> > I've never dug a ditch, and thank god for that.
> >
> >Doug
>
>
>Ah, Doug. Don't be such a Yalie. Digging ditches is honest, vibrant work.
Sure, it's honest I guess -- whatever that means when applied to an action. Either you're digging a ditch or not, and when you dig a ditch you get a dug ditch. But then the same thing can be said of buying stocks.
I know -- you mean no-one is adversely affected by your ditch-digging? Perhaps perhaps... as long as it's say not their land or their body you're burying or water you're redirecting or any of the other myriad effects of particular ditches. So I don't know, I'm a little unsure about this abstract ditch though harmlessness or even benefit may indeed be true of your particular ditch/es. But then, is this quality 'honesty'?
Perhaps indeed you mean that, in some equally abstract sense, honest people dig ditches or some other association between the likely attributes of the ditch-digger and the ditch. This warrants a great more discussion. I would hate to attribute to you some patronising rhetorical stance about the nobility of work presumed to be naive, simplistic, unmediated, and (resolutely) non-intellectual by someone who in general is not required to support themselves with that kind of work. I'm sure that can't be what's happening here.
But indeed maybe in some mesh of these ways ditch-digging is honest in some way applicable to neither writing books or stock-broking. Maybe. But I'd like you to tell me how.
As for vibrant... I think it's best if I don't even start.
Catherine [disappointed in all Americans at the moment -- was a little recalcitrant backbone too much to ask for? I bet I don't get many more laughs out of GWB] ------------------------------------ Dr. Catherine Driscoll
* Director, Adelaide Research Centre for the Humanities and Social Sciences http://www.adelaide.edu.au/ARCHSS.htm
* Associate Dean (Information Technology), Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
* Convenor, Bachelor of Arts (Cultural Studies)
* Lecturer, Department of English email: catherine.driscoll at adelaide.edu.au phone: 61-8 8303 5627 fax : 61-8 8303 4341 http://www.adelaide.edu.au/English/cdriscol.htm mail: Department of English, University of Adelaide, Adelaide SA 5005, AUSTRALIA ------------------------------------