Creativity and Joy

 

 
These pictures were taken last May. We had gone down to a big home improvement store looking for tile for our entryway and bathroom. At first the choices seemed overwhelming, but then the salesman explained that a lot of the different tiles we saw were actually variations of the same tile–the tiles had so much variety we wouldn’t have a clue what we were getting. And we couldn’t possibly get a uniform look.

So a few days later we went down to Santa Fe to try again. We tried a couple of stores before we found a salesman who knew his materials and helped us match some tiles to our samples of the flooring and the wood for our cabinets. Thanks to him and to our samples the process didn’t take long at all.

This weekend we started on making another choice–what color to paint the house. It has to go with the roof, the dark brown of the flashing and and the terra cotta trim on our windows. There are gazillions of different colors and shades so those constraints help a lot. I still spent a lot of time on the internet looking at possibilities so we would know more or less what we want when we go down to our local retailer and look at color swatches. It’s highly unlikely the colors on our computer screen will be the same as the swatches. Also the swatches won’t be exactly the same as the paint, and the paint looks different in small samples than on a whole house, and colors look different in different light, and they also look different depending on what they’re next to. So we’ll choose the best we can and expect to be surprised.

This whole enterprise is one great experiment, so we might as well enjoy it. For some reason it tickles my funny bone. 😀

What about you? Have you had to make any choices lately? Were they hard or easy?

I’ve been having a great time the past couple of weeks learning some new software programs. A couple of them have steep learning curves and are great mental exercise. I tend to be happiest when I’m learning new things.

I’ve also been labeling the pictures Andy brings home from the land and putting some of them up on Flickr. These are two he took Friday, when they were putting up ceiling joists:
 

 

 
And here are two that he took today as he walked down one of our old emergency escape routes. The road was rough before but now it’s impassable by car because of the flash flooding last summer:
 

 

 
There are a lot of changes in our life right now. What about yours?

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
—John W. Gardner

I was surprised a few years ago by the preface in the U. S. News and World Report annual issue on the country’s best colleges. It said its rankings are still valid but they couldn’t honestly say the colleges were worth the price. Things have not improved since then.

Costs have gone through the roof, increasing faster than the cost of medical care, and many students end up saddled with years, or a lifetime, of debt. I read one article that said 15% of student loans are owed by people over 65. And economists are warning that the over one trillion dollars of student debt will weigh down the economy for years to come. Some call it the next financial bubble.

So what happened? As far as I can tell the main problem is the notion that everyone should go to college, regardless of interest or aptitude. That was the only way to success in life. To give everyone the opportunity credit was made easy with no regard as to whether the students would be able to pay the debt off after college. Or without any regard as to whether or not the college experience and degree was really what the students needed to prepare them for life.

The colleges were in great shape, with plenty of students clamoring to get in. In general they could blissfully go on doing what they’ve been doing and raise their rates. It wasn’t their problem. Fortunately that may be changing. For instance Harvard, MIT and Stanford are looking into providing online classes, so new alternatives will be opening up. I think that’s a healthy development. I also think that it would be healthier if we stopped equating education with a college degree. I went to college because I always wanted to go and worked hard to get there and to get my degree. My sister didn’t go because she wasn’t interested. We both made great choices. She had an outstanding work ethic and did just fine in life. She’s better read than a lot of people I know who have their degrees, and she’s doing a fantastic job doing research on companies as she trades in the stock market.

What about you? How important was college to you? If you went what parts of it was the most valuable? Would it have been worth being saddled with years and years of debt?