Spruce Up Quotes

When I die, nieces, I want to be cremated, my ashes taken up in a bush plane and sprinkled onto the people in town below. Let them think my body is snowflakes, sticking in their hair and on their shoulders like dandruff.

Let's sum up... a little house, white and green or to be made so... with trees, preferably birch and spruce... a window looking seaward... on a hill. That sounds very possible... but there is one other requirement. There must be magic about it, Jane... lashings of magic... and magic houses are scarce, even on the Island. Have you any idea at all what I mean, Jane?" Jane reflected. "You want to feel that the house is yours before you buy it," she said. "Jane," said dad, "you are too good to be true.

The awesome silence of the place crept up on her. The spruce and pines, all still laden with snow, spread their limbs in a frozen ballet, breathing a ghostly incense from dark, arid chapels sheltered by their branches.

Maybe being oneself is an acquired taste. For a writer it's a big deal to bow--or kneel or get knocked down--to the fact that you are going to write your own books and not somebody else's. Not even those books of the somebody else you thought it was your express business to spruce yourself up to be.

Sometimes back then, fishing with Jasper up the Sulphur, I hit my limit. I mean it felt my heart might just burst. Bursting is different than breaking. Like there is no way to contain how beautiful. Not it either, not just beauty. Something about how I fit. This little bend of smooth stones, the leaning cliffs. The smell of spruce. The small cutthroat making quiet rings in the black water of a pool. And no need to thank even. Just be. Just fish. Just walk up the creek, get dark, get cold, it is all a piece. Of me somehow.

Charlotte had never forgotten it - she was always looking for it. An old house facing seaward, ships going up and down. Spruce woods and musty hills, cold salt air from the water, rest, quiet, silence.

Why was fabulousness important? The world was a scary, sad place and adornment was one of the only ways she knew to make herself and the people around her forget their troubles. That was why she had opened her store almost five years ago. Everyone who entered the little square white house with miniature Corinthian columns, cherub statues, and French windows seemed to leave carrying armloads of newly handmade and well spruced-up recycled vintage clothing, humming sixties girl-group songs, seventies glam and punk, eighties New Wave one-hit wonders, or nineties grunge, doing silly dances, and not caring what anyone thought. Weetzie loved the old dresses she found and sold, because they had their own secret histories. She always wondered where, when, and how they had been worn. What they had seen. Old dresses were like old ladies.

A storm ravaged among the spruces and shook them, and it made them even stronger. The prouder did they raise their tops the next morning and bathe them in the golden sunrays. They deserved to stretch up to the clouds and be proud.

He looked up to the tall spruce trees and noticed an eerie silence envelope the camp. Not a bird sang when the gates to Dachau opened. It seemed an evil-smelling place, and the dreary surroundings befitted this wicked establishment.

There’s something sexy in cooking for a man who likes my food. Am I growing up?

The nurses did their best to spruce up the antiseptic corridors but the smell of pine boughs was overpowered by Pine Sol and no one paused beneath the mistletoe on the contagious ward.

Lots of times growing up, I’d just try to do something myself because I believed that being a boy, and being Indian, I should just know how to do things." -Will Bird, Through Black Spruce

Whenever you see redwoods in the National Geographic, or fog, or watch Shamu on TV, you'll be seeing me. Whenever you smell pine and spruce and day-old socks, that's me. Whenever you hear wind in the tops of trees, that's me, and whenever you taste crab and wine and Brie, that's me, and whenever the wind blows your hat off or you get under a cold shower, that's me. Whenever you read about an earthquake, that's me, sure as gun's iron. Whenever you smell wet dog, that's Curtis and me, and whenever you see a Rattus rattus, that's Forrest, and I'm right behind him. Never see me again? You'll never not see me. And I'll never not see you . . .Didn't I say I'd always be your same stars? If you get to missing me, just look up.

Season late, day late, sun just down, and the sky Cold gunmetal but with a wash of live rose, and she, From water the color of sky except where Her motion has fractured it to shivering splinters of silver, Rises. Stands on the raw grass. Against The new-curdling night of spruces, nakedness Glimmers and, at bosom and flank, drips With fluent silver. The man, Some ten strokes out, but now hanging Motionless in the gunmetal water, feet Cold with the coldness of depth, all History dissolving from him, is Nothing but an eye. Is an eye only. Sees The body that is marked by his use, and Time's, Rise, and in the abrupt and unsustaining element of air, Sway, lean, grapple the pond-bank. Sees How, with that posture of female awkwardness that is, And is the stab of, suddenly perceived grace, breasts bulge down in The pure curve of their weight and buttocks Moon up and, in swelling unity, Are silver and glimmer. Then The body is erect, she is herself, whatever Self she may be, and with an end of the towel grasped in each hand, Slowly draws it back and forth across back and buttocks, but With face lifted toward the high sky, where The over-wash of rose color now fails. Fails, though no star Yet throbs there. The towel, forgotten, Does not move now. The gaze Remains fixed on the sky. The body, Profiled against the darkness of spruces, seems To draw to itself, and condense in its whiteness, what light In the sky yet lingers or, from The metallic and abstract severity of water, lifts. The body, With the towel now trailing loose from one hand, is A white stalk from which the face flowers gravely toward the high sky. This moment is non-sequential and absolute, and admits Of no definition, for it Subsumes all other, and sequential, moments, by which Definition might be possible. The woman, Face yet raised, wraps, With a motion as though standing in sleep, The towel about her body, under her breasts, and, Holding it there hieratic as lost Egypt and erect, Moves up the path that, stair-steep, winds Into the clamber and tangle of growth. Beyond The lattice of dusk-dripping leaves, whiteness Dimly glimmers, goes. Glimmers and is gone, and the man, Suspended in his darkling medium, stares Upward where, though not visible, he knows She moves, and in his heart he cries out that, if only He had such strength, he would put his hand forth And maintain it over her to guard, in all Her out-goings and in-comings, from whatever Inclemency of sky or slur of the world's weather Might ever be. In his heart he cries out. Above Height of the spruce-night and heave of the far mountain, he sees The first star pulse into being. It gleams there. I do not know what promise it makes him.

But even while Rome is burning, there’s somehow time for shopping at IKEA. Social imperatives are a merciless bitch. Everyone is attempting to buy what no one can sell.  See, when I moved out of the house earlier this week, trawling my many personal belongings in large bins and boxes and fifty-gallon garbage bags, my first inclination was, of course, to purchase the things I still “needed” for my new place. You know, the basics: food, hygiene products, a shower curtain, towels, a bed, and umm … oh, I need a couch and a matching leather chair and a love seat and a lamp and a desk and desk chair and another lamp for over there, and oh yeah don’t forget the sideboard that matches the desk and a dresser for the bedroom and oh I need a coffeetable and a couple end tables and a TV-stand for the TV I still need to buy, and don’t these look nice, whadda you call ’em, throat pillows? Oh, throw pillows. Well that makes more sense. And now that I think about it I’m going to want my apartment to be “my style,” you know: my own motif, so I need certain decoratives to spruce up the decor, but wait, what is my style exactly, and do these stainless-steel picture frames embody that particular style? Does this replica Matisse sketch accurately capture my edgy-but-professional vibe? Exactly how “edgy” am I? What espresso maker defines me as a man? Does the fact that I’m even asking these questions mean I lack the dangling brass pendulum that’d make me a “man’s man”? How many plates/cups/bowls/spoons should a man own? I guess I need a diningroom table too, right? And a rug for the entryway and bathroom rugs (bath mats?) and what about that one thing, that thing that’s like a rug but longer? Yeah, a runner; I need one of those, and I’m also going to need…

He's the ultimate plagiarist, copying what others do if it proves successful and putting his own spin on it, which really pisses me off, because it`s far more difficult to come up with the original idea than steal someone else`s and spruce it up a bit.

Yes, they are alive and can have those colors, But I, in my soul, am alive too. I feel I must sing and dance, to tell Of this in a way, that knowing you may be drawn to me. And I sing amid despair and isolation Of the chance to know you, to sing of me Which are you. You see, You hold me up to the light in a way I should never have expected, or suspected, perhaps Because you always tell me I am you, And right. The great spruces loom. I am yours to die with, to desire. I cannot ever think of me, I desire you For a room in which the chairs ever Have their backs turned to the light Inflicted on the stone and paths, the real trees That seem to shine at me through a lattice toward you. If the wild light of this January day is true I pledge me to be truthful unto you Whom I cannot ever stop remembering. Remembering to forgive. Remember to pass beyond you into the day On the wings of the secret you will never know. Taking me from myself, in the path Which the pastel girth of the day has assigned to me. I prefer "you" in the plural, I want "you," You must come to me, all golden and pale Like the dew and the air. And then I start getting this feeling of exaltation.

Build it all up, and it all falls down. It all burns down. Everything you need can be taken. Remember that, nieces. Everything you hold dear, it can be taken.

Who knows, dear Godfather, if you were spruced up like my dear Nutcracker, and if you had on such lovely, shiny ankle boots, who knows if you wouldn’t be as beautiful as he?

