Different Slants

Seeing the World from a New Angle

Learning To Work With Your Hands…by Robert M. Katzman

by Robert M. Katzman © May 20, 2019

Learning to work with your hands changes your worldview and increases your ability to take care of yourself and be more independent. It also helps make a person more compassionate to other people’s physical limitations, because so many are one injury away from unemployment. Working with handtools builds muscles, focuses attention and keeps aging people stronger.

To me, judging another’s worth by what they do for a living is a sin. But then, my running a wooden newspaper stand outside as a shivering teenager in winter to allow me to pay for high school with privileged classmates, creates feelings like that in a person. Seven of my 160 classmates ended up working for me, at one time, or another. 

I learned to care for disabled people at 15, because my first employee had one arm, one leg, was 69–my age now–and he knew a hell of a lot more about everything than I did. I had two educations, one in high school learning about journalism, biology, algebra, history, French, German, shop, geometry and whatever else I was required to take to graduate. 

At the same time, 1965-1968, I learned about all sorts of people, how to treat and respect women, consideration of other’s limitations and disabilities, ambition, carpentry, desperation, theft, crime, political corruption, racial understanding and hate, how to pay off politicians in order to survive in the Chicago Machine, how to protect myself, how to use a gun, how to dress to protect myself from all kinds of weather and avoid illness. 

How to understand the police and interact with them as a teenager and as an adult, how to take care of my old car to give me independence, how to run a corporation, hire an accountant, hire a lawyer, deal with the federal government and make change correctly for a dollar very, very fast. 

My classmates thought I dressed badly and was pathetic because of what I did to support myself and my father. That was wounding, but 50 years later, my worldview, my education I now realize was, is unique and that I was blessed to turn necessity into what I needed to know to really mature, grow and prosper and learn not to judge others too quickly. They may have something to teach me, even today.

Share this. A lot of people have identity problems because they have no college degree and work as I describe above. You just might raise your friend’s spirits. Thanks.

(Written in honor of Joyce Esther Katzman’s birthday, who was born 69 years ago today, May 20, 1950, and who knew everything about working with her hands, and showing uncountable people compassion and kindness when they needed that in their lives)

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Publishing News! 

Bob Katzman’s two new true Chicago books are now for sale, from him!
Vol. One: A Savage Heart  and Vol. Two: Fighting Words

Gritty, violent, friendship, classic American entrepreneurship love, death, heartbreak and the real dirt about surviving in a completely corrupt major city under the Chicago Machine. More history about one man’s life than a person may imagine.

Please visit my new website: http://www.dontgoquietlypress.com
If a person doesn’t want to use PayPaI, I also have a PO Box & I ship anywhere in America.

Send me a money order with your return and contact info.
I will get your books to you within ten days.
Here’s complete information on how to buy my books:

Vol 1: A Savage Heart and Vol. 2: Fighting Words
My books weigh almost 2 pounds each, with about 525 pages each and there are a total together of 79 stories and story/poems.

Robert M. Katzman
Don’t Go Quietly Press
PO Box 44287
Racine, Wis. 53404-9998                                                                                                                    (262)752-3333, 8AM–7PM

Books cost $29.95 each, plus shipping

For: (1)$3.95; (2)$5.95; (3)$7.95; (4)$8.95 (5)$9.95;(6) $10.95

(7) $11.95; (8) $12.95; (9)$13.95 (10)$15.95 (15)$19.95

I am also for hire if anyone wants me to read my work and answer questions in the Chicago/Milwaukee area. Schools should call me for quantity discounts for 30 or more books. Also: businesses, bookstores, private organizations or churches and so on.

1 Comment »

Comment by Brad Dechter

May 20, 2019 @ 10:01 pm

Not sure how to interpret this writing, but I will take it as a short and brief life lesson.
I appreciate it as sometimes many of us judge and individual based on partial information and not knowing enough about a person. In fact, a book titled Blink points out, that as a matter of survival, we almost instantaneously judge everyome we meet for the first time .
That being said, I agree with you that no one item should allow us to judge anyone- unless they are a “pussy grabber”!
That guy sucks.

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