Woodworking Work Quotes

Silence. It flashed from the woodwork and the walls; it smote him with an awful, total power, as if generated by a vast mill. It rose from the floor, up out of the tattered gray wall-to-wall carpeting. It unleashed itself from the broken and semi-broken appliances in the kitchen, the dead machines which hadn’t worked in all the time Isidore had lived here. From the useless pole lamp in the living room it oozed out, meshing with the empty and wordless descent of itself from the fly-specked ceiling. It managed in fact to emerge from every object within his range of vision, as if it—the silence—meant to supplant all things tangible. Hence it assailed not only his ears but his eyes; as he stood by the inert TV set he experienced the silence as visible and, in its own way, alive. Alive! He had often felt its austere approach before; when it came it burst in without subtlety, evidently unable to wait. The silence of the world could not rein back its greed. Not any longer. Not when it had virtually won.

‎"And suddenly they came out of the woodwork. I don't actually know what that expression means. What come out of the wood work? Cockroaches maybe. Mice? Are these rhetorical questions, like I just learned about on one of my rare visits to school? Was that a rhetorical question? Is it a paradox when you ask rhetorically if a rhetorical question is a rhetorical question? I think I'd better stop before I get a headache.

He grinned. "Some guys like to work on cars or do woodworking. I search for beautiful women who might want to bite me.

Silence. It flashed from the woodwork and the walls; it smote him with an awful, total power, as if generated by a vast mill. It rose from the floor, up out of the tattered gray wall-to-wall carpeting. It unleashed itself from the broken and semi-broken appliances in the kitchen, the dead machines which hadn’t worked in all the time Isidore had lived here. From the useless pole lamp in the living room it oozed out, meshing with the empty and wordless descent of itself from the fly-specked ceiling. It managed in fact to emerge from every object within his range of vision, as if it—the silence—meant to supplant all things tangible.

Soetsu Yanagi, in the "Unknown Craftsman", writes, "Man is most free when his tools are proportionate to his needs." For example, for optimal productivity, a carpenter needs woodworking tools and an environment conducive to his work, not a steam shovel or army tank.

The real wages of potters are in the daily silent appreciations of each of their customers as they pour the morning tea from their teapot, or drink coffee from their mug, or eat dinner off their plate. To be this involved in the daily lives of people who appreciate and admire your work enough to buy it must bring deep reassurance. It is a kind of immortality you can enjoy while still living. The same goes for the woodworker. You are part of the community.

In high school, I was on the carpentry team, but I got benched. It was awkward sitting on it while my teammates built it.

Money is dehydrated mercy. If you have plenty of it, you just add tears, and people come out of the woodwork to comfort you.

He is a woodworker; I’m a carpenter. We both work wood, but the way we approach it, and the tools we use, differ greatly.

I live in a beautiful place, I work at something I love, I make enough money to live, and my demands on the world's resources are very meager. What's unusual about this idyllic circumstance is that there is plenty of room for more to join.

year, possibly longer. The Hostetlers had then purchased a little haus for Noah and Hannah. The haus had been built by Englischers and was conveniently adjoining the Millers' property. It was ideal, as it was all on one level and had no stairs, apart from two on the porch, and given the fact that Noah worked in Mr. Miller's woodworking business, he only had a short distance to drive the buggy to work each day. The Miller familye and Amos sat down at the table, put their hands

Silence. It flashed from the woodwork and the walls; it smote him with an awful, total power, as if generated by a vast mill. It rose from the floor, up out of the tattered gray wall-to-wall carpeting. It unleashed itself from the broken and semi-broken appliances in the kitchen, the dead machines which hadn’t worked in all the time Isidore had lived here. From the useless pole lamp in the living room it oozed out, meshing with the empty and wordless descent of itself from the fly-specked ceiling. It managed in fact to emerge from every object within his range of vision, as if it—the silence—meant to supplant all things tangible. Hence it assailed not only his ears but his eyes; as he stood by the inert TV set he experienced the silence as visible and, in its own way, alive. Alive! He had often felt its austere approach before; when it came, it burst in without subtlety, evidently unable to wait. The silence of the world could not rein back its greed. Not any longer. Not when it had virtually won.

