Bricoleur

Nice explanation from Wikipedia about the concept of bricolage: “It is borrowed from the French word bricolage, from the verb bricoler – equivalent to the English “do-it-yourself”, the core meaning in French being, however, “fiddle, tinker” and, by extension, “make creative and resourceful use of whatever materials are to hand (regardless of their original purpose)”.

Sometimes working in this library reminds me of fieldwork on the island of Flores in Indonesia, when Father Hubert and I would spend Sunday afternoons trying to make a working sprinkler with gravity fed water pressure and unthreaded faucets with hoses tied on with plastic twine. We used sprinklers from Germany, sprinklers from the Netherlands, various sprinklers from the US (we were perfect pests to our friends and other travelers). Tip from me: you can’t make your own soaker hose by gouging holes into a regular hose.