. On the other hand, if a man murders his mother, the first thing the lawyers want to know is, was this man sane or was he crazy when did it. You see, for this type of crime, your state of mind makes a difference. If you can prove that you were crazy when you killed someone, you can't be held accountable. A man in Martinsville who could never remember if his cat is in or out, put a little sign by the door that says IN and OUT on it so he will know. But he can never remember if he remembered to flip the sign when he lets the cat in and out. Instead of fining the people who can't remember to do things, why not simply assign them to a keeper?
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7. Alan Ames of Cushing says that he was on a three lane freeway in Rochester, New York, when an old lady, who was going the wrong way, sideswiped him. He says she didn't stop because she was talking. Somehow, she got by 150 more cars before she hit one hard enough to stop her. Later, she told Ames, "I'm a good driver --- I don't drink or smoke. I didn't hit anyone --- they hit me." Ames says he got $260 for damages to his car. Luckily his car wasn't totaled, or he'd only got $100.
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8. Professor Steven E. Landsburg wrote a book called The Armchair Economist. He says that statistics have proven that people drive less carefully when they wear seatbelts. I can see the truth in this. Unless I’m in New Jersey I feel very safe wearing a seatbelt, and am afraid every minute I am in a moving car or bus or train without one. A professor in California has suggested that a good way to bring about a reduction in the accident rate, would be to have a spear mounted on every steering wheel, pointed at the driver's heart. He believes we would see a lot less tailgating. I have mixed feelings about this. Because I am fool enough to stop at stop signs, I have been struck in the rear end at least half a dozen times over the past 25 years. And with this proposed system I would miss seeing them get out of their cars to chew me out for being in their way. Professor Landsburg points out that people put Baby on Board signs on their cars, hoping that other drivers will be a little bit more careful when near them. Do bumper stickers really have the power to influence other people's behavior? I can say, "Yes," from personal experience. My old friend Stanley French, who had a junkyard in South Thomaston, once showed me a brand new car that hit a tree head on. Stanley said that he bought the car only because of the sticker on the rear bumper. It said, "Jesus is my pilot."
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9. From watching me on television, you can see that I'm quite a natty dresser. I spare no expense to look good for you, my friend. But my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, is from Connecticut, where they have a different standard. And one day she asked me why I always wore such shabby clothes. I said, "Clothes don’t amount to anything. It’s the body underneath that counts." And she said, "Don't make it any worse than it already is."
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10. I look up to doctors and you probably do, too. When you need a doctor, there's nothing like a doctor. You know that they are above average in intelligence and that they have gone to school long enough to earn two or three undergraduate degrees. This is why I was surprised to hear that a local doctor said, "I don't want you to drink no alcohol while you're on these pills."
Now, although the double negative is perfectly acceptable in many languages, Bishop Lowth and his proscriptive grammarian friends stamped it out of English, for no good reason, in the 18th century. So I was surprised to hear that a doctor had said, "I don't want you to drink no alcohol while you're on these pills." So, having an inquiring mind, I asked the doctor about it. And he said, "They don't hear me when I say, 'I would prefer that you do not partake of alcoholic beverages.' But when I say, "I don't want you to drink no alcohol while you're on these pills,' they know what I'm talking about."
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11. According to a newsletter advertising cross-country ski exercisers, cross-country ski exercisers create more than 50 percent less joint impact to the knees, hips and ankles than walking. The only studies that demonstrate the benefits in walking are conducted by shoe companies. Of course, if you want to completely eliminate the joint impact problem, you can sit in a reclining chair. Or, even better, simply go to bed. In bed the worst thing that can happen to you is to be struck by a frozen piece of waste dropped by an airplane.
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12. All over the United States, industry and business are being decentralized. Work out of your home. But some people in Maine are still stuck with the 1960s mindset that schools must have a centralized location. If you aren’t bussing kids an hour each way, you’re inefficient. Proponents of this system are obviously influenced by the ease of administration argument. That is, put all your chickens in one big henhouse. There's no question that it works great with chickens, because your program just about guarantees that they'll all come out the same. But here’s what actually happened. As centralized schools became more and more crowded, small modular classrooms were wheeled in to accommodate the extra kids. But then, someone out west figured out that there was no need to spend millions of dollars bussing kids in to these centralized modular classrooms. It would make more sense to haul one of these modular classrooms out to each village or section of town where the kids lived. Students could walk to school instead of spending over an hour every day on busses. Great savings were realized all around. Kids were healthier from walking to and from the school in their own neighborhoods. And teachers discovered that young people in their own local school were happier, better mannered and therefore easier to teach. Don’t look for it in Maine right off.
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