In olden times, you'd wander down to Mom's Cafe for a bite to eat and a cup of joe, and you would feel right at home. It worked just fine if you never left your home-own. But if you went to the next town over, everyone would look up and stare at you when you came in the door, and the Blue Plate Special would be something you didn't recognize. If you did enough traveling, you'd never feel at home anywhere. But when a businessman from New Jersey goes to Dubuque, he knows he can walk into a McDonald's and no one will stare at him. He can order without having to look at the menu, and the food will always taste the same. McDonald's is Home, condensed into a three-ring binder and xeroxed. “No surprises” is the motto of the franchise ghetto, its Good Housekeeping seal, subliminally blazoned on every sign and logo that make up the curves and grids of light that outline the Basin. The people of America, who live in the world's most surprising and terrible country, take comfort in that motto. Follow the loglo outward, to where the growth is enfolded into the valleys and the canyons, and you find the land of the refugees. They have fled from the true America, the America of atomic bombs, scalpings, hip-hop, chaos theory, cement overshoes, snake handlers, spree killers, space walks, buffalo jumps, drive-bys, cruise missiles; Sherman's March, gridlock, motorcycle gangs, and bungee jumping. They have parallel-parked their bimbo boxes in identical computer-designed Burbclave street patterns and secreted themselves in symmetrical sheetrock shitholes with vinyl floors and ill-fitting woodwork and no sidewalks, vast house farms out in the loglo wilderness, a culture medium for a medium culture.

It takes the better part of those months for Herr Thiessen to complete the clock. He works on little else, though the sum of money involved makes the arrangement more than manageable. Weeks are spent on the design and the mechanics. He hires an assistant to complete some of the basic woodwork, but he takes care of all the details himself. Herr Thiessen loves details and he loves a challenge. He balances the entire design on that one specific word Mr. Barris used. Dreamlike. The finished clock is resplendent. At first glance it is simply a clock, a rather large black clock with a white face and a silver pendulum. Well crafted, obviously, with intricately carved woodwork edges and a perfectly painted face, but just a clock. But that is before it is wound. Before it begins to tick, the pendulum swinging steadily and evenly. Then, then it becomes something else. The changes are slow. First, the color changes in the face, shifts from white to grey, and then there are clouds that float across it, disappearing when they reach the opposite side. Meanwhile, bits of the body of the clock expand and contract, like pieces of a puzzle. As thought clock is falling apart, slowly and gracefully. All of this takes hours. The face of the clock becomes a darker grey, and then black, with twinkling stars where the numbers had been previously. The body of the clock, which has been methodically turning itself inside out and expanding, is now entirely subtle shades of white and grey. And it is not just pieces, it is figures and objects, perfectly carved flowers and planets and tiny books with actually paper pages that turn. There is a silver dragon curls around part of the now visible clockwork, a tiny princess in a carved tower who paces in distress awaiting an absent prince. Teapots that our into teacups and minuscule curls of steam that rise from them as the seconds tick. Wrapped presents open. Small cats chase small dogs. An entire game of chess is played. At the center, where a cuckoo bird would live in a more traditional timepiece, is the juggler. Dressed in harlequin style with a grey mask, he juggles shiny silver balls that correspond to each hour. As the hour chimes, another ball joins the rest until at midnight he juggles twelve balls in a complex pattern. After midnight the clock begins once more to fold in upon itself. The face lightens and the colds return. The number of juggled balls decreases until the juggler himself vanishes. By noon it is a clock again, and no longer a dream.