Imagine if we had locally supported, collectively organized agriculture, where our apples were grown in--I dunno--Kent, and if you lived in Kent you could buy and eat those apples in Kent. And then someone turned up and said "I've got a better idea! Let me take over yourr orchard and all orchards like it, fly their produce around the globe to be spruced up and then we'll give em back to ya! Sound like a plan?" We'd tell em to fuck off, wouldn't we? Well it has happened, and we didn't because nobody explained it to us. The reason they don't explain this to us is that they know if we find out the extraordinary lengths that they're going to to fuck us over we will overthrow the current system and replace it with something fair. That is why all this important stuff is made to seem inaccessible, boring, and abstract. That is why our participation in politics has been sanded down into an impotent nub: Stick your X into this box and congratulate yourself on being free.

I passed the friendship centre and nodded to an old couple on the porch. Kookum smiled back and nodded, a cotton kerchief on her head. Moshum's eyes squinted, too, but never looked straight at me, just glanced my presence once, and that was enough. Old school. I knew that when they stood up to hobble home, he would lead a few feet ahead, and she would follow. They grew up in the bush and still walked the same way, as if the wide road was nothing more than a narrow path through the muskeg and spruce.

To wake up on a gloriously bright morning, in a tent pitched beneath spruce trees, and to look out lazily and sleepily for a moment from the open side of the tent, across the dead camp-fire of the night before, to the river, where the light of morning rests and perhaps some early-rising[240] native is gliding in his birch canoe; to go to the river and freshen one's self with the cold water, and yell exultingly to the gulls and hell-divers, in the very joy of living; or to wake at night, when you have rolled in your blankets in the frost-stricken dying grass without a tent, and to look up through the leaves above to the dark sky and the flashing stars, and hear far off the call of a night bird or the howl of a wolf: this is the poetry, the joy of a wild and roving existence, which cannot come too often

Off Spruce, there was a little known trail. A savage gulley wound through acreage of older residential homes that met up with Green Rock Drive. A natural bouquet gust of wind assaulted me. The domestic and native encroached on each other in a battle for dominance at the edges of the cramped path's undergrowth. The tangy scent of wild onion and sagebrush intermingled with the verdant odor of wild geranium, blue flax, columbine and creeping pussytoes. The wild weeds spiced up the encroaching grass turf and the tamed floral honeysuckle vines and lilac bushes.

Funnel The family story tells, and it was told true, of my great-grandfather who begat eight genius children and bought twelve almost-new grand pianos. He left a considerable estate when he died. The children honored their separate arts; two became moderately famous, three married and fattened their delicate share of wealth and brilliance. The sixth one was a concert pianist. She had a notable career and wore cropped hair and walked like a man, or so I heard when prying a childhood car into the hushed talk of the straight Maine clan. One died a pinafore child, she stays her five years forever. And here is one that wrote- I sort his odd books and wonder his once alive words and scratch out my short marginal notes and finger my accounts. back from that great-grandfather I have come to tidy a country graveyard for his sake, to chat with the custodian under a yearly sun and touch a ghost sound where it lies awake. I like best to think of that Bunyan man slapping his thighs and trading the yankee sale for one dozen grand pianos. it fit his plan of culture to do it big. On this same scale he built seven arking houses and they still stand. One, five stories up, straight up like a square box, still dominates its coastal edge of land. It is rented cheap in the summer musted air to sneaker-footed families who pad through its rooms and sometimes finger the yellow keys of an old piano that wheezes bells of mildew. Like a shoe factory amid the spruce trees it squats; flat roof and rows of windows spying through the mist. Where those eight children danced their starfished summers, the thirty-six pines sighing, that bearded man walked giant steps and chanced his gifts in numbers. Back from that great-grandfather I have come to puzzle a bending gravestone for his sake, to question this diminishing and feed a minimum of children their careful slice of suburban cake.

So, let's get back to why the roots are the most important part of a tree. Conceivably, this is where the tree equivalent of a brain is located. Brain? you ask. Isn't that a bit farfetched? Possibly, but now we know that trees can learn. This means they must store experiences somewhere, and therefore, there must be some kind of a storage mechanism inside the organism. Just where it is, no one knows, but the roots are the part of the tree best suited to the task. The old spruce in Sweden also shows that what grows underground is the most permanent part of the tree-and where else would it store important information over a long period of time? Moreover, current research shows that a tree's delicate root networks is full of surprises. It is now an accepted fact that the root network is in charge of all chemical activity in the tree. And there's nothing earth shattering about that. Many of our internal processes are also regulated by chemical messengers. Roots absorb substances and bring them into the tree. In the other direction, they deliver the products of photosynthesis to the tree's fungal partners and even route warning signals to neighboring trees. But a brain? For there to be something we would recognize as a brain, neurological processes must be involved, and for these, in addition to chemical messages, you need electrical impulses. And these are precisely what we can measure in the tree, and we've been able to do so since as far back as the nineteenth century. For some years now, a heated controversy has flared up among scientists. Can plants think? Are they intelligent?

Winkler's breath plumed up onto his glasses. The entire valley was enveloped in a huge, illuminated stillness. Above him the clouds had pulled away and the sky burned with stars. The meadow smoldered with light, and the spruce had become illuminated kingdoms, snow sifting from branch to branch. He thought: This has been here every winter all my life.

This Is a Photograph of Me It was taken some time ago. At first it seems to be a smeared print: blurred lines and grey flecks blended with the paper; then, as you scan it, you see in the left-hand corner a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree (balsam or spruce) emerging and, to the right, halfway up what ought to be a gentle slope, a small frame house. In the background there is a lake, and beyond that, some low hills. (The photograph was taken the day after I drowned. I am in the lake, in the centre of the picture, just under the surface. It is difficult to say where precisely, or to say how large or small I am: the effect of water on light is a distortion but if you look long enough, eventually you will be able to see me.)

I explored the literature of tree-climbing, not extensive, but so exciting. John Muir had swarmed up a hundred-foot Douglas Spruce during a Californian windstorm, and looked out over a forest, 'the whole mass of which was kindled into one continuous blaze of white sun-fire!' Italo Calvino had written his The Baron in the Trees, Italian editionmagical novel, The Baron in the Trees, whose young hero, Cosimo, in an adolescent huff, climbs a tree on his father's forested estate and vows never to set foot on the ground again. He keeps his impetuous word, and ends up living and even marrying in the canopy, moving for miles between olive, cherry, elm, and holm oak. There were the boys in B.B.'s Brendan Chase, who go feral in an English forest rather than return to boarding-school, and climb a 'Scotch pine' in order to reach a honey buzzard's nest scrimmed with beech leaves. And of course there was the realm of Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin: Pooh floating on his sky-blue balloon up to the oak-top bee's nest, in order to poach some honey; Christopher ready with his pop-gun to shoot Pooh's balloon down once the honey had been poached....

so many white roses whose names won’t survive either, resistance groups and newspapers now as forgotten as soldiers waiting for the enemy veiled in snow, unknowingly digging their own graves in the forests, an entire infantry on alert among the pines and spruce, France, Belgium, elsewhere young German soldiers seeming to sleep, half-opened lips on the snow which likewise moulds itself to their boots and helmets, every one of them forever forgotten, dying for what or whom in these ice fields, oblivion or Hitler, even those still breathing on stretchers, statues of ice, petrified flesh outfitted in frost, this is the story of winter glory, cold and misery, men and horses finished off in the frigid fog, the young in uniform, hands raised and crying, I give up, enough, enough

Setting aside the puppet shows, the only thing that matters is who will be ruling, who will have the keys to the cash register, and how they're going to split up other people's money among themselves. On their way to the booty they'll spruce everything up, which is badly needed. New Scoundrels will appear, new leaders, and a whole choir of jnnocents with no memory will come out into the streets, ready to believe whatever they want or need to believe. They'll follow whichever Pied Piper flatters them most and promises them some shotty paradise... This is what it is... with its highs and lows, and it's only as good as it gets, which is better than nothing. There are those who see it coming and go far away... And there are those of us who stay with our feet stuck in the mud, because anyhow we don't have anywhere better to go. But don't worry about the circus. We've now come to the clown acts, and the trapeze artists will take a while to arrive.

SATURDAY AT THE STORE is a nightmare. We are besieged by do-it-yourselfers wanting to spruce up their homes. Mr. and Mrs. Clayton and John and Patrick—the two other part-timers—and I are besieged by customers. But there’s a lull around lunchtime, and Mrs. Clayton asks me to check on some orders while I’m sitting behind the counter at the register discreetly eating my bagel. I’m engrossed in the task, checking catalog numbers against the items we need and the items we’ve ordered, eyes flicking from the order book to the computer screen and back as I make sure the entries match. Then, for some reason, I glance up … and find myself locked in the bold gray gaze of Christian Grey, who’s standing at the counter, staring at me. Heart failure. “Miss Steele. What a pleasant surprise.” His gaze is unwavering and intense. Holy crap. What the hell is he doing here, looking all outdoorsy with his tousled hair and in his cream chunky-knit sweater, jeans, and walking boots? I think my mouth has popped open, and I can’t locate my brain or my voice. “Mr. Grey,” I whisper, because that’s all I can manage. There’s a ghost of a smile on his lips and his eyes are alight with humor, as if he’s enjoying some private joke. “I was in the area,” he says by way of explanation. “I need to stock up on a few things. It’s a pleasure to see you again, Miss Steele.” His voice is warm and husky like dark melted chocolate fudge caramel … or something.

