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By Root 1157 0

a hole through my finger. But someone gave me an old power drill he was no longer using, so I had a chance to do a comparison. The power drill saved some time, but not that much. For me it was a little faster turning a screw, about twice as fast drilling a hole. Occasionally the power drill was clearly superior. The pressure-treated wood I bought for our deck was very dense, and was hard to drill through manually. Also, in the basement there were some spaces too cramped for rotating hands, so again the power drill was necessary. (A friend recently suggested I try an old-fashioned “Yankee” drill, which has a push-in, pull-out action and can be operated using only one hand. He claims to delight in wielding it, but I have yet to locate one.) My use of a power saw, which I borrowed a time or two from a neighbor, was similarly intermittent. By exercising restraint with these devices, I created a working environment both more serene for myself and more inviting for my young son Hans, who at age five begged to be allowed to drill or saw into his own pieces of wood alongside me. At the same time, the motorized devices could be undeniably handy.

Transportation: By working in and around our home we have saved untold time and cost in transportation. Still, to have minimal need of a car is not the same as having no need. We have gotten by with the Blazer for our longer trips. I have also considered turning to a low-energy car or a hybrid vehicle that can be pedaled but that also has an electrical assist motor for hills or longer distances. Last spring I traded in my three-wheeled rickshaw for a four-wheeled pedal-car called a “Quadracycle,” which uses two wheelchair motors and two batteries for its power boost. The front passengers can pedal as much or as little as they like and allow the silent electric motors to pick up the slack.

But most of the time for our short trips in town, it is the simple bicycle that makes the most sense. Mary and I supplement it with attachments known as Trail-A-Bikes, which give our children the pleasure of pedaling behind their parents in temporary tandem. Our bikes have large rear baskets, each big enough for a sack of groceries. I recently replaced my worn-out conventional bicycle with a recumbent, which, with its heavily padded reclining seat, has made cycling more comfortable than sitting in an easy chair in my living room.

Communication: We are selective when it comes to communication devices as much as other technologies. We have a telephone, but not a television or a video player or a computer. The telephone has become so much a part of daily existence for most people that, unlike the true Minimites, we would be socially isolated if we didn’t have one. And for my rickshaw, I recently got a cellphone so customers can call me in transit.

In a small town, the need for a phone is lessened. I frequently bump into people I have been meaning to speak to and am able to convey the message face-to-face instead of over the wire. Yet if I want to play a game of chess with Pieter, my friend who lives outside the city limits, I must call.

Although we don’t have a television, watching it is sometimes unavoidable, say when visiting friends and relatives. But at these times “tele-voyeurism” becomes an occasional treat, an enjoyable bonbon of entertainment instead of a joyless, lifelong compulsion. When it happens only occasionally and in the presence of others, TV viewing can also become the basis of a mild social experience.

Along the same lines, we look forward to going out to an occasional movie, both for the reason of its rarity in our lives and for the chance to take part in a forum of public entertainment. For certain types of “television content,” like news, we turn to newspapers and periodicals. People frequently comment on the fact that our children seem to possess long attention spans—they don’t wiggle too much in church and they sit quiet and rapt at concerts and theatrical productions. I always reply, “We don’t have a TV at home,” and the person who commented, after recovering from the shock,