Sylvia Plath, Nicaragua and People Who Don't Read

In my diary on my fieldwork in Nicaragua in 2007 I wrote:

In my project I asked if people expressed their thoughts on the volcano "through music, dance, rituals, literatur". The question seems ridiculous to me now. About 50% of them cannot read and the rest is not intersted in reading. They say themselves that after going down to the town eller to the water reservoir and back home, they just want to rest. In most cases it means getting into bed and sleep to be able to to get up at dawn, at the latest.

In July 1950 Sylvia Plath wrote in her diary:

I may never be happy, but tonight I am content. Nothing more than an empty house, the warm hazy weariness from a day spent setting strawberry runners in the sun, a glass of cool sweet milk, and a shallow dish of blueberries bathed in cream. Now I know how people can live without books, without college. When one is so tired at the end of a day one must sleep, and at the next dawn there are more strawberry runners to set, and so one goes on living, near the earth. At times like this I’d call myself a fool to ask for more …