Such is the lunacy and unfairness of the system. Huver’s witnesses, the ones testifying on behalf of the State, are cloaked with legitimacy, as if they’ve been sanctified by the authorities. Cops, experts, even snitches who’ve been washed and cleansed and spruced up in nice clothes, all take the stand and tell lies in a coordinated effort to have my client executed. But the witnesses who know the truth, and are telling it, are discounted immediately and made to look like fools.

But Douglas fir and ponderosa pine were both better than the spruce and subalpine fir at minimizing water loss, helping them cope with the drought. They did this by opening their stomata for only a few hours in the morning when the dew was heavy. In these early hours, trees sucked carbon dioxide in through the open pores to make sugar, and in the process, transpired water brought up from the roots. By noon, they slammed their stomata closed, shutting down photosynthesis and transpiration for the day.

I distinctly heard the blackbird from the top of a spruce tree, and clear as glass I heard the lark high up and several other birds whose song I did not know, and it was so weird, it was like a film without sound with another sound added, I was in two places at once, and nothing hurt. 'Yahoo!' I screamed, and could hear my own voice, but it seemed to be coming from a different place, from the great space where the birds sang, a bird's cry from inside that silence, and for a moment I was completely happy.

Solitary Swedish Houses" A mix-max of black spruce and smoking moonbeams. Here’s the croft lying low and not a sign of life. Till the morning dew murmurs and an old man opens – with a shaky hand – his window and lets out an owl. Further off, the new building stands steaming with the laundry butterfly fluttering at the corner in the middle of a dying wood where the mouldering reads through spectacles of sap the proceedings of the bark-drillers. Summer with flaxen-haired rain or one solitary thunder-cloud above a barking dog. The seed is kicking inside the earth. Agitated voices, faces fly in the telephone wires on stunted rapid wings across the moorland miles. The house on an island in the river brooding on its stony foundations. Perpetual smoke – they’re burning the forest’s secret papers. The rain wheels in the sky. The light coils in the river. Houses on the slope supervise the waterfall’s white oxen. Autumn with a gang of starlings holding dawn in check. The people move stiffly in the lamplight’s theatre. Let them feel without alarm the camouflaged wings and God’s energy coiled up in the dark.

But drinking: manly. Having buddies: manly. Clowning around: manly. Earning lots of money: manly. Owning a fast car: manly. Slouching around: manly. Sniggering as you smoke joints: manly. Being competitive: manly. Being aggressive: manly. Wanting to fuck loads of partners: manly. Responding with violence to something that threatens you: manly. Not taking time to spruce yourself up in the morning: manly. Wearing clothes because they're practical: manly. Everything that's fun to do is manly, everything concerned with survival is manly, everything that gains ground is manly.

When his shirt is tugged up halfway up his torso to his chest, Jimmy follows the lead by lifting off of me to allow the shirt over his head and off his arms, where it's then flung away, never to be heard from again, and he's on my lips once more. But shirtless now. Good Lord, Jimmy, and it ain't even my birthday.

The creek at night under the moon was just enough like the creek in daylight to be reassuring. There was the deadfall spruce that sieved the current with skeleton branches, churning a line of pale foam. There was the long pool above, a dark mirror of tree shadows and beacon moon. There were the gravel bars, chalky, shaped to the banks and swept into low moraines that divided the water. There the sky, softened as if by a thin fog of moonlight, filling the canyon. For a moment I forgot my preoccupation with the dark and drove up the road with that awe I felt before certain paintings in certain museums, the awe in which I disappeared.

When the logs in the fireplace crackle merrily, the corpse of a beech or oak is going up in flames. The paper in the book you are holding in your hands right now is made from the shavings of spruce, and birches were expressly felled (that is to say, killed) for this purpose. Does that sound over the top? I don't think so. For if we keep in mind all we have learned in the previous chapters, parallels can definitely be drawn to pigs and pork. Not to put too fine a point on it, we use living things killed for our purposes. Does that make our behavior reprehensible? Not necessarily. After all, we are also part of Nature, and we are made in such a way that we can survive only with the help of organic substances from other species. We share this necessity with all other animals. The real question is whether we help ourselves only to what we need from the forest ecosystem, and-analogous to our treatment of animals-whether we spare the trees unnecessary suffering when we do this. That means it is okay to use wood as long as trees are allowed to live in a way that is appropriate to their species. And that means that they should be allowed to fulfill their social needs, to grow in a true forest environment on undisturbed ground, and to pass their knowledge on to the next generation. And at least some of them should be allowed to grow old with dignity and finally die a natural death.

The day we were all allowed to bring our pets into the classroom was going to be special. It was a nice sunny morning and Batty my black mouse had been spruced up for the occasion. He was in his new second-hand plastic cage, it was mustard coloured, had the mandatory wheel and sleeping chamber but had previously been a torture chamber for my cousin's late hamster. Despite my best efforts to revitalise it the wire remained rusty in places but at least it was more secure than the wooden enclosure my father had made... and Batty had instantly, and repeatedly, chewed his way out of. Sadly the species list for the class was a meagre four: rabbit, hamster, guinea pig and... one domesticated house mouse, Batty. They all ignored him, they cooed over the 'bunnies' and those chubby-fat tailless things whose eyes bulged when you squeezed them a bit, and queued to offer carrot and cabbage to those cow-licked multicoloured freaks with scratchy claws, but not one of the kids wanted to see, let alone hold, my mouse. By mid-afternoon the teacher finally caught sight of the lonely boy whispering into his mouse cage in the corner and gingerly agreed to let the rodent walk onto her hand in front of the class. Batty promptly pissed and then pooed three perfect wet little pellets, the classroom erupted with a huge collective 'urrgh' and then a frenzy of giggling, she practically threw him back in his cage and then made a big deal about washing her hands. With soap. Then we were all meant to wash our hands, with soap, but I didn't and no one noticed.

I am sitting here in my room at twilight. The window is open and the frogs are singing of something that happened very long ago. All along the middle garden walk the Gay Folk holding up great fluted cups of ruby and gold and pearl. It is not raining now, but it rained all day-a rain scented with lilacs. I like all kinds of weather and I like rainy days-soft, misty, rainy days when the Wind Woman just shakes the tops of the spruces gently; and wild, tempestuous, streaming rainy days. I like being shut in by the rain-I like to hear it thudding on the roof, and beating on the panes and pouring off the eaves, while the Wind Woman skirls like a mad old witch in the woods, and through the garden. Still, if it rains when I want to go anywhere I growl just as much as anybody! An evening like this always makes me think of that spring Father died, three years ago, and that dear little, old house down at Maywood.

I grin. “It’s just a party,” I assure her. “Nothin’ big.” “There ain’t nothin’ that happens on this ranch that’s organized by your mama that ain’t big. That woman’s about as subtle as a shotgun.” “A shotgun can be subtle if it ain’t bein’ fired,” I point out. She narrows her eyes. I think she’s about to quip back with something super sassy, but then a smile wrinkles up her face. “You sayin’ I’m better off to keep the shotgun from firin’?” “I’m sayin’ quit playin’ with the trigger, Grandma.

It has been noted in various quarters that the half-illiterate Italian violin maker Antonio Stradivari never recorded the exact plans or dimensions for how to make one of his famous instruments. This might have been a commercial decision (during the earliest years of the 1700s, Stradivari’s violins were in high demand and open to being copied by other luthiers). But it might also have been because, well, Stradivari didn’t know exactly how to record its dimensions, its weight, and its balance. I mean, he knew how to create a violin with his hands and his fingers but maybe not in figures he kept in his head. Today, those violins, named after the Latinized form of his name, Stradivarius, are considered priceless. It is believed there are only around five hundred of them still in existence, some of which have been submitted to the most intense scientific examination in an attempt to reproduce their extraordinary sound quality. But no one has been able to replicate Stradivari’s craftsmanship. They’ve worked out that he used spruce for the top, willow for the internal blocks and linings, and maple for the back, ribs, and neck. They’ve figured out that he also treated the wood with several types of minerals, including potassium borate, sodium and potassium silicate, as well as a handmade varnish that appears to have been composed of gum arabic, honey, and egg white. But they still can’t replicate a Stradivarius. The genius craftsman never once recorded his technique for posterity. Instead, he passed on his knowledge to a number of his apprentices through what the philosopher Michael Polyani called “elbow learning.” This is the process where a protégé is trained in a new art or skill by sitting at the elbow of a master and by learning the craft through doing it, copying it, not simply by reading about it. The apprentices of the great Stradivari didn’t learn their craft from books or manuals but by sitting at his elbow and feeling the wood as he felt it to assess its length, its balance, and its timbre right there in their fingertips. All the learning happened at his elbow, and all the knowledge was contained in his fingers. In his book Personal Knowledge, Polyani wrote, “Practical wisdom is more truly embodied in action than expressed in rules of action.”1 By that he meant that we learn as Stradivari’s protégés did, by feeling the weight of a piece of wood, not by reading the prescribed measurements in a manual. Polyani continues, To learn by example is to submit to authority. You follow your master because you trust his manner of doing things even when you cannot analyze and account in detail for its effectiveness. By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the rules of the art, including those which are not explicitly known to the master himself. These hidden rules can be assimilated only by a person who surrenders himself to that extent uncritically to the imitation of another.

