Tag: Capitalism

Puttering Around

When I was a child, my father “puttered” in his free time.  This had nothing to do with golf; it had a lot to do with a form of relaxation we don’t see much of anymore.  The extinction of puttering has a lot to do with some fundamental changes in our lifetimes.  Let me explain.

To putter is defined thus: to busy or occupy oneself in a leisurely, casual, or ineffective manner: e.g. to putter in the garden.  Leisurely, casual, and especially ineffective.  In his puttering, my father considered many projects and chores; few of them materialized. Puttering was not meant to be productive; it was meant to be an antidote to hard work and productivity.

My father had special clothes for puttering.  He wore, for years and years, the army fatigues he had brought home from his stint in the military sometime between WWII and Korea.  Those clothes lasted forever and were eventually stained by every kind of oil and paint known to our household.  Long after the shirts fell apart, the pants remained.  Dad called them his “putter pants.”  Now, there are “putter pants” on the market, designed with an elastic waist for old guys.  It would have been anathema to my father to buy something special to putter in.  When the last of the “military” putter pants bit the dust (probably disappeared by my mother), he started buying putter pants at tag sales – castoff military wear if he could get it.

Dad puttered on weekends and most of the summer.  (He was a college professor.)  He made no lists, but just wandered from one thing to another.  It was therapeutic rather than effective.  He would do it alone or with a child.  His grandchildren enjoyed puttering with him until they reached puberty, then they had “better” things to “do.”  So, Dad went back to puttering alone.  Such puttering is a lost art.

Dad sometimes did more than putter – in his younger days, he built two houses and repaired our cars and boats.  But when there was not something special and demanding on his plate – he puttered.  You could tell he enjoyed it because he sang or hummed the whole time.  Frank Sinatra and Patti Page hits when I was young; later it was Roger Whittaker.

I thought of this recently when I came across an article about Jeff Bezos and his habit of rising early and “puttering” until 10AM.  Good for him.  But the gist of the article was that Mr. Bezos was sure that his puttering made him more effective and more creative.  The author of the article tried it, and, sure enough, it helped him get things done.  I guess everything has to serve the Goddess of Productivity.  But that is not what puttering is supposed to be all about.  It is not supposed to be scheduled or weighted for effectiveness or participated in wearing specially designed pants.  Thoreau (one of the great putterers) would certainly assure us that there are not supposed to be new clothes for it.

Men of my father’s generation puttered.  What do they do now?  Is surfing the net or watching nonstop sports or playing video games the new form of puttering?  Do women putter?  I do it on occasion, but not with the joie de vivre and lack of purpose with which my father did it.  Even in retirement, I find myself pondering whether there is something specific I should be doing, somewhere I should be, some news I should catch up with.   Even if I am willing, even eager, to be decadent, there are many alluring alternatives calling to me – funny videos, silly text exchanges, countless errands.  I hope we have not lost the art of puttering – for it is an art.  And art is done for art’s sake.  It is not supposed to be a productive activity in any way – Jeff Bezos notwithstanding.

Perhaps this piece of writing is an example of puttering.  You might also look at an example of my puttering at fiction.  Talking about Thoreau and the advent of autumn reminded me of “Again and Again and Again.”

Old Age, Space Age

I had heard that there would be a lunar eclipse last night, so when I got up at 4:30, I looked for it.  The moon was about 2/3 covered and was opening up, but it did initially have a pink glow.  I was glad to see it –the night was cold but the sky was clear, and the stars (suns) were out.

It reminded me of other nocturnal sky events, most notably when I was 6 and we were living out in the woods. My father bundled us out of bed to see Sputnik as it moved like a living star across the sky.  Such excitement as he pointed upwards and told us we were seeing something that no one had ever seen before.  I don’t know if we saw Sputnik 1 or 2 – the second was launched about a month afterwards and contained the poor dog Laika, with whom I had much empathy as a child and later included in one of my stories.

Last night’s lunar viewing also reminded me of the first U.S. manned space flight, Alan Shepard in his Mercury capsule (Freedom 7), when I was 9 years old.  My mother had to pick me up at school that day and take me to the doctor because I had a bad earache and the nurse insisted on it.  She had been monitoring the news all day about the capsule’s progress and was not happy about being dragged away.  When we came out of the pediatrician’s office, Mom started waylaying people on the street asking them if Shepard had gotten back safely.   People were happy to tell her he had.  Of course, Freedom 7 did not even orbit the earth.  Shepard’s capsule went up and then down in a perfect parabola – the shape of our lives according to Dante.  A year later John Glenn would become the family hero when he achieved earth orbit in Friendship 7.

And now I have lived long enough to see rich people build their own spaceships in order to give other rich people the thrill that we all got vicariously and collectively through Alan Shepard and John Glenn.  President Kennedy hoped to replace the patriotism and energy of war with that of exploration, and it worked for a while.  But capitalism trumps all.  Young children used to want to be astronauts; now they want to be rich so they can be astronauts.  And instead of one satellite to look for in the sky, orbital space is so full of our discarded junk that it is becoming a hazard.

All of this from getting out of bed to see the eclipse.  I hope some daddies wrapped their kids in blankets and took them outside to see it.  Robert Frost told us that we needed to “choose something like a star” to look at because:

It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

Sputnik was no star.  It was a piece of technology and a propaganda tool.  The American space program started with stellar ambitions and has ended as the plaything of the wealthiest men.  It was a different time.  Laika the dog was loved by children everywhere.  Heroes like Alan Shepard and John Glenn were not torn apart by the media as soon as the news cycle started to flag.  “Choose something like a star” Frost said.   Hard to do when light pollution almost blots out the night sky, but try anyway.  I had a beautiful view this morning.