The kid in the newspaper was named Stevie, and he was eight. I was thirty-nine and lived by myself in a house that I owned. For a short time our local newspaper featured an orphan every week. Later they would transition to adoptable pets, but for a while it was orphans, children your could foster and possibly adopt of everything worked out, the profiles were short, maybe two or three hundred words. This was what I knew: Stevie liked going to school. He made friends easily. He promised he would make his bed every morning. He hoped that if he were very good we could have his own dog, and if he were very, very good, his younger brother could be adopted with him. Stevie was Black. I knew nothing else. The picture of him was a little bigger than a postage stamp. He smiled. I studied his face at my breakfast table until something in me snapped. I paced around my house, carrying the folded newspaper. I had two bedrooms. I had a dog. I had so much more than plenty. In return he would make his bed, try his best in school. That was all he had to bargain with: himself. By the time Karl came for dinner after work I was nearly out of my mind. “I want to adopt him,” I said. Karl read the profile. He looked at the picture. “You want to be his mother?” “It’s not about being his mother. I mean, sure, if I’m his mother that’s fine, but it’s like seeing a kid waving from the window of a burning house, saying he’ll make his bed if someone will come and get him out. I can’t leave him there.” “We can do this,” Karl said. We can do this. I started to calm myself because Karl was calm. He was good at making things happen. I didn’t have to want children in order to want Stevie. In the morning I called the number in the newspaper. They took down my name and address. They told me they would send the preliminary paperwork. After the paperwork was reviewed, there would be a series of interviews and home visits. “When do I meet Stevie?” I asked. “Stevie?” “The boy in the newspaper.” I had already told her the reason I was calling. “Oh, it’s not like that,” the woman said. “It’s a very long process. We put you together with the child who will be your best match.” “So where’s Stevie?” She said she wasn’t sure. She thought that maybe someone had adopted him. It was a bait and switch, a well-written story: the bed, the dog, the brother. They knew how to bang on the floor to bring people like me out of the woodwork, people who said they would never come. I wrapped up the conversation. I didn’t want a child, I wanted Stevie. It all came down to a single flooding moment of clarity: he wouldn’t live with me, but I could now imagine that he was in a solid house with people who loved him. I put him in the safest chamber of my heart, he and his twin brother in twin beds, the dog asleep in Stevie’s arms. And there they stayed, going with me everywhere until I finally wrote a novel about them called Run. Not because I thought it would find them, but because they had become too much for me to carry. I had to write about them so that I could put them down.

The franchise and the virus work on the same principle: what thrives in one place will thrive in another. You just have to find a sufficiently virulent business plan, condense it into a three-ring binder -- its DNA -- Xerox(tm) it, and embed it in the fertile lining of a well-traveled highway, preferably one with a left-turn lane. Then the growth will expand until it runs up against its property lines. In olden times, you'd wander down to Mom's Cafe for a bite to eat and a cup of joe, and you would feel right at home. It worked just fine if you never left your hometown. But if you went to the next town over, everyone would look up and stare at you when you came in the door, and the Blue Plate Special would be something you didn't recognize. If you did enough traveling, you'd never feel at home anywhere. But when a businessman from New Jersey goes to Dubuque, he knows he can walk into a McDonald's and no one will stare at him. He can order without having to look at the menu, and the food will always taste the same. McDonald's is Home, condensed into a three-ring binder and xeroxed. "No surprises" is the motto of the franchise ghetto, its Good Housekeeping seal, subliminally blazoned on every sign and logo that make up the curves and grids of light that outline the Basin. The people of America, who live in the world's most surprising and terrible country, take comfort in that motto. Follow the loglo outward, to where the growth is enfolded into the valleys and the canyons, and you find the land of the refugees. They have fled from the true America, the America of atomic bombs, scalpings, hip-hop, chaos theory, cement overshoes, snake handlers, spree killers, space walks, buffalo jumps, drive-bys, cruise missiles, Sherman's March, gridlock, motorcycle gangs, and bun-gee jumping. They have parallelparked their bimbo boxes in identical computer-designed Burbclave street patterns and secreted themselves in symmetrical sheetrock shitholes with vinyl floors and ill-fitting woodwork and no sidewalks, vast house farms out in the loglo wilderness, a culture medium for a medium culture. The only ones left in the city are street people, feeding off debris; immigrants, thrown out like shrapnel from the destruction of the Asian powers; young bohos; and the technomedia priesthood of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong. Young smart people like Da5id and Hiro, who take the risk of living in the city because they like stimulation and they know they can handle it.

I'm good with my hands. Woodwork, metal work, engines...other things too.

I found the ad in a community booster paper. “Sharp, experienced go-getter wanted to strip/refinish woodwork. Enthusiasm a must.” I had spent years refinishing, first in Raleigh and then again in Chicago. I always vowed I’d never do it again, but that’s the problem with having a skill: once you swear off it, you know you’re stuck with it forever. All work seems designed to kill you, but refinishing is tailor-made to provide a long and painful death. The chemical strippers are sold in metal cans picturing a skull and crossbones, and the list of ingredients reads like a who’s who in the world of cancer-causing agents. These strippers will eat through plastic buckets, rubber gloves, and nylon brushes. One is advised to wear a respirator but I rejected it, as the cumbersome mask tended to interfere with my smoking.

Shut up, Doc. This little piece of work thinks he’s not in zombie movie. Bontragers. Get ’em in the dark. How stupid are we? Well, guess what they did when the food ran out? A man gets hungry enough, the man next to him looks mighty tasty. And your little Bontragers? That ‘not so easy to get’ got a whole lot easier to catch when they started eating each other! And when their brains went all soft, the last thing they were thinking about was how hungry they were, and how nice a big ol’ chunk of human meat would taste.” McCaffrey shrank in his seat, visibly recoiling from the tirade taking place directly above him. “Take your ass across the channel and see what happens. They come out of the God damn woodwork! They get all amped up and they get you on the ground and they start eating you. They fucking eat you! There’s no mercy. There’s no quarter. There’s just a mindless killing machine clawing at your skin and tearing pieces out you with his God damn teeth!” “Artis!” Buehl stopped, not because of Dr. White, but rather because he was spent, breathing hard, his eyes welling with tears. “So, yeah,” Reagan finished calmly. “We’re in a zombie movie.

A newspaper, the first that had appeared, “The Rocky Mountain News,” was started whilst I was in Denver. The first number was full of scathing articles against the gamblers and blacklegs generally: in fact, the paper was run in the interest of the Vigilance Committee and law and order. The composing offices were in a log shanty, and the printers had to set the type with their six-shooters and double-barrelled guns lying on the benches beside them. I saw three of these men killed whilst they were peacefully carrying on their work. The editor’s name was Byers, and I knew him well. He never showed outside his door whilst these articles were appearing. The rowdies were always on the lookout for him, and directly he made any movement to leave his house half a dozen bullets would bury themselves in the woodwork. He stood this state of siege until the Vigilance Committee succeeded in clearing out the gang, when he became a great man in the town, very wealthy, and a State senator.

The asceticism of intellectual life is related to what we might call the asceticism of life in general: the cancer may or may not respond to treatment; a woodworker or an engineer must accept the limitations of the materials, regardless of the grand vision he or she began with; there are some stains that just will not come out, no matter how important the garment is; the office can hire and fire as much as it likes, but in the end only the people who work there can accomplish its tasks. The encounter with a given reality, and the resultant crushing of our desires and hopes, is an essential part of being a human being. Every mode of learning is a school of hard knocks.

Yeah. It tells me something. It tells me no relationship in the world could survive the shit we lay on it. It tells me we’re not looking at the reasons why we’re doing the things we’re doing. It tells me we’ve got a lot of work to do. A lot of looking to do. It tells me that, if those happy couples are there, they better come out of the woodwork fast and show themselves pronto so we can have a few examples for unbelieving heathens like you that it’s possible. Before you fuck yourself to death.

our, against limitations imposed subtly, in a thousand ways, from birth. To be female, to be working class, to be unexceptional. At my school, the boys took woodwork and metalwork, the girls domestic science and needlework. It never occurred to me to question. I gave it no thought. But now I think of sparks and sawdust and wish it had been different.

When I first started showing the “Indra’s Jewels” work, I had people coming out of the woodwork saying “Who is this guy? What is he doing? Who does he think he is doing this stuff?” and the more they’d find out they’d go “Oh, he was a painter? He taught for more than decade on the university level? He knows what he’s talking about? Oh, well let’s look at it a little closer.

Even if your gateway product is the same as everyone else’s, you’re going to communicate in a way that’s specific for your target market. Remember, you’re not just selling a product. You’re creating a message. You’re taking something that’s already there and crafting a story that’s tailored to your customer. Two people can buy the same product for completely different reasons. Somebody who’s buying gloves to work in the garden might buy the exact same gloves for woodworking or going to the gym. Their preference would be to find a brand that speaks directly to them. Put simply, customers want to buy into brands that are going to serve them over the long term. You’re not just selling workout gloves. You’re selling to people who work out. This is nonnegotiable.

I intentionally create products and processes around projects with a beginning and an end. It’s amazing to see the few that come out of the woodwork to support a cause or a startup vs how many come out to celebrate the big launch after all the hard work, a graduation, or closing of a chapter.

Working with wood is one of the joys of life.