Hobby wisdom

   "Disparage not another man's woman, nor his job, nor his hobby, nor his drink."  I wrote that down once, after someone teased me about ordering a Manhattan.

   Speaking of Manhattan, and hobbies, and disparagement: Manhattan is where I bought my first digital camera and started doing what millions of people do -- snapping photos and downloading them to my laptop. I spend many a happy hour editing, sorting, culling, and just flipping through them. There's a reason why millions of people do it. It's fun.  

   But like any hobby, it's not for everyone. My sister-in-law, for example, says, “What’s the point of keeping a bunch of pictures on a computer, and not doing anything with them? I mean, I don’t get it."

   "Well," I should have said, except that I don't think that fast, "The point of keeping a bunch of pictures on a computer, when you have taken and arranged them with some care, is about the same as a lot of things people do for recreation. It is an outlet for the natural and healthy human impulses to be creative, maybe even artistic, to engage in the world, and most of all, simply, to play. It’s a hobby, for crying out loud –- a relaxing diversion from work and responsibility and the generally dispiriting news of the world. That's the point, and it's a pretty good one." 

   So cast no aspersion on the man with his digital camera and his computer and his pictures of people on the street or the woods near his house, the evening sky, the corn stubble peaking through snow in a field along the river in the town where he grew up. He has a hobby. It's the man without one who needs watching.