Nobody makes breakfast like a Canadian! There’s a lot of growth on the property and my cleaning lady’s uncle and son have come to the rescue. And I’m busy cooking. If you want someone to do hard work, feed them well!
I tried to swing a machete for a few hours. It wasn’t a pretty picture, the aftermath. Turns out too, you got to spend a helluva lot of time sharpening the thing, above and beyond swinging it. A la Whitman, I salute those that swing the machete and whistle a song of self-liberation!
Whenever I feel down or in a mood to complain about things, I always say to myself, “At least I ain’t working in any coal mine.” And it is true. There are so many folks out there doing REALLY dirty, dangerous, hard work. Everything you HAVE is paid for in someones GIVE.
I grew up on a farm, more a rough homestead and had a hard-natured Swiss-German father who expected me to always be working. And I was. Collecting wood, chopping wood, hauling water, clearing land, milking goats day and night, working the land, mending fences - my father never ran out of work for me. I was never allowed to be in the house, watch TV, play video games. It was just day after day of work.
I got my first real job when I was 13, laying tile with “men”. It was super cool and from that moment, I always worked outside, doing dirty work, the work so many wouldn’t do. Construction, roofing, concrete forming, steel work. My childhood had taught me well. And I loved it. Being outside, feeling tired at the end of the day, hanging out with the crew. Loved it. I’d work all day without gloves and then swoon over the relief as I did the dishes each night.
Without labor nothing prospers. Sophocles
It didn’t help my running career. It made it very hard to train. But my later success in ultrarunning always came back to that foundation of many, many days of hard work. I was built like a piece of granite. I also attribute my poetic mind to all those long days alone, working, meditating in my mind and exercising it.
Working men are my heroes. Those doing the hard work that keeps the world grinding along. I salute them.
It’s great that machines and technology are replacing manual labor. I’m not in favor of work for work’s sake. But there is a good, solid, honorable side to the workingman’s life. This world was built on the backs of hard-working men and women. Our roads, our electrical grids, our cars, the ore and metals things are made of, the food on our table, the houses we live in, and the buildings we work in.
I say all this because I’ve been thinking lots lately about the men and women who do the back-breaking work in this world. Where I live in gritty Matagalpa, it is full of people who get up early, go to bed early, and in between lift, haul, shovel, machete, cut, carry and generally work themselves to death. It’s as blue-collar, hard-knocks a city as you’ll get. And I’m so thankful to have hung out here and been part of that. Going to write and share my photos of the hard-working part of town soon.
There is no better documentary on this topic than Workingman’s Death by Michael Glawogger. He’s a genius - also see his Whore’s Glory. Please watch, contemplate, set aside some time for this.