Learning From Others

Keep Going, from Austin Kleon, is about making things. It is an easy read for those of you interested in making things. Actually, those of you not interested in making things, in the art sense, may find it worth reading.

But that is not the point of this posting. You can see the summation below. (Easy for 10 chapters all of them titled.) This is something I started after my heart attack. How to get through a book? How to return to reading?

I started with Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death. Read a chapter, make a summary. That process got me through the book. I don’t understand why this enables me to ready. But it does. I’ve continued. A two-page spread, fill it up with chapter numbers, some bits of summary follow. I’m reasonably sure I understand that I read.

This works for fiction and non-fiction books. But, Poetry? That does not seem to work. The collections, Sailing Alone Around the Room, Newspaper Blackout, and Queen of a Rainy Country, are three recent examples, are all so atomic that summaries would fall to individual poems.

So I must read without the crutch of summarizing. I hope I understand/

On Quora, a person asked about the necessity of mixing eggs before putting them in a pan for scrambling.  There are several thoughtful answers. But why did the person ask? Why rely on what people on the Internet say? Eggs, for a non-impoverished person in an industrialized country, are cheap.  This is a question one can easily answer for oneself. This is a question that answering for oneself brings benefits beyond having the knowledge. My answer is:

Since you’re asking this question on Quora, I’ll assume you’re a citizen of an industrialized country. I’ll further assume you are not an impoverished citizen. The rest of my answer rests on the foundation of those assumptions. In essence, I assume you can afford to spend the money to buy a dozen eggs and possibly “ruin” a few of them.

Eggs are cheap. With relative ease you can get the answer for yourself. Buy a dozen. Each day for six days make a pair of scrambled eggs for yourself changing the mixing time, maybe the heat level. Pay attention to how you do it each day and how you liked the results. Try to not forget too much.

On the seventh day review your notes and/or memories. You will then know with absolute certainty if you really need to mix the eggs before pouring in order to have scrambled eggs prepared the way you like.

Fundamentally, why ask when you can easily get a more authoritative answer via direct experience at trivial cost?