Part 10 (1/2)

I pretended to be reading the paper for thirty seconds one She was standing a short way off, on the heartless ht how close to barefoot she looked in her thin, old leather shoes

Most beggars in New York City are either con artists or alcoholics She didn't seem to be a con artist or an alcoholic, and I don't knohat soaddict, anyway Drug addicts steal She didn't look like a thief

There aren't a lot of beggars in New York but there are all kinds, and every passerby has a decision to ed entrance to the bridges and tunnels and slop soapy water on your windshi+eld with a dirty sponge If you give them a quarter, they clean it off If you don't, they don't I'er at ti and I laugh and give

The ordinary street beggar will not be helped by what anyone gives hi the saddest cases and the ones who needPeople and Night People 149 149 Everyone in New York is approached at least once a ars on the street, I give nothing I wish I was certain I' wos

Morning People and Night People A re you consistently du some hours of the day than others? I certainly aht not think so if you , but that's the fact After about 11:30 aressively duller, until by late afternoon I can't re as I write My middle name is Aitken

Each of us has his best hours The people who have to have a cup of coffee to activate their brain in the et , but my brain starts up without it

It's always best if e are coincides with the ish ere It doesn't happen often to ht people seem to be pleased with themselves the way they are

I know I' person I think it's best I associate it with virtue It works out best for et to work very early, taper off around noon and have a very unproductive period between about 1:30 and 4:30 Unproductive periods are important too, you know

Soe a o home

I feel sorry for the people who think best in the evening and I'd like to tell you why Night people awaken grudgingly They dread getting up but eventually drag the ablutions and stu everyat the same speed as the current of activity that surrounds thein to blend in It is now lunchtione down and the rest of the world is settling in, they're ready to go They waste some of their s some of the dumbest shows on television

Prined for those of us who are s By 8 pm, we've lost most of our critical faculties, and ”Dallas” and ”Laverne and shi+rley” are just perfect for our level of intellectual activity Even if we don't like theetting up to turn the the crossword puzzle or reading the paper and gru

It seeht to rethink the whole pattern of our daily lives We've got to es

If each of us really does need seven hours' sleep, it would probably be better if we took it in shorter periods I often get ht Even when I go to bed at 11:30 and get up at 5:45, which isthere in one place for six hours and fifteen minutes

I'll bet it would be better for both our brains and our bodies if we took our seven hours in sections instead of all at once Say we slept for three hours between 1 am and 4 am, two hours from noon until 2 pm and another two hours between 7 pive us the same seven hours, but better distributed over the twenty-four-hour period

There are some problems that would have to be worked out, of course The reason all of us now try to get what is known as ”a good night's rest” is not because that's the way our bodies like it, but because the whole civilized process of going to bed and getting up is such a ti activity that we couldn't afford to do it three or four tiht people a couple of hours to get going again after each sleep period, they'd be less help than they are now A personal opinion, you understand

The Sound of Silence 151 151 And, of course, there are other questions that would have to be resolved When, for instance, would we change our underwear, take a shower andakes you on those nights you can't sleep Last night, I awoke at 2:20 It was the sound of falling snow that did it I kneas snow because there was not a single, solitary sound The silence of falling snow is deafening

I lay there for severalto breathe quietly so as not to obliterate the soundlessness Finally, I couldn't handleoff ”arose”), pulled back the curtain and looked out on the backyard Sure enough, there it was-gently falling snow hitting the ground silently, covering the little slate walk and clinging, half an inch thick, to tiny branches that are themselves no more than half an inch thick It perched on top of the points of the picket fence in a beautifully symmetrical peak that no human hand could fashi+on They say no two snowflakes have ever been the same but we don't know, do we? I sao that looked very much alike

There are all kinds of sounds in nature that are better than noise So on where you are and what you're doing when you hear theht out in it without a coat or umbrella But inside, the sound of the same downpour is a pleasure that makes you appreciate your shelter

Of all the sounds co weather with nature, none is so persistently loud and i up onto a broad, sandy beach I envy people who live on expensive property near the ocean There's the roar as thousands of tons of water advance on a broad front along the width of the beach, or the crash when the waves hit the immovable rocks that cup the shoreline at either end of a sandy crescent There is the soft, seething sound as the water recedes It pauses briefly out at sea, gathering strength for its next attack A beach confounds angry waters by accepting the patiently for the waves to go back where they came from, out to sea

The heat of summer is as silent as snow but it's an oppressive silence There is no pleasurable relief fro up the extra blanket on a cold night Air conditioning is a modern marvel but it is loud, heartless and mechanical, with no charm I don't like it but I don't knoe ever lived without it

Wind is nature's most unpredictable sound You never know for sure what it's doing, where it's co somewhere but while it blows, it seems to stand still The trees in front ofup to the wrath of a gale The trunks creak, the branches crack, but the big h hundreds of stor in the wind fifty years ago The tree will, in all probability, survive many more years

My perfect day would be to awaken to a cool and sunny day with a sun that shone in the kitchen hile I ate breakfast I'd take my own shower under circu me to control the force and temperature of the spray with the twist of a dial

By the time I sat down at er, my ideal day would be cloudy with a threat of rain that discouraged ed this kind of overwriting

Where Are All the Plumbers? 153 153

The Search for Quality Where Are All the Plumbers?

