`Whatever Was at Hand'

“If your [sic] so smart how come your [sic] teaching little kids and not writing books [sic]”

So writes an anonymous reader. Despite the paucity of punctuation I take this as a question. What follows is an incomplete answer. I work in a public school with children because I enjoy the company of most kids, and even on the most discouraging day I contribute something, if only a joke or civil greeting, to at least one kid’s life. For some of them, I may be the only source of such things. Also, for a writer, kids are good material.

I’ve earned at least a portion of my living from writing for thirty-two years, mostly for newspapers. That too was a good source of material – for writing, for life – and served to patch my moth-eaten education. I’ve written about science and engineering for two universities, furthering my career as an autodidact and curing me of the notion I might enjoy college teaching. As to a book: I like what I’m doing, publically and otherwise.

Zbigniew Herbert writes in “The Price of Art” (Still Life with a Bridle):

“The Dutch painters of the `golden age’ undertook all kinds of employment that a contemporary so-called artist would reject as degrading. They were artisans, and their humility toward life was great and beautiful.”

“…Others, the best known painters among them, led a `double’ professional life. They were cooks, innkeepers, owners of taverns or brick kilns, petty clerks, traders of works of art, real estate, stockings, tulips, and whatever was at hand.”