The road climbs curving out of wet ground thick with cedars, and up onto a plateau meadow where Jersey cows, beautiful as deer, watching them with Juno eyes. Along the trail the ferns are dense, drooping with wet, twenty kinds of them. Again he does not know them (in my experience, ferns are an exclusively feminine expertise), and she tells him: hayscented fern, wood fern, sensitive fern, cinnamon fern, ostrich fern, interrupted fern, Christmas fern, bracken, maidenhair - names that are as pleasant to his ear as the woods smells are to his nose. In the intervals between clumps of spruce, the moss spreads a green carpet, inches thick, feather-soft, with candles of ground pine and the domes of spotted orange mushrooms rising out of it... Those aren't toadstools, Those are mushrooms. Deadly Amanita mushrooms. Ne mangez pas. You know everything that grows here. That's wonderful." Not so wonderful. I grew up here. I grew up in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, too, but I couldn't tell you the name of one thing that grows there. One, maybe Lilacs. You didn't grow up with my mother.

Wendy still enjoyed it when Mrs. Darling included her in some of her "feminine rituals," which usually involved the proper application of powders and creams, tips on how to polish her nails, or ideas for sprucing up an old bow. She loved it when they had enough extra house money to go for a fancy tea out at Saxelbrees, just the two of them. Wendy would admire her mother smiling and laughing beneath her many-times-renewed hat, and would think once again that she was the most beautiful mother in the world. She wondered when she herself would attain that delicate beauty, confidence, and perfection of manner.

When other birds are still, the screech owls take up the strain, like mourning women their ancient u-lu-lu. Their dismal scream is truly Ben Jonsonian.( Wise midnight hags! It is no honest and blunt tu-whit tu-who of the poets, but, without jesting, a most solemn graveyard ditty, the mutual consolations of suicide lovers remembering the pangs and the delights of supernal love in the infernal groves. Yet I love to hear their wailing, their doleful responses, trilled along the woodside; reminding me sometimes of music and singing birds; as if it were the dark and tearful side of music, the regrets and sighs that would fain be sung. They are the spirits, the low spirits and melancholy forebodings, of fallen souls that once in human shape night-walked the earth and did the deeds of darkness, now expiating their sins with their wailing hymns or threnodies in the scenery of their transgressions. They give me a new sense of the variety and capacity of that nature which is our common dwelling. Oh-o-o-o-o that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n! sighs one on this side of the pond, and circles with the restlessness of despair to some new perch on the gray oaks. Then — that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n! echoes another on the farther side with tremulous sincerity, and — bor-r-r-r-n! comes faintly from far in the Lincoln woods. I was also serenaded by a hooting owl. Near at hand you could fancy it the most melancholy sound in Nature, as if she meant by this to stereotype and make permanent in her choir the dying moans of a human being — some poor weak relic of mortality who has left hope behind, and howls like an animal, yet with human sobs, on entering the dark valley, made more awful by a certain gurgling melodiousness — I find myself beginning with the letters gl when I try to imitate it — expressive of a mind which has reached the gelatinous, mildewy stage in the mortification of all healthy and courageous thought. It reminded me of ghouls and idiots and insane howlings. But now one answers from far woods in a strain made really melodious by distance — Hoo hoo hoo, hoorer hoo; and indeed for the most part it suggested only pleasing associations, whether heard by day or night, summer or winter. I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized. They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have. All day the sun has shone on the surface of some savage swamp, where the double spruce stands hung with usnea lichens, and small hawks circulate above, and the chickadee lisps amid the evergreens, and the partridge and rabbit skulk beneath; but now a more dismal and fitting day dawns, and a different race of creatures awakes to express the meaning of Nature there.

The Purveyor of Delusion confers upon his wife a certain expression or twist of Phiz I daresay as old as Holy Scripture,— a lengthy range of Sentiment, all comprest into a single melancholick swing of the eyes. From some personal stowage he produces another Flask, containing, not the Spruce Beer ubiquitous in these parts, but that favor’d stupefacient of the jump’d-up tradesman, French claret,— and without offering it to anyone else, including his Wife, begins to drink. “It goes back,” he might have begun, “to the second Day of Creation, when ‘G-d made the Firmament, and divided the Waters which were under the Firmament, from the Waters which were above the Firmament,’— thus the first Boundary Line. All else after that, in all History, is but Sub-Division.” “What Machine is it,” young Cherrycoke later bade himself goodnight, “that bears us along so relentlessly? We go rattling thro’ another Day,— another Year,— as thro’ an empty Town without a Name, in the Midnight . . . we have but Memories of some Pause at the Pleasure-Spas of our younger Day, the Maidens, the Cards, the Claret,— we seek to extend our stay, but now a silent Functionary in dark Livery indicates it is time to re-board the Coach, and resume the Journey. Long before the Destination, moreover, shall this Machine come abruptly to a Stop . . . gather’d dense with Fear, shall we open the Door to confer with the Driver, to discover that there is no Driver, . . . no Horses, . . . only the Machine, fading as we stand, and a Prairie of desperate Immensity. . . .

Overall look: Soft and delicate   Hair: Most often blonde or golden grey   Skintone: Light, ivory to soft beige, peachy tones. Very little contrast between hair and skin   Eyes: Blue, blue-green, aqua, light green IF you are a Light Spring you should avoid dark and dusty colors, which would make you look pale, tired and even pathetic. Spring women who need to look strong, for example chairing a meeting, can do so by wearing mid-tone grey or light navy, not deeper shades. If you are a Light Spring and you wear too much contrast, say a light blouse and dark jacket, or a dress with lots of bold colors against a white background, you ‘disappear’ because our eye is drawn to the colors you are wearing. See your Light Spring palette opposite. Your neutrals can be worn singly or mixed with others in a print or weave. The ivory, camel and blue-greys are good investment shades that will work with any others in your palette. Your best pinks will be warm—see the peaches, corals and apricots—but also rose pink. Never go as far as fuchsia, which is too strong and would drain all the life from your skin. Periwinkle blue toned with a light blue blouse is a smart, striking alternative to navy and white for work. Why wear black in the evening when you will sparkle in violet (also, warm pink and emerald turquoise will turn heads)? For leisure wear, team camel with clear bright red or khaki with salmon.   Make-Up Tips Foundation: Ivory, porcelain Lipstick: Peach, salmon, coral, clear red Blush: Salmon, peach Eyeshadow for blue eyes: Highlighter Champagne, melon, apricot, soft pink Contour Soft grey, violet, teal blue, soft blues, cocoa Eyeshadow for blue-green and aqua eyes: Highlighter Apricot, lemon, champagne Contour Cocoa or honey brown, spruce or moss green, teal blue Eyeshadow for green eyes: Highlighter Pale aqua, apricot, champagne Contour Cocoa or honey brown, teal blue, violet, spruce.

July I watch eagerly a certain country graveyard that I pass in driving to and from my farm. It is time for a prairie birthday, and in one corner of this graveyard lives a surviving celebrant of that once important event. It is an ordinary graveyard, bordered by the usual spruces, and studded with the usual pink granite or white marble headstones, each with the usual Sunday bouquet of red or pink geraniums. It is extraordinary only in being triangular instead of square, and in harboring, within the sharp angle of its fence, a pin-point remnant of the native prairie on which the graveyard was established in the 1840’s. Heretofore unreachable by scythe or mower, this yard-square relic of original Wisconsin gives birth, each July, to a man-high stalk of compass plant or cutleaf Silphium, spangled with saucer-sized yellow blooms resembling sunflowers. It is the sole remnant of this plant along this highway, and perhaps the sole remnant in the western half of our county. What a thousand acres of Silphiums looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked. This year I found the Silphium in first bloom on 24 July, a week later than usual; during the last six years the average date was 15 July. When I passed the graveyard again on 3 August, the fence had been removed by a road crew, and the Silphium cut. It is easy now to predict the future; for a few years my Silphium will try in vain to rise above the mowing machine, and then it will die. With it will die the prairie epoch. The Highway Department says that 100,000 cars pass yearly over this route during the three summer months when the Silphium is in bloom. In them must ride at least 100,000 people who have ‘taken’ what is called history, and perhaps 25,000 who have ‘taken’ what is called botany. Yet I doubt whether a dozen have seen the Silphium, and of these hardly one will notice its demise. If I were to tell a preacher of the adjoining church that the road crew has been burning history books in his cemetery, under the guise of mowing weeds, he would be amazed and uncomprehending. How could a weed be a book? This is one little episode in the funeral of the native flora, which in turn is one episode in the funeral of the floras of the world. Mechanized man, oblivious of floras, is proud of his progress in cleaning up the landscape on which, willy-nilly, he must live out his days. It might be wise to prohibit at once all teaching of real botany and real history, lest some future citizen suffer qualms about the floristic price of his good life. * * *

