I woke up this morning.

This alone was enough to fill me with optimism for the rest of the day.

***

Thank goodness. I can stop worrying about overpopulation being a problem. As recently as 70 years ago, Isaac Asimov and other great social commentators were concerned about our planet becoming overpopulated. But 60 years later, computers and our ability to collect and assemble data from all over the world enabled people like Hans Rosling to paint a different picture. And even this week I read that “like many European and Asian nations, the United States is graying, posing challenges for the workforce, the economy and social programs.”

So, without the usual influx of immigrants, we are running short of young people to do the work. My father and two of his sisters were three of them. Unable to speak English when they came, my aunts worked at the bottom of the pay scale as housekeepers and my father cut paving blocks here in a St. George quarry. He married a local girl and did his part to provide my generation with English-speaking workers. Alas, it is now a bit too late for me to help out with the problems caused by our present dwindling population.

•••

Because of the headline, I found this Facebook post to be interesting: “Brain experiment suggests that consciousness relies on quantum entanglement“

After reading the article, I understand that quantum entanglement means that a particle vibrating because of the sound of your voice can affect a molecule inside a star at the other end of the universe.

Sounds like the butterfly effect on speed, doesn’t it?

This is as close as this old Maine man will come to touchy-feely, but because physics – which implies hard science – was mentioned, I had to read it. There is so much we don’t know. And perhaps do not need to know. But wouldn’t it be nice to know?

You might share my belief that the brain is capable of much more than we presently use it for and that someday, we might learn to annihilate ourselves even more efficiently than in any manner we can even dream of today.

***

Facebook can be a valuable tool. When I whined that I was having trouble finding someone who would paint my house, a Facebook “friend” I have never met suggested I call her friend, a retired contractor who lives up in The County in a town that is impossible to pronounce. You can be sure you’ve seen that town spelled out in print because the great Maine author John Gould never wrote about fishing but what it was way up north in a town on a lake or stream with a name that nobody could pronounce. Cobbosseecontee comes quickly to mind.  

You know that both sides can be wary when it comes to starting big projects around your home. The contractor wants to be sure he will get paid and that there will be no needless squawking when he gets done. The property owner wants to be sure that the contractor knows which side of the shingle is up, and that he won’t sink his backhoe into buried pipes or power lines.  

In that respect we were lucky and discovered, perhaps to our pleasant surprise, that we suited each other finest kind.

Gary, for that is his name, scraped and painted the front of our house last spring. I was pleased with the work and the price. He earned as much as he figured he’d need to take his girlfriend to an exotic beach in a faraway land, and that was it.  

Last week he contacted me about doing a bit more. I didn’t ask him where he was going this time but quickly agreed that he could once again stay upstairs while he was working here. You have read about, and perhaps seen, the cot Edison kept in his laboratory, so there was nothing new or unique to our arrangement.

He also took his meals with us.

One day, however, he washed up his brushes around 1400 and, with another six hours of warm daylight available, headed for home.    

I asked Marsha why he left so early. She said, “He scraped paint on the side of this house and then primed it 12 hours a day for four days and five or six hours today. Fifty-four hours hanging from a ladder while scraping paint? He is 69 years old, you know. He might be tired.”

The humble Farmer can be heard Friday nights at 7 on WHPW (97.3 FM) and visited at:
www.thehumblefarmer.com/
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