Chapter 15

I had a more difficult time with this chapter. I felt like Brende jumped around too much and went from one episode to another too quickly. The chapter seemed to focus mainly on Wilbur, who seemed to have some type of depression. I must say he asked Brende many questions. I like how Brende answered him about not dwelling on being depressed but just accepting it as perhaps a sad day. I have also read that pigs are very smart. I once tried to talk my parents into letting me have a pig. It didn’t work but I did have two ferrets and a dog.

I thought it was interesting how Brende set out to clock how much time was actually spent on threshing in a day. What was amazing that after he deducted all of the breaks the men only worked a half day. He also learned from a thresherman, the community as a group was debt-free. His study did not reveal all the free time during the long months of the off-season. So comparing this to working in a New York law firm where a typical partner would spend sixty to eighty hours in hard mental work per week, the work of these Minimites doing manual labor seemed very appealing.

Sometime later Wilbur visited with him and questioned him about life in a big city. Wilbur could not even image living under the fast pace of city dwellers. He remarked that people who survive this type of life have to have a lot of mental strength. He asked Brende if he thought getting a college education and being in debt was worth it. I thought it was interesting when Elbert asked Brende what percentage of college students from Boston actually did what they learned. Brende answer was very few, because it they didn’t change their minds by the time they graduated, they often discovered that what they were learning has already been outmoded. Boy, that’s a scary thought.