So, you want to improve your home like you have some knowledge and respect for the endeavor, yes? Very well. First, you need to know the basics associated with it to showcase what type of knowledge you actually have about it. If that is not enough, try reviewing the article listed below to assist you. Home improvement is often a daunting task. This is because of the time and the amounts of money required. However, it doesn't have to be so bad. If you have several projects in your house, divide them up into several smaller DIY projects. For example you may want to redo the entire living room. Start simple, by just replacing the carpet, and before you know it, your living room will be like new. One great way to make the inside of your home sparkle is to put new molding in. New molding helps create a fresh sense in your living space. You can purchase special molding with beautiful carvings on them to add a unique touch of elegance and style to your home. When it comes to home improvement, consider replacing your windows and doors. This not only has a chance of greatly improving the value of the home, but may also severely decrease the amount of money required to keep your house warm and dry. You can also add extra security with new doors and windows. Change your shower curtain once a month. Showering produces excessive humidity in a bathroom that in turn causes shower curtains to develop mold and mildew. To keep your space fresh and healthy, replace your curtains. Don't buy expensive plastic curtains with hard to find designs, and you won't feel bad about replacing it. Sprucing up your walls with art is a great improvement idea, but it doesn't have to be a painting. You can use practically anything for artwork. For instance, a three-dimensional tile works great if you contrast the colors. You can even buy some canvas and a frame and paint colored squares. Anything colorful can work as art. If you are renovating your kitchen but need to spend less money, consider using laminate flooring and countertops. These synthetic options are generally much less expensive than wood, tile, or stone. They are also easier to care for. Many of these products are designed to closely mimic the natural products, so that the difference is only visible on close inspection. New wallpaper can transform a room. Before you add wallpaper, you need to find out what type of wall is under the existing wallpaper. Usually walls are either drywall or plaster smoothed over lath. You can figure out what kind of wall you are dealing with by feeling the wall, plaster is harder, smoother, and colder than drywall. You can also try tapping the wall, drywall sounds hollow while plaster does not. Ah, you have read the aforementioned article, or you wouldn't be down here reading through the conclusion. Well done! That article should have provided you with a proper foundation of what it takes to properly and safely improve your home. If any questions still remain, try reviewing the article again.

I went to the beauty salon today and got spruced up," Grandma said. "Ever since Mildred Frick called me a slut my phone hasn't stopped ringing. I got two dates for the weekend." "It might not be such a good thing to have men calling you because they think you're a slut," I said. "They're only going to be after one thing." "I hope that's true. I don't want to find out I went blond and bought all them thongs for nothing.

To the east the land was darkening. Night does not fall. It rises from the earth as the sun sinks low, sets, and embraces the land with its shadow. How could I describe this place? Words could only be read and the scene imagined. Even a photo could only be seen. It would not include the sound of the water on the stones, the scent of the spruce trees, the coolness of sea wrack under my hand, or the weary satisfaction of just sitting there after paddling six hours that day, and six weeks before that. The size of these islets and their details of sand, shell and rock beach, grass, driftwood, and flowers, the small woods back of the shore – these are proportioned to kayaks and close-ups, not big cruise ships or ferries. Those get a far outline of the shore, but their only close-ups are of the docks and the towns. This country is made for the pace of a kayak.

ant to spruce up your bathroom? Don't hesitate to hang pictures in there. Plaques, posters, framed magazine covers-whatever strikes your fancy. Mirrors and clocks are naturals too. Flowers are always a plus. Seashells are also at home in the bathroom. Put them in a bowl, hang them, or glue them to a frame. Add favorite bathroom accessories such as lamps and scented candles. Potpourri gives everything a special ambience. Put in a few unexpected touches to make your bathroom unique. A guaranteed hope-producer is spending time with children. Get down on the floor and talk to them. And listen to them. Let their youth and enthusiasm rub off on you. And here's the best tip of all, taken from Psalm 39:7: "But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you." May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him. ey, if little things can drag you down, then little things can also pick you up! Here are a few ideas. • Always keep something green in a little vase or pot by your kitchen sink. And I'm not talking about cash-I'm talking plants.

Our Bar franchise program, which seeks to lift sales by targeting entrepreneurs in Brazil's slums, known as favelas. The company helps spruce up taverns and ofers management training. It's joining retailers and other businesses trying to reach out to the new middle class in Brazil's gritty neighborhoods in and around its big cities.

It was taken some time ago. At first it seems to be a smeared print: blurred lines and grey flecks blended with the paper; then, as you scan it, you see in the left-hand corner a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree (balsam or spruce) emerging and, to the right, halfway up what ought to be a gentle slope, a small frame house. In the background there is a lake, and beyond that, some low hills. (The photograph was taken the day after I drowned. I am in the lake, in the center of the picture, just under the surface. It is difficult to say where precisely, or to say how large or small I am: the effect of water on light is a distortion but if you look long enough, eventually you will be able to see me.)

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Some species-like spruce-rely on timing. Male and female blossoms open a few days apart so that, most of the time, the latter will be dusted with the foreign pollen of other spruce. This is not an option for trees like bird cherries, which rely on insects. Bird cherries produce male and female sex organs int he same blossom, and they are one of the few species of true forest trees that allow themselves to be pollinated by bees. As the bees make their way through the whole crown, they cannot help but spread the tree's own pollen. But the bird cherry is alert and senses when the danger of inbreeding looms. When a pollen grain lands on a stigma, its genes are activated and it grows a delicate tube down to the ovary in search of an egg. As it is doing this, the tree tests the genetic makeup of the pollen and, if it matches its own, blocks the tube, which then dries up. Only foreign genes, that is to say, genes that promise future success, are allowed entry to form seeds and fruit. How does the bird cherry distinguish between "mine" and "yours"? We don't know exactly. What we do know is that the genes must be activated, and they must pass the tree's test. You could say, the tree can "feel" them. You might say that we, too, experience the physical act of love as more than just the secretions of neurotransmitters that activate our bodies' secrets, though what mating feels like for trees is something that will remain in the realm of speculation for a long time to come.

Shacking Up in the Adirondacks I first declared our love to the world, when I peed our names in the snow in a red spruce forest in Upstate New York. The cuneiform script melted through the snow like a late winter downpour, but I couldn't get the heart just right. Perhaps the clumsy penis cannot capture the subtle ovals in the heart's calligraphy. So I used my fingers to finish you off. Now, beneath a forgiving sky we were right as rain ~ at least until the next snowfall.

When the logs in the fireplace crackle merrily, the corpse of a beech or oak is going up in flames. The paper in the book you are holding in your hands right now is made from the shavings of spruce, and birches were expressly felled (that is to say, killed) for this purpose. Does that sound over the top? I don’t think so. For if we keep in mind all we have learned in the previous chapters, parallels can definitely be drawn to pigs and pork. Not to put too fine a point on it, we use living things killed for our purposes. Does that make our behavior reprehensible? Not necessarily

The name “Bering land bridge” is a misnomer. Never mind Vitus Bering, the jowly Danish cartographer and explorer who led sailing expeditions for the Russian Navy along the upper Pacific Rim in the eighteenth century and after whom the Bering Sea and the Bering Strait were named. When this was land and not water, the land bridge was not a catwalk teetering from one hemisphere to the next, but a flat subcontinent fully exposed when sea levels were at their glacial low, its center five hundred miles from the nearest coast. I would have looked across a steppe grassland and the occasional birch and black spruce grove, summers free of snow, ground grazed and turned to grass by large herbivores, loess blown in from the edges of distant ice caps, allowing the soil to hold and retain organic matter. This would have been an easily habitable landscape. Winters were dark and furiously cold, but summers produced copious wildflowers, their pollen found in cores taken from the bottom of the Bering Sea. The land bridge had experienced a unique regime of global weather patterns, the Pacific curling up warmly against its southern coast, Himalayan ice cap blocking precipitation from a quarter of the world away, and the mass of the land bridge itself holding its own temperature, a terrestrial heat sink. Inland precipitation was sparse, winter snows frigid but light. Land bridge summers were sunnier than those experienced on St. Lawrence Island, temperatures slightly warmer, more muskeg and grass than permafrost, snowpack melting earlier for longer growing seasons. This was the American Atlantis, and it went under wave by wave, storm by storm. Craig Childs, from ."Atlas of a Lost World

The countryside around us changed again. Now we were driving through forest. Sørland forests with mountain crags here and there among the trees, hills covered with spruce and oaks, aspen and birch, sporadic dark moorland, sudden meadows, flatland with densely growing pine trees. When I was a boy I used to imagine the sea rising and filling the forest so that the hilltops became islets you could sail between and on which you could bathe. Of all my childhood fantasies this was the one that captivated me most; the thought that you could swim over bus shelters and roofs, perhaps dive down and glide through a door, up a staircase, into a living room. Or just through a forest, with its slopes, cliffs, cairns, and ancient trees. At a certain point in childhood my most exciting game was building dams in streams, watching the water swell and cover the marsh, the roots, the grass, the rocks, the beaten earth path beside the stream. It was hypnotic. Not the mention the cellar we found in an unfinished house filled with shiny, black water we sailed on in two styrofoam boxes, when we were around five years old. Hypnotic. The same applied to winter when we skated along frozen streams in which grass, sticks, twigs, and small plants stood upright in the translucent ice beneath us. What had been the great attraction? And what had happened to it? Another fantasy I had at that time was that there were two enormous saw blades sticking out from the side of the car, chopping off everything as we drove past. Trees and streetlamps, houses and outhouses, but also people and animals. If someone was waiting for a bus they would be sliced through the middle, their top half falling like a felled tree, leaving feet and waist standing and the wound bleeding.

