Have you ever developed an allergy to a food or product or animal after you were 80 years of age?

OK. After you were 40?

We read that a shellfish allergy “may develop any time during a person’s life, but tends to present (itself) in adulthood. It can be caused by foods that you’ve eaten before with no issues.”

I’m wondering if I have suddenly become allergic to lobster. The bacteria in my stomach went to war after I ate a lobster. After living with it for a month or so, I asked Dr. Roy Cobean to tell me what was going on down there. He looked and said that all was well.

All was well until I ate another lobster and found my stomach up in arms again.

Which is why I was awake at 3 a.m. and thinking of something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Do you have Roku? If you don’t, I would encourage you to get it so you can see the wonderful things that are now available out there on television.

Television isn’t what it used to be. Now your television set can be a conduit for things people have posted on YouTube. I watch Paul Freedman lecture on history and Robert Sapolsky lecture on the biological basis of religiosity. (A brain tumor can give you the ability to talk with God and even start a new religion.) I can watch Iván Szelényi lecture on the foundations of modern social theory. There are even two dozen humble television programs out there, each one featuring Lenny Breau, posted by Robert Karl Skoglund. My point is, even if these things don’t excite you as they do me, there is probably something on YouTube that would give you a great deal of enjoyment.

We subscribe to no television channels and only get Time Warner cable. Which, you might have noticed, was taken over by Spectrum – which immediately doubled the fee for just an internet cable through which we get our YouTube and telephone service.

I have 30 solar photovoltaic panels on my henhouse and generate all my own electricity. I am anathema to everything that is good and true in this burn-it-up-and-throw-it-away Maine and America of today. Before Spectrum, I could boast that my utilities – that’s my electricity, cable for my computer, TV and telephone – cost me less than $50 a month. You might have noticed that Spectrum now charges you more than that for just running a cable into your home for your computer.

Yesterday afternoon I passed out before the TV screen listening to vocalists from 1928 to 1932. Here’s how it works. You bring up Annette Hanshaw or Lee Morse singing “Tain’t No Sin (to Dance Around in Your Bones).” And the machine, knowing that you like that kind of thing, continues to bring up other singers and songs from that era as you pass out in your reclining chair.

I knew most of those songs, probably because my mother, who was born in 1916, was a piano player and played all the songs she learned as a teenager. They are nice songs to dance to. I even know the words to them. Yesterday I noticed that Rudy Vallee specialized in songs about unrequited love.

The same thing happens when you bring up Clark Terry or Clifford Brown. The machine continues to play more tunes by the same group or in the same genre. So, no matter what you like, you can find it on YouTube – which plays through your Roku adaptor on your television set.

We have met many people who boast that they have no television. If you were confined to watching only the network shows, you could easily understand why these friends would have no use for TV because, unless you count Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell, there is very little out there of interest for folks who read. You can watch “Matlock” and “Columbo” reruns only so many times.

True, even Roku can let you down, because when you do get something that is really good on YouTube, you can count on some demented child to mess it up. I am referring in particular to Ted Talks, which once provided me with hours of educational diversion. But one unhappy day, as I said, some child who hates old people changed the TedTalk format. You can no longer search by topic or most recent talks, and the writing on the screen is now so small you can’t even read it. So I had to abandon it.

Did I mention that Fien Gerritsen, who is over 90 and very wise, was worried when she heard I’d gone to Maine Med in Portland to see Dr. Cobean? She said she wouldn’t have thought anything about it if I’d had the procedure here at Rockland’s Pen Bay. But she said that when one goes to Portland, there is cause for concern. And had they sent me to Boston, she wouldn’t have expected to ever see me again.

The humble Farmer can be heard Friday nights at 7 on WHPW (97.3 FM) and visited at his website:

www.thehumblefarmer.com/MainePrivateRadio.html

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