Carter’s favorite hobby

Jimmy Carter knows his way around a lathe and a saw, says Douglas Blackmon in The Wall Street Journal. At 83, the busiest ex-president in history still writes books, monitors elections, and helps operate his namesake center. But his favorite way of spending time is working with wood. Carter began sawing and hammering as a young naval officer, when he built furniture for his family. Following his electoral defeat in 1980, his staff bought him a collection of planes, chisels, lathes, and other tools. He’s been using them in his garage workshop in Plains, Ga., ever since. “It’s like taking a vacation,” he says. “You’re immersed in a paragraph or a sentence, or worrying about the future of America—things like that—and all of a sudden you walk out 20 steps, and there you are in a different environment completely.” Today, he sells much of his work at auction to benefit the Carter Center. One of his bookcases sold for $200,000 in 2000; last year, a cradle went for $320,000. Carter’s most recent project was a bench made from two big pieces of maple that an admirer had sent him. “I particularly like this design,” he says, surveying his handiwork. “It’s very strong and will hold up everybody who could possibly sit on it. I hope that 500 years in the future, somebody will be sitting on the bench saying, ‘A president made this.’”

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