How to Recognize Different Types of NYT Columnists

From Quite a Long Way Away

No. 1 - The Larch

I met him at the remote mountain camp where he now lives, a bumpy 4-hour ride south of Nairobi near the Rift Valley. Leakey and his wife Katy — an artist who baby-sat for Jane Goodall and led a cultural expedition up the Amazon — have created an enterprise called the Leakey Collection, which employs up to 1,200 of the local Maasai, and sells designer jewelry and household items around the world.

One of the benefits of being a Club Member is that Our Mr. Brooks got to spend a portion of his Summer Vacation ambling around Nairobi with the Leakeys.

Like many summer vacationers, he has returned with a slide show.

Like few summer vacationers, rather that a bedsheet tacked up on the wall, Our Mr. Brooks gets to use United States' newspaper of record as the screen on which he shows his slides.

The Leakeys live in a mountaintop tent. Their kitchen and dining room is a lean-to with endless views across the valley. The workers sit out under the trees gossiping and making jewelry. Getting a tour of the facilities is like walking through “Swiss Family Robinson” or “Dr. Dolittle.”

The exercise, of course, comes with an Important Lesson that makes it all deductible worthwhile.

Some people center their lives around money or status or community or service to God, but this seems to be a learning-centered life, where little bits of practical knowledge are the daily currency, where the main vocation is to be preoccupied with some exciting little project or maybe a dozen.

Some people specialize, and certainly the modern economy encourages that. But there are still people, even if only out in the African wilderness, with a wandering curiosity, alighting on every interesting part of their environment.
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One might, of course, also note those vast numbers of other-other people whose lives are neither built around money nor status nor specialization, but are instead highly focused on hanging onto what's left of their sliver of the American Dream by their nails.

But that would be rude.

I am very glad you had a nice vacation, Mr. Brooks.

Now welcome back to America.