Learning something new is good for the brain and the hands. L. Francis Herreshoff, the designer of some of the most beautiful man-made objects ever, wrote “there were among men a few, a very few, who used both their hands and their heads, and they achieved a happiness that nigh passeth the understanding.” (He was also a bit of a character). So in learning something it is not simply enough to just read about it, you also should also strive to create something. In A Place of My Own, Michael Pollan states an appreciation for “forms of knowledge that seem to yield most readily to the hands.” He goes on to say “Different kinds of work, performed with different sets of tools, can disclose different faces of the world…”
So don’t be satisfied as a spectator — get your hands dirty. Grow your own dinner – knit your own fisherman’s sweater — build a canoe and use it to transport the family on an exploration of a distant waterway. Make something — Craft something — Grow something — try something you’re not sure you can actually accomplish. Even if you fall short, you’ll be stretching a lot of muscles — both mental and physical — and the journey is more than half the fun.
Michael Pollan: “Food Rules”: A Completely Different Way To Fix The Health Care Crisis
#39 Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself. There is nothing wrong with eating sweets, fried foods, pastries, even drinking soda every now and then, but food manufacturers have made eating these formerly expensive and hard-to-make treats so cheap and easy that we’re eating them every day.
“Sailing is a wonderful and unique thing, and the sensation of being noiselessly and smoothly propelled without cost of fuel is one of the most satisfactory pleasures known, but when you add to this the fact that the sailboat itself is one of the most interesting things which God has let man make–well, then you get a combination which is almost sacred.”
Lewis Francis Herreshoff – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
His books include The Common Sense of Yacht Design, The Compleat Cruiser, Capt. Nat Herreshoff: The Wizard of Bristol, The Writings of L. Francis Herreshoff, Sensible Cruising Designs and An L. Francis Herreshoff Reader. He published numerous magazine articles, notably the ‘How To Build’ series in the magazine The Rudder.
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