Congratulations, sir,” Alfred preened as he offered a low bow. “It appears you will have several heirs to boast of, and your women seem quite proud.” “Violently so,” I agreed. “I know it’s a bit early for supper, but I’ve prepared a victory burger for you,” the butler announced as he came forward. “I used bison for the patties to spruce things up a bit, and I’ve taken the liberty of planting a flag in the bun to symbolize your triumph and the claiming of the vast territories that are your women.” “Hell, yeah,” I chuckled as I admired the tiny blue flag. “It looks like I settled some wild ass land.” “You certainly have, sir,” Alfred replied in complete seriousness. “What’s in the glasses?” I asked. “Spirits, of course,” the butler said with a smile, and he handed one to me before he raised the other in my honor. “May your children carry your legacy forth for generations to come, and may your women remain somewhat level-headed throughout their pregnancies.” “Well said, Alfred,” I chuckled heartily.

When I looked up, I found myself at the edge of a rolling expanse of grass and trees. It wasn't a forest, but as I wandered deeper, following a concrete path that led in soft, sloping curves, I could feel the scents changing. Even though it was still winter, there was life here. I spotted a Douglas fir and went to it, putting my nose deep into the crags of its bark. Hey, you, I whispered. I could feel my breath warming the trunk, surrounding my face. I made my way from one tree to the next, greeting each, inhaling spruce and cedar, cherry and apple, and some I didn't yet know. When it started to get dark, I found the trail again and headed back to the hostel. I had more buses in my future, but I carried the scent of sap with me on my fingertips.

Where did he take you?" "An island." I thought of the archipelago, those dots and dashes of land, a code you could never unlock. "What did it smell like?" she asked. I'd expected a lot of questions, but not this one. As soon as she said it, though, I knew it was the only one that mattered. The only one that would tell you what a place, or your past, was actually like. "Cedar and spruce and fir," I said. "Applewood smoke. Salt water. That metallic smell right before a storm." I was picking up speed. "Salmonberries, huckleberries, spruce on your fingertips. Wet dirt- oh, and morels." I stopped, embarrassed by my volubility. "You did get my genes," she murmured.

Keeping hold of Larson as if he were a disobedient puppy, Kingston berated him quietly. “After the hours I just spent with you, providing excellent advice, this is the result? You decide to start shooting guests in my club? You, my boy, have been a dismal waste of an evening. Now you’re going to cool your heels in a jail cell, and I’ll decide in the morning what’s to be done with you.” He released Larson to the care of one of the hulking night porters, who ushered him away expediently. Turning to West, the duke surveyed him with a quicksilver glance, and shook his head. “You look as though you’d been pulled backward through a hedgerow. Have you no standards, coming to my club dressed like that? For the wrinkles in your coat alone, I ought to have you thrown into a cell next to Larson’s.” “I tried to have him spruced up,” Severin volunteered, “but he wouldn’t.” “A bit late for sprucing,” Kingston commented, still looking at West. “At this point I would recommend fumigation.” He turned to another night porter. “Escort Mr. Ravenel up to my private apartments, where it seems I’ll be giving counsel to yet another of my daughter’s tormented suitors. This must be a penance for my misspent youth.”` “I don’t want your counsel,” West snapped. “Then you should have gone to someone else’s club.” West sent an accusing glare at Severin, who shrugged slightly. Struggling up from his chair, West growled, “I’m leaving. And if anyone tries to stop me, I’ll knock them flat.” Kingston seemed rather less than impressed. “Ravenel, I’m sure when you’re sober, well-rested and well-nourished, you can give a good account of yourself. At the moment, however, you are none of those things. I have a dozen night porters working here tonight, all of whom have been trained in how to manage unruly patrons. Go upstairs, my lad. You could do worse than to spend a few minutes basking in the sunshine of my accumulated wisdom.” Stepping closer to the porter, the duke gave him a number of quiet instructions, one of them sounding suspiciously like, “Make sure he’s clean before he’s allowed on the furniture.

From Gary Snyder: I heard a Crow elder say: “You know, I think if people stay somewhere long enough-even white people- the spirits will begin to speak to them. It’s the power of the spirits coming up from the land.” Bioregional awareness teaches us in specific ways. It is not enough just to “love nature” or want to be “in harmony with Gaia.” Our relation to the natural world takes place in a place, and it must be grounded in information and experience. This is so unexceptional a kind of knowledge that everyone in Europe, Asia and Africa used to take for granted… Knowing a bit about the flora we could enjoy questions like: where do Alaska and Mexico meet? It would be somewhere on the north coast of California, where Canada Jay and Sitka Spruce lace together with manzanita and Blue Oak. But instead of northern California, let’s call it “Shasta Bioregion.” The present state of California (the old Alta California territory) falls into at least three natural divisions, and the northern third looks, as the Douglas Fir example, well to the north. East of the watershed divide to the west near Sacramento, is the Great Basin, north of Shasta is the Cascadia/Colombia region, and then farther north is what we call Ish River country, the drainages of Puget Sound. Why should we do this kind of visualization? It prepares us to begin to be at home in this landscape. There are tens of millions of people in North America who were physically born here but who are not actually living here intellectually, imaginatively, or morally. Native Americans to be sure have a prior claim to the term native. But as they love this land, they will welcome the conversion of the millions of immigrant psyches into “native americans.” For the non-Native Americans to become at home on this continent, he or she must be born again in this hemisphere, on this continent, properly called Turtle Island.

Deerfield, Massachusetts February 29, 1704 Temperature 0 degrees We will freeze to death, thought Mercy. Why go to the trouble of carrying a hundred pairs of moccasins when they won’t make a fire? Her Indian knelt and, with his bare hands, scooped out a hole in a snowbank. She expected him to store his plunder in the cavity. He had to make a lot of hand motions before she understood that this was her shelter for the night. Not a house, nor a bed, nor even a stable. A hole in the snow. Mercy wanted to raise her head to the skies and howl like a dog. But she wanted to survive. There must be no more bodies along this terrible trail. “First, may I look for my brothers?” She held up four fingers. “No,” said the Indian, and motioned her into the cave, tucking Daniel in after her. Mercy would have felt much better if she could have rested her eyes on Tommy and John and Sam and Benny. From her hole she watched the others settle in for the night. Eben’s Indian collected the older boys: Eben, the oldest Kellogg boy, the two Sheldon boys and Joe Alexander, who was in his twenties but looked very young. They were pinioned to the ground a dozen yards from where Mercy was curled. For Eben, however, his Indian made a cradle of spruce boughs. He wrapped a leather rope around Eben’s wrists and linked the cord to his own. If Eben moved, his captor would know it. The rest were made to lie on open snow. There was nothing between them and the weather. No walls, no roof, no parent.

The residence sat toward the back of the property, which sloped up across a masterfully landscaped yard shaded with maple and spruce trees, dotted with stone sculptures—fountains, birdbaths, angels—and not a leaf to be seen on the pockets of lush green grass. An engine turned over near the house. Letty stepped off the drive and crawled into a thicket of mountain laurel as a boxy Mercedes G-Class rolled past. Through the branches and tinted glass, she glimpsed Chase at the wheel, a young boy in a booster in the backseat. The car ride over had only intensified her nausea, and as the diesel engine faded away, she put her finger down her throat and retched in the leaves. She felt instantly better. Weaker. Less drunk. But better.

Originally the Indians made their tepees of buffalo hides, but since the destruction of the buffalo herds by the white man, domestic cow hides have been used, as well as canvas. New buffalo-hide tepee covers were made every spring. The size of the tepee depended somewhat on the number of horses the tribe or family had, because it required several horses to transport a large tepee. The poles were made of lodgepole pine, cedar, spruce, or any other straight tree. Flexible poles were not used. The poles averaged about 25 feet in length and tapered from 4 to 1 inch in diameter. In warm weather the lower part of the tepee was raised up on the poles to allow the breeze to blow through. In cold weather the space around the bottom between the stakes and the ground was packed with sod to hold it down tightly and to keep out the snow and drafts. When the tepee was new it was nearly white. But by spring, the smoke and the weather had darkened it at the top and the skins became quite transparent. At night the campfires made the tepees look like large Japanese lanterns. On the Great Plains the wind is usually from the west and for that reason the tepees were set up with the smoke hole facing the east. The flaps, or smoke hole ears, as they are called, were used to control the drafts and to keep the wind from blowing down the smoke hole. In case of a storm they could be lapped over to close the smoke hole completely.

Leaving the Connecticut River March 8, 1704 Temperature 40 degrees Eben realized that he need not worry about being burned or tortured. He was going to starve to death. Eben had thought that up here, where nobody lived or ever had, the deer would be standing in rows in the woods awaiting a bullet. He had expected rabbits and grouse, moose and beaver. But there was no game. They built shelters from woven branches, piling spruce and hemlock on top to keep out the snow. Each day some of the Indians left to hunt and each day they came back with nothing. It had never occurred to Eben that an Indian could go hunting and find nothing. He was not sure how far they still had to go to reach Canada. He had seen a map once that showed the Connecticut River, how it split the colony of Connecticut in half, then cut up through Massachusetts, headed north through unknown lands and bumped into Canada. The northern part of the map was guesswork. Eben needed a French map, which would show the city of Montreal, where the French kept their government, and the St. Lawrence River, down which fortunes in fur were shipped. He could not ask his master. An Indian kept his map in his head.

