Note (more of the same): Last year I got a pacemaker for Christmas (13 December, actually); the #1 no-no is using a chain saw. (The magnetic field is fearsome.) Taking that warning a step farther, I decided to do this project entirely with hand tools. Of course that means more exercise—a good thing. But the “great wonder,” again unexpected, is that the resultant slowness and quiet is the de facto engine of my entire spontaneous discovery process.

Note: Some of you will have discovered my implicit debt to the economist-of-freedom, F.A. Hayek. His stunningly clear view of market  capitalism as a “spontaneous discovery process” is my intellectual bedrock, my “context” for three decades in Silicon Valley, and now even for my recreational pursuits (which are, as noted, becoming so much more than that).