This morning, a public radio station in the New York City area proudly announced it will be airing The humble Farmer radio program three hours every week.
This news might surprise many of humble’s Maine radio friends, who have been under the impression that he either died in 2006, retired or was carried off in a purge.
The truth of the matter is that humble simply shifted his radio program over to cable television. Same music. Same rants. But with the radio soundtrack overlaid with movie pictures of humble making solar panels or planting his garden.
Longtime radio friends will recall that humble played “The Bones Song,” Garner or Django, and then delivered a two- or three-minute rant on something he had heard or read in the Encyclopedia Britannica the previous week.
Humble’s TV program outraged many of his former radio friends, who said they didn’t mind listening to him as long as they didn’t have to look at him. This problem was solved when humble very astutely pointed out that the TV show was just a radio show with pictures; by throwing a blanket over their television screen, or even over their own heads, they could pretend it was a radio. And that solved that.
Over 35 years ago, humble’s Maine radio friends learned that he was somewhat economical with his words and that if they weren’t listening closely, much of what he said wouldn’t make sense.
Which presents a problem.
The ability to listen to a story (or read it with comprehension) is a skill or habit that is no longer esteemed in some areas of our country. Bob Marley will tell you that Maine people are willing to listen to a long, drawn-out yarn, but cosmopolitans want a laugh every 20 seconds.
So, The humble Farmer question for you today is, “Will humble’s new audience have the patience to listen to him tell a story, or will they storm the station with pitchforks?”
One might well wonder if New Yorkers, who pay more than $3,000 in monthly rent, have time to listen to anything as they must be working three jobs and eating out of dumpsters.
Which of these humble rants do you think would be most likely to appeal to a person who lives on Jane Street in a loft stuffed with books? Thank you for your help.
• It can be statistically proven that people come in three sizes: large, average and small. Because most of the women used in TV 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 told 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 his wife so sensitive to calories that she’d been gaining half a pound every night just by smelling the hot chocolate on his breath.
• You have heard me say that I could never afford to have children and at 70 had to learn about grandchildren, starting from scratch.
Without even an hour of grampy experience to fall back on, Marsha placed one of her grandchildren under my care for an hour. I was scared. The child, Avalane, could not talk. What could I do if she wanted something, and how would I know what she wanted?
But you can well believe that I learned something from this unique experience. The child went into my library and peeled the dust jackets off some “Art In America” books and ate them.
I couldn’t believe it. How, I wondered, could any child cultivate a taste for paper? But then I remembered that earlier in the day, I’d seen her mother feed her an artichoke.
• Little news item here: Police pulled 145 nasty-looking marijuana plants from a dirt road in Friendship and are looking for the owner. A Cushing logger had complained to police that the 12-foot plants were interfering with his cutting operation.
Although the street value of the plants in Bangor is in excess of $50,000, the logger said it would be a waste of time for him to cut them because, unlike firewood, there is no ready market for marijuana in Knox County.
The owner of the weeds is urged to call the police at once, as the plants are drying out rapidly and, unless they are claimed, will soon have to be thrown away.
The humble Farmer can be seen on Community Television in and near Portland and visited at his website:
www.thehumblefarmer.com/MainePrivateRadio.html.
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