For the past few days I've spenta complicated little oak stool for Eet back there in my workshop, I notice that I'm quite contented Yesterday I worked until 2:30 before I remembered I hadn't eaten lunch It even has occurred toand spend the rest ofpieces of furniture that aood at it

It's a mystery to me whywith their hands Soe happened in this country Aood, hard ith their hands were not as smart as those orked exclusively with their brains The carpenters, the plumbers, the mechanics, the painters, the electricians and the farory of their own below the one the bankers, the insurance salesmen, the doctors and the lawyers were in The jobs that required people to ith their hands were generally lower-paying jobs and the people who took the has happened in recent years It's al people who really kno to do so back at the white-collar society In all but the top executive jobs, the blue-collar workers areas much as or more than the teachers, the accountants and the airline clerks

The apprentice carpenters areout as bank clerks Master crafts double that In e 45 an hour Ain the service department of an authorized car dealer, can e]Hard at work in his orking shop in Rensselaerville, New York make35,000 a year All this has happened, in part at least, because the fathers ere plue so they wouldn't have to be pluland, a child's future is is deterned either to a school that features a classical education or one that eh we never have had the saland, our lines are drawn, too The people ith their hands as well as their brains still aren't apt to belong to the local country club The mechanic at the car dealer's s to the club and the e when he or she is assigned either to a school that features a classical education or one that eh we never have had the saland, our lines are drawn, too The people ith their hands as well as their brains still aren't apt to belong to the local country club The mechanic at the car dealer's s to the club and the mechanic doesn't

It's hard to account for e're so short of people who do things ith their hands You can only conclude that it's because of some On Conservation 155 155 mixed-up sense of values we have that ious to sell houses as a real-estate person than it is to build them as a carpenter

To further confuse the matter, when anyone orkswith his hands, as when I make a piece of furniture, friends are envious and effusive with praise So, how come the people who do it professionally, and infinitely better than I, aren't in the country club?

If I've lost you in going the long way around toit is to ith your hands and considering how remunerative those jobs have beco out of school aren't learning a trade instead of becoht and wrong about a lot of things, but he was never undecided When I elve, he told s on earth so fast that we'd run out of theuess we all have, and I wonder whether it's true or not The real question is, e run out of the things we need to survive before we find substitutes for the to run out of oil Of course, we're going to run out of coal And it seems very likely that there will be no substantial forests left in another hundred years

Argue withthere's round than we've already used Tell h in the United States to last seventy-five or a hundred years Makeu doo, it's somewhere down the line of years if we don't find replace from the earth What about five hundred years from now if one hundred doesn't worry you? What about a thousand years from now? Will there be an oak tree left two feet in diameter? How ht feet long, two inches thick and a foot wide? My guess is it will cost the equivalent in today's money of a thousand dollars A piece of oak like that will be treasured as diamonds are treasured today because of its rarity

I don't think there is a more difficult question we're faced with than that of preservation A large nu we have because things ork out They are not necessarily selfish They just don't believe you can worry about the future randchildren's foreseeable life expectancy They feel someone will find the answer Pump the oil,you can find there Thereelse, soood substitute

The preservationists, on the other hand, would set aside a lot of everything They'd save the forests and reduce our dependency on coal and oil in order to conserve theh no satisfactory substitutes would ever be found

It's too bad the arguroups is as bitter as it is, because neither wants to do, intentionally, what is wrong The preservationists think business interests ant to use what they can find are greedy and short-sighted Businessmen think the preservationists are, in their oay, short-sighted (One of the strange things that has happened to our language is that people like the ones who run the oil coh they do not approve of conserving at all) All this comes to me now because I have just returned fro to an area To randfather, Honolulu would probably look like the end of the world if he could see it now

Design 157 157 We have just about used up the island of Oahu Noe're starting on Maui Is it right or wrong? Do the hotels crowded along the beach not give great pleasure to large numbers of us? Would it be better to preserve the beauty of Hawaii by li the number of people allowed to be there? Would it be better if we saved the forests, the oil and the coal in the world and did without the things they provide? If there is round, where is it?

The ansill have to come from so car fast, I want to cut smoke pollution but burn coal to save oil, and I want to pursuedown any trees