The Countryman: I don’t get it

10 mins read
Bob Neal
Bob Neal

Sometimes, we see two sides of someone or something that just don’t add up. Or, they add up to some people, but not me. I just don’t get it.

Take, for example, music. We like signer-songwriters, what used to be called folk singers, but now casting a wider circle. Most singer-songwriters distinguish themselves from all the others by the lyrics, often very personal lyrics, that they write.

Song lyrics are about the only remaining form of poetry that rhymes. Some stubborn old-timers — I plead guilty — even insist that if it doesn’t rhyme, it isn’t poetry. But almost all singer-songwriter lyrics rhyme.

Lyrics drew us to John Prine 40 years ago:

You come home late and you come home early, you come on big when you’re feeling small. You come home straight and you come home curly. Sometimes you don’t come home at all.

Lyrics of The Flatlanders showed us that Bob Wills didn’t write the final words in Texas music:

There’s some refugees from Mexico, behind an abandoned Texaco. We nod and smile, it’s clear we’re all the same.

Lyrics blew us away when they came off the pen of Jason Isbell about three years ago:

She said “Andy, you’re better than your past,” winked at me and drained her glass, cross-legged on a barstool, like nobody sits anymore.

In the past three years, we have attended concerts by all three acts.

We saw John Prine at the Collins Center in Orono, the Flatlanders twice at the Stone Mountain Arts Center in Brownfield and Jason Isbell three times, in Portland, Freeport and Kansas City.

In three of those six shows (Prine, the second show by the Flatlanders and the Kansas City performance by Isbell), the volume of the percussion and guitars overwhelmed the lyrics. Looking about the audience, we could see the mouths that often lip-sync along with the performer’s live singing fall motionless. If you can’t tell where in the song the performer may be, how can you “sing along” silently?

In the loud shows by all three of these acts, the parts we liked best were when the noisemakers took a break and the headliner performed a solo set, usually acoustic. At the Collins Center, when the band came back, it was noticeably quieter, and the Prine show was much better. At the second Flatlanders show the sold-out audience was rapt during the acoustic set, and the percussionist was restrained when he returned. Ditto with Isbell’s show in December in Kansas City.

But, in those three cases, we sat through nearly half a show unable to make out much of what the lyricists/singers were singing. Boom-box volume means we can’t hear the lyrics.

I don’t get it.

Convenience stores that sell gasoline pop up in the news every couple of years, their managements complaining that they lose money selling gasoline because the margin on fuel won’t cover the fee they pay for accepting credit cards. They say customers need to come into the store to buy something else if they are to make up for the money they lose on fuel.

But the convenience stores happily put credit-card machines into their fuel pumps, which ensures that many customers don’t go into the store. If they don’t go into the store, they won’t buy the beer, bread, milk, pizza and cigarettes that make every convenience store go.

I can recall when the margin on gasoline was 17 cents a gallon, regardless of the retail price. When I was in business, I paid 2.75 percent each time I swiped a card. At today’s retail gasoline price of, say, $2.25, that 2.75 percent would be about 7 cents. Apparently, the margin on gasoline has shrunk so much that the card fee eats up the entire margin.

Still, convenience stores encourage us to stay outside and pay with a credit card that they say means they lose money on the sale.

I don’t get it.

Physicians sometimes tell patients about the importance of diet and exercise for keeping fit and trim. My physician certainly does. A few docs, such as Mehmet Oz on television, talk about diet and exercise incessantly. Even though physicians receive virtually no training in nutrition — chiropractic physicians and osteopathic physicians receive more than do allopathic (MD) physicians but still probably not enough — they seem well aware of the diet-weight-health connection.

But what do you see when you walk into a doctor’s office? Or through the halls of a hospital?

Large people at work.

Not just “big-boned” people, but really large, too often obese, people. Recently, in a doctor’s office (not around here), I couldn’t look at the medical assistant because she was so overweight. Is there some law of nature that gives greatly overweight people an inside track for getting hired by physicians? Or is there some federal law that forbids physicians from refusing to hire such people even though their very appearance defies everything the doc has told us about weight and diet and exercise?

If diet and exercise and BMI (body-mass index) are so important as the docs say, why are they hiring people who haven’t figured out the connection?

(Confession: I have a lifelong morphology problem that means hard dieting from time to time. I’m on it right now. But my weight has never come close to beginning with the numeral 3.)

I don’t get it.

Finally, I’m a political junkie who took economics courses in university. I read the Bangor Daily News and the New York Times (online) first thing in the morning. On Mondays, I go straight from The Times to the Daily Bulldog to see if Al Diamon has yet posted Politics & Other Mistakes. Politics is serious stuff to me, and economics intertwines with it at every turn.

We often hear politicians rail about the importance of the family, frequently suggesting that a family without a work-at-home parent is almost sinful. Then the same politicians, when they get into office, adopt legislation, usually written by corporate lobbyists, that ships America’s best-paying jobs overseas so that American families must have two breadwinners if they are to survive.

Our family fit that pattern, as do so many. For most of the time we had children at home, both my wife and I worked out. Marilyn wanted to be a work-at-home mom, but we couldn’t pay our bills if we didn’t both have paying jobs. It got easier when I started making enough on the farm that I could at least be at or near the house when our sons got off the bus. But I didn’t make enough farming that Marilyn could stop working out until long after our sons were grown and gone. And then, when Marilyn did retire, she still worked on the farm (to obviate hiring another employee) so we could pay our bills.

