Quality, knives and uncut words: A late autumn ramble

I write these words on a windless, cloudless, warm late autumn Sunday afternoon. Sweetheart Vivienne’s flown off to appear in the Sydney Writers’ Festival [1]. I’m home alone. I feel sleepy. Lethargic, Lazy. My mind wanders. Hither and thither. Free associating. Giving birth to today’s Farmdoc’s Blog post: a musing meandering ramble:

I’ve previously written of my thoughts on Quality – which I owe in large part to Robert Pirsig [2]. Regarding consumer items, quality’s essentially proportional to price. But as price increases, the incremental quality increase tapers off. So the things I buy are generally half way along the quality/price continuum.

Four weeks after my post about Riedel glasses [3], today’s photograph’s of our set of Wüsthof Trident knives. Wüsthof, founded in 1814, based in Solingen in Germany, and family-owned for seven generations, makes the highest quality knives [4, 5]. Sweetheart Vivienne and I treasure ours. We hope they become heirlooms.

Segueing on from literal to figurative cutting, I’ve started a collection – well okay, a list – of words which have prefixes or suffixes and which aren’t (to my knowledge, anyway) in common usage without their end-bits. So far I have three, i.e. uncouth, unkempt, ruthless. Have you ever come across the words couth, kempt or ruth? And can you tell me of other words that lengthen this list? If you can, please share them via a Comment. Thanks.

farmdoc's blog post number 19

Robert Pirsig. Have you heard of him? He is a 79-year-old American writer and philosopher. I was reminded of him a month ago when I wanted to buy two webcams – so my sweetheart Vivienne and I could see each other when we are apart and we talk on Skype. When online I found a webcam price range of A$15-110, I quickly realised I had a decision to make. And at that exact moment my mind jumped to Pirsig’s 1974 book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. In it Pirsig explores the metaphysics of quality via discussions between motorcyclists during a journey across the USA. Wikipedia tells me it sold millions of copies in 27 languages, and has been called the most widely read philosophy book ever (after first being rejected by 121 publishers, more than any other bestselling book, according to Guinness World Records). I know nothing about Zen or Motorcycle Maintenance, but this is one of the most useful books I have read – which I did over 30 years ago, so I have little recall of its content. But the message it gave me is that quality – which Pirsig deemed undefinable – is paramount. So I bought two high-end webcams – Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000, for the record. And they are top quality and wonderful – as is Pirsig’s book.