Sippican’s Got His Wealth Of Nations Freak On

Look, I’m doing it wrong.

It’s not that I don’t understand how the Intertunnel works. I do. But I can’t bring myself to do what you’re supposed to do and grub around on the ones-and-zeros ground for attention. I’m too busy making things anyway.

But no one writes things and hopes no one reads them — unless they’re crazy. I’m a lunatic, of course, but a much different kind than that. I appreciate it when people come and read what’s offered here. It is a constant source of fun and interest to read what visitors here offer as comments, and to see how many other people point to what is here and talk about it.

Part of me “doing it wrong” is how badly I keep up with all that. Based on manners alone, I wish I could correspond properly with everyone that says: Hey, look at that Sippican drivel today; it’s the Shiznit! And I’d like to acknowledge a lot of such people right now, but I am loathe to do it because I will undoubtedly leave out a bunch of people, because I forgot, or I didn’t even know about it in the first place. I do find my name in the damndest places these days.

I must mention one thing, because it is so piquant. I am terribly fond of everybody’s crazy intellectual uncle, that wild wigged wag from Edinburgh, Adam Smith. I sheepishly admit I keep a hardbound copy of The Wealth of Nations at my bedside and reread it all the time. It is like a secular bible to me. Of course I’m so poor that reading it is more akin to looking at pornography than scripture, but still. As someone who is fed into the maw of the woodchipper of primitive barebones commerce daily, but has likewise run things large enough to come under the rubric of “Macro” economics, I can tell you that if you’re looking for a pinmaker, well, Adam, I’m your huckleberry.

Oh yes, that one thing? I am a devotee of a website across the roiling Atlantic called The Adam Smith Institute blog. I’ve been reading it for years, and stealing jokes from it, too. Of course any institute devoted to the memory and teaching of Adam Smith is my kinda place, and their blog is very interesting, in an I’m-interested-in-things-other-people-avoid-like-homework and-would-rather-watch-CSIMiami kinda way. And I was reading it the other day, and flummoxed to see them telling everybody to read Sippican Cottage. It seemed like such an out of the way/wonderful place to find myself.

Again, thanks to the legions of people who read and comment and link and riff and so forth. But you gents and dames over there on that foggy lump of rocks and coal out in the Atlantic? You made my day.