June is a bad month for bugs in Alaska; generally it takes a good five or ten knots of breeze to keep them at bay, but even then they will tend to hover in your lee, waiting for the wind to die. Mosquitoes swarm so thickly up there that they can, like clouds, briefly form recognizable shapes. This is probably the only circumstance in nature where it is possible to look downwind and see a shadow of oneself infused with one's own blood.

weeks. It was the same stuff every year. Santa mugs filled with candy canes. Canisters of homemade hot chocolate mix. Starbucks cards she’d never use—not because she didn’t like coffee but because she rarely made the seven-mile drive to the nearest Starbucks. Enough cookies for a bake sale wrapped in various colors of cellophane and tied with ribbons. Garish ornaments that would never hang on her tasteful Victorian tree in the bay window—which she hadn’t even put up this year. The odd handmade scarf in a color outside a palette she would ever don. Spruce Valley was small, with distinct but overlapping social circles. Re-gifting was next to impossible, even if she waited a year, though she might be able to give away the Starbucks cards if she took them out of the envelopes. She might use the hot chocolate mix, though she never found it a bother to make hot cocoa on the stove. At least the mix would keep. She had no appetite for the cookies.

Staff meal." The words are sweet relief, and I untie the apron Roberto gave me, hanging it up on the hook by the entrance. Sure, I ate here last night. But there were so many things on the menu I didn't order. The open-faced duck confit sandwich with red wine aioli, the almond-crusted salmon with zucchini puree, tempura vegetables, chipotle oil. I wonder how this works, if we get to choose whatever we want. Or maybe it's some new creation, some experimental dish that Chef tries out on the staff before adding it to the menu. To think that I might try one of her dishes before anyone else is all the reward I need for today's scrubbing, for the hot water that has splashed all over me throughout the day. What I find instead is a sheet tray of charred burger patties, most of them covered in toxic-yellow American cheese. There's another sheet tray with toasted buns and matchstick fries. Morris and Boris are leaning against the coffee station, taking huge bites in sync. I try to hide my disappointment, follow Elias's lead and grab a plate. I'm shocked that some people are eating it just like that, munching down as quickly as possible without bothering with the condiments. I'm starving too, but it's crazy to me that Chef Elise's food is at their fingertips and everyone's just letting it sit there. There's a whole line of deli containers right in front of us, and I can't even tell what's in them, but the mere thought is making my mouth water. Whispering so that no one can laugh and/or yell at me, I ask Elias if it's cool to use some of the mise to spruce up the burger. He shrugs. "Do your thing." It mellows the disappointment a little: pickled red jalapeños, cilantro aioli, Thai slaw.

But her territory was currently getting a fresh coat of paint. Much needed too. Her little cottage was long overdue for a sprucing up. And this was only a short trip. Jayne would be back Saturday night. In time to enjoy the next day, New Year’s Eve, with the new man in her life, Sinclair Crowe.

Everything happening here was already known. Our people said long ago that this day would come. They told of how the forest was about to die, when humans suddenly remembered the rest of their family.” And for half the night, the characters sit around the blaze, laughing and listening and whispering and baying at the moon up in the spruces’ spires.

THE FIRST MORNING This is the most beautiful place on earth. There are many such places. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary. A houseboat in Kashmir, a view down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, a gray gothic farmhouse two stories high at the end of a red dog road in the Allegheny Mountains, a cabin on the shore of a blue lake in spruce and fir country, a greasy alley near the Hoboken waterfront, or even, possibly, for those of a less demanding sensibility, the world to be seen from a comfortable apartment high in the tender, velvety smog of Manhattan, Chicago, Paris, Tokyo, Rio or Rome—there’s no limit to the human capacity for the homing sentiment. Theologians, sky pilots, astronauts have even felt the appeal of home calling to them from up above, in the cold black outback of interstellar space. For myself I’ll take Moab, Utah. I don’t mean the town itself, of course, but the country which surrounds it—the canyonlands. The slickrock desert. The red dust and the burnt cliffs and the lonely sky—all that which lies beyond the end of the roads.

As the climate continued to warm (and the ocean continued to rise), plant life inevitably began to spring up among these hills, providing the basis for an ever-improving soil. Thirteen thousand years ago, jack pines and spruce trees began to grow; a few thousand years later, oaks appeared. What is now Nantucket Sound was then a valley of ponds, lakes, and forests. It was not until just 5,000 years ago—a drop in the bucket of geological time—that the ever-encroaching ocean flooded this valley and Nantucket became an island.

The penumbra of dusk moves slowly westward. The owls of Europe are already hunting. The zoo owls will be waking now as the light declines and the grey Victorian brickwork glows with evening gold. Trees drift in the wind above the roar of traffic in the road outside. White mice lie dead on the floor of the cage. The eagle owl will not feed till dusk. He is waking as the people watch him, stretching his neck and uttering a soft call. His sunset-coloured eyes are kindling, the light coming slowly forward from within. The owl looks outward, beyond the watching faces. They have no significance for him. He is waking to his own world, to glooms of spruce or desert rock. He does not see the dull metallic chains that fence us in. His mind is still unscalable, a crag from which he can look down at the captives gazing up at him.

Soon after the Gordons left, Frank and Joe gave Aunt Gertrude a final hug and set off for the airport with their father. Their route included Toronto, then over a vast, lonely, region, splashed with lakes and carpeted with spruce. The plane landed briefly at Sudbury, where the boys glimpsed the white domes of a radar station standing out against the night sky. Two hours after leaving Toronto, they set down near the rugged mining town of Timmins. They registered at a hotel for the night and arranged by telephone for a bush pilot to fly them on to Lake Okemow. At daybreak the two sleuths were up and breakfasting on a hearty meal of Canadian bacon, eggs, and fried potatoes. Then they taxied off in a four-seater amphibian. The flight proved to be bumpy. Below lay a dense wilderness of black spruce, poplar, birch, and tamarack. Glittering lakes and snakelike streams slashed the forest. Farther north came barren patches, frosted white with snow. Then again they were flying over heavy timber. “Here we are!” the pilot said at last. He brought the plane down to a choppy landing on the not-yet-frozen lake and taxied to a wooden pier. On the shore lay the stout log hunting lodge. Smoke feathered from its chimney.

He starts to turn away, then stops, scratching at his beard, considering something, before bending low in the grass and plucking something from the soil. He holds it out in his palm. "Good luck, giant," he says, nodding. In his palm rests a tiny green leaf. "It's a four-leaf clover," he explains with a wink. "And one that's been plucked from inside St. Patrick Town is particularly lucky." I take the green clover from his palm and hold it up to the clouded sky, marveling at its four perfectly rounded leaves. It smells of soil and rain, resting delicately between my fingertips. And it looks just like the clover on the doorway into this realm. "Thank you," I say to him, but when I glance up, he's already vanished into the thick green spruce trees and falling raindrops.

I watched an eagle turn slowly and fall away, quick-sliding across the dark stands of spruce that marched in uneven ranks up the slopes. His piercing cry came back on the wind. I thought of the man at his desk staring down from a city window at the ant colony streets below, the man toiling beside the thudding and rumbling of machinery, the man commuting to his job the same way at the same time each morning, staring at but not seeing the poles and the wires and the dirty buildings flashing past. Perhaps each man had his moment during the day when his vision came, a vision not unlike the one before me.

Some scientists think that the bdelloids can extract DNA from their dinner and spruce up their own genome by a process called ‘horizontal gene transfer

For Shackleton, self-promotion had been essential all the way. He had paid all his expenses with media tie-ins, one way or another: auctioning off news and picture rights before he left, taking special postage stamps along to be franked at the south pole. After he made it, his bestseller had nine translations. He spruced up his expedition ship into a museum and charged admission.

What, then, is the end of study? For one thing, as the fate of Navarre’s Academe makes plain, it is not “philosophy” in the sense of a cloistered cultivation of the intellect and pursuit of truth for its own sake in a spot secluded from the world and from women. Nor is it “love” in its romantic sense sheltered from life’s suffering and reality--“love” with all its ritual and manners, its form and style, its fads and foibles, its “wit” and raprtee, its masks and costumes, its rhyming and sonneteering, its language of ‘Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, Three-pil’d hyperboles, spruce affectation, Figures pedantical.’ These things are but summer flies that blow their worshipers full of ostentation, as they did Boyet--Boyet who picked up wit as pigeons do peas, Boyet the ladies’ man, forerunner of Osric, who kissed his hand away in courtesy. Neither is the end of education erudition, the barren learning that transformed the pendant Holofernes into a walking dictionary of synonyms, nor slavery to authority and the past, the bondage that never let the sycophatic curate Nathaniel utter an idea or opinion without backing it up with an “as the Father saith.” Nor, at the other extreme, is it subservience to fashion and the present, such as made the swashbuckling Don Adriano de Armado a mint of fire-new phrases emitting a “smoke of rhetoric.

But now the streets were not like the streets she knew. They were so silent: and so empty. On the doorsteps, little groups of milk bottles huddled with their dirty white collars, waiting for the roundsman to collect them next morning and take them off to be washed and spruced up and sent out on duty again… In the areas, the dustbins spilled forth unsightly contents, relentless reminders of man’s mortality: now and again the air still gave a tiny sigh, and a whiff of decay was borne away upon the breeze. The plane trees rustled, whispering a message from the dustbins: ‘All is rottenness, all is death…’, the high street lamps cast shadows in angled walls that seemed as black and bottomless as eternity. A couple reeling home late from a party were swallowed up by a dark doorway: already the glow and the rapture were fading—tomorrow there would be sick headaches and queasy tummies… Beauty vanishes—beauty passes…Only the cats were heedless and unafraid, darting across the patchwork shadows of the streets on plush-cushioned, soundless paws. What threat had death and decay and nothingness?—to a sleek, suave gentleman with nine lives before him and every one packed with adventure that had nothing to do with death—on the contrary!

