“One of the things that I always told the kids was, Don’t let the dollar bill tell you what to do. If you’re not happy doing what you’re doing for a living, you’re not gonna have a happy life. You’re gonna be working a third of your life, and a third of it you’re gonna be sleeping, and you doggone jolly well better be enjoying the third that you have off, because that’s all you’ve got left. But if you can work and be happy working the third of your life that you’re working, boy, you’ve got yourself about as complete a life as you’ll ever get on this earth.”

—Hank Lawson, who worked in the Brooklin, Maine boatyard for forty-four years fabricating metal parts for boats, from an interview Mary Catherine Bateson conducted for her book Composing a Further Life (New York: Knopf, 2010), 30