Even after sixty-some years, I remembered Laika well enough to include her in a story, “What Crime is There in Error?” – part of my Metamorphoses  series.

Emily Dickinson, Publication, the Dumpster, Covid-19, and Two Questions

I recently (but pre-Covid-19) had to have a medical test done. Because the procedure took a while, I got chatting with the technician. When I mentioned that I had (in an earlier life) taught literature courses, he effused about what a great writer his wife was – she wrote whole novels even – but other than a few short stories, his beloved had never been able to get anything published. He felt bad. He said a few of her friends were also great writers, but they had not been published either. It was a familiar story and the litany of every writing group I have participated in. I assured him that it was still a wonderful thing that his wife wrote – publication did not matter as much as the process. He looked dubious and sad despite my reassurance. Of course, I was also reassuring myself, reminding myself not to mind about those novels in the bottom drawer, not to look at the statistics on my blog, not to dwell on the thought of reams of my stories ending up in a dumpster when someone cleans up after my existence in this realm.

But these musings led to bigger questions. Would Emily Dickinson’s life have been any less worthwhile if her poems were never found and appreciated? What if Kafka’s instructions had been followed and all his manuscripts had been burned upon his demise? These, in fact, are monstrous questions – but worth thinking about. And how many Emily Dickinsons have we lost because the heirs had to get the rooms cleaned out to avoid paying another month’s rent?

And it is not just writers who face obscurity. There are many artists who face the same problem. I watched my son, who studied opera (but saved his financial future by also getting a degree in computer science), perform with his classmates – some of whom seemed to us to be very talented. At this point, most of them are lucky to be performing occasionally at weddings or at community Gilbert and Sullivan productions.

Two questions: Should a capitalistic framework tell us how to think about everything in life (think the demise of amateur athletics and the monetizing of human lives in all kinds of ways)? Should the artist feel compelled to keep producing (and I hope she does) – what should be done with the results?

First on capitalism. It creeps in everywhere. I go on the internet to look at a meaningful poem and an ad for my favorite brand of sneakers pops up. (They know me so well!) Sellers distract me for their advantage. And don’t get me wrong – I’m not sure that capitalism is inherently evil (but also not sure that it is not), but in the days of global communication, production, and marketing, everyone has access to what society considers the “best” (the most marketable). Recordings of music mean there is less demand for local performances, movies mean local theater is less attractive, and those bestselling books mean there is less need for a neighborhood storyteller. Everything has a price and an approval rating. Even human life is monetized; we might not be slaves but if we die in an accident, the insurance company can tell us what our lives are worth. It was not always so. Capitalism is a form of trade, but I think it must have bounds as to methods and scope. (More on this in another blog.)

And then we have the question of what to do with the art if it is not a livelihood, not part of a financial transaction. Lewis Hyde in his wonderful book The Gift reminds us that talent is thought of as a gift, and that many of the oldest cultures operated on the basis of gifts (think potlatch). Pablo Neruda wrote a wonderful piece about an exchange of gifts in his childhood that gave him the basis on which he wrote and shared his poetry. Both Hyde and Neruda eventually backed off the idea of “free” exchange, but it is an ideal worth nurturing.

Until recently I shared very little of my writing. I have cabinets full of work, for some of which I am the only reader. Sometimes I would send someone a story for which she was the inspiration (if it portrayed them positively); some stories I shared with writing groups. A couple of years ago I gulped hard and started this blog. But this blog only works for me if I don’t worry about the statistics that my provider pushes out to me on a daily basis. Sometimes those statistics are gratifying, but other times discouraging. And yet, I am sharing more than I ever did and that feels like a good thing.

The internet has given us all access to an audience – but while the audience may be almost infinite, so are the creators. I have lost track of so many good blogs because there just isn’t enough time and attention. In the end the real joy must be in the doing.

All of this reminds me of one of my favorite Kipling poems, “The God of Things as They Are,” where he imagines creativity in heaven:

And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They are!

As I was writing this blog, the coronavirus/Covid-19 spiraled into my consciousness. It got me thinking about mortality and time. In some ways, mortality has come to the door at the same time that our sequestration leaves us with time… and perhaps a year’s supply of toilet paper (please don’t hoard!) In the midst of this, this snippet of a conversation with Wendell Berry came to my attention (thanks to Contemplify):

It was the Shakers who were sure the end could come anytime, and they still saved the seeds and figured out how to make better diets for old people. Thomas Merton was interested in the Shakers. I said to him, “If they were certain that the world could end at any minute, how come they built the best building in Kentucky?”

“You don’t understand,’ he [Merton] said. “If you know the world could end at any minute, you know there’s no need to hurry. You take your time and do the best work you possibly can.” That was important to me. I’ve repeated it many times.

It’s important to me too, and reminds me a little of Thoreau’s Artist of Kouroo. The Shakers continued to work and create and improve things, even under the shadow of the apocalypse, even though there might never be people to reap the harvest or sit at their wonderful tables. So we should do what we are moved to do and do it the best we can. As the Bhagavad Gita says, we must attend to the work but not to the fruits of the work.

I once wrote a novel about a pandemic, an abstract of which can be found here. Interestingly, I also wrote a story about ten years ago about a flu originating in China that I am reworking and will post next time. Truly, I had no premonitions. I always thought that if we ended up hunkering down like this it would be due to war or a hazardous waste spill, and not to a virus. How little we know. Take care of yourselves out there.