Food for thought

Harvard educated travel writer, Kristin Kimball, writes of a learning experience on her farm:

"As I patched the barn with scrap lumber, pig tight but ugly, I was forced to confront my own prejudice.  I had come to the farm with the unarticulated belief that concrete things were for dumb people and abstract things were for smart people.  I thought the physical world-- the trades-- was the place you ended up if you weren't as bright or ambitious enough to handle a white-collar job.  Did I really think that a person with a genius for fixing engines, or for building, or for husbanding cows, was less brilliant than a person who writes ad copy or interprets the law?  Apparently I did, though it amazes me now.  I ordered books from the library about construction, plumbing, and electricity, and discovered that reading them was like trying to learn in a foreign language, the simplest things-- the names of unknown tools or hardware, the names for parts of structures-- creating dead ends that required answers, more research.  There's no better cure for snobbery than a good ass kicking."

--Kristin Kimball, The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love (New York: Scribner, 2010),  111.