How would our Democritus have been affected to see a wicked caitiff, or "fool, a very idiot, a funge, a golden ass, a monster of men, to have many good men, wise men, learned men to attend upon him with all submission, as an appendix to his riches, for that respect alone, because he hath more wealth and money, and to honour him with divine titles and bombast epithets," to smother him with fumes and eulogies, whom they know to be a dizzard, a fool, a covetous wretch, a beast, etc., "because he is rich"! To see sub exuviis leonis onagrum [an ass in a lion's skin], a filthy loathsome carcass, a Gorgon's head puffed up by parasites, assume this unto himself, glorious titles, in worth an infant, a Cuman ass, a painted sepulchre, an Egyptian temple! To see a withered face, a diseased, deformed, cankered complexion, a rotten carcass, a viperious mind and Epicurean soul set out with orient pearls, jewels, diadems, perfumes, curious elaborate works, as proud of his clothes as a child of his new coats; and a good person, of an angelic divine countenance, a saint, an humble mind, a meek spirit, clothed in rags, beg, and now ready to be starved! To see a silly contemptible sloven in apparel, ragged in his coat, polite in speech, of a divine spirit, wise; another neat in clothes, spruce, full of courtesy, empty of grace, wit, talk nonsense!

Despite all the solo vocals, each using the others as a back-up group, the White Album still sounds haunted by memories of friendship—that “dreamlike state” they could still zoom into hearing each other sing. They translated Rishikesh into their own style of English pagan pastoral—so many talking animals, so many changes in the weather. One of my favorite British songwriters, Luke Haines from the Auteurs and Black Box Recorder, once told me in an interview that his band was making “our Wicker Man album.” He was miffed I had no idea what he meant. “You can’t understand British bands without seeing The Wicker Man. Every British band makes its Wicker Man album.” So I rented the classic 1973 Hammer horror film, and had creepy dreams about rabbits for months, but he’s right, and the White Album is the Beatles’ Wicker Man album five years before The Wicker Man, a rustic retreat where nature seems dark and depraved in a primal English sing-cuckoo way. They also spruced up their acoustic guitar chops in India, learning folkie fingerpicking techniques from fellow pilgrim Donovan, giving the songs some kind of ancient mystic chill.

It looks amazing! Stunning. Gorgeous. The office, I mean. The office looks gorgeous. “Did you use a decorator?” I ask, and he says he did. I figured. If the earlier furniture was his doing, he clearly needed a professional for this. Still, it fits Wendell perfectly. The new Wendell. The spruced-up but still unpretentious Wendell.

We are the sons of that beast, Almuric, we are but spruced up- urbane predators. What else, if not a talent for violence separates the aristocracy from the peasantry? We are the nobility for the very fact that we are able to visit more violence upon them than they can upon us. History is written by nations with superior violence. The greatest civilizations to ever have existed were allowed such lofty cultivations only because of their divine brutality- their ability to vanquish those nations standing in the path of their destiny" - Grand Champion, Count Húracan Excerpt from Varangian: Book One of the Byzantum Saga

She felt that, before she went back, she must slip along the pasture fence and explore a certain path which she saw entering the grove of spruce and maple further down. She did—and found that it led straight into Fairyland,—along the bank of a wide, lovely brook—a wild, dear, little path with lady-ferns beckoning and blowing along it, the shyest of elfin June-bells under the firs, and little whims of loveliness at every curve. She breathed in the tang of fir-balsam and saw the shimmer of gossamers high up in the boughs, and everywhere the frolic of elfin lights and shadows. Here and there the young maple branches interlaced as if to make a screen for dryad faces—Emily knew all about dryads, thanks to her father—and the great sheets of moss under the trees were meet for Titania’s couch. “This is one of the places where dreams grow,” said Emily happily.

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Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. The cool kids of the 1960s invited the old man who had been cool before they knew cool was cool to join them in a musical romp that nobody took particularly seriously. Crosby enjoys himself. He has nothing at stake, since he’s not the star who has to carry the film. He’s very casual, and appears to be ad-libbing all his lines in the old Road tradition with a touch of W. C. Fields’s colorful vocabulary thrown in: “You gentlemen find my raiment repulsive?” he asks Sinatra and Martin when they object to his character’s lack of chic flash in clothing. Crosby plays a clever con man who disguises himself as square, and his outfits reflect a conservative vibe in the eyes of the cats who are looking him over. The inquiry leads into a number, “Style,” in which Sinatra and Martin put Crosby behind closet doors for a series of humorous outfit changes, to try to spruce him up. Crosby comes out in a plaid suit with knickers and then in yellow pants and an orange-striped shirt. Martin and Sinatra keep on singing—and hoping—while Crosby models a fez. He finally emerges with a straw hat, a cane, and a boutonniere in his tuxedo lapel, looking like a dude. In his own low-key way, taking his spot in the center, right between the other two, Crosby joins in the song and begins to take musical charge. Sinatra is clearly digging Crosby, the older man he always wanted to emulate.*17 Both Sinatra and Martin are perfectly willing to let Crosby be the focus. He’s earned it. He’s the original that the other two wanted to become. He was there when Sinatra and Martin were still kids. He’s Bing Crosby! The three men begin to do a kind of old man’s strut, singing and dancing perfectly together (“…his hat got a little more shiny…”). The audience is looking at the three dominant male singers of the era from 1940 to 1977. They’re having fun, showing everyone exactly not only what makes a pro, not only what makes a star, but what makes a legend. Three great talents, singing and dancing about style, which they’ve all clearly got plenty of: Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Dean Martin in Robin and the 7 Hoods

If you want to have a presence on Instagram at all, even as a garden-variety non-famous person, you’ve probably considered sprucing up your space, upping the ante on your vacations, and drinking more photogenic lattes, because nothing happens in a vacuum anymore.

Looked around at the wind-blasted peaks and the swirls of mist moving past them. It was hard to take my eyes away. I had been up on some of them, and I would be up there again. There was something different to see each time, and something different from each one. All those streamlets to explore and all those tracks to follow through the glare of the high basins and over the saddles. Where did they lead? What was beyond? What stories were written in the snow? I watched an eagle turn slowly and fall away, quick-sliding across the dark stands of spruce that marched in uneven ranks up the slopes. His piercing cry came back on the wind. I thought of the man at his desk staring down from a city window at the ant colony streets below, the man toiling beside the thudding and rumbling of machinery, the man commuting to his job the same way at the same time each morning, staring at but not seeing the poles and the wires and the dirty buildings flashing past. Perhaps each man had his moment during the day when his vision came, a vision not unlike the one before me.

Eventually Theo would pick up their daughter, kiss the top of her head, and carry her to an old spruce stump. He’d crouch down, gather up the beach glass that was still scattered there, and whisper in her ear. “Let’s build a fairy house.

Traveling in these giant cedar canoes, the Haida would regularly paddle their home into, and out of, existence. With each collective paddle stroke they would have seen their islands sinking steadily into the sea while distant snow-covered peaks scrolled up before them like a new planet. Few people alive today have any notion of how it might feel to pull worlds up from beyond the horizon by faith and muscle alone.

Artistic license, also known poetic license, narrative license, and licentiate poetical, is a colloquial term (employed occasionally as a euphemism), which denotes a license to distort the facts, alter the conventions of grammar or language, or reword pre-existing text by an artist in the name of art. Liberal usage of an artistic license to restructure basic facts can result because of conscious or unconscious acts. Artistic embellishment or misrepresentation of the facts and distortion or alteration of the compositional text frequently is the by-product of both intentional and unintentional additions and omissions. An artistic license, employed at an artist’s discretion to fill in details or gloss over factual and historical gaps, raises some ethical issues. Many stories retold verbatim would bore an audience or require inordinate time and resources to reenact, describe, and view. A dramatic license eliminates mundane details and tedious facts, spruces up the picturesque background, and glamorizes the characters’ temperament and action scenes. Is it wrong to be inventive with the facts? What degree of embroidery of a series of events and the characters’ mannerisms and attributes is acceptable? How can anyone paste together a set of facts into an interesting or compelling narrative that has literary value without engaging in some creative organization to enhance the theatrical retelling and to create juxtaposition of ideas and values?

up over a wooded hill beyond, where perpetual twilight reigned under the straight, thick-growing firs and spruces; the only flowers there were myriads of delicate “June bells,” those shyest and sweetest of woodland blooms, and a few pale, aerial starflowers, like the spirits of last year’s blossoms. Gossamers glimmered like threads of silver among the trees and the fir boughs and tassels seemed to utter friendly speech.

It's just cheese from the Pistoiese Mountains. It has that taste." "Tell me." "The sheep eat the grass, and their milk tastes like what they eat," I explained patiently. "There are certain kinds of wild flowers that grow on the hills around Cutigliano, I suppose, and they flavor the cheese. There's something a little bitter- someone told me there are a lot of gentians up there. Then they age the cheeses on spruce boards, and you can taste that." "Can you?" "Yes. It's strong." I took a bite and smacked my lips. "Like pitch.