Pipe Fitter Quotes

Our goal is to present climate science and solutions in language that is accessible and compelling to the broadest audience, from ninth graders to pipe fitters, from graduate students to farmers.

He staggers through the forest. The burning forest. Bits of brush smoldering. A stormtrooper helmet nearby, charred and half melted. A small fire burns nearby. In the distance, the skeleton of an AT-AT walker. Its top blown open in the blast, peeled open like a metal flower. That burns, too. Bodies all around. Some of them are faceless, nameless. To him, at least. But others, he knows. Or knew. There—the fresh-faced officer, Cerk Lormin. Good kid. Eager to please. Joined the Empire because it’s what you did. Not a true believer, not by a long stretch. Not far from him: Captain Blevins. Definitely a true believer. A froth-mouthed braggart and bully, too. His face is a mask of blood. Sinjir is glad that one is dead. Nearby, a young woman: He knows her face from the mess, but not her name, and the insignia rank on her chest has been covered in blood. Whoever she was, she’s nobody now. Mulch for the forest. Food for the native Ewoks. Just stardust and nothing. We’re all stardust and nothing, he thinks. An absurd thought. But no less absurd than the one that follows: We did this to ourselves. He should blame them. The rebels. Even now he can hear them applauding. Firing blasters into the air. Hicks and yokels. Farm boy warriors and pipe-fitter pilots. Good for them. They deserve their celebration. Just as we deserve our graves.

It is, I think, the journalist’s vice to believe that all history can instantly be reduced to experience: (“Pierre, an out-of-work pipe fitter in the suburb of Boulougne, is typical of the new class of chômeurs . . .”) just as it is the scholar’s vice to believe that all experience can be reduced to history (“The new world capitalist order produced a new class of chômeurs, of whom Pierre, a pipe fitter, was a typical case . . .”).

While there was no federal law restricting people to certain occupations on the basis of race, statutes in the South and custom in the North kept lower-caste people in their place. Northern industries often hired African-Americans only as strikebreakers, and unions blocked them from entire trades reserved for whites, such as pipe fitters or plumbers.

The day-to-day running of the Empire State Building fell to the building’s manager, Chapin L. Brown, who operated as if he were the mayor of a small town. Brown supervised about 350 service employees (full tenancy would have called for one thousand), including fire and sanitation departments and a police force, as well as elevator operators and mechanics, engineers, plumbers and pipe fitters, electricians, painters, cabinetmakers, a house smith, and a staff for the general welfare of the workers, which included a nurse.