Some introspective blogs in the mirror.

What I Want For You

The Virtues of Dead Time

Wisdom From The Agrarians

Lex Anteinternet: I've experienced total or near total solar eclipses...

Lex Anteinternet: I've experienced total or near total solar eclipses...:  and I can't grasp why a person would travel to see one.  It seems like an extravagant waste of money to me.

And in pondering further, having experienced two total or near total eclipses, and quite a few partial ones, I really can't grasp the "big deal" nature of it.  Shows how rich of a society we are, however, that people will actually spend money to travel to experience one.

Next week, everyone will be back to complaining about the economy and that taxes are too high.

Really, while I hate to complain about leisure, traveling to an eclipse, unless it's a day's trip, is really extravagant.

May 26, 1920. Canning Clubs and hand rolled cigars.

A Canning Club Girl, May 26, 1920.

Girls Canning Clubs were a movement in the early 20th Century that was a reaction to a similar corn growing club for boys much in the same way that the Girl Scouts were a reaction to the Boy Scouts.  They started off as Tomato Clubs and evolved into general Canning Clubs, sometimes finding an expression in 4H.

I'm sure that canning is still done in 4H today and in recent years it seems to have undergone a bit of a revival.  My suspicion is that our current times will increase that trend.

Lee Ying, Washington D. C. Cigar maker.  May 26, 1920.

Lee Ying apparently operated his own shop and he didn't appear to be particularly pleased to be the subject of a newspaper photograph on May 26, 1920.  This probably was just another day at work for him.

Cigars, like canning, have enjoyed a bit of a revival recently.  Indeed, the things they're associated with have as well, two being whiskey and the concept, if not the actual practice, of leisure.

Blog Mirror: Catholic Answers Focus | Catholic Answers: God Wants You to Rest

One of my New Years Resolutions this year was to quit working on Saturdays:

I haven't adhered to it whatsoever.

I have, however, largely quit working on Sundays.  A person needs some downtime. And here's an interesting view on that:

Catholic Answers Focus | Catholic Answers: Want to know what Church really teaches? Well, you can hear it from the top Catholic leaders, newsmakers, and unsung heroes of our times in this podcast. You get in-depth and compelling conversations in each episode.

I work most Saturdays.

This is very common for attorneys who do litigation. As a rule, we work at least 5.5 days a week, or 6.  When approaching trials, we work 7.

Indeed, one of the oddest experiences most trial lawyers have is somebody calling you on Friday afternoon and give you the old "well. . . it's 3:00 so you must be ready to knock off. . . ".

No, I'm not.  It isn't the weekend for me.

Sunday is my weekend.  If I'm lucky.

Anyhow, on the odd occasion I take a Saturday off, or even get close it, the home conversation is "What are you planning on doing this weekend?", which is followed by as a comment; "oh, well I thought we'd do x, y and z in the yard".

Usually followed by a claim that we discussed this.

Nope.  We didn't.

I hate yard work.  I like farm work, but yards are a big boring waste of time in my view.  My wife views things differently.  I like to have a yard, but I could care less about having the niftiest grass or any such nonsense, in my view.  I want the yard to look kept, and not messy, but that's about the extent of it. My wife, on the other hand, is one of those people who are constantly improving the yard. 

Which has caused me over the years to dread summer a bit. Spend Saturday in the yard?

Oh well, there's always the reward of a nicely kept yard. Right?

A Mid Week At Work Query: How Do You Decompress?

Earlier this week we ran a distressing item on the distressing items in the most recent issue of the state's bar journal.  We didn't discuss every article in that issue, distressing or otherwise.  One of the articles was entitled Take Two Weeks, There Will Always Be Work.  The article counseled that lawyers should take two weeks off each year, and it's wise counsel.

The article also noted that a recent study determined that our colleagues in Canada now take "only" two to three weeks each year, which is down from an entire month in the summer and two weeks in the winter in the 1970s.  Man, that must have been the golden age. . . .Having said that, a lawyer I used to have a fair number of cases against once told me that lawyers in his county took December off at one time.  What with the holidays, late hunting seasons, and the end of the year, they didn't work Decembers.

I can't even imagine that occurring now.

 Some folks relax by riding.

I'm one of those people who bring the vacation statistics down.  I didn't take a vacation this year. . . or the year before.  I have taken two weeks off in a row since I started practicing law in 1990 exactly ones, and only once.  On a couple of other occasions, maybe as many as four times, I've taken a week off.  It just doesn't seem to happen.

That is bad, I'll omit.  But it's common in the United States.  We hear of vacation time becoming less and less used all the time.  And while it may be just me, it seems to me that the more self employed or professionally employed a person is the more likely it is that they won't take their vacation time.  That has an impact on a person and it is bad.

 William O. Douglas, Supreme Court Justice, apparently cold relax at the office.

People need to decompress somehow from their job stresses. . . at least we're told that.  And of course vacations aren't the only way that's done.  There's hobbies, avocations of all sorts, sports of various types and the like.  It seems to me that most people I know have something along these lines they do. 

How about you?

Nellie Tayloe Ross relaxed by farming.

How inscrutable is the civilization where men toil and work and worry their hair gray to get a living and forget to play!

How inscrutable is the civilization where men toil and work and worry their hair gray to get a living and forget to play!

Lin Yutang

Overwork as self escape

Leisure is only possible when we are at one with ourselves. We tend to overwork as a means of self-escape, as a way of trying to justify our existence.

Josef Pieper

The world of Work as our only world

Of course the world of work begins to become - threatens to become - our only world, to the exclusion of all else. The demands of the working world grow ever more total, grasping ever more completely the whole of human existence.

Josef Pieper

Repose, leisure, peace, belong among the elements of happiness

Repose, leisure, peace, belong among the elements of happiness. If we have not escaped from harried rush, from mad pursuit, from unrest, from the necessity of care, we are not happy. And what of contemplation? Its very premise is freedom from the fetters of workaday busyness. Moreover, it itself actualizes this freedom by virtue of being intuition.

Josef Pieper