{"id":573894698,"date":"2022-08-16T21:36:32","date_gmt":"2022-08-17T01:36:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/?p=573894698"},"modified":"2022-08-17T12:23:04","modified_gmt":"2022-08-17T16:23:04","slug":"unconcerned-as-the-deer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2022\/08\/16\/unconcerned-as-the-deer\/","title":{"rendered":"Unconcerned as the deer"},"content":{"rendered":"

I got a decent shot of the fawn on the lawn as I rode through one of the campus neighborhoods. Three or four seem to sit there every evening. It’s a grassy, wooded lot that sits next to an odd rental, and just down from a Civil War-era home. They’re on a slight hill, in the shade, munching clover.<\/p>\n

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I just saw two of them on this pass. Last time I spied three. Next time, maybe zero. Who knows the schedules urban deer keep.<\/p>\n

That’s a standard width sidewalk, and I was passing by close to it, on the two-lane road. The deer were not at all concerned with me, or the occasional passing car. <\/p>\n

There are five houses on that block, and the one small stand of trees. One block down there’s a more densely wooded stand. I suppose that’s where they live.<\/p>\n

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Back to Sarton. I’ve worked my way through about two thirds of the book. She’s telling the story of her house. She bought it in her mid-40s after her parents died, and the memoir, written eight years later, is about the experience, the hidden New Hampshire village and, now, her neighbors.<\/p>\n

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I bought this book used, and I was pleased to see someone had underlined a few bits here and there. I probably haven’t always felt this way, but now I like idea of happening on someone else’s notes, but people seldom write in the margins anymore, it seems. <\/p>\n

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I think about a version of her support and freedom of a routine once in a while. I think it’s really about efficiencies. A routine gets done and redone, and you get better and better at it. So you become faster and so on. <\/p>\n

Isn’t that the point of rote work? It’d be different, of course, if you were talking about true craftsmanship, which she does a fair amount. From time to time she tries to compare the craft work of others to her own craft. <\/p>\n

And here she is at her craft, jamming an incredible amount of work into two pages. It is masterful, really. This is not the full story of her neighbor, Albert Quigley<\/a>. (Even more about what is an interesting measureIt is not she includes about the man, but consider how much information is contained in these two short, clear pages.<\/p>\n

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The Quigley home is now Nelson’s library.<\/p>\n