DP
>>
>>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