Marilyn and I have three college degrees between us, and we couldn’t support a family on just one paycheck. Yet the politicians who pushed down our wages also told us our sons should have a parent home all the time.

I just don’t get it.

Bob Neal has retired after 35 years of farming in New Sharon. He also worked for more than 20 years in journalism, much of the time on editorial pages. There is still a lot that he doesn’t “get.”

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11 Comments

  1. Bob sounds like maybe you should do as John Prine did “Dear Abby”. Maybe she(they) can help you get it.

  2. You’re not the only one & there’s lots more. A recent one is that some legislators have introduced a plan to fill the Maine teacher shortage by increasing start pay by $10,000. Of course, that means pay increases will go up the ranks. So, does this guarantee more students graduating with teacher degrees? The pay would be nice if one could get there. Students that graduate often have considerable debt. I know some have given up, because they cannot do it financially.
    This leads to 2 “I don’t get it”s. First, did these legislators flunk math? Wouldn’t tuition-free courses specific to education programs be more financially viable for students & taxpayers, rather than the pay leap suggested that will continue as long as a teacher is employed. The promise of money won’t help if a person can’t that get that far. Second, we have a university that can put up new (additional) buildings, but can’t secure funds to assist students reach their goal of becoming a teacher.
    Who “gets it”?

  3. Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
    A lot of us don’t see how we are inconsistent. Connections don’t get made.
    I think it is helpful that you are calling attention to certain irrationalities.

  4. Live concerts?
    It’s better to get the cd, or nowadays, download the MP3. Costs way less, sounds better, you don’t have sweaty people crowding into you and you don’t get stuck in traffic.

    The two income family contributed to the myth of increased productivity, which in turn was used to justify increasing the budget deficit. Never should have let G.W. cut taxes. It was like getting halfway to paying off that high interest credit card and then saying screw it, and blowing the available credit on a vacation to Disneyland. Except, it wasn’t Disneyland, it was the scavenger hunt for phantom WMD and now we have to pay even more just to keep up on the interest.

    College degrees are not necessarily relevant to income. It’s just like the rest of life. One person can buy a computer for a few hundred dollars and use it to write a app that generates billions. Another guy invests hundreds of thousands in heavy equipment only to watch it rust away when the market shifts.
    What we make and what we are worth, are two different things.
    Writing “Fifty Shades of Gray”, made a lot more for E.L. James, than “Moby Dick” made for Herman Melville. Yet I doubt folks will be reading Fifty Shades a hundred years from now. I hope it doesn’t become required reading either :)

  5. Good morning Bob! Some interesting thoughts… I too hate it when overplayed instruments drown out the fine lyrics and vocal talent of musicians. If I may suggest, catch the Wailin’ Jennys next time they are in the state… perfect balance in my opinion. With that said, I find it difficult to get past a couple of things you said. I’d argue that your inability to “look at the medical assistant because she was so overweight” might be a bias that you need to address. It comes across as incredibly rude. I’m actually a bit surprised that the DB would print that in a featured post.

    Also, I take an interest in political activity as well, and one thing that I dislike more than just about anything else is when someone creates a straw man to knock about in an effort to try to make their argument seem stronger. I get that you think some people have taken actions that have driven jobs overseas, but your comment that they do so while ” frequently suggesting that a family without a work-at-home parent is almost sinful” rings a bit hollow. I’ve literally never heard a major politician do that and you claim they do so “often” and “frequently”. Could you share an example or two of someone implying that anything of the sort would be almost sinful?

    It seems like we are relying more and more on hyperbole and deliberately misrepresenting the opposing viewpoint in an effort to make ours look stronger. This just continues to perpetuate the Red State/Blue State mentality and drives a wedge between good people, and I’ll be honest…

    I just don’t get it.

  6. It is surprising that some people can be over 300 pounds, rarely exercise and still live to be 80 years old or so. You would think they would have died in their 40’s. I think that if a person’s body is used to being heavy all its life, then it doesn’t seem to matter so much if they remain heavy or not. Doctors don’t know much, in my opinion. And they don’t like it if you self-diagnose yourself from home medical books. They want you to blindly trust them and sometimes give you meds that increases the chance of blood clots when you already have thick blood. Meloxicam is a good example. A hemetologist told me I should not read those books and instead, I should just trust him when he didn’t even give me anymore tests. I have little faith in doctors and they don’t set a very good example if they don’t take care of themselves.

  7. “It is surprising that some people can be over 300 pounds, rarely exercise and still live to be 80 years old or so. You would think they would have died in their 40’s”

    Some do, quite a few more don’t get that far!

    My body is well trained to take (most of) the abuse I give it!

  8. Bob, pretty sure it’s illegal not to hire somebody because of their weight (unless, I guess, they’re an astronaut or something)

  9. @ Darlene Power: Everyone judges all day long. Even you.

    @ Concerned citizen: It’s insulting to talk about any victim class. To the victim. And everyone is a member of at least one such class

    If we didn’t make some judgment calls and risk some insulting, there would be no point to forums like this.

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