SM,
I've linked to VDH a couple times but I think it was you who made me aware of him in the first place. Thank you.
In a way he's something close to my ideal, someone interested in history and ideas, and yet still in touch with the Earth.
I've worked in academic environments, if it can be called work. As our author points out, most of one's time is spent jockeying for position in the socio-political environment.
Actually, I was lucky enough to have some outstanding professors, but later in life I mostly met faculty who didn't know much and did less.
I've spent more of my life working with drywall or pounding nails or digging rocks out of the garden than with the university crowd, and yet what truly amazes, is that most of these academics are quite obviously considerably less well read than I am, someone whose most major accomplishment might be installing a floor or a skylight or growing something obscenely huge. Maybe they're too busy working on the paper they hope to publish proving another improbable theory to spend any time reading.
Although I love to learn, I've always had more respect for someone who can actually do something than a mere publicist. Public speakers can be a special turn-off. I suppose that's part of the reason I can't stand most politicians. Barack Obama's smooth and utterly vacuous style, with a career that is entirely empty of one single solid accomplishment nicely compliments his speeches, straightforwardly empty of one single solid fact, more or less epitomizes what I don't like about politicians. Always talking. Never doing. By contrast, Donald Trump, uncouth though he undoubtedly is, seems like a breath of fresh air.
Don't get me wrong. Trump isn't exactly my type. He's hasn't read any more than Hillary Clinton.
BTW, Congratulations on your new home. The photo of the surrounding area which you posted recently looks really nice.
... It's more mountains really. That pic was taken at about 3,500ft elevation.
However, hm.... How can I be polite about this? You call them
mountains?
As some posters may recall, I'm a life-long do-it-yourselfer. And now I'm involved in another major project, probably one that I have no business taking on at my age. I'm going to lay a new floor in the living room. I have in mind something that will ultimately look a bit like this floor in a Vancouver coffee shop: