Peter Korn, Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman

I'm a craftsman in two worlds, as a writer and as a construction worker. I don't write the kind of novels that win highfalutin awards, and I don't build the kind of houses that win architectural honors, but I'm pretty good at what I do. I craft. I make a living. So I'm always interested in how other people integrate their values, their families, their simple need to earn a living into their passion for craft.

Peter Korn is a writer, an educator, a furniture maker. As a craftsman he discovered that he couldn't make a living -- or sustain a marriage -- chiseling mortise and tenon joints one by one, chair by chair. He could teach, though. And he could write. In this book, he's a philosopher as he tries to come to grips with what it means to be a craft worker.

We view books through our own personal filters, so here's mine: what interested me was not the philosophy but the memoir aspect, the people Korn met and his own growth as a person and as a furniture maker. He started like me as a carpenter on a construction crew. He had some advantages I never had -- a private school education, Ivy League college, a father who continually bailed him out of business failures and personal setbacks. I envy that. He had Hodgkin's disease and chemotherapy -- twice. I don't envy that. He developed his own furniture style and then really found his calling as an educator, founding and running the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Rockport, Maine. I applaud that.

Korn traces the history of how society has changed its appreciation of craft -- first as work, then as skill, and finally as art. Eventually Korn realizes that by embracing a life of craft he was seeking self-fulfillment, seeking "a good life." He also realizes that craft alone is not salvation. He witnesses one man who is a great craftsman but fails in most other aspects of life.

Craft itself can be an attempt at redemption. To create something good, one must know something good:

Every man-made thing, be it a chair, a text, or a school, is thought made substance. It is the expression of someone's ... ideas and beliefs.

This book, along with the furniture he made and the school he created, are the expressions of Peter Korn's beliefs. He found his good life.

My father sang a song to me, and then we would sing it together: The bear went over the mountain (repeated three times). And what do you think he saw? He saw another mountain (repeated three times). And what do you think he did? The bear went over the mountain...
And on we'd sing. And so it is. As a maker you put one foot in front of the other and you own the journey. Finding creative passion that governs your life may be a curse as well as a blessing, but I would not trade it for anything else I know.

Review: Cabin by Lou Ureneck

Cabin: Two Brothers, A Dream, and Five Acres in Maine by Lou Ureneck is part story and part encyclopedia.  It's a compilation of everything related to the location and construction of a cabin in Maine, though it's by no means a how-to manual.  Half of it is about the human relationships of the builders — which is my sweet spot.  The other half, intertwined with the story, is about the ecology, history, and social structure of the area, sometimes in exhaustive detail.  If the subject of a particular page doesn’t interest you, just skip ahead a few paragraphs or pages and read about something else.  Like:

By the 1830s, Stoneham (Maine) was … a source of staves for the manufacture of wood barrels.  Stoneham’s staves, the beveled pieces of wood that formed the sides of the barrels, traveled by wagon to Portland and then by schooner to Cuba and the West Indies, where they were assembled into barrels and filled with molasses and rum.  The staves were temporarily assembled into barrels in Stoneham to assure their eventual watertightness, and then broken down and packaged into shooks that took up less space in shipping — in the local vernacular, the staves were “all shook up.”

Did Elvis Presley know that when he recorded the song?  Well, now you and I know it.

I must have skipped a third of the text, but the parts that engaged me were wonderful.  He's a descriptive writer.  I could feel the snow coming down.  I could see the beaver in the pond.

I loved the author's boyhood trapping of muskrats in New Jersey (and what does this have to do with building a cabin in Maine?  Not much.)  I loved the Civil War history detailing what happened to the local Maine boys who went away to fight.  I loved meeting the locals who helped with the construction — a carpenter, a dowser, an excavator — and I loved meeting a crusty local lumberman who greeted the author with a long skeptical stare and then asked, "Are you a liberal?" as if he were asking, "Are you a cockroach?"

It's about men: the author, his brother Paul, their sons, their father.  Both the author and his brother go through divorces.  Though he examines every other tangential aspect of the cabin-building, we learn almost nothing about the break-ups except how they affected the work.  The very lack of women in the author's narrative — and I suppose, the author's mind — might indicate why the divorces took place.  Or might not.  I have to respect the author's discretion, though it creates a notable hole in the story.

Here's a construction detail I learned, while it twisted my stomach in a knot:

Paul smacked his thumbnail hard with the hammer.  It immediately turned purple and throbbed as the blood from the bruise pushed up the nail.  He applied pressure on it to slow the pooling of the blood, but the pain was bad enough to make working difficult…  So I proposed a solution I had learned on a construction job and had once used on myself: Piercing the thumbnail to relieve the pressure…  I sterilized a tiny drill bit with the flame of a butane lighter and went to work in my operating room — the front seat of his truck.  Slowly and carefully, I turned a tiny drill bit, about an eighth of an inch in diameter, back and forth with my thumb and forefinger over Paul's thumbnail to make a hole.  'You're going to know it when I touch the flesh,' I told him.  'That's okay,' he said.  'It can't be any worse than what I'm feeling right now.'  The bit came through and the pressurized blood shot over the dashboard and onto the windshield.  He wrapped his thumb with a handkerchief and tied it tight.

I hope I never have to use this technique, but it's good to know.

Gidget, Kathy Kohner Zuckerberg, and (ahem) the great Kahoona

The original novel called Gidget, The Little Girl With Big Ideas — which started the whole Gidget craze — came out in 1957.  I've just read the new edition of 2001 which is titled, simply, Gidget, and I'm amazed at how much I liked it. The new edition's forward by Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, who was the real-life Gidget, puts the story in perspective.

Kathy Kohner was a petite (less than 5 feet tall) perky Jewish girl who became obsessed with surfing back in the days before the Beach Boys started singing about it, before most of America had even heard of the sport. Her actual photo was used on the original book cover and again on the new edition. In the novel, Gidget remains a petite brunette, but I can't recall any mention of being Jewish. (She became a blond in the movie as played by Sandra Dee.)  Gidget is not interested in dating, at least not with her high school peers, and she is something of a tomboy. But she also wishes that her "bosom" was bigger. She's on the edge of discovering her sexuality at age 15 and is attracted to the college guys who spend the summer surfing at Malibu, especially one guy named Moondoggie. She also befriends the leader of the group, an older man called the great Kahoona who is a non-collegiate full-time beach bum, and quite proud of it.

With spunk and determination, Gidget ingratiates herself into the group of surfers, who reluctantly - but protectively - accept her as something of a mascot. There's a fascinating tug-of-war between Gidget's growing attraction for Moondoggie and the surfing group's determination to keep hands off.

Gidget is a rebel of the 1950s. She lies to her parents and sneaks out of the house.  And what's weird is that all this little rebel wants to do is surf (which was considered a boy's sport) and get pinned (frat pin, that is) by Moondoggie. How it all plays out is well worth the very short read.

An interesting dimension of the story is that the author, Frederick Kohner, was writing the novel about his own daughter with her cooperation - and her actual diaries. Some people will get creeped out that a father was creating a character of his own daughter and writing about her sexuality and her attraction for an older guy. As a writer and father myself, I admit to some queasiness, or at least some curiosity, about the situation.  Fred Kohner was a professional writer, a good one, who recognized that the sexuality was the essential part of the story. He also had a PhD from the University of Vienna, the training ground of Sigmund Freud.  Kathy Kohner in later life seems to have had no problem with what her father wrote and is in fact quite proud of her role - and interestingly, she was always attracted to professors and eventually married one. Analyze that, if you wish.

Ed McClanahan has written an interesting follow-up, based on his lifelong friendship with Kathy (he was her first English professor at Oregon State College in 1958): 

And the next thing I knew there she was, right there in the front row of my very first class, a drop-dead cute, Malibu-tanned, feisty-looking little Jewish beach bunny whose natural insouciance made her an enlivening presence amongst all the Presbyterian peaches-and-cream sorority girl home ec majors.  ...When, in her first in-class theme, she used the term "shit-heel squares" to describe certain of her peers ... I knew right away that this was someone I wanted to know. 

Three Without Fear

A wonderful adventure, Three Without Fear was published in 1947 but is just as engaging today. It's like Gary Paulsen's Hatchet but for a younger age, and instead of a boy alone in the wilderness it's about three kids alone in the desert. I read it to a third grader, and neither of us could put it down.

After a shipwreck, an American boy named Dave is cast ashore on a beach in Baja California. He is found by Pedro and Maria, brother and sister orphans who have run away from virtual slavery in a foster home at Cabo Blanco and are now hiding in a makeshift shelter in the desert. Dave wants to return to his parents in California, while Pedro and Maria want to find their grandmother in northern Baja. Together they decide to hike north following the desolate Pacific Coast (Baja in the 1940s was much more isolated and unpopulated than it is today). It will be a journey of hundreds of miles, on foot. Accompanying them are a half-coyote dog named Chico and a roadrunner bird with a broken wing.

 It's a story of survival, discovery, and friendship. They improvise and invent. They hunt rabbits with slingshots and dig up clams on the beach. They endure storms and days without water or food. They start fires without matches.  They make tortillas by grinding the seeds of wild plants into flour.  They are held captive by a bad man. They attempt to repair a derelict boat with nearly disastrous results.  They face these adventures, as the title says, without fear while their friendship grows.

The California white boy and the Mexican brother/sister learn their cultural differences and common humanity, which is woven nicely and unobtrusively into the story. In the trek, Dave becomes nearly as brown as his companions.  The ending - and their parting - is both happy and touchingly sad.

Only the rigid gender roles might betray the book's age (Maria cooks; the boys hunt) but the roles are consistent with writing in 1947 and particularly true to the Mexican locale. Maria, by the way, is one tough cookie.
  
The illustrations by Ralph Ray, Jr. are a striking bonus to an excellent story. The book is out of print and costs a small fortune on the used book market (I paid $50 for mine).

Here's the opening:

Dave was never quite sure how it happened.  He only knew that he awoke as he was being hurled from his berth, and mingled with the startled awakening, there was a terrific explosion.  For a moment or more he lay stupefied on the floor of his stateroom, struggling to regain his senses.  Then slowly he realized the steady throb of the engines, to which he had grown so accustomed in the week since boarding the ship, had abruptly ceased.

I recommend it to boys 8 to 12 and to adults who love good books about kids.

Given the nature of this blog, I was particularly enchanted by the inventiveness of the kids in plugging wormholes in a leaky old boat, building a raft, and in Dave's invention of a still consisting of a gourd filled with water sitting on an oyster shell to protect it from flame, heated over a fire with the steam escaping through hollow reeds to drip into another shell, by which they slowly and painstakingly converted salt water to fresh water.

Robert Coleman DuSoe (also spelled Robert C. "Du Soe" with a space between Du and Soe — it makes a difference when you search) was born February 20, 1920 in Los Angeles, California and died September 1, 1964, also in Los Angeles.  He wrote several books for children, including a nice one called Sea Boots.  He is credited with story or screenplay for two movies, a noir The Devil Thumbs a Ride and a western 20 Mule Team.  That's all I can find out about him.  Whoever are the heirs of Robert C. DuSoe, (or Robert C. Du Soe), I beg you to re-issue at least Three Without Fear — or contact me and let me do it.

George Nakashima: The Soul of a Tree

In preparing my profile of James Adams, James mentioned that he was trying to follow in the path of George Nakashima.  Naturally, I had to get my hands on a copy of Nakashima's The Soul of a Tree.  I've just read it, and it's changed my life.

What an inspiring man — both for the life he lived and the works he created.  I've written before that the Shakers were a source for my woodwork and for my method of writing.  Now I add George Nakashima as a spiritual guide, a man who once joked: "I am a Japanese Shaker."

He is best known for his tables made of large wood slabs joined by butterfly joints.  The tops are smooth while one or more edges are the natural rough edge of the tree.

I'm fascinated by his two-legged, leverage-defying conoid chairs, which must have fantastically tight joints:
As with poetry, a reviewer can best let the book speak for itself, in word and image.  Here is George Nakashima:

"Resurrection"

On resurrection: "This slab was cut from one of the great trees of England...  A deep furrow remains, giving its surface a sculptured look.  The usual market for fine timber would not find much use for such a slab, practically a reject of nature.  I have sometimes rescued these great slabs from the dump heap and sometimes, with luck, seem to give them a second chance at life as good furniture.  The natural forms with all their bumps and 'warts' survive.  To fashion such a piece of wood into fine furniture is almost an act of resurrection."

On cutting: "Usually, cutting across the crotch produces the finest figuring [on left].  This cut also provides the greatest usable width.  Cutting along the crotch [on right] results in a somewhat triangular piece of lumber with less surface area to work with.  The figuring is less intense, too.  At the point where a tree branches freely, three or more crotches may be found.  The result in the lumber can be truly extravagant figuring."

"I make any number of preliminary drawings in chalk to get a feeling for the proportion of the object we are creating.  It's easier to make a final decision where to cut if there is something to see on the board." 

"There is drama in the opening of a log — to uncover for the first time the beauty in the bole, or trunk, of a tree hidden for centuries, waiting to be given this second life."

"The key man in the process of cutting logs is the sawyer, one of the great craftsmen of our age with steady nerves and experienced judgment.  It is necessary to have an almost silent dialogue with this sawyer.  Few words are spoken, but thickness, the direction of the cut, the positioning of the log — all must be decided with precision."

On the soul of a tree: "When trees mature, it is fair and moral that they are cut for man's use, as they would soon decay and return to the earth.  Trees have a yearning to live again, perhaps to provide the beauty, strength and utility to serve man, even to become an object of great artistic worth."

 "Each flitch, each board, each plank can have only one ideal use.  The woodworker, applying a thousand skills, must find that ideal use and then shape the wood to realize its true potential."

Rough design, bookmatched walnut root

Finished bookmatched walnut root table

"The object is to make as fine a piece of furniture as is humanly possible.  The purpose is usefulness, but with a lyric quality — this is the basis of all my designs."

On hand versus power tools: "Our approach is to realize a synthesis between the hand and the machine working as a small unit."

"As much as man controls the end product, there is no disadvantage in the use of modern machinery and there is no need for embarrassment...  A power plane can do in a few minutes what might require a day or more by hand.  In a creative craft, it becomes a question of responsibility, whether it is a man or the machine that controls the work's progress."

A butterfly key of rosewood joining two pieces of walnut.

On nature: "Once I was pulling a fairly large branch and it suddenly gave way, knocking me breathless to the ground.  As it fell, two long shards of wood broke off, each fifteen to twenty inches long and as sharp as a spear.  I was wearing heavy rubber boots with leather tops.  One of the shards pierced one boot's heel, while the other slashed through it.  Lying on the ground, I waited for the pain to start, for it seemed as if I'd been crucified.  But as my senses returned, I realized the wood had gone through the boot, but not my foot: all I had were scrapes on my sole and heel.  Nature is compassionate."

Part of my feeling of kinship with the man comes from the remarkable facial resemblance between him and my own father, who was neither Japanese nor a woodcrafter.

George Nakashima

On personal history:  "Then Pearl Harbor broke, and all of us of Japanese descent were put in concentration camps.  My wife and I and our newly born daughter were sent to a camp in Idaho.  This I felt at the time was a stupid, insensitive act, one by which my country could only hurt itself.  It was a policy of unthinking racism.  Even Eskimos with only a small percentage of Japanese blood were sent to the Western desert to die."

After relocating to New Hope, Pennsylvania: "After a year of doing general farm work, it was quite clear to me that chickens and I were not compatible."
 
On building his house in New Hope:  "At no time did we have more than fifty dollars in cash, but by scrounging materials, gathering stones off the property, digging foundation by hand, and working evenings and weekends, I was able to build a rough structure by Thanksgiving. …  Our first winter in the house was bitterly cold, and the faucet froze in the kitchen."

"We built, quite literally, on the principle of laying stone upon stone.  We had considerable stone on our land, and it was simply a question of hauling it by wheelbarrow to the building site."

On architecture:  "There is a wonderful feeling to be had in erecting a stone wall.  There is a sense of order and permanence.  A good wall will last for generations and even millenia."

"The decline in quality of modern furniture is probably due in part to the use of the quick, easy and cheap dowel joint.  The decline of modern domestic architecture can be traced to the popularity of the stud wall put together with hammer and nails, a type of construction calling for no joinery at all.  By contrast, the early American house and barn with their excellent joinery still represent the best we have produced and will greatly outlast contemporary buildings."

Nakashima built several innovative structures at New Hope, blending traditional Japanese and American styles with modern materials.  This photo shows the interior of the Minguren Museum, which has a roof that is a hyperbolic parabaloid.  "The span of the room is thirty-six-by-thirty-six feet, but note that there are no trusses or beams." 

Ceiling, stairs, Minguren Museum

"The stairway is made of three-inch thick oak planks cantilevered twelve inches into a fieldstone wall."  I wonder: With one end anchored in stone and the other hanging in free air, how much do they bounce?

The reception house

On local salvage:  "I call our reception house a sanso, or 'mountain villa,' in Japanese.  I built it … entirely with materials cast off from my workshop.  Castoff though the building materials were, they were quite unique since the rich and rare woods that I normally use are not generally obtainable.  The floor, for example, is made of red birch and walnut boards with extraordinary figuring.  Most of the outside construction was done with a single dead elm.  This elm, about five feet in diameter, could not be lifted by one huge forklift, but required two.  The elm had been cut into two-and-a-half-inch-thick boards.  Once cut, there seemed to be no client demand since the wood was light in color and not unusually grained.  So, we happily used it in the reception house."

There's so much more:  Drawings by Nakashima's own hand.  Chapters about species of trees, their spiritual and practical uses.  Pages about where to cut, and why.  Architectural commentary.  Gorgeous photos of Nakashima's stunning original designs that are so lovely, you'll want to run your fingertips over the paper.  Slabs of trees that make a woodworker's heart race.  A genius of a man who enriched our lives, even if we never knew him.  


The original edition of the book is out of print (I borrowed mine from the library).  Used copies are fetching enormous prices (as are his furniture), but a new edition of the book has been released by Kodansha.  I've just bought the Kodansha version and am pleased to report that it's of excellent quality.  The man deserves no less.  


Note:  If you're interested, here's a link to the Kodansha edition at amazon.com:
The Soul of a Tree: A Master Woodworkers Reflections.

For more about George Nakashima, here are some links:

George Nakashima web site

Tour George Nakashima's "Handmade House"

Links to some other books I've reviewed:

A Carpenter's Life by Larry Haum

House by Tracy Kidder

Toil: Building Yourself by Jody Procter

Religion in Wood: A book of Shaker Furniture by Edward Deming Andrews and Faith Andrews

With our Hands: The Story of Carpenters in Massachusetts by Mark Erlich

The Mind at Work by Mark Rose

Tools of the Trade: The Art and Craft of Carpentry by Jeff Taylor

A Splintered History of Wood by Spike Carlsen

Reverence for Wood by Eric Sloane
Cabin: Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine by Lou Ureneck

Review: La Honda Journal by David E. LeCount

The old gloves

hold the same wrinkles worked

into my hand

Just 20 miles from the Silicon Valley, the little village of La Honda has long served as a counterpoint to the frantic high tech lifestyle.  From the regulars who hang out on the porch at Apple Jack's (motto: We eat puppies) to the readers and writers who hang out at La Honda's monthly Lit Night (motto: Drink hearty and read something) to the musicians who seem to be playing everywhere at all times (motto: The best music you never heard), the town has long been an alternative outpost. 

Picture window —

a hummingbird stares at me

in my cage

David E. LeCount, whose haiku has appeared on tea bottles all over the world, now has a lovely new book called La Honda Journal: a haiku diary.  It's a gentle, funny, and very wise reflection of family, love, children, and the rural life.

Digging for "treasure" …

two boys hushed having found

a rusted square nail

David has frequently joined Lit Night at Cafe Cuesta (formerly Sullivan's) to down a beer and read a poem or two.

To write, the old waitress

takes the pencil behind her ear

and tongues the point

I want to quote them all, but I'll stop now.  You can purchase the book at amazon with this link. You'll get 153 haiku for just $12.  That's less than 8 cents per haiku.  What a deal!  Read them and you'll go to a place where fat frogs sink the lily pads, where a woman's hair blows across her lips as she's saying good-bye, where piglets climb tumbling over your foot as you shovel their wallow.  You'll be glad you came.

Review: A Carpenter's Life by Larry Haun

I wish I’d known Larry Haun.  From his writing he comes across as one of those spry, sometimes cranky, remarkably ageless carpenters you meet from time to time who love their work and understand the deeper meaning of their craft.  Best of all, his passion was for creating durable, practical housing.  Not McMansions.  Not ego-castles.  Just shelter, a basic human need.

Here’s the purpose of the book in Larry’s own words:
  

I can’t help but wonder about the relationship between people and their homes.  How do these vastly different dwelling places affect the people who live there?  How have I been shaped by the houses I’ve lived in?  Who and what would I be if I’d been born in an upscale mansion or a shack by the river? 

His knowledge of practical housing came first hand.  In western Nebraska his mother grew up in a sod house and later taught in a straw bale school.  Larry worked as a production framer in the 1950’s tract housing boom in Los Angeles at a time when production framing was just being invented.

Larry avoids the cult of exquisite wood craft.  He used power saws and drywall and makes no apology.  At the same time he cares about sustainability and green values while laughing at the self-canceling concept of a 10,000 square foot house that was certified “green.”

In A Carpenter’s Life he discusses twelve houses in twelve chapters, from his mother’s “soddy” to the quonset huts he built during World War Two to post-war tract houses to Habitat for Humanity houses to his own small, simple house in which he raised a large family.  Most interesting are his personal experiences with each form of construction.  Least interesting are his occasional sustainable ecology rants, which become a bit too frequent near the end of the book.  Not that I disagree with him.  It’s just that if you’re reading his book, most likely you’re already among the converted.

Larry Haun

There are photos and drawings, but this is not a glossy book about glossy houses.  If you’re seeking a holiday gift for a non-glossy carpenter (and, ahem, you’ve already given my own book Clear Heart), you might give A Carpenter’s Life.  I doubt if it’s in many stores.  I ordered my copy through Amazon, and here’s a link if you want to do the same.

For more information, there’s a glowing review of the book here in the New York Times.

Sue Doro: Heart, Home & Hard Hats

I previously reviewed Sue Doro's Blue Collar Goodbyes.  Checking Amazon for more titles by her, I found Heart, Home and Hard Hats along with an arrogant and mean-spirited review written by one Robert P. Beveridge of Lakewood, Ohio.  The review reveals far more about the reviewer than about the book in question.  I won't go into it except to say that the reviewer called the poems "morally and ethically ill-informed."  If this guy is so threatened by this book, I want it.

As with Blue Collar Goodbyes, the poems in Heart, Home, & Hard Hats wouldn't fare well in a university MFA seminar.  But then, Sue Doro isn't writing for a university MFA audience.  Let's stop being snotty about poetry.  Sue Doro is a factory machinist who writes with feeling about her job, her coworkers, and her family.  After reading her poems, I'd like to sit her down and buy her a beer.  Does anyone feel that way about T.S. Eliot?

Granted, if I were editing her book, I would have tossed out half the poems - like, anything with the word "womyn" in it.  The remainders would stand up nicely in a shorter, tighter edition.  

Sue opens her heart.  That's the chance a poet takes at the risk of withering scorn from the likes of Mr. Beveridge.  Morally and ethically ill-informed, indeed - for loving her husband, loving her children, for supporting her coworkers, for toiling hard at a dirty job and thinking she deserves equal pay.

Here are a couple of short ones I like:

Where's My Hammer?

number 13's still screwed up
have to whap it with a hammer
every time I want the tool bar up or down
and my arm is killing me
hammering at a funny sideways angle
all the time
told the foreman the machine was broke
he says it'll get fixed
it's on the "list"
felt like tellin' him
I got a list too…
and HE'S on it
WHERE'S MY HAMMER!?!

Paper Napkin Poem for Larry

i am writing on a paper napkin
missing you     it is after lunch
and i am waiting for a 1:30 class

i am a 37 year old school "girl"
waiting for a 1:30 afternoon
industrial math class
and missing you

for five hours this morning
i faced and turned a steel bar
to specified length
on an engine lathe
and only thought about you
in between cuts
which is right and proper
and especially safe
considering the machine parts
were spinning
at 620 revolutions per minute

so you can see
now that i'm waiting
for my 1:30 math class to start
i can spend time safely
thinking about you
loving you
and feeling good
about my life and ours
while writing
this paper napkin love poem

Heart, Home & Hard Hats was published in 1986 by Midwest Villages & Voices.  You can find it (and the vile review) here on Amazon.

If you're interested in other tradespeople writing poetry, I've got some suggestions here.

Sue Doro: Blue Collar Goodbyes

Sue Doro was a machinist for the Milwaukee Road Railway and, before that, for Allis Chalmers Tractor in Milwaukee.  

Her book Blue Collar Goodbyes is a collection of poetry drawn from her experience working lathes and big machines in the Rust Belt.

These are blue collar poems by a blue collar writer.  No academic finery here.  No arch irony.  She has something to say and she says it.  

I like that.

I especially like this one:

Red Dust

Davey was a clerk at the railroad
sixteen years union seniority gaining him
a seat outside the bathroom
in the foreman's office
behind a desk smokestacked high with papers

Only Native American in the wheel shop
he tried to bury his identity
for survival in white territory

Became more christian than the christians
to ward off totem pole humor

Carried his bible around for protection
when stepping out into the shop

Just in case he was confronted
with the booming noise of brass hammers
drumming a dubious "tom-tom" beat
on the sides of steel barrels

At least they wouldn't dare a racist joke to his face
when confronted with a sign of the crucifix and
"aw, it's somethin' to do" the guys would say
when I'd ask about intent

Then one afternoon alone together in the office
Davey confided with a conspiratory wink
that he continued to honor his mother's religion
of wind rain and sun in the event
the white man's god fell through

Recounted tales of his childhood on the reservation
his real name Red Dust
his land in northern Wisconsin
settling over graves of friends and relatives
where he returns to hunt with his sons
each Thanksgiving weekend

And the last days before the railroad shut down
saw his bible lying on the desk
gathering dust
closed over a blood-red beaded bookmark

Blue Collar Goodbyes was published in 1992 by Papier-Mache Press.  It seemed to be out of print, so I bought a used copy from amazon.  Later I found this link, which might still work if you want a brand new copy.

If you're interested in other tradespeople writing poetry, I've got some suggestions in this post called Poets Pounding Nails.

Clemens Starck: Changing the Alternator Belt on your 504

Clemens Starck is the best journeyman/poet I've ever read.

Often the word "journeyman" is an insult when applied to a writer.  It implies that one has learned the craft but hasn't risen to the level of Master. 

In the case of Mr. Starck, at the time of publication for his book of poetry, Journeyman's Wages, he was a carpenter.

A journeyman carpenter working in Oregon. 

Let me add to that title.  Clemens Starck is a Master of Poetry working in the world.

I simply love this book.  Here's an example:

Changing the Alternator Belt on your 504

1.

To do this the radiator
must be removed.  Two bolts on top, three
on the bottom, and disconnect
the hoses.
Four small screws, and the shroud
comes loose.  This leaves
the radiator free.

Lift it out carefully.  Set it
outside the garage, on the gravel.
Take five.
Smoke.
Contemplate the plum tree.

2.

If the soul took shape
it might look like that - a cloud of white blossoms
throbbing with bees...
In the rank grass,
daffodils flaunt their yellow message.
Six fat robins
skitter across the pasture.

It makes no sense.
Eddie Rodriguez is dying.  You know
that you are dying too, and still there is spring
and fixing cars.

3.

With the radiator out,
the rest is easy.
After replacing the belt, reverse the procedure:
radiator, hoses, anti-freeze.

Turn on the ignition.
Be brave.  Be sad.  Check for leaks.
Wipe your greasy hands on a rag.
Drive on,
brother, drive on.

    for E. R., 1945-1987

by Clemens Starck from the book Journeyman's Wages published by Story Line Press, © copyright 1995 and 1997.

You can buy it with this link to alibris. 

Unfortunately, the book is out of print, so your purchase won't send any pennies to the poet.  He deserves some journeyman's wages.

Poets Pounding Nails

Today after 106 consecutive daily posts about my own work life (with the emphasis on "life"), I'm going to take a break and talk about other authors who write about working in the building trades. 

There are several authors I've read and quoted and reviewed in my Clear Heart blog.  Some of the writers are tradespeople themselves, others are observers.  Most are poets. 

If you want to read about work in the trades, here are some people to know:


Joseph Millar, poet:

"Red Wing" from Fortune.


"Fat City" from Overtime.


"Tools" from Fortune.

"Telephone Repairman" from Overtime.  (In the Writer's Almanac blog.)


Mark Turpin, poet:

"Gene Lance" from Hammer: Poems. 

"Before Groundbreak" from Hammer: Poems. 

"Last Hired" and "The Box" from Hammer: Poems.  (In the Writer's Almanac blog.)

Gary L. Lark, poet:

"Becoming a Librarian" from Men at the Gates.

"Getting By" from Men at the Gates.  (In the Writer's Almanac blog.)

"Driving Nails" from Getting By.  (In the Writer's Almanac blog.)

"Men at the Gates" from Men at the Gates.  (In the Writer's Almanac blog.)

Sue Doro, poet:

"Red Dust" from Blue Collar Goodbyes.


 
"Where's My Hammer?" and "Paper Napkin Poem for Larry" from Heart, Home & Hard Hats.








Clemens Starck, poet:

"Changing the Alternator Belt in your 504" from Journeyman's Wages.

"Putting in Footings" from Journeyman's Wages. 

"Journeyman's Wages" from Journeyman's Wages.  (In the Writer's Almanac blog.)

"A Brief Lecture on Door Closers" from Traveling Incognito.  (In the Writer's Almanac blog.)





Terry Adams, poet:

"Last Draft" from Adam's Ribs.


"Pieta" and "The Dump" from Adam's Ribs.




 





Jody Procter, carpenter, actor, memoirist:
Toil: Building Yourself 


Support the poets.

Buy their books.

Keep them writing.

Reviewed!

My 365 Jobs blog gets reviewed about as often as I get married.  Once.  And it just happened today:  Something Very Different.

Check out the rest of Michael Taylor's blog.  It gives you an inside view of working in the movie/TV industry down at the grunt level, just as I try to do about working in the housing trade.  Try this one:  Circle of Confusion.

Michael is funny and he's a philosopher.  He's got trade secrets.  He's even got gossip.  Enjoy!

Heartwood, the movie

A couple of years ago, I posted a review of the movie Heartwood.  I said I liked many things about the movie but that the script was flawed.

Lo and behold, two years later, the scriptwriter and director, Lanny Cotler, just posted some fascinating comments to my review.  You can see them here.

I'm going to re-watch Heartwood and also Lanny's movie The Earthling.  Then I'll have more to say.

"...Place..." by Diane Lee Moomey

To enjoy a book I have to trust the writer.  Only then can I give in to her power.  Sometimes trust is easy - a voice sounding just like my own, or not like mine but amply  warm or authentic or engaging.  Sometimes the voice is first contact with a mind utterly different than my own but clearly onto something - such as the voice of Diane Lee Moomey.

And trust her I do.  She is kindred to the voices of Barry Lopez, Annie Dillard.  I’ve read her book three times now and will surely return again.  The book is called . . . Place . . . and that’s what it’s about: her lifelong search for …place… a state of mind, a home - not a structure or location but a spot in the spiritual and physical universe.

The power of the book is largely indirect, cumulative.  There are the people: James, her companion homesteader on their frozen one hundred hectares of Canadian Shield, gatherer of maple sap, a man she never fully reveals perhaps out of kindness, perhaps out of sorrow.  There is Marcel, a farmer who rides his tractor while composing poetry in his head, who sells candles at a fair where Diane sells porcelain eggs.  “When the fair is over… Marcel kisses me in front of everyone: a surprise kiss; a stong, hard kiss, beyond Quebec-polite.  This is not an invitation; it is a statement.  We could live Here together and do very well.” 

There is Evan, “another one of those rock-star potters that Ontario is famous for,” from whom she buys clay, with whom she shares a kiln and an attraction.  She says, “As Marcel is actually not wind, but the door through which wind blows, so Evan is not fire, but the kiln that contains it.”

And there is Will:  “Wherever he goes, he carries the presence of those red trees with him; the slow, tenacious movements of vines and of root hairs.  Winds do not blow him down; earthquakes do not topple him…  He moves like a plant, and thinks like one, too.  Days or weeks will go by with no apparent activity, then suddenly comes a flurry of blossoms, a setting of fruit.”

To read this book is to feel in your body - to your very core - how it is to walk (carefully) at midnight, sixty degrees below zero, in the Laurentiens: “No wind will blow; no snow will fall; storms move only in the much warmer regions near zero.  Smoke from chimneys will rise straight up, skies will be clear, stars clean and sharp.  Beneath the snow, Mouse and Shrew may sleep, may move about in tiny tunnels.  Above the snow, no sensible creature…” 

You will feel the dry heat of the noonday desert sun that paradoxically leaves you drenched: “I can feel the thin, high vibration of the ultraviolet seeping beneath arm hairs, altering my cells, changing my skin forever.” 

You will learn the smell of water, the personality of granite.  When a blue jay becomes trapped in your house, you will calm her with a spontaneous language:  “'Chikachikachik,' I continue, and walk slowly to the open door, carrying her in front of me.  As soon as she sniffs the plein air, she shoves off the dowel with surprising force and is gone.  I think, absurdly, of aliens coming to rescue earthlings as we flap against our own glass ceiling…”

You will swim naked at midnight in a small Adirondack lake:

On sudden impulse, I upend myself and dolphin-dive into the dark water, eyes open, pushing down as far as I can.  My fingertips brush the cold layer six feet beneath the surface.

I am not prepared.

Utter emptiness surrounds me.  This water is not simply dark, it is void.  It is nil, it is naught, it is no-thing and no-where.  It has no up and down, no cool and no warm.  It is the dark of the moon, the moment in the night before the dreams begin.  I feel no Presence or Non-Presence, nothing to comfort or to threaten, but all the same I thrash my way quickly back to the surface, splash hastily back to the shore, wrap myself in the towel and sit shivering on the dock.

I have seen my face before my parents were born.

Eventually from her birth on Canadian bedrock she comes to the Pacific Coast, a land crackling above the tectonic Ring of Fire, a land of “loose and temperamental stuff.  The occasional massive boulder on the surface is the black bear in the snowdrift, the swimming pool in the desert - astonishing by the mere fact of its appearance.”  To her surprise, it is Home.

Diane Lee Moomey settled for many years in La Honda, California.  Now she lives in nearby El Granada.  She designs gardens and is a frequent reader at Sullivan’s Lit Night in La Honda.  Perhaps one night, she’ll read this poem (from …Place…):

Faultline

i drive the coast.
at the fault line,
soft ragged cliffs need only
a couple of richters
to go sliding into the sea.
i park here,
spread my blanket, picnic lunch.

delicious.
deep beneath me,
rocks could wake, stretch,
roll over in their sleep.
they could, they could do it now.

i could drive on,
out of harm’s way,
but i won’t.

no, i don’t know why.

Charlie Cutten: Part 2

Back in April of 2009, I posted an appreciation of Charlie Cutten, a marvelous La Honda musician, a gentle cherub of a guy with a twinkly grin and a white beard. Now I’ve just heard from Mark Horne, an old acquaintance of Charlie’s. Mark shared some memories. With his permission, I’d like to add them here:

“I first met Charlie in 1978. We spent much of the summer together in Avignon. I had just finished my first year at university and was hitching around Europe. For the first couple of weeks in Avignon I worked in a steel plant during the day and hung around the market stalls under the Palais de Papes in the evening. It was there that I met Charlie and within a short time I had given up the steel plant as I was making much more money 'bottling' for Charlie when he played around the cafes in the centre of town. He was such a nice guy and so talented.

“Some years later, after I had finished at university and joined the corporate world, I was on a business trip to Munich. I was coming up from the Ubahn and heard someone playing and singing in the street above. I knew that voice - Charlie Cutten. When he saw me he just smiled and kept playing; typically Charlie. Later that evening some friends of mine managed to get him a gig at one of the local clubs and we spent too many hours afterwards drinking and remembering the days in Avignon.

"I am now a middle aged guy with my own kids who go roaming around Europe during the summer. I have never forgotten Charlie, his sense of fun and his exceptional talent. I can't believe that he is gone.

“There were a number of adventures/screw-ups that we had that summer like:

“Being relentlessly chased by a farmer when we stole a couple of peaches from his farm. He actually followed all the way back to the leather stall where we were staying. We had to hide under one of the display tables for ages, struggling not to laugh, while he argued with the stall owners that he had seen us come in.

“Meeting a guy called Dr. John J. J_____ who seemed really nice until he started talking about Viet Nam. Apparently he spent the last few years of the war taking guys off death row on the promise that if they survived they would get a reprieve. As you can imagine he and Charlie had some heated discussions.

“Walking through Avignon hospital trying to find a girl that was part of our group who had been mugged. We didn't know her name so he walked through the wards playing his guitar trying to get her to recognise us. The matron wasn't very happy but he was a big hit with the younger staff and the patients.”

Charlie Cutten, 55, a Stanford University graduate and well-known figure on the Northern California acoustic music scene, died April 12, 2004. His wonderful CD is still available at CDBaby.com.

When we die, ripples of our spirit continue spreading, little waves, farther and farther. Charlie's music still moves me. When I hear his "Rejoice," tingles still run down my spine. Somewhere, Charlie is smiling, still touching us in his gentle, cheerful way.